Everything is in flux

Luckily, the long-to-be remembered snow storm of October '11 was apparently deflected from Cape Cod and the Boston area by the relatively warm waters of the Atlantic. Now I sit looking at still green leaves tossing in what I know to be a very chilly wind but beneath a sky of slightly dirty looking cotton clouds with snippets of blue in between while 75 or so miles to west and north heavy deep snow has brought down limbs and turned off electricity and caused consternation and havoc. The second highly unusual storm in two months, counting hurricane Irene, for those parts of New England. Yes, the climate is in flux.

Reading the newspaper I find that the whole world is in flux, politically. Things seem rather quiet down in Australia and New Zealand and those Pacific island nations although it may just be that their quieter flux is ignored by the news because so much else is happening. Not only has the Occupy Wall Street movement spread to other US cities and to cities in Europe, but we've just seen the paroxysms of the "Arab spring". I read today that middle class Indians are shedding their usual political apathy and both demonstrating and voting to stop the endemic bureaucratic corruption. China is terrified by their own almost daily demonstrations which, with current media communications, could grow massively, so they are cracking down on both Internet and television. Things are always unsettled in various parts of Africa, Mexico is in the throes of serious drug wars, parts of South America are unsettled ... and so it goes ... everything in flux. A period of instability physically and politically.

I am a watcher, I've learned that knowing is a good thing, being aware is grounding, but worrying in a waste of time when I could be quietly finding the good and creative things I can do to be happy with my life and perhaps contribute a bit to the small world around me. An hour spent wringing my hands about global warming or the greed begotten by capitalism is an hour I cannot enjoy the limited hours that remain in my life -- which I hope are a great many but when you've hit the Big 7-0 you're an ostrich with her head in the sand if you don't give a little thought most days to the limits of life. But if you're reasonably balanced, you use the time as consciously as possible.

Occupy Wall Street

Uploading videos is something I haven't learned to do so I will direct you to the sidebar on the right and the blog called Time Goes By. Today's post includes a video from an Occupy Wall Street gathering at Columbus Circle in NYC last night. It's dark so it's hard to tell how big the crowd is but it's big. The video features Pete Seeger [age 92 and going strong], Arlo Guthrie and Tom Chapin and many others, playing guitars, flutes, etc and all singing "The Little Light of Mine, I'm going to let it shine>"

And I have a fit of nostalgia for protests I didn't take part in back in the '70s because I was on my Mommy track in a staid small town in upstate New York. But I had been with the civil rights people in the '60s and was with the anti-Vietnam people in the '70s. Watching this four minute clip and hearing the familiar song, I'm once again with a protest in my heart.

Yesterday's documentary movie was Food, Inc. which emphasizes the hydra-like reach of big corporations controlling what we American eat -- what is in our supermarkets and why junk food is actually cheaper that "real" food [the answer is partly government subsidies that benefit the big corporations].

While the "serious"people complain that the Occupy Wall Street people don't have an agenda and don't stand for anything concrete, they are wrong. The movement stands for the extent to which our choices, even of what we have available to eat in this richest of nations, is controlled, what we see on television and read in papers, what we are charged for for health care, how our schools are run, on and on and on ... are all controlled by corporations who are now defined as "People" by the Supreme Court. But these "people" are essentially robot without a heart or even a head, merely a counting system ruled by bottom line numbers. Many of the most basic choices humans have always had are severely limited by what Wall Street stands for. No, it's not as simple as saying "stop this war" or "give black people equal rights" -- it's become too invidious to define in a few words. We know we are controlled, we are constantly spied on, we are overcharged for inferior services and goods and we are being milked like docile cattle of our savings so that a few rich people can grow richer and richer.

When the Frost is on the Punkin

This giant pumpkin is 1810.5 pounds and was grown in Stillwater, Minnesota I've never seen one this big but in the part of Indiana where I grew up, we had an annual Pumpkin Show [a month ago this year and I wasn't there]. I think of jack-o-lanterns second, really third, after thinking of that annual Pumpkin Show [which was the only event in our area that offered carnival rides]. I couldn't have cared less about the pumpkins.

Second, I think of James Whitcomb Riley [1851-1916] a Hoosier poet who wrote in dialect and wrote a poem that was probably taught much more enthusiastically in Indiana than elsewhere in the US. This is it:

"When the Frost is on the Punkin"

WHEN the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock,
And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin' turkey-cock,
And the clackin' of the guineys, and the cluckin' of the hens,
And the rooster's hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence;
O, it's then the time a feller is a-feelin' at his best, 5
With the risin' sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,
As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

They's something kindo' harty-like about the atmusfere
When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here— 10
Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossoms on the trees,
And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of the bees;
But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the haze
Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days
Is a pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mock— 15
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn,
And the raspin' of the tangled leaves as golden as the morn;
The stubble in the furries—kindo' lonesome-like, but still
A-preachin' sermuns to us of the barns they growed to fill; 20
The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed;
The hosses in theyr stalls below—the clover overhead!—
O, it sets my hart a-clickin' like the tickin' of a clock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keeps 25
Is poured around the cellar-floor in red and yaller heaps;
And your cider-makin's over, and your wimmern-folks is through
With theyr mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and sausage too!...
I don't know how to tell it—but ef such a thing could be

[Sorry I cut off the last line but I think you've had quite enough by now]

Fun Fashion in L.L. Bean Land

At my quilt guild's meeting yesterday I had an opportunity to sit and watch the 130 or so women chatting and finding seats before the meeting and during the break between speaker and business meeting. Here on Cape Cod we are mostly in the casual Friday every day of the week mode -- I speak not of working people, that is an area I've graduated out of. I mean, for the most part, the senior population intertwined somewhat with young mothers. Casual, of course, is heavy on denim but here in New England a lot of khaki is worn and other quiet colors, especially in the winter. I overheard a woman in a old rose colored corduroy shirt jacket say to another who was wearing dusty blue -- "mine's L.L. Bean, yours is the same, right?" Right.

I also do a lot of people watching at the Academy for Lifelong Learning at the community college and have decided that by and large those in this semi [sometimes demi] intellectual atmosphere dress a bit more stylishly and brightly. They are more apt to add a nice scarf, a brighter color. This is a long, long way from the ladies I love looking at at the advanced style blog, those ladies are in NYC and would certainly be conspicuous here on Cape Cod. The woman in the photo was the only person at yesterday's meeting whose clothing was memorable - a bit of an Eloise-grows-up attitude. Good for her.

This, of course, is the place where the Pilgrims first settled and they were plain dressers, certainly. I find a bit of that attitude still pertains here. Other parts of the country have their special styles too. Florida brings out the bright colors even when they are pastels, California has its own variation of that Florida feeling. The West is a land of cowboy boots and Stetsons (sometimes on women as well as men) and the South still has a bit more formality about clothing than the rest of the country. Wherever I am, I am a dedicated people watcher. (Sometimes I deeply miss the streets of NYC)

Autum's touches

Just now, and until the clock gets reset in a week or two, the dawn comes up in full view from my patio doors while I am eating breakfast. On clear days it is magnificent and changes colors, catching different cloud groups minute by minutes. Maybe I will have to start getting up a bit earlier for a while to continue to have coffee and toast with sunset on the side. Gradually it will become later until the end of December.

Here on Cape Cod autumn is parsimonious and later than on the "mainland" -- the ocean keeps us a bit warmer and I have no quarrel with that. I have in my memory bank some upstate New York autumns when whole hillsides were so brilliantly colored under the purest of blue skies that I could hardly breathe, so awed was I. Sometimes I stopped a car on the shoulder of a country road to sit and gaze.

Having had those autumn scenes, I do not feel deprived by our little touches of color and the late occasional blaze among the browns and fir tree greens. One of the rewards of living in awareness as I have mostly tried to do is that, just as I have collections of rings, bracelets, earrings, [none precious stones but mostly semiprecious] which I collected on travels, I have heaps and reams and collections of memories -- a richness I enjoyed at the time and can continue to enjoy many years later as I'm reminded by a little bunch of leaves or a spreading sunrise.

That Old House

This little house in Woods Hole, on Cape Cod was across the harbor from a portion of the Oceanographic Institute. The town was originally a whaling village. Many old houses from that era still exist there. This three story one with it steep pitched roof looked, on a gray misty day from a fair distance away, like a fairy tale house. I felt that if it were in a forest Hansel and Gretel might live there. I know absolutely nothing more about it but I was enchanted.

October poem

An October dawn seen from my breakfast table.

Since the beginning of April I have been writing, instead of a diary entry, something that vaguely (sometimes more closely) resembles a poem. This is one about a dawn I wrote a few days ago.


The precious Indian summer days

slipped away under cover of a near full moon night

leaving behind a gray morning

without

the peach, orange, tangerine dawn

clouds

of my last few breakfasts.