Just Ducky

My building where I work is right across from Sequoia Lake. Every spring we are able to watch the male ducks escorting the females everywhere around campus and fighting off competing males. It really is quite funny sometimes and I always cheer when the occasional very resourceful female can slip away from her escorts. But in the end nature always succeeds despite the few independent ladies and the result is an explosion of baby ducks throughout the spring. These pictures are from the second group I've seen. They are about a day old and amazingly fast. Even though I followed them all over, probably totally freaking out the mommy duck, these little guys moved like they had one brain between the bunch of them. I move one way, they moved the other. Looking for a contrasting shot was tough. Mommy kept them in the bushes and undergrowth. There is a reason these little guys are camouflaged. If you look hard you can see them in the road picture. Finally I let mommy and brood waddle off and I finally got my contrast shot in the grass. It was a nice way to start off my morning as I walked into work though I doubt if mommy duck would have agreed with me.

Connections

To my two mountain woman girlfriends.

Biene - V is in Placerville. Vicci - B is in Angels Camp.

You both have inspired me in such marvelous way. B, you got me knitting. V, you got me blogging and writing. B and V and ME - we three love coffee. Starbucks rules.

Today I plant roses, seal the drawers in my kitchen, take a walk, feed the baby ducks, and crop and chop a bunch of photos.

There will be a trip to the bank for my mom's business. Well, there had to be SOMETHING mundane happening today.

When we were wee . . . - Sunday Scribble #3

When I was very young, my dad was in the Navy. When he wasn’t stationed on a ship and overseas, we would live in either California or Illinois. At the time air travel was financially untouchable for most people and even though low ranking military could get along then on one income (unlike today) air travel would have been financial folly.

The romance of the road that is nostalgically recalled as Route 66 was for us a reality. When dad was with us, he would load us up in our old green Nash Ambassador Airflyte. The irony of the name of this car isn’t lost on me either considering cross-country flight was never an option for us. However, I had the entire back of that car for the days long trips back and forth between California, Illinois, and oh, let’s not forget the Korean War era and our trip to stay in Wisconsin. That car was so big you could practically set up housekeeping in the trunk. The backseat was a child-size bed and it was in that backseat that I claim my earliest memory.

Route 66 for us started in Illinois and dropped south through the Texas panhandle, across New Mexico and Arizona until we finally reached California. Somewhere in New Mexico or Arizona it was night and I was tucked into that big old bed of a backseat and was staring up into the desert night sky. I was maybe four at the most and definitely under five because my sister was not yet born. There was little or no moon and the stars were so dense and unbelievably bright. The world then was cleaner, the sky clearer, the stars visible even on a full moon night.

Now, fifty plus years later, when we travel at night through the desert I lean my head up against the car window and gaze at the night sky. It looks a bit different today. Even in the most remote areas one can see a solitary light where some independent soul has decided to live. Or high up on the horizon one can see lights blinking suggesting radio stations, weather stations, or military posts. The sky isn’t as bright, air pollution has dimmed its luster but that earliest memory still sparkles in my heart and mind like the stars that so enchanted me in my long ago childhood.

St. Clare's Retreat Center

Silent retreats at St. Clare's are so rejuvenating. I went to them three years in a row and then stopped. I need to go again. St. Clare's is in Soquel, CA in the Santa Cruz mountain.

Cars and Telephones, and Computers, and Isolation

I've been thinking and writing for the past few of days on how the CTC's of life keep us connected and what happens when we lose these things. Gathering these thoughts and getting it all down is taking longer than I expected but here now are these thoughts.

I am old enough to remember partylines and despite the way that sounds, I am not talking political doctrine or 800 numbers. No. What I am talking about are telephones. For those of you who are part of the cell phone/blue tube generation, you may not know that at one time people shared phone lines. They were called partylines. Today we are beeped if we have incoming calls while on the phone. Back then, we would hear a click if we were on the phone and that was a signal that someone on our partyline needed to make a call. Politeness dictated that we free up the line.

Oh how things have changed. Now we screen calls, ignore calls, block calls, and God knows we don't call back, we just end one call quickly and go on to the next one. So, what in the world, you may ask, got me going on this? Well, a few weeks ago my friend Vicci, who has only a landline, found herself, due to severe weather, intermittently without a telephone and a computer for email. Then her car died. Here she was, a rural living woman caring for her 90 year old father, husband at work and no way to communicate to the world. The results? Isolation.

But WHY isolation? Why not solitude instead? What makes solitude feel positive and isolation feel negative. Is one chosen? Is the other imposed? Is the one pleasing? Does the other feel empty? Can we turn isolation (a negative) into solitude (a positive)? Deep questions all and I find that I am turning to Dark Nights of the Soul by Thomas Moore for insight.

Back in my early 20s I first heard of the philosopher, Teilhard de Chardin. This was my first exposure to the idea of a dark night. Then I learned about St. John of the Cross. I saw Gerald May's book on the subject and eventually discovered that the dark night is something that we all encounter. Dark night has certainly been knocking at MY door lately. But it was Vicci's problems with communications that underscored to me how much we, all of us, need each other. It was Vicci's problems with communication that underscored how global meeting people has become and how fragile the maintenance of these friendships and the maintenance of family ties has become. Without computers, Vicci and I would have never met. Without a telephone, we would have never connected for that coffee meet-up at Starbucks that first time we met face to face. Without the computer and cars we would have never been able to share the Day of Art at Penny's house in November 05. That fragility needed a cure and I recently started sending postcards to friends and find that this little written form of communication is both anticipated now and deeply appreciated. It has become my way of not being so dependant on fast modes of communication in such a wired world as we now live in.

Winter has been brutal this year. Well as brutal as it can get for a flatlander like me who does not live in a flood zone and simply has to put up with a lot of rain. But for Vicci, relentless snow and rain has narrowed her world to the occasional ability to move outside of her rural home. And when the car died her world narrowed even further. Her isolation was a huge frustration for HER and by extension, a frustration for all who care about her and want to be in touch with her. However, her "isolation" did turn into a positive, at least for me. It started me on the road of thought about my own "isolation" and how it may be turned into solitude instead and thereby an avenue of change for me.

52 pick up

I have a habit of creating idealized images of myself. Dream (below) is an ATC collage I made a couple of years ago. What first attracted me was the back of the female figure. I hope I'm not breaking every copyright law known to man by using it. I don't sell my work. I create from bits and pieces I find here and there and just for my own satisfaction. This particular ATC was traded off to someone else like much of my work is. This has left me with little of my own work other than what I have scanned to retain the image. I miss not being able to hold my own work.

I recently decided to start a new project of creating a deck of 5x7 cards, 52 in all. I'm starting with my previously created ATCs and altered pages as a starting place for inspiration. I won't be able to create them again exactly as before but I'll have these now to hold and keep.

Dream