"A wonderful bird is the pelican. His bill can hold more than his belican."

“Anyone with quiet pace who

walks a gray road in the West

may hear a badger underground where

in deep flint another time is”

from Walking West

by William Stafford

I should never have stopped updating my blogs. They serve as a valuable resource to supplement my faltering memory. They improve my grammar, spelling and vocabulary. They are a wonderful way to share my photos, And they send me back to my many poetry books to find snippets to adorn my posts. 

We came to the cabin June 7th this year, our trip delayed by some medical tests, an all to  familiar consequence of aging. We had just finished packing the car when Helen got the alert telling us of the major water main break in Calgary, a situation that is still not resolved. So we are missing that. However we have to go back to Calgary in early July for a week or more and they may still be working on it. It is interesting how fragile our cities and our societies can be.

The first day here we had an adult and immature White Pelican exploring the slough directly in front of the cabin, they could easily be photographed from the cabin. They worked their way around the edge scooping through the weeds with their nets, filtering up, I assume luckless salamanders and frogs.The slough seems too shallow for fish. We have never seen any in this slough before. Unfortunately their search and our enjoyment of it came to an abrupt end when they entered the territory of a Red-winged Blackbird who drove them both off. 

As for the summer this far it has been exceptionally cool and very wet. The rain is welcome as many parts of the prairies have had years of drought conditions. However it has brought a huge number of ticks a pest that has only moved into the area in the last few years. I have required antibiotics several times after tick bits so this has reduced my wandering around the property despite bug spray and special insect repelling clothing. So we cutting back grass, checking bedding, clothing, the dogs, who are on medication for ticks, and each other on a regular basis. Today we plan on dragging one of the canoes down to the near slough thru the call grass so that will be interesting.

My late father-in-law John who always quoted this snippet by Ogden Nash would have loved to see them. Whenever one of the family sees Pelicans he springs to mind. A wonderful gift.

"A wonderful bird is the pelican.

His bill can hold more than his belican."

 

Today

 

“I live in my dreams — that's what you sense. Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. That's the difference.”  Demian

Still Here

"MACHEVILL: I count religion but a childish toy, And hold there is no sin but ignorance."

Christopher Marlowe

Grasslands Park Last week and I will start updating again.

 

"do u understand what heaven is it is the surround of the living" 

James Merrill

The Changing Light at Sandover

Sunday. Jan 17. 2021

"Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;

Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:"

W.H. Auden

Sunday (London Trip 2018)

 

Literature is the irreplaceable human art. “A book,” wrote Franz Kafka, “must be the ax for the frozen sea inside us.” Reading not only illuminates our souls, it makes the lives of others more real to us — in all their diversity and complexity. Books enlarge, enhance and refine our humanity, and slowly transform our society to match our dreams.

from Literary L.A. with no apology 

http://danagioia.com/essays/literature-in-california/literary-l-a-with-no-apology/

The New Recute

 It started innocently enough. I had one nutcracker that looked like Santa. Then I saw others and well the die was cast. As of Wednesday that number has grown to 22. I am sure the collection really expanded once we began buying ornaments for our tree from Pier One Imports. They tended to put their Christmas merchandise on sale before Christmas and the temptation was too much. While I purchased a few elsewhere most of them came from Pier One as well as many of the nicest ornaments on our tree. 

“Marley was dead, to begin with ... This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.” 

Pier One was a store we enjoyed, it was close and did not require a trip to a big shopping mall. We bought everything from bedroom furniture to candles but is was an especially important part of our life at Christmas. We could also get lovely Unicef cards there. 

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.” 

When they closed earlier this year we dropped by and picked up a few candles. But we also realized it was one less place we would go simply to browse. Online shopping is convenient but rarely a shared experience. The last time I purchased a nutcracker at Pier One I was retired and had been to lunch with a group of friends from work. I was walking by with Manuela a lovely lady who had been telling us about a vacation home she was building in Mexico. The two of us wandered in and well the nutcrackers were on sale.  I realized when Pier One closed this was one yearly ritual that was no more and I decided the collection was complete. But recently we were watching a program on the Nutcracker and I knew there was one character missing. Yes I bought it online and yes I am now content with the collection as it is. 

“It is required of every man," the ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death.” 

            

 

“No space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused” 

Why a pickle? As a student, 40 plus years ago I spent several summers working at the H.J. Heinz Co. in Leamington, Ont. It has been an ongoing joke in the family ever since. This was long before the capitalists bought the plant to grab the brand, degrade the product, and break the union. May they wear the chains they forged in life, mankind was their business. Not as charity after the fact, when they have no further use for wealth, but as an ongoing part of a life richly lived.

The Christmas Maximalists Yule Tide

 

"Oddly enough, they often grow ten times the size of everyone else," said Alec thoughtfully, "and I've heard that they walk among the stars." 

The Phantom Tollbooth, Juster

Helen placed me on Instagram a month or so ago. It was fun to choose the topics I would follow, macro photography especially insects and nature seemed obvious, travel - nordic countries, London, Venice, New York and Japan, the Barbican and brutalist architecture (lots from the USSR) and mudlarking. We have started watching mudlarking on youtube as well. it has been relaxing and I look forward to seeing the photos even if it is a time sink. 

Instagram allows me to see the photos of people who share my interests.  In this turbulent time, I like to see the beauty that other people have discovered, the things they choose to seek out, surround themselves with. The things they treasure.  I avoid text-heavy posts with a few exceptions preferring to experience these things visually. It's seeing the world through someone else's eyes. One of the most important things for me when I travel is having someone to share the experience with. Sharing experiences not only enhances the experience at the time but creates a long term bond. You can see the same bond when family members share memories and relive experiences. 

Helen has also found a series of videos of walks that people film with GO-Pros.  There is no narration; people just film what they see as they walk. We have been able to see lots of gardens in Japan as well as the Christmas decorations in London and Red Square. It seems this is the closest we will get to travel at present, and I enjoy the unscripted nature of the videos. 

guytrott60

Road Trip - We found a lovely spot for lunch with friends

 

“A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”

― John Burroughs

"Several hundred years ago
this could have been mysticism
or heresy. It isn't now.
Outside there are sirens.
Someone's been run over.
The century grinds on."


from IN THE SECULAR NIGHT
Margaret Atwood

Florence Sept. 2019 Verdi

"Fly, my thoughts, on wings of gold;      "Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate;
go settle upon the slopes and the hills,   va, ti posa sui clivi, sui colli,
where, soft and mild, the sweet airs       ove olezzano tepide e molli
of my native land smell fragrant!"          l'aure dolci del suolo natal!"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Va,_pensiero

We watched the Venice episode of Lucy Worsley's Nights at the Opera
last night.

Today (The First House Xmas 2019)

“Without noticing, I slip into a light yet lingering malaise. Not a depression, more like a fascination for melancholia, which I turn in my hand as if it were a small planet, streaked in shadow, impossibly blue.”

Patti Smith

Books, Reading, Beauty, Summer Bird, Great Crested Flycatcher

“I try to write,” says Rachel Blau Duplessis in The Blue Studio, “so that if a single shard were rescued in the aftermath of some historical disaster, that one shard would be so touching and lucid as to give the future an idea of who we were.”

Where I found it, in this beautiful year end essay on books by Shawna Lemay's at Transaction with Beauty.

http://transactionswithbeauty.com/home/bibliobalm

A Day in the Life

"We risk our eyes

every day; they celebrate; they dance

and flirt over this offered treasure.

"Be alive," the land says. "Listen-

this is your time, your world, your pleasure.""

from Crossing Our Campground

by William Stafford

Yesterday I worked around the cabin taking out some grass, to discourage ticks and moving some plants. Despite bug repellant, changing my clothes after a tick check, a shower at the farm, more tick checks, scanning the sheets with a flashlight before bed, I found I had been bitten by two ticks. Helen has ordered me an anti-tick outfit, I believe it is a plastic buddle with waldos. She has also put the kibosh on some of my landscaping plans, I am not arguing. Ticks only became a problem here a few years ago when the winters warmed up. I was getting a bit discouraged, thank god the dragonflies showed up about four days ago.

Then this morning I woke to this out the front window.

We went to Shellbrook for breakfast and shopping.

On the way there were ducks. A Canvasback and 

some Scaups.

An old cabin. This looks similar to the homestead cabin

on the farm which was built about 1911-1912. Quite the

place to spend a Saskatchewan winter with the family.

The view from Arnies Grill, the wonderful restaurant in Shellbrook.

A prairie town sleeps under a blue sky. 

Nice but we really need rain.

A quick stop for gas, almost there.

Fall landscape and poetry

"I don’t know, but I do know that one thing that interests me is being in a landscape and trying to attach a language to something that you could never attach a language to."

An Interview with Michael McGriff at Poetry Daily
http://poems.com/special_features/prose/essay_evans_mcgriff.php

"My blood fills with so much iron I'm pulled

to a place in the hard earth where the wind 

grinds over the ridge bearing the wheels of tanker trucks 

oiling the access roads, where deer ruin the last of the plums, 

where the sloughs shrink back to their deepest channels, 

and I can turn away from nothing."

from Iron

by Michael McGriff

"Back there at the beginning, as I see it now, my life was all time and almost no memory. Though I knew early of death, it still seemed to be something that happened only to other people, and I stood in an unending river of time that would go on making the same changes and the same returns forever.

     And now, nearing the end, I see that my life is almost entirely memory and very little time." 

from Jayber Crow

by Wendell Berry

A view from the porch

"do u understand what heaven is it is the surround of the living" 

James Merrill

While we have stayed here in late August before this is the first year we have heard geese calling loudly from the far slough. This year we did not see many swallows around the cabin, some of their nests occupied by phoebes instead. There were also very few snakes in the hay field and none by the cabin. Each year is different, but some creatures are so entrenched within oure sense of place that their absence is like notes missing from a favourite tune. A discord season.

"Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things."

from Wild Geese

by Mary Oliver

‘I don’t know. Things don’t have purposes, as if the universe was a machine, where every part has a useful function. What’s the function of a galaxy? I don’t know if our life has a purpose and I don’t see that it matters. What does matter is that we’re a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.” (73)

from The Lathe of Heaven

by Ursula K. LeGuin

"When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things"




from The Peace of Wild Things

by Wendell Berry