Day 304

The upload problems are with our service provider and should be fixed by tomorrow.  So it is just the words again, I'm afraid. 

I ran the 5km in two sessions, so to speak.  I don't want to take Molly into the grassy meadow where all the ticks lurk right now, so doing the bottom circuit 5 times gives her a good workout (except she doesn't do hills0 and then she goes home.  Then I do 5 circuits of the meadow, which gives me my 5km, which I ran, apparently, at a pace of 7.32 minutes per km today. 

Dark-eyed juncos played "chicken" with one another on 4 occasions as I ran up Heartbreak Hill.  They love the rich grass-seed on the ground, and flew up into the trees next to me, flapping noisily across the path a few meters in front of me, the first time I went past their hideout. 

The next time I passed them they flew out, one after the other, at the very last moment, flying into the same tree but now right past my nose, as though they had tried so hard to stay, but just weren't brave enough, when the first one chickened out the others all felt obliged to follow.  And one more time they did exactly the same thing, and I acknowledged them with a smile.

My favourite, the common milkweed, has seeds in abundance flying about today.  And everywhere I run, the little white gossamers are lying on the ground.  They are so beautiful, in each stage of their development, milkweed, compared with goldenrod, which just turns greyer and greyer and gets a few little fluffy light grey edges which are the seeds.  They seem to be as successful as one another, but I love the more beautiful procreation devised by the milkweed.

At the end of my 5km, when I reached the dead tree lying in the road which blocks one circuit from the other, this time I leapt over it, which I have not done before.  As I was going over I wondered if I would make it, and was pleasantly surprised when I did, otherwise I would have fallen on my face!  I laughed out loud, in fact, at the feat I had accomplished.

Writing this blog I acknowledge that I have a certain persona, a "blog persona", as one of my friends has said.  It is interesting, thinking about this persona.  It is a part of me but not me entirely, there is a strong element of self-censorship.  There are things I do not share, cannot share and will not share, for a wide variety of reasons.  I am not like Samuel Pepys, who wrote compulsively about absolutely everything he did, including his bowel movements and his extramarital sexual relations, in great detail.

No, this blog was purely a New Year's resolution, to run every day, and muse about it, and to create a portrait every day. I have done that now for 304 days.  Perhaps tomorrow the pictures can again be uploaded. 

Day 303

Clouds with river, river with clouds.

I changed up my run today, after waking up so late, happy to have my husband back in our bed.  So Molly and I ran the bottom circuit, which is a fairly hectic hill, (although Molly doesn't really do hills anymore) 6 times, which is 3.16km, and I ran it at 7 minutes 16 seconds per km.  It was hard going but shorter than my normal run.  Quite nice.  It is amazing that you can lie in bed and feel quite bereft of energy, wondering how you will possibly be able to get up and begin your day, and then you go for a run, and immediately your life is different, you have mountains of vigour and everything is beautiful, even the sight (and sound) of your sons arguing about something really silly.

I want to go to Yosemite, such beauty.  Tim has returned with image after image of enormous waterfalls, amazing sequoias, giant granite batholiths caused by subduction (when one tectonic plate is pushed under by another) and then further formed by glaciers.  The Ice Age glaciers ripped out some rocks and set them down further down the mountains, and polished other enormous rock-surfaces completely smooth.

In 1906, after years and years of campaigning by various people, especially John Muir, to get Yosemite protected as a national park, the bill was finally passed, mainly due to a camping trip Teddy Roosevelt went on with John Muir.

Tim and I went to a Halloween party at his camera club tonight.  The hall was decorated with graves and ghosts and spiderwebs, and everyone arrived dressed up, some very scarily.  A lovely dinner was served, and good-natured fun was had by all.  Tim was going to go as the old man in "Up" but didn't get his act together to get helium balloons, so instead went with the big glasses and the hat, and decided that the first person to come up with a good idea as to who he was, that would be his answer when asked again.  So someone said, "Professor Henry Higgins, isn't it?" and so he became!  I just went in my Frida Kahlo outfit again but only one person had ever heard of her.  I think most people thought I was a gypsy with a weird unibrow!

Trouble uploading again, so will try again tomorrow!

Day 302

Sunset near Farnhams.

So green technology is not always so green, is it?  But what are we to do.  In an article on migration in the latest National Geographic there is a startlingly sad image: all these bodies laid out on the page like butterflies in a collection, 32 dead bats, 4 dead songbirds and 1 dead red-tailed hawk, the average yearly victims of a wind turbine farm of 23 turbines.  The biggest wind farm in America is in Texas, with 400 turbines, so the average death rate there would be about 512 bats, 16 hawks and 64 songbirds!  A drop in air pressure from the spinning blades causes most of the deaths.

Aaaargh!  Why are there so many problems associated with seemingly good ways of doing things?

I have been following the Biodiversity conference in Nagoya for the last two weeks, my heart at times in my mouth, and always a dull ache of worry in my stomach.  There has been some argument about what percentage of the sea and the land to put aside as protected.  The proposal was for 20% of both, which is a very small percentage, infinitesimally small for the sea, especially considering how large the ocean is, and how much trouble it is in, for example, not one sector of the ocean is unpolluted by some form of plastic. 

They have, after a lengthy plenary session which went on until 2 am this morning, come to an agreement about which some environmentalists are pleased.  17% of the world's terrestrial  and inland water areas, and only 10% of the ocean is to be protected, however, which is very, very sad.

And even so, will they follow through with all these decisions and promises?  Previous such gatherings have produced wonderful ideas, commitment and affirmations, but the old careless status quo still prevails in most parts of  the world regarding threatened species galloping towards extinction, etc.

It is Halloween.  Here in America, children dress up in disguises and walk around to the houses in their neighbourhoods, the aim of which is to collect pounds and pounds of candy, which has been sold in stores for months for this very purpose.  We live up such a long dark steep driveway that no children ever come up here, which saves me buying all those ridiculous sweets.

Halloween is derived from an ancient Celtic harvest celebration, Samhain, where because the plants and trees were in the process of "dying", it was believed that the boundary between the living and the dead became much thinner around this time.  It was the end of the "lighter half" of the year and the beginning of the "darker half".   

At school today everyone had to dress up and pay a dollar for the privilege, to raise money for a charity.  I racked my brain for an idea, something home-made and easy, and finally came up with Frida Kahlo, the Mexican painter famous for all her self-portraits addressing the pain of her life and the experience of being a woman.  She wore wonderfully colourful clothing and had a unibrow, so it was easy.

It is amazing to what degrees some kids go, and how much some parents will pay for costumes, like a Star Wars storm trooper, or a vampire bat with the most delicate and beautifully made wings. Interesting to see what each kid decides to be, and to hear the teachers talking about them in the faculty room.  I like the inventive ones, like the chimney sweep, or the farmer, or the astronaut.   I loathe that so many girls dress up as sexually provocative witches or some other costume where everything hangs out!  I suppose this means I have joined the older generation.  I have nothing against sexuality, I just hate seeing girls blindly following the kind of slutty examples bombarding them everywhere in popular culture.

And I did take a photographic self-portrait dressed as Frida, but it will have to wait until tomorrow to be uploaded, as I have now fetched my tired husband aka "The Computer Wiz" and we are now taking the journey "up the wooden hill" as my dad used to say, and off to bed.

And it is tomorrow, and here is the portrait.

Day 301

She runs early, through the warm autumn meadow, it is easy today, a lovely Indian summer day at the end of October.  At Refrigerator corner the sun is playing tag with the softly grey stratocumulus clouds, and on the other side of the meadow the moon still rides high in a clear sky, hoping for a glimpse of this beautiful star.

She thinks of her husband far away in Yosemite, hiking a long uphill trail.  She misses him keenly, especially at night.  Going to bed alone is strange after twenty-six years of sleeping together.  His absence upsets her rest, and strange and anxious dreams sometimes occur when he is not there to shape his body to hers, to drape his arm safely over her.


She stills the rhythmic song in her head and decides to listen to the sounds of the meadow.

She hears the cheerful chickadees, observes them flitting from branch to branch.

A bluejay flies over her head, lands on the tree nearby and scolds her in his harsh voice, "Stop this running business and go and put out the peanuts already!".

A large aeroplane can be heard but not seen, on the way to Logan Airport, with its human cargo and all the things which have to go with people on their journeys.

An unknown bird repeats a single sound very fast for about a minute at a time.

The sudden hasty flapping of several dark-eyed juncos, surprised out of the tall grasses.


She realises that she is the loudest creature in the meadow, even though she is not speaking or singing out loud.

Her expelled breath rushes out of her with a whooshing sound, the fabric of her trousers makes a crinkling noise as her legs brush past one another, and the pounding of her feet make a different sound depending on the terrain.  In the forest her shoes swish through the leaves.  On Babbling brook hill the sound of her feet is loud going down and soft coming up.  When she reaches the meadow grass the sound is muffled, until she goes downhill on the wet grass which makes her shoes squeak.


And is there a sound for a field of grasses strung together with light?


Is there a sound for the delicacy of a small crimson leaf fallen on a sea of green?


Or the soft, oh soft creamy sky so light before the sun?


She finds that she has somehow set the pedometer again on kilometers, and is astonished and delighted to find that she has run 5.13km, running 7.12 minutes per kilometer!  Her fastest 5 km yet. 


And now she is very disappointed because she had a lovely photograph and a pleasant self-portrait for today's post, but there is something wrong with the uploading process, so tomorrow evening her personal computer wizard comes home and will probably just turn on the laptop and it will obediently do everything right, maybe he will just have to stand next to it and it will work.  Which has happened before.

Well, actually, she managed herself!  Still some things wrong, but managed to upload at least!

Day 300 (65 days left!)

Jess and the little cat, the day Lily decided to die then changed her mind.  I missed my daughters today, and the little Lily-cat.

Yesterday I ran just over 4km and when I calculated my pace it said 9.07 minutes per km!  Perhaps I miscalculated, because that seems very slow.

But again today, I ran 5.19 km and the calculation was 8.05 mins per km.  So, a little better but still over the magical 8 minute mark!  Slipping up somewhat.

Maybe it was because of the clouds of colour hanging from each tree, which delighted me each time I started again round the meadow-track.  Some are big fat cumulo-nimbus clouds, others more delicate cirrus, almost faded to nothing.  And then, along the road through the woods, each deciduous tree wears lanterns of light which illuminate the dark forest.

While I was gathering dandelion leaves for the little piggie, squatting down I spied a long brown snake in the golden leaves.  By the time I came back with my camera the pretty sight had slithered away.

And then from a distance I could hear geese honking, which grew louder until I could see the first of the flock, flying at some speed in formation, chatting to one another, while behind them came the delinquents, all just hurtling along in no particular order, who were obviously arguing very vocally about which direction they should follow, who should be in the front, who should ride shotgun, etc etc.

Later I listened to a fascinating podcast about communication among animals.   It seems that prairiedogs have the most amazing vocabulary.  They can distinguish between a short fat person wearing a red shirt and a tall skinny person wearing a blue shirt and will chat about this even when the person isn't there, which is definitively abstract thought.

The research was carried out by recording the noises made by the prairie-dogs, say for example their range of warning calls, taking these back to the lab and slowing everything down to enhance it, which releases the different tones within what to our naked ears sounds like the identical warning sound.  One of the researchers mentioned how the prairie dogs will be happily foraging or eating, and one will raise its head and chitter-chatter, chitter-chatter, and then another one will raise its head and chatter-chitter, chatter-chitter, and they have not worked out yet what they are saying to one another.  He said it may just be "chitter-chatter, chitter-chatter", but it could also be, "Hey, do you know where Sam was last night?"

All these experiments are brilliant, because they show the world that animals are not just creatures to be plundered like the rest of the earth, but that contrary to the musings of Rene Descartes, "The word is the sole sign and certain mark of the presence of thought.", and even the great Noam Chomsky, who believes that the basic lack of grammar and syntax in animal communication "precludes non-human species from higher cognition", more and more research is proving that many species actually use complex "language" like humans.  Which should lead to better treatment for animals, shouldn't it?

Another group of researchers headed by Klaus Zuberbuhler, a Swiss scientest, did similar research on primate communication in the very dense (and noisy) Tai forest in Cote d'Ivoire, where there are 10 different types of primates, among them Diana monkeys, very beautiful monkeys, and Campbell's monkeys. Diana monkeys live 100 feet off the ground, eating fruit and insects and they chatter a lot.  The researcher would walk out with a boombox, play the sound of a leopard, their most feared predator, and they would all leap about making an alarm call, and they would all scamper further up the tree.  If he played then the shrieks of the crowned eagle, another predator, they would make a slightly different sound, and rush down the tree.  The difference in sounds can be seen in the acoustic details on a computer.  So their sounds are filled with little ghost notes that we can't hear. 

So then Klaus, the researcher, wanted to know if different types of monkeys could understand one another, rather like an English speaker being able to understand French people talking on a train if you know the French language.  So he played the Campbell's monkeys' alarm calls to the Diana monkeys, who took them very seriously, running up the trees if it was the leopard alarm, and down if it was the Campbells' eagle alarm!

And it didn't stop there, hornbills could also discriminate between the different alarm calls, so it seems as though "a pretty substantial web of species are basically eavesdropping on each others' calls in this forest"  Klaus Zuberbuhler.

One day he was far away from camp, when he realised that it was getting late and he still had a long way to get home.  So he was walking past a kind of valley, when he heard on the other side of the valley, a monkey group making the leopard alarm call.  He was not actively listening for it, and was excited to be able to understand them.  So he carried on walking and the next group across the valley did the same thing, the leopard alarm call.  When the third group did the same thing, Klaus realised, with a chill down his spine, that a leopard was tracking him!  Then the fourth group and the fifth did the same thing, and then they all stopped.  So he picked up a big stick, which wouldn't have done much against a leopard, apparently, and then suddenly experienced an epiphany, that he just entered the forest, he had become the 11th primate in the forest.  "Suddenly I shifted from being the objective observer, to being part of that whole crowd in there, even though we are separated by 20-30 millions of years of evolutionary history, these humble creatures were able to teach me something about what was going on in the forest, of course it wasn't intentional, they weren't trying to inform me or anything, but it was still a very emotional experience."

How wonderful, that there are people doing this incredible work, that we are discovering such amazing things every day.  For all the bad things, these good things help to balance it all out. 

Day 299

Great Blue Heron feeding.

Beautiful bird, the largest North American heron.

One Christmas I had the grand (and frugal) idea of buying each person a small fleece blanket, the kind you can wrap yourself in to read a book or watch a movie, and I chose a spirit animal for each member of the family, wrote a little poem about them in a card, and then was going to embroider the animal on each blanket. 

A spirit or power animal is found in many cultures, and can be compared with a guardian angel.  The spirit animal also represents your connection to all life, and may represent too your physical or mental attributes.

Of course the embroidering didn't happen before the day, and actually never happened at all, because too soon the girls had to go back to wherever they were living at the time, I think Jess to varsity and Emma back to London.  I feel some regret that I didn't finish that project, because I usually do finish something once I have begun, especially if it is a gift, even if it is late, which it frequently is! Perhaps I will still accomplish it one day.  I did knit everyone fair-isle woolen caps a couple of years ago, and in time for the day!  My mother would have been so proud of me!

I know I thought very carefully about which animal to choose to represent each person.  I think this is how it went: Nick was a red-tailed hawk, and Matthew a polar bear, and I think Jess was a jaguar, Emma an eagle.

Nick was fascinated by falconry at the time and has a bit of the predator about him.  Matthew was (and is) a wonderful swimmer, even in freezing water, and has always been kind of like a big old teddy-bear.  Jess has always had that quiet independent mien of a wild cat, enigmatic and lonesome, but full of spitting tooth and claw when necessary!  And strangely she has worked with tigers, lions and cheetahs for the past year!  Emma and Nick are the bossy-boots of the family, hence the hawks.  Plus, the eagle reference was one from a tender place in my heart, as when Emma was about 15 she wrote out the words of The Wind Beneath my Wings as a gift for me, in her beautiful longhand, which treasured possession was always pinned up in my office thereafter, until we moved to America.

Tonight a collage of my Calder sculpture which I finished, after doing the demonstration for my eighth graders.  

Day 298

Molly running on water.

At the winter beach today, walking with my friend under a lowering sky which later became a lightening sky.  Molly loved the beach and the swimming, but it has taken its toll and she is struggling to get up from a lying down position, those old muscles worked so hard doing the wild running that is one of her reasons for living.  The others being: to be fed delicious food, (which for Molly includes raw carrots, apples, pecan nuts, and her favourite, pancakes!), and, of course, love.

When I was a little girl and a bigger girl and right up until I became a mother, when I was 23, I was quite brave.  I didn't cry at the dentist, I was undaunted in the face of a  chronic debilitating illness, but after I had given birth for the first time, I suddenly wasn't brave anymore.

It is such an utterly shocking experience, the whole painful process of giving birth, the labour which racks you, again and again, without letting up, until you don't know yourself, you are a loud wailing being, your greatest wish is for it all to be over, or maybe even for death.  It changes you in ways other than just becoming a mother.  It liquidizes your resolve, compels the springing of tears to your eyes at the least provocation, results in injury in a permanent part of your mind.  (And yes, of course I would do it all over again!)

So I am a weeper.  Like my mother before me, and my daughters who have come after me.  A six year old girl with the beautiful name of Anna-Karien, spending the afternoon on a play-date for the first time with my little daughters, joined them in front of our tiny little black and white tv when it was time for the one series the girls always watched, The Yearling, about a boy living a poverty-stricken life with his parents in the Florida backwoods, who raises a baby deer and who eventually has to shoot the deer who has become a menace to his family's livelihood.

The girls and I were invariably in tears at some point in each episode, and this one was no exception.  Anna-Karien looked back and forth into each face incredulously, what WERE we doing?  And then, as if she had just been given permission to do something, she began wailing ferociously, tears and snot and loud snorting sounds, leading us to look at her with some surprise.  I don't think she had ever seen anyone crying about an animated boy on a tv programme before, which does sound pretty lame.

But I believe that crying is a good thing, it releases tension, it is part of a passionate life, it washes your soul clean, and perhaps so many men become grumpy old men because all their unshed tears have pickled their feelings and emotions.

I remember when the girls and I went up the Empire State Building, at the top there is a walkway with a fence through which you can look out on the entire city of New York, under a full moon rising, the evening we went, which made it even more magical.  There were so many people that we all had a chance to stand close to the edge for a while, then had to step back to allow the next wave of people their turn.  As we moved back, a blind person with his seeing-eye dog, stepped in to my spot.  And everyone made space for the dog, who put up both his front paws next to his blind master in order to see better, then surveyed the scene with an interested eye, sweeping his gaze in an intelligent manner from one side of the city to the other, enjoying the vast tableau.  I walked away with wet cheeks, just as I did from the telephone after hearing the voice of my husband tonight, who had earlier been diverted because the plane "ran out of gas" (??), safe and sound in San Jose.

So tonight I had no time for a drawing.  Instead, a tray I decorated with a mosaic of sea-glass for my friend's birthday a few years ago.

Day 297

Fall colours in Manchester.

I think I realised something to do with why these turning leaves are so beautiful today, driving past tree after glorious tree, almost causing you to crash from feasting your eyes too long.

A yellow poplar is like the moon on a dark night, flooding the landscape for a few hours. These fall colours are the last hurrah of the trees.  It is a spangled, vibrant, gaudy radiance before the bare drab branches of the long cold.  It is a perfect interpretation of the Dylan Thomas poem: Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.  Such beauty.

And driving in the car, seeing all this beauty, and beauty floating also through my ears, listening to a performance by Ya-Fei Chuang of the 24 preludes by Chopin, Opus 28.  I suddenly hear one that I knew how to play, and I am a teenager again, sitting at the piano at number 10 Forest Drive, feeling the notes with my fingers knowing where to go, hearing the music I am making, making vast dramatic sweeping movements with my seated torso and head for expression.  And again it happened, and twice again, four preludes part of my old musical repertoire.

So sad, that we give up musical instruments when they become too hard.  I remember I really worshipped Debussy, and so badly wanted to learn Clair de Lune, but it was just beyond me, all those incredible four-fingered chords, I struggled for many weeks, but eventually gave up and soon thereafter gave up piano lessons altogether because I knew I would never be good enough.  For myself.

A quick sketch begun when I was observing the little soap-opera of the three doves bathing, and finished tonight, also quickly, as I must go to bed in good time in order to get up early to take my husband to the airport, where he has an appointment on a plane flying right across the country.

Day 296

Molly this time last year, same yellow leaves, same open meadow, same crazy dog.

Thinking of a photograph for this blog, I was looking back at my photographs from the same date last year, and found a video of a playful Lily toying with a plastic bottle-top, batting it gently along the tiled kitchen floor, dear old cat. 

It was kind of a messy day today, one of those days where nothing goes according to plan.
Matthew wrote the ACTs this morning, which stands for American College Testing, a standardised test on English, Mathematics, Reading and Science, used for college applications.  I dropped him off there early because I needed the car and Nick had taken their car to Oak Grove to catch the Orange Line into Boston for his Saturday morning course at MassArt. Matthew was nearly run over as he was crossing at the pedestrian crossing!  Some kid focusing more on where the test was going to be held than on his driving, giving Matt a nice shot of adrenalin just before the test.

I was about a quarter of the way through my run when my phone rang.  Nick, whom I had to rescue for the 4th time this week!  I suppose I should be happy that I can still do this, this time next year he will be away at college somewhere, having to fend for himself.  But Good Grief!

When I returned I carried on running, and managed 2.9miles, which is 4.7 km.  Although I have no idea how long I took, because of the interruption. 

Went to pick up Matthew at 11, but he only came out at 1o'clock!  I had a lovely time though, sat in the warm sun, listened to the classical station and read my book.  And finally, finally, my beautiful big son came striding out, curly hair unruly like his dad's, looking happy and spent, after 5 hours of testing!

We were supposed to go out to dinner and a game of Pictionary, but Tim has been nursing a sore throat and we had to cancel.

And the day progressed in much the same vein! 

Funny, some days are like that, and you just have to let them play out in their disjointed way.  More is nog 'n dag, as they say in Afrikaans, and in English Tomorrow is another day, and I think it is the same in French, Demain est un autre jour.  So this kind of day is experienced on a regular bais all over the world, judging from the need for this old saying. 

So tonight a picture of the fireplace with the woodstove, making our home rather cosy.

Day 295

Autumn Blush

Matthew took this on our way home from school the other day.  The leaves are reaching their peak of beauty.

I am standing down at the bottom of the driveway where I have rushed,carrying a towel and swimsuit, after being phoned by Nick in a mad hurry as usual to get to work, and having forgotten his swimsuit (actually the third time I am rescuing him in as many days, good grief, you would swear he was actually in 4th grade, not the 12th!).  The maples lining the drive are pretty, all yellows and mustards and pinks and browns.  Suddenly, a big roaring wind comes out of nowhere and surges through the trees, ripping off leaves that rain down in their thousands.  I wish I had my camera, which I had actually thought about on my way down but not gone back for.  So I just enjoy the show, as leaves pour down, flickering at my face and hands.  The door opposite opens and the old lady who lives there, who I love, comes out and exclaims, making wide excited happy gestures with her hands, wondering at this sudden squall.  She carefully crosses the road, although in her usual sprightly way, and tells me, smiling broadly, "I looked out of the window and saw you there with your hair the color of fall and the leaves coming down all around you, what a lovely sight!" 

Early in the day I watch three doves jostling to bathe in the birdbath, which is actually full of pine needles floating on the water, but they don't seem to mind.  There is obviously a pecking order, and the biggest, fattest one waddles in first.  She has a good wash, lifting and stretching first one wing, then the next, dipping and rolling her head under the water in a swift fluid movement, over and over, and finally, waddling back out on to the wooden railing to preen herself. 

There are two left strolling around the perimeter of the bath, deciding who will go in second.  Eventually the littlest one makes a move, gingerly steps in with one foot but quickly pulls it back out when the other one rushes around to peck at her.  The bully then steps in and repeats all the moves of the first dove, and by the time the last one can enter the water, the first two have left the area, and she does a kind of hurried leap and flutter, and then flies off to join her tormentors.

Do you feel sorry for the littlest one?  Yes.  She is the underdove.

I am gmail chatting with my daughter in South Africa because the phone connections are so bad that we can barely hear one another and the conversation is spent asking "What?" so many times that after a bit you just say, "Oh really?" and other helpful interjections as you strive to grasp the gist of what the other person is saying.  So it is super-frustrating.  Gmail chat is marvellous, because we can both type super-fast.

Here is a funny example of our communication yesterday:

 me:  A dove just banged into the window in front of me and managed to fly off, I don't know how, and is now sitting on top of the roof looking rather dazed.  I got such a fright, I hope it's alright

 Jesse:  oh shame

poor thing

 me:  I wonder if the plants trick them, because we brought in all the plants last night, as the first frost is expected tonight, and maybe they can see them through the window and think they will just land on them, and maybe they are familiar to them because they were just outside next to the birdbath and so they all sat in them over the summer.

 Jesse:  stupid owl was sitting on the electricity pole again last night right outside our window- it doesn't give a shit about me anymore which I guess is sort of a privilege but also a curse as I walked out onto the balcony at four in the morning livid! expecting it to fly away and it just sat there

I waved my arms, yelled, cursed and it just sat there and went hoo hoo

 me:  ha haha!

 Jesse:  then finally after I had stopped waving about and just about thrown my own self off the balcony in despair it flew off

 me:  Jess, YOU need to write a book

 Jesse:  silently

She has these amazing great horned owls where she lives, which most people would utterly love, but for months now every night, just about, the owls have sat on their roof which is about 4 feet above their bed, or on the electricity pole, and hooted loudly at odd times, which is very jarring, not like the white noise of traffic, for example, that you can fall asleep to.  

When Jess was a teenager we had these fowls that decided, for some reason known only to their little poultry brains, that they would leave their owners, our neighbours, and move in with us.  They were bantams, and the little rooster was a fierce defender of his wife and children, and a loving father and husband, finding titbits for them to eat and doing all this while looking very beautiful in all his cockerel finery.  

But the place they decided on as a safe haven for their roosting spot each night was directly below Jessica's window, in the creeper over the carport.  And many times, as anyone who has owned a rooster knows, they do not crow at the break of day, but long before it, which served, of course, to drive Jess, an insomniac, completely batty!  She threatened to kill him many nights, and then forgave him during the day, because he was really a dear.  

One wild and stormy night I went out to check on our dog Skye, who slept outside in a kennel under the carport, and  she was very happy when I brought her into the kitchen to sleep because there was thunder and lightning and I felt sorry for her.  Then I wondered how the poor little drenched bantams were faring, and how I could rescue them, but when I peered up there with a torch, there they were, safe and sound and dry, as Jess had flung out a raincoat over their part of the creeper to keep them dry.  

Raining leaves.

 

Day 294

Me (aged 14 months) and my Dad (aged 37).

My dad died 3 years ago today, and although I wasn't at the funeral, I had been to visit him before he died, just as I had with my mother almost 2 years earlier.  I wrote their eulogies, and that was my part in each memorial service.   I thought of putting an excerpt here, but then couldn't choose, so I have included the entire piece.  He was an amazing dad.

A Eulogy in honour of Jack Radford, written by Anne Bouwer, younger daughter

John Andrew Radford was born at the end of the First World War on a farm in Essex, England.  He grew up a strong healthy boy, the champion of his two younger sisters.  He learnt much about animal husbandry from his father, the head stockman, Arthur Radford, from whom he also inherited his green thumb.  Dad could grow absolutely anything, the apple tree he grew and grafted outside no. 10 Lawrence Village, which produces 6 different varieties of apples, being a testament to this talent. 

His mother, Alice Emily, affectionately known as “Em”, was a governess who taught him good manners and the importance of educating yourself throughout your life, which he did, even though he had to leave school at the age of 14 to earn money for the family. 

He had, together with his wife Joan, 3 children, 10 grandchildren, and 3 great-grandchildren.

My dad’s great heart gave in, a month short of the grand old age of 89, in October 2007, just 20 months after his beloved wife of 64 years. 

For the last 52 years of his life I was privileged to know him as my father.   

My father signed up for the RAF just before the beginning of the Second World War and that is where he acquired the nickname “Jack”.  After contracting cerebro-spinal meningitis which nearly killed him, he had to give up his dream of becoming a fighter pilot and was sent on a fitter’s course instead.  We always said it was lucky for us because it  probably saved his life.  In the famed 92 Squadron at Biggin Hill he was in charge of a team of men fixing and outfitting Spitfires.

Even though he was spared the thick of the fighting Dad had a lot of first-hand experience of being under constant attack during the Battle of Britain.  During one bombing, after many previous hours spent bored and cold standing in the leaky air-raid shelters, sometimes in 4 inches of water, Jack decided that he was staying in his warm bed in the billet. They had banked the stove till it was roaring and red-hot and had hot cocoa and bread which they were about to eat.  He stubbornly refused to join his friends in the chilly air-raid shelter.  Hearing the crunch as each bomb exploded on the airfield, he slid under the iron bedstead just as one fell really close by.  When the all-clear sounded he jumped back into his bed, where he was lying, warm and happy, when the rest of his mates came in, cold and grumpy.  The next morning they discovered a hole in the wooden billet 12 inches above his head, so he really had been lucky! 

My father was sent to the air station at Wingfield in Cape Town, where he met and married the love of his life, Joan Webster, a WAF, falling in love with her radiant smile, across the proverbial crowded room, as he always loved to tell us.  Their first child, Brenda, the apple of her father’s eye, was born just before they were posted to no. 45 Air School in Oudtshoorn, where they were happy to spend the rest of the war years.

The main thing I know about my father is how much energy he had!  He trained as an electrician, worked as one for about 16 years and then decided to train as an Air-conditioning and refrigeration engineer. He became much sought after as a trouble-shooter, a true engineer, having the knack of looking at the engine or motor or whatever it was as a whole and then being able to fashion the new part it needed from something he more than likely produced from his pocket!  The contents of his pockets were legendary in our family.  Once he gave his bulging jacket to one of his small granddaughters to hold for him and she nearly fell over from the weight of it!  Often working two or more jobs to make ends meet, he always found time to spend with each of his children.  When Brenda, Tim and I were together during the first week of September this year, reminiscing, we each could remember numerous amazing times with my dad, where we alone were the focus of all his attention and delight.  By the age of four I could read fluently, having been taught by my dad, so effortlessly, that when an elderly neighbour asked me, “And who taught you to read so well?” I replied, “I was born like that,” because that is how it felt.  I hadn’t even known that I was learning something wondrous, one of his best enduring gifts to me.

In addition to his day job as an air-conditioning and refrigeration engineer at Centurator Products, he taught night-school at the Cape Technical College for more than 20 years, with numerous success-stories coming back to him from his grateful students.  As one of his young grandsons remarked, “He loved teaching you things, even when you didn’t really want to be taught.”

My father loved to travel with my mother and they saved for an overseas trip every few years, visiting many countries.  My dad fearlessly traveled all the way to America three times in his eighties.  Last year, arriving at London’s Heathrow airport, where Tim was waiting for him, he forgot that he was supposed to wait for the wheelchair and marched purposefully out of the gate, excitedly greeting his own dear son, minus his unremembered luggage. 

My father was a steadfast friend.  He sustained friendships with people he met as a young man and was loyal and supportive to the end.  We remember Jack Nielsen who my dad visited for many days through his long battle with cancer.  Also Wally Burch from his RAF days, the best man at his wedding, a beloved friend for life.  Dad was also a good and loyal friend to Porti Vikos, our cousin Carol’s husband. He spent many pleasant hours with him in Porti’s wood-carving workshop and loved the kind attention he got from Porti and Carol in his last few years.  Even in these last few weeks, when he didn’t really have any idea where he was most of the time, friends still visited him, and for these people my heart is full of gratitude and appreciation:  Doctor Hudson, Joyce Gardiner, Fred Sterry, and my parents’ dear friends, Wilfrid and Jean Chetwin. 

From so far away, we have appreciated so much the kind attention given and sacrifices made by Brenda and her extended family to help Dad over the past few years.  My sister has been a devoted daughter to her aging father, coming through all the ups and downs with shining, flying colours.

I am so proud of my father.  He was at times a difficult, sometimes cantankerous, character, particularly in his latter years, but with such a good heart, the best heart, really. He did his best at everything in his life, achieving an enormous amount with little education.  He was a self-made man.  My dad was bold and brave always.  He was our safe haven, constant and steadfast. 

He was a big strong man (Brenda always compared him to a powerful Shire horse) and handsome.  He had huge hands, the largest hands I’ve ever seen. I remember as a small girl, literally flying across Adderly street on the foreshore one strong south-easterly day, my little hand (and half of my arm) firmly in his huge hand, my body horizontal, parallel to the ground, such fun, utterly safe!

I always believed that he could fix anything, from a bird with a broken wing to a car engine.  Just a few months’ ago I was talking to him over the telephone, describing two tall white pines which we have to have taken down because they are old and could threaten the house.  My dad was full of suggestions on how we could do it, how he would climb the ladder, which branch we should cut down first etc., next time he came out to America.  He was so gung-ho, believing in his abilities to do anything, that I could almost imagine it really happening, this 88 year old man cutting down a 150 ft tree!

He loved his children with a fierce and doting love and thought we were the best children who had ever lived!  And after all, what more could you wish for from a dad? 

His grandchildren, commiserating their loss on emails to one another, all mentioned how much they loved and respected him,, and how he had influenced their choices in life, how he had taught them to be good people.

Dad doing what he loved best - note the huge hands

When my brother and I were there in September we had a morning visit with him where he, for brief moments, escaped the confusion that had crept up on him in recent years.  I have chosen to remember him like that, when, knowing exactly where he was and why he was there, appreciating the Spring sunshine on the creeper-covered wall and the little scudding clouds in the bright blue sky, he looked into our eyes, his own those twinkling light light blue eyes, and said, “It’s good to be alive.” 

This is his legacy to us, that positive and abiding life-force that gets us up every morning, freshly washed and sparkling, ready for the new day, ready to do our best.

Dad in his RAF uniform, when my mother had just met him.

Day 293

Maple in our garden yesterday.

Some of the trees in their autumn grandeur take your breath away with their beauty.  I remember trying to describe it to my mother, how amazing it was to stand, our first October, beneath the yellow leaves of the sycamore maples next to our first house in America, and be encompassed by their golden light, it was almost magical.  I remember going out to look for the boys, and being enchanted for a few minutes under their spell.  I tried taking a few photographs, thinking that would demonstrate better to her how it was, but they did not capture the experience at all. 

So what is it that makes them so beautiful?  Some of them have this rosy blush, like the cheeks of a young girl.  I drive along smiling at all this radiance, knowing I am in the presence of beauty but unable to explain how it works.

I love to understand why it all happens, the chemicals which produce the amazing colours, like anthocyanin and carotenoids, the need for deciduous trees to rest through the cold winter in order to grow, the self-protective nature of a tree whose leaves all fall off, so that they tree does not get weighed down by snow, and various other theories as to why deciduous trees lose their leaves.

But to try to explain why it is beautiful is beyond me.  Perhaps it has to do with the transient nature of the colours, perhaps all beauty is that, transient, like the beauty of youth, or even, of old age. 

I was changing after a swim, in the women's changing room at the "Y" one day, when some of the old ladies who do aqua-aerobics came in to put on their swimsuits.  They call themselves "The Wet Hens" which is a wonderful name, and swear by the aqua-aerobics, that it keeps them fit and going strong.  One old lady changed right next to me and was not shy at all, she just moved carefully and in the slow manner of very old people, took off all her clothes, then cautiously pulled on her swimsuit.  I couldn't help looking at her as she struck up a conversation with me, and it turned out she was Russian, and 83 years old.  I tried not to stare but so desperately wanted to draw her, as I found her, in all her aged fragility, extremely beautiful.  You could still see her high cheekbones and the vivacious light in her dark-blue eyes, and everywhere skin hanging off her old bones, like wrinkled paper.

I ran 3.25 miles (5.23 km) today in 42 minutes, which is 8.01 minutes per km, which is over the 8 minute mark.  Well, just, so not so bad.  The running becomes easier after the mid-mark, when all the joints are oiled, the muscles warmed, the lungs in rhythm, the head knowing the end is approaching.

I think it is going to be cold tomorrow, as the birds were frantically filling up at the feeder today.  I glanced out of the upstairs window to see a red-bellied woodpecker using his tail as leverage to hang on to the perch which is built for much smaller birds, and peck away at the food in a hurried manner.  Blue jays balanced in the trees like little pieces of sky, and my favourite little nuthatches hurtled about in their quick flitting flight from branch to feeder, beeping softly and steadily, what sounds like "Vite, vite!". which is "Hurry, hurry!" in French.

I am so tired from not sleeping properly, having so many hot flushes that if they could make electricity from them I could probably power our entire house for the winter season!  I snuggle down into the bed next to Tim, get nice and warm, and then - Oh my god!  I'm dying of heat!  Throw off all the blankets!  Ah, that's better........... Oh my god! It's freezing!  reach out for covers, pull everything up and over again, snuggle up to Tim, get nice and warm, and............  Oh god! I'm dying of heat! ....  And this goes on all night long!  It's like having a tiny baby again, only not as much fun.  Hey-ho, the joys of menopause!

So another little sculpture I made which ended up with Emma in London, although this is a bad picture of her.  She is Sea, Sky, Moon and Stars.

Day 292

Silvery morning.

Molly and I ran 2.34 km before school in the cool meadow, my calves aching a bit from the mountain hike on Sunday. 

My 8th grade classes are concentrating on the figure this trimester, and looking at how artists portray the human body.  So today, in preparation for making wire sculptures, I showed them two short You-tube clips on Alexander Calder, who is one of my favourite artists. 

I like him because he was an amazing artist, and also because he was a lovely man, who remained married to the same woman until he died, who had a playful sense of humour and enjoyed his life, who stood up for causes he believed in, and who loved the colour red so much that he wore a red shirt almost every day. 

Then I demonstrated a wire portrait, and after watching attentively (this is an amazing class) off they went, weaving wire, making careful joins with the pliers, bending and stretching and setting an ear straight here and an eyebrow bushing out there, until, when we were finished clearing up, there was a table full of half-finished beautiful wire busts.  All different, all wonderful. 

I have been encouraging one kid who is not particularly skilled, who struggles with drawing, and who can act out because of this.  If I give him step-by-step instructions he is much better.  And he is really enjoying art now, because he knows that he gets praised for his endeavour, and this year he has been trying, listening to my advice.  Making art is so individualistic that his work can be completely different and possibly less developed than that of the other students, but because the artworks are all so divergent, it is still wonderful, and he is beginning to understand this about art.  And instead of making silly remarks he is really striving and succeeding. 

I have noticed that his entire demeanor changes, his face becomes younger, his eyes sparkle, it is an actual physical thing, this affliction of having a poor opinion of yourself. 

He loved the wire sculpture and made a very good face profile without any help at all, just asking, "Is this alright?"  "Does this look good?"  "How do you think I should do the mouth, like this?"  I love days like this!

So tonight I am too tired to do something new, so here is a little sculpture I made a few years ago, "Water".  Made with a wire armature and covered with papier-maché.