Things Being Various

While Sue was in Milwaukee Xmas shopping with Abby and then helping out at Fox Point, I worked on Great Lakes Islands stuff and Democratic Party stuff, along with several outings with Pax. Non-wintery weather, though ice remains on ponds and shallow lakes.

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Caught a fragment of the poem below on one of the episodes of Endeavor (which we are watching at present). Like many poems, it takes a few readings (even one aloud) before it makes complete sense, but eventually it does, and when it does, it’s good.

Say not the struggle nought availeth
—Arthur Hugh Clough

Say not the struggle nought availeth, 
     The labour and the wounds are vain, 
The enemy faints not, nor faileth, 
    And as things have been they remain. 

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars; 
     It may be, in yon smoke concealed, 
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
    And, but for you, possess the field. 

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking 
     Seem here no painful inch to gain, 
Far back through creeks and inlets making, 
     Comes silent, flooding in, the main. 

And not by eastern windows only, 
     When daylight comes, comes in the light, 
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly, 
     But westward, look, the land is bright.

D.C. al Fine…

…and poco moto while you’re at it. Another practice session with Irene (while Sue with Jayne). Great fun, good sounds, and the only real problem getting the repeats right.

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After practice, dinner at Craft Urban in Geneva (Sue now joining us), right across the street from the Unitarian Universalist Society of Geneva. Incredibly fine food, some of the best I’ve ever had.

All Decked Out

Sue put up Christmas. I helped—by gluing a few dough ornaments back together.

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Wind from the south; chilly, but warm enough for a bike ride to the prairie.

December Morning In The Desert
— Alberto Rios

The morning is clouded and the birds are hunched,
More cold than hungry, more numb than loud,
This crisp, Arizona shore, where desert meets
The coming edge of the winter world.
It is a cold news in stark announcement,
The myriad stars making bright the black,
As if the sky itself had been snowed upon.
But the stars—all those stars,
Where does the sure noise of their hard work go?
These plugs sparking the motor of an otherwise quiet sky,
Their flickering work everywhere in a white vastness:
We should hear the stars as a great roar
Gathered from the moving of their billion parts, this great
Hot rod skid of the Milky Way across the asphalt night,
The assembled, moving glints and far-floating embers
Risen from the hearth-fires of so many other worlds.
Where does the noise of it all go
If not into the ears, then hearts of the birds all around us,
Their hearts beating so fast and their equally fast
Wings and high songs,
And the bees, too, with their lumbering hum,
And the wasps and moths, the bats, and the dragonflies—
None of them sure if any of this is going to work,
This universe—we humans oblivious,
Drinking coffee, not quite awake, calm and moving
Into the slippers of our Monday mornings,
Shivering because, we think,
It’s a little cold out there.

Fine Fall Day

Little wind, and warm enough for a walk to the post office, and then back the long way, as well as a loop around the prairie just before sunset.

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A little workshop work (Christmas is coming), erection of prototype anti-starling bird-feeder, Aerophone practice (11 different instruments for the church gig), and new wipers and an oil change on the truck, which, surprisingly, is coming up on 5 years old.

Email from the Ice Yacht Club commodore, however, letting everyone know that some real ice-forming cold is coming, and to be prepared.

So It’s Sunday

Semi-soggy and somewhat uninspiring. Drizzle turning to light snow.
A walk around a deserted campus, a little elfish workshopping, groceries. And now, looking forward to dinner, an episode, and reading.

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Dusting Marilyn Nelson Thank you for these tiny particles of ocean salt, pearl-necklace viruses, winged protozoans: for the infinite, intricate shapes of submicroscopic living things. For algae spores and fungus spores, bonded by vital mutual genetic cooperation, spreading their inseparable lives from equator to pole. My hand, my arm, make sweeping circles. Dust climbs the ladder of light. For this infernal, endless chore, for these eternal seeds of rain: Thank you. For dust.