Memorial Day Walk

I headed down to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park today, primarily to check out a great blue heron nesting colony.  Herons nest apartment-complex style -- in this case, in giant sycamores overhanging marshland.  One tree held thirteen nests, which look like massive piles of sticks, and on one nest, four herons, almost full-grown, craned their necks and stretched their legs.  They were too far away for much in the way of photography, though, so I decided to walk on a portion of the Ohio-Erie Canal Towpath Trail, the portion that makes its way directly through the marsh:  

 

The trip was well worth it.  My short walk revealed a ruby-throated hummingbird, cedar waxwings, downy woodpeckers, red-bellied woodpeckers, a flicker, a kingbird, tree swallows, Canada geese parents with four goslings, a wood duck hen with at least 12 tiny young scurrying behind her across the muck and vanishing into the grasses on the bank and, best of all, from my point of view, yellow warblers, who nest along river (or, in this case, canal) banks:

(http://www.pnl.gov/ecology/Gallery/Animal/ywarbler.htm)  

Their nests are virtually impossible to find, but I could see that at least one of the birds was busy providing lunch to his family.   It was a dreary, sprinkly kind of day, but I had a terrific walk anyway.  

Walked: 4 miles.

Walked in May: 86.7 miles

College Visits

University of Rochester Library

The "college visit," another form of walking, has gotten completely out of hand, as has the entire application process.

"Back in the day," as my students say, I applied to five colleges.  I visited two of them, one because it was nearby and one because it was easily accessible on spring break.  I handled my applications pretty much on my own, having little idea what grade points or SAT scores meant.  No idea, in fact. No one else proofread my essays, or even discussed them with me.  Most of my friends approached the process in the same manner.  And we attended a school designed to prepare us for the best in college education!

Today, the college application process is a roller coaster ride that picks up speed with every passing month of a student's junior year, the incline steepening as catalogs are collected, visits are planned, SAT and ACT and AP tests are scheduled, and the applications themselves, with their dreaded essays, loom ahead as the summer screeches downhill to an autumn so packed with classes, activities and sports that, we are warned, there will be no more time to make visits or write essays. 

Selective colleges, parents are advised, expect propsective applicants to show an interest.  That means, at minimum, actual visits, complete with tours and, if available, interviews.  Even though the internet now makes far more material available to high school stduents and their parents than was ever accessible through the paper catalogs of my generation; even though colleges apparently have unlimited funds with which to ply students with postcards, letters, brochures, and viewbooks; and even though college admissions representatives fan across the countryside in the fall to meet with seniors; the visit is still an integral part of the process with respect to any college within 500 miles.  And many young people criss-cross large chuncks of geography, sometimes more than once, long before they complete a single application form. I'm not entirely sure where the money for tuition is supposed to come from after parents' funds have been exhausted by the visit process.

Of course, there are tremendous benefits to in-person visits.  Although pretty much every campus boasts Georgian architecture, Gothic architecture, 1950s monstrosities that do not warrant the appellation "architecture," and contemporary architecture, and although pretty much every campus has "extensive new science facilities" and "impressive acoustics in the new music and theatre auditoriums" and workout facilities for a few thousand students that put the new recreation center for our city of 60,000 to shame, each one does have its distinct flavor. 

The University of Rochester, which we visited on Friday, is casually impressive.  The grounds and buildings are meticulously maintained, the libraries are elegant, and the student union is contemporary, comfortable, and full of light.  It was easy to imagine the energy that must suffuse the place when students are in residence. The admissions representative who met with us and the student who showed us around were both relaxed and good-natured, and left us with the feeling that the school would be a great place to spend four years: excellent and comprehensive academics with plenty of choice in course selection, a diverse group of students from all over the country, and a friendly atmosphere. 

The young man who served as our tour guide was himself probably the most positive aspect of our visit.  Originally from the Bronx, he had decided early in the game that he wanted to pursue engineering and, in the end, applied to only two schools: the University of Rochester, upon which he focused all his efforts, and a safety school that would have enabled him to live at home.  His ability to research and hone in on his goals was impressive (and in distinct contrast to our guide at another university, who had applied to no fewer than THIRTY-NINE colleges) and made him a convincing representative for the quality of his school. 

Do I sound like a catalog yet?  It really does seem like a terrific school.  And we walked around the campus for two hours!

Walked: 3.5 miles

Dream Vacation Number 1 Of 500 Or So (Week-end Assignment #7)

(http://www.gov.nf.ca/tourism/topmenu/gallery/completecard.asp?image=Gros_Morne)

Several years ago, when I was living another life entirely, a well-paid and childless colleague told me that she and her equally well-paid and childless husband just couldn't think of anywhere they wanted to go during their generous vacation time.  Neither money nor family responsibilities presented any barriers to them, but they were going to stay home and play golf at their club every day.

I remain unable to comprehend such a catastrophic failure of imagination.  I could have grabbed that yellow pad from her desk and filled every line (on both sides) with vacation and travel ideas.

It seems that we are limited to one for the week-end assignment, though, so I choose....Newfoundland!  Hiking, views, water, kayaking, whales, sea birds, northern lights  -- I could be on my way tomorrow if someone would like to fund me.

Poppies and Friends

Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting for the second time with an online friend and her family who hosted my daugher and I on a college visit to the University of Rochester.  We had a lot of fun catching up on changes since our first meeting about three years ago, when her handsome little boys were only 3 and 6, with bowl-cut blond hair.  (At that time, one of my boys looked at them and said, "They look just like we used to!")  Her neighborhood is an older inner-ring suburb pretty much like mine, so visiting her wasn't much different from staying at home -- except that she has a wonderfully pristine third floor covered with a plush green carpet that muffles virtually all sound from below, while my third has been a haven for teenage males for several years and is not remotely pristine.

As we were leaving, far behind schedule, she pointed out the poppies growing behind her house.  I'm not sure that I've ever seen poppies -- their texture is paper-like and, as you can see, they are brilliant in the sunshine.

Imagine what I'm going to be able to do with this photo and Paintshop Pro!

Walked: 4.5 miles.

Jefferson Airplane and Blogging

I know; the title doesn't make sense.  Just hang in there....

I have, unfortunately, disovered Paint Shop Pro.  I mean, really discovered it.  This is already such a problem.  It is way too fun, and I still have three weeks of school to teach and piles of papers to grade and 35 presentations to get through...and I just wanna play!

So, for those of you who remember the 60s, doesn't the following version of the allium photo from a couple of days ago remind you of posters from the Fillmore? 

As for blogging, the New York Times article this morning (www.nytimes.com)  was interesting.  John Scalzi's criticism(http://journals.aol.com/johnmscalzi/bytheway/) is legit: people have always, through centuries of letter writing (Remember that?  Fountain pens, stationary, stamps?) written for limited audiences, often even audiences of one.  So it hardly makes sense to crtitize bloggers for writing stuff that hardly anyone reads.

On the other hand, the article makes note of a real issue: addictions which are also and probably by definition time-wasters.  I have a full life, with kids and extended family and work and church and lots of friends and acquaintances, so my online life is just one other part of the whole.  But is is a really fun and intriguing part and it is definitely addictive.  Especially this journaling stuff -- I have my own and about 10 others already that I follow regularly.  I can see that I'm going to have to start scheduling myself the same way I have to do most other things: an hour to walk, an hour to grade papers, 30 minutes to pay bills, 10 hours to play online, an hour to make dinner... .  You get my drift.

Hey!  If anyone is actually reading this today, let me know -- just hit the comment button and say "hi."

Walked: 3miles.

Walked this past week: 15.5 miles.

 

Early Morning Rambling Thoughts

...my daughter has a late arrival time for school this morning, so I let her sleep in and head out to walk at 7:00 -- too late; it is already SO humid...I miss my cat, who got hit by a car on June 1 last year; I've been thinking about him because for the second year in a row it's been too rainy to use the yard much, but last spring at this time we had just fixed up the back after years of neglect and he thought that the pavers bordering the garden were his personal cat walk...I was so happy to get an email last night from one of my college-freshmen sons to whom I had sent the allium photo since we had started planting those when he was a little guy because he liked them so much and it turns out that he still does...the van which just acquired new brakes (ouch!) a couple of weeks ago now apparently needs a brake light, and my daughter and I are leaving for Rochester tomorrow, so I have to take that in...I need to get over to the university where I do graduate work to order a transcript for my teaching license...our current psycho kitty apparently does not like her litter box in the basement since she pooped on the dining room rug this morning, so I have to address that...why does my daughter's college counselor think Vanderbilt might be a good choice? isn't it on the conservative side?....I need to find the car insurance bill and get it paid, or call the insurance company if I have completely lost it....there are 8 emails on my other account, which means my students have finally decided that they want to discuss their final papers...if I try to photograph those iris I will probably slide off those slippery stones and right into the creek...

Nope -- I didn't!

Walked: 5 miles altogether.

Playtime

I don't usually do two entries in a day, but this was my first attempt at playing around with the macro function on my camera.  It's just one of the allium out front, but it will be fun to see it open and to try to improve my technique, such as it is.

Growing Goslings

The first picture is from last week and I wasn't going to use it since it's so blurry.  But it does give you a vague idea of how the family is doing.

The second picture is from this afternoon.  I am happy to report that all six goslings are alive and well.

Walked: 1.5 miles. 

South Beach Failure

Yes, that one was a disaster.  The headaches, the intestinal upsets, the cravings, and the total of one pound lost in 5 days -- no, South Beach wasn't for me.

South Beach looks and sounds sensible and easy.  But it does require some significant changes, all of which clearly have systemic ramifications.  And, more importantly, it doesn't address the emotional issues connected with overeating.

Back to Weight Watchers.  I paid to join online at the beginning of the year, and then competelly ignored it as a resource.  One of my friends is going to meetings, and she looks fantastic. To be completely honest, though, I'm not sure if it's the Weight Watchers or the new man in her life.

Walked: 3 early morning miles - despite another middle-of-the-night dog panic.  Enduring these thunderstorms with the dog night after night is like enduring the first few weeks with a new baby.  The difference is that a baby lying next to you in bed is much sweeter than a frantic, panting, wriggling dog.

P.S.  Y'all should read  Pooh's Adventures in Japan today.  The Anne Frank entry.

Big Pictures

Celtic Crosses

Thanks to Sunflowerkat321 , I now have some idea of how to do Big Pictures. I actually delayed going into work by an hour the other morning in an attempt to follow her instructions, and came home and gave it another hour at at lunch, all to no avail.  I'm not sure why something like 25 steps should be required to achieve this -- and I have to look at the printout for almost every one of those steps.  But then, despite my family's careful explanations a few weeks ago, I can never remember the difference between "upload" and "downlaod."

At any rate, you might have guessed, the problem lay with the technician (that would be me), not the teacher.  It took my teenaged daughter seven minutes flat to get from "Here -- let me see" (uttered with a big sigh) to "There you go" and the appearance of a Big Picture.

What I want to know now is, where on earth are my pictures?  What and where are "My FTP" and .jpg?  Never mind; those questions are entirely rhetorical.

What I would really like to know is how to do an in-text link, so I could send you off to Kat's journals.  Oh! -- I figured it out! So take a look at Walk with Me  and From Every Angle.  Kat is one talented woman whose sites glow with her appreciation of the natural world and, unfortunately for the things I am supposed to be doing, has got me thinking about making Big Pictures of wonderful tiny subjects. 

Walked: Took the day off.  Between the previous night's disrupted sleep (due to my daughter not returning from a babysitting job until after 1:00 a.m. and the dog's frantic leaping around on top of me during yet another 3:00 a.m. thunderstorm) and the intense humidity, I decided it was a good day for a break.

Listening While You Walk

Cemetery Visitor

A few summers ago I participated in a journal writing workshop in which one of our assignments was to sit quietly in one place for an hour or so and record what we heard around us.  I thought I'd try that today while I am out and about -- I don't really have space today to sit still for long.  So, from today's ventures:

In a scene any mother will recognize: a young couple is loading up a car in a quiet lane.  Their little daughter, about two years old and with hair fluffed out like cotton candy, ventures a few steps away from them, into the street behind their car, just as the car parked in front of theirs starts to pull out.  The mother, loading boxes into the car but keenly aware of her daughter's whereabouts and alert to any change in surroundings, lets out a little yelp and leaps out to grab her child. The father, loading boxes and oblivious to all else, looks up in confusion and, after he has grasped what has happened, laughs at her.

Despite the dense humidity, the Muslim woman approaching me is wearing an ankle-length skirt, a long-sleeved jacket, and a scarf thoroughly wrapped around her head and neck, so that only her face from her eyebrows to her chin are visible.  Despite the traditional garb, she is also wearing headphones, and is listening so intently that she doesn't notice me as we pass.

T-shirts on people walking and running: Troop 22.  We Drink Till We're Full and We Sell the Rest.  Yellowstone National Park.

Woman in Borders, to two other women: "The problem with this one is, you'll finish it in one night."

Woman outside Borders, talking on her cell phone: "She wants me to move out and start living on my own, but...".

Outrageously thin (90 pounds, maybe?) college-aged woman with similarly-sized friend, both wearing skin tight jeans, huge hip-hugging belts, teeny tiny tank tops, and hair in a variety of hues, walking down the block: "Well, like, if there were, like, ice cream at places like, Borders, well, like...".

My daughter, when I stop by the house where she's babysitting to ask whether she'd like to go to a play with me tomorrow night, and the two kids, who are supposed to be eating dinner, start growling and climb under a table: "Thanks, Mom, for making a bad situation worse."

Ah yes.  My role in the universe.

Walked : 3 miles -- 1 at a time -- it's really humid out there!

Best Friends

Contemplative Pose

My best friends, oddly enough, are the ones who surround me now.  I say "oddly enough" only because I have come to realize that adult friendships, particularly friendships that begin in adulthood, are somewhat rare.

Several of us have been together for 16 years.  We met through a church that most of us no longer attend, parents of young children who were starving for adult companionship.  Most of the women had recently left the workplace, or were about to, and found oursleves working harder than we ever had in our lives, but without the comraderie of the water fountain.  Most of the men were in the early stages of careers that were becoming increasingly demanding as the new world of ten and twelve-hour days in the office claimed their time, and finding that they were isolated from their growing families.

For several years the women got together, without fail, one morning a week, solidifying friendships as the children played nearby and, eventually, went off to school.  We all spent frequent evenings together.  But then, as the women started going back to work and the children required frequent afternoon, evening, and week-end transportation -- to soccer games, hockey games, music lessons, ice skating lessons, riding lessons, Scouts, you name it and suburban parents will find it -- our time together started to dwindle. 

A couple of years ago we designated Saturday mornings as sacrosanct.  We drift into a local coffeee shop, staying sometimes a few minutes, sometimes well beyond lunchtime.  We never stop talking.  We have seen each other through personal career achievements and disasters, through deaths of parents and divorces of our own, through anguish over adolescent trauma that we could never have imagined would befall those shining-faced children of ours, and through graduations and college admissions.  Now the first big wedding is coming up.

My childhood did not lend itself to the development of any "best friend" relationships.  But in adulthood I have been far more fortunate.

Walked:  Fit in 2 miles after a very long thunderstorm in the late afternoon/early evening.

Walked this past week: 19.5 miles.

Highlights, Photos, Blogs, and Week-end Assignments (#6)

Celtic Cross

Thanks to Keyword: Journal and its weekly Journal Highlights, I've found a terrific walking journal -- check out my Links.  And on the subject of Highlights, I got another invitation this week to submit my photo so that my journal might be noted -- this time on the Main Page instead of on the Diet and Fitness Page.  I referred them to my Nordstrom's Girl entry.  But in the meantime, another journaling friend has suggested that we steal our photo identities from yet a third online buddy.  We've known her via email for years.  All I can say is that when a gorgeous blonde appears next to my byline, you may rest assured that it is absolutely and authentically ME!  I'm abandoning the brunette Nordstron's girl persona.

And on the second subject of photos, if anyone out there can help me, in a blow-by-blow explanation that omits not one tiny detail, figure out how to post BIG pictures, please write! 

Back to blogs: I've also found a fascinating travel journal (again, see Links).  I'm thinking about sending it on to my sons, but I don't want them to drop out of college.

And finally, the Week-end Assignment: Sigh.  Second grade was the worst year of my life.  So yet another assignment which I have to skirt with imaginative eloquence.  I'm working on Best Friends from Other Time Periods.

Walked: 4 miles.

Walking and Talking

I've discovered that even though you really shouldn't drive and talk on the phone -- did you know that driving while talking on a cell phone is supposed to be as incapacitating as driving while intoxicated? -- walking and talking on the phone is a great way to get through a bout of exercise for which you feel no motivation or desire.

So this afternoon I have talked to my two sons away at college and a friend who is going to help me figure out what colors to paint our first floor interior.

Son to the north:  Didn't have a lot to say.  He's finding his super-duper-required-for-a-physics-major math course to be more challenging than the previous two quarters of calculus.  Hey, don't look at me: I have no idea what the purpose of calculus might be (even though I aced a course in it once by memorizing the textbook of which I understood not one single word) and I never took even a high school physics course.

Son to the south:  Much more talkative.  Full of plans for a summer in Europe and actually asking intelligent and responsible questions about overseas cell phone communication.  Not that I have any answers yet, but I'm glad he's asking.  I'm a lot more frightened about an American child in Europe this summer than I was about the same situation even immediately post 9/11.

On the house:  When we moved in 20 years ago, the house had just been redecorated and I was totally blown away by all of the matching and complimentary country print wallpaper in the first floor rooms and hallway.  OK, so I had no idea that there are wallpaper books that help you match wallpaper patterns.   More importantly, after 30 years of marriage and 20 of motherhood, I am most definitely NOT a country prints woman.  I was a stark white walls woman for awhile, but only got around to painting our bedroom white.  Now I am a daring and bold colors woman. I want to run away screaming from the actual wallpaper in my house and transform it into a house that makes me think of the Maine Coast.

My preference would be for the St. Augustine or Italian coast, but our house is full of dark woodwork and the yellows, pinks, turquoises, and lime greens of the southern seaside just won't play here. So I have decided to move to the rocky northern beaches in my thematic daydream and am imagining walls in deep teals, greens, and purples, with a dash of yellowsomewhere.  However, since I have no artistic capability whatsoever (perhaps that is obvious?), I need my artist friend to come over this week-end and plan the painting project for me.

So I got my walk in and talked the whole time!

Oh, and I do have a funny story related to today's cemetery photo, about another conversation that I overheard there a few days ago.  A little boy was asking his mom about this mausoleum, which I think is beautiful, built into the hillside and highlighted with pink and green marble.  I couldn't quite catch what he asked, but his mom said, "Well, I think they're very happy in there,"

Walked: 3 miles.

Just an Ordinary Day

I don't usually write much about my entire day, but once in awhile one of them might be worth taking a look at.  Not because of anything special or outstanding; just because it's good to take stock once in awhile. So, some of yesterday:

Started out on the tense side.  I had agreed to drive my daughter and another girl to the bus stop (15 minutes away); the other young lady got off to a late start and ambled out of her house without a care in the world.  I don't think she understood that the bus doesn't just wait around to see who shows up.  We made it, but without a second to spare.  If we hadn't, I would have had to add another 45 minutes of driving to my day, which was not on my list of things I wanted to do.

So I came home, discovered that poached eggs two days in a row is an unacceptable menu, played around online for awhile, and then spent an hour putting together some research and an outline for a student in my honors history class.  I have assigned a major project for the final exam, and some of my students struggle in a HUGE way with multi-part projects.

Went to work, knowing that I was going to be late in meeting with the 7th grader I tutor (he's newly from Israel and needs help with his English vocab and reading assignments), but when I got there, the 7th grade was nowhere to be found.  Off on yet another special project.  So I graded papers instead.

Taught two ninth grade world history history classes.  We have reached the topic of 19th century imperialism, which means that we will barely sqeak through World War I in the next week before it's time for their final presentations on World War II.  After class, I met with several students on Life Issues and, in a couple of cases, on actual academic work.  Then I came home to eat another fine meal: salad and leftover steak from the night before. And some Oreos: I've decided a little cheating is acceptable and, in fact, necessary, if I am going to survive one more day on this ridiculous diet.

The class I teach in the afternoon is on contemporary history and we are supposed to be working our way through Watergate.  However, we got completely off track and spent most of the class on Nicholas Berg.  One of the students claimed to have seen the video and says that Nick Berg's captors sawed his head off.  Is that possible?  I don't know.  I see that today's Tehran News says that the entire video is a fraud.  I haven't seen the video.  I have looked for it, but not too hard. 

Do I believe Tehran News?  CNN?  Donald Rumsfeld?  Anyone?

One of the seniors in the contemporary history class was stunned last month when I said that I seldom believe anything I see or hear on the news.  I was equally surprised to find a teenager so willing to accept as "the truth" whatever she hears. Unfortunately she is on senior project now, when we are reaching the reason for my skepticism; part of the Watergate fallout was its production of a generation that no longer takes at face value any statement made by a political figure.

At any rate, we live in a world of suspicion and hatred, and my little class is a microcosm of the whole.

I picked up my daughter, dropped her off at her math tutor's house, and fit in the first mile of my walk before picking her back up and running to the grocery.  The skies opened just as we got home -- luckily for me, because had we unloaded the gorceries a minute sooner, I would have been sure that I could have managed another couple of miles before the downpour.  We decided to go ahead and eat whenever we felt like it.  Just as I finished -- ricotta wrapped in eggplant that I found at the deli counter -- my husband showed up and made a real meal for the two of them. I watched the grande finale of 7th Heaven -- how ridiculous is that, to have a birth show with the dad, baby, and grandparents, but no mom? -- and went out to finish my walk, the rain having finally stopped.  Came home to find that the student on whose work I had started my day had called four times while I was out.  So I talked to her, and her mom, and finally crawled into bed with my books and papers.

So now it's another day.  The sky is darkening again and I'm off to search for the 7th grade and to see what I can convey about imperialism and Watergate, which are probably connected in some offbeat way.

Walked: 2 miles late at night -- the day got away from me again, partly because it rained endlessly.

Misery

 

You know how all the weight loss stories in magazines make it sound so easy?  "Oh, la-di-dah, I just stopped eating things that were bad for me and started eating vegies and chicken and voila! I've lost 40 pounds"?

This is not going to be one of those sagas.  This is going to be more along the lines of the one told by some celebrity (Ha! I did pay attention to a celebrity -- but I have no recollection of whom she was) who said that losing a significant amount of weight was the most difficult undertaking of her life.

I long for a Milky Way.  Not because I'm hungry -- no, I'm aware that my eating problems are 100% related to my emotions -- and not because I eat Milky Ways all day.  I just want a Milky Way, and have for about 22 hours now, because I can't have one.

I already feel completely depleted of energy.  I had to go to a meeting last night at 6:00 p.m., and by 6:45 I was almost nonfunctional.  People kept looking at me, waiting for my scintillating contributions, and what came our of my mouth was either gibberish or, "Whatever you want; I don't care."

I woke up with excruciating headaches at 3:00 a.m. and 5:30 a.m.

I am hoping all this is simply my body transitioning from sugar-dependence to protein-dependence.  What ever is going on, I do feel that my source of physical and mental well-being is lost and that I am going to have to find a different kind of energy to rely on if I am going to survive the next few days.

Walked: 3 miles.

South Beach

Common yellowthroat (saw one this morning)  (www.nps.gov/.../ birds/Common_Yellowthroat.html)

 

OK, here I go. 

Despite having averaged about 3 miles a day of walking since I began this journal, my weight hasn't budged.  I'm relieved, of course, that I haven't added any -- I probably gained 5 pounds over the winter and I certainly didn't want to continue in that direction.  But I'd sure like to see some significant movement downward.

A couple with whom we are best friends has been following the South Beach diet for several weeks, and they've each lost about 20 pounds.  She assures me that she doesn't feel the least bit deprived, but then she has, shall we say, a far more perfectionist streak than I do, and endless patience and attentiveness to detail.  And she enjoys cooking,  Since we have virtually no personality traits in common, I imagine that my experience will differ somewhat from hers.  She looks great, by the way.  I haven't seen her husband since they got started.

He happened to answer the phone last night.

"So," I said, "I hear you're really skinny!"

"I should be a lot skinnier," he said.  "I feel like a rabbit.  Salad for lunch, salad for dinner."

I think he's having a little bit of a harder time.  But he says it's an easy diet to follow.

"I should think so," I responded.  "I just sent myself an email listing all the things I can't eat for the next two weeks.  No bread, rice, potatoes, sugar, cake, cookies, baked goods, cereal -- in other words, you simply stop eating for two weeks."

I'm off to my fabulous breakfast of poached eggs.  With no toast.

And I'm still going to post springtime pictures.  The last thing I want is to look at pictures of meals with no white in them.

Walked: 4.5 miles.

Great Places to Walk #3: Cemetery

 

I have lived in the same house for more than two decades, but I didn't disover the historic cemetery nearby until a few years ago.  Oh, I had been there from time to time, mostly to take the kids to visit an enormous historic monument to a former president, but I had no idea how many other treasures were hidden inside the gates. 

Roads and paths meander over nearly 300 acres maintained as an arboretum, in which over 90,000 people are buried.  The cemetery is adjacent to Little Italy, whose stone masons carved hundreds of intricate sculptures.  Many of them mark the graves of well known citizens, while others bear names that few would recognize today.

The sculpture pictured above is one of the most photographed in the cemetery.  It seems to draw all kinds of people -- I'm sure that some are local art students, but others look more like me: they simply find it irresistible.

Walked: 1 mile.  I got up at 5:30 a.m. to finish a paper and tried to take a nap in the afternoon.  The paper got finished but the nap didn't, so I have been tired and out of it and just couldn't manage a real walk.

Celebrities (Week-end Assignment #5)

Once again, I've discovered how completely out of it I am. 

I haven't had any close encounters with any celebrities.

Or if I have, I don't know about it.

I did learn a few months ago who Jennifer Aniston is.  And I've seen Oprah on tv twice, for a total of about 40 minutes.  Do those count?

Walked: 3 miles.

Walked this past week: 24.7 miles.

Springtime in the Marsh

The Sentinel

About a week ago, I discovered that the Canada geese parents I had been watching had abandoned their nest.  I was so sad for them -- she had been sitting patiently for days and he had been slowly traversing the water, back and forth and back and forth -- but snapping turtles and racoons present constant hazards to the geese and ducks.

Then I discovered them under the boardwalk with six fluffy goslings -- they had abandoned the nest because they were finished with it!  A couple of days later, it looked like only two of the little ones remained, but gradually all six appeared.  They were simply extending their range.

And this morning the entire family was out for a swim.  The goslings are sticking much closer to each other and to their parents; it looks like they're finding the water a bit more intimidating than the grassy cover of land.

Walked: 3.7 miles.  Ran into a friend and she said it was 90 degrees -- at 7:00 p.m!

Mbira

(http://www.mbira.org/)

Last year as I walked through the cemetery late one afternoon, a lone man was standing in an empty field, playing Amazing Grace on his bagpipes.

Yesterday as I approached the lake, I could hear an unusual sound drifting through the humid air, and as I got closer, I could see a man rocking back and forth in a lawn chair, playing an instrument that looked like a small xylophone in half a round gourd. He told me that it was a mbira (prounounced just like it's spelled), an instrument from Zimbabwe. I was hoping that he was from Zimbabwe, too, but no such luck.

If you're at all interested in African music, the website is well done.

Walked: 2.5 miles.  The heat is almost intolerable and it's only about 80 degrees. 

Nordstrom's Girl

OK.  First, you have to understand that a Nordstrom's catalog has been tossed onto our couch.  The cover features a young model in a black bikini.  Her skin is smooth and her long and lustrous brown hair blows in the wind.  She looks exactly like me.   

So yesterday I get an email telling me my journal might be featured on AOL's Diet and Fitness programming screen.  The catch?  They want a photo.   Now do you believe for a second that a woman who is writing about her efforts to lose weight wants her photo plastered all over America so that her friends from years past can, um, issue sorrowful and sympathetic but secretly relieved commentary?

I don't think so.

I tell my daughter that I was going to be famous, but the photo thing is a deal-breaker.  She looks at me in amazement.  "Just use someone else's," she says.  This time it's my turn to be surprised.  She's in high school.  Plagiarize a whole other person?  "Sure," she responds.  She picks the Nordstrom's catalog off the couch.  "Here," she says.  "Use this one!"

So there you go, AOL.  You already have my photo.  It's on the cover of the Nordstrom swimsuit catalog. What more could you possibly ask?

Walked: 3 of the slowest miles ever -- it was beyond hot this afternoon.

Today's a Tough One

Mallard in the marsh

I thought I had a free hour this morning, but the phone rang just after 7:00 and my daughter's carpool driver had pooped out on us.  No problem -- I'd take her to the bus.  That's didn't work either; the other girl in the carpool isn't registered for the bus, so she needed a ride all the way to school.  So my 10-minute round trip drive became a 30 and then a 60 minute trip.

As it turned out, I didn't have that free hour anyway.  I had completely forgotten plans to meet a friend for breakfast, and when I dashed into the coffee shop to grab a croissant, she was on her way out.  As we stood on the sidewalk trying to cram an hour's worth of talk into five minutes, her contact flew out, so four adults spent some time crawling around on the sidewalk, to no avail.

I just slipped out for a lunchtime mile, but the heat is opprerssive.  I have to go back out to my daughter's school, get her to a meeting, and get myself to an evening class.  What are the chances of fitting in the other two miles?

Later: Ha!  I did it!

Walked: 3 miles.

Three Moms

"What are you going to do with your one wild and wonderful life?" (Mary Oliver)

It's hard to imagine that my grandmother was 48 when I was born -- she always seemed old to me! -- but my first memories of her must date from when she was only a year or two beyond my age now. She loved long walks in the country and on the beach to look for birds, she loved music, and she loved to travel the world, almost always with a grandchild in tow.  My grandfather refused to board a plane or a boat, which restricted his choice of destination considerably.  At the age of 58, my grandmother shrugged her shoulders at his recalcitrance and took me on an experimental little jaunt: a week in Colonial Williamsburg.  Her final excursion, at the age of 80, was to Trinidad and Tobago to see tropical birds.  In between, she managed to hit most of Europe and much of Africa and Asia.  These days, she spends most of her time sitting in an assisted living apartment, barely able to see or hear.  Now 98, she has had a long and rich life, equally full of expansive joy and devastating sorrow, but these final years are sobering ones for her family as we observe the restrictions nature can impose on someone who liked to push the limits .

My mother had 70 fewer years to work with.  She died at the age of 28  in an automobile accident. She left to me neither her blond hair nor her lovely singing voice, both of which skipped a generation and reappeared in my daughter, but I like to think that she provided as a generous legacy her capacity for enjoyment and appreciation of other people.  She spent the entirety of her few years in southern Ohio, with the brief exception of a year in western Massachusetts and one in Florida, and took a genuine pleasure in others that filled her life with laughter and friendship.  When eight families, complete with large and hungry teenage males, crowd into our home for Christmas dinner, or when I manage a day in which I teach Orthodox Jewish students, attend a class taught by a Muslim imam at a Catholic university, and respond to e-mails for my Protestant church, I think: that's my mother, filling my life with everyone.

There's one other mother of whom I think every day: our son's French mom.  Our son spent his junior year of high school in Rennes, France, attending school as part of an American program, but living with a wonderful French family.  Marithe' was about to begin a year-long course in nursing home-administration as she mothered three teen-age boys.  A generous hostess and outstanding cook, she seemed easily able to slot our son in between her college-aged and middle-school boys.  It's a challenge to send a 17-year-old across the ocean for a year, and I lost plenty of sleep in the weeks before his departure, wondering what family life would be like for this child over whom I had so carefully watched every day. But when the rest of us arrived a few months later to a beautifully prepared Christmas Eve dinner and a table full of laughter and friendship, I could see that he had landed with the best mother in all of France.  I don't let a day go by without thinking of her with love and gratitude.

Happy Mother's Day!

Walked: 4 miles.

International Migratory Bird Day

(http://northeast.fws.gov/migratorybirds/migratory_bird_day.htm)

Take a bird walk today!  From the website of the Northeast Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:

<<Set on the second Saturday in May, International Migratory Bird Day (IMBD) is an invitation to celebrate and support migratory bird conservation.

Like any day of recognition, IMBD exists to focus attention on a valuable resource - the nearly 350 species of migratory birds that travel between nesting habitats in North America and non-breeding grounds in South and Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean.

To learn more about IMBD, please visit this site.>>

Walked: 5.5 miles.  It's hot!  But I had a great visit on the bird part of my walk with a colleague from several years back and his wife, who are novice birders but still had managed to come across a yellow-billed cuckoo.  (Bet you didn't even know that there really are such things as cuckoos in North America, did you?)

Camp Birthdays (Week-end Assignment #4)

No memorable presents, either given or received -- but memorable birthdays for sure, especially my 10th and 11th, when I was spending the summers at camp in North Carolina.  Camp was a month or two of outdoor simplicity, a respite from the world outside.  Birthdays were no more elaborate than anything else -- the high point was the watermelon that your parents could provide for a cabin party in the evening.  Since our cabins had no amenities, the watermelons were kept cool in the mountain streams that ran through camp.

It would be hard for most electronically-hardened kids today to imagine that the highlight of a tenth birthday would be traipsing over a little bridge several times during the day as you trotted back and forth to your activities, and looking down to see your birthday watermelon lodged among some rocks so that the icy water could tumble over it.

That camp still exists -- a haven from computer camps, gifted-children camps, specialty sports camps, competitive music camps, and all the other lures of summer in our fast-paced world.  My 16-year-old daughter will be working there this summer, and the smile that broke across her face when she received her job offer told the whole story.  There is still a need for places where young people can hike and paint and play in waterfalls and make coiled clay pots and sing around nightly campfires.  And share birthday watermelons with friends from around the world.

Walked: 4 miles.

Walked this past week: 15 miles

Bird Walks

So, okay, these aren't actually walks.  Not the areobic kind anyway, and not even the strolling kind.  These are more like...scavenger hunts.

Last night:  woods full of palm warblers and ruby-crowned kinglets.  Palm warblers bob their tails nonstop and are exhausting to watch.  Drake wood ducks sauntering forth solo, which means that the ladies must be sitting on their eggs.  A bird I didn't recognize, and I have no idea where my bird book is, because I've been dragging it around the house all week.  The Canada geese eggs that I thought had been consumed by snapping turtles or racoons have morphed into six yellow fluffballs, oblivious to the hazards of marsh life.

It took me 1.5 hours to walk 1.5 miles last night.  Hmmm.  Well done.

Walked: 2 miles.

The Creative Life (Baby Steps)

Cemetery Springtime

I titled this journal Unload! because I was hoping to use it as a catalyst for weight loss and healthy living.  I can't say I've had huge successes in those areas; in fact, with the exception of my (almost!) daily walking, I've had close to none.  Not that the walking itself isn't a huge plus.  If my calculations are correct, I've walked 99 miles in the past 35 days (not counting today).  That's something of an improvement over an entire winter of maybe 20 miles total.

More importantly, though, is the creative discipline that my journal is imposing on my life.  Years and years and years ago, when my children were very small, I published several articles (most of them in barely-read publications, but still...). However, as I went back to work and life became more complex, I let my favorite occupations, writing and photography, slide into -- well, into complete nothingness.  Month after month, I charted "writing" and "photography" into my "to do" lists, and month after month as I checked off all the tasks under the kids-family-work-bills-house-errands-church categories, I moved on with barely a glance at the blank spaces under the two categories that I needed to sustain myself.

So, in a big way, I have made progress in healthy living.  Only a season ago, I was a teacher with a procrastination problem, but now I am now a writer who gets out and walks and takes pictures!

Walked: 1.5 miles

Black-Winged Redbirds: A Dedication

Scarlet Tanager (http://birds.cornell.edu/BOW/SCATAN)

A magnificent morning -- frost glistening in the sunshine and birds calling energetically.  The area where I walked is waking up to spring: a wave of yellow-rumped and palm warblers came though last night, great blue herons and great egrets stalk the shallow waters of the lake, and geese honk frantically.  To my amazement, I caught a glimpse of crimson in the woods and realized that a pair of scarlet tangers was flitting through the trees.

It's been nearly 25 years to the day since my husband and I participated in a Museum of Natural History week-end field trip to Point Pelee, a major stopover for migrating birds.  The point, in southern Ontario, juts into Lake Erie and provides a welcome resting spot for weary travelers who have made their way up from South Amercia and crossed the wide expanse of the lake during the night.  The birds drop to Pelee's beaches in droves on early mornings in May, utterly spent from their long journey.

Our first morning there was cold and rainy and generally miserable for humans and birds alike.   However, a wave of scarlet tanagers had come through the night before, and their vibrant reds and glossy blacks seemed to light up the dark woods.

I will never forget one of the young women who took part in that trip.  She was killed in a terrible accident several months later, but that morning she stood there in the rain, with her own thick red hair cascading down the back of her poncho, and exclaimed, "The woods are full of black-winged redbirds!"

Walked: 3.5 miles

 

Great Places to Walk #2: Cinque Terre

Riomaggiore, Italy (http://walking.about.com/library/walk/bllartcinque.htm)

Along the western coast of Italy are the Five Lands -- the Cinque Terre:  five colorful fishing villages built into the rocky cliffs over a distance of about eight miles. 

You can take a boat from village to village, or walk the smooth path along the coast from one to another, or hike any number of trails higher in the hills.  Open-air markets and cafes are plentiful.  The houses are step and narrow, washed in pinks and yellows, while laundry in bright blues and reds hangs from window-to-window lines across the winding streets.  Fishing boats in the same colors as the houses line the cobblestone roads down to the beaches.  Children splash in the shallows, adults swim out twenty or thirty feet to sunbathe on huge boulders, and tourist boats and  kayaks glide by in the turquoise Mediterranean.

I've only been there once, but it's at the top of my list of places to return to!

Walked: 1 mile

It's Raining, It's Pouring

...and it has been since very early this morning.  No kind of day for a walk at all.  The kind of day to get back to some major stretching, which my back needs desperately.  I had forgotten about the unending back pain that accompanies walking, which I believe comes from the back's effort to compensate for nonexistent stomach muscles as the body gradually gains in overall strength.

So what have I done today since I haven't been out to play?  A few loads of laundry.  The grocery shopping for the next few days.  An adult church class (I teach that one) and church itself, where I was just like a fidgety six-year-old (the dreary, cold, and wet weather, I'm sure).  A couple of hours of preparation for my high school students' upcoming final projects on Watergate and World War II.  The Watergate work is fascinating -- I was in college during Watergate, so it's probably the first major sequence of political events of which I have a reasonably clear recollection. I am thoroughly enjoying this opportunity to reread articles from The Washington Post and The New York Times that I first read as a student while the events were unfolding.

Personal Watergate Memories:

(1) I was working at the Hasbro Toy Factory in Pawtucket RI making GI Joe flashlights during the summer of the televised Senate Watergate hearings -- a miserable job in an un-airconditioned warehouse building.  The only good thing about a daytime factory shift is that it ends at 3:00 p.m.  I would return to my apartment every afternoon covered in sweat and grime and sink into the tub to relax for an hour and watch Senator Sam Ervin demonstrate how to run a Senate investigation.

(2) A few months later I was riding my bike across an autumn picture-perfect New England campus when someone called out, "Agnew has resigned!"  A few weeks later, we watched the news in amazement as Nixon fired Special Prosecutor Cox and two of his senior administration officals promptly resigned, a series of events that became known as the "Saturday Night Massacre."

Of course, Watergate continued to dominate the news and our lives until Nixon resigned ten months later.

Worst Advice (Week-end Assignment #3)

I'm afraid that it came from my beloved grandmother, now 98 years old.

She was hell-bent on my attending the elite Eastern women's college from which she had graduated forty-some years before it was my turn.  I had other ideas.  Well aware in high school that I had no well-formed ideas about my future, or half-formed ideas, or any other-formed ideas, I determined to attend a far less prestigious midwestern college known for its work-study program.  Although internships are a typical component of college programs today, they were few and far between thirty years ago.  The college on which I had set my sights was a pioneer in that regard.  It took a student five years to graduate, but that was because periodic semesters off-campus in employment or volunteer positions were required.

When I was accepted to both schools, I happily announced my plans to attend the latter.  My grandmother, usually unobtrusive where my generation was concerned, sprang into action.  Several phone calls later, I was regretfully accepting her school's offer of admission and turning down the one I really wanted.

In just how many ways was that a mistake?  Let's see: (1) I had attended small girls' schools for six years and found the atmosphere of a small women's college stifling.  I transferred after my second year. (2) I had no more idea of what I wanted to do with my life when I finished college than I had had when I finished high school. (3) I proceded to spend 20 years in a career which I enjoyed at times but for which I was temperamentally unsuited, and ended up making huge changes in midlife.

I don't blame my grandmother.  She loves me lots and didn't want me to lose out on the opportunity of a lifetime.  But I was in need of entirely different opportunties.  And I am trying REALLY hard to remember that now that I have college-age children of my own.

 

Walked: 3.0 miles.