Winter
Spring
Fall
January 1, 2000! The Future is here and it looks like the present which looks like the past.
It is 9:45 p.m. and the Vienna orchestra is playing on tv and I am considering going to bed.This morning I was up early but went back to bed till 8:30. Each morning of this holiday week, I stayed in bed a little longer. In the beginning, I was up around 5:00 a.m. or 6:00, then it went to 7:00 and now, a day before I return to work, I made it to 8:30. Partly, though, that was because I had been up till 1:30 a.m. the night before since it was New Year’s Eve. A couple of old friends, Paula and Gale, stopped by to hang out and watch the Millennium around the World on channel 12. That was great. I loved the one at Somoa where a handsome man in a sarong and a beautiful woman walked down the beach and picked up water in their hands. Also, I really liked Sydney, Australia - the huge fireworks display over the Sydney Opera House. We had ‘crunchy soup’ a recipe Gale brought - fresh vegetables in a tomato soup base microwaved. It was delicious. I had pumpernickelbread and cheddar cheese, too, and we had sherry. At midnight, we went onto the porch and banged pots and pans with soup spoons.
A couple of neighbors on this street came out onto their porches, but mostly we heard voices from far off shouting, “Happy New Year” and we saw fireworks in the sky in every direction. It was restful, calm, and nothing went Y2K haywire, thank goodness.
No one around here had done much to prepare beyond typical storm supplies - some water, canned goods, flashlights and candles. I had extra oil and an extra oil lamp, plus the kerosene heater and a 5 pound can of kerosene. I could return it but I’ll probably keep it just as a precaution for future power failures.
Each day this week, I sent my parents something in the mail to cheer them up over the holidays. They were feeling kind of glum and not in the holiday spirit. One day I sent a video, Waking Ned Devine, and another day the video of my daughter’s High School winter concert . Also, I sent them magazines, a cordless phone that we didn’t need, a mystery book, and on Monday, I’ll send them two video tapes of the Philadelphia Mummer’s Parade.
My daughter said today that she hadn’t felt as though it were Christmas at all. Maybe I was the only one satisfied with my holiday - low espectations on my part, no doubt.
I had some goals for this week but didn’t fully reach any of them except getting stuff in the mail every day. Well, I did reach the goal of resting. But, I wanted to finish putting my short story on the web and only got to page 7 of 22. And I wanted to clean my room which had become incredibly cluttered from my many jobs and many projects. Each time I had to gather some unfinished work, I took it up to my room in a crate or canvas bag, or cardboard box, and finally, I could hardly walk. Plus, each container had a little of this and a little of that. I had to boxes from Christmas cards and gifts alone. One had all the cards I received and all the ones I was filling out and sending plus boxes from previous years and address books and the other had pens and tape and scissors, gift wrap, glue, and all kinds of stuff. I spent one full day and an hour here and there, and I’m down to one basket of laundry to fold and put away and two cartons and one crate of stuff (from 3 crates, 3 boxes, and 4 baskets of laundry). I had done all the laundry in case we had a water problem. I’m glad I didn’t buy a gun!
Everyone around me seemed glum except my teacher pal from school, whom I met for breakfast one morning this week. She was pretty cheery. We are meeting for New Year’s brunch at a charming local corner cafe’ tomorrow morning at 10:00.
Another thing I wanted to do was walk the dogs every day. I only walked them twice.
Mainly, it seems that I ran errands. I went to the bank, the post office, the super market, the hardware store - EVERY DAY! The other thing I didn’t get done was I wanted to make some sample for the courses I’ll be teaching soon at Markheim Art Center. I’ll work on them at school. I did get a bunch of lists done - instead of “Man of the Century” which I thought
was ludicrous - how can you pick one ‘man’ to represent a hundred years of progress and events. So, I came up with my own - things I thought were more significan that one man - ten major human movements, and then I got personal - my ten heroes, ten favorite movies, ten most significant personal life events, etc. That was interesting to me and I sent it on to my parents and sent them a blank so they could do one too. I may add it as a page.
I haven’t been keeping my online journal nor have I had any enthusiasm for updating my web pages. Somehow it all seems to tedious and complicated to be much fun anymore. After losing my online diary - months of it - through editing last summer, then losing all my diary pages stored on my computer this summer when my daughter doused it with orange juice and killed it, I’ve lost that enthusiasm. It isn’t easy to continue to enjoy something that gives you so much loss after so much effort. That other silly stuff happens such as trying to log on to edit your web page and finding out your web host has been bought by a browser and the log in is changed and your password doesn’t work. That sucked up a good hour and by the time I got a new password, I didn’t feel like writing any more. I guess I always try to do too much and my reach has to fall short. I didn’t get my finances done either.
Did: 80% of room cleaning, fixed broken light fixture, ran errands and sent parents stuff, rested, read and watched videos, wrapped gifts, sent cards, watched hours of great documentary on PBS called People's Century.
Didn’t: finances/pay bills, finish room, finish story, 5 walks out of 7, Aunt Sue’s annual party, drive to seashore, drive to woods, meet Aunt V. for lunch in city.
Not too bad, I guess. Things do manage to get done.
Tomorrow is the last day of my holiday and that it is back to work. Monday is back to school, then on Tuesday, it is school plus night computer teaching, then, in two weeks the Art Center job begins (two more nights) and my Saturday job. So I’ll be back to 6 full days of work and 3 evenings. After this year, though, the computer courses will probably stop. In the autumn, I may only have the Art Center and Saturday School, and after the spring, I get a raise and maybe I’ll just have Saturday School and no evening work at all. That would be great.
Just now the 4 cats and I are warm and cosy on the sofa and the Lippizaner Horses are prancing in the courtyard of a palace in Vienna on television.
Since I wasn't doing an on-line diary for the past 3 months, I missed Halloween, my birthday in November, my daughter's 16th Birthday in December, and everything at Christmas. I didn't even type an account on the computer, or even hand write one in my hardcover diary. It seemed futile somehow. I did take lots of pictures, though. Sadly the video camcorder broke during my daughter's party, so we don't have it on video. And does any of that matter? YES! The People's Century, the PBS documentary, demonstrated just how history is made up of the accounts of
ordinary people like myself, and from the photos taken by people
in the course of their lives. If you have the drive to do it, then I guess it is your job. This entry, sadly, is not very creative or well written - sometimes just to get back into the
groove, though, you just have to get going.
Next, I'll try to dress this up with some better commentary, good descriptions, pictures and, if I get my scanner working (after a year of frustrated failure) I'll scan some stuff. If not, I'll just take pics from the internet and upload them and stick them on.
So - Happy New Year - Happy New Millennium and Congratulations to all of us who have survived to see this day!
September 1999 - Maybe the best name for this journal from this time forward would be REFLECTIONS IN THE PARK. Since this is
a public diary, it goes without saying that I'll leave some things for a private diary, but, certainly there are things that
I would like to discuss with others. Since summer, so many things have happened. Working my way backward, school has started. My theme this year is What Every Child Should Know About Art, and it is true that you learn what you teach because even though I am an avid seeker of knowledge and passionate about my field, there are somethings I never saw till I got ready to teach. Today I was hanging up some stuff in the hall and I put up reproductions of the Ravenna mosaics. Right under
the board with the pictures is a big print of a work by Prendergast and I was struck again with the debt the impressionists owe to mosaic wall art. I'm struggling this year with stress and spirit. I am trying very hard to keep optimistic and positive. It occurred to me recently that too many of us have been chewing the same old problems and getting
into a kind of frenzy about supposed, alleged, hinted, guessed at, and potential problems, none of which matter in the big picture anyhow, and the big picture is bounded by life and death.
Speaking of death - the big picture came clearer to me this summer when I got very sick - suddenly. You think illness will be be gradual but sometimes it is as much an attack as a robbery or a car accident. On a Friday, on my way home from the shore, I felt sick, and by Sunday evening I was in the hospital with diverticulitis. Only the most vague twinge in my left side from time to time, ever gave me a hint that this was coming. Since my uncle died at 62 from colon cancer, and my father has suffered a number of colon problems including a non cancerous but growing tumor, it made me stop, think, and change. First, I reorganized my thinking and put my body in the center circle.
Ahead of all other concerns, other people's happiness, friendship, family, household cleaning, shopping, pets, etc. comes my body - my own needs. So, I walk two miles every morning
and two miles a few nights each week. Sometimes I take the dogs at night, but if they are causing too much stress, I leave them home. One night, Whitey ran away and I walked 3 miles to find her waiting at the car. And eating - big changes there. Since Lavinia doesn't eat at home any more, I fix what I need - high fiber cereal for breakfast, yoghurt and an apple or orange for lunch, and a big salad for dinner - usually spinach with something on top, feta cheese, or tuna, or chicken. Along with that, I am avoiding stress. No longer do I fight with my daughter and I try to avoid stress everywhere else that I can.
The yoga course I wanted at Audubon was filled, and I don't like the room or drive of the one in Cherry Hill so I think I'll let that go for the time being. So far I have lost 20 pounds and I do feel much better but have been working to climb out of a kind of mini depression - a small floating low. Now I've got to get back to work.
News! - New animal companion photos on Family Page
Coming in a week - new photos of new kittens Seamus and Padraic
on family page - by 7/4/99
June 20, 1999 - Big Cat, Little Cats
How I remember when I first got Bibs and her run away sister and wondered if they would ever make friends. They hid in the attic for almost a year - unseen the first 6 months, spotted peeking from the top of the steps the next 6. Now, of course, Bibs
is down in the living room with all of the rest of us. Today,
when I brought the new kittens, Seamus and Padraic into the living room while the dogs were in the yard, she sat on the steps and watched them. At one point, she came down to look
at their toy wheel and Padraic wobbled up beside her to give her a sniff and she didn't notice. Suddenly she turned around, saw him, hissed and fled up the steps. I know, however, in time she will come around and make friends. I'm looking forward to it.
Meanwhile, S & P keep us laughing with their teetering explorations of the house and other antics. Yesterday I bought them a 'cat condo' and while Lavinia was brushing her teeth, one little red paw came out and smacked her leg then withdraw into the murk of the lower level. They love their new bed. The donut shaped toy I bought that was supposed to "drive cats crazy!" however seems mainly to perplex them.
June 18, 1999 - Swimming Squirrel, Saved Snapper, Seamus and
Padraic, Graduation.
Walking around Audubon Lake one morning recently, I saw 3
small humps moving across the lake like a mini Lochness.
It was odd enough that I had to stop and wait until it pulled
ashore. When it did, the mystery animal was revealed to be
a swimming squirrel! He shook himself (or herself) off and
headed up into the tree. It is the season of spawning, and the
carp are rolling all over each other and setting the water
on the banks to a boil. It is also the season of migrating
to spawning grounds which is the only reason I can imagine for
the presence of the largest snapping turtle I have ever seen,
in the middle of the road last week when I was driving to school.
A kind man had pulled over to rescue the turtle and I joined
in with a blanket. We thought we could use a board from the
manis car and push the turtle onto the blanket and pull him
back to Newton Creek. His head was as big as my fist and his neck as thick as my forearm. When he whizzed around with
unexpected and remarkable speed and snapped his mighty jaws
at us, it was as loud as a firecracker. His back was as
broad as a big skillet. He scared us so much we couldn't
really move him at all and when the man tipped over with
his stick in an attempt to roll him onto the blanket, he used
his massive neck muscles to instantly flip himself back up.
Just as I had decided the only way we could get him back to
the creek was with a shovel and wheelbarrow, a street repair
crew pulled up. I waved them down and three men came over
to survey the situation. Fortunately, they had a shovel, so
they scooped him up and we all hurried down to the bank of
the creek to watch him sent back to his safe home.
Aside from migrating turtles and marine squirrels, spring has
brought us babies. It is possibly imbecilic on my part to
have succumbed to such a foolhardy impulse, but my feeling that
all species should have another of their own kind for company
caused me to accept two small red kittens whom I have named
Seamus and Padraic (Ballykissangel pronunciation - Pawrig).
This news is really fresh, as I just got them on lunch and
it is 2:00 on the day before the end of the school year. A
student of mine, Anthony, told me his cat had just given birth
to 5 kittens and 2 had homes but 3 did not, so I took 2.
They have the Irish names because they have red hair and gray
eyes. When I took them home, Whitey greeted them with wild eyed
leaping and sniffing to which they responded with hissing and
clawing and such racing heart beats that I was afraid they'd
die. The cat I got them for would have no parts of them after
an initial interested sniff and in fact, she retreated to the
farthest corner of the attic - definetly regressive behavior.
I am assured by cat people that this is normal and temporary and
that in time they will make friends and even play. I hope so.
I feel like the crazy old lady in Great Expectations who hired
the boy to come and play with her strange and solitary girl.
Graduation at Audubon, June 17th, Wednesday night, 1999.
Last night I met Sean's parents at his high school graduation.
I dropped Lavinia off to play in the band. It was interesting
to see one after so many years. The weather was cool but the
football stands were brutal on the back. I ended up squirming.
One thing that was noteworthy to me was that this was a generation with no draft and no war. In fact, as I was thinking
that, either the valedictorian, or salutatorian, last name Darlington, gave a speech on just that topic - how things were
different for this group of kids - she was funny! She talked
about how they didn't understand expressions such as "a broken
record" because they were born after vinyl. We went to Sean's
house after and I am relieved that I like his family so well.
I think it is a novelty to Lavinia to be in the midst of a
'family' in the traditional sense of the word - Sean has 3 brothers and they have wives and girlfriends, and there were a couple of aunts and uncles there, also. My family is now so split and separated, she has never grown up with that family
gathering kind of celebration. Time to go home now. I locked
Seamus and Padraic in the bathroom so they would still be
in one piece when I got home. I guess that the dogs and
Bibs will have to get used to them over a long period of time.
Coming Soon - I hope - a West Virginia
Page, in honor of all things changing, the past, and the closing of THE HONEYMOONER'S SOUVENIR SHOP outside of Maysville Unincorporate, in business over 52 years, (coincidentally close to my age) and going out of business. The woman behind the counter claims WalMart did it. Perhaps the HSS just reached it's natural end.
June 3rd, 1999, Thursday. I am home from school today due to laryngitis, a severely sore throat and a chest cold. Yesterday I stayed home too, after trying to teach without a voice on Tuesday. The kids are all set up with a great video timelines called Prehistoric Life, narrated by Martin Sheen. I copied it from PBS in September and wanted to show it all year. This works
out perfectly. Also, the model World's Fair is still on display
at school and I wanted to leave it up for a week so that every student could see it.
Audubon Lake
It is summer on the lake and the fish are not only jumping, they are rolling and wrestling and writhing and making the water on the banks look like it is at full boil. They are spawning - great long golden brown bodies, I swear they are 2 and 3 feet long, muscular and only partly visible, swimming just below the surface, ghostly, with their fins and backs partly emerging from the brown water, then, over they go! The roll over each other, fins slapping the water, great tails propelling them up and out and over. The water is beat into a froth and they discharge their genetic cargo and disappear again. There is a blue heron and the cormorants are back. They sit impassively watching the spectacle of life from their perch on a log in the middle of the lake. Sometimes one will open its wings like sails. Large families of bustling ducks rouse themselves from their slumber in the mud of the banks, soft, fluffy, light brown ducklings all tucked cosily amongst themselves with their watchful parents nearby. They watch me walk by and decide to stay there or move out onto the lake. The spawning fish must be providing a rich and nourishing growth formula. I am assuming, of course, that all the browsing on the banks is about eating the eggs.
Every morning the lake saves me and helps me figure things out. That is, when I am ot caught in a cycle of anger or self justification. Today I made a revelation about parenting. It is time to leave things on Lavinia's shoulders. She knows what she needs to do and I am just diverting her energy into rebellion against my force when it should be directed at solving
things herself.
The breeze on the lake, the trees, the scent of blooming honeysuckle - are medicine for my soul.
I've taken some pictures of Lavinia's and Sean's prom to add to the family page, and I plan to add another page SOON - West Va.
Maybe even today, if I get the chores done and have energy left
over. Lavinia's father and I went to her choral concert last night and there is a band awards celebration tonight.
April 25, 1999 The End of Sat. School Semester - hooray! (in a way)
Sunday - sun day - it is the day that makes a yard job seem like a privilege (not that I am doing a yard job - but I might!) The sun is shining and the brisk spring breezes blow and the returning leaves nod and greet one another after their long exile. I did a long piece on a drive to West Va. but have been so busy that even to get here and copy and paste was too much effort. I want to spend the time, soon, to re-build all of my sites, including this one. Maybe now that my Saturday job is over; however, I do have a lot of other stuff coming to take my time away from both housekeeping in te real house, and housekeeping in this virtual home. So, there was West Virginia, and there was the end of the spring semester of the Sat. Lab. School, yesterday, and the last week of my student teacher's practice teaching experience, and upcoming, Lavinia's marching band trip to Toronto, her prom, my ETTC homepage course to teach and the next 5 weeks of the adult computer skils course at MEC.
Still busy, but next week, a whole free day. This a.m. I did the homely little things such as cleaning the tub and fixing my e-mail account. Last night, after Sat. Lab School, we shopped at the Cherry Hill Mall for Lavinia's prom dress, shoes, etc.
I bought my last prom dress in 1963 at Lillian Albus. In keeping with my promise in regard to my mother, I am going to type up an account of the shopping trip and send it to her with
pics. My Mother's health is so frail that I want to do more to keep in touch with her, put her on a higher priority. Also I plan to drive there more often - I'll try for 3 times this summer - simple 3 day trips. I want to add new pics to this
page, so I am going to leave off text and go to that now.
March 15, 1999 The Unexpected Snow
Last night a very heavy wet snow struck our area. March is just like that. Fat wet heavy flakes filled the air and lay like a soggy mattress over the world. Not a beautiful snow as things go, but snow is always welcome to me. This was a sodden and sulky snow like a very heavy mood and it broke branches all over the place. As I lay in bed a midnight, the wind and the springing limbs of the trees pelted the walls and the roof with snowballs - an all out war - it was amazing. Even at my age with 53 winters behind me, it was a novelty. This morning I walked around the park in inadequate boots which were soaked through within 50 yards of my car. My soaked and frozen feet made me all the more aware of the tracks of the feet of other park denizens - seagulls, geese, ducks, dogs, people, squirrels.
The unexpected snow gave us a late opening at school - we go in at 9:40 and so I had this special quiet morning which I couldn't even devote to bills or homework because I had packed all my stuff in the car, so there was nothing to do but what I pleased.
It was a shock to see that it has been so long since I wrote here. Yesterday, coincidentally, I read in WIRED magazine a fascinating article on power failures due to storms. The issue was more or less devoted to Y2K possible scenarios and there was a long piece on an unexpected ice storm in the northern states and Canada that cause lengthy power failures. I must admit, I searched out my flashlights last night because the weight of the snow was such that I thought the lines might break. They didn't
and this is a temperate place to live, most of the time. I threw those old leaky boots away and I'm going for better ones - maybe those 'duck' things. Anyhow - I have new park photos but haven't had time to post them - took more snow ones today, too.
Jan. 28, Wednesday 1999
Shawshank Redemption, Parenting, and Life in General
Last night I saw that film on tv and really, it transcended film, to me, and became literature. I see it as a metaphor for life in general. You spend your adulthood in routines that help you to survive. You get screwed over by life and you struggle against it and put up the good fight and endure until you don’t get screwed over any more and if you last long enough, with careful planning, you escape to your own kind of humble
peace. Probably you’ll be alone with maybe one or two friends who’ve seen it all too and understand and give you space.
I’ve been in a lot of emotional pain lately. It is easy for me to know that because I am dropping tears without willing them to fall and I am smoking to distract myself from it.
The pain is over dealing with parenting. It isn’t going smoothly and the way I know that is that my daughter is in trouble with school and we have an appointment with her counsellor today.
What has been easier for me to sort out are the issues as I see them - not enough structure for homework, not enough work and study, too much involvement with relationships, and her unwillingness to accept outside authority and outside imposed limitations.
Perhaps for the first time I am realizing and accepting that things will not turn out as I had hoped.
The rub is that you don’t know which side to go to - letting go of control and reconciling yourself to dimished expectations, or fighting to maintain as much control as you can until it is wrested from you by a greater force than you can prevail against.
The path of reconciliation would make it less stress temporarily, but perhaps more pain in the long term. Holding on to as much control as you can may make continuing stress that neither she nor I can stand and it could go very wrong anyhow.
One of the things that was both disturbing and yet illuminating in the movie, Shawshank Rendemption, was that we all hope for and hold on to the belief in simple justice - but the act of holding on to the hope may be the closest we ever get to it. In the film, the man who resigned himself to routine ended up killing himself when routine was removed from his life. The man who gave up on justice from outside and leaned on his own wit to plan a good escape, made it to freedom. He dug it out carefully and slowly and quietly and left his dirt in the excercise yard - kind of what I do when I walk around the park in the morning.
People I know are having the same problems and with much older offspring- they all frighten me about the self-sufficiency aspect of raising children. They have offspring who have not succeeded in this - even to their mid 20’s - beyond. What I want is what I suppose all parents want for their children - to do well in school, go to college, get married, be independent and successfully raise their own children. It just seems so often not to work out that way.
Well, I am going to fight, and maybe be defeated, screwed over, and faced with injustice at every turn, but, perhaps I will be careful enough and plan my future, and dig at the dirt and last through the long tunnel of sewage, like Andy in Shawshank, and eventually reach my freedom in a little patch of peace.
January 24, 1999 - And the rain falls in bounty in the wet place-green even in winter.
No wonder this place is so deeply rooted in my soul - is there any place more like those lands my ancestors left when they came here? New Jersey is temperate, near the ocean, wet, and green.
Even though overdeveloped and crowded to a remarkable degree, it is still so green - even in the depths of winter. Grassy patches
are bright with hope and moss is verdent around the trees. And rivers - who would miss the Thames or the Shannon or the Neckar when she had the Delaware. Here is all I need - rain and snow, rivers and the ocean, mild temperatures that make the earth seem a friendly place. It is afternoon, 3:35 to be almost exact, since no clocks in this house (or anywhere else where I spend time) seem to tell anything nearly the actual time. Well, they do, but nearly is the closest they get and that is ok by me. It is a quiet afternoon because my teen daughter is bowling. So I have checked my e-mail and updated my web sites, written my course outline for next week's computer class, read the newest Yahoo magazine, and I am about to put on shoes and walk to the corner 7 - 11 to get the Sunday paper. It is wonderful to be home for the day. Yesterday was the start of the spring semester at the Sat. Lab School and I taught a class from 9:30 till 3:00. That is a lot of time to cover. Friday night was spent preparing for it. There is a bit of homework I have left to do, but I'll save that for when my daughter comes home because she needs to study for mid term exams. I can be a good example for her and we will both work in quiet. Tomorrow is tutoring and piano lesson after school. It gets so busy now and will stay that way till May. Still, I don't have anything to complain about because of the great gift of doing work I like and that is helpful others and not harmful to myself. Having spent bits of my work life in factories, offices, nursing homes, restaurants, temp work, and so on, I can appreciate a good job.
Teaching art is the BEST. At school we are celebrating the Euro by painting paper and using it to design money. What a treat.
I'm not reading anything that I particularly like just now. Still slogging away at Dr. Gachet, the book about the Van Gogh painting. I've picked up other books, read a page or two and left them behind. Just not in the mood, I suppose. Lately I have spent a bit of time with Dickens however a Tv production of A MUTUAL FRIEND, a video of 1940's b&w Great Expectations, and we are about to rent the newest, Gwyneth Paltro re-make of Great Expectations. Well, off to the store with me and goodbye to you.
January 12, 1999
There is a show about castles of Scotland on tv and it provides
a quiet, if somewhat dour background to this typing. A lead
statue of Charles the "fust" watches over the castle. It is a strange kind of music that they play with these travel shows - it must be new age music - a climbing and descending chords on electronic instruments. Plague, debts, wars, cruelty - castles.
Just before the castle show there was a program that detailed the latest attempt to find the monster of Loch Ness. I believe something exists. The man who made this most recent search died 10 months after the film of his search. He was 82 years old.
How lucky to live so long and to be active and to pursue his dream and have that big adventure. Our snow is gone - washed away by an almost invisible morning rain. That's how it is when you live in a tiny toe of land dangling out near the ocean and surrounded by river - a moist and mild place, New Jersey. Just for the record, the school where I work is just blocks from the
Delaware River. The town is old - dates from the 1600's. and on one small bulge of land on the river, an old fur trading fort once stood, followed by an Immigration station, and that was followed by a Coast Guard station which is now the headquarters of a river/shipping company called Holt Cargo. I love to go down
to the park beside the river and look at that ample and gentle
river as it moves ceaselessly to join up with the Ocean at Cape May Point.
January 1, 1999 Happy New Year! Last night two friends and I
watched a video, ate potato soup and rye bread, salsa and crackers, pecan pie and ice cream, and drank a nice Mosel Riesling, and coffee, to help us stay awake long enough to watch the big ball drop at Times Square. My daughter spent the night at her Dad's. He has a party every year. At 5 minutes before
midnight, I called my parents in West Virginia and at 5 after, my youngest sister called me. The movie we watched was Regarding
Henry - appropriate for the night of resolutions and change - beginnings, starting over. Now, I guess, it is time for me to consider my resolutions. I take this seriously. It is a fine opportunity to improve. The main area in which I need improving is in spending. First of all, I need a budget and I need to keep to it - not so easy. Already, I am dreaming of a dual VCR so I can edit tapes. Secondly, I can work on improving my temper
and attitude - I need to be kinder and restrain my impatience and
be more sensitive to what is going on with other people - my daughter, my students. Fuzzy face just came downstairs and she is butting my arm with her shining velvet black nose. I didn't mention this, but of course, since one of the friends who spent New Year's Eve here was Gale, there were 3 dogs to add to the mix of my two. Gale has two pugs named Phoebe and Paula, and a little fellow named Chin. My dogs, Whitey and Coco enjoy all visits with other dogs. Today, my daughter and I went to Border's book store. She had a gift certificate to spend and I needed a few Christmas gifts. One of the things I bought for myself was "The Secret Life of Dogs" and I can't wait to begin
reading it. So many things happen in even a short and simple life like my own. My daughter got a ride home from her Dad's with another party guest who lives in Jersey, and, coincidentally, is a teacher with an art degree so two purposes ended up being met. Now I have a teacher to replace the one who quit Saturday School! and I was spared the drive over the Schuylkill Expressway. At midnight, Gale and I (my other guest left a hour before) went out onto the porch, she with a air of maraccas and I with tin whistle and added our joyful noise to
that of the explosion of fireworks, horns honking, people crying out, "Happy New Year!" Happy another year to be alive to see the full moon shining in the deep black star studded sky with
a fresh clean frost over the ground and a warm room at your back, twinkling lights on a humble cozy cottage full of dogs and delicious foods.
Small Footprint on the Space of the World
Christmas morning 1998 - First, excuse me while I make a cup of coffee - my water is boiling on the stove. While in the kitchen, I stopped for a piece of sweet potatoe pie to have with my coffee. A glance at the window, through which a clean light shone, made by early morning sun on snow in a northern winter, gave me a bit of pleasure in the new curtains, cream colored with a maroon border and cut work in the shape of circles with
fruit inside, round fruit - apples, pears etc. On the glass of
one of the panes is a black cut out decal of a circular Celtic
design. The table holds the bounty of the season, a box of chocolates, a box of Walker's shortbread cookies, a tall glass
holder filled with Reeses peanutbutter chocolates in the shape
of Christmas trees that were thrown into my bag at the Superfresh last night as I shopped for the last few things - stocking stuffers for the dogs and cat - Jerky strips for the dogs' stocking, and tuna flavored pounce treats for the cat. Also, I picked up a last few things for Lavinia's stocking. I made the off-hand comment about being out for the last few stocking stuffers, and they threw 3 bags of chocolates into my shopping bag! They were meant to be given to customers, I suppose, and since they were close to closing.....Today, in the quiet of sleeping animals and a sun filled room, I return to my better self, like a ghost finished with its tormented night hauntings. My interactions with people - any people - inevitably take me down a path that is torturous, unproductive, and unsatisfying and I always get lost. I get stuck in anger and frustration, and blinded by emotions so that I can't see the world anymore. Being with people is not one of my skills. Even as I can see how stuck I am, somehow, I can't get out of the ditch. It takes away all my pleasure in life and I get closer and closer to wishing I weren't here at all. Only in solitude do I find my true self, and peace and contentment. Yet, all motions move toward pulling people together whether they like it or night - so much a part of being human is in this interconnectedness, and other seem to crave it and expand in it. My high school occupations inventory came out that I should seek
a career in the forestry service! Would that I had obeyed.....
Still, to get off that grousing, which is something I am struggling to do, here it is. Christmas morning has arrived and it is a white Christmas - a civilized coating of snow, 2 or 3 inches arrived just in time for Christmas eve. I found a little tree that gives me pleasure. It is 3 feet tall from where its trunk meets the root ball to the tip of its tiny top branch - just the right size for the small decorations I saved out of the boxes of stuff I gave my sister. It bothers me to have too much stuff accumulated. Whoa - I have to stop for a moment to catch the beauty and magic of the shadow of a swifly flying bird that flew between the sun and my window thereby casting its other self across my living room! To use the vernacular of the day, I am a person who prefers a small footprint on the space of the world. There were so many boxes of Christmas things in the shed that I couldn't face them and they stayed unpacked. So I called my youngest sister and we went through them together and I gave
all but 2 footlocker sized boxes to her. She has a big house and she loves STUFF. She left with all the boxes - about
6 emptied ones, and two full ones. For Christmas, I gave her and her husband and little son one of my old computers - a V-Tech Windows 3.1 with an HP color printer. Yesterday, I stopped by to drop it off. She has an enormous house - about 15 rooms and 3 room basement - a huge rambling old Victorian with hidden staircases and odd shaped roofs and mysterious closets with two entrances into two rooms. She is a young Martha Stewart with homemade Christmas stockings crafted from old woolen clothes and trimmed in faux fur, wreathes created with vines and all sorts of this and that and beautifully and clever arranged objects in every corner. My house, in stark contrast, is a 4 room bungalow. My room is the attic. One box of decorations is more than enough for me. The other box I saved is all the stuff my daughter made in school and girl scouts.
December 15, 1998 - First New Car Ever! JOY!
As a neo-puritan, I do feel the tiniest twinge of shame at the happiness my first new car ever in my whole life has brought.
And this from a person who never had any interest in cars whatsoever. Yesterday I went from the low point (broken old Toyota 1984, couldn't find the title, stressed out, everything is going wrong, even stepped in dog dirt on both shoes!) to the high, all the paperwork done, everything approved, on the road in a brand new automobile that rode like cutting butter with a real radio that worked, real heat, real defroster, no bumps and bangs and rattles - heaven! It was like when I had my daughter and felt I had joined up with this huge club of parents with babies and we had our secret smiles and knowing glances. Now I am in the car club - I have a CAR! We never even broke the 15 year mark before - my newest car was an '84 that I bought for $2000 from the mechanic who fixed my old car, an '81 my Mom gave me.
Before that I had a '74 death trap that died a sad death at the hands of an illegal and uncaring owner who abandoned it on Washington Ave. I got a ticket for it, and that is how I know the sad end to that tale. Suddenly, everything is rosy and I feel like driving to Canada, Maine, California. I never thought about it, so of course, I never dreamed what it felt like to own a new car, the comfort, security - the luxury. The car is a Saturn and I bought that brand because I was terrified of the sales ordeal. They were the nicest people ever. It was so smooth and simple and easy. It convinced me that I'll be a
Saturn owner forever. Plus, you do get a great deal of car for a good price. Check it out on the internet.
Lake news - today on my walk around the lake, I noticed the first freeze a the edges, with leaves and duck feather trapped in the thin glaze and Jack Frost's signature engravings across the surface. A mysterious and cold cloud floated and rose above the
water and all the leaves around the path were edged in silver and crunched under foot. There are few visible creatures - just the ducks. Everyone else has gone somewhere warmer. I wonder how the ducks manage when it gets really cold and the lake freezes?
December 11, 1998 at 7:00 p.m. in my living room
Death in the park.
I am sitting on the sofa, the dogs and the cat are eating their dinner, my daughter is on her computer talking to friends. Tomorrow is the last day of Saturday Lab School for the
autumn semester. We will have an art show. This morning when I took my walk around Audubon Park, a sad thing happened. Each morning I watch the other usual park creatures. This morning, as I walked, a particularly sad lament was being sung by a sea gull. Usually they screech, or squawk, but this was a long and mournful cry. It made me stop and look for the seagull making the sound. Then I went on my way, past bathing ducks, fishing cormorants. The woodpecker is gone and the cormorants are reduced to one or two from their top number of 75. One of the creatures I enjoy most is the muskrat. Over the period of the months I have been walking, we crossed paths many times and the muskrat looked at me, decided I was no danger, and kept on about the task of carrying grasses and leaves to line its home for the coming cold of winter. It gave me a humble and happy feeling to see this fat little creature with its salty brown fur and its
alert eyes and friendly little face, bustling body, busy hands.
Around the far corner I walked, alone, watching the thin veil
of cold mist lift off the face of the lake. When I reached the far side, there was the muskrat, dead, lying on its back in the path, shiny eyes gone dull gray and hands flung out. There were no blood stains but a wet and pressed area in the fur that made me think that it was crushed by a dog. It had seemed to be so industrious and deep in its life - important in its own life, preparing for the future, making comfort - simple things that I do, too. It made me feel so sad that I cried the way adults cry - cold, still face, tears quietly pushing themselves out of unwilling eyes. Finally, I had to turn back to put the body of
the little animal down into the leaves of the bank, closer to its home. It seemed wrong to leave it out there cold and exposed on the asphalt path. Breaking a branch from a nearby bush, I scooped up its chubby form, not yet stiff with rigormortis, and rolled it down the path to a tiny grove of
bush branches and covered it with leaves. This simple act brought me zooming back through time to my most early and ancient ancestors who showed their love and respect by covering the bodies of others so that they should not be exposed in the vulnerability of death. All the rest of the way around the lake, I thought about death, with tears running down my cheeks. I thought about all those I love who've died, and about the death of the maintenance man at school, and another old school colleague who died quietly in his sleep this fall, and my sister's dog Buster, run over by a car. Then, I hoped that there is some peaceful circumstance to make up for all of us who are torn from the profound and intense joys of simple daily comforts and emptied of our magic. And I pondered the "blind and ignorant thing in the heart" that allows some of us to do this violence to others - so easily, casually, cruelly - so unaware at that moment, of all that is being destroyed.
November 30, 1998
Today, the lake was quiet again with one lone song from a seagull - long and plaintive, repetitive and sad. A soft but vast mist filled the air and all the colors were muted. It was restful. The cormorants are gone, replaced by resting mallards
and Canadian geese on their long journey. The water was still.
It calmed my soul. When I got to work, it turned out one of our maintenance men had died on Thanksgiving Day. I had seen him
just a week or so before. He'd been ill for such a long time. Mary, the computer teacher, and I went to offer our sympathy to the family. The funeral home is right across the street from school. So sad. He was going to retire in June. He was 61 and it was pancreatic cancer that took him.
War and Peace
On Sunday, I spent the day watching the Russian version of War and Peace - all 9 hours of it! My daughter and I had put up our Christmas lights early and we were tired enough to sit through the film. At least I was. She bailed out after the first two hour video. It was spectacular. I feel I am still in its spell.
The huge battle scenes that must be so much what they were really like - the beautiful and innovative camera work and the acting - the characters truly fit the characters in the book.
Thanksgiving
Finally, we have it right. Families are hearbreaking, I think.
You love each other so much and you make each other angry, too.
This year, my parents came from West Virginia to my sister's house and my sister's house is BIG. She cooks, too, and loves people and crowds and social life. She cooked and her table was beautiful - she loves a pretty house and china and pretty napkins in rings and all of that. I never did it right. My bungalow is so tiny and I can't cook and no matter how I tried to be patient, I am by nature a solitary person and two days of
no quiet and solitude would inevitable fray my nerves and either I would get squashed and dark from holding it all in, or I would lose my temper at someone. So, this time, the house was right and the hostess was right, and my long lost brother and his wife and kids came, and everyone got along. It was a miracle.
November 19, 1998 Thursday 4:25 p.m. in the Art Room at the High School
In less than half an hour, I'll be heading home and fighting the urge to buy a pack of cigarettes to smoke when I get there. It's funny how addicts of any kind find each other. First I went outside beyond the school yard fence with a fellow teacher who smokes, then I went with an aide, now two aides and a teacher and I, all meet outside the fence and smoke together, so I am getting to be a cigarette a day smoker! My photos just came back from developing and there are some breathtakingly beautiful shots of the Sacred Lake - my place of daily worship. How ordinary it used to appear to me till I got to know it and now it shimmers in beauty. Perhaps I'll stop right now and add those pics. Just before I do go, however, I should note my 53rd birthday which passed on Thursday, Nov. 13, 1998, and a lucky woman I am to have had the opportunity to celebrate it. Just two days ago, a substitute teacher had a massive stroke in one of the classrooms and is in the hospital in a coma. He was younger than I am. He had just retired and was subbing part time.
November 10, 1998
The Lake in Audubon seems to be my take off point for the morning mediations. It is like church or chapel, a spiritual, soul searching experience. Today, it was gray and faintly damp and hung over. All the creatures were quiet. The muskrat was not out. On the way to dropping my daughter off to school, however, we did see a hilariously frolicking raccoon who scampered up a tree much like a squirrel might. He (or she) was overcome with some kind of personal joke. We looked at the raccoon and the raccoon looked at us. When I returned to the park for my walk, I happened onto 3 young men, late adolescent aged - maybe 17 or so. The were grouped around a medium sized, skinny, short haired brown dog who had a decidedly worried look on his face. They were all so still. I watched from the car for a minute or so, then decided to talk to them.
"Hi, what's up with the dog?" I asked. The looked at me, still
quiet, and one answered, "We just got him from a house in Camden
where he was mistreated and we're trying to get his chain off. You can see he's been abused and he doesn't trust anybody. We can't get our hands near his collar."
"Why don't you just take the whole collar off, then," I suggested, "and you can unlock the chain more easily." "We want him to keep his collar; we just want to get the chain off. It's too tight for him," answered the same boy. They were medium sized, about 5 feet 10 inches, and light haired, with light colored sports jackets. I wondered why they weren't in school, and I knew, without a doubt, they were up to something bad. I could just feel it. The problem was, what to do about it. I didn't feel personally endangered, but I felt that they meant some harm to the dog and my theory was that they wanted to get the chain off to set him after the ducks sitting passively and totally unawares just a few feet away."
I talked to the dog, and he looked at me with despair and hopelessness and fear - cold like an old meal. When I asked the boys what the dog's name was, they said, "Prince," and I answered, "a prince in chains like a slave." Then I asked the boys if they lived in Audubon. The same one boy answered,"I'm from Bellmawr, but I go to Gloucester City High School."
"Oh, I teach there," I answered brightly. Of course, I know that
if he went to Gloucester City High School, he was already an hour late since they are on half sessions and began at 6:45.
"If you want to take the chain off and you can't get near his collar, why don't you just wait and get friends with him first, be patient and let him learn to trust you over a few days."
"Well, he's too dangerous. We're taking him to the police," he answered.
"You know that he'll be destroyed, then, put into a cage in the dog warden's pick up truck and taken to a shelter and put to sleep," I answered, "why don't you try to make friends with him then, and give him a good home instead. Just be patient. My whole family are dog people and we have rescued all kinds of dogs. With some kindness and patience, you'll be able to make
friends with him. Take him for a nice walk now, think what paradise that would be for him." Then I left. They were nodding. As soon as I was out of sight, they fled with the dog.
They were either going to drown him, or set him on the ducks and I think it was ducks. One boy had a key on a cloth around his wrist. The truth is that unless I was going to take the dog in and give him a home myself, there wasn't much I could do. That is if I could have convinced the boys to let me have him anyway.
A major dilemma in life - How do you live with tragic things you cannot prevent, and how do you live with the sorrow and fear and
misery of the weak and vulnerable you cannot save.
In contrast, yesterday at the park was so beautiful that I took 27 photographs. The creatures on the lake were alight with the joy of the energy of the sun. Today, the lake belonged to the sad, the gray, the sorrowful, the mourning dove. The seagulls
cried out a warning."
October 30, 1998 Mischief Night in New Jersey!
Actually, it is afternoon - 3:00 p.m. and I am at school. Classes are over and I am enjoying some peace and quiet after a
minimally stressful, but still tense, day. What made anxiety was that I lost my keys briefly. On that ring of keys are my house, car, shed, classroom, closets, file drawers, and the doors to the classrooms of two other places where I teach - a computer lab and a university class room. Also, my neighbors' keys (an elderly woman who is alone, and a friend who travels and whose cat is under my care from time to time). Immediately I flew into a paranoid panic - someone was out to get me! At different times in my life it has been different people who have been the object of my paranoia - daughter, sister, student, co-worker. It is almost like natures way to point out your flaws to you so you can fix them - like a hole in a dam - uh oh - you're leaking paranoia. It is a brilliantly bright day and the sun has set the red leaves glowing like small candle flames. The lake this a.m. was exquisite, but I was unworthy of even a fraction of the appreciation or enjoyment that it had to offer. Still significantly distracted by this an that to take the pleasure laid out before my eyes.
I have a little bungalow here in New Jersey. It sits in a grove of trees, all about my age or so - I am 52. There are maples and oaks and a couple of dozen cedars that I carried home from West Virginia and planted. The yard is pie shaped - narrow at the front and wide across the back - the way a quiet person such I would prefer. It is shady, and the house sits back off the street. It looks like a cookie jar my Mom had when I was a child - pointed roof, lots of ivy. This house came to me in my forties when I neede shelter badly and it has been a sturdy little ship in the stormy seas. I love this humble cottage. It sits under an umbrella of branches and leaves; some of the tree trunks are
only a foot away from the roof. In fall they drop their leaves like red snow, ankle deep. It used to take 250 bags to rake them all up but I have a mulch mower now and simple mow them when the time comes. It gives me pleasure when a tool can save a thing of beauty from becoming a burden. Neighbors of mine complain about the leaves they have to rake so much that they get angry enough to cut them down. I've seen tree after tree go throughout the neighborhood - one was cut down across the street last weekend - a slim pale birch with small delicate leaves. Sad.
All the houses are decorated - we go in big for decoration in this little town. All have orange lights, some in those dripping veils that are a foot long and very popular now, for the roof line. Lots of scarecrows, and corn shucks tied to trees, and hay bales with pumpkins and mums on them. Many have ghosts in the trees and wooden tombstones staked into the lawns. We have some spider webbing and blow up skeletons. I put about 15 little skeletons in the trees but we've had a lot of wind lately and only 2 are left. This is the year of skeletons and eye balls. Each year we seem to get a theme. Last year and for a few years before, it was pumpkins and jack o'lanterns. For several years before that it was witches of all kinds. For some reason, just now I am liking skeletons and skulls and bones of all kinds. We have a life size wax skull that you can actually light and several life size skeletons in the trees, on the porch and in the house. We have a lot less now though, because my daughter is a teen and I am getting too old, too tired, and too busy to do it.
Fortunately we don't get much mischief, but we get a couple of hundred trick or treaters. I have 150 eyeball gumballs and assorted eye ball gizmos - rings, etc. I hope it is enough.
This is the first year since my daughter was born that we didn't spend hours making some kind of costume. She has so many marching band events and so many other things to do that she won't have time to either get a costume or, probably, trick or treat. "To every thing, there is a season...:
October 24, 1998, Saturday evening at 8:20 (or thereabouts)
This sad relic of a fine site is what remains after the 'bombing'. I had a wonderful online journal index page with 3 months of entries until the sad morning when I added a geoguide
to the top and then added a geoguide to another site of mine and somehow Site 1 got mixed up with Site 2 and I lost all of Site 1.
It taught me a very important lesson, as a friend of mine said, waving a finger in front of my sad face, "Save your pages onto the hard drive!" Well, somehow I just hadn't thought of that. From this day forward, however, I will. That is if I can figure
out how to do that. All is not totally lost however, because I had saved some months onto paper a few weeks ago. Of course, I've lost all of October, and I'll have to retype the rest of it.
Someone else suggested that I simply let her scan it with her optical character recogniton software, then save it as html and past it in. Does that seem plausible? It is tough being a
beginner, but it is humbling and full of useful insight. It is also character developing. Time after time, I have stopped myself from giving up and gone back over it again and made the discovery, and fixed my error, learned something valuable, and jumped back in refreshed with victory. My ex-husband was a programmer, and although he moved away more than 15 years ago
and I haven't seen or spoken to him since, I can retrosympathize
with his black moods - mysterious to me at the time, when he came home from work after poring over printouts - it was back in the days when computers looked like giant metal cabinets and
the data was stored on huge tape reels.
Before I lost my journals, I had been talking about Cormorants
on Audubon Lake, where I walk every morning. First there had been a pair, then a half dozen, now there are 40. One of the teachers at my school is very interested in science and the environment and she thinks the lake must be in their migration path. We didn't know for sure if they migrate. Anyhow, I have seen the mating dance of an iridescent black and green necked
drake and a woodpecker banging away at the pathetic stump of a once tall and strong tree, muskrats busily rambling around the banks, and the fishing cormorants on my morning walks. The lake is lovely, still, reflective of the fringe of trees, turning red and dropping leaves onto its surface. It is my new sacred place.
Last year there was a small oval walking track next to Newton Creek and along a quiet boulevard in a small town nearby where I walked each morning, but as my own migration path has changed,
so has the place where I go to worship and get right with the world. I'm thankful that these small pools of wonder and beauty still exist in this tangle of overcrowded, backed up, hectic
urban crush. They are like water holes for the spirit in a
daily desert.
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