Happy Groundhog's Day!

Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this morning and thus predicted six more weeks of winter.  The picture below (courtesy of Wikipedia) is of another groundhog (also called a 'whistle pig'  or a 'woodchuck') in warmer weather. The Latin name is Marmota Monax.

In 1921 Robert Frost published his poem "A Drumlin Woodchuck."

A DRUMLIN WOODCHUCK

One thing has a shelving bank,
Another a rotting plank,
To give it cosier skies
And make up for its lack of size.

My own strategic retreat
Is where two rocks almost meet,
And still more secure and snug,
A two-door burrow I dug.

With those in mind at my back
I can sit forth exposed to attack
As one who shrewdly pretends 
That he and the world are friends.

All we who prefer to live,
Have a little whistle to give,
And flash, at the least alarm 
We dive down under the farm.

We allow some time for guile
And don't come out for a while
Either to eat or drink
We take occasion to think.

And if after the hunt goes past 
And the double-barreled blast 
(Like war and pestilence
And the loss of common sense),

If I can with confidence say
That still for another day,
Or even another year,
I will be there for you, my dear,

It will be because though small
As measured against All,
I have been so insistently thorough
About my crevice and burrow.

Robert Frost  1874 - 1963

Wassailing the Apple Trees

A winter landscape can look bleak and barren but it may contain the promise of plenty in the year to come.

Much has been written (and refuted) about the benefits of talking to your plants, singing to them, and even playing music to promote their healthy growth.  This clearly isn't a new idea, as an old English custom involved singing and toasting the apple tree and other fruit trees on the Eve of Epiphany.  In wassailing the apple trees, workmen went from farm to farm with pitchers of cider.  Following the farmer into the fields and orchards they encircled the trees and sang their toasts to the trees.

"Here's to thee, old apple tree,

Whence thou may'st bud, and whence thou may'st blow!

And whence thou may'st bear apples enow!"

*****

"So well they might bloom, so well they might bear,

That we may have apples and cider this year!"

 A new  field of scientific study is called 'plant neurobiology.'  It seeks answers to questions of plant intelligence.  Are plants capable of their own type of cognition, learning, communication with other plants, memory, response to environmental input, and information processing?  The wassailers would answer with a definitive 'yes.'

Clouds of Christmas Eve Morning

Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:

"Pipe a song about a Lamb."
So I piped with merry cheer;
"Piper, pipe that song again."
So I piped; he wept to hear.

           Songs of Innocence [1789 - 1790]
           Introduction, st.1,  2
         
           William Blake 1757 - 1827

Fifty Years On

To all my classmates, teachers, friends, and family who were together on that Friday afternoon and the days that followed.  Fifty years on and I still see you as though it were now.

 We know that three hundred years before that day Shakespeare expressed our thoughts most clearly.

When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
          
                            Romeo and Juliet, III, ii, 21

Saint Teresa of Avila

Today is celebrated as the feast day of Saint Teresa of Avila.  This is a portrait of her painted by Peter Paul Rubens many years after her death.

Teresa died at Alba de Tormes in 1582.  She died either shortly before midnight on October 4th or early in the morning of October 15th.  This was the time when much of Europe was switching from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar and the transition required the removal of October 5 - 14 for that year.

In the twentieth century many women of intellect, including Beauvoir, tried to place Teresa within a pantheon of postmodern "subversives" against patriarchal power structures.  For her daughters in Carmel, and her thousands of followers over the last five centuries, Teresa's courage, wit, tenacity, and lively intelligence cannot be confined or defined by these academic theories.

Thoughts on an Annual Tradition

It's almost Halloween and so it's time for the annual "guess how much the pumpkin weighs" contests.  You find them all over the country - in stores and farmers' markets and parking lots.  Sometimes it's just a large pumpkin sitting on the back of a pickup truck. This one, like so many enormous pumpkins, seems to have almost collapsed under its own weight.  I wonder if this is the one that cartoon character Charlie Brown is waiting for - The Great Pumpkin!  Wait a minute!  I think that Cinderella didn't make it home on time and the glitzy golden coach was turned back into a splendid and real orange pumpkin.  A pumpkin like this one will make many pies and custards and make many people happy.

September Afternoon Visitors

The urban birds of my neighborhood seem to raise their families year round.  I shouldn't have been surprised to see such a young mourning dove outside my window this afternoon under the watchful eyes of an adult.

I stopped reading the book in my hands and flipped the pages back to a most appropriate line of writing.

". . . one listens to the mourning dove terracing its sweet calls . . ."

from "On Beauty and Being Just"  by Elaine Scarry