Rainy Sunday

All day rain. Never heavy, but never ending. The ground is wet.

Sometimes a quiet, rainy Sunday feels just right—allowing for simple pastimes like reading and writing, sewing, practicing a musical instrument, taking a nap. For some reason, the television has not been on for weeks, perhaps because of news-weariness, perhaps because we have good books at hand and in the queue. For some reason, having the TV off right now feels just right.

“Who Says Trump and Poetry Are Incompatible?”

We know a poem can be maniacal, the best ones
Always unpredictable. Don’t poets sometimes rave? 

Pound for example: profound, but mad as the Hatter, 
And maybe a traitor. As for the tweets, if Dylan Thomas
Were still with us, might not he tweet his late-night sullen art? 

Perhaps only poetry, after prose has failed us, 
Is brave and big enough for this Trumpian time. 

Think of Wordsworth, The world is too much with us,
Or Arnold: And we are here as on a darkling plain.
Dickinson would tell us to turn the TV off, the phone
And iPad too: The Soul selects her own Society.
Did Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwock foretell our president
Come whiffling through the tulgey wood, and burbling… 

But if I had to choose one poem to give to him, 
I’d give him Angelou: You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

     —from the New York Times

The Leaves Think It Might Be Fall

Insistent south wind sending swirls down the road. Locust almost bare. Same for the sugar maple, and Vi's magnificent crab. Big ash out back long gone. The front yard birch has turned yellow and is beginning to shed, and the three white oaks have turned brown. And all this without a frost.

The grass, however, is lush and green.

The Bluet" by James Schuyler
 

And is it stamina
that unseasonably freaks
forth a bluet, a
Quaker lady, by
the lake? So small,
a drop of sky that
splashed and held,
four-petaled, creamy
in its throat. The woods
around were brown,
the air crisp as a
Carr's table water
biscuit and smelt of
cider. There were frost
apples on the trees in
the field below the house.

The pond was still, then
broke into a ripple.

The hills, the leaves that
have not yet fallen
are deep and oriental
rug colors. Brown leaves
in the woods set off
gray trunks of trees.

But that bluet was
the focus of it all: last
spring, next spring, what
does it matter? Unexpected
as a tear when someone
reads a poem you wrote
for him: 'It's this line
here.' That bluet breaks
me up, tiny spring flower
late, late in dour October.

All In a Summer’s Day

High near 80.  Perfect for washing the truck and, once the sun got down a bit, cutting some grass. 

And walking the dogs.  

Closing the Circle

Lunch at Legs in Cross Village (indescribable place [though I might try tomorrow] overlooking Gray’s Reef and the entrance to the Straits of Mackinac).  After a drive of about 25 miles on a twisty 1.5 lane "tunnel of trees" high above Lake Michigan, from Harbor Springs. After a wind-whipped look at the big seas coming into Little Traverse Bay north of Petoskey. After a walk around the now deserted (required by association by-laws) Bay View Association. After a luxurious breakfast at our 110-year old Tarrace Inn.

The patio at Legs, high above Lake Michigan.

The patio at Legs.

High above Lake Michigan along the "Tunnel of Trees."

Littel Traverse Bay, rather kicked up.

Somewaht typical Bay View Assn. architecture.

Just a bit of what you will find in Legs, a Polish restaurant in the absolute middle of nowhere, drawing throngs of customers from around the world.

Fall Fantasy

Now enjoying a blustery but warm south wind on the long veranda of the Terrace Inn above Little Traverse Bay between Petoskey and Harbor Springs.  

Inn built in 1911. Restaurant about the same age.  

Tour de Liquor...

...plus lunch

Cidery, distillery, winery—plus a good long walk along Lake Leelanau and whitefish for lunch at Knot Just a Bar, in Omena. 

Lake Michigan Circle Tour

Now at the Habes’ place on Lake Leelanau, near Traverse City. 

World Famous Waffles...

...this morning—almost as good as Mimi's renowned lemon cake, which was last night's piece de resistance. 

So, waffles, along with sausages, the making of Halloween decorations, a reprise of Dooly and the Snortsnoot, and a good bit of fun at the Starin Park playground (Mimi brought towels to dry thing off), and then back to Oconomowoc and a return of the loan. Oh, the joys of grand-parenting!

Play Day and Sleepover

Busy Barns, UWW, cake baking, art projects, book reading. And all on a rainy day.  

Quietly The Rain Falls...

...as day descends to dusk. (But after a warm and sunny afternoon. )

Chores and errands, errands and chores.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay. 

     —Robert Frost

Play Misty For Me

A very slight drizzle all day.  Chilly, gray, and damp.

Young walnut getting ready for winter.

Sue down to Irene's, helping her pack up for the move to her new house.

Interesting article in the Manitoulin Expositor about the first annual Great Lakes Islands Summit—here.

Pilot Light

Lit the pilot on the little fake wood-burning stove in the breezeway. Chilly day, gray and damp, so the minuscule warmth of the pilot-light actually felt good.

And...back to A Technique for Producing Ideas.

The five steps:

1) Gather raw material—specific, about the problem at hand (record on 3x5 index cards), and general, everything you have ever learned by being insatiably curious (record in scrapbooks).

2) Chew over all the raw material. Try to digest it. Write down partial ideas, however crazy or incomplete. Try to see if anything goes with anything else. Keep at this hopeless stage until you are sick of it. Try not to throw up.

3) Do nothing. Exert no effort of a direct nature. Drop the whole subject and put the problem out of your mind. Do something completely unrelated—whatever stimulates your emotions or imagination. (Sherlock took Watson to symphony concerts.)

4) Wait for lightning to strike—in the shower, while preparing baby formula, or while tying your shoes.

5) Take the brilliant new idea out into the cold, gray dawn of reality and let it fend for itself. Remain open to criticism and possible refinement.

Not a Fit Night...

...for Man Nor Beast.  (The five steps to great ideas is postponed until tomorrow.)

But, the trailer is functional, working well, and made operational with minutes to spare. Three iceboats now in the fold. (The problem with the lights turned out to be blown fuses in the truck—from a short in some other trailer.)

Chilly, with a cold rain.  The first hint of the changing season, but really not all that unwelcome.

Good Ideas...

...come from a process.  

Ideas here from the book Curious, by Ian Leslie, and A Technique for Producing Ideas, by James Webb Young, a famous advertising man. 

All five steps in tomorrow's blog......

"Every really good creative person in advertising whom I have ever known has always had two noticeable characteristics. First, there was no subject under the sun in which she could not easily get interested —from, say, Egyptian burial customs to modern art. Every facet of life had fascination for her. Second, she was an extensive browser in all sorts of fields of information . . . In advertising, an idea results from a new combination of specific knowledge about products and people with general knowledge about life and events."

James Webb Young's formulation is simple but powerful. Any task or project that requires creative thought will be better addressed by someone who has deep knowledge of the task at hand, and general background knowledge of the culture in which it and its users (or readers, or viewers) live. A mind well-stocked with these two types of knowledge is much more likely to be a fertile source of the serendipitous collisions that lead to brilliant ideas. Leo Burnett, founder of the global ad agency network that still bears his name, and a near-contemporary of Young's, said, 'Curiosity about life in all its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.'

Too Many Variables

New wiring harness on the old trailer, but, of course, it doesn't work (in spite of meticulous and methodical installation). It doesn't work because:  1) the LEDs are faulty, 2) there's a discontinuity in the new wires, 3) the plug at the front end of the harness is defective, 4) the plug at the back end of the truck has gone squirrely, 5) things never get properly grounded no mater how hard you try, or, 6) trailer wiring never works, no matter what, so why did you even waste a moment of your time trying to hook stuff up, you dodo?

Perfectly lovely (though on the warm side) summer day. (Climate change is really starting to freak me out.)

House Guests

Katy and Will, and later Abby and Tony. Great fun on a day of plentiful weather. Right now, a fire in the chiminea being blown sideways by the cold-front that finally came through.l Manitoulin had a weather advisory—heavy rain.

Falling Barometer

And a little rain.  

Still warm.  

Trailer work for some and needle work for others. Wisconsin Friday fish fry, followed by Sequence with neighbors.  

On The Trail of a Trailer

To Kewaskum, and a private junk yard on the banks of the Milwaukee River in northern Kettle Moraine. A beautiful place for piles of junk, but also the perfect place to buy an excellent used trailer at a great price.

Why another trailer? Because of the third iceboat—and the assumption that this winter will be a fine one for ice sailing.

Cleaning it up and converting to iceboat readiness will be a fun project.

Only Apples and Ashes...

 ...have lost their leaves so far, and there is little fall color. 

One of neighbor Kathy's roses.

But a feeble thunderstorm did its best about 2:30 last night to remind us that weather was still possible in these parts. The barometer, however, had no use for this nonsense and remained high. Sunny and pleasant today, so who's to complain?

Mostly errands and chores. (And a little memory work, too.)

Moral Compass

or lack there of.  

But, at least there's the compass plant (Silphium laciniatum), which helped early visitors to the prairie find their way.

In light of Las Vegas, Speaker Ryan has decided to hold off for a while on legislation authorizing widespread sale and use of silencers.

Seriously, a great majority of Americans are in favor of sensible gun laws. It's just that the NRA, the gun lobby, and a relatively small group of gun fetishists have bought the Republicans in Congress. The only real solution to continued carnage is voting the moral cretins out. They have got to go.