In Southern Maryland

Yesterday I drove almost four hours to the other end of the state to St.Mary's College of Southern Maryland. I'm attending their first annual Chesapeake Writers' Workshop.  About forty writers are here, in four groups of ten:  two groups for fiction, one for creative nonfiction, and one for poetry.
Haven't had the first poetry workshop session yet, but so far it has been fun.  The campus is very beautiful --- surrounded by water, with campus buildings that remind me of Williamsburg. It's birdwatching heaven as well. 

Photo from Google:

On the perception of time

That's a mysterious and abstract title for what is probably a common realization.


Back in the summer of 2010, when I was visiting my mom  in the nursing home, I was looking at this 8X10 framed photo on her dresser:

This was taken in 1941, of my mother and her five brothers.  I know it was 1941 because my Uncle Al is in uniform. I would love to know the location and story of the house in the background.
What struck me was that I always thought of 1941 as ancient times, very far in the past. It hit me that day that 1941 was only seven years before I was born!  And that 2003, when this photo was taken,

of me, at the "Mountward Bound"

retreat for the incoming freshmen ( I worked in Campus Ministry then), was much more distant in time from my birth -  fifty-five years!

I lived in what, to my students, are the dark ages, the ancient times. Yet they seem to me to be not so far away.

I guess I especially have been thinking about this since last Sunday, when I visited one of my high school teachers -  one of my favorites . We hadn't seen each other since about 1972, or maybe even before that.  He is only ten years older than I am,  but at age fourteen, age twenty-four seemed so old.

I looked into his face ( still handsome) and saw the face of that twenty-four year old.  This must be the way my former students see me --- the students I taught when I was twenty-eight and they were eighteen.  Several of them have been visiting me in recent years.

Maybe this miserable heat has been cooking my brain  But the passage of time just fascinates me.

I remember that old Rolling Stones song  "Ti ---me  is on my side, yes it is"  Not any more.

Heat Advisory

The heat and humidity have arrived in Maryland.

I began to remember the first fourteen or so years of my life before airconditioning became widespread.  People flocked to movie theaters on days like this.  I also remember going to the Thrift Drug Store in the West Goshen Shopping Center to hang around in the aisles in the air conditioning.
It's hard to believe that my first waitressing job, at the Guernsey Cow restaurant in Exton Pa was in a restaurant with no airconditioning.

In the summers between 1956 and 1962, when I was home from school, my mother, who was a private duty nurse working from 7-3PM, took off for the summer, and she and I would spend our days at the pool at Lenape Park.  We would get home about 4, in time for her to get supper ready for when Dad came home from work at 6PM --- and he worked outside in the heat at his Exxon ( then Esso) station.  Our house was not airconditioned; if it was really hot, she and I would like on the tile floor in the living room on towels in front of a large electric fan.

My parents were not big beach-goers. We did go at least three times during my childhood, though.
This photo was taken on the beach at Ocean City New Jersey in the summer of 1954:

Jump to 1979 through 1984, when I was a young Daughter of Charity, living in Petersburg Virginia. One of the sisters said she thought Petersburg was built over hell. The heat and humidity were unrelenting, and were enhanced by the sulphurous fumes from the Allied Chemical plant and the tobacco processing plant.  The convent chapel, community room, and refectory were airconditioned, but the rest of the cinderblock building and the schools were not.  I remember going over to my classroom in late August and September at 5AM to open the windows and turn on the fans, to try to bring some of the cooler morning air in.  My long-sleeved navy blue habit would be sticking to me most of the days.

Actually, when I think of it, most of the high school classrooms in which I taught for twenty-five years were not airconditioned.  I was younger and thinner then, but I just lived with the expectation of discomfort.  Most people have done so for most of the history of the world.

Back to the Garden, part two

On this lovely sunny summer Sunday, I weeded and mulched out there. Then, when the sun moved, or, rather, when the garden moved into the sun, I went back out to take some photos of the glory:

Bee Balm

Larkspur

 Glads-  two of the many

 

Sunflowers and Crocosima

Tomato plants coming along

Hostas

Procrastination

I should not lecture my students about this; I'm guilty of it so many times myself.

This morning I have frittered away several hours on Facebook and on the Cornell Birds website.

I love this photo posted by Laura Culley one of my Facebook/Cornell  friends:

"A juvenile Malachite Kingfisher from Berni Richter of SOAR (Illinois) a raptor rehab organization."

I want to write a poem about this photo.

The other is one from the adventures of C3, the fledgling at Cornell.  She spent the evening and night perched on a window air conditioner on one of the university buildings!

need to stop this nonsense and get to work on something.

Summer Reading

Today the radio announced that Frederick is the hottest spot in Maryland, at 99 degrees. Same here, 25 miles north. The heat index is over 100, with a consequent health warning about going outside.

I was out this morning, watering the tomato plants and running errands, but now I'm hunkered down in my bedroom -  a cave with the shades drawn against the afternoon sun.

I should be reading Wendell Berry's novel Hannah Coulter, which I need to read for the Freshman course in the fall. But I can't get into it.  Will try again in a day or two.

What I did finish with no trouble was Denise Mina's mystery/thriller  The End of the Wasp Season. Mina is from Scotland, and the novel is set primarily in Glasgow.  I couldn't put it down.  Am happy to have found her; this was the first of her novels. Now I have her Field of Blood from the library- have two others in process before I start that one ( not even mentioning Hannah Coulter.)

The other two, which are unabridged books on CD, are Martin Cruz Smith's Stalin's Ghost and Stephen King's  11/22/63 .  I have read three other novels by Smith:  Gorky Park, Havana Bay, and Wolves Eat Dogs.His detective is a Soviet, then Russian policeman, and the course of the novels reveals much interesting detail about life in the USSR as it dissolves into its present chaotic state.

I haven't read a Stephen King novel for a while, and listening to this one is revealing how wordy he is -  when I devoured  The Stand and The Shining and The Dead Zone and Firestarter ( my favorites) I did so skimming a lot of the verbiage to get to the meat of the plot.  It's his plots that grabbed me. So I'm not sure about this one yet.

Back to the Garden

Returned from Cape May on the night of the 11th; still basking in the delight of that week!

My birding buddy and sister, Mary Jo Stein, was there, and we went birding together several times.

The highlight of our final day of birding was a view of a Parula warbler --- a male, if full breeding plumage - and these are the most colorful of our mid-atlantic nesters, I think. He was singing his very high-pitched whistle, too.

This photo is from the Cornell Lab website:

Speaking of Cornell... I have continued my addiction to the Red-tail Hawk nestcam live streaming from Cornell.  Now all three young hawks have fledged, but we watchers and lurkers have continued to follow their progress as new flyers .  We have witness some drama with the third one, C-3 ( no nmaes for them until they are banded)  The experts think she is a female.  She was the last to fledge, and took her time about it.  Now she does worrying things like getting trapped in the loading dock of the Cornell Library ( someone caught her and rescued her and let her go) and spending a day and a half perched on a bike rack on the campus.  The chatters and camera folks have been joined by "BOGs"  - birders on the ground - who have been reporting and updating, while thousands of us online wring our hands and get no work done at home. 

You are probably thinking:  Get a life!    But this is a delightful part of our lives right now.

Here is C3  still in the nest:

Here she is, at the loading dock:

Here she is, on the bike railing:

What did that passer-by think?

Lots of anthropomorphizing going on at this chatroom, I can tell you.

Anyway... I have spent some hours back home this week in luscious, cool, dry weather, tackling the weeds in the garden, mulching, and admiring the flowers that are presently blooming there:

Calla Lilies from some past Easter:

Asiatic Lilies, Astilbe, Larkspur, Coreopsis, Swamp Milkweed, and still the Cherry Bells. I love to just stand there and admire them all.

Posting from Cape May

One of my favorite places on earth.  We are having wonderful weather - cool and sunny. Here is the view of the ocean from my third story window - note  the sharp horizon line of the ocean:

I know it's not the best ocean view, but I am glad for whatever I can get!

Update from Cornell:  the first young hawk fledged today at about 11AM!  One of our birding companions ( from the webcam)  Janet Goodrich, was on the scene when #1 took off, and photographed the unfolding drama, which she has posted on her excellent blog , "Discovering Nature."  Here is here photo of #1 just before takeoff:

Cherry Bells Ringing

The photo at the top of the page shows Cherry Bells, which are blooming right now in my garden.

I have a pitcher full of them, and some red roses, on my bureau behind the statue of the Virgin Under the Earth  from Chartres.

This is the thirteenth day of my summer vacation. I wrote more in this blog when I was busy with school work. Where have these days gone - how have I spent them?  Many hours sleeping - a luxuriating sleep.  Other hours gardening; the garden looks much better; still many buckets of mulch to go, though.  Yesterday I baked all day - bread and sticky buns for the upcoming week at Cape May.

I spent many hours reading Brave New World. My university is devising a new Core Curriculum; the Freshman Seminar course I have taught for thirteen years is being totally revamped.  The first text in the new course is Brave New World. I must have read this in high school , but have no memory of reading it.  Reading it this time is a disturbing experience.  I need to spend a whole post talking more about it.

I've been to several poetry readings: last night, at the Carroll County Arts Center in Westminster.
I ate dinner before it with my poet friends Katy, Marty, Gary and his wife, and Michael. Then we all trooped over to hear Laura Shovan and another poet whose name I don't remember  - read.

What else?  I ate dinner with Mary Steiner, a new friend and former student from 35 years ago, and that night I gave a poetry reading in Takoma Park - it was a lot of fun.

This entry sounds more like a calendar report.  I will try to write something more substantive soon.

nest cam update

This was taken three days ago, and the little hawks are much bigger today.  They lumber around the nest like drunken sailors... or like teenagers, whose arms ( wings) and feet have grown out of proportion to their bodies.  This website is a daily delight.

Some nests are empty, though. The university where I teach, Mt.St.Mary's, had graduation yesterday -
photos of my colleagues and some of the students I knew as freshman, who just graduated:

End of semester grading frenzy

Never finished the Poem-a day- project for April... sigh...

For the last week, I've been grading essays, reading journal entries, and now, final exams.
Hope to return to more faithful posting next week.

In the meantime, some photos of the wonderful Perigee Moon this past Saturday:

from Eileen Wise:

 from Russell Joseph Reynolds:

from Maureen Plant

from Inspired Resource

With a Song in My Heart...

I posted this one on Facebook the other day.  It is hilariously true!  My mother used to remark to me
"It's a shame you can't remember your schoolwork the way you can those silly song lyrics!"

I still have those song lyrics in my brain. Here are a few that immediately float to the surface:

1. To know,know, know him is to love,love,love him...
2. Macarthur Park is melting in the dark, all the sweet green icing flowing down...
3. Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen...
4. When your heart's on fire, you must realize, smoke gets in your eyes
5. I'm leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again...
6. So ferry across the Mersey, for this land's the place I love, and here I'll stay...
7. Sunshine came softly through my window today; could have stepped out easy, but she changed my way...
8. Oh yes, I'm the great pretender...
9. We'll sing in the sunshine, we'll laugh every day...
10. Country Roads, take me home to the place I belong...

What do these songs have in them , that they stay in my mind, so easy to retrieve?

There are many many more... songs we sang in Glee Club in grade school and high school... songs I sang in folk music groups... Church songs... Christmas carols... funny songs my mother sang to me before I even went to school... all those songs from my teenage years...

Nest cam update

All three eggs have hatched, and the little ones are doing well -  they are already bigger than they are in this photo.   I continue to watch, fascinated.

Couplets Blog Post Tour continues

(photos of some of the WOM-POs -womens poetry list serv group - at the AWP in 2011.)


This has been a wonderful project all through National Poetry Month! I'm so glad I was part of it.

This link lists the stops on the tour for this week just ending:


 http://www.upperrubberboot.com/couplets-a-multi-author-poetry-blog-tour/

Doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more?

Will you still need me, will you still feed me
when I'm sixty-four?                             ( Beatles song)

John Lennon never made it to sixty-four, but here I am, today. 

How did this happen?

I can still remember five:

Couplets Blog Tour for National Poetry Month

Today, Sue Burke has posted an essay/memoir by me on her blog. Here is the link:
http://mount-oregano.livejournal.com/122462.html

Another nest cam report

Things improved for the red-tails.  Still cold up there ( 34 and blustery) but snow is gone, and baby has survived. Two more to hatch.

Photo from Cornell:

Crazy Weather

Is it really the end of April?   Cold and rainy here, but four inches of snow at Cornell University in Ithaca, where I, and about 6,000 other people, am ( are?) anxiously watching the nest cam of the red-tailed hawks.  Newly hatched eggs, and the female hunkered down over them on the snowy nest.
Thirty-one degrees.

Couplets Blog Tour for National Poetry Month

Carol Berg interviewed me on her blog  for National Poetry Month.  The interview is posted today.

Visit Carol's blog at:

http://carolbergpoetry.blogspot.com/2012/04/coupletstour-carol-berg-hosts-anne.html

Distractions and Procrastination

I should be either writing poems or grading papers.

Instead, I am indulging my addiction to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology live-stream nest cam of the Red-tailed Hawk couple and their soon to hatch eggs:

When I'm not staring at the hawks, I am surfing the web to try to see if Ellen Bryant Voigt is doing any summer poetry workshops, and if she is, can I afford to go to one.  Can't find any.  I am still waiting to hear from the MacDowell Colony, if I got one of their residencies  --- I have just about given up on that. Sigh.

I will try to wrench myself away now, and get down to business.