limpid gray

Scotio River today, Dublin, Ohio

Smile O voluptuous cool-breath'd earth! 

Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! 
Earth of departed sunset―earth of the mountains misty-topt! 
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue! 
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river! 
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake! 
Far-swooping elbow'd earth―rich apple-blossom'd earth! 
Smile, for your lover comes.

― Walt Whitman

Dublin Crew

click to embiggen

One of my favorite things to see, in my neck of the woods, is the Dublin Crew kids rowing on the Scioto.  They practice on the river, and travel to out-of-town regattas.  I love the precision of the team, the graceful way the shells skim over the water.  The cox sits in the stern, facing the rowers, steers the boat, and coordinates the power and rhythm. If I had to choose, I would definitely be the cox.

The etymology of the word "regatta" is debated.  Some say it is derived from the Italian "riga", line, for the starting line, and others consider it derived from the Latin "aurigare", to race.

This kind of competitive rowing has been around for eons, first noted in Egyptian inscriptions in 1430 BC. The first known "modern" racing began with competition among professional watermen that provided ferry and taxi service on the River Thames.

Doggett's Coat and Badge by Thomas Rowlandson

photos by Lisa Aurand

november

It was November―the month of crimson sunsets, parting birds, deep, sad hymns of the sea, passionate wind-songs in the pines. Anne roamed through the pineland alleys in the park and, as she said, let that great sweeping wind blow the fogs out of her soul. 

 L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

I know; I know.  I'm forever singing the praises of autumn and winter. Not only do I gravitate toward a neutral palette of grays, I happen to thrive on plenty of cool, fresh air.  Maybe it has something to do with being a Libra, the cardinal air sign of the zodiac, but just like Anne of Green Gables, I must embrace that great sweeping wind.  It certainly does blow the darkness out of my soul, chase the black dog from my doorstep. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off for a fast November drive in the Rover with the windows down, wind-fingers in my hair...


image: November view from the french doors at Willow Manor

scents of stories

For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they are born, the city apartment or farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in. It is all these things that have made them what they are, and these are the things that you can't come to know by hearsay...   ―W. Somerset Maugham 

Just as people are a mulligatawny mix, so are places.  They are bowls left with remnants of unique recipes, scraps and scents of stories, wanting to be savored, waiting to be told.  ―me 

image:  from my Abandoned America series, "T-Shirt Window", Delaware, Ohio

death of a bird and a review

There is a legend about a bird which sings only once in its life, more beautifully than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves its nest, it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, it impales its breast on the longest, sharpest thorn. But as it is dying, it rises above its own agony to out sing the Lark and the Nightingale. The Thorn Bird pays its life for that one song, and the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles, as its best is brought only at the cost of great pain; driven to the thorn with no knowledge of the dying to come. But when we press the thorn to our breast, we know, we understand... and still, we do it.  

Colleen McCullough, The Thorn Birds

Last week, on my birthday, I heard the tell-tale thud, as this little fella crashed into the glass of the french doors, and fell to the rain-drenched cedar deck.  From inside, I watched, helpless, as he gasped his last few breaths.  At least, I thought, this beautiful creature deserves to be remembered with a photo, before he becomes part of earth's patina.

Speaking of patina, please check out this excellent review of my new poetry chapbook PATINA, published this summer by Finishing Line Press, by Poet, Critic, Blogger Jenne’ R. Andrews, whose work has appeared in a number of journals including, most recently The Adirondack Review; her collections include the small press book Reunion, Lynx House Press, The Dark Animal of Liberty, Leaping Mountain Press, and In Pursuit of the Family, Minnesota Writers’ Publishing House, edited by Robert Bly. She posts work in draft at La Parola Vivace in addition to submitting individual work and book-length collections to journals and presses. She has recently been writing “Rilke variations”—an exercise that has become a vital part of her daily writing practice.


Click here to purchase PATINA from Amazon. 

no other end of the world

A Song on the End of the World


On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
No other end of the world will there be,
No other end of the world will there be.


Czeslaw Milosz
translated by Anthony Milosz



This particular Milosz piece brings to mind the rather humorous story of my fourth great-grandfather, Rev. Robert Goodloe Harper Hanna. "Harper" was one of the earliest clergy in Carroll County, Indiana. He belonged to a denomination known as the Primitive Methodists and preached the Millerite doctrine. If he believed this radical doctrine, personally, he certainly failed to impress the outside world with his sincerity.

Here's the account, according to the History of Carroll County, Indiana by Thomas Helms, Chicago: Kingman Brothers, 1882...

One morning in April, 1848, John Payton rode by Hanna's farm and saw him setting out an orchard. The inconsistency of his preceding at once struck Payton, who elected that a number of years must elapse, in any event, before he could expect any return of his labor, and if the final destruction of the world were so nearly at hand, was not his an unnecessary outlay of labor? 

With this in mind, Payton addressed him: 

"How is this, Brother Hanna? This is April, and if your account is correct, the end of the world will come in June next. It scarcely looks consistent to be doing such work so nearly the borders of eternity." 

"Oh well", replied Hanna, "we can't tell exactly; there may have been an error in the calculation."

my trusty '96 Land Rover at an abandoned farm
Dublin, Ohio
click to embiggen

frayed and flaky around the edges

I always wondered, though, what the fathers felt as they drove up the street they used to drive down every night, and whether they really saw their former houses, whether they noticed how things got frayed and flaky around the edges now that they were gone. 

I wondered it again as I pulled up to the house I’d grown up in. It was, I noticed, looking even more Joad-like than usual. Neither my mother nor the dread life partner, Tanya, was much into yard work, and so the lawn was littered with drifts of dead brown leaves. The gravel on the driveway was as thin as an old man’s hair combed across an age-spotted scalp, and as I parked I could make out the faint glitter of old metal from behind the little toolshed. 

We used to park our bikes in there. Tanya had “cleaned” it by dragging all the old bikes, from tricycles to discarded ten-speeds, out behind the shed, and leaving them there to rust. “Think of it as found art,” my mother had urged us when Josh complained that the bike pile made us look like trailer trash. I wonder if my father ever drove by, if he knew about my mother and her new situation, if he thought about us at all, or whether he was content to have his three children out there in the world, all grown up, and strangers.

--Jennifer Weiner, Good in Bed

click to embiggen

images: abandoned farm, Dublin, Ohio

Because someone has to remember...

“I like places like this," he announced.

I like old places too," Josh said, "but what's to like about a place like this?"

The king spread his arms wide. "What do you see?"

Josh made a face. "Junk. Rusted tractor, broken plow, old bike."

Ah...but I see a tractor that was once used to till these fields. I see the plow it once pulled. I see a bicycle carefully placed out of harm's way under a table."

Josh slowly turned again, looking at the items once more.

And I see these things and I wonder at the life of the person who carefully stored the precious tractor and plow in the barn out of the weather, and placed their bike under a homemade table."

Why do you wonder?" Josh asked. "Why is it even important?"

Because someone has to remember," Gilgamesh snapped, suddenly irritated. "Some one has to remember the human who rode the bike and drove the tractor, the person who tilled the fields, who was born and lived and died, who loved and laughed and cried, the person who shivered in the cold and sweated in the sun." He walked around the barn again, touching each item, until his palm were red with rust." It is only when no one remembers, that you are truely lost. That is the true death.”   


--Michael Scott, The Sorceress

click to embiggen

For more in my series Abandoned America, click on the label at the end of this post.
Images: abandoned farm, Dublin, Ohio

it's about passion

my vintage rosaries
click to embiggen

I'm not sure exactly how I contracted the passion for collecting, but the symptoms were evident at a very early age. Maybe I enjoy collecting because it takes me back to the simple comfort and joy of my childhood Little Golden Book and postage stamp collections.  

It may lie dormant for a while, but once you have caught the virus, it is a life long condition and it often returns with a renewed vigor. It might just be that it is instinctive for humans to collect, just as a magpie is compelled to hunt and gather shiny objects and drag them back to her nest.  I definitely like to have my things about me, like Mary Kate Danaher in The Quiet Man.

McCoy pottery, mercury glass, insulators, tarnished silver
in my retro metal medical cabinet

chalkwork icons
click to embiggen

There is a certain explorer spirit in me. I like to dig in dusty places. One discovery often leads to another, to a fresh search and the start of a new collection. In fact, I would have made a great archaeologist.  

Garage sales, flea markets, Gee-Dub (my local Goodwill store) and various antique shops are my favorite places to forage...the junkier the place, the better.  The rarity or value of a particular piece, is not the objective for me, but the mellow and a little bit worn, the unwanted, the unappreciated and orphaned, are what happens to strike my fancy.

the manor is filled
with the scent of old books

Other people's gatherings are endlessly fascinating, since it reveals an obvious look at the personalities behind the collections.  What objects do you like to hunt and gather? 

I think that interiors need 

a bit of a twist... most have 
no sense of irony or of real life, 

and there is nothing harmonious or soulful.

  

--Hubert Zandberg

bibliophilia

In a good bookroom you feel, 
in some mysterious way, 

that you are absorbing the wisdom 
contained in all the books through your skin, 

without even opening them. 

Mark Twain

photo:  Karen Wickliff Books, Columbus, Ohio, my favorite second-hand bookstore, with the creaky hardwood floors and lovely retro tile

abandoned america iv

The Barn and the Down


It stood in the sunset sky
Like the straight-backed down,
Many a time - the barn
At the edge of the town,

So hug and dark that it seemed
It was the hill
Till the gable's precipice proved
it impossible.

The great down in the west
Grew into sight,
A barn stored full to the ridge
With black of night;

And the barn fell to a barn
Or even less
Before critical eyes and its own
Late mightiness.

But far down and near barn and I
Since then have smiled,
Having seen my new cautiousness
By itself beguiled

To disdain what seemed the barn
Till a few steps changed
It past all doubt to the down;
So the barn was avenged.


Edward Thomas

click to embiggen

abandoned america iii

Nails

Aliens would render us useless

if they sucked all our nails

with some powerful magnet

like a big vacuum sweeping

up bobby pins

we would be a mess

without our carpet tacks

and gutter spikes

penny size brads

hammered down with the gusto

and sweat of a nation's brawn

a rapture of galvanized proportions

they'd leave the buns and beehives

of our landscape

in disheveled heaps, raped

uncoiffed bedrooms and barns

bad hair days scattered

across America

Tess Kincaid

nails, abandoned barn, Dublin, Ohio
click to embiggen

Recorded by the talented R.A.D. Stainforth.  Check out his excellent blog, Black Dogs.

abandoned america ii

abandoned barn, Dublin, Ohio, July 2011
click to embiggen

Tall nettles cover up, as they have done
These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough
Long worn out, and the roller made of stone:
Only the elm butt tops, the nettles now.

This corner of the farmyard I like most:
As well as any bloom upon a flower
I like the dust on the nettles, never lost
Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.


Edward Thomas  1878-1917

Thanks to R.A.D. Stainforth for this lovely poem.

abandoned america

abandoned barn, Dublin, Ohio
(click to embiggen)

There is something very nostalgic, mysteriously magical, so bleakly wondrous that draws me to abandoned places: farm houses, out-buildings, barns.  I love feeling the leftover energies, the stories left behind in the rubble.  It's like an archaeological dig, the forgotten objects buried in time and dust, above ground. They are a lovely quintessential American art form in themselves. Even though long empty, this particular barn smells of cows, oil and old wood; its history is intensely palpable.

As my Facebook friends know, I've been posting a series of photos titled "Abandoned America", most of which I took in and around my neck of the woods, Central Ohio.  Hope you enjoy these places, truly majestic in their own right, as much as I did.  Stay tuned for more images in the coming weeks.

Another night, I dreamed 

I saw my father sweeping 

out the barn floor clean, 

and would not suffer the wheat 

to be brought in the barn. 

He appeared to me to be in anger.

Joanna Southcott 

I picked up a little sunshine today...

Arranging a bowl of flowers in the morning 

can give a sense of quiet in a crowded day

--like writing a poem, or saying a prayer.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

skeeter magnet

Mosquitoes love me.  They can't get enough of me.  And to make matters worse, they like to bite my face. Experts say mosquitoes really do have blood-sucking preferences. "One in ten people are highly attractive to mosquitoes," reports Jerry Butler, PhD, professor emeritus at the University of Florida. Lucky me, I happen to be one of the chosen ten percent.  I currently have a mosquito bite on my forehead the size of a grapefruit.

Dr. Butler says that people with high concentrations of steroids, cholesterol, uric acid, or lactic acid on the surface of their skin will attract mosquitoes. Also, those who emit large amounts of carbon dioxide are attractive. Mosquitoes can smell their dinner for an impressive distance of up to 50 meters. How are we supposed to avoid them, especially if we don't want to slather ourselves with DEET every time we go outside?  Oil of eucalyptus products are said to be very effective, so I'm adding this to my shopping list.

Here's a few ways to prevent the breeding of mosquitoes and protect yourself from mosquito-borne diseases like encephalitis and West Nile virus:

• Cover trash containers that have the ability to collect water.
• Repair leaky pipes and outside faucets.
• Make sure gutters and downspouts are draining properly.
• Empty bird bathes twice a week.
• Empty pets' watering dishes daily.
• Use sand to plug holes in trees where water can collect.  

One birdbath alone can be a breeding spot for 5000 mosquitoes over the course of one summer.  Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time to give the old stone one on the patio a good going over with me mops and me brushes. 5000! Yikes.

photo: birdbath at Willow Manor

cornhenge

This strange field of 109 eight foot tall concrete ears of corn is one of the landmarks in Dublin, Ohio, my neck of the woods.  It was created in 1994 as a tribute to our agricultural heritage, and also a memorial to Sam Frantz, who farmed this site from 1935 to 1963.  Frantz was well-known for his hybridization of corn seeds and worked with the Ohio State University on hybridization projects.

The artist brought in by the Dublin Arts Council for this project was Malcolm Cochran, who created three different molds to fashion the larger-than-life-sized concrete ears.  

The field of giant corn is somewhat of a local joke, often referred to as "Cornhenge".  Personally, I like it best in the winter, in lovely monochrome against the snow.  As much as I love art, I can't say our tax dollars spent on inedible corn were used wisely.  We are, however, included in the quirky and eccentric American landmarks at Roadside America.

only god can make a tree

click to embiggen

We recently lost a majestic pine tree in a storm at Willow Manor.  It was most likely a tornado, that came literally swirling out of nowhere, with the sound of a freight train, throwing all kinds of limbs and debris against the front windows, which happen to face west.

I'm not one to be afraid of storms, in fact, I rather enjoy the drama of an ominous sky, and claps of thunder that reverberate off the limestone Scioto River basin behind the house.  But this storm scared me. It roared through and was gone in the space of just a few minutes, pulling up large trees by the roots along a mile stretch of our road.

I have a certain spiritual connection to trees, and hate to see one, especially this old, come down.  I love to place my hands on a tree and feel the peace and strength it exudes.  This wise one was about 100 years old, since I counted nearly 96 rings, which means it was here even before the house was built in 1927.  I'm sure it will be proud to keep Willow Manor toasty-warm for several winters to come.

As the poet said, 'Only God can make a tree', 

probably because it's so hard to figure out 

how to get the bark on.

Woody Allen

weeds, and so on, and so forth

The Large Turf, Albrecht Durer, 1503

The Hawkweed


Between the red top and the rye,
Between the buckwheat and the corn,
The ploughman sees with sullen eye
The hawkweed licking at the sky:

Three level acres all forlorn,
Unfertile, sour, outrun, outworn,
Free as the day that they were born.

Southward and northward, west and east,
The sulphate and the lime are spread;
Harrowed and sweetened, urged, increased,
The furrow sprouts for man and beast:

While of the hawkweed's radiant head
No stanchion reeks, no stock is fed.

Triumphant up the taken field
The tractor and the plough advance;
Blest be the healthy germ concealed
In the rich earth, and blest the yield:

And blest be Beauty, that enchants
The frail, the solitary lance.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Buck in the Snow and Other Poems

1928

The hawkweed is certainly licking at the sky at Willow Manor, along with the Virginia creeper.  Two new pairs of garden gloves are here, dormant on my desk, as we speak.  Putting dishes away and washing linens proved to be therapeutic this week, but I simply can't get motivated to tackle weeds.  For one thing, it's too damn hot.  Obviously, Durer thought them lovely enough to paint, and Millay considered them a thing of beauty.  I think I shall follow their lead, at least until it cools down a bit. 

we are who we were

peonies, my favorite flower, after the rain, Willow Manor, May 2011

Flowers really do intoxicate me.  

Vita Sackville-West

Have a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend, my friends.
  
Don't forget to visit the grave 
of a loved one and pay tribute; after all, 
we are who we were.