I'm glad not to be young in 2021

 

Can't find the writer or illustrator of this one, sorry.

I was going to post the old song "I'm glad I'm not young anymore" that Maurice Chevalier sang in "Gigi"  but the lyrics don't really apply in my case.

However, I am glad to be in the 70's now, not back in the years of the 70's.  Glad to be here now.

Some regrets, and one of them is that there wasn't digital photography until so recently.  The film camera made one abstemious about what photo to take, since film cost money, and developing the film cost money and time.  There were photos of events and persons that I simply wish I had, to help my memory along.

I am glad I won't be around in thirty years to live in the world that is coming.  

Midsummer comes and Midsummer goes

 

art by   Maggie Vandeerwhalle

How did it some to be a week into July!

This poem expresses my amazement:

Midsummer Song

by Clinton Scollard

Dawnings of amber and amethyst eves;

Soft in the south wind the laughter of leaves;

Breath of the poppy and death of the rose,--

Midsummer comes and midsummer goes!

Dapple on cheek of the apple and plum;

Honey-bees droning a die-away hum;

Swales in a shimmer and dales in a doze,--

Midsummer comes and midsummer goes!

Darting of dragon-fly, flutter of moth;

Barley in windrow and wheat in the swath;

Hush-song and thrush-song!--the mother-bird knows!--

Midsummer comes and midsummer goes!

Moonlight and noonlight all glamour and gleam;

Hillside and rillside a thrall to the dream;

Capture the rapture before the days close!--

Midsummer comes and midsummer goes!

 

In the fervors of July

 

art by Lucy Goldsmith

more poems and quotes I like:

"The linden, in the fervors of July,
Hums with a louder concert. When the wind
Sweeps the broad forest in its summer prime,
As when some master-hand exulting sweeps
The keys of some great organ, ye give forth
The music of the woodland depths, a hymn
Of gladness and of thanks."
-  William Cullen Bryant, Among the Trees 

 

"The dandelions and buttercups gild all the lawn: the drowsy bee stumbles among the clover tops, and summer sweetens all to me."
-  James Russell Lowell 

 

art by Sarah Earl

"Nothing is more memorable than a smell.  One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains..."
-  Diane Ackerman

 

Downsizing

 

My friends are downsizing --- selling their large homes and moving into smaller cottages and condominiums.  About six different ones have done this over the last three years, friends from grade school, high school, and college, and more.  One particularly close friend is downsizing in preparation for such a move right now.   It's unnerving to me;  I blindly think that everyone and everything will stay the same.  

I just spent an hour looking for some photos I have of these various places, but I can't find them in the vast storage space of my files.  

I hope to return to the task.  But for now, just some poems and pictures:

art by Amanda Clark

A Green Thought

by Katherine Towers

Say instead it was an evening in head-high
bracken with its smell of dark and medicine.
Thinking green of the infecting fern                                

where you may crouch and not be known,
lodging your feet for good amid the stalks.
A bower is a dwelling place or once it was

a cage for pent-up singing birds. 
Look down to see the warp and weft of root.
All the world is in these clutches.                        

Look up to clock the fern’s drab underneath
blotched with spores you mustn’t breathe.
Breathe in deep. There’s nowhere else to live.

July 4 thoughts

 First of all, I am so glad that Joe Biden is our president now.  No more Trump and his lies and Twitter terrorism.

We still have many problems in this country, but we are so much better off than we were with that miserable man and his self-centered, passionate intensity.

We sang "America the Beautiful" as the closing song of Mass last evening in the parish, and I actually got choked up - I , who never cry.

We've had a run of gorgeous summer weather, too. 

And these lovely thoughts and pictures:

and this:

and this: