Poetry

April is National Poetry Month, and, well, I'm an English major, so, yes, I do like poetry.  My first exposure to poetry was in children's books and from my mother reciting to her children the very many poems she had memorized as a girl.

I also still have my first Rhame High School poetry textbook, published in 1971.

It is marked as my older brother's book as he used it first and it was passed down to me.  I suppose the English class in which it was my textbook was about 1973 or so.   Even today I can thumb through the book and fondly remember being moved by the poems.  We also had a very good English teacher who was passionate about her subject.

Moreover, I spent decades in friendships with poets and even once dated a published poet, who was a very interesting man.

We have many books of poetry on our Red Oak House library bookshelves among them W.H. Auden, Walt Whitman, and Mary Oliver. We continue to buy poetry books.  We always try to stop and listen when Garrison Keillor comes on public radio on the Writer's Almanac with his sonorous voice.

It is difficult for me to choose just one poem to highlight from this old textbook of mine or to pick a favorite, but, because this is Holy Week, here is my choice, by William Butler Yeats, one that has stayed in my mind all of these years, reinforced by study of poetry in my undergraduate work and my interest in birds.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those word out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethelehem to be born?

Gratitude

In deepening my practice of mindfulness, I am focusing my thoughts on gratitude.  Yet today my thoughts also stray to Syria.  There, in a country so far away from my home, peaceful people have been engulfed for years in a brutal civil war.

Here, in gratitude, I wake up to the peaceful spring sunshine and read my morning paper.  I turn on my computer and chat on Facebook, read websites, and write this blog.  I wash my windows and put up the screens.  I send my husband off to fish on the Missouri River.  I get in my car and quietly drive to the nearby grocery store for supplies. I emptied the dishwasher of clean dishes and my washing machine & dryer are cleaning my clothes as I write this. I will sit in the sunshine and read quietly later today.  I put a letter on my postbox to my sister that the US Postal Service will come pick up and deliver to her. I live in a safe neighborhood in a snug house and probably twenty cars a day, at most, drive by on my street.  We have a beautiful yard in which we grow much of our food. Tomorrow we will drive to Pheasant Haven Lodge to gather with good friends for the Badlands Conservation Alliance board retreat.  Tuesday I will pack a suitcase and my husband will take me to the airport where I will simply show my driver's license to board a plane to fly to Tucson to spend a week with treasured lifelong friends.

I am sorrowful for the people of Syria, and outraged that more bombs are raining down on a part of the world where the horror is, to me, unimaginable.

My blessings are abundant.  I am also grateful that my father, my husband, my brothers, my niece and nephews, and so many others made great sacrifices in their lives so I could live in this level of comfort, security, and serenity.

"From the backstabbing co-worker to the meddling sister-in-law, you are in charge of how you react to the people and events in your life. You can either give negativity power over your life or you can choose happiness instead. Take control and choose to focus on what is important in your life. Those who cannot live fully often become destroyers of life." Anais Nin

I am grateful for the color yellow.

This afternoon I will pray for the people of Syria, for the world.

I write in resistance to armed conflict as a solution to problems.   All I have is my writing.  This afternoon I will enjoy the sunshine on my back patio and watch the migrating sandhill cranes fly over the northern Missouri River valley and be grateful.

Raking Red Oak leaves

I've spent the morning raking the leaves under the Red Oak tree.  Last winter came very early and hard to North Dakota, so I didn't get most of the leaves raked up in the autumn.   At some point I had a very pleasant interlude when my nice neighbor Myrna came across the street to loan me a book that she knew would be of interest to me.

This time of year the front yard doesn't look very attractive but everything will start growing now.  A gardener must balance between taking each day as it comes and planning ahead for work to be done.

It is very restorative to spend the morning out in the warm sunshine after such a long winter. Pruning is also finished.  

Our trip the other day to Menards for supplies yielded a bonus.  We splurged on a new patio umbrella to replace the old, rotting one.  We went big as the back patio is where we spend so much of our time and it is on the sunny and hot side of the house.  There will be many hours of enjoyment in this place.

Next up will be dividing and moving perennials and working on the long task list I prepared last fall.

Garlic crop has emerged at Red Oak House

Now that the enormous quantities of snow have melted, the garlic crop at Red Oak House has begun to emerge from under the thick layer of mulch placed in last fall.  This morning I raked off the mulch from the garlic and the strawberry patch.  Jim has gone to the dump with the winter's worth of fallen branches and the results of spring pruning.  Now a light rain is fallen so it is time to drive over to our local Menards and purchase some spring gardening supplies.

We two are really gardening fools here, both having sprung from a long line of gardeners.  We try to grow as much of our food as possible.  With the remaining space, I grow perennials.  Because of this, our patch of grass is a tiny portion of our large lot (I also dislike mowing grass).  Next up is raking the front yard.

Korea

Right now, Korea is on top of mind.

This segment from last night's NBC Nightly News is but one example of how North Korea is dominating the news cycle.  US Military in South Korea

My father fought in the Korea Conflict in the 50s.  He tells harrowing stories of the unrelenting, bone-chilling cold weather they endured, and one time he was driving a troop transport truck and found himself behind the North Korean lines, surrounded by Chinese troops.  Somehow, he and his buddies managed to get back to safety, and he went home to marry my mother and raise a family.  No doubt his low opinion of our love of winter camping is formed by his real-life experience of surviving in a pup tent in the Korean snows.

In the late sixties, when we were stationed at Fort Bliss, TX, he was sent back to duty in South Korea.  To comfort their children, my parents told us that Daddy would be sending each of us a special birthday present by mail from Korea.  My older brother and sister have birthdays in November and December, and their presents arrived.  Suddenly the next spring, we stopped hearing anything from my father, and my younger brother and I, with spring birthdays, did not receive a present.  My mother was frantic for news of him and so she contacted the Red Cross.  Eventually, they informed her that my father had been seriously hurt in an accident when a chain had broken while they were moving a missile, and he was in the military hospital (why the US Army had not informed his wife is still a mystery). After some time had passed, he was transferred to the Fort Bliss hospital, where he convelesced.

The other day I asked my father if he was concerned about the news coming from Korea.  He was noncommital, but I find he is, like so many elderly, growing more taciturn and silent as he ages.  No doubt he never dreamed he would see such news in his lifetime.   We are witnessing troubling times.

Musings on Ballet

A pleasant Sunday afternoon was spent here in rivertown attending a Birds and Ballet program by the Missouri Valley Chamber Orchestra and Northern Plains Ballet.  My housemate grumbled a wee bit when we got there.  "You didn't tell me that there would be ballet."  Guess he didn't read the announcement in the Bismarck Tribune as closely as I did. Oh well.

It was a charming program and we got to watch Claudia Purdon (daughter of our friends Carmen Miller and Tim Purdon) dance as The Broom in a performance of The Kitchen Review (by Bohuslav Martinu).

It got me to thinking about my days studying ballet in El Paso, TX (see photo below, I was about eight).

After school at Terrace Hills Elementary, I would walk to the ballet studio.  Eventually, I achieved the elevation to "pointe".  I still have my pointe slippers in my mementos box.  All of the costumes my parents invested in are long gone so far as I know.

Ballet lessons ended when my father retired from the United States Army and we moved "home" to the Slope County, ND farm & ranch in June of 1970.  Summers on the ranch are busy times and, other than the neighbor children, I had not yet had a chance to meet my new peers at the Rhame school when the word came down that there would be a USO Show at the Legion Hall in Rhame.  My mother and my Aunt Junette Henke thought it would be a terrific idea for me to dance a ballet number for the Show.  Innocent I did as I was told.  I guess I was nervous backstage, but nothing prepared me for the reaction of the boys (soon to be my classmates) sitting on the floor in the front row, who howled with laughter when I danced out in my costume and ballet slippers.  I think it would be fair to guess that they'd never seen anything like it, and, well, boys will be boys.   Probably that didn't get me off to a terrific start at Rhame Elementary School that fall.  Oh well.  I guess that's why they say "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger".   Certainly, ballet gave me better posture.

As I raised my daughters in Dickinson, I made sure that Chelsea would be in ballet, and she was blessed to study under the inimitable Susan Robbins at Susan's Academy of Dance.  I spent many hours brushing her hair into the perfect bun and sitting with Rachel in the car in the parking lot during lessons.  You don't get a Perfect Attendance medal as shown here without some parental sacrifices.

I'm glad that Chelsea had that experience. She has all of the photos that were taken from those years, but here is a snapshot of one of her portraits.  Love the tiara.

Nowadays my local YMCA offers a class called "Barre Fitness" which I thoroughly enjoy.  I channel my inner ballerina.  Don't let the word "barre" scare you off if you are considering such a class.  In no way does it require ballet experience.  It is, however, a very punishing workout. When I'm lifting the hand weights over and over and over, I motivate myself to push through the pain by telling myself I'm working on my Michelle Obama arms.  Works like a charm!

Attending "Who Decides What's Sacred" a program by Clay Jenkinson

This morning I attended a talk at the Bismarck Unitarian Universalist Church, as a part of their Sunday worship.  I have many friends who are members there and it was wonderful to catch up with them, including Dina Butcher, Vinod and Aruna Seth, Dean and Pat Conrad, and the inimitable C.J.

The title of Clay's talk was "Who Decides What's Sacred?" and he challenged us in a very vigorous and thoughtful manner to consider the DAPL crisis in the context of history, comparing what happened in North Dakota this summer to what happened in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.   He also challenged us to a better understanding of Native American sovereignty.  In my opinion, talks such as Clay's make North Dakota a better and more compassionate place to live here on the northern Great Plains.  You can check out more of his work at his website Clay Jenkinson