…to look out and see white.
But winter is a’coming,’ and the morning snow was actually better than the afternoon gloomy rain. Still, in spite of dim and damp, rays of hope—vaccines on the way, transition in progress, competent people occupying government posts, stock market up. Optimism, at long last, although the country is still afflicted with over 40 senators who belong to the Anti-American Party.
…on roads. This is the way street departments now deal with impending snow. Not a good sign for those of us who ride bikes, but then, we are on the cusp of winter.
Pax and I did a little seasonal prep as well. Repairing the trailer and sequestering it in its winter domicile, moving rechargeable batteries from the garage to the basement where freezing is unlikely, walking around our block (no salt), walking the prairie (still walkable if wearing bright colors), and reloading the coffee water jugs at the flowing well.
AND, finally, the transition moves forward!
…reallocating furniture to Oconomowoc and Cedarburg. Pleasant Sunday drive through autumn kettle moraine landscape, and a chance to see (distanced) a few extended family members.
…even if the hands are numbed by cold.
After all, it’s good practice for iceboating.
And, for dinner, mushroom stew over polenta.
But, forget dinner. Who needs it when there is a lemon torte cooling in the garage?
Warm weather and longhorns.
Not much to report.
Very warm and windy. Good walks, and a long bike ride. Trying to get my head around how almost all 50 Republican senators are willing to sell out American democracy. I see them as traitors.
will travel.
To Batavia and back with truck and trailer to move furniture. A bit tricky with dog, and in the time of COVID. What’s the best way, for example, to handle bathroom breaks?
…with Becca, Maddie, and Ellie at Nature Hill. Great day for a hike. And afterwards, a little time playing with Ben and James. All outdoors, and pretty well distanced.
Pax had a good time too.
(Virtual, of course) The wheels of government turn slowly, ever so slowly, but at least they are turning, and progress, or its approximation, is being made. This is a true test of my ability to refrain from speaking, to speak slowly when I do, to remain deferential, to appear to listen intently to off topic ramblings— in short to exercise extreme patience. None of it comes natural.
So far, I seem to be doing it.
…from the wind, of which there was more than enough.
Apart from reading, and cooking (Chicken Francese) the central project, for me at least, was the late fall gutter clean-out (after all Vi’s Bradford Pear leaves had finished clogging them). (Note: never plant a Bradford Pear.) Whenever I was up on the ladder facing north and south I asked Sue to hold the device while I ascended, fearful that the extreme west-wind would send me sideways.
Just plodding and puttering. Zero mileage on the cars.
Morning sun, followed by clouds, wind, cold, and rain.
~~~~~~~~~~
We inhabit a universe where atoms are made in the centers of stars; where each second a thousand suns are born; where life is sparked by sunlight and lightning in the airs and waters of youthful planets; where the raw material for biological evolution is sometimes made by the explosion of a star halfway across the Milky Way; where a thing as beautiful as a galaxy is formed a hundred billion times - a Cosmos of quasars and quarks, snowflakes and fireflies, where there may be black holes and other universes and extraterrestrial civilizations whose radio messages are at this moment reaching the Earth. How pallid by comparison are the pretensions of superstition and pseudoscience; how important it is for us to pursue and understand science, that characteristically human endeavor.
Today’s bike ride felt a little like ice boating.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Letting Loose
For three wild days they clung to twig and branch
As the November gale ripped limbs from trunks
And toppled ancient boles.
Then morning broke, clear, and calm, and cold,
And one by one, then many at a time,
The golden leaves let loose, and rattled to the forest floor.
It might have been the frost that bid them go,
Or, it might have been a rhythm eons old.
—JBN
…Ellie riding.
…and a trip to the compost site.
A urine test for Pax (ask Sue how the sample was collected). And a covid test for me—not that I needed one.
Pax seems much better, so the test may have been unnecessary. Sometimes just the threat of visiting the vet is a marvelous restorative. But, we will know know of any chemical imbalances, if they exist, as a result of all this.
I took the covid test just to test the operation—free to anyone, and rapid. I rode my bike to the site at the U, and by the time I got home the result showed up in my email in-box.
And, somewhere in between, we took a trailer full of leaves to the compost site.
The wind vane has swung.
The predicted weather was a long time coming, but eventually we got a brief downpour, though nothing like the tornado we were warned about.
Squash soup on the menu tonight.
And, from Virgil:
These two rules, thou must have always in a readiness. First, do nothing at all, but what reason proceeding from that regal and supreme part, shall for the good and benefit of men, suggest unto thee. And secondly, if any man that is present shall be able to rectify thee or to turn thee from some erroneous persuasion, that thou be always ready to change thy mind, and this change to proceed, not from any respect of any pleasure or credit thereon depending, but always from some probable apparent ground of justice, or of some public good thereby to be furthered; or from some other such inducement.
Not November, but change is in the air.
Not exactly the day one would plan—Pax to the vet, and phone not accepting calls, but in the end, everything fine.
Great fun to see their silent aerial acrobatics against the darkening sky, with Mars rising in the background.
And here, another aerial shot of the park, this time from an altitude of 400 feet, and all the leaves on the ground. (Zoom in enough and you can see the leaves.)
And, here, a poem I find worth reading:
Nothing Is Far
—Robert Francis
Though I have never caught the word
Of God from any calling bird,
I hear all that the ancients heard.
Though I have seen no deity
Enter or leave a twilit tree,
I see all that the seers see.
A common stone can still reveal
Something not stone, not seen, yet real.
What may a common stone conceal?
Nothing is far that once was near.
Nothing is hid that once was clear.
Nothing was God that is not here.
Here is the bird, the tree, the stone.
Here in the sun I sit alone
Between the known and the unknown.
A great day for our country.
Believe This
BY RICHARD LEVINE
All morning, doing the hard, root-wrestling
work of turning a yard from the wild
to a gardener’s will, I heard a bird singing
from a hidden, though not distant, perch;
a song of swift, syncopated syllables sounding
like, Can you believe this, believe this, believe?
Can you believe this, believe this, believe?
And all morning, I did believe….
…across the street, with our little neighborhood group.
And below, just another look at how people are socializing in the time of COVID.
I believe it’s acceptable to use that term. Over 70 after a hard frost. Just about the most perfect weather possible.
Still very up tight about the vote count. Alabama and Mississippi can apparently count, and even Wisconsin, but for some reason not Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, or Nevada.
I need to think of other things.