April 15, 2005
Thaw
Adam sent me this photograph about a month ago. This river to be is now all river.
View larger image
Matt is on Spring Break in Florida and we are going to be in Chatham on the Cape until Monday. No computer access and no updates unless the Benedict Arnold Twins, Adam and Dan, chime in.
'Course it's a pretty middlin' picture at best, even I'll admit. An I took it. Mike (wisely?) neglected to include the accompanying philosophical musing that was to be the proposed post, and which may or may not elevate it by context. From that day's headlines and events:
A homeless woman leaves her 3-month-old baby at a police station. Despite the 7-day-old cutoff for state-legal retributionless infant abdication, the officers acknowledge winter and the baby’s better interests and accept her. A rock-and-hard-place nothing-but-winter first impression of this world perhaps gets a little easier. For the baby.
Ten turkeys – 4 male, 6 female – peck their way through our barren backyard. At what I don’t know, but they haven’t starved. Yet. The taunting March snows have left no ground exposed, not that there’d be anything I can imagine as food there. They were through here pretty thoroughly in the fall.
Lumbering yellow behemoths scoop snow from parking lots into waiting dumptrucks for “relocation” in advance of the next storm. Mid-March, and the solstice but days away, yet the potential mildness of our latitude is absent. I put finishing touches on two room remodelings, the leading edge of acute cabin fever.
But on my way home from work, the backwaters of the river are joining the open waters of the main body in their ability to reflect sky. The sunset makes me think of the dawn of spring.
Posted by adam.Why in the world would you say that's a middlin' picture? I really like it.
Posted by jennifer.This is unrelated to THAW.
I've just gotten ahold of something which I find quite fascinating, and I'm curious whether readers here would be interested in (parts of) it -- or if anyone thinks it would be inappropriate to put online in this way. My mother (who died in 1988) went to Antioch and finished in the early 50s. She wrote a short novel which was quite autobiographical and I have been trying to find it again for about 20 years. My sisters knew that it was written for an Antioch assignment, and also knew that Antioch archived senior papers, and therefore thought that we would be able to ask for it. So I did, and what I got turns out to be a very different piece of work. It is hard to explain exactly what it is, but clearly seniors were asked to say something about their experience at Antioch, and how they found themselves becoming whomever they became. She apparently took the task more seriously than most -- 80 pages-worth of serious. I've found it very interesting to try to relate the near-graduate she apparently was with the mother she became. Whaddaya think?
Posted by jennifer.Adam, the pic is beautiful. And I enjoyed your rock and a hard place description of this little baby's foray to the police station. It's bound to get better. You unwittingly provide desktop photos for me often.
Posted by chris.I’d love to read it Jennifer. How about excerpts of her writing followed by you telling us “the mother she became.”
You might wonder why no one else has responded to your question. Well, I might wonder why no one took my Benedict Arnold bait. Or why the twins ignored it. And Adam wonders why I left out the accompanying text to his picture. Finally a simple answer. I forgot.
Posted by Michael.Hah! I DID get a response before yours. I got a directly e-mailed response! So there.
On the Benedict Arnold twins ... when there's stuff I don't get I figure it's either an in-joke, and I won't get it; or I'm just too stupid or not well-read enough to get it and there's no need to broadcast THAT. Like, why should I admit that I STILL don't see the connection between Aimee Semple cutting up and nakedness?
Back to my mother's writing, and in response to the e-mail as well as your suggestion, Michael, I'm going to work on figuring out excerpts that would possibly be interesting to strangers, and work on writing brief yet elucidating commentary. It'll take a while, I imagine.
Posted by jennifer.Maybe you can post your mother's writing in installments, Jennifer (like I do, when I want to stall for time). My mother liked to write, but the only thing I have is a long description of her honeymoon trip. After that, being a mom took all her time, and she only wrote occasional letters to the editor. Anything like what you described is something to treasure and share.
Posted by rakkity.Posted by Michael at April 15, 2005 02:30 PM
'Course it's a pretty middlin' picture at best, even I'll admit. An I took it. Mike (wisely?) neglected to include the accompanying philosophical musing that was to be the proposed post, and which may or may not elevate it by context. From that day's headlines and events:
A homeless woman leaves her 3-month-old baby at a police station. Despite the 7-day-old cutoff for state-legal retributionless infant abdication, the officers acknowledge winter and the baby’s better interests and accept her. A rock-and-hard-place nothing-but-winter first impression of this world perhaps gets a little easier. For the baby.
Ten turkeys – 4 male, 6 female – peck their way through our barren backyard. At what I don’t know, but they haven’t starved. Yet. The taunting March snows have left no ground exposed, not that there’d be anything I can imagine as food there. They were through here pretty thoroughly in the fall.
Lumbering yellow behemoths scoop snow from parking lots into waiting dumptrucks for “relocation” in advance of the next storm. Mid-March, and the solstice but days away, yet the potential mildness of our latitude is absent. I put finishing touches on two room remodelings, the leading edge of acute cabin fever.
But on my way home from work, the backwaters of the river are joining the open waters of the main body in their ability to reflect sky. The sunset makes me think of the dawn of spring.
Posted by: adamat April 15, 2005 07:00 PMWhy in the world would you say that's a middlin' picture? I really like it.
Posted by: jenniferat April 16, 2005 12:10 AMThis is unrelated to THAW.
I've just gotten ahold of something which I find quite fascinating, and I'm curious whether readers here would be interested in (parts of) it -- or if anyone thinks it would be inappropriate to put online in this way. My mother (who died in 1988) went to Antioch and finished in the early 50s. She wrote a short novel which was quite autobiographical and I have been trying to find it again for about 20 years. My sisters knew that it was written for an Antioch assignment, and also knew that Antioch archived senior papers, and therefore thought that we would be able to ask for it. So I did, and what I got turns out to be a very different piece of work. It is hard to explain exactly what it is, but clearly seniors were asked to say something about their experience at Antioch, and how they found themselves becoming whomever they became. She apparently took the task more seriously than most -- 80 pages-worth of serious. I've found it very interesting to try to relate the near-graduate she apparently was with the mother she became. Whaddaya think?
Posted by: jenniferat April 16, 2005 02:39 PMAdam, the pic is beautiful. And I enjoyed your rock and a hard place description of this little baby's foray to the police station. It's bound to get better. You unwittingly provide desktop photos for me often.
Posted by: chrisat April 16, 2005 10:31 PMI’d love to read it Jennifer. How about excerpts of her writing followed by you telling us “the mother she became.”
You might wonder why no one else has responded to your question. Well, I might wonder why no one took my Benedict Arnold bait. Or why the twins ignored it. And Adam wonders why I left out the accompanying text to his picture. Finally a simple answer. I forgot.
Posted by: Michaelat April 18, 2005 01:37 PMHah! I DID get a response before yours. I got a directly e-mailed response! So there.
On the Benedict Arnold twins ... when there's stuff I don't get I figure it's either an in-joke, and I won't get it; or I'm just too stupid or not well-read enough to get it and there's no need to broadcast THAT. Like, why should I admit that I STILL don't see the connection between Aimee Semple cutting up and nakedness?
Back to my mother's writing, and in response to the e-mail as well as your suggestion, Michael, I'm going to work on figuring out excerpts that would possibly be interesting to strangers, and work on writing brief yet elucidating commentary. It'll take a while, I imagine.
Posted by: jenniferat April 18, 2005 05:03 PMMaybe you can post your mother's writing in installments, Jennifer (like I do, when I want to stall for time). My mother liked to write, but the only thing I have is a long description of her honeymoon trip. After that, being a mom took all her time, and she only wrote occasional letters to the editor. Anything like what you described is something to treasure and share.
Posted by: rakkityat April 18, 2005 05:21 PM