Peace, Dropping Slow...

Dear Maria,

You will be happy to know that a former colleague called me out on my slackened pace for posts and short fiction. I claimed that as old rhythms may be slow to disappear, I was in summer vacation mode. She did not laugh either. Some of my lack of desk time is due to more time outdoors. We had two overcast mornings that were cooler and demanded being in the yard or walking Max out at the school.

I do wish I were a painter—or at least a photographer--so that I could capture a flight of snowy egrets Saturday morning. Max stood stock still with his tongue hanging out after the ten birds were flushed by our approach near the pond beyond the practice fields. Against the pines in that gray light was quite the show as first five went one way and five the other and then all began what appeared a controlled pattern of spirals over the water. Exquisite.

Was fortunate enough to have lunch with one of our young friends yesterday. Between courses, we were trying to recall hearing any moderate on some issue screaming—perhaps just seems so to me, but how is it extremists are the ones that must shout, must contort their faces into something somehow less than human. I try to imagine grabbing someone by the shoulders and screaming “You’ve got to shut up and listen to other viewpoints in a calm manner!” And, if you can’t? I’m going to make your life miserable until the end of time.

Of course, I am well aware that certain groups want enclaves that would mean no one like scientist Athene Donald will be possible in their societies. I don’t get that kind of thinking. I’m no idealist, but the desire to subjugate everyone under one ideology and believe that will be the way of the world—for all six or seven or nine billion of us—won’t prevail.

The human race is a marathon.

Okay, summertime and the 4^th near at hand and the beetle invasion repelled. Life is good.

My very best to you and yours, srk

 

 

 

 

Summer News

Dear Maria,

Well settled into summer now, and a good soaking yesterday—three and a half inches in my gauge. The only cloud of late, metaphorically, is the arrival of Japanese beetles that are chewing on the roses. First time for such an attack since I planted the knockouts three summers ago. Yep, this is summer number four.

Last week, I chanced to post a story on my Facebook page about the death of a promising young writer in a car accident. She was the passenger. Somehow that detail makes the sting even worse. I say chanced because there is a very public back and forth going on between a young musician and the young daughter of a musician who died before his time as the phrase goes. At issue is whether an early rock’n’roll death is being romanticized.

I posted the story about the young writer because, for me at least, the loss before a real opportunity to fulfill whatever promise of talent and energy and passion is freighted with a little extra sadness. Like a bridge just rising at the water’s edge, to be halted. A plane with front wheel just leaving the ground and never to climb into the sky. A rose bloom just beginning to unwrap itself that will never reach full flower. Maybe I am overly sensitized to such loss after all those years working with teenagers and believing that their lives were just beginning in so many ways.

Of course, the writer could have been a chemist, a college student, a stay-at-home mom.

This morning I had an email waiting for me from a former student who is wrestling around with the notion of a meaningful life as he nears the end of his college career. Coincidentally, I happen to be reading Seeking Wisdom, even as I am closer to proclaiming that wisdom does not exist and that we are all doing the best we can—even if the best is sometimes awful.  Is that wise?

Yes, I promise that a novel is next in the stack. By the way, the bird book did take my mind off the slavery history. The thing with feathers, indeed.

A sudden shower— The windows were up in the truck. Yes!

Hope you are doing well and the family enjoys some time together. Already, the 4^th beckons.

Yours, srk

 

 

Happiness is a Warm Bug...

Dear Maria,

To take my mind off a history of world slavery that I just finished reading—I know, I know—I thought I’d dash off a quick letter. Next up is the Strycker book on birds, which surely ought to serve as a much more pleasant counterpoint to hundreds of stories of such vile human degradation—too appalling to fathom, but as it turns out, not for words.

Saturday morning, while at my summer mornings’ perch in the living room, I saw the first of the sun’s light touch the upper reaches of a pine that stands behind my neighbor’s house across the street. As I watched the show, a hawk landed on a branch near the top and spread its wings out to catch some warmth. We had a violent downpour around two o’clock that morning, and so the bird needed a drying out most likely. Really was quite a sight, the hawk’s wings brightly detailed against the pale morning sky—stunning.

Of course, the tranquil scene had to be interrupted by violence. I saw a streak come down into my front yard out by the rescue elm, and before I could get out of my recliner, the bird shot back up into my neighbor’s pine of a thousand cones that never drop. I stood close to the window, and down again came the predator to nail some sort of cricket or grasshopper out in the grass. She took the bug in her mouth and zoomed back again to the pine.

No, the hawk was still across the way, sunning itself as if awaiting a photographer from National Geographic. No, the predator this time was a female bluebird. While I spied a hawk, a bluebird made the kill. Surely, there is a deep lesson in this scene worth pondering.

We raise our eyes to the majestic heavens, and the sturm und drang of daily affairs churns on mercilessly at our feet.

Perhaps the bluebird does not bring us happiness but rather makes itself happy. As I have reported before, its territorial feathers are easily ruffled. Of course, I am complicit in the violence as I would rather the bluebird live to fly another day, and as for the cricket or grasshopper, alas, the food chain is a merciless taskmaster.

Dominance and subjugation. I’ve read enough of that subject to last forever. A few days with The Thing With Feathers may boost my morale.

Be well. I am sure the World Cup will torture us all, or those of us who choose to follow the games. Games. Later.

Always, srk

 

 

 

To the Core and Beyond...

Dear Maria,

Okay, I freely admit I have no personal news of note, but I just had to laugh—and when is that not a good thing? I know I am slow, or at least slower, to react to current events these days, even as I have more time to follow the news, which I don’t very much.

A sign along a local roadway touting a state education superintendent candidate’s commitment to ending Common Core nearly prompted me to spend a few minutes on the subject via Facebook, but I just couldn’t get around to it. Now, our very own governor is ready to demolish the whole thing.

Remember the fanfare when in 2010 we were committed to Common Core? To be fully implemented by 2014-15. Now what? After all the speechifying, the political wrangling, the true believers, and those who choked it down because their admins claimed this was the ed movement to end all ed movements. And the money. All that money.

Of course, to be fair—do I have to be?—writing standards or objectives is not easily done. Maybe if parents and law-makers and policy thralls were to try their hands at it, then rather than eyes glazing over when actually reading standards like those in the Common Core, the public might understand how nuanced are the issues of teaching and learning.

Wonder how many parents would own up to different standards and approaches for raising each of their own children. Cue the chorus of that’s-not-fair. If only some sort of yardstick or weight scale could be applied and the messiness of learning and maturing of children could be tidied up for a spreadsheet.

Curiously, I am reminded of that old saw, measure three times and cut once.

The unsettling whisper beneath all of this cacophony is the basic notion of why public schooling—in the name of social cohesion, or the public good, or the needs of an informed citizenry. Or an effective labor force.

My weak-kneed bailout is to bend before such overwhelming complexity, both in the ideas and in scope of the undertaking. Too much for my head to ponder much beyond a chuckle or a headshake. Now, if I am not helping with the solution, then I am part of the problem?

My best guess about much of anything is just that, a guess. Doesn’t mean there’s not some money to be made by folks shrewder than I will ever be.

Let the dithering continue. I have a lawn to mow.

Yours, as always, srk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The News Today, Oh Boy...

Dear Maria,

Just some light rain here yesterday morning and a little more overnight, but via radar updates, I know you got pummeled by the heavy storms that barreled down along the river last night. A cool morning at least—cool enough to enjoy coffee on the patio and still cool when Max and I toured the neighborhood.

A little later, when I stepped out the front door to make a quick run to the grocery store, I watched a crow swoop down and peel up a frog that had croaked overnight. I’ll have to drag out my book of symbols on that one. Tough world out there—the mean streets, indeed.

The world of my garden is a little less violent, even as the bluebirds continue to strafe every squirrel in sight. A pair of Carolina Chickadees have become regular visitors to the feeder both morning and early evening, and mourning doves now gather at the birdbath as the sun is nearly up. Hearing them coo takes me a long way back to listening to them when I was a child in Florida. One of those sounds that is pleasantly evocative, along with the very particular whisper of a light breeze in the pines.

You know that I have a good view of the garden—and step out there many times a day—so when something changes I take notice. Yesterday, in the early evening, I stood out back while Max made his rounds, and I wondered when the crape myrtle might flower. Surprise, this morning several of the crowns were partially bloomed.

Just struck me as funny—not so much in a laugh-out-loud fashion—that it is healthy, indeed necessary, for us to be unconscious for a significant portion of the day, even as events great and small continue to unfold. Thus the early news roundup, I guess: Overnight, frog flattened, crape bloomed, and somewhere in the dark, a baby cried.

But, I digress. Imagine that.

Be well, and have fun.

Yours, srk

 

 

Out of the Mouths of...

Dear Maria,

Very quiet here—too quiet? Now that June is arrived and the school buses are not rolling, the morning walk with Max is even quieter. Be thankful, I know.

Last week I confessed to a friend in Baton Rouge an odd bias on my part that still has me shaking my head a bit. I watched a video of Wayne Dyer talking with Oprah about a year in his life that he decided to give over to reflecting upon the Tao Te Ching and to give up much of his normal schedule. What I did was reflexively bristle at the idea of two wealthy individuals talking about letting go of things and living in the moment. My growling came not by way of reflection.

Wonder where my kneejerk response came from. Perhaps I am guilty of snobbery to take the ideas of the ancients to heart, but then reject the same line of thinking from someone who is on the bestseller lists many times over or who can command speaking fees. Guess there is not much point in belaboring Oprah’s wealth.

Herman Hesse observes that letting go of a love requires more strength than not doing so, and so does Ann Landers. Does it matter where the idea comes from if it is taken to heart? What if the life-changing moment comes via a bumper sticker? Less valid than, oh, Marcus Aurelias or the Dalai Lama speaking to the same point? So, message, or messenger? Do we internalize a notion because of its costs?

On a few occasions, I have received very nice comments to the effect that something I wrote and posted made someone laugh or feel better about some matter, or at least was entertaining to a degree. Happily, that works for me, and I have said often that one reader of my stuff is enough.

Of course, I am not a entombed in the long list of long lost writers and thinkers that various quotations sites offer to us on any number of subjects, nor am I at the front of the ranks of folks who may charge $100, or more, a head for a couple of hours of my insight.

I guess we will take comfort in words where we find them, and so I will again at some point, from my mother or a friend, from Seneca or Howard the Duck.

Please accept my warmest wishes for a pleasant June. They are honestly offered.

Yours, srk