This and that

It’s a sunny morning, with spring-like temperatures in the dead of winter.  Odd but welcome … that is until the buds are fooled and start to show.

As I grabbed my morning coffee, I was pleased to see my newspaper trumpet new research that confirms the health benefits of a cup of joe.

So I drink up, feeling the antioxidants rise as fast as my metabolism. Go, boys, go!

Some musings and updates on such a fine day:

Having words

Uncle Dick ... word slayer!

In the age of the smart phone and the land of apps, there are plenty of games out there to play.  Many are free.

So on my iPhone is an aircraft-carrier game, Flight Deck, that requires me to line up fast-moving planes in a logical row before they crash into a fiery mess; Angry Birds, the flying-fowl game everybody knows and some now hate; Crash Kart, for road-racing fun; and Zen Bound, my favorite. With Zen Bound, you wrap rope around teak structures while mystical music plays in the background. (Headphones and Indian incense recommended.)

That’s it … except for my new nemesis, Words with Friends.

I first heard about this game last fall from a friend who seems ahead of the curve on what’s popular in the wired world.  But I didn’t have the gumption to give it a try until a few weeks ago … and then I picked on my relatives first.

So about once a day – usually at night, before I turn out the lights – I do battle with my sister, brother-in-law, niece and a few others.

Basically it’s a version of Scrabble; you’re given letters, and you take turns creating words. There are points, of course, with triple- and double-word and -letter scores.

What’s cool about it is that you can be continents away but still play as if you’re face to face at the corner pub.  What’s bad about it is that you have to know, well, words.

I’ve never been much of a crossword or Scrabble player.  And that’s my weakness.

Anyway, I often lose, incredulous that words like “toni” and “zat” and “ozbot” aren’t real.

But I play on.  Good for the noggin, I reckon. 

(“Noggin” … 36 points with a  triple-word score. Not bad.)

Nellie update

Well, it didn’t take long for her to feel at home.  The photo speaks volumes.

How'd this happen?

Not that we’ve decided she’s welcome on the couch.  But we’ve not had the heart to tell her no, honestly.  Unlike with Riley, she doesn’t shed.  Linus has couch privileges, so is it fair to deny the bigger dog the couch if there’s no cleanup to do?

Still, it seems wrong.  Part of the problem is practical … when she’s on the couch, no one else is.  And there’s a fear that, when friends are here seated, she’ll try to squeeze in between like a book in a too-full bookcase.  To us, cute.  To our friends, perhaps white terror.

What is apparent, though, is that despite Nellie’s big-and-getting bigger size, she’s very light on her feet.  When she runs across the back yard, she lopes along like Neil Armstrong, moon-walker.

“Her butt’s filled with helium,” I said to Cindy.

Last night we were watching TV and Cindy was at the south end of the couch. Nellie decided she’d settle into the north end.  Problem was, she was standing at the south end, at Cindy’s left.  So she simply jumped over Cindy.

A cow scaling the moon.

The problem is she’s about five months old now but already twice Linus’s size.  Doing the math, we figure she’s about 38% percent of her final weight.

So while she might remain light on her feet as she ages, the consequences of unfettered freedom – on land or in the air – weigh heavy right now.

Washington, ho!

We’ve decided next month to head to the Northwest again.  For another visit with daughter Meghan and fiancé Eric.

The two sent out their “Save the Date” cards … very cool postcards using old images of the scenery around Bellingham. 

The card sent us was a favorite, of Chuckanut Drive circa the ‘20s.

As noted previously, the wedding site on Mount Baker has been found and the reception site reserved.

Meghan also has made progress with the dress – sorry, can’t show it because it’s a secret. Nor can I reveal the price.  Some things you just don’t dwell on.

So yes, there’s some wedding planning that we’ll do while there.  But I’m hoping for some good walks in the woods as well, with Meghan and Eric as guides.

Like Northern Michigan, the dark green of the Northwest restores the soul. 

Wrote Emerson: "In the woods we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life  –  no disgrace, no calamity, which nature cannot repair."

Agreed, Ralph.  Nothing.  Not even Words with Friends.

Sing, Becky, sing

This blog lost a friend recently.

Cindy’s sister, Becky, used to shoot me occasional emails and Facebook comments about the silliness I sometimes post here. 

She also mentioned to Cindy a compliment that any writer covets … “You know, Cindy, he has a real voice.”

I took that praise seriously, for Becky was a voracious reader and extremely literate. 

Was … because Becky passed away suddenly from a stroke several weeks ago.   Her last note to me was a congrats on my birthday and best wishes regarding the arrival of our new dog Nellie.

“Happy birthday, Doug!  I am really glad you married into the family that ‘had brains once!’  Enjoy your day and your ‘present’ that will arrive next weekend!”

The “brains once” refers to a morning kitchen-table discussion that I’d had with mother-in-law June about different kinds of odd foods we’d eaten.

At one point, June proclaimed proudly: “I had brains once!” 

I shot coffee out my nose.

That was Becky … always appreciative of a good joke.  We shared many over the years. 

The memorial service was held in Springfield, Ill., where Cindy and I first met. 

The Porters were an institution in Springfield … well loved and active in the community.  While Cindy and brother Tom had moved to other parts of the country, Becky kept her roots nearby, in Ashland, where she raised four children.  So the turnout for the service was heavy.

Besides being a mom, one of her favorite past-times was shape-note singing, also called Harp singing, at New Salem State Park.  New Salem was Abe Lincoln’s home as a young man.

Legend has it that Abe and his early love, Ann Rutledge, sang out of a shape-note tunebook at the Rutledge Tavern in New Salem.

The photo's scratchy, but here are the singers, Becky at left, front.

True or not, there’s decent evidence that shape-note singing was common throughout the county in Lincoln’s time.  And so Becky and others would gather occasionally to sing as their forebears did.

Before we even walked through the church door for the service, we could hear the Harpists inside.  Becky’s shape-note friends had gathered to honor her with song.  They sat up front, in the choir area, facing each other in a circle.   They held their oblong tunebooks and sang forcefully for 30 minutes in four-part harmonies, intentionally rough – as rough as the rails that Lincoln used to split – because that’s the nature of shape-note singing.

Retired Springfield College teacher Peter Ellertsen once wrote:

Traditional Harp singing strikes those who hear it as powerful, stark and moving. And loud. Harp singers glory in it. Folksong collector Alan Lomax, who heard a lot of it, once said the "hard, pure voices" of country shape-note singers sounded like "a cross between a steam calliope and a Ukrainian peasant choir." It has the full-throated ornamentation of the Anglo-Celtic tradition, and it has a rough-hewn integrity all its own.

Here's an audio example of shape-note singing ... this one recorded in Alabama in 1979.

During the memorial service, more than one person spoke of Becky’s love of the singing, and how it was identical to her own personality and values:  Honest, forthright, spiritual, strong, with a hard edge born of love and knowledge and, yes, wit.

But as much as Becky loved singing, I think she loved reading more.  One of Cindy’s best memories of Becky growing up was the time Becky read Edgar Allen Poe stories to Cindy.  Poe had a fascination for a lot of us growing up then because of his portrayal of our darker side.

Edgar Allen Poe

I’m sure that’s what captivated Becky, who always appreciated a good thriller … and a chance to scare her little sister.  Interestingly, and not surprisingly, that same appreciation for mystery and intrigue spread to Cindy as well.    

So when Cindy drove to Springfield to see Becky in the hospital, she came equipped with a selection of Poe.  Not that Becky could hear … the doctors said there was no hope of that.  Her brain had essentially stopped. 

But Cindy felt the need, and so she sat by Becky’s bed and read out loud … to return the favor.  And the words floated from her room, down the hallway, so that even the nurses could listen.

“It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain,” Cindy read, the passage  from the Tell-Tale Heart.  “But once conceived, it haunted me day and night ….”

I like to think that somehow, some way, Becky heard Cindy’s story-telling. 

Just as I think she could hear her friends’ forceful voices in church that day.

God’s speed, Becky.  Cindy and I both thank you for being the good Big Sister.

Thank you, too, for your love of the written word.  

And now … sing on, with strength and joy.

When "imagine" isn't enough

"A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature."

- Henry David Thoreau

I can only imagine what it’s like now, this half-acre by the lake that we once called ours.

Glen Lake frozen, though not thoroughly.  That should come this month.

The trees surrounding the lake bare and brown except for the deep greens of the pines and cedars.

Zach at the cottage ... January 2010.

And quiet … so quiet. The ducks and geese on hiatus. Seagulls still fly, of course, but they’re less vocal, rendered stiff by the Michigan cold.  Even the howling coyotes are burrowed deep, seeking added warmth. 

A few winter birds might chirp amid the undergrowth. But they will be muffled by breezes born on big Lake Michigan that dance and skip across the smaller Glen.

These nights, when I awake at 3 or 4 a.m. in my Kansas City bed to the worries of business, I flee to this spot … to seek its solace and comfort.  In my mind I sit on the ground where once sat the cottage.   I lean back on my arms, stretch out my legs.  And I listen … to the breezes, the chirps.  And I take in fully the immense blue sky that is anchored both to the green-peppered hills and to the sheer white of the lake’s ice below.

Only then, it seems, can I find sleep again.

I can only imagine, because we’ve not returned since the cottage was torn down last fall.  We hear that the work was done quickly and expertly.  The neighbors, the Hansons, kindly asked the crews to spare some of the interior ash panels.  I’ll go up to retrieve them soon – to then fashion them into picture frames for the siblings to fill with their favorite lake-time photos.

It’s hard to describe the yearning one has for being by a Northern lake. To see it, smell it … to hear it.  For me, the combination brings a powerful clarity of mind and purpose. 

Scarcity breeds demand, of course.  Sitting high and dry in Kansas invites thoughts of shimmering blue places. So would a life lived year-round by water dampen the fever?  

I think not much.  

Sure, for most of us, no matter where we live, the day-to-day demands of existence separate us from Nature in ways unnatural.  So when work is done, we find ourselves seeking a slice of the outdoors to replenish ourselves.  We flee to porches and decks, backyards and grills, nature trails and parks.

It’s there where we try to regain the balance.

But imagine life on a Michigan lake, especially in the warmer months.  Yep, work continues.  But when work is done, Nature welcomes you not with a slice but a full banquet.  Ducks, geese, coyote, but also beaver, the wily raccoon, loons, many deer, even the feared cougar. 

Lake Michigan below a frozen dune.

And the winds … breezes some days, but on others, a forceful gale that churns the blue waters into frothy green rows, the waves crashing ashore like small cracks of thunder.      

And, at dusk, a celestial beauty that forces you to reconsider your time spent at work, and whether its purpose measures up to the balancing force you just witnessed.

Thoreau reveled in nature and defined his purpose accordingly, most notably with his famous stay at Walden Pond.

“Nature is full of genius,” he wrote, “full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.”

If that’s true – and I believe it is – then it explains the ache we seem to feel for Up North, where native brilliance is so abundant, the call of the wild so incredibly strong.

And so we ponder ….

Perhaps “imagine” isn’t enough.