Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) ~ Sleepy Hollow Cemetery Concord, Massachusetts
Last year in June I wrote a blog about Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts, which originally included a quote mistakenly attributed to Henry David Thoreau. Jeff Cramer, an editor who works at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods, took the time to comment on my blog and kindly called my attention to the error, which I was happy to correct.
On Thursday, June 16th of this year Jeff will be presenting a reading from and a discussion of a new book he has edited, The Quotable Thoreau. Wish I could go, but I will add the book to my Kindle and be there in spirit.
One page on the Thoreau Institute website I find very illuminating is The Henry D. Thoreau Mis-Quotation Page, which takes note of quotations either misquoted or erroneously attributed to Thoreau. Very helpful!
Last weekend we took a ride out to The Salem Herbfarm. It was a hot and humid day so we didn’t last too long. Took a few pictures and bought a moonflower and a bamboo pole for it to climb on. Fortunately the weather has cooled off for now, after a wild evening of violent thunderstorms, which produced devastating tornadoes in Springfield and Monson, Massachusetts…
5.27.11 ~ Salem, Connecticut
This weekend Tim has been working from home and a kind of lethargy has set in, in spite of the delightful weather. This past week I got a lot of work done on my garden and the living room. Janet and I are making plans…
nemesia ~ 5.27.11 ~ Salem, Connecticut
No more house centipede sightings and yesterday I finally got up the nerve to sit on the couch again…
5.27.11 ~ Salem, Connecticut
Reading a fascinating book: A Time for Everything by Karl Ove Knausgård. It’s an unusual piece of historical fiction, based loosely on the lives of characters from the Bible. But it gets into their heads and reinterprets the ways Cain or Noah, for example, might have experienced Biblical events. The author’s descriptions of the natural world of pre-flood times are detailed and vivid. The book is supposed to examine the nature of angels, too, but I’m only a little less than half way through.
monarch butterfly on New England aster by Greg Thompson
Is this not enough? This blessed sip of life Is it not enough? Staring down at the ground Then complain and pray for more from above Greedy little pig ~ Dave Matthews ♫ (Pig) ♫
After more than a week of concentrated and intense work on our family history and my garden, I sat down yesterday to catch up on this neglected blog and to visit the blogs of my friends. First I took my turns on Scrabble on Facebook, though, and while playing had my laptop attacked by another virus – apparently the same one (or similar to the one) that infected it when I was playing Scrabble back in March. In spite of my faithfully installing every virus protection update sent to me.
Tech Support (Tim) worked on the situation yesterday and more this morning and then decided to take my laptop to work with him. I’m using his computer for now, again with no access to my word or picture files! But I do have some quote/painting posts scheduled ahead of time that will appear now and then. Feeling a little lost and disconnected…
Typhoid fever! A school child in Connecticut has come down with typhoid fever. Wonder how he or she got it? Hope he or she will be all right…
When I have a terrible need of – shall I say the word – religion. Then I go out and paint the stars. ~ Vincent van Gogh (An Examined Faith: Social Context & Religious Commitment)
“Portrait of Charles & Georges Durand-Ruel” by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions, which have been hidden by the answers. ~ James Baldwin (A Toolbox for Humanity: More Than 9000 Years of Thought)
There may be people who like centipedes… ~ William S. Burroughs (The Western Lands)
Bugs!! Shudder!!! Yesterday I was sitting on the couch for a few minutes taking a break when one of these creatures, which I think must be a house centipede, ran across the living room, lickety-split, and disappeared under the couch. Needless to say I have not sat in the living room since! And reading up on them has not made me feel any better. Much as I avoid chemicals, I think I’m in the mood to buy some “bug” spray!
I had never seen one of these things until the 1990s when I was coming out of the laundry room in the basement and one confronted me in the hallway. It was a good two inches long and an inch wide! I grabbed what was handy, a can of hair spray (good a getting ink stains out of clothing), and started doing battle with the alien. It actually charged at me after I zapped it once. It finally died after tons of spray and I left the scene, shaken. When the family came home and I told my tale and went to show them the remains of the bug, it had dried and shriveled up to almost nothing, and they seemed a little skeptical of my accounting of the enemy’s size and speed and aggressiveness.
Am I losing my mind?
Sometime during the 2000s I was walking on the treadmill, also in the basement, when one of these monsters raced out from under the treadmill and made a beeline for a big pile of storage boxes. I tried to pretend I had not seen what I had just seen, and to get on with my life.
And now yesterday, my third sighting. Why me??? Why do they not come out to terrorize the rest of the family? First two times in the basement, then this time of the first floor. I’ll be hysterical if I ever see one up here on the second floor!
I have learned that house centipedes are not native here, but have arrived somehow from the Mediterranean region. That would be why I had never encountered one before. The only positive spin I can put on this situation is that apparently they eat spiders and ants and can eat a few of them at a time. Still I don’t like the idea of something so big and so fast lurking around my home. I startle way too easily… I had a LOT of trouble falling asleep last night.
Has anyone else ever dealt with house centipedes???
It’s one of nature’s ways that we often feel closer to distant generations than to the generation immediately preceding us. ~ Igor Stravinsky (Father Knows Best: Words That Celebrate the World’s Most Wonderful Dads)
When we know about our ancestors, when we sense them as living and as supporting us, then we feel connected to the genetic life-stream, and we draw strength and nourishment from this. ~ Philip Carr-Gomm (Druid Mysteries: Ancient Wisdom for the 21st Century)
