There’s a whole lot going on these days. Civil and political discord, extreme weather, and, well, humans being human. Join us on a heartfelt and heart-filled, circuitous ramble through the fields of Mayhem.
The Loss of Those Girls ...
By JoAnne Young
It’s been a month now since 27 young girls and camp counselors died in an explosion of water through Camp Mystic in Texas. The flooding of the Guadalupe River took many more lives in that tragic July 4 storm, but it is the children -- those girls -- I can’t stop thinking about.
We’ve seen pictures now of many of them, all freckles and ponytails, beaded necklaces and adult and baby teeth shining through 8-year-old smiles. They are the girls who could have someday become scientists or doctors, special education teachers, mothers, maybe heroes. They could have added so much to a needy world.
Scott Simon of NPR in a tribute said this: “We think of the years that should have been ahead of them, filled with laughter, learning, friends, new adventures, fun, frustration, love and heartbreak and love again.”
I also think about the soul deep grief of their parents and grandparents, family and friends left to imagine these darling children being carried away, out of reach, too fast to rescue. Parents who kissed them good-bye just days before and told them not to be nervous, to have fun.
Other children died outside of the camp in that flood, and some children who survived lost their parents. I’m thinking of them, too. And there are the two Nebraska girls who died Tuesday with their father in a horrific explosion at a plant in Fremont, Hayven Danielson, who was 12, and her sister Fayeah, 8.
We know the deep hole they all leave in their families’ lives. What we will never know is what our country and our world will have lost with their absence.
***
A Summer’s Gift
Mary Kay Roth
I’ve never done an accurate job describing the sound
of cicadas.
A crescendo of buzzing voices. A cadence of rhythmic,
high-pitched whines. A symphony of clicks, drones, whirrs, hisses.
But perhaps words don’t really matter,
because for me cicadas are simply the sound of summer.
Once upon a time I listened randomly. Nowadays I head outside each evening, around
dusk, with a cup of tea or a glass of wine.
Listening.
To the bass of a bullfrog, the whoosh of sprinklers,
the splash of kids in a pool, the call of their parents telling them it’s late.
Distant
thunder. The jingle of an ice cream truck. The faraway chords of an outdoor
concert, buzzing lawnmowers, trilling meadowlarks.
And cicadas.
Their famous sound only emanates from the guys, using special structures
called tymbals, located below each side of the front abdomen. The tymbals contain a
series of ribs that buckle one after the other when the cicada flexes its
muscles – and every time a rib buckles, the rib produces a click.
In fact, the legendary insect song has been featured
in literature as early as Homer’s Iliad.
Specifically, the elderly Trojan
counselors are described as fluent orators, sitting on the tower “like cicadas
that chirrup delicately from the boughs of some high tree in a wood.”
I’ve always thought their cry was a little sad, perhaps
foreshadowing the close of summer. According to legend, cicadas are filled with
the souls of poets who cannot keep quiet because they never wrote the poems
they wanted to.
***
The Season for Good Eating
by Marilyn Moore
Mom was a gardener. She planted, nurtured, watered, weeded, harvested, and preserved most of the food we would eat year-round. It was a lot of work. She liked it…I think it was the sheer satisfaction of seeing plants grow, knowing that the harvest would provide for our family. Most of the year, we ate the summer produce that she had canned or frozen. But in the summer….well, as Mom said, “It’s the season for good eating.”
I’m not that gardener. And because of transportation and storage and imports from around the world, we can buy fresh produce in the local supermarket all year long. Still, it’s not the same; that tomato that was grown somewhere, harvested green, packed and refrigerated and shipped to Lincoln, is not the tomato that comes off the plant in your own garden, or your neighbor’s garden, or from the local farmer who is selling at the farmers’ market. So August is a celebration, a season of good eating. On my kitchen counter now, Colorado peaches. Naber’s sweet corn. Tomatoes from the farmer’s market. In the upcoming days, BLT’s. Cherry tomato salad. Peach pie. Peach cobbler. Corn on the cob with nearly every meal. Some new recipes, some from my mom’s recipe box. All of it good, all of it fresh, all of it a reminder that this season of good eating nourishes my physical body and my spiritual body. It’s another tie this urban dweller can make to the soil, the sun, the rain, the seed, upon which all life depends.
***
Exercise?
By Mary Reiman
What moves me? Stretching...literally. Not stretching my mind, stretching my body. Years ago, I didn’t feel the need to work out the kinks early in the morning. Now I am fascinated by those exercise reels where they make everything look so easy. At full speed, they are swinging their arms around the heads and doing crunches touching knees to nose...and all the time they are smiling! That doesn’t happen in my world. However, it is amazing how a two-minute series of stretches, first thing in the morning, can set the tone for the day. Time well spent.***
Finding Pawsitivity & Purrpose as a Petsitter
By Penny Costello
I am a crazy dog lady. I have often joked that my true
purpose in life is to be a human dog bed, but that I need to figure out how to
get paid for it. Apparently, the Universe has been listening and responded. Regular readers of this blog know my story of sustaining a
traumatic brain injury after falling headfirst into a ravine almost 11 years
ago. Before that, my career trajectory was based on very timeline and deadline intensive
pursuits, including event management, television production, and grantwriting. Over
time, it became apparent that the demands of those deadline intensive pursuits
were no longer a good fit. Traumatic brain injuries can wreak havoc with
executive skills like planning, task initiation and completion. Ten years later,
these are still impacts that I grapple with. I’ve made progress over the years,
and I’ve also learned that sometimes it’s better to not set myself or esteemed
co-workers up for that kind of stress
and exasperation. Instead, I chose to resign from the grantwriting job, and
forge new pathways.
So many sweet, snuggly pups give me joy and friendship. And
the opportunity to provide peace of mind and comfort to their humans, knowing
their fur babies are safe and loved is incredibly gratifying. My circle of
human friends has grown, and housesitting for people and their pets provides a
nice change of scene from time to time.
Sometimes the bumpy roads and unexpected turns can lead to
wondrous places. I’ll continue to look forward to whatever is around the next
turn.
***
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