Herb Garden

You know who you are, the one who loves the fresh clipped scent of parsley, and the bitter balance it gives to soup, potatoes, and well, anything that benefits from a bit of green.  Parsley comes in leaves that are flat, extremely curly and regular, each with a particular flavor to offer.  Parsley is my favorite, ubiquitous herb that punches up soup stock or adds color to the side of the plate.

I learned how to hold four chef's knives, two in each hand, in order to prep parsley during my life as a cook in a restaurant.  First you chop the bunch as minutely as possible, and then back and forth on the diagonal, scraping the pile together, turning the blades in opposite paths at each run.  Once minced, you then put it on a tea towel, a cotton kitchen towel, and wring as much green juice out as you can.  This keeps it dry to the touch, easy to garnish a plate, and prevents fast souring as a heated kitchen will do to anything.

Oh parsley!  Favored by swallowtail butterflies whose tiger striped caterpillars would be found amid the plentiful stalks, enough for everyone, come on in and share.  It can come back from year to year as it did in my Aunt Dory's back yard.  I was enchanted by the tiny patch of spontaneous parsley that grew at the far end, and loved to put a sprig next to my hot dog lunch, just so.  Made me feel citified.  Parsley is, therefore, a family tradition, and there is one brave straggle of living green left in my windowsill pot from last year.  I am nursing it through, but will just go to the grocer's or the farmer's market and pick up a new plant to start again.  Parsley is handy to have, even pull off a bit to chew on as you walk by to freshen yourself and outlook.

Besides parsley, another favorite is perennial sage, grey, mouse-eared, fuzzy sage.  The absolute fresh stuff smells like medicine, but add it wherever you want to taste medieval history, the American colonials, or the meadows and fields of summer.  Dried, it lasts through a bleak winter and revives when you roll the dried leaves in your palms, producing a fuzzed lint which dissolves and disperses in soup, or a concoction of vegetables with added bacon.  It's the main ingredient in that yellow box of seasoning with the turkey on the front, that adds not only to stuffing, but a decent turkey sandwich as well.

Basil will grow above your knees with plenty of sun and water, and well, do we have to talk about pesto?  Tomatoes?  Basilico (baz-luh-co), as my Sicilian neighbor Concettina called it, would be put in the glass jars when she canned her Roma tomatoes, or be a part of her foccacia.  Basil smells so nice when you brush by it, you can also put a few fresh leaves in hot water for a different sort of tea.

Chives are stubborn and determined.  They spread and come back in the same clump plus brothers and sisters for the rest of your life.  They grow well in a pot, happier in the ground.  You can grow the oniony sort, or the garlicky type.  Nothing bothers them, not even the neighborhood cats.

These are the easiest and to me, the most rewarding of the herbs.  Be careful of mint, if you grow it be prepared to surrender unless you plant it in a restricted area, preferably in a submerged pot that will contain the roots from traveling, choking out anything else.  But put a handful in a pitcher of iced tea, and all is forgiven.  Good in tabbouleh, Greek cooking, and also a nice plain, tummy-settling hot tea.
Oregano, thyme, and rosemary round out basic American recipes and are all perennials.  Bring home small pots from the farmer's market, and drop them in the ground or transplant them into larger pots.

I had a neighbor who loves growing stuff, and she loaded the back wooden porch of the apartment building with tomato plants, cukes, herbs, peppers, and loads of flowers. all in pots.  Successful!  I will have a few more pots on my own windowsill, for there are few more simple pleasures than gathering for the pot on the stove from what you have created.  It is creation, a kindness towards yourself, a hand that can pull you up after a long day, this gardening business.

Be kind to yourself, yes, bother with it, do not say "wait and see" or "maybe later".  Later was yesterday, and the pleasures will move you forward, even in the smallest manner.  Fight against any inertia, fight!  What?  What do I hear?  It is the call of parsley, sent by exuberant spring breezes and warm rains, sent by your favorite soup pot that cries itself to sleep for the sake of homegrown herbs.  Begin a tradition, congratulations on the ones you have.  Now get out there while the light of day shines on your innocent, sweet face.  Plant.  Water.  Grow.  One thing.  Engage life, you will not regret it.  


Here is a bit of interest: digging in the dirt, hiking, gardening, any outdoor activity that rouses dirt exposes you to Mycobacterium vaccae, a bacterium that cheers us up by releasing serotonin neurons in our brains.  Not only do you get to say howdy to horsetail worms (which are fascinating) and treehoppers, but you get a dose of good-for-you as well.  Plant lavender, bring the mature spikes into the house.  Oh, so much, so much.

Night is now here, and it is time for bed.  Last day of vacation, this Easter day, work begins again tomorrow.  I will check the cat's water bowls and feed the fish, put my bag by the door, and turn in.  Sleep well, sleep under the dark sky, the rotating heavens.  You are loved.  Good night.

Spring Baskets

Today is Saturday, tomorrow is Easter Sunday.  Crows wheel in the air outside my window, the overcast sky supports their silhouettes.  If anything, my parents believed in candy.  My father was taught to squeeze a penny till Abe hollered, but his mother ran a small grocery during the Depression and they did okay within the tight Polish community of the East side.  By the time he was a kid running the streets, his older brothers and sisters (thirteen children in all) had jobs at Houdaille, Pivot Punch, and Herr Manufacturing which means they had paychecks, all turned over to Ma.  They weren't rich, but I don't think the Depression hit them like it did my Mom's family.

Mom's father was a streetcar driver when he met grandma.  They weren't well off by any means, and I don't know what happened except that they lost everything to a landlord who locked them out and kept their furniture, dishes, all of it.  Mom was sent to live with relatives while the rest of the family went to Buffalo, but there was no nest egg to help.  I think it was the rest of Grandma's family who got them going here.

My dad didn't care for baked goods as much as he adored candy.  His favorite was anything maple-flavored; Mom loved anything with coconut, especially the little coconut pigs dipped in dark chocolate that would show up around Easter time, or the Neapolitan coconut bars.  Whether it was memories of childhood or just the ability to buy it, we always had a slew of candy bars in the house, and we kids were not limited to what or when.  Just within reason, and god forbid you eat the last one of someone's favorite.

Baby Ruth's, Fifth Avenues, Clark Bars, Mars Bars, Paydays, Forever Yours, Three Musketeers, Sky Bars, black licorice, Mounds, Almond Joy, bags of orange slices, marshmallow circus peanuts that smelled of banana, Hershey bars, Cracker Jacks, Oh Henrys, Snickers, Milky Ways, Nik L Nips; it was an explosion of post-WWII abundance.  And let me tell you young'uns, you could buy this stuff in full size bars for a nickel.  Each.  Popsicles were 3 cents, something fancy like a Drumstick was one thin dime.

So Easter ended up a pretty good time as far as our baskets went, the hard boiled eggs were returned to the fridge and appeared during the week as egg salad sandwiches.  I saved the sugary Peeps for last, as I liked them after they became stale, hard, and crusty.  None of us liked the spice flavored jelly beans, favoring the fruit ones.  It was a stay at home holiday, Mom would bake up a fresh pork ham and we would pray that Dad would eat so that he would fall asleep.

I remember the excitement and anticipation of wearing my new spring hat and coat to church, of having a basket of candy at my command, of dyeing hard boiled eggs the night before which was allowed and encouraged.  Mom got a large coconut egg covered in milk chocolate that would sometimes have a bright yellow blop in the middle of the white filling, mimicking a real egg.  She would wrap it in waxed paper and keep it in the fridge, slicing off bits for her afternoon soaps.  

I miss the Easters of my son's time, when his eyes grew large at finding his chocolate rabbit, or looking for plastic eggs in the yard.  Children add so much to holidays, now since everyone is older, the coming together for a meal is celebratory enough.  Grown up faces do glow for a nice platter of ham slices, sautee up a few pineapple rings for added hypnotic effect.

Fare well with your families, with those you love and if no one is there, be grateful for the country we live in, the life you are able to have, and how far you have thus come.  I hear pots and pans down the corridor, and aromas of cooking wend around hallways and stairwells throughout the building.  Daffodils and early tulips are popping, fisherfolk cast lines from the breakwall, robins are yelling their heads off, and another day is ending.  The moon is hidden by the layer of clouds, as are any stray meteorites from the recent Lyrid shower.  Do what work is left, hide eggs, hop around, fold papers, pull down covers, sleep well. Early spring night.

Permission

The laundry is not done, nowheres near.   This place could use a vacuuming, dusting, window washing, and the bed needs to be set up.  I sleep on a mattress on the floor that is a size too big for the bed frame, which has now been kindly, dearly repaired with a walnut beam from an old New England loom.  The floored mattress was handy when there was a cat who needed insulin shots as he couldn't hide under the bed, but he has been gone for two or three years.

The manual defrost freezer belonging to the refrigerator has formations in rounded chunks, the onion drawer is sprouting, and I could toss out the sodium-inflated canned soups from that company we all know whose serving size is about 1/2 of a cup.  They keep the serving size down so you think that well, 480 milligrams of salt is all you're getting, but that goes according to how much is spattered into the bowl.  The saucers in their ads sure allow more than a half cup per, and often is shown with that other devil, a grilled cheese.  Ach!  Why do the good things kill you slowly?

But the point is, besides the last paper for the last college course, I am surrounded by necessary chores that aim nagging fingers at my conscience.  So, all the cats are brushed and given clean water and litter, the fish tank is replenished and new filters battle the algae infestation currently being waged.  I should get my agoraphobic arse out and go for a walk.  I should try to fix the left turn signal in the car, the instructions are there from the internet.  I should call my brother.  I should consolidate student loans.  I should I should I should.

Here is what I want, unashamedly:  to make eggs, to draw in beeswax on eggshells and dye them until each color has its turn and then to melt the wax away, revealing a bit of some small god from days when Paleolithics practiced animism, the belief that everything living or inanimate has a spirit.  I talk to the cats, the car, the plants, the fish, and myself.  And you.  The eggs sit on the table with penciled designs, along with the dyes and a new electric kistka for drawing.  Pounds, pounds I say, of beeswax await melting.   Do I make a deal with myself?   The guilt at making art never disappears, tossing insinuations that I am lazy and wasteful for using time as a plaything, when it is better suited towards useful products.

I know, get over it, go make something.  What I create often brings me joy and not to sound full of it, but I can enchant myself with some of the drawings or ideas that spill waterfall heavy with fluidity.  Not all are winners, but there are favorites.  Once accomplished, I like to go on to the next, quickly.  But here is good news, even though the years have trod on some of my dreams either through neglect or inability to cope, there is a new stage of life arriving, this last phase of creative push.  The subject of the last paper for the last class, I am using an idea learned in one of last semester's courses, that of women attaining eminence in their sixties.  I think I can do this.

Once children are grown and degrees are attained, there is an open period that can be filled with art, art and more art.  Freed of family, as it were, women can devote time to their own development and craft.  God bless you if you were able to do it when younger, it was a gift of the universe--me, I had difficulties dealing with health and circumstances, and would not have wanted to spend hours in the studio while my son was living at home.  Oh!  Damn me for not going to college before, I was so intimidated by the world that anything outside the door had claws waiting to snatch.  Well, hell's bells, hindsight blah blah.

But here is my chance to flood life with mediocre illustrations rising to amazing illuminations in paint, pastel, and my dear eggs.  I make little men out of plastic resin and those wooden, jointed mannequin models, of which a dear friend said were creepy.  Neat!  My trinity consists of paper, pen, and ink dabbed from a bottle, crow and hawk quills charged and ready; layered courses of pastel colors jigsaw together into human faces, there's my meat and drink.  The thing is, there are months, sometimes years between projects, and I have missed many opportunities for creation and growth due to the inertia caused by Being Good.

Do you recognize yourself in any of this?  Have there been materials gathering dust in a cupboard's gullet or perhaps you dream of traveling places seemingly out of reach?  Is there a barrier?  They can be genuine, but determine whether the wall is true or if you would rather stay safe, untested, bound by inflated responsibility used as a fable to avoid risk.  Who knows?  Only, just don't be hard on yourself, for who cares why, just get out there and fake it until the new becomes comfortable.

I must finish this paper, and then I am free.  Sorting out is next, for to devote a life to art needs no clutter, and interests should be pared down to minimum.  My dreams are still here, still vital, still a marker as to who I am as time's plumb bob courses back and forth through days and weeks, months and years.  Maybe I'll begin a book.  Maybe I'll eat a can of dangerous soup, maybe I will be able to create into my nineties.

Dreams, sleep, and wakefulness, which is most important?  People are rushing home in this late afternoon, returning from jobs away to jobs at home.   The sun is now descending past the apex of heaven and will shortly dissolve into the lake, releasing the night air filled with the scent of growing spring grasses and buds. Paddle your coracle to shores far and pebbled, listen to the fish tell you of dreams coursing deep under the rippled surface of the water, dreams liquid, living, loved.  Find yourself, I will wait for you.  Good night.

A Passover Evening

This was new for me, Passover.  I participated in this year's ritual with the parents and family of my son's girlfriend for the first night of the remembering and retelling.  Much getting ready in the house, with boiling water being poured on counters to purify the surfaces.  All dishes, pots, and utensils were put away, and the Passover sets brought out.  The table was set with a large round Seder plate holding bitter herbs, a roasted egg, a shank bone, greens, charoset, and horseradish.  Matzah had been brought in and placed within a cover, bowls of salt water were placed at either end of the table, and wine enough for the required four glasses to be drunk by each member.

What surprised me the most was not the explanation of each segment, why dip the herbs in salt water, why hide half of a matzah, why have an egg for soup, or why the horseradish, but the encouragement to ask questions, to wonder, to challenge, to debate.  Oh ho ho, not in my Catholic upbringing was I ever asked an opinion or invited to challenge belief.  That was a crime to be reported as doubt in confession, at least in the household and parish of childhood.  This was news to me, and I listened and learned.

Several of the people sitting around the table voiced that they were uncomfortable with certain phrases in response to the reading of the Four Sons answering to "Why is this night different from all other nights?" There was no condemnation of their feelings, but a jovial debate.  We leaned to the left while drinking the first cup of wine, to indicate that we were now free men and women who were not in a hurry, that we were no longer slaves who had to sit on the floor during meals.  Also, by leaning to the left, the windpipe is not hampered by food traveling down the esophagus, which elicited a response from one of the younger participants who said that roller coasters will often end with a turn to the left, in order to release pressure on the heart by centrifugal force, returning your gizzards to their proper places.

We washed at the sink, pouring the water three times over each hand from an antique copper jug with two handles.  We ate and recited prayers, each component representing ages of tradition done for centuries from generation to generation.  The two youngest that were at the table valiantly held up, for the prayers had begun after nine, the supper at elevenish to past midnight, ending with prayers well after one o' clock in the morning.  I was in bed no earlier than two a.m., something that usually doesn't happen these days unless someone needs emergency stitching up.

Food included a new dish for me called tzimmes, a compote of carrots, apricots, golden raisins, and cinnamon.  It. Was. So. Good.  There was roast turkey, more matzah, more charoset (chopped apples, walnuts, and wine), and potatoes mashed in chunks with paprika that were equally delicious and wholesomely filling.  Pepsi was allowed at the table since this version was made from cane sugar, not the grain-based corn syrup.  Because the Jews had to leave in a hurry, there was not time to let bread rise; in accordance, grains and legumes avoided at a Seder are wheat, barley, oats, barley, corn, rice, millet, rye, lentils, beans, and spelt.

There was a joy in participation, in reliving the stories, in honoring those that had come before and longed for freedom.  I learned more about Judaism from this warm, loving family than in my previous years put together, and am a better person for it.  The Jews didn't build the pyramids, the ten plagues may have had a volcanic eruption as a catalyst.  Not a subscriber to religion, for I think you just need to be kind and say thank you, I still wonder why there aren't more Jews in this old world.  The vibrancy, community, and the core belief in performing a mitzvah is necessary and good.

The basis of Passover is very different from the Sicilian spring celebration of St. Joseph's Day, yet St. Joseph's Day recounts another deliverance, that of the poor from starvation.  Dia de San Giuseppe is a tradition that may have factual basis, yet Passover is absolute history that had been lived by hundreds of thousands, whose descendants continue upholding the memory of what had been.

I am hoping that both will become part of spring's ritual in my home; today I am also thinking of the coming time to gather leeks in the woods amid bursts of trillium and the white flowers of bloodroot.  Seasons come and go, phases of the moon wax and wane, tides ebb and flow, night and day, up and down.  Sleep well under Virgo, Leo, Bootes, and Ursas Major and Minor as they turn through the dark sky, having watched centuries ago when the sphinx shook mortar dust from its heavy, stone paws.  Good night, safe to home all.

I Need What?

Received a letter on Saturday stating that I was missing a third elective necessary for graduation this May.  Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!   My heart is still halfway up my neck with anxiety, and anyhow, I have done everything that this system has said was required.  My advisor checked and rechecked the course load year after year with no discrepancy, and even told me that I couldn't take another course this spring as that would put me over the limit.  She is a gem, and I already know that the snafu is in the graduate offices.

Still, if I do not attain this degree, it will be hell's teeth, arse, and damnation as the city and state want me done by August.  Sure, I could squeeze in a summer course that runs from May to June, but this whole soup is getting too close to the wire.  Fortunately, I had taken two electives back in 2002 and 2004 that may be used if I get the right signatures on the piece of magical paper that gives permission.  I had asked if I could apply these to the degree previously and told that well, no, you see, it was too long ago. Now, the new form says okay.  Forgive the blathering, but I am twitted to distraction.

The 2002 elective was probably the most enjoyable course taken in the roster of requirements, that being Fleshy Fungi, a study of the larger bodies of mushroom and mold, as compared to the minute spores, rusts, yeasts, and smuts that cover every inch of everything on this earth.  If all of it was able to melt away with only the microscopic fungi remaining, what you would see would be the ghostly outlines of buildings, people, trees, rocks, cars, you name it covered by fungal cells.  Rare is the area that has nothing.

We went out in the field during a particularly dry summer when little was flourishing.  To find fruiting bodies, one had to hunt under dead logs that held moisture deep in the woods.  It was well worth the search, for the array of slime molds was on parade, plus an example of Sphaerobulos stellatus, the artillery fungus.  This particular, miniscule mushroom is a nuisance that can grow on houses; it propagates through pressure building within the gleba, exploding and shooting spores to areas as far as 20 feet away.  To see it in person was fascinating, even though it mostly looked like tiny cracked eggs oozing yolk.

This will work out, I am confident.  It will because if I have to go down there, do turn on the local news because there may be yelling.  Incessant, ballistic, artillery inspired yelling.  Tonight, however, I bide.  I have a new bulb for the left turn signal and have looked up directions on the web for installation, as long as it doesn't incur attack from beneath the car engine, I think I can fiddle this in.

The snow has again stopped and is melting avalanche style from windshields and overhangs.  Robins are hopping about in search of sodden worms, the narcissus are again lifting their heads, freed from dollops of snow.  Hum as you tidy up before evening, readying to settle down after a warm supper.  Wash hands and face, bundle up the children, wipe the table, set cups on their shelf.  You are safe and able to watch the green things tiptoe back into play with each rise of the sun.  Take time now to sleep and let the day go off to a land where nothing matters, not time nor papers, cup or saucer, equinox or solstice.  There is a full Egg Moon tonight, marking the wild birds as they lay new eggs in nests.  The minnows are also running upstream, and the world spins on.  Put your hand in it, and leave behind good.  Sleep well.   

Off the Lake

A quick, hard wind has come in from the west, bringing in snow enough that I cannot see the downtown buildings. A white curtain has been introduced across the horizon of brick and stone, and I am very glad to  be inside.  Forecast said winds up to 50 mph, and the bunny at the shore must be huddled down into a dry nest below ground level.  It amazes me, the delicacy of nature that is able to withstand the harrowing weather consisting of rain, ice, and snow, especially the kind pelting sideways.

Bird natural body temperatures ranges between 104 - 105 degrees, and I would think that even a fifteen minute blast of cold would severely affect their metabolism.  They aren't inside on the couch in front of a laptop, they are hanging on to a branch with their toes for dear life.  How do the finches that stay all year survive?  All I can imagine is that the species has adapted to the climate, in spite of being not more than a handful of feather and wit.

Fortunately, the short torment of snow has ended, but yet it remains cold.  I remember human me being chilled to the bone yesterday in my layers of clothing, while a furred but unclothed lagomorph raced around the rocks and wet sand and is still there, outside, no furnace, no teakettle, no blanket.  I tell my cats they have it good and to count their whiskers.  Two were lost and founds that lived a few winters outside before humans snagged their busy selves.  The other three were barely cared for, having had litters and just sickly when I got them from shelters.  I can only bless the dear unknowns who scooped them into carriers and got them to a place where they could receive help.

My big grey boy, Stevie, waits at the door when I leave in the morning, just begging to be let out, I'm sure a habit from an earlier life.  Well, there you go.  He is anticipatory and thus stunned when I open the door and all that surrounds him is linoleum.  No grass to bound outwards and into.  No wild neighborhood buddies to chew the mouse fat with.  He stands midway out, imagining other days, other yards, then sighs and turns back around, a bit defeated.  I know he is happy to be here, however, for he has begun to butt his large head into my leg, and take things less seriously.  Perhaps I can train him to wear a harness for a walk.

The sky has brightened.  Tomorrow is the first night of Passover, and I look forward to participating in the rituals at my daughter-in-law-to-be's parent's home.  I wish the cold would lift as does the rest of the city, there is not a soul who doesn't long for temperatures that don't require dressing up.  Soon.  I remember Easters in snow, even at the late date that this year's takes place, but then, the planet was coming out of a mini-Ice Age in 1950.  Trends indicate that maybe this warming afterwards is a natural occurrence, the last one  happened during Medieval time and contributed to increased crops and population.  Anyways, it's still cold outside.

So don't put up the winter blankets yet, and keep the flannel pajamas out a bit longer.  Still a good night for tea or cocoa, or something else to warm the blood and loosen the knotted joints.  I am blessed to be warm, the cats agree in their even respiration, curled on the mat, this fat cat.  Let dreams come.  Good night.

River Cleaning

Every year a clean up day is sponsored by Buffalo Niagara Riverkeepers, an organization devoted to keeping our local waterways shining.  They dispensed gloves and plastic bags to assist in gathering the incredible amount of garbage dumped into and around the rivers and creeks by humans.  For all the green publicity put out there, I still think people are overwhelmed by the disposable aspect provided by the business end of economy.  If you don't throw it out, you won't buy another.  Things are made to be tossed.

Yes, there were a lot of the plastic straws and paper cups from fast food, but that was the least of the debris.  What compromised the largest bulk of the garbage I picked up were disposable lighters, twist off tops, and myriad bits of hard, brightly colored plastic inexorably, minutely, universally mixed throughout the sand and wood chips.  Neon purple, pink, green and orange shards are a part of the beach and shore, forever.  To pick up each one was similar to pulling apart yards become miles of coleslaw from the sand and rocks along the walkway.  I wondered if this was the new environment, one spattered with bits of broken toys and containers, and if what I was doing mattered.

Stronger folks hauled tires and found a discarded table, hubcaps, shoes, beer cans, and indescribable things battered by waves and elements into mystery.  I stayed within a certain distance of the fence opening, and was still able to fill my bag with plastic discards, sharp edged and shapeless.  Where is this coming from?  You see the product in the store, and think that the manufacturer has something to do with its beginning and end, and that they wouldn't make more if it were really hurting the way we live.  False.  Business will make as much as it can sell, leaving disposal to chance.

Here is an example:  I picked up a crayon from the floor of a classroom.  This crayon, however, is in a plastic case and will spiral up similar to a lipstick as a gimmick.  For what purpose?  The stick of crayon within the tube is very thin, and would not hold up to the pressure of fingers; this means that less product is presented in a hardier case.  But this is designed for children, who love to fiddle with stuff as it gives them the illusion of control, so within hours, the plastic tube no longer has any crayon left.  The crayon has been used up, snapped, shared, gone.  What is left is a the container, which is not refillable and so is tossed.  Eight to a pack.

This is a big name company who makes millions of these things--think of the load the earth holds with these and all the other hard plastic doodads.  Picture all the stuff in the mall, now throw it out, fill the mall up again.  Empty out the big box stores, pile the items in a parking lot, refill the store.  Look in a catalog of party supplies, all made to be discarded.  A lot of it can't be recycled, much of it the city doesn't accept.  Too much is thrown away in lots, at curbs, in open fields, waterways, wherever it becomes out of sight.

The area does looks better for the effort, even though the day was dismal cold and worked its way up into hail and rain.  When my hand was reaching for another discarded container, a brown blur scurried around from under a rock to another crevice: a bunny!  Years ago when walking along the top of the rocks, a tiny cup of a baby rabbit was so intent on the yellow rock clover in front of him, that he didn't startle when my foot almost stepped atop his self.  Just a wee bit of brown with the liquid eyes of a wild thing, he let me watch as he took supper.  Could this be the same one, all grown?  More likely a relative.

When I was young and down at the river, the dangerous discard was the silk line left by fishermen, likely to get stuck in a maw somewhere.  This was before plastic filament, I would see black line tangled with hooks, waiting to ensnare finger or beak.  Glass bottles were a terror, for idiots would toss them into the waves, and they would break near shore and cut the feet of waders.  Tin cans, the ubiquitous tire, and machine parts would get dumped into the lake.  A train is at the bottom of a local Canadian quarry, originally used to haul stone, left in the pit after its use ended.

There is much left to do today, before ending with a sigh.  The bunny down at the shoreline has new greenery to nibble, for fresh buds and small mouthfuls are beginning.  Not the lush exuberance of green yet, but enough to know that a cottontail will dine well before retiring to a burrow lined with dried grasses and the mother's fur.  Bed down, little rabbit, and dream of lovely warm days and burgeoning clovers, enough to fill your rabbit desires.  Sleep well, good river, good night.

Sun Dogs Above

Driving into work points directly into the sun, often at the time when the rays dance little jigs on the back of my retina.  Because the daylight is lengthening, the sun is now higher in the sky at the same hour and less of a blinding concern.  Fiddling with the left turning signal which had started a frantic blink at the last corner distracted me from looking up, because sometimes if you wiggle something, it works again.  Example: my defroster that started all by itself after six weeks of no output.  No luck with the turn signal, I just have to call this really great mechanic who works his own hours he is that good.

By this time I had turned onto the Kensington Expressway, a handy drive that had cut a beautiful neighborhood in half and eliminated the promenade that connected Humboldt with Delaware Park.  I remember the parkway, and at the end in front of the beautiful facade of the Museum there once was an orb that was labeled as the largest ball of coal in the world.  On a pedestal, with a plaque.  Wonder where they put that?  Remaining alone is the foot for the pedestal. If you go round to the west side of the Museum and scan the patch of lawn across the street, you can see the squarish bottom sadly missing the immensely peculiar black ball, which had looked as if the gods had dropped a giant punctuative period onto a cement stand.  Rolled off of some giant astral scroll.  There has to be a picture of it somewhere.

After merging with not so friendly traffic contrived of people that I am sure are perfectly nice once they are not behind a wheel, there was a vision in the sky, a rainbow?  The colors were there, leading from inner red through orange yellow greenish blue purple as a blotch, a slice of rainbow directly horizontal to the sun.  A duplicate icon balanced the other side of our solar star, smaller and not as brilliant in color or intensity.  You could have run your finger in a halo around the sun, linking the two prismatic segments of morning air.  How can you drive at 55 mph and remark on the atmosphere?  Not well.  Once I got to the parking lot the effect was beginning to fade as the sun ascended towards zenith, and the colors had washed to pale ghosts of the spectrum.  It was meant to be fleeting, you take what you can get and say thank you.

Parahelia are also called sun dogs, companions who wait at each side of the sun.  Composed of hexagonal ice crystals, they filter the light and break it apart into colored apparitions low in the sky.  I have seen them more at sun's set than in the morning, but they can appear at any time of any season.  Under the right conditions you will observe them hanging about the moon, paraselenae.  Living far into the city as I do, there isn't much of the night sky that isn't filled with buildings and orange street lamps.  I miss the stars and other astronomical doings, and so a sun dog offered in post dawn hours aligns me back with Sagittarius, Jupiter, cumulous, Antares, and Tycho Brahe.  The push and pull of tides, the breathing of the earth's crust.

The setting sun is bouncing yellow off the taller edifices of economics and commerce found downtown, they will soon glow apricot to rose to last violet.   Clouds pass above, forecasting rain for the next day.  In the meantime, the newly revived birds flutter towards evening roosts, and leaves of the house plants fold closer to stem in preparation for the coming dark.  The cats are arching eyebrows as this is the time they are most active, just before and after sun; not nocturnal, these folks are crepuscular.  Nothing like an early morning crash of china to get you out of bed.  Me, I am tired.

Come then, with a cup of tea or cocoa and sit while the sun descends and goes to count the hours on the other side of the world.  Let those people wake for a while and toil with the day, god bless them.  Night is here, and so is a book, a pillow, go latch the door, outen the lights.  Sleep and be safe, cats call, children sigh; human hearts, sun dogs laugh.

Tiller Hard Alee

When my mom gave me a bubble bath and lotion set when I was six or seven, my father turned purple and tore that Christmas up one side and down the other with the edict that I would become a whore.  I don't think the glass bottles were more than 3 ounces each, and I picture them as clear today as on that awful holiday.  She don't need that, she'll be down on Franklin Street with the rest of them red haired women.  There was green shampoo, pink lotion, bubble bath, and a light cologne in a cardboard box with a cellophane window.  I was so excited to get it, but any feeling dropped out of me as my mother's face crumpled and we ended both in tears.  Knots in my stomach.  Another Christmas hell.  She tried to stick up for me, for us, for women, but my father countered any sanity with his contorted, crazy accusations.  I put the set under my bed where it gathered a grey layer of  dust.  Never used it.  I wanted to side with my mom, but was frightened of consequences.

When I was little, I was permitted to be bathed once a week using Oxydol or Spic and Span.  Mom switched me to Tide once, and the fresh scent started another witch hunt.  When my father came home from work, first we had to greet him as if we were happy to see him. Then, once he sat with the evening paper, I had to go over and let him smell me, my neck, checking for anything contrived as fragrance that would label me as a six year old parasite, sucking the life out of a man.  I didn't want to be near him under any circumstance, it wasn't love on either side.

I have mentioned that he had brought me a pirate skull kite.  I also had a catcher's mitt, a Zorro outfit, a gun that shot plastic darts, and weirdly, was allowed to run around outside topless, wearing just red shorts as if I was a boy, which is what dad was hoping I would turn into.  He hated women, and bragged of beating one up that had been leading on a buddy of his during the war, he gave her just what she had coming, the bitch.   He had named his fists Mariah and Beulah, and challenged the men who objected to fight.  Laughable, unless you were living with it.   He was the Master Sergeant at Arms or some such nonsense, and taught judo and hand to hand combat, so the tale recounted ends with him coming out on top of the heap.  Mom and I didn't know what to make of his stories or if they were true or not, but the design was to intimidate us from ever crossing him and to tiptoe when he was around.  We sure the heck did.

I wasn't allowed to eat at the dinner table because I didn't appreciate him enough, so mom spread newspapers on the living room floor and put my dinner plate there, in front of the television.  I was happy enough to be put off to the side and watched Three Stooges reruns until the evening news came on.   He had gotten a rubber squeak doll of a curvaceous woman in a bathing suit that he would play with after supper, sit it next to him on the arm of the chair.  Ordered it from True magazine.  I was supposed to move out of the living room when he had it.  Mom hated the thing, fights ensued, and he didn't get rid of it until she told him to ask the priest if it was an appropriate item.  He was told it would lead him to sin, and burned it with the night's garbage in the back yard.  You never, ever knew what was coming next.

After he looked at me when I was thirteen and said "You're a woman now,"  I stopped bathing altogether.  My school life was abysmal as it was, I had no clue what people were or how to talk to them, so this development put me into another category altogether.  I was greasy, smelly, poorly dressed, and inside out with shame and shyness.  Every day was hell, all one could do was duck and hope not to get an apology later, for the "I'm sorrys" were dramatic.  He would come and explain and explain and explain as if I cared or understood the dynamics of his alcoholism, he would relate incidents that occurred between him and my mom, or tell me of stories of past exploits and penance.  I would freeze into stone, hoping he would hurry up and leave, for god's sake go away.  These were my junior high years.

I got out eventually, got away, he lost interest once I started working.  Today I received a bill with his name on it in the mail; since I had got him an account with the Veteran's Administration they would send correspondence here.  I still can't look at his name without a reflexive clench, even though he's been dead for two months and my brother had been involved with his care more than I.  Will it ever stop?  Only if I look forward and forcefully push the garbage aside.  I have legally changed from my maiden name and have built a small network of friends that I love.  My one son and my other son are in my life.  There are gentle, kind men, those that are selfless and giving, stable and unpretentious examples of what fathers can be, of what husbands are, of what friendship and companionship mean.  Congratulations if you have one in your life.

Hold your head up, o child.  Hold your head above the abusive actions taken by those mentally ill, the ones entangled in webs of delusion and accusation.  Get out there and learn, but don't apologize for who you had to be because that deflected the physical and verbal lashings intended to raise weals on your soul.  So I wasn't clean.  So I wasn't able to make friends.  So what.  I am here now, and it is a good place to be.

Tuck someone in tonight, even if it is yourself, you are such a sweetie pie.  Think of someone and send them a thought.  Let the night float by in dreamtime, and sail upon the glimmering ocean of Nod in a cockleshell made from dimensions beyond time. Sleep as if you were a child, innocent of premonition.  You are, you are.  Love.  Tiller hard alee.

Phenology

No, not the stuff where you read bumps on people's heads, this is an actual science based on observation of the timing plants and animals display.  Like crocus coming up now, in spring, after snowdrops and squill.  Like robins returning.  Like asparagus in the supermarket because the growing season in Florida is producing crops.  I didn't realize there was a word for it, I found the link on the weekly email I receive from the Farmer's Almanac.  And really, no great shakes here, but I am taking pictures of flowers as they appear in succession, and hope to complete this minor project through the last vestiges of fall.

Most of them are cell phone pics, which works for me as the thing is handier to carry than the camera.  Unless I get myself to the swamp to formally photograph skunk cabbage, this is the way to go.  When I was a kid living out in Clarence, New York, I would bring my mother bouquets of anything I could find, including the dried heads of Queen Anne's Lace, teasels (ow!), or the remaining brown heads of purple aster.  She loved it all.  I remember looking for the first chickweed, the first dandelion, and a real coup in late spring of the first wild daisy.  Clover, buttercups, locoweed, evening primrose, and stuff I couldn't tell you the name of sprouted in her glass vases she would place on the kitchen table, or in the living room.  Maybe this is what I am trying to relive.

She taught me how to press flowers, and iron fall leaves between sheets of waxed paper; Mom knew what catnip was and where it grew, and could make a whistle from a blade of grass.  Old timey doings that I am sure she learned from her own mother, my Grandma Ida who came from German stock in Crawford County, Pennsylvania.  Close to dirt poor, my mother would rankle at the word "hillbilly" and often said that was not what I wanted to be.  But she loved the soil and planted flowers, roses, iris, peonies, and got my crabby father to help her haul rocks for a rock garden.  There was a bit of a vegetable garden, but not much as the raccoons and deer saw it as a walk-in buffet.  Not much else to do way out there, without a car.

A forest fire started by my idiot cousin wiped out acres of trees and low growth preferred by the families of pheasants and fox.  It jumped the crick, and I remember her and my Auntie Anne dressed in heavy jackets, their hair and faces wrapped in scarves, wearing gloves and boots in the heat and sparks for protection, they heaved my Uncle Bob's wooden trailer away from the grass fires headed towards the two houses.  It took  only a few weeks of rains to begin the sprouting of green again, years before the trees and brush came back.  I walked on the hot, bare, black ground still smoking the next day, and saw a line of bones that may have once been a tail.  Me, you know me, I grabbed a few and flew them up into the sky as crossbones on the Jolly Roger skull kite my father had bought me.  There was an investigation, with my cousin supposedly having to do some sort of community work along with the other two geniuses involved.  He's now an idiot pastor down South.  Yes, you are probable keerect.  Totally.

This is partially where the love of the seasons comes, with each player arriving onstage with fanfare and glad appreciation.  You know how it feels to pick that first tomato, or cuke, or tulip, or what most of us just did, see that first robin.  It's just wonderful.  Here is a link to the phenology website:  http://www.usanpn.org/.  So much to see, so much to celebrate.

What a day it was here, with sun and temperature.  I actually didn't get out beyond one trip to the car to dig out a box, but even so, the day was shining.  Min is here beside me again, Tulip is at my foot on her bed, Kai just traipsed by and is now washing her bib; Stevie is atop a china cabinet, and Snowbelle is on the bed.  The fish tank has been tended, and the clown loaches are noodling together under the driftwood.  They have a habit of floating sideways upsidedown on the bottom till you think you have to get the net, and then they zip away, pleased with the charade.

I hope this evening finds you safe and with most loose ends tied.  Take up old wood and leaves, rake them away and get the beds ready for the coming show.  Sleep well tonight, gathering, pondering, deciding, moving forward.  All of it is growth, slowed only by the darkened hours when the stars gyre in the welkin of heaven.  Sleep.

Concettina

Connie was my next door neighbor when we bought our first house, a two and a half story monster that housed two flats.  She had her husband, Sal, and two boys, Santino and Calogero.  Santo and Charlie.  We would say an occasional hello, but that was that except for the two boys who came over to play with Brian.  He would go over there, and come back with stories of spinach soup and homemade pizza, cookies and pasta with sauces.  This was a wonder, for at home he was the child who would go to bed with a cheek full of peas after "trying one bite" rather than swallow.  I would check on him and find a trail of green goosh on his pillow: peas.  He still hates them.  Yet in the land of Sicily, he ate them in pasta sauce along with any other vegetable Connie offered.

I had gotten to know her after giving her a quart of green and yellow beans from my garden.  She wondered if I was Italian because I grew cucuzza, a lovely squash remembered from a childhood neighbor's garden.  She taught me to hand pollinate the blossoms after a dismal production, and I provided tomatoes and chocolate chip cookies in gratitude for her patience.  The language barrier was formidable, and Santino would be called to translate.  I asked for some of her recipes, as I was overjoyed to find food that Brian would actually eat.

She always made her own loaves of bread, baking it in the second kitchen in the basement which is one of the most brilliant ideas ever in summertime.  With extra dough, she would stretch it out in a baking sheet containing about a quarter inch of olive oil, dotting it with sliced garlic, a small amount of fresh tomato, anchovies, and a light sprinkle of parmesan cheese.  More olive oil on top, then bake in a slow oven for a few hours till it became crisp and slightly golden.   Her apron was always on, if not a towel tucked in around her waist.

Her cookies came year round, the mainstays being the sugar cookie dough rolled in twists and frosted with rainbow sprinkles, thumbprints made mostly of walnuts, osse de morte, the bones of the dead; sesame, chocolate balls, and cucidati.  You would go over for coffee, and the cookies, grapes and walnuts in shells would be brought out.  "Hey Brian, you want a  cook'?"  Such warm, good hearted people.  I still have many of her cookie recipes, and cannot say how grateful I was for her friendship.

I had impulsively grabbed a blob of frozen dough from the grocery yesterday, with the idea of replicating her pizza.  Since St. Joseph's Day, I have been on a fishy journey: the fishier, the better, and had purchased a jar of lovely anchovies from the import grocery down on Grant Street.  They needed a base of dough and garlic to rise to their best calling, and so that is how it happened that my oven was the source of Sicilian heaven just moments ago.  I can see her, tall, thin, worked to a bone with one of the cleanest homes I have ever been in.

We parted somewhat when my family moved two streets away, yet still the boys would play together.  Connie and I kept in touch and would visit.  Once my marriage dissolved, there was a difference.  She didn't understand, and would say, "Come over.  You bring you husband,"  for he had been a friend to them as well.  I ran into Santino many years back, his new family with him, a wife and a beautiful little girl.  Everyone was fine, Sal had retired, Connie still with her garden and home.

Again, a part of my life that I do not wish to forget.  The hands that lift you up, that let you lift them up also.  Day in day out.  It strengthens us.

Dear Min, Glad You Are Here

It was the sound of a child: sharp, loud, uncannily human.  Unrecognizable in sleep, I wondered for the merest of seconds how did a child get in the apartment?  The second cry was deeper, throatier, in pain, and reminded me of what is heard often in the rooms of a hospital during delivery, a primal sound of agony whose roots reach back to the days of dirt.  It was Min, who I found laying on the bathroom floor unable to move, calling, calling in bewilderment and anguish.  This was at 3:30 in the morning.

Min is my oldest at fifteen.  Her back legs seemed unable to work and she was drooling, another signal of intense pain.  Sliding my hands under her, I was able to get her to the couch, her claws clutching while her guttural cries continued, but less often since I had gotten to her.  She purred in rough, heaving rumbles, which a cat will also do when hurt.  No bones seemed broken, there had been no signs of distress from her previously.  In fact, her climbing up the bookshelf and subsequent play at the top shelf had caused admiration at her abilities in being the oldest of the cats, the other four now circling us in worried concern.  

Had she fallen?  Her head was now turned under into the blanket on the couch, one hind leg oddly extended forward in contortion.  After many emergencies in life, I have learned what they teach you on the airplanes: get yourself ready first in order to facilitate helping others.  I can't see ten inches in front of me, and there may be a fast drive involved.  I ran to get both my glasses and hastily dressed for a trip to the emergency vet.

This veterinary is a godsend, and their services have been used several times before.  Local doctors schedule themselves for the emergencies that occur in the night, taking turns.  It is required that you call ahead, which is what I did once I could see.  Min had pulled her leg in, was still purring loudly, drooling profusely, black tail bushed out.   I also learned that pencil and paper are best for saving an emergency number rather than waiting for an electronic device to fire up, unlock, password, find the file nonsense.  At the other end of the line was Rose, who spoke in efficient, calm clarity.

The lack of movement of Min's back legs were my largest concern, but Rose told me that cats don't have strokes, something new to me.  Were her legs cold?  No.  There was apparent feeling as she pulled her foot away when I checked.  Sometimes cats have something something something, the words are lost for Min suddenly lurched up, staggering, and the immense reason for the pain made itself known.

There were no heroic measures, the cat carrier and towels were left unused.  Her genuine incapacitation during the spasms were heart-wrenching and real, and the lack of movement combined with her dull, unfocused stare made me think of trauma.  Within the half hour, she stretched and dug her claws into the cardboard scratching tray, and genuinely seemed pleased and appreciative that I was there to help her.

They do, animals, appreciate our efforts.  Old orange cat Martian had an event that caused his back legs to go out but not his front.  I was sitting on the couch when he dragged himself to me and asked for help,      the emergency vet was visited and luckily the condition again was temporary.   The connection is there, and I believe most of us humans understand and welcome the commonality.  Min will be watched, but is now next to me on the couch, rowring her announcements and washing my hand.  It was a serious circumstance that can become crucial, this time things went well.

Today is overcast, and I am glad we didn't have to drive through red lights on early morning, empty streets.  There is a focaccia in the oven that I learned to make from a long-ago neighbor who generously shared recipes, and what sleep was missed is still overridden by the adrenalin surge.    Thankful is a fine word, and it is what I am.  See you the rest of this bright day, one that has the young shoots reaching upwards for the sun.

Taxes Done...It Must Be Spring

Sense of pride, sense of accomplishment!  I like to do my taxes myself, mostly because I can't see hiring it done when mine are pretty simple, and second, I like to think I can still figure stuff out on my own.  I love these fat envelopes, I taped down the flaps with extra tape and wonder if they need extra postage.  This is the first year the government didn't send out booklets and forms; I went to the library and got them, besides working online.  No envelopes were included in the booklets either.  You wonder what they do with all their money, and when you read of some of the extravagances, decry this sloughing of envelopes.  Oyez!

Good news at least this year, probably the last since I graduate in May, that taking a college credit reduces what I owe and gets me a bit of a refund.  Hot dog, I am getting new refrigerator psyched.  Just a small fridge, no hookups with water for ice are available, nor is there much room, so I am looking at apartment size but with an Automatic Defroster.  Chopping ice out and discovering Siberian wooly mammoths inside is getting old.  It's square, it's now brown, it's kinda meat?  Even the cats run.

Tally for the day: bag of garbage 2.  The haul wasn't memorable only but for the volume; there was a swollen can of maybe tuna ready to burst, innumerable plastic straws and fast food cups, some cables and plastic bottles from car oil, five glass alcohol bottles, and a look, don't judge me, pretty little rusty brown back and white underside deer mouse.  I imagine from the feral cats.  Deer mice are known to carry Hanta virus and Lyme disease, so I made sure it got deposited somewhere safe.  Lots of cigarette butts, and if you think I am going overboard, just think of the trillions of butts leaking the toxic chemicals they are designed to trap into both the environment and our water table.  I do not like the giant yard ashtray you see anywhere people sneak out for a butt, particularly when there is a cigarette ash urn immediately two feet behind you.  Yuh, I know, Ms. High and Mighty here.  But for heaven's sake, folks.  I swear if we cleaned it all up, there'd be squirrels begging for fresh cigs to get their depleted nicotine fix.

Now, under one plastic cup cover was a leaf no bigger than a fingernail, a beginning of a burdock.  The edges were scalloped and the triangulated tip pointed up towards light and air and hopeful rain.  Tiny chives are appearing, their little fingers reaching up between the cracks of sidewalk round back.  Said to be maybe a thunderstorm tonight, and down here amid the buildings a storm crashes and echoes off the towers like a firecracker exploding inside a garage.  Hella loud.  I enjoy it, the cats don't.

The low clouds are rolling in, the temperature is to be in the mid-fifties tomorrow; this combination of warm coming into cold air primes the atmospheric pump for tearing open a breach in the sky and letting the pluvial deluge rip.  The spring torrents wash sidewalks, removing mud and salt and percolate through soil and sleeping seed from last year's plants.  Say, go buy a cheap pack of seed from the dollar store, and toss it onto neglected ground, easy enough to find in the city; what a show we would have!  I am sure there is some rule against seeding with intent to abandon, but if it bring flowers or food for the birds, I say go for the sin.  Just think of the cry if people were able to buy packets of used cigarette butts to sprinkle; as it is, it remains an unseen crime out in the open.  Uh oh, I think I am rambling.  Sorry.

Sleep well, the night is coming in measures of time to count the dark till dawn.  We hypnotize ourselves into our dreams, and fall gratefully backwards into layers of precognition.  I will listen for rumblings in the heavens of rising air, cumulonimbus, rain, and hail.

In Toto

The snows have melted and will only appear in thin blankets for the rest of spring; tiny leaves and the whorls of plantain are growing again.  Driven by increased daylight, the birds are yelling their heads off to determine territory, tipping tails to attract mates.  Many pass through the edge of the city along the waterways towards a further destination, others are happy to stay here where there is abundant food especially by the mill that is still in operation making breakfast cereal.  Even the houseplants have lifted their heads and sighed contentedly.

I took a bag out to the parking lot along with rubber gloves to begin on the melee of trash that seems to increase with each season of two-legged tenants, and I don't mean the sparrows.  Today: Bag One.  How does anybody pick a cause?  There is so much to do.  You can't spread yourself thin, or you break like a saltine crumbled over a bowl of tomato soup.

You know, maybe you've read of the teacher who has been suspended for writing about students on her Facebook page.  I will not defend any of that, but I also wonder how to bring a burgeoning situation in public school to the fore.  It all seems to be a big secret that everyone is frightened to speak of, for fear of losing a job.  We need help, and most adults, parent or not, have no idea of the process of a school day.  Or am I naive, and has this been going on since Dewey decimaled his first subject?  Research is tangled and oblique, usually couched in roundabout terms that don't help anyone except the publisher.  I don't think people, the population, the everyday fella, has a clue.

What is keeping this academically hindering circumstance so hidden?  Someone, some politicians somewhere know.  Teachers are taking the brunt for poor student achievement, and damned for alleged extravagant salaries.  Gee whiz, come on in and see what we do, understand that I have gone to school for two degrees and am now in debt for over $43,000 and will be paying that back for most of the rest of my life.  I have to work summers to keep up. Does anyone imagine that I took this career up because I am a lazy, conniving so and so who wants summers off?  My salary will never be what it should be. That's not why I'm here.  

Messes need picking up, and sneakers need knotting.  Night is here and the ease of the weather sliding into a warmer rhythm revives the living, the air is easier to breathe, the sharp ice crystals that peppered your tender sensibilities are memory.  It all goes on, which is wonderful.  Every day the sun rises and sets, moon cycles, birds return, people come and go.  Sleep well, toss some seed to the birds who have come back, there is little enough for them to eat while they fuss and build nests for their babies.  Innocents, us all.

Elves and Bums

The notice said to clear all personal items out of the bathroom because the busy elves were coming with their brushes and rollers.  I further unscrewed the towel racks and the toilet roll holder as I know the elves are very busy, very fast, and could give a cow's udder concerning neatness.  I covered both the toilet tank and the showerhead with plastic bags, and told the cats to hide, expecting to return to a blinding white or vaguely spoiled milkish off-white on the walls.  Wrong-o.

It took a while to figure out what it was, but it seems that I now have an off-khaki cube of a bathroom, walls and ceiling.  I would bet they got a leftover close-out batch of satin finish, and mixed it with whatever  Dad was saving in the basement from the avocado years.  Campbell's pea soup made with milk.  You may have seen this color in the cat box, folks.  The lovely, artful blue sky and clouds which labeled the ceiling as up are now yesterday's cream of broccoli con poop.  I will get over it.  All this and Nigerians, too.

Today was April Fool's.  All the kids got their knocks in right to the end:  "Mrs. Rabinski is looking for you."  "Raquan hit me."  "Today is 'E day'".  Fake and fake and fake to their infinite delight to the point where they were congratulating themselves on their abilities to fool old fart me.  Until the math lesson.  In the middle of adding 2/5 plus 3/5, I lifted my head and said, "What was that?"  Trotting to the lavatory in the back of the room, I stepped inside, closed the door and yelled, "WHO ARE YOU?   WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN HERE, YOU NEED TO GO.  OH, NO!!!  GET YOUR HANDS OFF OF ME!!!"  While yelling, I put on a bum's mask and a derby hat.  I banged and thumped on the door, and burst out.  RAWR!!!  They screamed.

The teacher next door insisted that I check her bathroom also, for any sneaking bums.  More screams.  Another teacher borrowed the mask, stuffed it in her desk, and pretended her face got sucked into the drawer.  She arose, majestic and bummified.  Again, screaming.  We calmed the kids down with pretzels. and the most sane of us mentioned to the principal that there may have been some noise in the area.  I hear the response was fine.  My students wanted to hold a raffle to see who could win the mask.

Tonight is clear, cloudless, and calm.  I hope yours is also, and that when you think of turning in, there is a memory of a person long ago, who dropped into your everyday life with a new perspective.   Oddball or mentor, someone who shook you up a bit in a good way.  Sleep well through this cold spring night,  new green shoots are here, the squill is in blossom.  Good night.