Waiting for Spring

Thirty nine days until spring and we are all waiting, including Rascal.

For a week or so, the weather was unseasonably warm, then yesterday, we had a snow storm.  I feel cheated somehow, that we are thrust back into winter.  

So I began to plant stuff, using seeds and potting soil from 2011.  Gary was complaining that he didn't have any parsley for some concoction he was working on last week, so I planted those and will soon have a nice pot in the kitchen window.  I found two kinds of tomato seeds.  It is way too early, but I planted them anyhow, figuring I can put the seedlings in pots and have sizable plants by the beginning of April.  We can put them out on the deck on warm days and move them back in at night.

I'm watching for some inexpensive herb seeds for other pots.  I would like fresh basil for my soups and Gary like cilantro.

I have some leaf lettuce sprouts already.

These little gardens help me get through the winter days.  

Journals

I've kept diaries and journals on and off since I was a child.  As the years have gone by, the journals grew in scope, being less a litany of day to day doings and more and more my feelings.  These days, the journal is done daily on my computer and each year's entries go on a CD for storage.

I added other journals.  There's the small  "idea book" that I carry with me to jot down ideas for stories and songs.  It fits in a pocket in my jacket.

The day to day events go onto a calendar Tisha makes up for me each year with Evan's photos.  At the end of the year, I put it in the yearly scrapbook, which is another form of journaling because all of the year's events are recorded in photos, each labeled.

This blog is the final form of journaling and it pays benefits.  Last Saturday, at my fiction class, we did an inspiration exercise.  We looked at pictures the instructor provided and wrote down words they brought to mind, both nouns and verbs. Then we wrote three sentences and decided which one was the best.  The assignment:  to write a story using that sentence.  Mine was:  "The orange paint shattered in the heat and peeled off, landing in the lake."

Now I have never in my life suffered from writer's block but all week I tried to think of a story that would use that sentence.  Today, I began to think about the main thrust of the sentence, the extreme heat.  I began to look through my journals that had entries for hot days.   I found one almost immediately and it was in this blog, in the entry for July 4, 2011.  That day, I met a wonderful old guy sitting at a bar in Empire, Colorado. The temperature was over 100 degrees, and we cooled off with iced soft drinks. He told me his story, and it will come out as fiction by tomorrow.

Whenever I need inspiration, it's waiting for me in my journals.

       *****'
Another story that came from my journals is "Island Fever" which starting today and for the next two Fridays will appear in three parts at http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com

Antenna

We don't have cablevision.  We have an antenna that has to be moved around according to the television channel we want.  The antenna is on a long pole with a crank on the back deck.  I am not good at estimating how much it has to be turned. Gary is good at doing the exact twist we need but has gone to his Thursday night meeting and I am getting frustrated.  

I am able to figure it out on all but the windy nights.  This is a windy night. To try to get it the antenna set right, I walk from my office through the house and out the back door to turn the antenna, then come back to my office to check the television.  I have been doing this over and over and I still can't get public television to watch Hercule Poirot solve a mystery I've never seen.

The one channel that comes in all the time is the Fox Network.  As a rule I don't watch anything Rupert Murdoch owns with the exception of House and Bones, neither of which is on tonight. 


I guess I will read a book.  Books never fail me.  

Phenology

There are those who tell me they don't "believe" in climate change as if it were a matter of faith. It exists, as 99.9 percent of scientists agree and almost all of them think mankind is at least partly at fault.

The temperature of the earth is gradually climbing, that is one indication.  But another thing scientists do is observe what the flora and fauna are doing.

Gary Fewless, a friend of my Gary's from his time at the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay, is the herbarium  curator at the  Cofrin Center for biodiversity.  He wanders around the Great Lakes region looking at plants.  He keeps day to day track of the what plants are doing, when they first appear in the spring, when they bloom, and when they die.  This is called phenology.  His careful day to day observations can be observed on the center's website:
http://www.uwgb.edu/biodiversity/phenology/

Yesterday, Professor Fewless observed:

"In areas where springs flow freely, the soil is unfrozen and some plants are already growing--this is very early  even for the springs.  For example, here is a new growth of marsh marigold (Caltha palustris).

This interested me because during the recent warm weather I began to wonder if the marsh marigolds were sprouting in the Good Shepherd swamp, one of our favorite tramping areas. I thought, no, way too early, and yet I was right.  We'll have to go over there and take a look soon.

On February 5, this observation appeared:  "Warm weather continues and among other reports of unusual sightings, Greater White-fronted Geese and Sandhill Cranes have been reported in southern Wisconsin."

Sandhill cranes usually show up in Wisconsin about the first week in April and the white-fronted geese around the same time. I help with the annual Midwest Crane Count in mid-April.  We listen to calls to determine how many are mating, yet I wonder if the pairs will have hooked up by then if they arrive this early.

I've read that Vermont's maple trees are dying out as temperatures mount while others are taking root in Canada.  It could be that in a generation or two maple syrup will only come from Canada.

The most noticeable signs of global warming are dramatic storms, droughts, and floods, but these little changes in plant life and migrations also tell the tale.

Climate change is real.

Technology

Public speaking is not a problem for me.  I can stand before a group of children of varied ages and keep all of them engrossed in my stories.  After telling for children, telling for adults is easy.

A few years ago, I was telling stories at the Oshkosh Correctional Facility where our state's worst offenders are kept. I was taken to a room inside the prison where there was a nice sized audience of men.  One big man was to introduce me. I was told he was in prison for life, with no chance of parole.  In a state without capital punishment, that was the worst sentence he could get.  I told to the prisoners who loved, it turns out, ghost stories.  They were a fine audience.

Afterwards, the fellow who introduced me talked to me about children's books because he wanted to order some for his children, who he seldom saw. Then he asked, "Were you scared?"

"No," I said, "I've told to preschoolers."

But even children aren't all that difficult to entertain. What does bother me is when I have to share my stage with technology because something always goes wrong.

Yesterday, I spoke at the Neenah Public Library to an audience of mostly senior citizens about my summer travels.  I was told that some of the elderly were hearing impaired so I must use a microphone.  My CD of digital photos would have to go through the libraries laptop rather than my notebook computer.   I tested the material and I was set to go....I thought.

Ten minutes into my talk, the microphone went out.  I spoke loudly for the remaining time. Ten minutes later, the computer quit and we had to reboot.  All the while I kept talking and telling stories about my trip then we caught up with the photos later.

Later, the audience said I had done a fine job but the fact remains, I would rather tell stories and sing songs for any group as long as no is technology involved. 

Bones

I don't watch the TV show Bones religiously, but I catch it now and again.  The characters are amusing but what I find interesting are the many corpses and the discussions about the rate of decomposition. A new body shows up at the beginning of each episode, usually a skeleton with a trace of flesh, covered with maggots.

Hodgson, the guy who understands bugs, worms and the bacteria that destroy the tissue, is one of my favorite characters.  He can figure by the creepy crawlies how long the victim has been dead.  If there are rats involved, he catches them and examines their feces.  Disgusting?  Yes, but an essential part of solving the mystery.

Bodies that are not embalmed deteriotrate rapidly.  Bones and the other crime scene investigation series remind me of the statues carved in the Middle Ages, of the handsome people buried below but with worms crawling out of their stomachs. The people of that era understood mortality. 

Today, bodies are embalmed and painted so that the deceased "looks natural" and people view their loved ones as if they are only sleeping.

There is none of that in Bones. We are only a few days to falling apart once we breathe our last.   Dead is dead.

There is something healthy about accepting our mortality.  The crime scene series may be this generations way of doing that.

The Choir

I've directed the United Methodist Choir for years, with some breaks when I went off to do other things and other directors took over.  This last time it was six years.

But now I am packing it in, as of the end of May. I've quit all the volunteer work I'd done, and now I am finishing the year at the church.  From now on, I intend to write and travel.  

The choir is aging and struggling.  At our best we sound good, but there are those days when too many members are missing.  Sundays find me counting, figuring out what parts we have, rehearsing, changing things around so that we sound as good as possible.  We no longer can do those big eight part anthems, but I do have some two and three part songs we can put together on the spur of the moment. 

When I told the choir I was leaving I suggested we have a meeting with the pastor. It would be better for them to discuss their future now than try to figure out something in September.  Besides, there are salaries to consider as the pastor explained to them this morning.    

The choir decided they want to continue in the fall.  They face several problems:  finding a director, a pianist, and new members. (I was both director and pianist.)  They formed a committee and will begin to work on it now.  They must do a search.  I wish them well.  My only part will be to review the available music with them.  There are four four-drawer filing cabinets stuffed with music.  I spent part of my tenure organizing those files to be workable so that should be easy.  

I will work with them to the very end of May and hand over my key to the church with no regrets.

......

Wade finished the third part of his Badlands Journal at Black Coffee Fiction http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com 

Now it is up to me to do the next three weeks as well as working on the novel and writing short stories for the  fiction writing class.  Tomorrow I give a talk at the Neenah Public Library.  Busy, busy, busy.