Auld Lang Syne

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear
for auld lang syne -
we'll take a cup of kindness yet
for auld lang syne ...

Robert Burns

Naturalists know that one way to locate a particular bird or other animal is to show up at an area that has food that that individual enjoys. You're not likely to find a panda in the wild where there is no bamboo. To see flycatchers and swallows, it's important to find an area that has flying insects. Squirrels like pine trees, trees with nuts. (Birdfeeders make them happy, too.) Dolphins follow the fishes.

Recipes come and go, and there are a few that seem to last through the ages. Others are fads, embraced for a few years, and then forgotten. When I was a mom in the early nineties, a recipe for Amish bread flew from neighbor to neighbor, along with a container of live yeasty culture with instructions how to maintain it for loaf after loaf in your own kitchen, and how to grow more to pass on to the next neighbor. The baked product was a lovely textured, mildly sweet bread.

Beef Stroganoff, a Hungarian dish with noodles, beef, sour cream and paprika, was an every day staple in Europe, I believe. There was little difficulty finding it in many restaurants and kitchens some 40 years ago in the US, but its visibility seems to have waned.

Several cakes, probably still around, but unknown to many were immensely popular in the 1960s. Devil's Food is a dark chocolate cake with rich chocolate frosting. German Chocolate cake is a milder, lightly spiced chocolate with milk chocolate frosting. The filling between the layers was a candy-like concoction of nuts and shredded coconut.

Old cookbooks are a great source for forgotten, but wonderful foods and how to prepare them.

we are each of us angels ...

'We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.'

- Luciano de Crescenzo

library

Sometimes we don't notice the architecture of a building because we are more interested in the contents. We focus on the aisles of food in a grocery store, or on the screen in a movie theater. Here in a central Texas library, I usually focus on the aisles of books, or on my work at a table. Yet this is a cheerful spot, with a clean, modern feel, the pale colors easy on the eye, and I sometimes gaze upward. The ceiling is high, and daylight flows in through square, set-back windows in tidy rows above the shelves. The ceiling is interesting with suspended curved rectangles of thin material - like a faux plywood - attached to a wood brace. Perhaps these panels are to help with insulation - of temperature, and sound as well. But it has the feel of the construction for a sailing ship, as though we were in a bright, spacious hold in progress, or the belly of a gentle whale, the panels like the arc of ribs. The architecture is well-suited for a library, a peaceful public resource.

Hanukkah Solstice haiku

longest night -
sheaf of distant stars
shines bright -
nearby sacred candlelights

The last three books I finished reading were all children's books. Nothing like a good picture book to bring in a bit of cheer. All of these have wonderful illustrations, creative and bright. Some of the pictures are very thoughtful and deep.

The first is about a tortoise and a hare, the tortoise calm and deliberate, the hare 'hurry hurry' and quick-minded. The story's brief, but the illustrations of fields and critters held my attention for quite some time (and inspired me to write about dandelions the other day). They're simple, gently humorous, carefully detailed, and beautiful. The next book was about a rabbit who is a magician's assistant. He gets lost in the city during a street show. These pictures really capture the feel of a city at all times of day - the buildings, streets, sidewalks, alleys and bits of park here and there. The city people - say in the transit tunnel - are interesting - human but respectfully distant at the same time, just like city folk tend to be. And the sketch of the magician's den at the beginning of the story, filled with fascinating clutter, is just as entertaining as the the first pictures of field in the tortoise-hare book.

The last picture book that I just finished right here just now is about an awkward click beetle. The author's colorful use of mixed media is gorgeous. There's a picture of two beetles, a tree, a crescent moon and crazy stars that would look great on my wall. The picture of giant loafer-clad feet approaching a beetle on its back is very scary indeed.

Hurry Up and Slow Down by Layn Marlow 2009
The Magic Rabbit by Annette LeBlanc Cate 2007
The Very Clumsy Click Beetle by Eric Carle 1999

winter solstice famished

You know the winter solstice is near when your appetite starts to roar. I ate a muffin around 7 in the morning, and at 10:30, still hungry, 3 refried bean tamales with salsa, a toaster waffle with yogurt and blueberries globbed on top, a slice of raisin toast, and a handful of chocolate kisses. Mangia, mangia -

Dandelions are so cheerful to see - bright yellow flowers, each with a bundle of slender petals. The green zig-zag dandelion leaves are good to eat - they make a salad look and taste all dressed up. The seeds are fascinating. When the petals start to droop and drop, little spindly rods appear, the tops dressed in translucent, silky white. Seeds are attached at the other end. A breeze sends them flying away, parachuting, to feed the bugs and birds or start a new plant growing. Both kids and grownup humans will pluck a seeding dandelion, make a wish, and set the seeds floating outward on a puff of breath.

notahaiku

twig of mistletoe
green and light
clings to the curb -
leaves fly by for a kiss

 
There was a little cardboard box -
embossed and fine.
when new, it held stationery.
The paper and envelopes were used up now
but there remained
the sturdy little box.
Soon, a stray of satin ribbon found its way there.
A beer bottle cap with a portrait of a handsome ram.
It had great curling horns.
A stick of gum, a used postage stamp.
Perhaps a green paper clip.
Random treasures -
a twig, a shining bolt.
A tarnished coin. A slender paintbrush.
A week would pass, or two
then - oh, yeah - I'd remember.
Every time I placed something new
it was a conscious thank (i-have-not-forgotten) you.

the Great Blue Heron
is indoors - seven inches high
and standing on the simple base
of a bedroom lamp.
Gazing toward the afternoon light
that fills the window casing,
the heron sees branches in the room-
leaves long browned and dry
anchored in a bucket of damp soil

a year-old haiku comes to mind:
'new and green,
or crumbling on the twig,
leaves maintain
their plucky outlook -'
Who knows what may take root.
'every leaf has its own soul'
i heard today
and will remember

Field

One of my happiest moments of late was finding myself in a field. Not like your usual city parks or school grounds or backyards. They tend to be trimmed short, and the ground is covered with a purchased grass and a few stragglers. This field was covered by the moisture of a very light December drizzle. At my feet, there was a surprising diversity of greens - the very broad leaves of what would maybe produce a big thistle, some tiny sumac-type leaves, little flowers - plants and grasses of many shapes creating patterns and bright smells that shimmer with life.

Within a block of the first house I remember was a field. Nowadays, this might be called 'an undeveloped property', but the kids loved it for what it was. Wild, ungoverned by adults. There was a football that was tossed back and forth. The girls called the tall thistle flowers powderpuffs. It was the kind of field where you might find blackberries, skunks, possums, rabbits. That field may be where the call of the bobwhites could be heard early in the morning.

Sometimes you'll see a sign near such a field inviting 'investment' and 'improvements'. A shopping strip, or medical center. Can there really be improvements for such a field?

ESP

somewhere
along our brief spans of time
lies an intersection
where you have already - will - or now
meet me (or i you somehow)
and there is was will be Jello
at the crossing
i don't know what flavor - you pick.

a momentous meeting.


so prophesizes
has prophesized
the Lovers' Fortuneteller
on North Memory Lane
someday
 

moles

Moles cause no harm. They are quiet, nearly blind little critters who spend most of their time underground. They eat grubs and worms and roots, and dig tunnels and little cubbyholes. You know there's a mole in your yard when you see a line of broken earth on the surface - caused by the tunneling below. Some people worry - 'They're destroying my lawn!', but the earth can easily be redistributed with a rake or hoe. Moles are one of nature's farmers. They plough the hard dirt from underneath, and fertilize it, and make it easier for plants and trees to thrive. Mole mounds are like a work of art, something to show off to the neighbor kids. 'You'll never guess who made this winding little maze of dirt!'

The children's television show 'Sesame Street' is peopled in part by Muppets. Oscar the Grouch, Kermit the Frog, Big Bird, and Elmo are all puppets, manipulated by human hands and speaking with human voices. They have been regulars on Sesame Street for decades, and have also starred in very popular Muppet movies. They have adventures. Sometimes they teach their very youngest viewers to count and spell and get along and how to deal with various temptations. Most of all, they are friendly and likable.

The original creator of the Muppets was Jim Henson, and he also was the voice for several of the characters. There was much grief when he died at an early age. His characters have lived on, and those actors who replaced him have done a fine job. It would have been fascinating, though, to visit with Mr. Henson, to hear his voice and get to know the man who put so much faith, energy, and tenderness into his innocent Muppet world. The Muppets offered a haven that one without worry could let their little kids wander, and at the same time could strike a chord that amused the grownups.

graphic novels

A graphic novel is a different kind of experience than a novel that is written; worded. Some graphic novels are like illustrated stories - but with primary attention given to the artwork. Some graphic novels have no words at all - the story is conveyed entirely through drawings, or other kinds of images.

The latter dates back quite a ways. In the 1990s, I had the good fortune to travel with a friend to France, the first time I went abroad. We spent half a day in the cathedral at Chartres. The cathedral was built across many decades (completed - was it in the 1200s?). On the outside were many statues around the frame of the great doors and much sculpting of the exterior walls. There were gargoyles, and statues of saints. There were statues of ancient Greek philosophers and mathematicians. (Aristotle and Pythagorus come to mind.) Some of those statues cleverly tucked in high places were carved images of the construction workers themselves. 'I was here!' they seem to say. Inside the immense building was a kind of clock-calendar that was large piece of intricate mechanics, decked with images of the moon, stars and sun. In the middle of one field of the interior was a long avenue of bas relief carvings. That was my first meeting with ancient graphic story telling. We were told most of the people back then did not know how to read. The carvings, like three dimensional frames from a silent film, told stories from the Bible.

Written novels today feed images and plot via our language centers. I believe the wordless graphic novels feed an experience more than a story. We enter another existence through the wordless images. We learn some things that cannot quite be expressed through words, things that are not stored in the language part of our brains.

Scorpio

Scorpion 
of the summer night
slowly glides
from left to right
gleaming from the southern sky
above the roads
and cars and houses
down below.

his heart is a star -
Antares! - bright and red
his stinger just for show
he's a shining softy
don't you know
keeping watch
through the dark of night
 
it's winter now
he's far away
but the scorpion returns
come the longest day
Now Orion's striding
across the sky
our giant friend
come the longest night.

butterflies over the baby bed


A mobile
of cellophane butterflies -
transparent blues and purples -
deep rich yellows -
dangled above her each morning
when she opened her eyes.
This was her first year:
Tilting colors
silent beauty.
Light in motion.

Home Economics

Aunt Plenty and Aunt Peace are two spinsters in Louisa May Alcott's book 'Eight Cousins'. They house their niece, Rose, who has lost both her mother and father. Rose's guardian is her uncle Alec, who is some sort of merchant at sea, now staying at home to parent Rose.

There are lots of aunts and cousins - seven boys - in the neighborhood. Aunt Peace and Aunt Plenty don't have a large role to play in the book amidst the cousins' antics. Their main occupation is the running of the household - cooking, sewing, carrying out the rugs in the spring to be aired and shaken. But Alcott gives them a kind of tender attention. Uncle Alec asks Rose to spend some time with the under-appreciated ladies and they teach her to sew and bake. 'Bread and Buttonholes' becomes the challenge.

The story was written and set in the mid 1800s in New England, the northeastern part of the United States. When I was in school, and perhaps still today, classes were offered in 'home economics'. Kids learn about measuring flour versus measuring liquids, how to substitute this ingredient for that. They come home with a simple dress or shirt they have sewn. Perhaps they learn about bread and buttonholes.

I avoided home ec because I absorbed in greater things. Math! Science! Literature! Home ec seemed low on the ladder somehow. Fortunately, snooty me did learn some of these things through Girl Scouts. I've always remembered that Louisa May Alcott, the great writer, gave a lot of attention to the arts of maintaining a home. I came to see baking and cooking are in many ways scientific endeavors. Hanging clothes to dry, shelling pecans, stitching and knitting have been calming and meditative activities. Household arts - especially regarding food - pay off in a tremendously rewarding way - both in immediate satisfaction, and in holding together the intimate fabric of love, family and friends.

Pachelbel's Canon is familiar to many people in the United States, although most may not know what it is called. Some consider it trite; it's played so frequently at weddings and recitals. There's likely a reason that it is so popular - there is something so lovely in its intricate lacework of sound.