Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.
Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.
~ Carl Sandburg
(Under the Harvest Moon)
These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time in them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present above time.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Self-Reliance)
Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.
~ William Shakespeare
(A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
Gain knowledge, brothers! Think and read,
And to your neighbors’ gifts pay heed,
Yet do not thus neglect your own.
Sadly I weep when I recall
The unforgotten deeds of all
Our ancestors: their toilsome deeds!
Could I forget their pangs and needs,
I, as my price, would then suppress
Half of my own life’s happiness…
~ Taras Shevchenko
(My Friendly Epistle)
It has turned into a three-day weekend for me! Friday Janet and I got together to create pysanky – Ukrainian Easter eggs. While visiting her I was introduced to Maggie, a very sweet twelve-year-old shelter dog with arthritis who is a pit bull or mostly pit bull. She barked for a while after I arrived – Janet explained she had anxiety issues. So Maggie and I had something in common and soon relaxed around each other. Maggie kept Janet and me company as we worked on our eggs, and then the three of us took a nice long walk along the rural roads surrounding Janet’s home. It was a bright, warm-in-the-sunshine, cool-in-the-shade, day. On my way out Janet gave me some venison and a recipe for it to try out on Tim. Thanks to the GPS, I successfully navigated my way home!
Tim was working off and on this weekend, but we did get out a little on Saturday, stopping by the grocery store to get some more ingredients for the venison stew. It was very windy and we were amazed to see the flag over the grocery store flying straight out. Storm clouds were gathering, but I managed to get a picture of the chionodoxa popping up through the periwinkle and dead leaves in my garden. Tim returned to working, from home, and I watched a couple of other versions of Jane Eyre from Netflix. The rain came down hard overnight, but this day dawned bright and sunny again, a bit warmer than it was Friday.
Is it so small a thing
To have enjoyed the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done?
~ Matthew Arnold
(Seasons)
Today was a slow cooker day. The recipe Janet gave me for the venison stew was given to her by Erik, Janet and Tim’s stepdad, who died in 2008. He was a fantastic cook! When I first read through the recipe, I noted with a smile that it was from an out-of-print cookbook Erik had, called Glorious Stew by Dorothy Ivens. This brought back a pleasant memory. Many years ago Tim had enjoyed a stew Erik had prepared so much that he wanted the recipe. When Erik showed him the cookbook Tim decided he had to have one, too, but it was already out of print. So Tim asked the Book Barn to set aside a used copy for him, if one ever came into the store. A used copy did show up after what seemed like a very long time, so Tim was thrilled to finally have his own copy! 🙂
So… I modified the recipe a bit for the slow cooker and it smelled so good cooking away all day. Being a morning person, I love slow cookers because I can prepare something yummy early in the morning when I’m fresh and alert and then have something wonderful to eat in the evening, when I’m too tired, cranky and overwhelmed to cook. When Tim got a break this afternoon, we went out for a walk around Olde Mistick Village and when we arrived back home the stew smelled tangy and very tempting. It was delicious!
I took some pictures of the ducks and shops on our walk. Yes, today we have enjoyed the sun…
About 38 miles (61 kilometers) northwest from here is a town called Moodus. The Native Americans called the area “morehemoodus,” or “place of noises.” The noises come from the earth, fault lines running under the community. Modern citizens refer to them as Moodus Noises. With the disaster in Japan on my mind I took more note than usual when news reports came in on Thursday that Moodus had experienced a little 1.3 magnitude earthquake Wednesday night at 8:42 p.m. The epicenter was close to Devil’s Hopyard State Park.
We didn’t notice it here, and it caused no damage, but in Moodus they heard a loud bang and felt some movement, causing residents to call the police department and the police to drive around looking for what they feared might be an explosion. At 11:00 p.m. the U.S. Geological Survey called to tell them of the quake and the search was called off.
I’ve never felt an earthquake before and started to wonder about the local geological history of Connecticut. It turns out that on May 16, 1791 Connecticut experienced what they believe was about a 7.0 quake in the same area. “The stone walls were thrown down, chimneys were untopped, doors which were latched were thrown open, and a fissure in the ground of several rods in extent was afterwards discovered,” an observer said. It caused damage across southern Connecticut and it could be felt as far as Boston and New York. There were more than a hundred aftershocks overnight. It was the largest known earthquake in Connecticut’s history.
Apparently there was a 5.0 earthquake in southern Connecticut on November 3, 1968, but being an eleven year old in northern Connecticut at that time, I missed that one, too. Not that I necessarily want to experience an earthquake! When we lived in Greece in the early 1970s I felt there was a good chance of having one while we were there. And there was a little one my parents felt in Athens, but Beverly and I were away on a school field trip.
And happily imbibing, as I recall! As far as I know, children of all ages were allowed alcoholic beverages in Greece at that time. My parents actually told us not to drink the water as there was a meningitis outbreak in the area. We were instructed to drink only the wine. There were a few overly tipsy evenings on that field trip, this being a wild treat for the American students in our school… The European students were not sure what all our excitement was about. 🙂
This was one of those experiences that had an effect on my opinions about having an age of majority for alcohol. If you grow up drinking wine with your family it loses its fascination and thrill and all sense of novelty.
But I digress…
So, anyway… I started wondering, again, just how far above sea level are we, in case we have an earthquake here big enough to cause a tsunami. (After all, there was a 3.9 earthquake off Long Island on November 30, 2010, just a few months ago.) Beverly pointed me to an online topographical map of Connecticut: UConn Map & Geographic Information Center (MAGIC). Looks like we’re about 20 feet above sea level. The entrance gate of the campus where Tim works is about 90 feet above sea level, so we’ve decided that’s where we’ll meet. Happy for me, if driving there isn’t possible I can walk uphill to get there, or run rather, IF we ever feel the earth rumbling here. Somehow it feels better to be prepared, to have a plan.
Softer than cotton-grass swaying in the wind
deep in the mountain clearing,
are the memories that drift through a man’s own mind
a pale, wind-swept evening.
~ Olav Aukrust
(The Northern Light)
When I was a little girl I heard this bird call often, and still do – the sound always reminds me of my parents. To me, it is the “drink your tea” bird, because that is how my parents described the call to me, so I could distinguish it from other calls. Perplexing child that I was, I could never remember the name, eastern towhee, to refer to it when talking to others. I was never sure which bird my parents were pointing to either, maybe because of my nearsightedness, but hopefully one day I will hear it, see it, recognize it, AND remember its name!
The video is from one of my favorite websites, Music of Nature.
Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.
~ Harriet Tubman
(Atlanta Magazine, April 2008)
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
~ John Lennon
♫ (Imagine) ♫