The view outside our windows is an emerald sea these days, from our worn out lawn wearing a freshened suit of moss, to the emerging leaves on trees and bushes. The ferns are unfurling, the lily of the valley showing tiny buds, and the roses are promising blooms sometime soon. I feel a bit like Kermit the Frog, only with a positive spin on the words to the song that helped to make him famous, as I sing out “it is easy being green”.
On a recent walk around Lake Katherine, one of Kermit’s relatives was splashing in the mud,
and a pair of Mallards became mighty friendly as they waddled over to where Tom and I were bench sitting, begging for a handout. Mrs. Mallard came a-quacking right over to our knees. As tempting as it is, I do not bring morsels of bread to feed geese and ducks as it is not good for them to take food from strangers now, is it?
Well, I have a bit of list a mile long today, so, I’d best get off of this log I’ve been sitting upon, and get out and about with the day before me, which includes finishing up “Mrs. Queen Takes the Train”, composing the minutes from a meeting I’m charged to do, give the basil sitting on the countertop a home in a pot on the deck, and maybe sit for a spell in the arbor and count my blessings.
Birds are flitting about, warbling their songs, building their nests. Robins and wrens, sparrows and finch, even the mallards are making way for their ducklings.
I’ve been busy doing spring cleaning in the garden, raking up leaves left on the flower beds from last Autumn, uncovering shoots that seem to burst forth with all the eagerness of a fourth grader once the weather warms and the sun shines. I also uncovered a frog – and a snake, who very rudely stuck his tongue out at me. Imagine that!
We hear there is a fox den under our neighbor’s shed. She counted five kits the other day. I take extra trips out to the compost pile in hopes of seeing them.
There is new growth everywhere, from the emerging ferns to the dripping pine cones. Tiny scilla cast long shadows and crocus pop up from under decaying leaves.
I was stopped at a red light, my favorite oldies station just starting a song, when I noticed him. Round and round and round he soared, his red tail seared against the blue sky, the sun catching it as a heavenly flame. There I sat, mesmerized, as the hawk glided, effortlessly, in figure eights; ice skating in the sky.
The Steve Miller Band ‘s words and music was a perfectly fitting musical accompaniment to the hawk’s performance. Abracadabra!
Suddenly, there she was, his dancing partner. Round and round and round she soared, crossing his arcs, a perfect partner in a lofty ice rink. A love affair on high, music below, me and my mocha VW, on a bright, sunny spring afternoon, enjoying the show. Who needs “Dancing With the Stars” when one just needs to look up to the heavens to see nature’s performance.
I cherish these magic morsels of life that happen unexpectedly and make me feel as if I’m dancing on air.
As she concluded her conversation with us last Saturday, Jackie Kennedy (Leslie Goddard) held up the 1960′s music album, Camelot. She spoke softly of how she and Jack played its soundtrack at night, and she recalled those lifting lyrics of “there’s simply not, a more congenial spot, for happily- ever- aftering than here in Camelot“. The song has hummed about my head all week as I traveled in the snow, pretending to be in “a more congenial spot”, my memories wending back to my first trip to Camelot.
As the make-up editor of the school newspaper my senior year of high school, I had the privilege of several interesting outings, press conferences, and close encounters with a few famous people. My responsibility was to arrange the stories on the pages of the newspaper, write the headlines, crop and paste pictures, etc. This, dear reader, was in the days where printing was done off campus. We published an eight page newspaper, twice a week, and we did it during a school year that saw historic snowstorms, the assassination of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, not to mention that our own school’s civil unrest. Our reporters were often rewriting stories and writing breaking news stories at the drop of a hat, all while serving in other clubs and being students. Several were National Merit Scholars, most of us were in the National Honor Society, all of us loved the lure of newspapers. We never missed a deadline. It was exciting and an educational experience that I have never forgotten.
We also got to meet notables of the time; astronaut Eugene Cernan, actress Carol Lawrence (who was married to Robert Goulet, Broadway’s handsome Sir Lancelot), Hugh O’Brien (aka Wyatt Earp), and advice columnist Ann Landers, who gave advice I failed to heed and for which I am paying for today. Another story for another day.
Then, there was Camelot. Janice, and I were assigned the task of Camelot. A showing of the Lerner and Lowe movie musical was playing at one of the ornate, downtown Chicago theaters and we were to do a movie review. Suburban busses and city trains took us to the theater, our seats were procured, and there we were, in Camelot instead of English and Chemistry. The costumes, the music, Sir Lancelot’s blue eyes, King Arthur’s vision of Camelot, Merlin’s aging, Lady Guinevere. Ah, Guinevere.
Janice was the editor-in-chief, and she gave me the responsibility of writing the review. I had never done a theater review before. It needed to be three hundred words, and it needed to be done in two days. I spent hours in the library reading movie reviews, writing down my own thoughts, then typing, and re-typing, the magical moments and musical refrains buoying me up, until my words were done. It was, I was told, a job well done, and off it and the news and the sports and editorials went, to press; and off I went to my daydreams of Camelot.
Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive. Anais Nin
One never knows where “dem bones” will end up. Take, for instance, a ham bone. One leftover from a Christmas luncheon. Actually, someone did take the ham bone. Several people, in fact, did. It made perfect sense to let the ladies who offered to warm the hams have “first pick” at the bones, which they happily took home. One bone, however, was passed on to another, Pat, who froze it to share at another time. I was one of the lucky ones who got to enjoy it!
I was delighted to receive Pat’s invitation to lunch, though not sure if I would be able to make it as it was a week after my sister’s surgery. As luck would have it, I was able to attend and, as these sorts of things go, it was JUST the thing I needed.
Several of us sat around Pat’s table on an icy Friday morn in February, enjoying a most delicious ham, bean and kale soup accompanied by spoon corn bread, a spicy carrot salad, and stimulating conversation with just the right pinches of laughter and encouragement. Dear reader, please know this hearty lunch with one of “dem bones” was a balm for my soul, allowing me to regroup, repair, and rejoice!
Ah, dem bones! As I wended my way home, I started humming the spiritual “Dem Bones”, then recalled a performance on the famed show of years ago, the Lawrence Welk Show. I guess I was still picking at ‘dem bones”. This version was performed on a Halloween show. I hope you will enjoy “dem bones” – and maybe have a big bowl of hearty soup, shared with friends, perhaps, someday soon.
Driving home today after a lengthy meeting, preceded by several long weeks, with a few more yet to come and feeling rather glum, I turned on the car radio to an oldies station I frequent from time to time. I could feel the beat of the tune before I heard the words and did what many-a-sexagenarian might do; I turned up the volume as loud as I could, bounced my head and shoulders back and forth, rocking my car to the rhythm as I sang as loud as I could “Mony, Mony”! Yeah! My feet pumping the brakes, ever-so-lightly at a stop light, I was wishing I were on a dance floor. Recalling dances in college where a certain friend of mine and I would arrive with 25 cents in our shoes.
College dances back then were 50 cents stag, 75 cents drag, which meant you could get in for 50 cents, 75 with a date. We would feign poverty, which really wasn’t stretching the truth all that far, asking a few cute lads if they could pretend we were their dates to get in, earning them 25 cents. It got us into the dance and the boys got a dance with two, if I may say so, rather cute girls with long, straight hair and short skirts who were pretty good dancers and always had fun.
So, as I drove, “Mony Mony” causing noise pollution, my mood lightened, the sun came out, and I hurried on home to find Tommy James and the Shondells to share with you, though the Billy Idol version may be more familiar. On the way to posting, Wikipedia informed me that the title and term, Mony, presented itself to Tommy James as he stood on a balcony. There, before him, was the Mutual of New York Building. Mony Mony! Not exactly acrostic but fun, none-the-less.
Sometimes it just feels good to shout out a song, doesn’t it? Do you have a song that does this to you? Makes you want to sing along, dance on your brakes, rock your car?
An update: My sister is healing, slowly but surely, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Thank you for all of your prayers, good wishes, thoughts, and encouragement. Penny
Did you know that the names Bert and Ernie of Sesame Street were rumored to be plucked from the iconic movie “It’s a Wonderful Life”? Do you remember Bert and Ernie, the policeman and the taxi driver of fictional Bedford Falls? Do you know the famous Muppets, Bert and Ernie? I adore both sets of buddies; partners in adventures and friendship and it really matters not if one set inspired the other. They make me grin and feel good and are a reminder of friends sticking together, no matter what, like setting up a honeymoon for George and Mary or involving a rubber ducky on Sesame Street.
The Sesame Street Bert came to mind yesterday as I headed home from the library, listening to our local public radio station, WBEZ, where a discussion aired on Rick Kogan’s program about a news segment exposing the deportation of some seventy (70) pigeons from a Chicago neighborhood. In short, a Chicago alderman had arranged for an Indiana farmer to net and remove pigeons from his ward, stirring up questions of whether or not this was legal, what would happen to the pigeons, who paid for the pigeon transport, the crossing state lines, etc.
Pigeons can be problematic. If one lives or works or visits Chicago, or any metropolis, he or she is a target for random pigeon poop; a plop on the shoulder or, horrors, one’s hair, is a risk one takes walking in the Big City. A short sit upon a park bench is enough to attract a flash mob of pigeons, cooing in unison, bobbing about for morsels of bread, popcorn, or whatever crumbs may congregate in a coat pocket or purse corner. There are even monetary fines in some places for feeding pigeons on street corners, by golly by gee, but a posse herding pigeons like a Wild West show seems a bit drastic from my dove cote here on the Cutoff.
The radio segment finished as I tossed my mail into the drive-up box. As I headed home, I found myself humming “Doin’ the Pigeon”, thinking about Bert and Ernie, and Bert and Ernie, how pigeons stick together, and of how, when our girls were little, Jennifer, Katy and I would bob our heads and pump our knees and dance around the living room, doing the Pigeon.
C’mon, folks. How about clicking on the video above, sit through the pigeon clip, and do the Pigeon with Bert. C’mon. You can do it!
Bert and Ernie, from It’s a Wonderful Life. Image courtesy of Wikepedia
The Cutoff is blanketed in a quilt of golden snow as the leaves continue to fall, their softened sounds a magical mystery. It has been a most beautiful Autumn here. I knew it wouldn’t, couldn’t , last, yet, like all good things, I kept hoping for just a bit longer. I wandered about in the leaf strewn grass, soaking up the colors, the mustiness and the crisp air, recalling the summer afternoons sitting under the arbor, sipping tea and reading.
My eyes were drawn to a flicker of gold in the distance. A ray of sunshine was playing tag with something. I needed to walk back to see what it was. Can you see it just beyond the bluebird house? Click on the picture for a better view.
My footfall was noisy as I dragged my feet. One must drag and crunch and shuffle through leaves to fully appreciate them, don’t you agree? I marveled at how our landscape had changed overnight, exposing things hidden during the lush days of summer. Ancient farm implements, long forgotten by previous owners, emerged from their hiding spots,
and I caught a slight movement from within the brush. Can you see her? Our eyes met and held for a spell, then I walked on as she bent her head down, gnawing at whatever was tasty upon the forest floor.
The rest of the foraging expedition were eyeing me from the other side, waiting for me to move on . . .
. . . and so, I did, looking for that hint of gold I saw from the arbor. I found it. It was a single leaf, stopped in its descent by the tip of a small twig which had skewered it like a toothpick in search of an appetizer.
The sun illuminated its translucent beauty and I stood in awe at nature’s perfection.
The view outside our windows is an emerald sea these days, from our worn out lawn wearing a freshened suit of moss, to the emerging leaves on trees and bushes. The ferns are unfurling, the lily of the valley showing tiny buds, and the roses are promising blooms sometime soon. I feel a bit like Kermit the Frog, only with a positive spin on the words to the song that helped to make him famous, as I sing out “it is easy being green”.
