A Father Goose Tale

We live on a very rural, gravel road with dips and rises, a road cut through a forest and bisecting a stream that leads to one of the two lakes that can be seen from the roadside. The two lowest-lying areas are wet and marshy on either side of the road and have proven to be handy portages for Canada geese families traveling by foot from one lake to another. Why drag the goslings through the woods and underbrush when there is a clear path most of the way?

Yesterday I saw two pair of Canada geese, one pair at each portage site, both pair in the vegetation alongside the road. Well, today on my way to an appointment in town I encountered one pair of geese shepherding eight little goslings down the road. How sweet!


(Click images to enlarge)

When Father Goose began to feel threatened by my car he slowed down while Mother Goose continued walking with the babies, moving them toward the opposite side of the road, the side they would eventually exit on. I crept along, not wishing to alarm the geese yet needing to get into town. Father Goose slowed down even more and spread his beautiful tail feathers as a warning to me.



When I persisted in following him he stopped and bent his neck at me menacingly. His message was clear: Back off! His threat display was a treat to witness, and his valor in protecting his family was heartwarming. I know how aggressive Canada geese are when they have little ones so I kept a healthy distance away when I stepped out of the car for a couple of photos, didn't tarry long outside the car and even rolled my car windows up enough to prevent an attack from that angle.



We made a humorous procession, I'm sure--Mother Goose with six goslings by her side, Father Goose walking much more slowly several yards behind his family and stopping every few seconds to "gooseneck" and make threatening displays, and me in my car, creeping along slower than Father Goose, waiting for the family to reach their destination and get off the road.



Time passed. I needed to get going. What to do? I honked, hoping to speed up the geese a bit. Mother Goose nervously moved their brood to the side of the road, the goslings looked confused and Father Goose grew even more angry and menacing at the intruder on HIS road.



After the mother and babies left the road Father Goose refused to budge from his position in front of my car. For another quarter of a mile he walked ahead of me, crossing back and forth in front of my car, goose-stepping and making menacing displays while I trailed behind him, slightly embarrassed to be caught in such a position yet thrilled to witness, and be part of, this fierce display of bravado. It would have been so easy to have run over the valiant guy; another person may have done so, but not I. No, I let him lead me far away from his family, let him bully me into driving extremely s-l-o-w-l-y, let him fulfill his role of protector and maintain his dignity at the expense of my own.



When we reached the beginning of the downhill slope past our neighbors' driveway, the point at which the field of dreams comes into view, Father Goose finally decided to take wing. Off he flew, circling back to rejoin his family.





Coming home after an afternoon of errands I had forgotten about my encounter with Father Goose, but was quickly reminded when I came upon TWO pair of geese accompanied by their young: six with one set of parents and three with the other.



Once again a Father Goose slowed to force me to slow down and allow all the others to proceed safely. I was in no hurry and didn't mind creeping along at a goose's pace, but was amused at his goose-stepping and occasional goosenecking displays of protectiveness. Long after the other geese left the road at the entrance to the lake he continued to lead me up the road for at least an eighth of a mile before taking wing and allowing me to pass.

Goosenecking


Goose-stepping



Sights and encounters like this remind me of how wonderful it is to live where wildlife still make their home and raise their families. These geese, the mother fox with her three or four kits that we see occasionally near the entrance to their den in the field of dreams, the sandhill cranes that we look so forward to seeing each year in the field of dreams and in other fields as we drive along the back roads, the silly little partridges we see alongside the road, the woodcocks with their funny walk, the deer we see in the fields...all these and more (including the one black bear and two moose I've seen in our area) bring the my husband and I an enormous amount of joy.

The Audacity of Hate: An Email From Obama's Enemies

Twelve days ago during our local monthly book club's exchange of views about books each of us had read or begun reading since our last meeting I related that I had just started reading Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father. One of the women, who apparently has been a member for quite a while but who I had not met until that day, is also an American married to a Canadian and living in this small town in northern Ontario. I am from Indiana. She is from the Deep South. To protect her privacy I won't use her name, but will call her D*.

Many people I've met here are familiar with American politics and know a bit about Barack Obama's quest for the presidency, so I anticipated some interest in his autobiographical bestseller written in 1995. D was the most interested, although she mainly projected concern; she said that she had received an email about Obama and statements he had made in his books that worried her and she would like to get my opinion of what she had received. I gave her my email address so that she could forward the email to me. The next day she sent me this:

Fw: The last excerpt is truly frightening!

Subject: Fw: The last excerpt is truly frightening! He is scary!!


-----In his own words...............this is scary.............


This guy wants to be our President and control our
government. Pay close attention to the last comment!!
Below are a few lines from Obama's books ' his words:

From Dreams of My Father: 'I ceased to advertise my
mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to
suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to
whites.'

From Dreams of My Father : 'I found a solace in
nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity
against my mothers race.'

From Dreams of My Father: 'There was something about
him that made me wary, a little too sure of himself,
maybe. And white.'

From Dreams of My Father: ; 'It remained necessary to
prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to
the black masses, to strike out and name names.'

From Dreams of My Father: 'I never emulate white men
and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It
was into my father's image, the black man, son of
Africa , that I'd packed all the attributes I sought
in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm,
DuBois and Mandela.'

From Audacity of Hope: 'I will stand with the Muslims
should the political winds shift in an ugly
direction.'


Publication history for 'From Dreams of My Father'

* New York : Times Books; 1st edition (July 18, 1995); Hardcover: 403 pages; ISBN 0-8129-2343-X

o This printing is now very rare. Only a few signed copies are known, and are estimated to be worth up to $5,000 (depending on condition).

* New York : Kodansha International (August 1996); Paperback: 403 pages; ISBN 1-5683-6162-9
* New York : Three Rivers Press; Reprint edition (August 10, 2004); Paperback: 480 pages; ISBN 1-4000-8277-3
* New York: Random House Audio; Abridged edition (May 3, 2005); Audio CD; ISBN 0-7393-2100-5; Includes the senator's speech from the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
* New York : Random House Large Print; 1st Large print edition (April 4, 2006); Hardcover: 720 pages; ISBN 0-7393-2576-0
* New York : Crown Publishers (January 9, 2007); Hardcover: 464 pages; ISBN 0-3073-8341-5
* New York : Random House (January 9, 2007); Format: eBook; ISBN 0-3073-9412-3

Sigh. I mean, you can smell the malicious stink of hate and fearmongering in the subject line. But to be fair to my new friend and fellow American I read the contents of the email carefully, pondered how to respond, struggled with the wording of my reply to her and came up with this:

Hi D*

I'll look for these five excerpts as I read Dreams From My Father. I don't have Audacity of Hope to check out that last excerpt but I'll see if I can find it...I paged through the introduction to Dreams From My Father and found the first excerpt, which was indeed taken out of context. It's on page xv. He's writing about people having a hard time taking him at face value. He writes:

"When people who don't know me well, black or white, discover my background (and it is usually a discovery, for I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of twelve or thirteen, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites), I see the split-second adjustments they have to make, the searching of my eyes for some telltale sign. They no longer know who I am. Privately, they guess at my troubled heart, I suppose--the mixed blood, the divided soul, the ghostly image of the tragic mulatto trapped between two worlds. And if I were to explain that no, the tragedy is not mine, or at least not mine alone, it is yours, sons and daughters of Plymouth Rock and Ellis Island, it is yours, children of Africa, it is the tragedy of both my wife's six-year-old cousin and his white first grade classmates, so that you need not guess at what troubles me, it's on the nightly news for all to see, and that if we could acknowledge at least that much then the tragic cycle begins to break down..." (his wife's cousin's white classmates refused to play with him because of his skin color)

I'll get back to Obama's Dreams From My Father and look for the rest of the excerpts as they fit within their context. Obama has certainly been vilified by many Clinton supporters and many right-wingers, so I don't tend to believe at face value any bad things I read about him, especially things sent in emails. An awful lot of it is hate mail. I don't forward it. Often I reply to it, correcting falsehoods, and am careful to send my reply to all who received the hate mail along with me.

Hope you are enjoying this long weekend, cool and damp as it is. I'm spending it with my nose in a book. :)

D replied with:

Ginger, thank you so much for the thoughtful reply. I know that things are so often taken out of context.

I am not a supporter of Obama or Clinton...I don't care for the liberal (Democratic) party. If I had to make a choice out of the two I would go for Obama but I would be scared only because he is known in the senate as the most liberal senator.

Whoever happens to win, I pray that they are good, Christian, moral people.

During the past week I have spent many hours reading Dreams From My Father, most often at night in the quiet of my bedroom where I can concentrate better, free of the distractions of a talkative husband, the radio, and the movements and utterances of seven cats and a dog. My follow-up email to D today sums up how I feel about the Barack Obama and the American presidency, based upon what I read in Dreams From My Father and my perception of the American government in general and the current administration in particular:

Hi D*

I finished Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father this morning. I normally read much faster but this is a book that needs to be read slowly and thoughtfully to fully appreciate the soul searching and relationships revealed, especially in light of Obama's political status now. I was also trying to look for the other statements allegedly taken from the book and used to create the critical email you forwarded to me. The book was so deep and fascinating to me that I lost track of this secondary goal of looking for the statements, although I recall seeing a couple of them and could probably locate them in the book without too much difficulty now. I'm not sure that I will do that, though, because there is no need. If you read this book carefully and respectfully, seeking to understand his reason for writing it and all that he reveals, often with painful honesty, about himself--his intellect, his conflicts, his family relationships, his regrets, his celebrations and his integrity--I think that you will find that he is a conscientious leader, a man to be admired, not feared.

The big worry I have about Obama as President is the same worry I have for any President--the integrity, honesty and intelligence of those who will advise him. Just look at the current administration and the way his greedy, unscrupulous warmongering advisors have manipulated George W. Bush into making many horrible decisions with far-reaching impacts, including embroiling the US in the Iraq war with all its disastrous consequences. We have to look at who the President trusts to provide him or her with the information (*intelligence*) that will be used to make critical decisions affecting not only the United States but the world.

After finishing Obama's book I found this information about the emailed quotations allegedly taken from it and his Audacity of Hope. Take a look and see what you think. As I see it, that email is hate mail, maliciously designed to promote fear and turn people against Obama in order to satisfy the sender's own political agenda. It's sad that people stoop to such tactics.

There was much more that I could have written to D about Barack Obama and what he shared with the world in Dreams From My Father. There were inspirational passages and candid observations that I would like to have quoted; feelings of fascination and foreboding that arose when he began to write about Reverend Jeremiah Wright, knowing what I do now of this man's recent impact on Obama's presidential campaign; and my struggle to look at race through Obama's eyes, limited by my own race, gender, age, background and experiences. So much to digest and process and reflect upon. Too much to try to impart to a new friend from the Deep South with Christian convictions who doesn't "care for the liberal (Democratic) party".

I really want to read Audacity of Hope, which our local library supposedly has requested for me via interlibrary loan. That's the problem with living in a small town with a rudimentary library and being too poor to afford to buy new books--access to books I want to read is extremely limited. If it weren't for a friend who lives over an hour's drive from me I wouldn't have been able to read Dreams From My Father, as our library doesn't have it, either. Sad to say, when I put in the request for Audacity of Hope the long-time library staff member asked me to spell "Obama"--she had never heard of him. One could pass this lack of knowledge and resources off to the fact that Obama is an American rather than a Canadian author, yet I can assure you that that is not the case. There is much more to it than that, as books by other American authors can be found on the shelves and important Canadian writers are either poorly represented or not at all, but that is a topic for another post.

Growing Old Together...An Image of Old Love

This lovely image came in an email the other day, undeservedly associated with a rather crude joke. I was struck by the comfort expressed and by the similarity to my own bed and sleeping arrangements--the bed frame, the quilt, the shoes, the cat at the foot of the bed, the woman's foot exposed.... Put the dog on the floor, add bookcases along the walls, cover the man's foot--and the resemblance is remarkable.

One of the things I love most about being married to my husband is sharing a bed with him, going to sleep with his arm around me, content. Once in a while I will go to bed early to read and he will fall asleep downstairs on the sofa--he tires more easily and earlier in the evening since his strokes--and I feel very lonely in bed without him. When I wake and he's not beside me I creep downstairs to make sure that he is okay.

Perhaps it's easier to live without loving someone so wholeheartedly that you fear losing him as much as I fear losing my husband. I don't know. I do know that before I met him I was incredibly lonely, especially at night. Work and volunteer activities kept me busy during the day and most evenings, but going to sleep alone was becoming increasingly difficult. Often I slept on the couch, ignoring my empty bed and comfortless bedroom. About a month before we met I had experienced insomnia for the first time in my life and had gone to my physician, who prescribed valium to help me sleep. I no longer needed it after we developed such a strong love for one another.

We've been together for a little over three years now, so our love could be considered to be relatively new, but we both feel that we've been together for a long, long time--that our love is old, comfortable and comforting, just like the image of old love above. We just have to enjoy it while we can.

My Life In Pictures...or, "Who, Meme?"

Here you go, Lin!

1. What is your current relationship status?



2. What is your current mood?



3. What is your favorite band/singer?



4. What is your favorite movie?



5. What kind of pets do you have?



6. Where do you live?



7. Where do you work?



8. Who do you look like?



9. What do you drive?




10. What did you do on Saturday?




11. What did you do on Sunday?




12. What is your favourite network TV Show?



13. Describe Yourself




14. What is your favorite candy?





I won't officially tag anyone else, but if you want to accept this wordless meme challenge be my guest! (and if you are wondering how I made the pet mosaic, here's the secret)

I Found Your Dog Today...

I Found Your Dog Today...

I found your dog today. No, he has not been adopted by anyone.
Most of us who live out here own as many dogs as we want,
those who do not own dogs do so because they choose not to.
I know you hoped he would find a good home when you left him out here,
but he did not. When I first saw him he was miles from the nearest house
and he was alone, thirsty, thin and limping from a burr in his paw.

How I wish I could have been you as I stood before him. To see his tail
wag and his eyes brighten as he bounded into your arms, knowing you
would find him, knowing you had not forgotten him. To see the
forgiveness in his eyes for the suffering and pain he had known in his
never-ending quest to find you...but I was not you. And despite all my
persuasion, his eyes see a stranger. He did not trust. He would not
come.

He turned and continued his journey; one he was sure would bring him to
you. He does not understand you are not looking for him. He only knows
you are not there, he only knows he must find you. This is more
important than food or water or the stranger who can give him these things.

Persuasion and pursuit seemed futile; I did not even know his name. I
drove home, filled a bucket with water and a bowl with food and returned
to where we had met. I could see no sign of him, but I left my offering
under the tree where he had sought shelter from the sun and a chance to
rest. You see, he is not of the desert. When you domesticated him, you
took away any instinct of survival out here. His purpose demands that he
travel during the day. He doesn't know that the sun and heat will claim
his life. He only knows that he has to find you.

I waited hoping he would return to the tree; hoping my gift would build
an element of trust so I might bring him home, remove the burr from his
paw, give him a cool place to lie and help him understand that the part
of his life with you is now over. He did not return that morning and at
dusk the water and food were still there untouched. And I worried. You must
understand that many people would not attempt to help your dog.
Some would run him off, others would call the county and
the fate you thought you saved him from would be preempted
by his suffering for days without food or water.

I returned again before dark. I did not see him. I went again early the
next morning only to find the food and water still untouched. If only
you were here to call his name. Your voice is so familiar to him. I
began pursuit in the direction he had taken yesterday, doubt
overshadowing my hope of finding him. His search for you was desperate,
it could take him many miles in 24 hours.

It is hours later and a good distance from where we first met, but I
have found your dog. His thirst has stopped, it is no longer a torment
to him. His hunger has disappeared, he no longer aches. The burrs in his
paws bother him no more. Your dog has been set free from his burdens,
you see, your dog has died.

I kneel next to him and I curse you for not being here yesterday so I
could see the glow, if just for a moment, in those now vacant eyes.
I pray that his journey has taken him to that place I think you hoped
he would find. If only you knew what he went through to reach it...and I
agonize, for I know, that were he to awaken at this moment, and (if) I
were to be you, his eyes would sparkle with recognition and his tail would
wag with forgiveness.--author unknown

If you feel as heartbroken as I do after reading this go to Help the Homeless Dogs!

After you die

After you die... Unstuck in Time After death, you will become unstuck in time, and re-live various moments of your life. Time will cease to exist. One moment you will be learning to catch butterflies, the next you will be using your walker to go to the bathroom. You will live on forever in this way, constantly reliving the sweetest and not so sweetest of moments.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

Lynda's Easy Chocolate Cake

Lynda's Easy Chocolate CakeMade in Canada17May08

It tastes just as delicious as it looks! Go to Lynda's blog for the recipe and for her many interesting posts about life in Tanzania.

Church Ladies

Maybe that's why the place they sit in church is called a "pew"! :D

Don't Look Down... El camino del Rey

From this Wikipedia entry:

El Caminito del Rey (English: The King's pathway) is a walkway or via ferrata, now fallen into disrepair, pinned along the steep walls of a narrow gorge in El Chorro, near Álora in Málaga, Spain. The name is often shortened to El Camino del Rey.

In 1901 it was obvious that the workers of the Chorro Falls and Gaitanejo Falls needed a walkway to cross between the falls, to provide transport of materials, vigilance and maintenance of the channel. Construction of the walkway lasted four years. It was finished in 1905.

In 1921 the king Alfonso XIII had to cross the walkway for the inauguration of the dam Conde del Guadalhorce, and it became known by its present name.The walkway has now gone many years without maintenance, and is in a highly deteriorated and dangerous state. It is one meter (3 ft) in width, and is over 700 feet (200 m) above the river. Nearly all of the path has no handrail. Some parts of the walkway have completely collapsed and have been replaced by a beam and a metallic wire on the wall.

Cashew and Libby

Received the following in an email today. Click image to enlarge.

For those of you who find critters as remarkable as I do . . . Meet Cashew the Lab, and her seeing eye cat, Libby. I wish for all our sakes that this was possible with humans. Aren't animals the nicest folks! ? ?

~You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I was just about to clip this touching story when I discovered that it had already been clipped. I'm so pleased! Now go pop this incredible story along.