Little grandson Finn has been home for a few days now and we are all very busy! His name is Irish, given to him as a nod to his family’s year in Ireland, where he was conceived.
Finn McCool (Fionn mac Cumhaill) was a legendary Irish giant who fought the Scottish giant Benandonner, who was threatening Ireland. Larisa, Dima and Katherine visited the Giant’s Causeway while they were in Ireland.
A blessing for a brother written by John O’Donohue:
The knowing that binds us Is older than the apostrophe of cell We formed from within the one womb.
All that flowed into us there From the red village of ancestry Sowed spores of continuity That would one day flower Into flickers of resemblance:
An unconscious gesture Could echo an ancestor, And the look of us stir Recognition of belonging That is ours alone;
And our difference finding Its own rhythm of strangeness, Leading us deeper into a self That would always know its own Regardless of difficulty and distance; And through hurt no other could inflict;
Still somehow beside each other Though the night is dark With wind that loves To clean the bones of ruins, Making further room for light.
10.22.18 ~ morning light ~ Chapel Hill, North Carolina
As a scientist I am indeed only an ant, insufficient and anonymous, but I am stronger than I look and part of something that is much bigger than I am. Together we are building something that will fill our grandchildren’s grandchildren with awe, and while building we consult daily the crude instructions provided by our grandfathers’ grandfathers. As a tiny, living part of the scientific collective, I’ve sat alone countless nights in the dark, burning my metal candle and watching a foreign world with an aching heart. Like anyone else who harbors precious secrets wrought from years of searching, I have longed for someone to tell. ~ Hope Jahren (Lab Girl)
Reading Lab Girl by Hope Jahren was eye-opening for me. My father was a scientist and, like many children, I didn’t have much of a grasp on what he did all day. I knew he was researching chicken viruses in a lab at the university. Sometimes he would take my sister and me to work and I noticed all sorts of lab equipment, especially a special light he used to examine chicken embryos in their shells. I knew every couple of years he would be stressing about whether he would get funding for another couple of years. (He always did.) Once I tried to read his PhD thesis, but it was like trying to read a foreign language.
In this book Jahren, who studies plants, introduced me to the concept of curiosity-driven research. The scientist sets up and runs experiments to investigate whatever she happens to be wondering about. Any “real-world” applications of the results are not immediately apparent or sought. Collecting data is pure joy for her. She adds to the volume of scientific knowledge and leaves information for future scientists to make use of in their own research.
Now I get what my father was doing all those years! He may not have made any dazzling discoveries but he was an important ‘part of something that is much bigger than he was.’ Hope Jahren gives a very enlightening look into the everyday world of scientists, in words all of us will understand.
Saturday we had perfect weather for Viking Days at Mystic Seaport.
6.16.18 ~ Norwegian fjord horse
6.16.18 ~ Norwegian fjord horse
We enjoyed strolling through the Viking encampment…
Draugar Vinlands is a historical reenactment and living history group based out of Exeter, New Hampshire that is dedicated to the accurate portrayal of combat and culture during viking-age Scandinavia. ~ Draugar Vinlands website
6.16.18 ~ Viking Days at Mystic Seaport
The costume of the Viking with the long pony tail (above) caught my eye and when I asked him if I could take his picture he posed for me. (below) 🙂
6.16.18 ~ Viking Days at Mystic Seaport
6.16.18 ~ Viking Days at Mystic Seaport
6.16.18 ~ Viking Days at Mystic Seaport
We stocked up on mead for summer solstice…
6.16.18 ~ Viking Days at Mystic Seaport
And stopped for lunch…
6.16.18 ~ Viking Days at Mystic Seaport
While we were eating (outside in the shade at a table under the trees) we spotted this artist painting…
6.16.18 ~ Viking Days at Mystic Seaport
Then we went to see a performance by Flock Theatre, “Viking Fact or Fiction?”
6.16.18 ~ the spirit of a Viking ancestor come to straighten us out about our Viking misconceptions
And then Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center gave a talk about birds of prey. The Vikings were falconers but the birds we were shown are from Connecticut. All the birds presented were injured and brought to the nature center but were unable to live in the wild after their recovery.
6.16.18 ~ screech owl
6.16.18 ~ kestrel
6.16.18 ~ short-eared owl
6.16.18 ~ short-eared owl
And finally we listened to lovely “Songs of the Sagas” by Lynn Noel.
6.16.18 ~ Gudrid the Wanderer portrayed by Lynn Noel
We had hoped to attend a lecture and book-signing with author James L. Nelson about the 300-year Viking invasion in Ireland, but, alas, the hall was filled to capacity by the time we arrived and they were not allowing any more people in. However, we bought two of his books and left them there for him to sign after the lecture. We can pick them up later. (I have a small collection of books signed by the author.)
It was such a lovely day. Now we brace ourselves for a very hot and humid day, although it looks like it won’t be as bad here on the shoreline as it will be inland. Some schools have already announced early dismissals and there is an air quality alert. Looks like the air conditioner will be going on today… I will miss all the birds singing… Sigh…
How it is that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul. ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett (A Little Princess)
We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth. ~ Henry Beston (The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod)
I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide [her], it is not half so important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil. Once the emotions have been aroused – a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and the unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration or love – then we wish for knowledge about the object of our emotional response. Once found, it has lasting meaning. It is more important to pave the way for a child to want to know than to put [her] on a diet of facts [she] is not ready to assimilate. ~ Rachel Carson (The Sense of Wonder)
The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery. ~ Anaïs Nin (The Diary of Anaïs Nin: 1931-1934)
This past weekend we took a long walk in the woods at Connecticut College Arboretum, and found ourselves fascinated with all the dead and dying trees. Some have been recently toppled, either by Hurricane Sandy or Blizzard Charlotte. This is the time of year to see deep into the woods, before the view is obscured by green foliage.
a mighty one fallen ~ 3.23.13 ~ New London, Connecticut
This fallen tree brought underground stones, embedded in its root system, up into the air, along with the soil.
3.23.13 ~ New London, Connecticut
Tim (5’8″) to give some perspective ~ 3.23.13 ~ New London, Connecticut
skunk cabbage ~ 3.23.13 ~ New London, Connecticut
Skunk cabbage is one of the first plants to bloom in spring. Its flowers are often partly or wholly hidden beneath last year’s fallen leaves. Like many other dark-colored flowers, skunk cabbage is pollinated mostly by flies. The flowers actually produce heat — a benefit to the flies out in cold weather. The leaves emerge after the flowers. They smell unpleasant if they are crushed, hence the name “skunk cabbage.” ~ Connecticut Botanical Society
dying of natural causes 3.23.13 ~ New London, Connecticut
living with scars and imperfections ~ 3.23.13 ~ New London, Connecticut
roots anchored in massive boulders 3.23.13 ~ New London, Connecticut
boulders deposited by ancient glaciers ~ 3.23.13 ~ New London, Connecticut
3.23.13 ~ New London, Connecticut
roots partly above water ~ 3.23.13 ~ New London, Connecticut
swamp reflections ~ 3.23.13 ~ New London, Connecticut
mushrooms! ~ 3.23.13 ~ New London, Connecticut
3.23.13 ~ New London, Connecticut
Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is a sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. ~ John Ruskin (The Stones of Venice)
a new life, just a few inches tall ~ 3.23.13 ~ New London, Connecticut
in the blue night frost haze, the sky glows with the moon pine tree tops bend snow-blue, fade into sky, frost, starlight. the creak of boots. rabbit tracks, deer tracks, what do we know.
~ Gary Snyder
(Pine Tree Tops)
