Margotlog: A Panting Junco and Silkwood
This morning in my usual way, I flung on a coat over my robe and went to the backyard, planning to spread seeds for the birds. There in the driveway where I'd been throwing handfuls of seeds all winter hunched a small gray-black bird. It was panting.
In the last week the air has been full of juncos, twittering in their more musical way than the sparrows' insistent, mindless chatter. I'd never seen so many of the dark males before, so dark as to almost black, but identifiable immediately when they flew, spreading their tail feathers and showing off the strips of white on either side.
Poor little bird, I thought, as I stood there in the chill drizzle, watching it pant. We had silhouettes of hawks on all our windows facing the back yard, but still it may have bammed into a window. Other than its panting, it didn't move, just hunched over its legs, keeping warm. Deciding to wait before doing anything, I returned inside, read the paper, drank a cup of coffee. I still hadn't fed the birds. But there were distractions. I confessed to my husband that I'd been feeling lonesome lately. I wanted more company, I wanted to host a dinner party. He wasn't opposed, just not eager. Odd how we have changed as time passes. I'm more forgetful. He is less social. Babysitting his grandchildren once a week, and playing Scrabble at least that often, he doesn't seem to need more contact outside the home.
Throwing on my coat again, and stuffing my feet into boots because it was drizzling, I went out again to watch the panting junco. It had moved maybe three inches to another patch of seeds. Still hunched into itself, still panting. I decided to take action. Don't ask me what triggered the decision. I knew what to do since for years I've been taking injured birds to the Wildlife Rehab Center on Dale, north of the freeway. I even took a bat last February when I returned from a writer's retreat at the Anderson Center in Red Wing, only to discover the next morning, a bat in our Saint Paul sink. Yes, it could have come from our own stash of bats in the attic. But this bat was in the kitchen sink. Hydrophobia! I thought terrified. Within minutes, Fran had captured the bat and put it in a cooler, I had clothes on, and was in the car driving north on Dale. I arrived a half hour before the Center opened, and walked in a woodland, hoping the incarceration in the cooler wouldn't kill the bat. A week later, a report came: it was normal and would be kept until the weather was warm enough for its release.
Recently Fran and I watched the movie Silkwood, directed by Mike Nichols. We were probably inspired by Meryl Streep's nomination for an Academy Award, and memories of seeing her luminous, intelligent performances in other movies. But I think our motive this time was more about the facts, the real life on which the movie was based. Silkwood is a bio-pic about a real woman who worked at a plutonium pellet fabricating plant during the 1970s. The movie chronicles her transformation from a flighty, friendly, humorous sort to a no-holds-barred activist.
The transformation is halting--she becomes disturbed hearing a co-worked scream as she's being treated with a corrosive substance to "clean" her from a "spill." She begins to notice slipshod practices that endanger herself and others. She is "picked" by management to be part of a surveillance team largely, it turns out, so management came keep an eye on her. Her home life with lover and roommate begins to fragment. She is not dependable in old familiar ways. She contacts the Atomic Energy Committee in Washington and is flown there to give testimony. She presents her fears and findings to a group meeting of workers, hoping to unionize them. Ultimately, she is killed on the road at night. We're sure it's inspired by the company.
Reading about the real life aftermath, we learn that her friends and children sue the company, and the case goes all the way to the Supreme Court. The company must pay a large sum of money. Ultimately the plant is closed. Yet, there's a sense at the end of the movie that she has given her life to help protect others. Maybe this is exactly what she was doing in real life.
The element in the movie that most interests me is Silkwood's slow built-up from awareness to taking action. It's this hiatus that I experience almost every time I put my body in action to help another being. Of course I'm not risking my life or job. The stakes are smaller. Yet every time I have taken a bird or yes a bat to the Rehab Center, my own needs and plans become, at some point, hugely secondary. I cannot NOT take action.
This morning, as I asked Fran to help, rushed to get dressed, readied a basket where I've taken birds before, and selected a small towel to throw over the bird so it could be captured, I flitted from this to that, not finishing one thing, finding I'd left a crucial piece somewhere, imagining opening the car door before capturing the bird, seeing myself on the road with the wicker basket beside me, seeing myself carrying it into the Center and plunking it down, and hoping the small junco would live.
Luckily when we went out with the basket, the bird took a hop, flew a few feet, then lifted higher and arrowed between the garage and wire fence, where there are with lots of sticks, a safe place for a small bird who may not be panting anymore.
Monday, April 6, 2015
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Margotlog: Because I Stand by This Window
Margotlog: Because I Stand by This Window
In the last week, the Christmas cactus by the computer has grown bright green shoots two and a half inches long. The light is changing, lengthening, and the wind is whirling. Long sticks of trees across the street sway like dancers in a sea-sky with clumps of clouds and splashes of blue.
Out the back window onto the backs of houses, I stare into feather-dusters of dark green white pine, and beyond, the twisted high vaults of the neighbor's elm. These are my trees, I belong to them, and to the gnarled, dwarfed crab apple which soon will die, yet still takes its awkward stance by the fence.
What does it take to fall in love with the physical world? To know a place as an extension of oneself? To let the gaze expand from inside through the glass to the outside world, where daily I spread seeds for the birds, spill out the used bird bath and refill it with warm water. Yesterday evening six morning doves lifted off in irregular pairs with a whirr of wings. My doves, I said to myself, not to possess them but to let them own a part of me.
Last spring after our brutal winter of heavy and continuous snow, first one, then the other of a dove pair found their way to the seeds in the back yard. One seemed to have a bulge at one side of her breast. I was afraid she was injured. But what could I do? Their lives must be lived in danger, as are ours, only different.
Gradually she recovered, if indeed that was what happened. Maybe she was already carrying eggs. Truly I could only guess--today six doves, the next day, none. Have they all six died? I am not in charge, nor do they owe me anything but their soft mournful calls, their soft gray pliant shapes which suddenly open to a fantail edged in white.
The doves take me back to childhood visits in North Dakota. We did not have morning doves in South Carolina, at least not in my cityscape. Only pigeons. But as I lay in the quiet upstairs bedroom of my grandfather's North Dakota house, I heard the coo-coo and was told it meant rain. Listening as a way of knowing oneself in a moment in space.
Wallace Stevens, the great 20th-century American poet, wrote, "The greatest poverty is not to live in a physical world." So I am not poor, counting over my riches, in this fading light of a blustery late March evening.
In the last week, the Christmas cactus by the computer has grown bright green shoots two and a half inches long. The light is changing, lengthening, and the wind is whirling. Long sticks of trees across the street sway like dancers in a sea-sky with clumps of clouds and splashes of blue.
Out the back window onto the backs of houses, I stare into feather-dusters of dark green white pine, and beyond, the twisted high vaults of the neighbor's elm. These are my trees, I belong to them, and to the gnarled, dwarfed crab apple which soon will die, yet still takes its awkward stance by the fence.
What does it take to fall in love with the physical world? To know a place as an extension of oneself? To let the gaze expand from inside through the glass to the outside world, where daily I spread seeds for the birds, spill out the used bird bath and refill it with warm water. Yesterday evening six morning doves lifted off in irregular pairs with a whirr of wings. My doves, I said to myself, not to possess them but to let them own a part of me.
Last spring after our brutal winter of heavy and continuous snow, first one, then the other of a dove pair found their way to the seeds in the back yard. One seemed to have a bulge at one side of her breast. I was afraid she was injured. But what could I do? Their lives must be lived in danger, as are ours, only different.
Gradually she recovered, if indeed that was what happened. Maybe she was already carrying eggs. Truly I could only guess--today six doves, the next day, none. Have they all six died? I am not in charge, nor do they owe me anything but their soft mournful calls, their soft gray pliant shapes which suddenly open to a fantail edged in white.
The doves take me back to childhood visits in North Dakota. We did not have morning doves in South Carolina, at least not in my cityscape. Only pigeons. But as I lay in the quiet upstairs bedroom of my grandfather's North Dakota house, I heard the coo-coo and was told it meant rain. Listening as a way of knowing oneself in a moment in space.
Wallace Stevens, the great 20th-century American poet, wrote, "The greatest poverty is not to live in a physical world." So I am not poor, counting over my riches, in this fading light of a blustery late March evening.
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Margotlog: Key West: What to Tell a Housebound Friend
Margotlog: Key West: What to Tell a Housebound Friend
First, it's an island at the end of a chain of islands called the Florida Keys. Key stands for Cay, which I think is Spanish or Meso-American meaning small island.
Second, and here you can imagine me actually speaking to her by phone, though she's not far away, only West St. Paul. I make my voice to be clear and encouraging. She spends her days fighting acute pain. Today, she's "fallen off a cliff," by which she means, a movement has created a surge of agony. She wants my voice to take her out of pain's narrow confines. She wants description.
"I liked one place best," I begin. "The butterfly garden. The warm, enclosed garden is full of plants butterflies love. I recognized mint and milkweed. The paths are full of huge blue Morphos, as wide as my hand, fluttering, iridescent blue. As if some hand had cut sky cloth into scintillating shapes. How long do they live? I asked the butterfly keeper. 'Five days,' he said, 'and they don't eat at all.' That made me sad, but also amazed that there could be such die-off and yet so many here, fluttering against the glass, sipping water, even one briefly resting on my shoulder. But this is the Morpho's time-tested way.
"I don't see many Monarchs, I told the keeper. How come? We both knew almost without speaking how imperiled this once iconic North American and Mexican orange and black butterfly has become. 'We've chosen not to bring them inside, but leave them where we hope they'll flourish.' I understand I tell him. Why less than fifteen years ago when I was driving down Highway 35 from northern Minnesota, such swarms of lazy flying Monarchs crossed in front of me, I had to slow down to keep from hitting them. Now I'm lucky if I see a few up north, and a few here in my St. Paul garden.
"'Do everything you can to help,' he said. 'Here we're working with farmers in Oklahoma and Texas to leave margins around their fields for wild flowers. That's where the Monarchs find the milkweed where they lay their eggs. Oklahoma and Texas are the last stops before Mexico where they can start a new generation.'"
As I talk, I try to recollect the colors and shapes of the garden's other winged beauties--some long and narrow with red in their centers, and black and white on the margins of their wings. Some broad and jagged with yellow and brown zig-zags, and the edges of their wings crisped. Some sedately black and white. Some entirely one color, like a North American bright orange, oblong butterfly, quite pretty against the green. I describe this to my friend, the wounded artist, who is practicing what it looks like in her imagination.
In this plethora of winged creatures, birds have a place too, but the biggest aren't flying. They're three-year-old, hot pink flamingos, "rescued" from a breeder in Ontario, Canada. Not named Rhet and Scarlett, but could be. They're honking from their pool in the midst of all this fluttering and chirping. Scarlett tries to climb out, but slides back off the slippery rocks. I don't want to come face-to-face with her on the path. Yes her beak curves downward in a most peculiar way, but her neck looks strong enough to deliver a blow. Stay put, you two, I telegraph as I pass, going around twice to enjoy the fluttering marvels again.
Several days later, flying home, I study a patchwork of fields, probably in Iowa or southern Minnesota. Trees fur areas around small lakes or along waterways, but all other fields go straight to the margins, none with a border of wild plants. Fifteen years ago when I was on the writers-in-the-schools circuit, I interviewed farmers in southern and northwestern Minnesota farming communities. The towns were experiencing a strange gasping for breath, as if all the red corpuscles were draining away.
Jobs were disappearing. Young people leaving for more populated areas. Smaller farms were being bought up by large operations, not necessarily owned by single or related families. The consolidation, I heard again and again, had everything to do with wanting to plant only one or two crops, soy beans and corn being the favorites. And using big machinery on these fields.
What had been a system of diverse farming--some cows, some pigs, fields of grain and beans, rotated to help enrich the soil--was being replaced by a "corporate" model. Profit ran the business, as much profit as possible. Plant every inch, out to the margins. Plant Genetically Modified seeds, which grow plants that will withstand herbicides and pesticides like "Round-Up" by Monsanto.
I was watching an ethic of responsible farming being replaced by a drive to take everything possible, the devil take the hindmost. Of course there were exceptions to this, but as you'll find by watching the lively documentary "King Corn," the results have been such enormous yields that granaries stuffed to capacity and overflow corn mountains are fueling another problematic practice, the fattening of beef in feed-lots. Not only does this create enormous pools of organic waste, but it puts fat on the beef which, of course, settles around our middles and in our arteries and organs.
Such excess not only kills the Monarchs, one of our summer beauties who in a series of brief generations sends its progeny to overwinter in swarms. But it ultimately damages bees, water, air, and us.
As Rachel Carson wrote in the 1962, a "silent spring" awaits us, though not this time through the action of DDT, but through a more complex combination of excess and poisoning which inexorably will damage our own health and the creatures who share this small planet with us.
First, it's an island at the end of a chain of islands called the Florida Keys. Key stands for Cay, which I think is Spanish or Meso-American meaning small island.
Second, and here you can imagine me actually speaking to her by phone, though she's not far away, only West St. Paul. I make my voice to be clear and encouraging. She spends her days fighting acute pain. Today, she's "fallen off a cliff," by which she means, a movement has created a surge of agony. She wants my voice to take her out of pain's narrow confines. She wants description.
"I liked one place best," I begin. "The butterfly garden. The warm, enclosed garden is full of plants butterflies love. I recognized mint and milkweed. The paths are full of huge blue Morphos, as wide as my hand, fluttering, iridescent blue. As if some hand had cut sky cloth into scintillating shapes. How long do they live? I asked the butterfly keeper. 'Five days,' he said, 'and they don't eat at all.' That made me sad, but also amazed that there could be such die-off and yet so many here, fluttering against the glass, sipping water, even one briefly resting on my shoulder. But this is the Morpho's time-tested way.
"I don't see many Monarchs, I told the keeper. How come? We both knew almost without speaking how imperiled this once iconic North American and Mexican orange and black butterfly has become. 'We've chosen not to bring them inside, but leave them where we hope they'll flourish.' I understand I tell him. Why less than fifteen years ago when I was driving down Highway 35 from northern Minnesota, such swarms of lazy flying Monarchs crossed in front of me, I had to slow down to keep from hitting them. Now I'm lucky if I see a few up north, and a few here in my St. Paul garden.
"'Do everything you can to help,' he said. 'Here we're working with farmers in Oklahoma and Texas to leave margins around their fields for wild flowers. That's where the Monarchs find the milkweed where they lay their eggs. Oklahoma and Texas are the last stops before Mexico where they can start a new generation.'"
As I talk, I try to recollect the colors and shapes of the garden's other winged beauties--some long and narrow with red in their centers, and black and white on the margins of their wings. Some broad and jagged with yellow and brown zig-zags, and the edges of their wings crisped. Some sedately black and white. Some entirely one color, like a North American bright orange, oblong butterfly, quite pretty against the green. I describe this to my friend, the wounded artist, who is practicing what it looks like in her imagination.
In this plethora of winged creatures, birds have a place too, but the biggest aren't flying. They're three-year-old, hot pink flamingos, "rescued" from a breeder in Ontario, Canada. Not named Rhet and Scarlett, but could be. They're honking from their pool in the midst of all this fluttering and chirping. Scarlett tries to climb out, but slides back off the slippery rocks. I don't want to come face-to-face with her on the path. Yes her beak curves downward in a most peculiar way, but her neck looks strong enough to deliver a blow. Stay put, you two, I telegraph as I pass, going around twice to enjoy the fluttering marvels again.
Several days later, flying home, I study a patchwork of fields, probably in Iowa or southern Minnesota. Trees fur areas around small lakes or along waterways, but all other fields go straight to the margins, none with a border of wild plants. Fifteen years ago when I was on the writers-in-the-schools circuit, I interviewed farmers in southern and northwestern Minnesota farming communities. The towns were experiencing a strange gasping for breath, as if all the red corpuscles were draining away.
Jobs were disappearing. Young people leaving for more populated areas. Smaller farms were being bought up by large operations, not necessarily owned by single or related families. The consolidation, I heard again and again, had everything to do with wanting to plant only one or two crops, soy beans and corn being the favorites. And using big machinery on these fields.
What had been a system of diverse farming--some cows, some pigs, fields of grain and beans, rotated to help enrich the soil--was being replaced by a "corporate" model. Profit ran the business, as much profit as possible. Plant every inch, out to the margins. Plant Genetically Modified seeds, which grow plants that will withstand herbicides and pesticides like "Round-Up" by Monsanto.
I was watching an ethic of responsible farming being replaced by a drive to take everything possible, the devil take the hindmost. Of course there were exceptions to this, but as you'll find by watching the lively documentary "King Corn," the results have been such enormous yields that granaries stuffed to capacity and overflow corn mountains are fueling another problematic practice, the fattening of beef in feed-lots. Not only does this create enormous pools of organic waste, but it puts fat on the beef which, of course, settles around our middles and in our arteries and organs.
Such excess not only kills the Monarchs, one of our summer beauties who in a series of brief generations sends its progeny to overwinter in swarms. But it ultimately damages bees, water, air, and us.
As Rachel Carson wrote in the 1962, a "silent spring" awaits us, though not this time through the action of DDT, but through a more complex combination of excess and poisoning which inexorably will damage our own health and the creatures who share this small planet with us.
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Margotlog: Luxe, Calme, e Volupte
Margotlog: Luxe, Calme, e Volupte
This line from the French poet Baudelaire (1857) is one of my favorite resorts to describe wafting on warmth and joy. All is ease--luxe, calme. All is indulgence--volupte.
It's rare to feel such untroubled ease in the midst of a Minnesota winter. Yes, the black and white cat caught in a sunbeam expresses sparky charm in her brilliantly lit spray of eyebrow whiskers and the warmth of her sun-drenched fur. But outside though sun reigns, we know from experience, the wind is brutally cold, and the car might not start.
Yesterday there was reprieve, the second of two warmer days. The sun was high in the sky which was blue as forget-me-nots. Bundled up visitors to the Como Conservatory soon shed their wraps. My friend Nordis had come from St. Louis Park to pick me up. More luxe. I hate driving, but especially in winter. Yet our destination was close. We found a parking space outside the wildly eccentric new, glass-roofed wing of the Como Conservatory, and soon were swaddled in rain forest moisture and warmth.
There was a bench just inside the entrance to Tropical Encounters. A pleasant-faced woman sat at one end, scanning the high trees and apparently listening. Bird song surrounded us. I sat down. Nordis sat down. Soon the three of us spied a plump yellow finch, so identified by the most charming young docent, with wide blue eyes and cascades of rich brown hair. "Oh, I saw something blue." She identified a blue tananger. Soon she handed us a thick-paged flip chart of rainforest birds brought to spend time in this crystal palace..
I had been so sick. Off and on since mid-December, with sinus infection, heavy cough, stomach flu. Trying to revive roller skating at a grandson's roller rink birghday part, I was blindsided by a faltering kid. Splat. On the right hip injured years ago when Fran and I spent 12 hours scarping paint off stucco to ready my little house for sale, I had traipsed around for five days, from class to class of a writing residency, training the cord for a heating pad. Now, I lay in the warmth of electric blanket. After a two weeks, each step on the hurt hip still led to a wince.
Oh, the joy of forgetfulness, immersion in beauty, green and warmth. We sat and sat, talking about rain forest adventures, theirs, not mine. Spying more birds in the many storied glass palace. Warm, at ease, voluptuous.
The first year I moved to Minnesota, my then husband and I went to see the sled-dog races on lake Como. The right thing to do, we thought--try and fit in with the natives. I wore my New York wool coat and silk-lined, knee-high boots. Yes, there were socks, probably two layers of socks. And heavy mittens. No doubt I wore jeans and a sweater under the coat--good for New York winters.
Within twenty minutes, the cold wracked my fingers and toes with such pain we had to leave. Frostbite, which would recur for years until I learned to layer, to buy heavy, rubber-soled waffle-stompers, a down coat well below my knees, two hats, three sweathers, three socks, several long scarves up to my eyes, and a wool hat under a down hood.
I could walk from the car to Como Conservatory in minus-20 windchill and survive without excruciating ache in fingers and toes. But that first year, I also discovered the surcease from pain available with deep draughts of moist green air. The antidote is still the next best thing to waking up to breakfast on a lanai in Kauai.
This line from the French poet Baudelaire (1857) is one of my favorite resorts to describe wafting on warmth and joy. All is ease--luxe, calme. All is indulgence--volupte.
It's rare to feel such untroubled ease in the midst of a Minnesota winter. Yes, the black and white cat caught in a sunbeam expresses sparky charm in her brilliantly lit spray of eyebrow whiskers and the warmth of her sun-drenched fur. But outside though sun reigns, we know from experience, the wind is brutally cold, and the car might not start.
Yesterday there was reprieve, the second of two warmer days. The sun was high in the sky which was blue as forget-me-nots. Bundled up visitors to the Como Conservatory soon shed their wraps. My friend Nordis had come from St. Louis Park to pick me up. More luxe. I hate driving, but especially in winter. Yet our destination was close. We found a parking space outside the wildly eccentric new, glass-roofed wing of the Como Conservatory, and soon were swaddled in rain forest moisture and warmth.
There was a bench just inside the entrance to Tropical Encounters. A pleasant-faced woman sat at one end, scanning the high trees and apparently listening. Bird song surrounded us. I sat down. Nordis sat down. Soon the three of us spied a plump yellow finch, so identified by the most charming young docent, with wide blue eyes and cascades of rich brown hair. "Oh, I saw something blue." She identified a blue tananger. Soon she handed us a thick-paged flip chart of rainforest birds brought to spend time in this crystal palace..
I had been so sick. Off and on since mid-December, with sinus infection, heavy cough, stomach flu. Trying to revive roller skating at a grandson's roller rink birghday part, I was blindsided by a faltering kid. Splat. On the right hip injured years ago when Fran and I spent 12 hours scarping paint off stucco to ready my little house for sale, I had traipsed around for five days, from class to class of a writing residency, training the cord for a heating pad. Now, I lay in the warmth of electric blanket. After a two weeks, each step on the hurt hip still led to a wince.
Oh, the joy of forgetfulness, immersion in beauty, green and warmth. We sat and sat, talking about rain forest adventures, theirs, not mine. Spying more birds in the many storied glass palace. Warm, at ease, voluptuous.
The first year I moved to Minnesota, my then husband and I went to see the sled-dog races on lake Como. The right thing to do, we thought--try and fit in with the natives. I wore my New York wool coat and silk-lined, knee-high boots. Yes, there were socks, probably two layers of socks. And heavy mittens. No doubt I wore jeans and a sweater under the coat--good for New York winters.
Within twenty minutes, the cold wracked my fingers and toes with such pain we had to leave. Frostbite, which would recur for years until I learned to layer, to buy heavy, rubber-soled waffle-stompers, a down coat well below my knees, two hats, three sweathers, three socks, several long scarves up to my eyes, and a wool hat under a down hood.
I could walk from the car to Como Conservatory in minus-20 windchill and survive without excruciating ache in fingers and toes. But that first year, I also discovered the surcease from pain available with deep draughts of moist green air. The antidote is still the next best thing to waking up to breakfast on a lanai in Kauai.
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Margotlog: Sudden Tears
Margotlog: Sudden Tears
The Russians are particularly good at this--an upwelling of tears at the turn of a head or sliding into a car. Today's snow and high clouds make me think of a Chekhov troika pausing in a stand of thin trees which whisper above their blanket of snow.
Maybe the illness of last evening and this morning has roused them. Last evening, Fran lay white-faced and sweating under heavy winter wraps as we watched another episode of Jeeves and Bertie. I kept saying in a quiet way, "Maybe you shouldn't go to Phoenix." Before going up to my own bed, I left an empty plastic waste basket beside his lounger/sleeper. He vomited twice during the night. Mid-morning, the trip canceled, he came upstairs to sleep under the electric blanket. Now, hours later, he still sleeps.
All of a sudden, with groceries in the trunk of the car, I am weeping for Eleanor, as if she had just spoken my name and risen from the lunch table to take me upstairs. Outside it would be a chilly November day, and later I would drive a rental car from the assisted living apartment where she lived, across dormant fields lightly touched with snow. When I turned left toward Bombay Hook, a flock of snow geese would rise white-winged into the air.
But I am stopped at a corner beside Feist Veterinary, proceeding toward the two stop lights on the route home. My cheeks are wet with tears. Can this be her birthday, Feb 12? She would be 98. A woman who laughed and filled a life with good work and friendships. She was helped by a companionable younger sister, and their adorable mother.Yet her husband was killed when his troop ship was torpedoed in the Pacific, and their son, born a few days after I was, did not live more than a week.
After both my parents died, I took to visiting her more often in the Delaware assisted living. I sat opposite her curly white head, bright blue eyes and freckled skin, so unlike the smooth olive of our Italian relatives. Behind her chair, hung a Gauguin print--surely his Pacific Island paradise, yet not with a shore and curving palms, and a woman with languorous hair. This was full of odd shapes in oranges and gray blue, citron and purple--a intensity over something I could not quite make out. It might have been the shape of her life.
And now I weep for her intense love and humor, her wails of frustration and flash of rage. For her armature was fully charged, unlike my mother's which wounded suddenly, which pretended calm. So much to love when it is fully expressed, when there is warmth to the touch, when the heart is open.
The Russians are particularly good at this--an upwelling of tears at the turn of a head or sliding into a car. Today's snow and high clouds make me think of a Chekhov troika pausing in a stand of thin trees which whisper above their blanket of snow.
Maybe the illness of last evening and this morning has roused them. Last evening, Fran lay white-faced and sweating under heavy winter wraps as we watched another episode of Jeeves and Bertie. I kept saying in a quiet way, "Maybe you shouldn't go to Phoenix." Before going up to my own bed, I left an empty plastic waste basket beside his lounger/sleeper. He vomited twice during the night. Mid-morning, the trip canceled, he came upstairs to sleep under the electric blanket. Now, hours later, he still sleeps.
All of a sudden, with groceries in the trunk of the car, I am weeping for Eleanor, as if she had just spoken my name and risen from the lunch table to take me upstairs. Outside it would be a chilly November day, and later I would drive a rental car from the assisted living apartment where she lived, across dormant fields lightly touched with snow. When I turned left toward Bombay Hook, a flock of snow geese would rise white-winged into the air.
But I am stopped at a corner beside Feist Veterinary, proceeding toward the two stop lights on the route home. My cheeks are wet with tears. Can this be her birthday, Feb 12? She would be 98. A woman who laughed and filled a life with good work and friendships. She was helped by a companionable younger sister, and their adorable mother.Yet her husband was killed when his troop ship was torpedoed in the Pacific, and their son, born a few days after I was, did not live more than a week.
After both my parents died, I took to visiting her more often in the Delaware assisted living. I sat opposite her curly white head, bright blue eyes and freckled skin, so unlike the smooth olive of our Italian relatives. Behind her chair, hung a Gauguin print--surely his Pacific Island paradise, yet not with a shore and curving palms, and a woman with languorous hair. This was full of odd shapes in oranges and gray blue, citron and purple--a intensity over something I could not quite make out. It might have been the shape of her life.
And now I weep for her intense love and humor, her wails of frustration and flash of rage. For her armature was fully charged, unlike my mother's which wounded suddenly, which pretended calm. So much to love when it is fully expressed, when there is warmth to the touch, when the heart is open.
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Margotlog: Emily's Angleworm
Margotlog: Emily's Angleworm
Though I supposed myself a serious graduate student, studying 19th-Century American Literature at Columbia, it now comes clear that I took away only one snippet from what that century had to offer--Emily Dickinson brief remark:
A little bird walked down the path
it did not know I saw
It bit an angleworm in half
and ate the fellow raw.
Yesterday I wrote this on the back of an envelope, just to make sure it didn't slither off into oblivion. The occasion was not pure whimsy, but a glimpse out the back window at a shape looming in the bare elm. Hawk!
The huge bird swiveled its head, somewhat disdainful as wind tufted its feathers. On the ground, under the wide branches of the white pine, gray squirrels kept eating seeds. Not a sparrow or chickadee in sight.
I consulted the Sibley Guide to Birds. Hawk, yes. But precisely what kind I couldn't tell. Dark back, long tail, paler front. Could have been any number of juveniles or females. I didn't think it was an immature bald eagle, though it seemed huge against the gray sky..
The next time I looked, a squirrel had inserted itself onto the other end of the branch and was advancing toward the tall, still bird. Stupid squirrel. Frisking, frolicking. Courting danger, I thought. Squirrel ran right toward the towering bird who looked down its nose at the annoyance. What the devil? I thought. Doesn't it know any better? Squirrel advanced, bird hopped an inch away. Squirrel skittered. Paused. Advanced.
Lifting its regal shoulders in an almost audible "Well!" the hawk spread wide dark wings, soared low into the yard, inserted itself between the houses, and was gone, leaving behind the chance to eat any darn thing raw.
This morning the wind blew bitter. I left for an appointment and returned. Squirrels eating, Birds invisible.
Too cold, I thought and hurried inside. At the window maybe twenty minutes later, expecting to see nothing, I found a regal, orange-chested Cooper's Hawk (unmistakable) holding to the ground a splay-winged pigeon. "Come quick," I called into the house. We both saw it. I put my nose in the book. Fran said, "It's squirming. Must be still alive." I looked up. Raw prey and predator were gone.
The back-yard dusted itself off. An hour later, it was full of birds, as many as could stand the fierce wind before rushing for shelter in the spruce. It didn't matter what we saw. So there, Emily, with your flouncy fella raw.
Though I supposed myself a serious graduate student, studying 19th-Century American Literature at Columbia, it now comes clear that I took away only one snippet from what that century had to offer--Emily Dickinson brief remark:
A little bird walked down the path
it did not know I saw
It bit an angleworm in half
and ate the fellow raw.
Yesterday I wrote this on the back of an envelope, just to make sure it didn't slither off into oblivion. The occasion was not pure whimsy, but a glimpse out the back window at a shape looming in the bare elm. Hawk!
The huge bird swiveled its head, somewhat disdainful as wind tufted its feathers. On the ground, under the wide branches of the white pine, gray squirrels kept eating seeds. Not a sparrow or chickadee in sight.
I consulted the Sibley Guide to Birds. Hawk, yes. But precisely what kind I couldn't tell. Dark back, long tail, paler front. Could have been any number of juveniles or females. I didn't think it was an immature bald eagle, though it seemed huge against the gray sky..
The next time I looked, a squirrel had inserted itself onto the other end of the branch and was advancing toward the tall, still bird. Stupid squirrel. Frisking, frolicking. Courting danger, I thought. Squirrel ran right toward the towering bird who looked down its nose at the annoyance. What the devil? I thought. Doesn't it know any better? Squirrel advanced, bird hopped an inch away. Squirrel skittered. Paused. Advanced.
Lifting its regal shoulders in an almost audible "Well!" the hawk spread wide dark wings, soared low into the yard, inserted itself between the houses, and was gone, leaving behind the chance to eat any darn thing raw.
This morning the wind blew bitter. I left for an appointment and returned. Squirrels eating, Birds invisible.
Too cold, I thought and hurried inside. At the window maybe twenty minutes later, expecting to see nothing, I found a regal, orange-chested Cooper's Hawk (unmistakable) holding to the ground a splay-winged pigeon. "Come quick," I called into the house. We both saw it. I put my nose in the book. Fran said, "It's squirming. Must be still alive." I looked up. Raw prey and predator were gone.
The back-yard dusted itself off. An hour later, it was full of birds, as many as could stand the fierce wind before rushing for shelter in the spruce. It didn't matter what we saw. So there, Emily, with your flouncy fella raw.
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Margotlog: Minnesota's Trumpeter Swans
Margotlog: Minnesota's Trumpeter Swans
In that dreamy mode when the mind brings up images as if from the deep, I imagine the swan as a ballerina, arching her beautiful long neck as she takes flight on her toes, her arms like slender graceful wings. Beside her, riding the air, two huge white birds, their white necks and black beaks outstretched, skim the water, put down black webbed feet, and fold their white wings--tents of clouds, gliding to a stop.
In the ballet Swan Lake, the swan dies, leaving her human lover aching with grief. In a daily cacophany of birdland on the winter Mississippi River near Monticello, Minnesota, our own ballerinas of the air hold up their regal heads, paddle upside down searching for food, mix with almost grown, gray cygnets, and receive the applause of an astonishing amount of corn.
Every day throughout the winter, in this theater of the swan, a generous couple, aided by swan lovers from miles around, feed around 500 swans, mallard ducks, and Canada geese. The menu is around 1500 pounds of corn a day. It is an astonishing sight, especially since the trumpeter's come-back has been conducted largely by the same species who almost eradicated the bird in the first place.
In 1989, when Minnesota's "bring back the trumpeter" effort first took flight, I wrote a long article for Minnesota Monthly (March 1989)--"Bringing Back the Swain." There had been two decades of work to protect and help repopulate a small number of swans in Hennepin County, Big Rat Lake, Carlos Avery Wildlife Area, as well as several lakes in Becker County, near the western edge of the state. Trumpeters used to be plentiful throughout much of the continental United States but they were an easy target for hunters--their heavy body (up to 35 lbs) and slow take-off and landing with their nine-foot wingspans--"like a 747," early wildlife workers like to say--had left their numbers so small in the continental US as to predict extinction.
Then in the 1980s, thousands of trumpeters were discovered in Alaska. In an amazing effort, funded in part by "the chickadee check-off" on state income tax forms, Minnesota's Department of Natural Resources and Hennepin County Parks--aided by "citizens for swans" in the Trumpeter Swan Society--worked to repopulate Minnesota with its glorious native swan. DNR's Carrol Henderson flew to Alaska to collect (sparingly) the trumpeter eggs--the size of nerf footballs. Steve Kittlesen tended incubators, turning the eggs as a parent swan would, and hastening the hatched cygnets into swimming pools. He quipped it was a darn good think he didn't have to teach them to eat.
There were some sad set-backs--a mink got into a brooder building and killed all 31 newly hatched cygnets. Replacements of this expensive stock came from the Minnesota Zoo, private growers, a research station in Manitoba, and Hennepin parks. "The better way...would have been not to let the [trumpeter] disappear in the first place," Kittleson said. But the habitat and the financial support and the eggs were available. Fully grown trumpeters were flown to small puddle lakes near Fargo-Moorhead, to try raising families. Goofy things happened: one bird couldn't be herded to water for 90 minutes. One kept heading to the road to watch the cars.
The following summer, 15 free-flying pairs returned to Detroit Lakes, joining 42 newly released birds. Over the winter, some birds discovered open water on the Mississippi near the nuclear power plant at Monticello. Others spent the winter south in Iowa and Missouri.
One of the best reclamation efforts was reviving Swan Lake near St. Peter, bringing back its original grassy, reedy form. A huge lake with many small bays, Swan Lake used to be home to many trumpeters long before Westerners arrived. "Named Manka tanka ota menda, or Lake of the Large Birds by the Dakota, the lake was a summer hunting ground for Chief Sleepy Eye" (Galt, 1989). When I wrote the 1989 account of these efforts, there were predictions that someday 150 birds might live on Swan Lake. The DNR hoped to establish a free-flying flock of 30 breeding pairs, and 300 birds to add to the Hennepin Parks flock of 100.
No one could have imagined that today, in 2015, an estimated 2500 trumpeter swans live in Minnesota. They mate for life and raise their fluffy gray cygnets in small prairie pot-holes. Some surely try out spots in Canada, and Montana. Each year a number of trumpeters and other water fowl sicken from ingesting lead from hunter's bullets and fishing sinkers. The lucky ones are treated at such places as the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Saint Paul.
But overall, the present numbers and health of the world's largest and, for me, most beautiful water bird is nothing short of miraculous. A few days ago as we stood in a chill wind watching the "man who feeds the swans" spread splash after splash of corn among the noisy, stately, pushing, eddying throng, I thought how wonderful when humans take to their hearts another form of life, and protect and nourish it. Young and old, hale and feeble, came to watch the swans enjoy their food. And not only that to appreciate the on-going effort, the care and desire to continue feeding and helping the trumpeter through the winter.
Of course only a fifth, at the most, of the summer trumpeters hang out in the warmed water below the Monticelli power plant. But at this moment, I can't imagine asking for more. This ballet of the air and water, of human and big white bird is a continuing love story.
---
To enjoy watching trumpeters in the winter Mississippi, here are directions from the Twin Cities - take 94 west and exit at the first Monticello exit. Up up the ramp at the stoplight, turn right. You will be on Hgwy 39. Go 1/4 mile and turn left onto Mississippi Drive. The park is about 500 yards, and is clearly marked with parking for handicapped and others. There's a path down to the river. Each day's "feeding" is at 10:30 a.m. Make a donation if at all possible.
In that dreamy mode when the mind brings up images as if from the deep, I imagine the swan as a ballerina, arching her beautiful long neck as she takes flight on her toes, her arms like slender graceful wings. Beside her, riding the air, two huge white birds, their white necks and black beaks outstretched, skim the water, put down black webbed feet, and fold their white wings--tents of clouds, gliding to a stop.
In the ballet Swan Lake, the swan dies, leaving her human lover aching with grief. In a daily cacophany of birdland on the winter Mississippi River near Monticello, Minnesota, our own ballerinas of the air hold up their regal heads, paddle upside down searching for food, mix with almost grown, gray cygnets, and receive the applause of an astonishing amount of corn.
Every day throughout the winter, in this theater of the swan, a generous couple, aided by swan lovers from miles around, feed around 500 swans, mallard ducks, and Canada geese. The menu is around 1500 pounds of corn a day. It is an astonishing sight, especially since the trumpeter's come-back has been conducted largely by the same species who almost eradicated the bird in the first place.
In 1989, when Minnesota's "bring back the trumpeter" effort first took flight, I wrote a long article for Minnesota Monthly (March 1989)--"Bringing Back the Swain." There had been two decades of work to protect and help repopulate a small number of swans in Hennepin County, Big Rat Lake, Carlos Avery Wildlife Area, as well as several lakes in Becker County, near the western edge of the state. Trumpeters used to be plentiful throughout much of the continental United States but they were an easy target for hunters--their heavy body (up to 35 lbs) and slow take-off and landing with their nine-foot wingspans--"like a 747," early wildlife workers like to say--had left their numbers so small in the continental US as to predict extinction.
Then in the 1980s, thousands of trumpeters were discovered in Alaska. In an amazing effort, funded in part by "the chickadee check-off" on state income tax forms, Minnesota's Department of Natural Resources and Hennepin County Parks--aided by "citizens for swans" in the Trumpeter Swan Society--worked to repopulate Minnesota with its glorious native swan. DNR's Carrol Henderson flew to Alaska to collect (sparingly) the trumpeter eggs--the size of nerf footballs. Steve Kittlesen tended incubators, turning the eggs as a parent swan would, and hastening the hatched cygnets into swimming pools. He quipped it was a darn good think he didn't have to teach them to eat.
There were some sad set-backs--a mink got into a brooder building and killed all 31 newly hatched cygnets. Replacements of this expensive stock came from the Minnesota Zoo, private growers, a research station in Manitoba, and Hennepin parks. "The better way...would have been not to let the [trumpeter] disappear in the first place," Kittleson said. But the habitat and the financial support and the eggs were available. Fully grown trumpeters were flown to small puddle lakes near Fargo-Moorhead, to try raising families. Goofy things happened: one bird couldn't be herded to water for 90 minutes. One kept heading to the road to watch the cars.
The following summer, 15 free-flying pairs returned to Detroit Lakes, joining 42 newly released birds. Over the winter, some birds discovered open water on the Mississippi near the nuclear power plant at Monticello. Others spent the winter south in Iowa and Missouri.
One of the best reclamation efforts was reviving Swan Lake near St. Peter, bringing back its original grassy, reedy form. A huge lake with many small bays, Swan Lake used to be home to many trumpeters long before Westerners arrived. "Named Manka tanka ota menda, or Lake of the Large Birds by the Dakota, the lake was a summer hunting ground for Chief Sleepy Eye" (Galt, 1989). When I wrote the 1989 account of these efforts, there were predictions that someday 150 birds might live on Swan Lake. The DNR hoped to establish a free-flying flock of 30 breeding pairs, and 300 birds to add to the Hennepin Parks flock of 100.
No one could have imagined that today, in 2015, an estimated 2500 trumpeter swans live in Minnesota. They mate for life and raise their fluffy gray cygnets in small prairie pot-holes. Some surely try out spots in Canada, and Montana. Each year a number of trumpeters and other water fowl sicken from ingesting lead from hunter's bullets and fishing sinkers. The lucky ones are treated at such places as the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Saint Paul.
But overall, the present numbers and health of the world's largest and, for me, most beautiful water bird is nothing short of miraculous. A few days ago as we stood in a chill wind watching the "man who feeds the swans" spread splash after splash of corn among the noisy, stately, pushing, eddying throng, I thought how wonderful when humans take to their hearts another form of life, and protect and nourish it. Young and old, hale and feeble, came to watch the swans enjoy their food. And not only that to appreciate the on-going effort, the care and desire to continue feeding and helping the trumpeter through the winter.
Of course only a fifth, at the most, of the summer trumpeters hang out in the warmed water below the Monticelli power plant. But at this moment, I can't imagine asking for more. This ballet of the air and water, of human and big white bird is a continuing love story.
---
To enjoy watching trumpeters in the winter Mississippi, here are directions from the Twin Cities - take 94 west and exit at the first Monticello exit. Up up the ramp at the stoplight, turn right. You will be on Hgwy 39. Go 1/4 mile and turn left onto Mississippi Drive. The park is about 500 yards, and is clearly marked with parking for handicapped and others. There's a path down to the river. Each day's "feeding" is at 10:30 a.m. Make a donation if at all possible.
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