Erica Johnson, our host at http://www.ethicalela.com for the first day of our five-day October Open Write, wrote one of my favorite forms of poetry – found poetry – in an art museum using the artists’ statements about the works! You can read her poem here – it surely captures the essence of departure by someone, leaving us to feel the loneliness that comes, almost missing them before they get fully out of sight. I feel I have been on an art exhibit tour today. Erica invited us to find poems in artists’ statements about paintings as well. I have a framed print of a painting that my parents gave me for Christmas in 1984, after I fell in love with the landscapes of the English countryside painted by John Constable following a visit to the National Gallery in London. My favorite Constable work: The White Horse, kept at the Frick Collection in New York. Here is the art link: https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.1146.html
The White Horse
six-foot wide space a new technique spanning canvas no longer overshadowed
The White Horse crosses the River Stour to the other side on a barge
full-size sketch with broad brushstrokes thus crossing a new career threshold
The White Horse painting appears at 2:37 and at 2:49 in the video
Today we are heading off to F. D. Roosevelt State Park in Pine Mountain, Georgia for the Southeastern States Little Guy Meet Up. This is a group of people who all love camping in our Little Guy campers. We’ll gather at various campsites as hosts invite us to bring a log of firewood and our camp chairs to sit around the fire pit and share stories of our camping experiences. Some travelers will take two days to make the journey, but we are blessed that the event is happening at one of our favorite campgrounds that is just under one hour from our home.
We bought our 2022 Little Guy Max Rough Rider by Extreme Outdoors in November 2022 from a couple who had planned to travel and camp throughout the United States but had a change of life circumstances that thwarted their plans. The previous owners had done all of the initial fine-tuning needed when anyone buys a new camper, and had even put together a three-inch binder owner’s manual with plastic sleeves, receipts, and warranty paperwork. They’d changed out the uncomfortable mattress for a Bamboo mattress and added a Froli bedding system, for starters. They’d also added a bike rack and put extra sealant on the side seams. They took immaculate care of the camper, and we felt fortunate to have had an actual engineer own it before we bought it from them.
“Join the club,” the previous owners urged, “there’s a whole following of LGM owners out there, and you can learn a lot from the Facebook groups.”
So we did. We joined all the groups and learned about Randi’s Adventures on YouTube, where she gives weekly tips on camping in this minimalist fashion that we have come to love. She hosts a yearly gathering on Lake Michigan, and we hope to get to that one someday, too.
But for now, we’re joining the meet-ups closer to home. Today, my husband and our dogs will make the trip to get set up, and I’ll join them after this evening’s National Day on Writing event on our town square. I’ll share pictures and stories from the meet up next week, after our October 5-day Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com that begins tomorrow.
Cheers for cozy nights with blankets and clear, starry skies! We can’t wait to share our adventures with you next week!
Last night’s book discussion in Dr. Sarah Donovan’s Healing Kind Book Group was Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World by Maryanne Wolf. Whether you are a teacher, a parent, a reader, or any combination of those roles, you would likely find strong points of identifying with the author – perhaps both agreeing and disagreeing with ideas even in the same chapter!
Each month, I enjoy the lively discussions of this group. We gather and bring a passage to discuss on our Zoom call. Denise Krebs of California led us this evening. Mo Daley of Illinois liked the quiet eye – the observant part of the reader that takes in details, and Sarah Donovan of Oklahoma liked the idea of cognitive patience – – attending with consciousness and attention to a rhythm that allows insights to unfold. What resonated most with me were the fostering of empathy and refining of critical thinking skills as readers use their eyes to take in whole new worlds through words. Every few pages, I’d marked a passage and stuck a Post-It bookmark tab on the side of the page to flag my favorite parts.
So much of our brain is active when we are reading – it’s performing miracles we don’t even realize are happening, lighting up the night sky during a thunderstorm with all of its lightning sparks and flashes.
To readers everywhere: pick up a book and savor the magic of reading. You are blessed to be able to make sense of print, to consider and contemplate it, to meditate on the ideas and to add layers of new perspective, and yes – even to revise your position because a book presents a case you may have never considered.
Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers for hosting Slice of Life for writers!
It’s that time of year – not just the time of buying hot chocolate bombs and pumpkin spice bagels and cream cheese and coffee creamer and basically pumpkin spice everything. Not just the time of lighting fragrant fall candles and making caramel apples and buying cinnamon brooms to prop on the hearth. Not just the time of putting leaf garland and mums all around the mailbox, and not just the time of getting down the sweatshirts and cabin socks to sit around the fire pit getting lost in the aroma of burning wood.
There’s so much more to that time of year.
It’s Hallmark movie time.
Last week alone, I watched Pumpkin Everything, Pumpkin Pie Wars, Autumn in the City, Under the Autumn Moon, and Home for Harvest. It was my fall break, and I succumbed to the temptation to multitask by watching movies while cleaning. It was the perfect marriage – I was productive enough not to feel guilty, but indulgent enough not to feel overworked.
I tolerate the teasing from my husband, who rolls his eyes every time I push play on a different movie. He finds it amusing that I enjoy watching the same basic plot with different settings and characters from fall to winter. I find it amusing that while he teases me about it, he never fails to be drawn into the story and ends up watching most of the movie with me. And this year, I’ve even started adding secret incentives that he hasn’t quite figured out yet – – like setting out caramel popcorn on the coffee table so he’ll start watching more from the beginning.
I’m pretty sure Hallmark movies make me a nicer person. I go out into the world wanting to smile more and seek joy lurking around the corners of my town square. I can hear movie music in my head as I walk over to the coffee shop and the bookstore from work, and I start admiring all the scarves and boots I see people wearing. I smell balsam and cedar and feel all the excitement of the season ahead.
If you haven’t marked your calendar yet, here’s the 2023 Hallmark Movie Countdown Calendar. The countdown begins this weekend – October 20th, which is also the National Day on Writing. You can download the calendar and also the movie checklist app, and check out the details of each of the new movies.
I’m trying to decide which will be my favorite. I think I’m looking most forward to A Biltmore Christmas. What do you predict will be your favorite, and what are your best movie watching traditions?
I return to work this morning after a quiet, uneventful fall break. We’re having an emergency drill today, so the inner peace will not fade throughout the work week but instead will be pumped out as adrenaline and action and what ifs replace the echoes of birdsong and back porch swing chains. My brother and his girlfriend came to visit, we arranged some furniture to make room for a few new pieces from my dad’s house, and we sat outdoors by the fire pit, roasting marshmallows and talking into the night.
As I was taking the dogs out for their final evening walk one night, I did what I always do – – I shone the flashlight all along the edge of the woods to see if there were any eyes shining back at me. Out here, we have everything from coyotes to field mice, and I’ve learned that I can never be too careful.
Sure enough, there was a tiny pair of eyes looking at me, about fox height. It had a black, bushy tail with a triangular-shaped face. We had a stare-down for a full minute at least before the animal disappeared around the tree, its tail curving along the trunk as it slunk off into the forest.
I walked the dogs, thinking it was gone, and mentioned it to my brother when I came back inside.
“Really?” he asked. “Let’s go check it out.”
I grabbed the light and off we went, back to the tree, where the two eyes sat just a foot behind it, shining back at us. The brush was thick, so we stared at it for a few minutes trying to figure out what it was before it hopped off through the dense thicket and went on its way.
I Googled and concluded that it may have been an oddly-shaped fox squirrel. We’ve had a black squirrel for a long time on this farm, and perhaps this was the great great grandson or something.
The shape of that head, though, perplexed me. I kept returning to the idea that it wasn’t a squirrel when it hit me: it might have been a skunk.
Just like my brother and me to chase a stripeless skunk into the woods, but I think that’s what happened.
If I’d had any doubt, my husband took the dogs out early yesterday and returned to bed, noting, “There’s a slight skunk smell out there.” I hadn’t told him that I had toyed with the idea that this had been a skunk.
Now I’m sure of it.
Skunks, dogs, birds, fireside pits, porch swings, and Hallmark movies all week- – and today I leave you with photos of peace taken last week. Happy Monday!
Leaves are turning, becoming more colorful by the day in my county.A pair of finches on the roofA pair of cardinals in the treeA tufted titmouse scratching an itchtufted titmousepine warblerpine warblerA tufted titmouse takes flightI’m photographing this tree as it loses its leaves, every few days, so I can see the change shot by shot
I felt tears welling as I watched the last of my little hummingbirds drinking nectar from their feeder they’d frequented all summer. I knew a couple of weeks ago that the stragglers were stopping by on their way south, but there was one little hummer that would always come and thank me for everything.
That little hummer needed me, and I needed her. She would drink, then hover over the coffee table right near my knee, looking me square in the face, not seeming to be as curious as she seemed to be thankful. I’d watch in complete amazement, studying each tiny part, wondering about what all she would see on her journey ahead, and where she would spend Christmas. In a world where so much is taken for granted, it brings great hope and purpose to feel the gratitude of a tiny green hummingbird that takes the time to acknowledge that it knows you care about it.
I got attached to my summer birds.
There is nothing as lovely as the song of the Wood Thrush, and nothing as humorous as the Eastern Wood Pewee calling its own name as if to repeatedly announce its presence like a high school student not wanting to be marked for skipping class. The Eastern Phoebe has several calls, but the one that makes me laugh is the hiccup that sounds a bit like she’s been out drinking all night and can’t fly quite straight. And then there’s the White-Breasted Nuthatch, who sounds like an evil circus clown laughing at the state of the world.
We have three resident Great Horned Owls who sit on different sides of the farm, as I imagine them having coffee and sharing the secrets of the night before dozing off to sleep the day away. They call back and forth right before dawn, and each has a different voice even though they have the same call. For a few weeks, they’d swoop in at dusk and put on a little show for us. We knew their favorite branches, and we witnessed the silent flight made possible by their fuzzy feathers.
For now, the warbler colony has my attention, and they’ll be wintering right here with us on the Funny Farm. We almost took down our abandoned chicken coop when the hawk killed off our remaining birds, but we left it up and now it is filled with shrubs and weeds. I had no idea until a long observation last week that it is also filled with warblers who have made it home. We have Pine, Palm, Cape May,Tennessee, Yellow-Rumped, Prothonotary, Hooded, and Nashville Warblers that have identified themselves through their calls. I’ve been taking the Zoom lens out to try to get photos of each species, but these are fast little birds that prefer to cloak themselves in the leaves.
This will be what I will do with my final day of fall break – – I’ll spend it selfishly, watching and waiting, noting details about the birds in my own back yard, listening for their voices and watching these tiny warblers flit from branch to branch like little Olympic gymnasts performing on parallel bars. And I’ll wish I had wee gold medals to award each of them for their acrobatic entertainment!
I’m participating in October Big Day today, and my goal is to log 35 bird species. Please check back this afternoon and see how the day went!
You can participate in this event, too. Here is more information. Create an eBird account and download Merlin ID to help you identify the birds you count. Report those species on eBird to help scientists track the migratory patterns of birds as they journey south for the winter!
Here is my species list:
Update: I logged 38 species today - I have included my list above, with several appearances by my colony of warblers - including the rare Nashville Warbler!
If you participated in October Big Day, I’d love to know what you saw or heard!
Northern Cardinal One of the warblers – a Palm Warbler or Tennessee Warbler most likely
opportunities not taken are
memories not lived ~ tomorrow
doesn’t come for all of us
dreams and plans are best lived
today, my mother
would say if she
were here to
remind
me
so
take the
trip, buy the
shoes, live the dream
create moments that
matter…work to live, spark
the flames and savor this life
because tomorrow is a hope
what-coulda-beens are buried daily
Are you looking for a new healthy hobby that reduces stress and gets you in tune with nature? Come join bird enthusiasts across the globe as we celebrate fall migration and help scientists track migratory species patterns!
If you choose, you can take the free eBird essentials course to see how eBird works, and learn how you can explore birding hot spots and track sightings across the world.
Next, download MerlinID, the birding app that helps you listen for birds so you’ll know what to look for when birding. With a touch of the Sound ID button, you will discover – like magic – all of the species you’re hearing. You’ll learn bird calls and see which birds are rare or infrequent in the area where you live.
Create a folder on your iPhone to hold both of these apps, and label it Birding. On October Big Day this coming Saturday, October 14th, you’ll want to get outdoors and report your observations. I like to get outdoors shortly before 8 a.m. Open eBird and tap Submit on the bottom left corner, and then click on Start Checklist. For each bird you see, tally the numbers in real time. Open MerlinID to help you listen for birds. When you are finished, you will click your location and let eBird know that you have reviewed your list before you submit your checklist. From there, you can go back and add photos or sound clips to your observation.
Please come back and comment on the page to let me know if you joined forces to help count migrating birds! I’m eager to see how you enjoy being a part of October Big Day!
Common Threads 