The Horse's Mouth
Bumble bees
Traveling medicine Hogs
Jitterbug parents
Peacocks on a farm
Chicks
Dress-ed
Halsteads
Canoe Racing
Geese in the bathroom
Blueberry Picking
TED
The Doors of Brookville
When the feather drops...
I was thinking about the story of Dumbo this morning. Dumbo was the circus elephant with enormous ears that everyone made fun of until the day when his fate changed. Dumbo was on that day befriended by a mouse who gave him a magic feather. With this magic feather Dumbo could fly! Soon he was thrilling the crowds, even those who had formerly been quite merciless in teasing him. Suddenly his detractors and all folks were wildly clapping and cheering him. Dumbo was filled with self-confidence and enjoying what he could do –until he dropped the feather. Instantly, Dumbo plummeted toward the ground in imminent crash when the mouse riding with him shouted, “Dumbo! It’s not the feather –it’s you! You know how to fly!” When Dumbo HEARD that, could really hear that message, he was able to soar again this time knowing it was through his own abilities. Sometimes I think we do have to experience dropping “the magic feather” to see what abilities innately exist within us. But here’s to the mouse, who for each of us, will shout out that we already know how to fly.
The Progress of Waste
"The wastebasket is a writer's best friend."
~ Isaac Bashevis Singer
Strawberry Pie
I made a strawberry pie this weekend. It has been miraculous in that there always seems to be another piece. I used Hazel’s pie pan that I bought at her auction. She was downsizing her belongings prior to moving into an assisted facility. Hazel would smile at both my “miraculous” conclusion and all the hospitality one pie has extended. Thanks Hazel!
Hazel and Hershel
Hazel and Hershel were my next door neighbors. Our houses were separated by an alley between us and our lives by over 50 years, but blacktop and years were the only separations. They were not only great folk but wonderful neighbors. Hershel would kindly loan me tools to work on my car. He would take time to teach me about adjusting a carburetor or changing a transmission switch plate. I had this 1969 Karman Ghia in need of his expertise which he gladly shared. Hazel always seemed to have Plenty Of: plenty of time, plenty of meatloaf, plenty of perennials to share, plenty of stories to tell, plenty of what I needed. Evenings I would often sit beside Hershel on his porch swing talking. One summer night he talked about the D-Day invasion and his job as an Army ambulance driver. I felt like I was on sacred ground hearing his story. It wasn’t many nights later, we talked on his porch for the last time. I tried to remember what we talked about that last time --when I saw the ambulance and the police arrive in the too early morning hours and Hazel came outside telling me he died. I still cannot remember that conversation just the image of him smiling at me and saying goodnight.
I have new neighbors now. I am on my second batch in Hershel and Hazel’s house. This week I was telling the new occupant, Loretta, about Hershel. I shared that one June afternoon Hershel let me sit in his “Tin Lizzy” a Ford model T. Unknowingly, I stepped on the ignition pedal and the car started right up and was heading right on out of Hershell’s garage with me absolutely perplexed. “Gal! Gal” he cried out. “Get your foot off the starter!” he shouted. “Hershell, what starter?” I yelled back. I had my feet tucked back under the seat away from any ‘normal’ pedals. I learned that day that Hershel, despite using a cane, could move very quickly and two that a Model T has a starter pedal tucked under the driver’s seat.
Derby Day
My cousins, the Brown's, live in Louisville, Kentucky. And how could I not give a shout out for Big Brown (even though he is not a Yellow Horse) running today?
Believe
Manna
Above is a picture by the French painter Poussin. I came across it today when I was taking a virtual tour of the Louvre. The piece is entitled “Gathering Manna.” The visual tells the story of the Israelites who waited daily for their Manna, this miraculous, mystical sustaining food stuff. I am no Old Testament scholar, hardly, but I remember the story from Sunday school in my long ago. The Israelites ate manna for the 40 years of being in the desert on the way to the Promised Land. When I saw Poussin’s painting, it occurred to me that I am complaining about the “manna” in my life; I am sustained, but it’s not by what I want to be sustained by or how. Grumble. Forty years is a long wandering time, I so get that.
Morrell
Headline: WOODLAND TRAIL YIELDS MORRELL
This morning I joined the ranks of Morrell finders. I was walking along the Woodland Trail with my dogs when I saw this sponge mushroom right at my feet. One more Nike footfall and splat, I’d have flattened it. I was so excited, perhaps not so much for the mushroom itself but rather the delight of the unexpected; a little windfall’s sudden appearance.
When you wipe the eggshell...
While cooking together in a friend’s kitchen:
B: “I noticed the other day, that my daughter J. wipes the inside of a cracked eggshell. She runs her finger around it wiping all the white of the egg out of the shell.”
Me: “Oh?”
B: “Yeah. My mother does the same thing and I realized I do that too.”
Me: “Really?”
B: “So I asked my mother why she does that.”
Me: “What did she say?”
B: “She said she did it because money was so tight with so many mouths to feed that the food had to stretch as far as possible. Couldn’t afford to waste any part of the egg. Had to make sure they used every bit.”
Me: “That’s something.”
B: “Stuff you learn to do in hard times.”
Me: “Interesting, it’s not hard times now, but that habit remains?”
B: “Yeah, all the women in my family still do that to this very day. The Depression really effected people in some lasting ways.”
Me: “For sure.”
Hands touch
I was thinking about hands. My grandmother’s hands always smelled like whatever she had been cooking or else of garden soil. My mother has long, tapering fingers that were today covered with the purple paint and glitter from her preschool classroom. Once I shook the hand of an Amish man, a well digger, and in every callous I could feel his laboring as he pick-axed and shoveled through soil to find water. My friend Carole, after a challenging cross-country relocation, was unexpectedly touched on her hands by a neighboring congregant. It was during the Our Father and she was moved to tears right there in a pew. Once during heartbreak, a McDonald’s clerk accidentally held onto my hand to keep change from slipping and I felt that rush to tears too. Though it would sound more sophisticated or dear, I think, to say I had such a reaction during the Our Father rather than during the exchange of a fast-food breakfast burrito. Today, an old man I know who has struggled to overcome serious cardiac injury and depression, greeted me in the post office. He held my hand for a moment and I felt such a connectedness to him. Because I know how hard he worked to get where he is now, successfully living with cardiac disease and finding ways to enjoy his life-- including flying planes with the accompaniment of another licensed pilot! What stories are in our hands.
Lilac and Dash
Redbud mornings
When the Mississippi Ran Backwards
5.4 Earthquake
Flannery O'Connor
Having published my thesis work on Flannery O'Connor, I thought how nice it would be to have a framed autograph by her. What would she have to say if she knew that an envelope with just “F. O’Connor” is selling for $6,000?
A new dresser...
My mother and I searched and scoured for an antique dresser and finally found the perfect one. It is walnut and has carved leaves for handles.
7,000 BC
I had the opportunity today to meet with a PhD Archeologist from Iowa who examined a stone work piece I possess. When I was a little girl, I found it in the upturned soil recently tilled for planting our garden. The archeologist was delightful and explained about the culture from 7,000 BC and told me about my piece, it was a knife. Fascinating to feel the history behind my own history. There is the personal history of my little redheaded self tagging along after my dad and finding the stone knife in 1969; there is the history of the farm as it belongs to my family, and then there is the history behind all of that, one not constricted and tidied by titles, deeds, and beyond the reach of personal or deliberate memories. A history that existed nine thousand years ago and left a tangible remnant I can fit in the palm of my hand to tell some story to me – and that is a powerful notion to think on.
Yellow Horse & Associates
P.O. Box 32 - Brookville, Indiana 47012
(765) 647-0937