Happy "All Fools Day!"

A year ago on this day, Husband and I had dinner at the home of our friends who operate a large dairy farm. On that day, their young Amish hired hands had dropped off a beautiful loaf of fresh-baked bread.

As we were about to sit down to dinner, our hostess cut into the bread...

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...and found this inside it! They may drive buggies and forego most modernity, but the Amish in our area have a great sense of humor.

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Happy April Fool's Day to all!

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Harrumph, said the Wizard...

As if I don't have enough to do today, another blogger - who shall remain NAMELESS (a state his EGO can barely tollerate) - has defiled and debased my hat and all it stands for: Dirty laundry, indeed!! (See "Comments" in my previous post).

Well, Mr. ----, lacking the time this morning to photograph the back end of my horse, I give YOU a brand new award: The Dirty Dirklet. The rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs explaining why you appear to be standing in a pile of steaming horse manure.

2. Link to the bestower of The Dirty Dirklet and apologize for your wanton disregard for the magnificence, intelligence and glorious content of his/her blog and all it stands for. (Include a kind word for the hat).

3. If you have any trouble doing steps 1 and 2, just dial 1-800-EATSHIT

And without further ado, I give you The Dirty Dirklet:

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Please click to enlarge this image - it begs to be seen clearly...

The Thinking Blogger

There are a lot of blogging awards floating around out there, some quite noteworthy because they come from sites that make it their business to peruse and evaluate blogs; others are often the work of pals bestowing compliments on pals. At the risk of pissing off those “noteworthy” evaluators (and forever squashing my chances of winning a “Blog of the Day Award”), let me say that the second category – pals bestowing compliments on pals – is the better kind to receive.

A few days ago I was honored to receive a “Thinking Blogger” award from Robin. She of course had been a prior recipient and was paying it forward. I have come to know Robin through her blog as a sensitive, passionate person, someone very concerned for the environment and the natural world. This is a woman who sleeps with her curtains drawn back so that she can see the stars, and her window open so she can hear the waves on Lake Michigan. I am proud to be in her company, and she does make me think about the things that really matter.

But here’s my problem. As a Thinking Blogger recipient, I’m now supposed to bestow that award upon five other appropriate bloggers, and as you might expect a Thinking Blogger to do, I’m really doing a lot of thinking about whom I should tap.

The basic instructions are these: If, and only if, you get tagged, you're supposed to write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think. Tag blogs with real merits, i.e. relative content, and above all - blogs that really get you thinking! Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote.

My blogging community contains many wise and thoughtful folks, but they’ve already been given the award. Okay, Dirk hasn’t gotten one, but is Dirk the embodiment of the Thinking Blogger? He’s funnier than hell, writes wonderfully, and is always interesting, but in the strictest sense, is someone wearing a flag top-hat appropriate? (Anyway, he has so many awards that I don’t think there’s any room left on his trophy shelf).

Whim already has one. Craig D is really funny and an all-around good guy, but all of those knock-off record label posts didn’t exactly elevate him to rocket scientist inspirational level. Crabby would describe herself as an anti-Mensa kind of gal, so that's not the place to hang up a Thinking Blogger banner (although she certainly is thinking of mischief all the time). And then there are all the artists: Lone Beader, Life at Star’s Rest, The Wild Inside, Foam... And there is my answer... I will choose not to continue the "Thinking Blogger" awards.

Instead, I would like to recognize five outstanding artists. Karan has told me that she is excited to get back to “work” because she’s overflowing with ideas and creative energy. Carmon at Star’s Rest works her knowledge and love of horses into beautiful silver pieces. On the other side of the country, The Lone Beader thinks up miniature masterpieces and creates them with thousands of tiny beads. Foam teaches art and inspires all of us to think about the things that give life its richness and flavor, to see things more clearly. Yes, these are the bloggers I will honor with my version of the Thinking Blogger award.

These, and one other. I invite you to visit my secret site, the place where I try to enhance the wonderful poetry of Shaman with an occasional photo or two. She is also an artist (a sculptor), but this blog is dedicated to her poems. She is not seeking a blogging community, and I very much doubt that she would want a Thinking Blogger award, but she definitely gets me thinking and inspires me. And that makes five.

I'm betting that this isn't what the originator of The Thinking Blogger had in mind, so let's call it

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The Wizard's Hat Award.

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These five women interest and inspire me, and I know that their creative energies are helped by the booster rockets of wisdom and thought. Hats off to Foam, Beader, Wild Inside, Carmon and Shaman! And ladies, you don't have to pay this forward unless the spirit moves you to do so (because it's awfully hard to single out just five of your friends while passing over the others).
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Woodcock...

Meet the bird that says beeeep.

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Woodcocks have evolved to blend in with their surroundings, so that's what they do when danger (a human) approaches: stay very still, imitating leaves and twigs. Many years ago my daughter and her grandpa almost stepped on a woodcock, but that's the only other close encounter I can think of during all the years we've lived here, although I've sometimes seen one flying at dusk (recognizable by its distinctive, round shape) calling its Bronx-cheer-like beeeep.

This bird's body is about six inches in length; his/her beak is about three inches long. For some reason, he was in the middle of a road when I spotted him, perhaps sunning himself, but by the time I had the camera out and ready he had disappeared. I searched quietly and finally spied him about ten feet into the woods. He tolerated two clicks of the shutter and then began to

retreat.

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I was thrilled to be able to take these photos! Please click on them to have a closer look at this beautiful and seldom-seen bird.

Ten Years
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WizenedEye.com photo
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Ten years: forever in a child’s mind, a fraction of an augenblick in Time's continuum. Sometimes these past ten years feel like both extremes.

My mother died ten years ago today.

She was an amazing woman, the best mother any child could have been blessed with, and trying to encapsulate all that was remarkable about her in this post is more than I am capable of, so I refer you to the Heavens on the evening of Sunday, March 23, 1997...
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Each night after helping my mother into bed, I would kiss her forehead, smile and say goodnight, then slip into my parka and step out into the cold night. Sometimes I would cry. Other times I would just take in a slow deep breath of the clear winter air, exhaling the sigh of a weary daughter.

The comet had been gracing the evening sky for weeks. Our canopy is dark and star-lit on a cloudless night, and as I'd walk through the snow on the quiet road home, Hale-Bopp would come into view above the outline of the trees to the northwest.

On that night in March when I kissed her cooling forehead and made my final walk home, there was something else happening in the heavens, something not as rare as the spectacular comet, but extraordinary in combination with it: to the south, juxtaposed with Hale-Bopp, the full moon was in total eclipse, the sky bearing witness in a double tribute to the amazing woman whose soul was leaving this earth. She deserved no less.
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In memory of Evelyn Grace Andrus, 12/9/12 - 3/23/97
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Lost

The afternoon was gray and getting grayer as I stepped into my skis. The wind was blowing up a gentle roar in the tree-tops, spitting a few tiny snowflakes and bumping at me from first one side and then the other as a hyperactive child might do. I had intended to get out earlier, but one thing and another had kept me indoors until Time screamed “now or never” and shook me loose from my keyboard. I put a piece of beech in the woodstove, slipped my cell-phone into a jacket pocket, decided to leave the weight of the camera behind for a change, and stepped outdoors.

Skiing was easy. A week ago it had taken a strenuous effort to break trail, but following two balmy days, this snow was only about eight inches deep and fairly compressed, allowing me to glide across it rather than high-step. I went up the trail to the small meadow, crossed it, and entered the woods via “the main road.” I was pushing myself, deciding to get the most bang for my cardio buck, when I saw the tracks.

There are several members of the weasel family, the largest one in our neck of the woods being Pekquam, the fisher. Picture a big otter or a huge mink with very dark brown beautiful fur, and a ferocity that makes him the only successful predator of old Unk Wunk, the porcupine.

Pekquam’s paw prints were beautifully clear, and I could easily see which way his three-foot leaps were taking him. These were very fresh tracks, and without a second’s hesitation I veered west off the trail and followed them into the woods.

He led me up hill and down dale through low-lying hemlock woods, circling and back-tracking on a couple of occasions, and although I felt that at any moment I might crest a small rise and see him, the tracks remained empty of feet.

From the beginning I had noted that this isn’t a part of our woods I have spent time in, and as the thrill of the chase began to lessen I realized that none of my surroundings looked in any way familiar. I looked up, but the sky was such a dark gray that it gave no hint of the sun’s location. On a quiet day, you occasionally hear the hum of a truck off to the north on the main road and can take your direction from it, but today the roar of the wind was doing a deft – and deafening – imitation of ocean surf. I could hear nothing else, and aside from being a wild and wonderful soundtrack, it was blowing snow over my ski tracks. It would soon be impossible to follow them back to the woods road. It would also soon be dark.

Bringing the cell phone instead of the camera now seemed like a stroke of brilliance... assuming it might get reception. I imagined the call: “Hi Bob, it’s me. Say, if I don’t greet you at the door tonight wrapped in cellophane and offering wine, you might want to go looking for me in the woods west of ‘Raymond’s Road’.”

No, I wouldn’t call yet. My old phone might only give me one chance before its battery died, and so I’d better save it. Anyway, why cause a commotion when in fact I wasn’t HOPELESSLY lost. Next I considered that the snow was of a good consistency for building a shelter if I had to spend the night outside. I looked around me and marveled that we have so many hemlock trees.

There was comfort in knowing that I was surrounded by a familiar network of woods roads. Going in a straight line in any direction would cause me to intersect with one of them, and from there I could find my way home even on the darkest of nights (which this one was promising to be).

For reasons not known, a person lost in the woods circles. They don’t mean to, but they do, and I was well aware of that. Continuing west would probably be the shortest route, so I struck out in what my best educated guess told me was that direction, trying to go "straight," but ten minutes later there was no road in sight. I climbed to a high spot, hoping to perhaps see some daylight in the distance that would indicate an open area such as a road or maybe the big beaver pond, and from this slight rise I could in fact make out a strip of snow in the distance. I headed for it.

As I approached the white area, I knew I was “found.” It was in fact a road, and to my astonishment, it was the road I had veered off when I began following Pekquam’s tracks in the first place. I re-entered it only about thirty feet from where I had left it an hour earlier - I had made a complete circle!

I resumed my original route, stopping several times to rest as I got closer to home. Pekquam had led me on a merry chase, an adventure in solitude and something few people in this world are fortunate enough to enjoy. I have only one regret: that I never did see the dark, furry rascal who took me there. Well, that and the fact that I’d left my compass back with my camera.
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Note: The animal names used here were taken from a "Glossary of Indian Names" found in William J. Long's book, School of the Woods, Ginn and Company, 1902. They are credited to the Milicete Indians of eastern Canada. Long was my father's hero and mentor, and after perusing his well-worn copy of School of the Woods, I am delighted to discover it on line. (This may take some time to load).

The Importance of a Positive Attitude...

Oh shucks. Here it comes again.

Some days it's just hard to put on a happy face.



Let's talk over our options...


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Hey, I've got an idea! Let's catch snowflakes on our tongues!



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Got one!

See? Winter isn't so bad! And if you click on my picture, you can see the wizard in my eye...

This post is inspired by Carmon at Star's Rest. Go visit her and bring her rain.
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The Haircut (another little episode of life in a small town)

It was 8:10 AM and the Curl & Swirl should have been open ten minutes earlier. That is to say that by now the two sisters who make their living in this tiny clip-joint (formerly liquor store) tucked in the back side of the local mini-mart should have been half finished with the two men waiting. The door was unlocked, so they’d gone in. They just didn’t find anybody else there.

“I’ll give you a hair cut if you give me one,” suggested one of the patrons, but before they finished chuckling about that idea, the girls appeared.

Him: Where the hell ‘ya been?

Hairdresser #1: My car wouldn’t start.

Him: Well where the hell is Jake?

Hairdresser #1: He went to work.

Him: So what the hell’s wrong with the car?

Hairdresser #1: I think it’s the fuel pump. We replaced the fuel filter.

Hairdresser #2: Well does it run once you get it started?

Hairdresser #1: Yeah.

Hairdresser #2: (sarcastically) Well then it obviously can’t be the fuel pump.

Him: Where’d ya get gas?

Hairdresser #1: From Bruce’s.

Him: (Nods. Apparently Bruce is a trusted source.) Does Jake’s truck run?

Hairdresser #1: Yeah.

Him: Okay, so tomorrow tell him you’re gonna take the truck and he can drive your goddam car.

Hair cut, problem solved, he shuffles off to straighten out the rest of the world.

Math

I drive to Burlington buoyed by the wisdom, the well-wishes and the positive energy of my husband and friends, sharing the long road with the usual sparse traffic of pick-up trucks, business travelers and the occasional semi on a long haul or Amish buggy. I note that I’m not as calm as I’d like to be, wonder why that surprises me, and take comfort in the scheduler’s words: 80% of the time these things turn out to be nothing.
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When you get a screening mammogram, the “yearly” thing a woman of my age is supposed to do, you go to the older, original hospital building just down from the UVM campus, give your registration information and then proceed to MAMMOGRAPHY. There you’re escorted to a cubicle where you’re give instructions to take off everything from the waist up, don a hospital gown and proceed to a small waiting room. There are usually a few other women similarly clad sitting there, and there’s the usual friendly camaraderie of female strangers sharing an unpopular duty.

Today my destination was someplace called THE BREAST CLINIC, on campus in the new medical center building. I find it adjacent to ONCOLOGY, am greeted and escorted to a changing cubicle, and then directed to the waiting room. Unlike the familiar MAMMOGRAPHY waiting room, this one is silent. I note the age range of the other women: the youngest is probably in her early thirties; one woman must be approaching seventy-five or eighty. There are seven of us seriously reading last summer’s People or Good Housekeeping. One wise soul has a book.

A pleasant but serious technician calls my name, and we proceed to a room with the familiar tit-squisher machine. Modern technology presents the breast images on a computer screen that you – the patient – can see within seconds of the x-ray. ‘Funny to see that piece of my anatomy flattened into something resembling a half-moon, but there, in what I assume is “the lower inside quadrant” I can see something resembling a small cloud against the darker sky that is apparently normal breast tissue.

Filming concludes, and the technician tells me I will need to have sonography on the left side. I had been told that this would happen if today’s mammography confirmed the suspicion raised by last week’s pictures. By now I have a sinking feeling in my gut, but I smile and thank her and return to the waiting room. New women have replaced three of the previous waiters.

My wait is short, and the next technician is perky. She explains that the doctor may want to come in to observe while she’s doing the sonogram, and I assume this would probably not be an encouraging situation. “Lefty” gets smeared with warm gel and the tech and I make small-talk as she moves the sensor over and around the area in question, ever watching her computer screen and clicking her keyboard. And then she’s finished.

She asks if I’m comfortable and tells me she will return in about five minutes. They’re a surprisingly short five minutes during which I have a closer look at the horse photos on the shelf above her desk and try to make some sense out of the image on her computer monitor. And then she’s back: “It’s a fluid-filled cyst,” she says with a smile, “and absolutely nothing to worry about. You’re back on regular screening mammography. You’re free to go; come back in a year.”
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And with that, my tension and fears melt away and the woman I see in the cubicle mirror looks markedly happier than the one I saw an hour ago. Maybe I should be joyous, but I’m not. There were ten women in the waiting room this morning, "eighty percent of the time these things turn out to be nothing," and even I don’t need a calculator to do the math.
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Image from Breast Friends, whose Antigua webpage says: Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer affecting women worldwide, with there being a 1 in 8 chance throughout a woman’s lifetime that she will be affected. Yet this cancer is 90% curable when caught early, and if caught early 95% of women live more than 5 years following diagnosis.
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Thank you Crabby, Katy, Whim, Karan, Becky, DNR, Robin, Barb, Em, Foam, Carmon, C-Dell and Sling for being "with me" yesterday. I'd like to believe that if each of us is diligent in getting the recommended screenings, even those of us who cry will be shedding unnecessary tears.
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And thank you sweet Bob for the beautiful roses, the shot of Bailey's and the warm hug when I got home. I am one lucky wizard.

Good News/Bad News

I just received this wonderful thought from an old friend, someone who knew me back when I first discovered the camera. In fact, he had a pretty big role in helping me get started in photography. Here's what he wrote:

I chanced upon this quote from Emerson the other day, and I thought it described you (and, by extension, your blog articles) very nicely:

"To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty; and in the same field, it beholds every hour a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again."

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Shine on!

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A wonderful and touching tribute, sweeter still because it arrived as I was hanging up the phone from a call informing me that the mammogram I had last week in Burlington showed "something new." It's probably nothing to worry about, but tomorrow I'll make the 3 1/2 hour drive back to Vermont to find out.

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I hope I don't have to rush my shining on.

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