Bee Therapy

My basil patch in full flower

I have been writing a lot (A. Lot.) lately about focusing on small things to center myself. There is a lot of noise and overload on many fronts, and some large family matters (my side of the family) that have really hit hard and, in my case, triggered my PTSD. Warren has been giving me support and comfort; we earlier this month passed our 17th wedding anniversary and I am daily aware of how much light and joy and love and strength he gives me. 

Even without a wedding anniversary, I am so grateful for what he has given me; he lifts me up. All the same, and this is one of those times, I sometimes stumble and fall back into those outside matters. So I think I caught him a little off guard yesterday when I said that I had thought of maybe going back to therapy.

After saying that out loud (as things sound different when spoken outside of our head), I thought back to the things I had learned 22+ years ago with my brilliant therapist. Can I do this, "this" being work through where I am, using those lessons? 

Later that afternoon, as I turned over the therapy question in my mind, I said to Warren, "I have an idea of how to move forward." 

Warren looked at me. "And...?"

"Bee therapy."

Bee therapy? Yes, bee therapy. 

I always let the basil patch go to flower in the fall and this year is no exception. As we move deeper into the fall, the bees take over the basil flowers.

So after announcing that, I grabbed a garden stool (thank you, Amanda!) and set it in the garden in the recently cleared lettuce patch, which is right next to the basil patch. I then sat down and waited.

But not for long. 

A Sunday bee

At this time of year, in the basil patch, bees fly in, bees fly out. Bees burrow their heads deep in the basil flowers then pull out, go sideways or up or down to another. Repeat.

I repeated therapy again today, albeit early afternoon when the sun was on the patch and it was considerably warmer. Yesterday in the cooling air there were perhaps a half-dozen bees. Today, in the full sun, I counted over two dozen. 

A bee today

Bee therapy.

As I watch them and their singular focus, my mind slows down. My body relaxes. Bit by bit, I find myself letting go of the emotional bundle I am holding.

I hope we are in for a very long autumn. As I mentioned in my last post, we just had our first frost. It was a light one, but frost is frost. I know at some point the bees will disappear for the year. Some of them are already showing their lifespan is growing short.  I even petted a bee yesterday. It had landed on a stem before I got out there and was clearly too tired and worn to lift off. I touched it very gently and it wiggled, slowly, one antenna, but did not move.  

Bee therapy. Who knew? 

"I'm ready for my closeup..."

Taking Stock

The zinnias are still in bloom; this was earlier this summer

Last October 1st, I wrote about inventorying the food in our freezer, thinking, smugly, "well, of course I know what we have in our freezer. Sheesh." And, as I confessed in that post, I clearly had no idea of what was in our freezer.

As September wore down and I started looking ahead to the coming winter, I thought maybe I should take a look in our downstairs freezer and see where we stood. It was only by pure serendipity that I came so close in time to the 2024 inventory (which was, admittedly, spurred in no small part as a result of emptying out my father's house when he moved in Assisted Living  and I came to see just how much STUFF he had in the house). So I blithely went down to the basement freezer and started moving, reorganizing, and counting up what it held. And, no surprise, I was just as stunned this year as I was last year. 

I dictated into my Notes on my phone and even a few weeks later, my discoveries crack me up:

Freezer notes

Other than 6 quart bags of historic apples, no apples.

7 quart bags of sliced onions.

Two bags of frozen turkey for justice bus.

Eight bags of hamburger buns for justice bus.

10 quarts of corn kernels; two additional bags of what looks to be corn kernels, frozen and smaller quantity probably for corn bacon quiche.

22 quart bags of zucchini and squash. Wow!! Far more than I hoped for!

6 quart bags of chopped sweet peppers, plus a gallon bag holding five individual small baggies of chopped sweet peppers.

11 Packages of chicken thighs, two each. Three packages of sliced turkey for sandwiches.

3 quart containers of already made navy bean soup. 

In frozen quartz containers: black bean soup, turkey/vegetable stock with note great for dumplings, lentil/onion soup, chicken stew (that would be from Boysel’s) chicken stew (small container, same source) 2 quart containers of meat stock/broth: maybe chicken?. Plus another quart of turkey broth in a quart container.

One pack of boneless chops.

Stopped inventorying all the ham slices packages, because arm started bleeding and I need to stop! [Note: I have fragile skin. A prior skin tear opened up while I was moving packages and containers around. All is well.]

But certainly far more than I did hope and feeling much more optimistic about getting through the winter for, truly, pretty cheaply while eating well. And we are still looking at local harvest: I have a lot of peppers in the garden, apples are coming into season. With luck, I can buy a lot of markdowns those at Kroger so the pies I make for Jaime and everyone else won't break us. [End of notes]

And since that inventory, we indeed have added apples (marked down, of course), 10 pounds of butter (a stunning sale that came out to $2.85/pound after applying a coupon to the sale price), homemade chicken broth, and more chicken thighs. We have FAR more zucchini stashed away than I had dreamed, which pleases me to no end. So I am not worried about what the fall and winter hold for us. Taking (some) stock of our food was productive and gives us both an idea of where we are. (And following up on the freezer, I did a partial inventorying of our pantry of foods: dried beans, rices, cereal, and so on. All is pretty solid there too.)

Taking stock of our freezer made me think about myself and about taking stock of where I am. As I have noted, the last several months have been overloaded, not always in bad ways, mind you, but overly full. At times, I feel as if Warren (who is also very busy given his business, his playing, and his new teaching duties) and I see each other in quick passings, and both of us are making an effort to find time each day to shut out everything else and just connect. 

As to the issues and demands personal to my time, I am still sifting through them. I even made a very, very rough "diagram" with categories such as "HAVE TO," "Do B/C Important," "SHOULD/NEED," and "Important/WANT TO." There are some items I cannot change, primarily that I am the sole adult child responsible for my father (HAVE TO). He is thriving in Assisted Living, which is great and a huge relief for all of us. But I am the one running the errands, handling his needs, and while I do not resent any of it, it can be exhausting. I am still recovering from the unexpected June hospitalization, doing well, but watching my health issues (SHOULD/NEED) and having to accept that the likelihood of my ever regaining my pre-hospitalization strength and energy is slim to none. (Probably none.) I am walking regularly, albeit not at my pre-hospitalization speeds (again, gone) and that is a plus. You get the idea.

I even noted I wanted to write more, bake more, do more photography, spend more time with Warren (Important/WANT TO). I even wrote "Travel??????????" 

In my last post, written as Yom Kippur came to an end, I wrote about how to move into the New Year with my putting more focus on repairing the broken threads of the world: "world" being this community and pieces of my life that I could do better at threading together. And maybe that's where I am in taking stock. 

We had our first light frost of the season last night. Warren and I covered the tomatoes, the peppers, and the deck planters with sheets. I am glad we did; there are still vegetables to ripen. There are still flowers to sit outside and marvel at. There is still time to watch the bees mine the flowers, the butterflies dance, and the small birds fly in and our of the garden. 

Small moments, little bits. All precious. 

A Small Moment

Headed for the Justice Bus

Small interactions. Sometimes that is all it takes.

I dictated this into Notes on my phone (one app I do use sometimes) this morning and thought I'd send it out into the world tonight.

I was at the Law Library early this morning because it was our monthly Justice Bus (a family law Clinic) and Judy, our librarian, had to go to the dentist. I wanted to be there to make sure we were ready for clients and our volunteer attorneys in another hour.  While I was waiting and walking around, the employee who cleans the building came through and I offered her a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie that I had baked last night to go with our hot sandwiches.

She was delighted. She took the cookie, did her work in the library, and started to leave. I was just walking into the main library lobby when she turned, came back, and asked me if she could ask me a question.

I told her I didn’t know if I could answer it, but I would do my best. Her question turned out to be one I could answer. A close friend had just lost her husband and the woman asked me about local probate attorneys. 

I lit up. Probate! We have a Probate Help Desk in this county, run through Andrews House and funded by our Probate Court. I told her how to reach the program (call Andrews House) and that the Probate Help Desk would allow her friend to get a free one-hour consultation by a vetted probate attorney. That consultation would give the friend information to make some decisions, including whether she needed an attorney. I wrote down the phone number for Andrews House and handed it over,  As she left, she thanked me. Her face was lit up with how she could help her friend.

After she left, I thought: this is what community is about. This is what mending the broken world, Tikkun olam, is all about. This is what we do here at the local level to help our community, regardless of faith, politics, income, race, gender identification, or primary language, to help our community.

Yom Kippur is ending here in Ohio in about, oh, guessing by looking our my west study window, about 30 minutes. That brings to a close the High Holy Days, during which Jews often focus on how they can be better going forward into the New Year. I did not observe Yom Kippur in more traditional ways (and I am exempt from fasting because of my health), but this felt to me like a superb way to bring the High Holy Days to a close.

It was a great start to my day.

After Three

The 3rd quarter of the year ends today and, knowing that we are not buying groceries until later this week, I am running the numbers on what we spent and thinking ahead to the final three months of the year. After I posted our 2nd quarter numbers back in early July, I noted that I was hoping to hold to $200/month, but wasn't sure we would be able, given the economy. 

It is always nice to be surprised. Positively, I mean.

For the months of July, August, and September, we spent a total of $595.18, which comes to an average of $198.39 a month. Of that amount, only $18.92 was spent on household items such as aluminum foil. The rest was all food. All. Food. 

[NOTE: The main reason our household expenses is so low is that we pay nothing (as in $0.00) or next to nothing for dish soap and laundry detergent by using cash "rewards" I get from CVS. My father's meds are filled there, credited to my Rewards account, so I get those household items when CVS runs a sale.]

In September, we did two "replenish the pantry" shoppings, one at Aldi and one at our local Walmart. I had comparison-shopped online first, and so had a specific list of items that Walmart had lower prices on than Aldi, anywhere from 10 cents or more (up to about 20 cents). Warren and I compared impressions afterwards. We agreed that Walmart is more stressful, packing is way harder using our own bags, and there was less selection; our local WM is small and does not have a full-fledged grocery store. I think, looking ahead to October, we will do our larger stock up shopping at Aldi: better selection on many items. Not to say I won't check prices, but for what we are likely to be buying this month, it will be Aldi with some fill-ins from Kroger (a butter sale this weekend!) and Walmart.

For 2025, with 9 months behind us, our average monthly grocery spending comes to $195.58. If we can hold our monthly spending to about $200.00/month through year's end, we will come in for 2025 at an overall $200/month average. Given these times, I will gladly take it. 

I recently did a freezer inventory to see where we stand for the winter. I will be sharing that in another post, but let me just say that it was encouraging. Especially looking at that $200/month goal.

Onward! 

Apples

Coming in the next five years

We recently made a rocket trip to Rochester, Minnesota, for a routine check-in with my specialist there. Mayo Clinic is in the early years of a five BILLION dollar expansion, with targeted completion in 2030, and when it is finished, my beloved Mayo will look even more like the Emerald City of Oz. 

Despite the rush of the trip (it was hemmed in by Warren's classes, medical tests here, rehearsals, and more), we nonetheless fit in a stop that I have dreamed about for years.

Years. 

Decorah, Iowa is about 72 miles south of Rochester, Minnesota on US 52. Decorah is a small community (about 8000) with a private college in the town. We weren't there for the college. No, we were there to stop at and explore Seed Savers Exchange, a non-profit organization that, per its website, is "the nation’s largest nongovernmental seed bank of its kind (some 20,000 varieties) at Heritage Farm" (which is where we were). 

I was not disappointed.

The Exchange encompasses about 890 acres, some of it in pasture, some of it in orchards, some of it in experimental gardens (experimental in that they are testing the viability of old, old (literally or figuratively) seeds). 

Okay, I splurged at the Visitors Center. (Yes, I know: "splurge" is a word I never use.) Some seeds for us, some seeds for friends, a Seed Savers T-shirt, and an etched small gourd ornament for our Christmas tree. (The ornament, unfortunately, was lost somewhere between Rochester and our home.) We wandered through some of the experimental gardens; these zinnias were part of that:

And then we went to the Historic Orchard.

Oh my. 

At the Historic Orchard (one of two orchards on the property), the apples date back into the 1800s. Visitors are allowed to pick up to five gallons of apples for free. We were the only visitors in the orchard, and Warren and I wandered through, both gaping at the assortments and picking various ones to carry back with us to Ohio. You would come across a tree maybe only five feet tall, bent over with apples, and then turn to see a much taller one of a different variety.

One of the smaller trees; I could pick from its very top.

In the end, we picked a tote bag full and put it in the car to carry them home:

Our haul! 

The next day at Mayo, we shared a meal with dear friends who drove down from Minneapolis to spend a few hours with us. While we laughed and talked in the Eisenberg Cafeteria (truly the best food in downtown Rochester, and there is great food in Rochester), a woman came up to our table. We had been talking politics, and I thought maybe we were too loud and she wanted to comment.

Not at all. She pointed to my Seed Savers t-shirt and asked me if I had been there. 

I beamed. "Yes! We were just there yesterday! It's amazing!" 

She asked more questions: How far away is it? Was it easy to get to from Rochester?

With every answer, the smile on her face grew wider.

She had to be in Rochester for the next two months for treatment. Before that started, while she could still get out and about, she wanted to go to Seed Savers Exchange.

She then posed her own question.

"Do you know they partner with Svalbard?" 

I nodded; yes, I knew that.

"I was at Svalbard this summer," she added.

Now it was my time to ask questions. Svalbard! What took her to Svalbard? Was she visiting? Was this a tourist trip? 

No, she had worked there this summer. We all stared at her. She smiled and added, "I only work above 61 degrees or below 61 degrees." 

While we puzzled out that answer, she laughed and explained: "I'm a polar scientist."

Only at Mayo can you be eating lunch in the hospital cafeteria and have a polar scientist come up to to you and start chatting. I hope she made it to Decorah.

We drove 11 hours the next day, Tuesday, to get back to Delaware, and we made it in good spirits. After an evening of only necessary tasks and a morning of catching up (the laundry, the mail, checking in with my dad), I turned my attention Wednesday afternoon to the historic apples.

Apples.

Lots of apples. 

A sink full of apples

Apples with textures and colors and tastes that I have never seen, let alone held, peeled, and tasted. These apples predate the "modern" varieties of the 1900s, let about those apples of the current century. Some were the size of a child's fist. Some had green flesh beneath the peel. Some had orangish flesh. Some were truly snowy white. 

Nearing the end of the apples

It was exhausting. It was amazing. 

The long view

The kitchen was full of the smell of apples. My fingertips were stained a light orange/red from peeling so many apples. After it was all over, I had six quarts of peeled and sliced apples, labeled "Ancients," in bags in the freezer. 

I penned this out last night and am typing it in this afternoon. While I wrote, Warren was an hour away in Mansfield as the Mansfield Symphony opened its 105th season. (Warren has played with it for 45 years of that 105-long year run!) I no longer go with him on performance day, as the afternoon rehearsal and evening concert make for a 11+ hour day, beyond my capacity, but I went up with him for the Friday night rehearsal. Given our week of travel and appointments and labs and scans and family matters, let alone the apples, even "just" going up for the rehearsal was about the limit of my energy, but I did it with love and delight.

And, by golly, we have apples. I swear there is still a faint tinge of apples in the air of our home. 

And that, my friends, is a gift. 

Notes on Small Things

More time for this?

When our neighbors Mark and Mary go out of town, I feed and check on their cat, Sammie. Mary and I were talking this afternoon and, as they are going out of town later this month and then again in November, I wanted to get those dates on my calendar.

I still use a paper calendar. Two, actually: a large one that I keep on the kitchen table, and a small one (a very small one) that I carry with me. Our events and activities and appointments are color-coded: Warren sky blue, me pink, and joint appointments/events a mild green. I make sure that what goes on one calendar goes on the other.

Mary goggled at my calendar. She asked the obvious: "Why don't you keep your calendar on your phone?" 

"Because I don't want to be tethered to it to any greater degree than I am already."

She laughed, then gaped when I opened my calendar to this month and she saw pink after pink after pink.

"I want less pink on my calendar," I announced. 

Mary got me immediately.

These have been hard, overloaded days—yet, still, whatever. Medical appointments have taken a chunk of days with more to come through next week. So has taking care of things for my dad. like picking up and delivering prescriptions or toothpaste or...yeah. I don't note Dad-types of things on the calendars unless they are an outside appointment. If I did, because I have started using orange for him, my calendar would be a patchwork of orange and pink. Not good.

I am picking up some online continuing legal education credits this month; those are on there. Not on the calendar but a constant: housework, our own local errands, the library.

You get the picture.

As we ate supper out on our deck tonight, I told Warren I was not unhappy, but I am worn out. (Add to that exhaustion our both getting our 25-26 Covid and our Fall 2025 flu vaccines yesterday.)

In short, t.i.r.e.d.

"And I am not making time for things I want to do, like write or take pictures," I said. "Look at that bee in the petunias. I mean that kind of thing." 

Warren came up with a practical observation, as he often does. Had I taken care of the things I absolutely had to get done today? Yes? Then let's get the dishes done (he washes, I dry), and then go write. Or read. Or...you get the idea. 

I just penned these lines out while sitting in our living room, then came upstairs to type them in. Absolutely it feels good.

My friend Katrina recently wrote that she noticed my blog has been focusing on small things, and the comfort that seems to bring me. She encouraged me to continue to keep that focus, as it would help me to get through some of everything going on.

As I finish these lines, I can hear the crickets through the open window and even catch a katydid or two piping up. 

And that is enough for now. 

Skyward

Photo by Samuele Bertoli on Unsplash

Yesterday started very early. I had a 7 a.m. appointment in Columbus with my oncologist, which meant getting up at 5:30 to be on the road by 6:15.  I dressed and headed downstairs to the kitchen. Waiting for Warren to come down, I stepped out on our back deck to see how much the temperature had dropped overnight. It was still dark with no hint of sunrise, so I looked up to see if there were any stars visible.

There were stars and there was Orion, hanging in the northeast sky, brilliantly lit. It was my first fall sighting of it.

Orion is my favorite constellation. Robert Frost put Orion in his poem "The Star-splitter," which has been a longtime treasured poem in my mental poetry collection: "You know Orion always comes up sideways..." Orion is one of the very few constellations I can readily identify, which is certainly a part of why it is my favorite. And way back in my misty past, I first saw and had someone identify Orion in a brilliantly dark Wisconsin night sky, seeing it from the outside walk surrounding the telescope dome at Yerkes Observatory. That first view of Orion, of knowing what I was looking at, has stuck with me.

I called Warren outside to see Orion and we both marveled at the sky. Then we went on with our morning.

The time came for Warren to head to class, I walked outside with him to give him a kiss and wave goodbye; both are important to us. When I turned to go back into the house, I noticed a moth resting on the lintel between the storm door and the house door. It must have fluttered on it when we stepped out. I opened the storm door wider: "Go on, little moth. You don't need to be in our house." 

It was then that I noticed that one of the moth's wings was badly damaged, almost as if something had bit a chunk out of it. 

Oh. I figured I would have to pick it up and set it on a bush.

The moth had other ideas. When I bent closer, it fluttered up off the lintel and flew into the front yard, heading towards one of the flower beds. True, it flew in a jagged, erratic fashion, but fly it did. 

That moth made an impression on me. "That's me," I thought. Or rather, I hoped that was me: yes, damaged but still able to move forward. Maybe jagged and erratic at times, but still going.

Orion in the morning and a moth giving me a lesson in flying midday. And all I had to do was look up.

This Year's Gardens: Chapter 10

Zinnia

Blogger friend Sam, who blogs at Sam Squared, recently had a post titled "End of Summer Juggle." I was so tired that when I saw the title, I read it as "End of Summer Jungle," and laughed at myself for mixing my garden thoughts with her summer thoughts.

Our Kitchen Garden IS a jungle. Between the cherry tomatoes gone wild, the cosmos gone wild, the agastache gone wild, and the zinnias gone wild, it is a thicket of stems and branches and bees and butterflies and even an occasional hummingbird. Earlier this week, I waded (the only verb that fits) into the thick of it, garden snips in hand, and cut a lot of tomato stems and branches off. Remember that scene in the movie Hook where one of the Lost Boys keep smoothing out the wrinkles on Peter Pan's face (played brilliantly by the late, great Robin Williams) and then announces, "Oh, there you are, Peter!" That's how I felt after some ten minutes: "Oh, there you are, garden!"

Late yesterday afternoon, Warren was in the dogleg of our backyard, where he had built a large storage shed for his business and for yard equipment like the tiller and mowers. As he and we continue to move into the next phase of our lives, he has been working in the shed to rearrange, cull through, and move various tools and materials. I came out to keep him company and sat there for some time, then announced I was getting my work gloves and be back. Five minutes later, I was taking apart the fence surrounding the Hej Garden. I realized several weeks ago that the time for me to operate this second garden, even though it is "right there," has come and gone. So slowly I unwound the fence and pulled up the support stakes.

Dave, whose yard contains that garden, came out and chatted a few minutes. I told him this was the last year I was gardening here; that Warren would till it later this fall and we'd seed it, but our gardening days were over. He nodded; they had gardened there the first year or two after they bought the house, but, as Dave noted, laughing, "with all of our activities, gardening, though enjoyable, was low on the priority list."

The site formerly known as the Hej Garden. 

So the Hej Garden is down and done. As a final fitting note, just know that the fat, happy groundhog who lives under a large brush pile on Adam and Maura's property just feet away from the north end of the Hej Garden breached the garden fence and ate BOTH of the remaining two red cabbages before I could cut them and make more slaw. 

The fencing that did not stop the groundhog

Even though I have been gardening for years, every year I learn new things about spacing and grouping, and this year was no exception. I am already making notes (both mental and actual) about next year's gardens, both vegetable and flower. The biggest change coming to the Kitchen Garden will be moving the agastache, which has flourished there, to the flower bed down near the pine trees, which we plan on expanding (all perennials). We love the agastache, but it takes up more room each year. Along with moving it out, I will not be sowing the kitchen garden with cosmos, but instead will sow the small bed immediately behind the house. Cosmos are beautiful and bright, but I want the room they take up. And, in a surprise to myself, it turns out that I love zinnias and will seed a row of them along the very back of the kitchen garden, against the outside garage wall. The ones I sowed this year were in a packet sent to my father from the Alzheimer's Association and the results were tall and colorful and made me smile.

As for next year's planting in the Kitchen Garden, I learned that I had been stunting the peppers' growth by having them too crowded and, wait for it, too shaded by the tomatoes all these years. This year, the peppers got the south side of the garden, and except for the two unfortunates closest to the cosmos/tomato jungle, the peppers have been having a pepper party!

Some of the peppers, ready for their closeup 

There should be weeks yet of tomatoes and peppers. The basil is growing beautifully still and while I am leaning towards letting it flower for the bees, I may do one more small harvest to dry the leaves for seasoning. My neighbor Mary was taken aback when I told her my plans to let it flower. "But it gets bitter then!" "But the bees love it," I replied, and I told her how I liked to think of the bees wintering over with their hive smelling like basil. Mary smiled; so that's why I was thinking that! 

Summer is winding down. But the bees and the flowers and the Kitchen Garden are still going strong. I look forward to seeing what the next month brings. 

More Small Things

Peppers, peppers, peppers! 

Right now, small things continue to work the best for me in moving through these days. When other matters become too much to work with, I can always turn to small tasks and find focus and satisfaction. 

Here is another handful of small things. 

This year, we have a pepper harvest to beat any prior pepper harvest (and there is more harvest to come). So after picking (not a peck of pickled peppers) peppers, I decided to make onion/pepper relish (hot bath canning only):

Preparing the relish

And done!

More got cut up and put in the freezer:

Cutting!

And ready for the freezer! 

And some ended up on our supper tables, sliced open, cleaned, and filed with mozzarella cheese:

Ready to prep for supper

Yes, they were delicious! 

Our hot weather finally broke (and hoping beyond hope it stays broke), so last evening I thought "Why not bake some cookies?"

So I did:

Getting ready to start mixing

And done!

They too are delicious!

Even the laundry is satisfying:

Socks socks socks

In the evenings, if Warren is working on business or class, I try to spend my time reading (current read is The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James) or writing letters. 

I know: Just small tasks. Just little things. But right now, it is these little things that help me make sense of my days. And that is more than enough.

Small Things

Coleslaw! 

It has been a long, hard week and I hit Friday night, when I am writing this out by longhand, with no reserves. Zero, nada, nil. Warren is also worn down from his own hard week.  

Our home life is transitioning again; Warren will be teaching Music Appreciation at our local college, Ohio Wesleyan University, two afternoons a week starting next Thursday. As for me, I am pressed up against a wall all too often, not because of Warren's commitments (which extend far further than the upcoming class), but for lots of reasons, including still recovering from June's hospitalization.

So here I sit, a baseball game playing on Warren's iPad (he's a Cincinnati Reds fan; I am not but I enjoy listening to baseball), and I am telling myself "Focus on small things tonight, April. Small things count too."

I can do that. Here is a small handful of recent small things.

Thursday, I picked one of the three small red cabbages that have managed to grow in the Hej Garden. Well, you don't "pick" cabbages, you break or cut them off their considerable stems. Back in the kitchen, I pulled off all the outer leaves, cut the stem off, then chopped the head into small pieces. I made a quick oil/vinegar/sugar/water mix, poured it over the pieces, and put it in the fridge to marinate for the day. Coleslaw, anyone?

Thursday late afternoon we drove down to Columbus to see the annual silent film of the CAPA Summer Film Series. We'd been down the week before to see "Arsenic and Old Lace" (which I had never seen on stage on on film) and had enjoyed a brownbag supper on the Statehouse lawn, which is directly across from the Ohio Theatre. So we did the same thing this time for the silent: a brownbag supper on a bench by the Statehouse. We ate, we talked, we just sat and enjoyed not being on a tight schedule, not being on call. 

Afterwards, we strolled on the Statehouse grounds. Even though Warren and I enjoy and purposely make stops to see state capitol buildings, I have never been in the Ohio Statehouse or even walked much on its grounds. So Thursday was the first time ever for me to see the large monument to President William McKinley, as well as the various war memorials. (Yes, yes, I am planning on touring the Ohio Statehouse this fall. I mean that.) We then crossed the street to the box office, only to learn that Clark Wilson, the nationally renown theater organist, had fallen ill. As a result, they had pulled the silent and substituted the 1997 "Titanic." Did we want to buy tickets for that? No thanks. So we drove home slowly, congratulated ourselves on making the most of our Statehouse supper (eaten leisurely, outside, and free), and finished our evening at home.

A small evening, by many standards, but a good one. 

Friday itself was particularly hard on larger family fronts. Stressful, demanding, numbing: pick any of those words. Thank goodness I'd had a long overdue call with my friend Katrina to start the day, as well as a planned break midmorning with two neighbors. Independent of me, Warren had his own demands and busy schedule. Because of the family matters, which were expected but not so abruptly (I'm sorry; I am being vague intentionally), I skipped lunch because I needed to talk with my father in person before keeping an appointment downtown that could not be moved. By the time Warren and I reconnected mid-afternoon, I was worn out. He'd had the lightest of lunches; I'd had none. We should eat early then. Okay. We have a gift card to Panera; should we just get takeout? I leaned my head on my hand, too tired to sit up straight.Yeah, that would work. Then I straightened up. No. Rather than drive there, order, drive home, then eat, we had leftovers here from earlier in the week that we could warm up. And don't forget the coleslaw!

"And then let's go out to get ice ream," said Warren. 

"Yes, let's."

Supper was delicious and we didn't have to leave to get it—it was all right there. The coleslaw was superb. Afterwards, we drove the few miles to the Midway Market, our preferred ice cream destination. Warren got a scoop of caramel oatmeal cookie ice cream in a cup; I chose a scoop, also in a cup, of dark chocolate raspberry truffle. 

We sat with our respective choices and savored every single spoonful. Mine may have been the best chocolate ice cream I have ever had, and that is saying a lot. A. Lot. 

It is now late morning on Saturday and between writing these lines last night and finishing them this morning, I ran into two more unexpected obstacles—nothing major, but the second one, which came up this morning, brought me to tears. I looked at Warren: "I just want something to go right." 

And then I thought back to what I wrote above: small things count too. Warren and I took a walk this morning while it was still cool. I got the towels and the sheets washed this morning; the sheets are drying on the basement line, the towels just came out of the dryer and are already back in their respective places. We just went out to a local sweet corn stand and brought back ears to cook and ears to cut the kernels off and ears to share with our neighbors. All small things, and all important in their own small way.

And that is enough. More than enough. 

Vachel Lindsay: Who Knew?

A young Vachel Lindsay

Oh, sure, I know Vachel Lindsay, the American poet, really I do. 

Not.

I mean, I do "know" who Vachel Lindsay is in the American poetry spectrum. But I never really knew the scope of his works and his life and how that was reflected in his works, and little about his personal life other than the fact that he committed suicide by drinking a bottle of lye at the age of 52.

And I knew a very little bit about some of his larger works, which involved a lot of shouting and singing, but I only read them in poetry collections and never heard them read (or, more accurately, performed) out loud. And as I think back, I do not remember ever, ever reading him in high school classes, not even the one on modern (read "late 1800s to maybe mid-1900s") poetry.

So why Vachel Lindsay now?

The Academy of American Poets has a poem-a-day feature; you give them your email, and every day you get a poem in your inbox. Every. Day. On weekdays, the month's Guest Editor selects the themes, the poets, and so on. On weekends, the poems tend to be "oldies but goodies," reaching back into past centuries. On Saturday, August 2, Lindsay's poem, "Meeting Ourselves," was the selection.

I'd never read that poem before. I read it that day, then saw in the bio note that Lindsay was considered a "founder of modern singing poetry."

Modern singing poetry? 

Well, that phrase sent me down the Vachel Lindsay rabbit hole. I learned that as a young man he had made three long distance "tramps" across America (Florida to Kentucky, New York City to Ohio, and Illinois to New Mexico). He would trade his poems for food, for a place to sleep, for a drink from a well. And all along the way, he took in the sights and sounds and songs and stories of America, with two of his most noted larger works, "Congo" and "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven" being written and published to acclaim after that third trip.

Who knew? I certainly didn't.

Vachel Lindsay had an international reputation and was in high demand on stage. His appearances were not staid poetry readings, but rousing performances that apparently bordered on a mixture of a revival meeting and stage production. Storyteller Studios made a superb video about Lindsay: his life, his accomplishments, his beliefs in community and progressive goals. The video is worth watching on many levels, but especially to see writer/actor Kevin Purcell speak/sing/shout Lindsay's poetry in a style very much like written accounts of Lindsay captured. 

As I continued tapping into nuggets of Vachel Lindsay, I discovered that he was from Springfield, Illinois and is buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery, which also contains Lincoln's tomb. I mentioned Lindsay to Warren and he said, after thinking a moment, that he remembered we'd stopped at "some writer's grave" when we were there in 2021 and that I had taken photos. I had forgotten but Warren was absolutely right, which is pretty good for a guy who is poetry-adverse.

Indeed we had stopped:

And, as I have seen at other burial sites that people make pilgrimages to, a number of coins were laid on top of his stone to let him know he was not forgotten:

The greatest discovery for me on my Lindsay tramp was finding recordings of him reading his own works at Columbia in 1931. Be still, my heart! The recordings are available through Penn Sound, part of the University of Pennsylvania. I have not listened to most of these recordings yet, but I did immediately listen to him recite "The Moon is the North Wind's Cookie," which I read many times in my childhood.

And no, I had no idea it was a Lindsay poem until I saw it listed at Penn Sound.

In 1962, Theodore Roethke wrote a stunning poem, "Supper With Lindsay," which I have read countless times. In it, Lindsay steps into Roethke's room on a brilliant moonlit night and begins talking about the power of poetry. He refers to William Blake: "Why, Blake, he's dead,—/But come to think of it, they say the same of me." The two men share a meal and then, as the kerosene lamp burns down, Lindsay acknowledges he needs to go. But not without a few final observations:

            ‘Who called me poet of the college yell?

            We need a breed that mixes Blake and me,

            Heroes and bears, and old philosophers—

            John Ransom should be here, and Rene’ Char;

            Paul Bunyan is part Russian. did you know?—

            We're getting closer to it all the time.'

In 2014, I wrote a post about my very belated realization that the 1939 movie version of The Wizard of Oz was a pilgrimage tale. Discovering Vachel Lindsay in a new expansive way is not quite the same, but there is definitely a feeling of "how did I not know this?"

But now I do. 

And an older Lindsay