The World Is Too Much With Me...

Why I have not been blogging much lately....


"THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US; LATE AND SOON"

THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
--William Wordsworth

from My Medicated Life

from My Medicated Life

from MedlinePlus

Jackasselope Spotted At Rural Residence!

My husband discovered this creature by the woodshed and shot it with my camera today. Until seeing the photo I had never seen a jackasselope, and will no doubt have nightmares after viewing it.

It's so ugly that it's almost cute. But, hey, it splits wood! And it attracts black flies, drawing them away from other living creatures.

Who couldn't use one of these?

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)

Green Bananas

There's a bittersweet old joke that comes to mind today:

"Doctor, Doctor, how much time do I have left to live?"

"Let's put it this way. Don't buy green bananas."

For the last few days I thought that I'd bought my last green banana because I've been very ill and in hospital until noon today. I have felt pretty grim and a little afraid that this was how I would end my days. It's a sobering thought. The doctor on call booted me out today, which is okay by me. It's good to be home again.

We stopped for a few groceries on the way home from the hospital and bought some green bananas, a symbol of hope for us both.

Ode to a Clean Refrigerator (or Look Who's Crying Over Spilled Milk)

Spring Cleaning forced itself upon me yesterday when the top shelf of our refrigerator dropped on one side, upsetting the pitcher containing the recently opened 1.33 litre bag of milk (oh how I miss screw-capped milk jugs!). Milk quickly drenched the second and third shelf items, seeped into the crisper drawer and puddled on the floor of the fridge. To make matters worse, the dangling shelf upset a can of black beans that my beloved had opened less than an hour before while making me a tasty mid-morning wrap, spilling black bean juice that flowed along the second shelf and ran down to the third shelf. The bottoms of many bottles, cans and other containers of food were engulfed by either milk, black bean juice, or both. Ugh!

On the bright side, the refrigerator was long overdue to be cleared of the detritus that settles upon all but the obsessive-compulsive clean freaks, so the end results of the clean up, which entailed removing everything from the shelves and crisper drawers, was gratifying. The down side was that with my blood pressure looming so high of late this was chore that was risky as well as gross. The experience inspired me to write this poem today:

Ode to a Clean Refrigerator

Legumes languishing fuzzily in opaque cottage cheese
Containers so carefully washed for reuse join the
Dried husks of once-broccoli and the slimy remains of
Lettuce putrefying beneath a bag of carrots in the dreaded
Crisper drawer, decaying remnants of forgotten meals,
Exiled to the compost heap of life.
Worm food.

Gleaming chrome, sparkling glass shelves, and brilliantly white molded
Surfaces bask in the glory of redemption from
Sticky residues of opened jars carelessly set and
Spatters of unknown origin defiling the Clean, embedded with
Particles drawn in on currents filled with motes and fur,
Wiped away by my unwilling hand.
House work.
-----

From now on our milk will be transferred to a screw-capped jug--no more plastic bags with the tips cut off, waiting to topple and drench the contents of the refrigerator. (A quick Google search let me know that I'm not the only one annoyed by Canadian milk bags). Also, my beloved has promised to refrain from setting opened cans of beans or other foods in the fridge--he will cooperate in storing the food in sealed plastic containers, preferably clear ones to enable us to view their contents. Hopefully there will be no more crying over spilled milk...or other liquids...in the refrigerator!

For an interesting article about milk, including history, production, varieties, distribution (including packaging!), and culture aspects, take a look at this Wikipedia offering.

And for a fairly brief yet comprehensive history of the refrigerator see The History of the Refrigerator: The Cold Truth and Hard Facts, by Marjorie Dorfman at House Not So Beautiful "where dirt and chaos reign supreme". Sounds like home, except, for the moment, my clean refrigerator.

So it goes.

Male or Female???

Should you be MALE or FEMALE?* created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Either You brain is neither specifically male, nor female in the way you perceive your surroundings. As bad as this may sound to some, it can easily mean that you are capable of combining both gender aspects to your advantage. Rather than being genderless you are possibly able think freely. This does not mean that you are bisexual or androgynous or indecisive, but it might. Either 82% Female 64% Male 64% Neither 61%

Interesting result, eh? Of course I'm not surprised at all at my results, as I've never been a girly girl or a tomboy. When I was a university student long ago in Indiana a male classmate once told me that he liked me because I thought like a man. I was flattered, and obviously have always remembered his compliment. I supposed that the fact that I took his statement as a compliment confirmed his assertion.

I've always felt more comfortable in the company of men than with women. One of the few memories I have of my childhood is of an extended family get-together in my grandparents' hometown. Quickly bored by the women gossiping as they cooked in the kitchen, I sat in the living room with the pipe-smoking men, who were watching some ballgame on television and speaking much less frequently and *gossiply*. The cattiness of women appalls me.

For many years I was spared the disillusionment of learning that men can be just as catty and gossip just as much as women, but in the early 1990's some university professors put an end to my naivety. Now I don't trust any one, male or female.

The F Word: Flu

When I started this blog my intent was to keep it fairly light and impersonal--just a hit-and-miss assemblage of a few of the things I find interesting or funny. A place to experiment with AdSense (I'm up to a total of about $2 now, haha). A website to validate myself, yet remain fairly anonymous, when I post comments on other people's blogs. A place to post amusing things I receive in emails so that I can clip them to Clipmarks. A place to post amusing things in a format that I can copy and paste to create a clever email to send to friends. A multi-purpose sort of blog, sans personal information.

From time to time, however, I think that a bit of personal information is warranted here. Now is such a time, because as I look at the paucity of posts over the last few months I am embarrassed by the impression of a lack of effort, interest, or both. Especially if people click the link to this blog to check out the person who made a comment on their blog or on a blog they are following. I toyed with the idea of giving up the blog, but decided instead to reveal a bit of myself in my explanation for not posting much lately.

Unfortunately the excuse is not that I've been too busy partying or traveling. No, the reason has to do with my husband's significant cardiovascular problems which combined with cold, gloomy winter weather have blanketed our household with a heavy mixture of anxiety and depression. For the last nine days my husband and I have been further undermined in body and spirit by a terrible flu that is going around. Since we seldom venture from home these days, I must have picked the virus up from someone at a meeting at the local library on the afternoon of February 28th. We both started feeling a little "under the weather" a day and a half later.

From that point on it was a rapid descent into flu hell--frequent prolonged sneezing, lots of mucous and congestion, excruciating muscle aches and pains, extreme fatigue, headache, sore throat.... No fever, though, that I know of. We reached a point when we thought we would die, and then moved on to the point of wishing we would die and be put out of our misery. One or the other of us was able to rally just enough to forage for food in the kitchen once in a while. I managed to make chicken soup Wednesday (March 5th) but was far too sick to attend an important meeting in town. I also had to miss the planning meeting the next day.

It wasn't until yesterday morning (Saturday)that we were able to creep into town to the grocery to replenish our supplies. We are still far from well, although, mercifully, the sneezing has ceased. My chest hurts down deep and it feels as if I'm being stabbed when I cough. I'm more short of breath than usual, probably due to the congestion, but as long as I just rest I can live with this and not panic. For some reason, though, my blood pressure has soared and I have to be very, very careful to not exert myself much. As if I felt like exerting myself. My poor husband, who feels at least as lousy as I do, has managed to keep body and soul together for our multitude of creatures, in both house and barn. He's a trooper.

Recently there have been other serious and heartbreaking events in my family back in the USA that I won't go into here. There's not been a lot of joy in my life lately, but I'm still hanging in, monkeying my way through life's trials and tribulations. I could use some good vibes if you have any to send my way.