August came and went, and I was there all the time riding the bucking bronc, reins in one hand and the other outstretched trying to maintain balance. Nahh, it wasn't that wild. Just unpredictable to a certain degree. Several times I thought about mentioning something of importance but the opportunities quickly slipped away.

It's somewhat astonishing, about the autumn months. All throughout summer, there's an inner anxiety to enjoy the long days of summer, so much so, that in cramming as much as possible in the daytime, it seems nothing is fully accomplished which is depressing and leads one down the path of 'why bother?' That little list so that nothing gets missed; just seems the items don't get checked off quickly enough. Perhaps, the old trick of breaking goals into doable tasks, and ticking those off one by one.

Actually, we did accomplish quite a bit.

We tried to change behaviors. We attempted convalescence and we took a week-long trip to the land of birth, a different place altogether from where we now live, and for which we'd not been back for more than 20 years. We tried to establish some new self- and other-person valuing behaviors. Not without sinking to some of the depths, and there's quite a way to go for reaching another plateau 'up from the ashes'.

Time marches on and our little dog's health is one measure of life well-spent, the time of a life-span. She came to us as a spunky 10-month old pup, but by dog years she was already 6-7 years old and her third home. A little girl. Adorable. An American Eskimo, not unlike a Japanese spitz in appearance. Intelligent and loyal. Already fiercely instinctual in her duties of protecting her latest family.

Teaching her feral owners some of the niceties of civility and basic lessons in self-pride, honor, and respect. Intensely loyal to those whose actions showed themselves a caring and considerate. The vet described her temperament as 'high-strung' not unlike a pediatrician would describe her younger 'family'.

Always ready for a romp, a walk, a run in an open field. Until her owners took obedience class, she was allowed to run ahead investigative nose leading the way to the right and left this way and that. Poor vision, but excellent sense of smell. A rabbit could fool her easily by standing downwind.

She is still a fierce rabbit hunter. At the corner of the front yard near the street a brazen female bore her litters of bunnies year after year under a bush just 2-3 feet beyond from where our little lady's leash extended from the pear tree knowing that she could provide warning and illusion of protection. But, it was always a roulette when the bunnies were learning to hop. If they strayed too close to our little dog's territory, they were fair game. Unfortunately for rabbits.

Her hearing phenomenal Her vision poorer at certain times than others. Bright lights, moving objects, but she could always appreciate Saturday afternoon opera. Singing along with the best at the Met, and joining in with Jacques (Brel), Luciano, and Jussi, and the male tenors in the household...o sole mio, and ave Maria, songs about love, loss, and yearning. Totally into musical expression. Understandable with a resident violinist.

Then, the humans she was in charge began a series of fracas at night, evolving in confrontational and loudly unloving interactions which upset her greatly for a period of time, disrupting her sleep and equanimity, causing surges in corticosteroid production and riling circadian rhythms.

First, she was thirsty, and barking for water, then when sated, left puddles, and had to stay outside at night. And the cycle continued for months in her reaction to her human's behaviors. Stress. She developed cataracts which cause her vision blindness. Running into low-hanging branches damaging the surface of her eyes. A thorn on her front pad took a long time to heal, and required gram negative treatment with gentamicin ointment. Very shortly after was diagnosed with diabetes.

The diabetes means her diet is strictly detailed. One cup of prescription food in the morning with her 2 units of N insulin and one cup at night with 2 more units of N insulin. She's doing okay. But, now, we take note that she seems as if she's older and frailer with the weight loss and drowsing all curled on the living room floor, all the windows open and whole-house fan changing the air, with NPR in the background.

A twist on the phrase, 'My dog has fleas' for tuning a four string guitar, comes to mind, with 'my dog has diabetes'. But, her current state of health makes mockery of the old poem 'Sunning' as she's not got a lazy bone in her old body, and deserves any measure of rest and pleasant dreaming.

From James Tippett, "Old dog lay in the summer sun, much too lazy to rise and run. He flapped an ear at a buzzing fly. He winked a half-opened sleepy eye. He scratched himself on an itchy spot, as he dozed on the porch where the sun was hot. He wimpered a bit from force of habit while he lazily dreamed of chasing a rabbit. But old dog happily lay in the sun much too lazy to rise and run."

Grand July has arrived

Covering for friends at work, along with the heavy-duty humidity of this landlocked mid-eastern cornfield country, has left me pr't'near worn out. Well, it was the work and weather, and now I find some degree of obstructive sleep apnea--not just being wery wery wicked. "There's no rest for the wicked."

July arrived with heat and sunshine (corn stalks nearly five foot high) and another birthday. And, aother chance to redeem my soul for the wickedness of the past three or four or five decades.

Little brother and his son went climbing the 'big one' turning back at 17,500 feet. Smart guy has kept himself fit and enthusiastic all his life. Says the snow and ice got boring after a bit, sunburns off the glare. Imagining peeling facial skin and his prominent nose. But, so much relieved that was it. Summer climbs always have the danger of melting snows and slides, though storms might be less than in winter climbs.

In any case, there's a special angel in heaven who succumbed 22 years ago during a mid-winter climb. How I wish she were here in person to meet her nieces and nephews. Sometimes, it's enough to say one's belief in heaven exists in legacies of loss.

Younger son was reluctant to enjoy the fireworks, so 'went out for pizza' and he got to view the magnificence in the skies, something of beauty, beyond his control, and a wonder to behold, taking him beyond 'himself' if for only a few minutes. Older son took videos, and it was wonderful, as it took him out of 'himself' as well, in an effort to think of others and their enjoyment.

Fireworks, invented by the Chinese, and such an ephemerally short occasion of beauty and grandness, a nanosecond of the blossoming of the stargazer lily, evoking summertime, often considered a state of mind; a time to be looking forward all the cold times of the year when an icy wind blows, but a time to curse the lack of sleep it engenders. Summertime is a time of grand enjoyment of everlasting green lit by fireflies, cold watermelon and symphony fermatas echoing in the trees of air-conditioned evenings, far far from mosquitoes.

June, wonderful June--ne'er a rare day in June

June arrived within the last week, and already the first firefly sighted in the heavy evening air. We record the first firefly of the season as well as last sighting when the evening air is less heavy with warm humidity---

At this time I do not like to recollect cold-tinged autumn air fraught with molds and decaying deciduous leaves set against the brilliant clear azure blue. For many years, the chill of an autumn afternoon evoked the ancient rhythms of life playing out in the havoc of blood flow through slightly constricted vessels and bringing on an increased heart rate of anticipatory school assignments. This feeling of thinning air could also come about even on an evening stroll in light twilight at 11:30 PM up the local mountain at a time close to the longest day of the year, to view Fourth of July fireworks on Point Woronzof.

Here, the fireflies flitting in the grass of the backyard, drone of cicadas, and waning light of evening dusk bring to mind a time of 'lazy' summer. No agenda. Just a bowlful of ripe cherries or cold wedges of watermelon to enjoy and engage in seed-spitting competition off the back stoop. (I wonder why we never see emergence of baby cherry trees or a watermelon patch.)

end of May

another end to another month...hard to say whether am on the way to or from...summer's on the way in
getting ready to grill beef like shish kebabs for supper...corn on the cob's been great so far...maybe baked potatoes and grilled beef...maybe just the baked potatoes and beef with onions and mushrooms...Kikkoman shoyu seems to dress up meat whenever it's used...a little brown sugar and bonito flakes
gotta get motivated

And so we come to the end of April

It's not the last day or even the last week, but it is fairly coming to the end of April after the first blush of pinkening magnolias and the chromium yellow of the forsythia, just after the crocuses, then the pink blossoming, and yaller daffodils, purple hyacinths and wind flowers. My second son's magnolia, his because he used to climb it and sit in the crook of the first branching boughs, catches my eye every time I look out the kitchen window as if a new coat of snow has blanketed the trees, and by the time I get used to looking past to the green buds, I can see the pink and white of various trees in neighborhood yards: chokecherry, apple, plum, and the Japanese pears out in front of our house.

The pawpaw is even bedecked with the dark purple of its zebra butterfly attractants. When we first read about this home-grown 'exotic local' in the local University School of Agriculture Extension office, we found mention of its very few pests, exclusively the zebra butterfly. This seemed an ideal situation in our yard as a prior decision to use lawn pesticides had made the fruit inedible to us with our super-sensitivities--not inedible to the ravens that decimated the crop of apple-pears the first year. Once the pawpaws became firmly ensconced in their present location currently, even after 4-5 years their trunks are still surrounded by chicken wire because the rabbits gnawed them badly the beginning of their first winter which unfortunately does nothing about the moles which seem to somehow have caused the death of rhododendrons--no flowers, brown buds, and limp stems and branches--and, furrows which could only be made by an active mole family, only to be plagued by another unmentioned pest. The pawpaws survived as small grafted plants shipped to us in coffee-can sized plastic containers as they find it difficult to transplant. Five trees survived the first year, only to attacked by relentless Japanese beetles. This thought of the Japanese beetle campaign my husband will have to wage all summer is daunting. He has to be out with the beetle smasher as soon as the sun rises, even climbing on a ladder to reach the tallest branches, in order to result in those delicious fragments of a mid-eastern summer close to the heartland. I mean there's pawpaws in Happy Hollow Park growing as wild as one would ever please. Looking forward to better times when we're all getting better!

March and Spring Break from School

My first brush with textbooks were the ones my father kept on a high shelf in the house from which he developed his school lesson plans for his junior high kids. (I remember a spanking for climbing precariously on a stool placed on a trunk to reach them at age 5. )

When little, I remember the intensity of discussions in our home. There were four of us girls only two years apart in ages, and throughout our elementary school years we were often enrolled in each others' classes in various combinations and in high school in years which electives were only held every two years, we ended up competing with each other for the highest grades in the class.

Truly, we girls were uniquely different from each other, and we absolutely never could study with each other for anything except if when we taking turns giving each other spelling words. But, there was always the intense concentration to do better than each other.

Anything we read, we had to give an opinion. I remember our discussions on biblical passages, religious themes, shortest way to Kasilof, who could curl their tongue, the validity of Kon Tiki, and Amundsen's trip to the South Pole, alternate routes up McKinley (before the more poetic Denali), Black Like Me, Up the Down Staircase, Dante's Inferno, Cartoons from the New Yorker, and Charlotte's Web.

One recurring discussion was whether or not it was wise for kids to learn to read early. Sisters argued whether we were stunted by having to wait to learn to read or not, and what would've happened if we'd attempted to figure it out on our own. As I was the eldest, our parents insisted I wait until I joined the other little Bluebirds in first grade, but there was no holding back anyone else once I'd mastered it. Pretty much we four girls all learned to read that year, and moved quite quickly beyond Dick, Jane, and silly Sally and their trip on the train to Chicago. Heck, in '64 we rode the Mooser Gooser along the coast, and would never have gotten except that the ride was over and we're going to the Old-Fashioned Ice Cream Parlor. I guess Pa didn't want us touching his school textbooks, because he was afraid that our schoolteachers might be stymied by the time we were in school.

And, indeed, as a teacher's kid I spent a lot of time before and after school helping the librarian put away books, running off tests for class on the hectograph copier or ditto machines. I think there was a mimeograph machine, too, one could use if the copy was typed. (But, I was happy to use the new Xerox for pep band parts when it was installed in the office.) Yes, I once rolled my thumb under the revolving drum of the ditto machine to elicit a red-purple color where the blood spurted out from under the cuticle.

When there were 3 minute timed math combination tests, I was the one that got to watch the clock while the teacher stepped out Yes, after the first one and half minutes, I often lost concentration and gave an extra one or two minutes. (I was too proud to tell anyone I had no idea of how to tell time and to me it was either the long or the short hand, not that there was any difference between the hour and the second hand--which was the first and which the second hand was beyond me, and for that matter after 1.5 minutes, actually if I stared hard enough the hands started to revolve the opposite way, and so got mixed up how many times they had gone around.)

Yes, but by sixth grade, I was the one that got to stick my chewing gum on the blackboard with my nose sticking to it while everyone else did their classwork. By that age, I could not sit still at the desk if Henry and Ricky and Charles were whispering in back of me while working to finish assignments from the previous day.

Anyone remember the darkened classrooms and teacher writing on an overhead projector? Nap time. If there was reading at the desk, I had to ask permission to barricade myself in a corner. Nor, could I focus on working on the next day's assignment in class after the lecture. Math classes were usually scheduled last period. Meredith Mills and Cindy Adams always finished geometry homework during class, so they could skip off to basketball practice without a heavy rucksack and assignments to complete. Adele Powell always finished analysis assignments before we left for the day. I could never sit still long enough to do math in the presence of others.

When I brought the book home, I never remembered the way it was shown in class, and had to come up with some more intuitive way to solve the problem. For a few years before I started having brain problems, I could actually solve problems without knowing how I did it, just by letting my head do its thing. Later, after surgery, math was meticulously deductive.

Homework went home in a big cloth bag. But, after a certain age, it was difficult to even study in the house. Brothers and sisters sat around the living room table. I have pictures in my mind of one of the twins helping younger brother with math. Some times I could not even concentrate to study in the house where there was a sound. Sometimes, I had to follow the moose dropping out to the big rock in the woods (for the first could weeks after school started anyway), and other times, it was to the radio shed before Pa got home where he had all his ham operator equipment and a nice quiet if only staticky background noise, and sometimes, in a houseful of kids and parents and cats, I had to make a fortress behind my sister's bed and study in the quiet there. I still remember dry eyes after hours under hot incandescence of a study lamp.

Later, ..in assembling summer math work-outs for my children when they were in elementary grades, (had to be fun and challenging) I picked up old textbooks at library jumble sales. These old books often had a theme; practical math, technology-based, or consumer math, etc. It was a bit of a challenge to plumb the depth of 4-5 textbooks to come up with different problems illustrating a similar concept for different reasons using each different book, to provide in-depth variety and challenge on a certain theme.

English texts in the 60's were pretty standard grammar references, and the information hadn't gone out of date when I snapped up at library sales. I remember 6th grade grammar, past tense, present, future, and the complexity of different parts of a sentence. We hit the basics pretty hard in Mrs. Hildeman's class in 4th grade and everything after that was merely a different fancier layer, sometimes more esoteric than conceptual. Actually, many of the content of the study was not applicable until studying a foreign language.

Geography, yes, a terribly boring subject, best studied under the guise of non-fictional references consulted for National Geographic magazines! My husband would pick up books or videos about children in other lands, and we could often make that the focus of our learning. I think, as a blanket statement, people from other countries that move here often have a sense about a cultural place in the world and certain common themes from history than we do.

As for science text...my house as I was growing up was full of them. Since my learning style could at best be called Bohemian, I found all types of basic science discussions to the learning. I could only focus on one topic at a time, and study of any topic--started with checking out books and books, starting with beginner simple books to as in-depth as as possible to learn all about a topic such as with muscles: calcium ATP, bones, blood, Krebs cycle, voltage, potentials and electricity.

Studying science from a textbook was too lightly scattered. The encyclopedias and references were oftentimes much better than trying to read paragraph after paragraph in a science book. I remember another way we would study was to look at nature and try to find out as much as possible about it. For example the abalone shell on the dresser resulted in discussions about life cycles of mollusks, bottom fish shrimps, lobsters, and oyster beds along the East Coast, grading pearls and forming nacre, makng pearl buttons and trading on the lower Manhattan, barnacles, shipbuilding, the Theme from the Pearl-Fishers, reading The Pearl, Venus in the scallop shell and Three Graces, Shell gas, dissolving eggshells in vinegar, fluoridation, and pearlescent lighting. I think we even talked about the lustre of opals.

And, that was the way my children easily learned, too.

I don't really know how kids can stand to learn anything at all from textbooks.

In college, I tried to sell the texts back as soon as possible if it wasn't referential. Remember the data is at least 5 years old by the time it's published, and older by the time some school contracts to purchase it.

What I always had in the back of my mind for a good class textbook was a collection of pamphlets, leaflets, or journal articles to assemble in a loose-leaf folder. That style of education, is probably too labor-intensive, though, and requires a standard lecture.

Mid-February in year 10

In my attempt to capture the glassiness of the clear dripping icicles this morning long after sunrise, I felt the nip of arctic chill. I could see the brightness of winter sun shining, glaring in the clear-glass ice, but like a sundog, only the ultraviolet rays bouncing off atmospheric crystals suspended in the stratospher, there was only light, no warmth. (This is the kind of day when Hans Christian Anderson's "Little Match Girl" freezes to death outside the plum bun shop in Tromso.)

Growing up in the far north country, in my mind I return to a 15-20 mile cross-country ski trip with the Nordic Ski Club from Eagle River passing by Ft. Rich and Elmendorf AFB to Russian Jack Springs. Cold nipped then, it bit, it snuck under the top layers and penetrated the dermis, and whatever skin was exposed had to be continually oxygenated by warm moving blood or turned pale and without feeling. But, several miles along, and the outer layers had to come off for a breather, at least!

The last time I was back during winter was a winter vacation the boys and I stayed alternately with the folks in Rosemary for Remembering Christmas, and the time before that was when sister Sov died of exposure on a mid-winter climb. I went back home for the funeral with Shimp, her godson and cried every day. My husband had opinions, he always has opinions, but he was gentle this time and told me to try and not let Shimp see me so distressed and breaking down, because our boy is sensitive and it would affect him negatively and make him weak. I spent a lot of time with my head in the pillow while he was out, the first grandkid, helping understand the grief of his grandparents.

Well, it was cold today, just like February can be at Fur Rendezvous time, except generally when we were kids, we dressed for the bone-chilling weather, but here in the mid-eastern cornfields, this type of cold weather is not anticipated year after year, and I lief as soon throw on a jacket and wrap the scarf around my neck but forget a hat, and crunch in the snow in street shoes. But, unlike years in which we saw only the tan of dead grass in the yard, this was a cold year, and my husband confirmed that he saw Bambi's hoofprints when she came up from the ravine to cross our yard in the back.

When I sat down at the computer on nights earlier in winter my hands would feel like little chunks of ice. So cold. I tried to double up on the levothyroxine sometimes, thinking I'd missed a dose or maybe my metabolism was slowing, going into hibernation mode with the sunlight deficit.

I had a few plans to begin the year; plan a trip with Shimp, and possibly Jonnio, make sure husband had his visa and passport renewed so he could visit Mama-san, finish an account of our last trip, work on pharmacotherapy certification in an area of unfamiliarity, as well as organize and re-arrange our lives by swimming every day, concentrating on meals of unprocessed foods, and working to earn more money.

Well, the organisation idea took precedence, and so far, there have been a few items that have left the house in boxes for recycling, to the newsprint and aluminum can waste facility, to Goodwill, the flowershop recycles vases and could use about eight that overfilled a closet, a fish tank and filter to a school, magazines and the short pencil collection to the donation center at the public library, etc. It's been rather fun to plan a recycling run and drop off items here and there. Sometimes, it doesn't look like much has been accomplished, but with me the most of it is the organizing everything that needs to go together in one spot.

I've been trying to become more involved in the local community, too, outside my professional interests. But, I expect sometime later this summer, an opportunity will arise in which I volunteer with the county disaster readiness organization (just please, don't ask me to obtain credentials in immunizations..., just yet.)

A Church group asked just before Christmas about participating in the annual medical mission to Haiti in February, and on such short notice, I considered it and bowed out for this year, then they didn't end up going in February because it would have meant crossing the Dominican Republic by bus, and no place to stay, etc. so decided to go a little later when things are more settled. By then, I may have saved up the airfare and living expenses and received the requisite malaria and Hepatitis A. With my training and employment I've received most series, and I did get a Hep A, but doubt if I had the 6-12 month booster. I heard dengue fever was a problem, but saw no mention at a WHO website, so just will go to the local international travel clinic, a month ahead of time.

I saw big packets of flower seeds in the garden section at the supermarket. February is when thoughts turn to love, and planning for a garden. I've received several bulb, corm, and seed catalogues; Breck's among them. I like to look at them for dreaming. The reality is often a hurried chilly night in October, with the outdoor patio lighting only as I cut little holes in the compacted soil at the end of the garden and struggle to open tough plastic bags with blue flag and daffodil bulbs. And, oftentimes the reality in springtime is looking over at the edge of the ravine to where the bright yellow of my daffodils should be appearing and cursing the squirrels that seem to have found the tasty supply in fall.

Mid-February in my youth was often when Mother was baking George Washington cherry cupcakes for sibling school parties, and I was at home miserable with an earache or strep throat, staring at the hoarfrost, and gazing at long shadows on the evening wall. Cold. Nose-dripping damp. The sounds of low-volume talk radio (back then there was no MIGHTY MEGAPHONE RUSH yelling out the radio), humming and sizzle of heaters and humidifiers, and a tuck-in for warmth at night. Fur Rondy, and Arctic Winter Games, Orange Julius, and dreaming of warmer days. Remembering warmth of family times.