Turn it off for W and K

Turn off the media for
William and Kate,
You know who I mean, just by two common first names,
Just like we thought we knew Diana and still can say only her first name
and know who we are talking about.

Turn off the TV and stop the feeding frenzy by the paparazzi,
if the money stream stops, they too will return to a life
of chasing some other poor famous person.

Wasn't fame something I craved as a youngster?
Jealously watching JFK's daughter living in the Whitehouse,
having whatever material things she wanted. She is about my age.
Then, at 5, I sat with the neighbor lady and sobbed all day
Watching JFK's funeral, my envy turned to sadness for
that little girl.
But here I was, not quite knowing who her father was yet,
Just thinking, maybe fame and fortune is not all it is cracked up to be.

When Diana got in the middle of a car chase clearly because of her fame, beauty, mystery,
Her poor children suffered most.
Never an apology from the media, only their arrogant self proclaimed right to get in your face,
chase you down with cameras, lethal as bullets,
And took that sweet soul out of our world.

Diana was and is the symbol of a classy woman, caring and kind, a mother first it is clear,
advocate for poor, defenseless,
who had to dodge aggressive camera toting creeps,
looking for a buck,
and their 5 seconds of fame.

So turn it off today and think of Diana,
She raised a handsome young man who married such a pretty innocent looking woman today (by the time this gets posted),
In William's eyes and actions, he will be a fine King I hope some day,
and give the papara-nazi's a run for their money.

turn it off.

Floods in Vermont

Floods are now the latest challenge after the nasty winter in Vermont.
3 inches of rain yesterday and more today have raked gullies down our driveway.
I saw the evil clouds come from the west, layers of dark and light, then swirling, almost.
The hills where we are start to cut the bands of different layers, preventing the spinning
that caused the tornadoes from the same storm system.
We hope the flooding recedes soon, the snow pack dissolves, and spring can officially commence.

On a different note,
I had a pleasant surprise blog discovery today....
Check out a friend's daughter's blog:

http://lopus.blogspot.com/

Kayla really has a talent, and we wish her well.

Swallows return

The Swallows




swallow, monkton, vt


The Swallows have returned to our woodshed and other sheds out back and other places with hollows like tree centers or under big tree bark.
We are happy they have cleverly come back at the exact time that the mosquitoes and flies hatch. They are ravenous from the journey but looked pretty healthy and spry.
We have a pretty good brood this year.
They showed up Easter Sunday.
First one, a sentinel, I believe, sits and chatters on the line for Fred to take down the window that keeps the North wind out in the winter.
Then a couple more showed up, letting us know their priority is to move into their version of summer camp.
Fred got up on the ladder and took down the window.
Within a minute the first swallow went in.
That evening, we could hear quite a chatter as the birds
were tidying their nests.
Then I heard a different noise, then they all went quiet. I believe it was an older bird shushing the others.
We are grateful to them for helping with our insect control.
We saw a couple of bats last year max. I hope they can recover from their near extinction in this area. So swallows are welcome and we hope they come back for years to come.

More signs of spring

Forsythia:

Happy Easter!

Eggs and rabbits and images of Christ and memories of wearing a new frilly dress
when I was so young.
A photo taken,
lost in time
forever in my mind
with the images
of the religious symbols at the church where we went and sat on hard benches
while sweating and
listening for the simple version,
be nice to others,
you reap what you sow,
God will forgive,
not forget.
Let's feast.
And chocolate, lots of chocolate.
Happy Easter!

Early Spring Flowers

 

Struggling through cold, rain and snow.

  

           Rhubarb

  4.22.11

Earth

Earth,
Our planet home,
Best visible from afar,
in fact the space travelers photos giving us the whole picture
in one gulp.

Earth,
some say needs help in maintaining it's wholeness,
I agree to an extent.
Still my personal me planet needs help at times too,
and when we animals called humans
on the ground, looking like tiny ants,
need compassion from the eco adorists,
like they care about newts and bats,
then I start to wonder
why the Earth needs humans at all.

How might the Earth feel?
If the Earth felt threatened, would it fight back?
This human has failed to fight for her rights due to lack of resources and compassion from other beings in town and state,
while they pour money on the newts and bats.

Can I be an expert like the ones who flood us with eco rhetoric?
Can I show you another side of people who wanted my property and cared not about the
last 2 humans living here from a long line of ancestors?

No, no one heard me,
Wait,
no,
no one heard.

Friend

She adopted a cat from us and always asked how we were.
I know that sentence might seem strange to some but not to me.

A friend is someone who cares as much, no actually more, about stray feral cats
than they do about empty things like money and power.

A friend looks at you with her piercing eyes, looking into your soul,
scouring the dark places,
Are you OK?

A friend is lost in a senseless moment of time,
taking away the opportunity to say goodbye, farewell,
or I love you
for being an animal lover,
lover of the poor,
downtrodden,
and sad in the world.

Never again in this material plane will I see her to say
goodbye,
farewell,
I love you,

Dana.

Mom's Verse

Mom sat there, contented in her institutional lifestyle,
Mind sharp as ever, her body has had better days.
I think this is what I might be like in 32 years.
My being is more like a clone of her.
One day in my early teens, I walked into the old Madison store, a department store.
A woman started screaming. She thought she had seen a ghost.
My Mom 30 years younger. It was me. The lady scared me a little
just because she made such a fuss. Normally, I am not afraid of ghosts
except in scary movies with the creepy music.

Anyway, the last night of our visit, we had supper with Mom and Dad
in the activity room.
Mom blessed the conversation with one of her favorite verse pairs
from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Right off the top of her head,
unhesitatingly perfect with her pretty song voice,
I am sure the verse varied a tiny bit from what I found on the web.
Mom is an afficiaonado of the verse variations.
Still,
The message still so true.
The translation by Edward Fitzgerald, a story all by himself.


XVI.




I sent my Soul through the Invisible,

Some letter of that After-life to spell:

And by and by my Soul return'd to me,

And answer'd "I Myself am Heav'n and Hell:"





LXVII.



Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire,

And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire,

Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,

So late emerged from, shall so soon expire.

I hope you are taking notes...

Mom said this to me a couple of visits ago.
It still rings true.
But I cannot find the little short story I wrote before. It is in some box or file or old computer.
So here are a few photos of the Illinios River Road, bluffs, barges, ferry to Brussels.
Yes Fred bought some turtle soup which we brought home and are saving for a special occasion.



Best Turtle soup on the Illinois
(see high water mark)





Ferry to Brussels, IL





Sandpiper holding her ground



That 70's Reunion

299 others and I had the distinct honor of attending:

That 70's Drama Club

and

 Junior Theater Reunion

It was an experience beyond my wildest dreams.

The Edwardsville High School Drama Scene of 1970 something.

Together again and marvelling at what we had done.

What we had. What we did after. Paying tribute to Who we lost.

The committee and others were masters at spinning a show of shows.

A tribute to honor friends, our successes, our smiles.

There were so many shows it is hard to keep track.

All a testament to our ever present Lea and Randy & now Kate.

For Jr Theater, Brad.

The weekend began with the current Edwarsville High School production of Hairspray.

It was breathtaking in form, energy and togetherness. The kids all high energy and right there

in the moment.

The direction by Kate Motley and no doubt nurturing and meticulous at the same time.

The scenery creative and bold..

The auditorium a dream for High School.

We are grateful for seeing the show.

Afterwards, a Cast party for the reunionites.

Saturday was a tour of the schools, our old High School Aud and the new one. My nephew helped by crawling up in the clouds to take the aerial shots.
(more photos in my flickr photostream right hand margin scroll down)





"old high school aud"



New EHS Aud





The Set of hairspray from the control booth

(Thanks Daniel)



Then The night we were waiting 30 to 40 years for....

The night we had no idea we would be participating in an historic christening of the

Wildey Theater, a familiar second home in many of our youthful years.

Our images cast on the full screen in perfect coordination by

Barb Wild Pizzini, a master of images, music and communication.

Barb, Phil, Bryan, Tamra, Craig, and many many others put together a classy night

where we could once again join together and revel in theater.

Our images so happy, we had not forgotten,

We cried, hugged, felt the love in the room for each other, this place, a sacred theater ground, lovingly rescued to become what will be a major cultural center for this growing city.



and connecting with dear friends

Back home again to the hills.
Better get this out and hope you enjoyed this recap of a simply Mah- vellous weekend.
Gerdt



Serendipity

Serendipity

Sometimes you cannot see the wisdom of the universe,

How it works in mysterious ways,

Leading you here or there,

just in time

for some other cog to engage.

And I was not able to use this word it in a sentence

Until I really experienced a series of events

that led to my understanding.

Even then, it was not until I was far past the event,

and could observe it from a distance,

analyzing the details,

evaluating the outcomes

and

concluding that was the best road,

the best path.

Only then could I grasp

 serendipity.

Blogging to win friends and influence people

The title is really for fun and a little flashback to a book that sat on my mother's bookshelf.
Soon, books may not have that effect on us. Books now in digital format, paper falling away to the cyberworld revolution.
I would pull that book off the shelf sometimes, hoping to absorb some wisdom from the chapters.
In reality, how to win friends really has little to do with reading a book or practising the outlined strategies in chapter 3.
So do blogs win friends or influence people?
I really cannot say.
And if these posts do influence someone to right a wrong or enjoy an image or song, or cry,
then perhaps they are influential.
Will my blog Win enemies? Perhaps.
Win friends? Maybe.
But there are some interactions that do require more human-ness and less cyber-stuff.
And we lock the memories we keep in our protein silos in our brain,

How do I describe that feeling, that moment so rare?

That is what I meant,
That  is why we blog.

Willy's Pond

Willy's pond is growing,
the beavers building 24/7 and it changes so slightly a little each day,
Until you wonder what it used to look like.
Last night I had a dream the ice went out of the river up on the hill.
There is no river but the water came crashing down the hill
and flooded the valley.
Must be how it looked back when this was sea bottom.
My dream, a flashback to my dream about the Wildey Theater. That dream from my childhood, it was a flood of water as tall as the theater. I laid down and went to sleep,  was it a death?
Then nothing.
Water is powerful and goes where it wants to.
Willy's Pond is growing.

Salute to space travel, 50 years old

I started following Ron Garan's blog The Fragile Oasis.
He is an astronaut who is taking off today for a mission with the Russian Cosmonauts.
Follow his travels.
Fascinating especially for us kids who have dreamt of going to space someday.

This post is his last on Earth.
Follow his adventures...

http://www.fragileoasis.org/2011/04/03/last-blog-post-on-earth-for-now/#comment-3209

Reading Posts

Feeling too busy to read all the posts of the bloggers I follow.
I will catch up. They are all such great writers and people.
They are documenting daily Earth life and who they are.
A living book or something I had a dream about-so witty it was, I lost it when light peeked through the window waking me.
Trying to spring clean which seems endless for being a new beginning.
Still wondering about the anal-ysts who changed daylight savings
the last time. Our VCR (yes we still have one) skipped ahead this morning causing quite
a discussion, wonderment, puzzlement until Fred figured it out.
It is so old, the daylight savings is on the wrong day.
Without spending energy on that foolishness, I might have had more time to read those posts.
Feel free to visit my favorite sites listed on the far right lower page.
Back to cleaning.

April Fool's Day

April Fools,
The weather and news people kept saying the Nor'Easter Storm was coming but it is not a joke for
April First, April Fools's Day, the traditional day of pranksters.
Then they said the storm is coming but looks milder than predicted, at least in this valley.
I thought about an old joke we played when hospitals were more fun (more like the show "Scrubs").
Way back I worked in a place where we had the resuscitation dummy (Annie) admitted through the ER.
One after another person would be fooled and laugh before Annie moved through all the departments, radiology, lab, finally the floor.
Tucked into her bed, her unmistakable plastic gentle face, diminutive body with her jogging suit (she was fashioned after a real Annie who was jogging and died-was that a myth?)
One of our Dr.s walked in to see her.
He started rattling off the usual roster of tests: EKG, Chest xray, labs, etc, etc.
They were his standing orders.
I was the handmaiden, the nurse scribbling orders and obeying the Dr.
How was I going to tell him?
That Annie was a plastic effigy of a human?
I don't quite remember, but pulling down a man's ego is a touchy subject,
and part of me felt bad for trying to explain to this foreign born Dr what April foolery is all about.
And now I have to go, work calls, no snow day today.
That is not an April Fool's joke.