The Gift of a Winter's Day

Up early to enjoy all this day may bring. Michael and Heather and Ben joined us for the weekend at the lake house, along with the pooches, Ellie and Elvis. The morning begins cold, but the breeze has died away so a quick walk with Annie in housecoat and slippers isn't unpleasant. After days and nights that seemed bitter and inhospitable, this day begins as fresh and clear.
Making biscuits for breakfast is a fun reminder of past mornings when Michael was little and our breakfasts were a time for special treats. So, I make "letter biscuits" for each of the "kids." There's Michael's M, the way I made it so many times before. Now I add an H for Heather and add a B for Ben. For Mike, I make one biscuit into a tiny heart shape. Small, silly traditions that warm our hearts as well as our stomachs.
Lolling about is a weekend joy for the kids whose weekdays are spent working. Though we're retired and have mastered lolling at an Olympic gold medal pace, Mike and I enjoy sharing the coziness with company. Sadly, early searches on laptops find the news of an 8.8 magniture earthquake near Concepcion in Chile and warn of the tsunami that threatens coasts across the Pacific rim. The TV coverage of events includes an interview with the Chilean President-elect who refers to his country's "catastrophic" proclivities.
This natural disaster comes too close on the heels of the Haitian earthquake. One wonders how this will impact Haiti's need for assistance. We forget too easily when the immediate crisis is past, especially when another remarkable event takes our attention.
Our midday is spent watching the Kentucky-Tennessee basketball game. I guess my lucky socks are lucky, indeed, as the 19th-rated Volunteers made their home court fans in Knoxville happy with a win over the number 2 Wildcats.
The younger set's afternoon is hiking at Chimney Rock Park while we more sendentary ones meander down to the boathouse to check some recent work there or spend our time blogging. The joy for all of us is the gleam of sunshine reflected from the surface of the lake and also, in my case, from the window sill in our study where I write.
It is a spectacularly ordinary day in our small, safe world. We take moments through it to remember those elsewhere who struggle with snowstorms, earthquakes and tsunamis. May they soon have many days like our day today, remarkable only for its shared warmth and happiness.
"To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy power which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates...” Percy Bysshe Shelley

When Winter Won't Go Away

This photo of Annie is real, but the idea that she would wear this sweater willingly is not. You might notice her body language. If we could apply a bubble to this one, it wouldn't pass the decency test. When clothing is applied to Annie's furry body, she turns into a statue until it's removed. There are rare exceptions, but the rule is no movement wearing clothing.

And who among us wouldn't wish for her great fur coat these wintry days. As the snow flurries occasionally outside our windows, we're at least grateful for today's sunshine. The thermometer hasn't gotten above freezing at midday and the wind is blowing the trees around outside, but at least there is sun where yesterday there was none.

For those of us accustomed to the mild winters of the Southeast, this has been a most unusual winter. We've certainly not suffered the amazing snowfalls of the Midwest and East Coast from Virginia north, but we've had so much more than usual and it has changed our perception of Southern winters. It's not as if it's not happened in our lifetimes, but simply that it is so rare we remain unprepared and occasionally whiny when it goes on this long.

The birds continue coming to our feeders, but perhaps the wisest of them have gone further South this year, maybe to Florida. But even the Suinshine State has had its uncommon experience of cooler temperatures, so much so that the fruit and vegetable crops have been affected. And, of course, it's doubly unfortunate when this happens because the people who make their living from these crops suffer and later the people who buy what's left of their crops pay more. In this economy, any rise in prices is not good for those who can least afford it.

But on this sunny day as the wind sculptures dance in the breeze, the whitecaps on the lake reflect the sun above and the chimes ring out their windy melody, it's hard to miss the beauty of life around us. When winter won't go away, we focus on these things and Spring seems closer than before.

Olympic Highs and Lows from the Sofa Seats

Watching the Winter Olympics coverage from Vancouver has been a joyous respite from our regular pursuits. Since we've had unusually cold weather, bundling up on the sofa to see the gorgeous vistas of Britsh Columbia while listening to the whining about their inauspicious weather (read as too warm, too rainy, too much snow, etc.) has provided an alternative reality.

My favorite blog model, Annie, is pictured here attired more appropriately, perhaps, for the Summer Olympics. Thanks to my sister, Pat, she wears the colorful floatie representing the nation of Estero Island as she prepares to challenge the waters of Lake Lure in her own doggie version of an Olympic swimming event. She's definitely a free-styler and, owing to a lack of competition, regularly wins her events.

But, having paid homage to Annie, let's return to the Winter Olympics. Our recent night's viewings have provided us with one gasp after another. There are the highs which include simple awe as people attempt feats of daring and grace that are so far beyond our cushioned behinds that we can't physically relate or mentally comprehend. Then there are the lows--from women crashing on the downhill slopes and bouncing hundreds of feet like skipping stones, to half pipe daredevils banging their heads and rear ends on the top, the sides and the bottom of their icy tube to speed skaters piling up and crashing into walls to skaters finding creative ways to fall.

As people who rarely follow these events during the four-year intervals between Olympic Games, it's somewhat counter-intuitive to hear announcers tell us that this or that athlete is ranked number one or two in the world, then to watch that champion performer fall again and again. Our abysmal ignorance of a sport's nuances allows us to expect a level of perfection that is clearly not attainable. As we become accustomed to that fact, we cease to be surprised by the crashes and focus again on what the athletes achieve, these people whose obsession with sport is their lifelong focus.

Meanwhile, the announcers and commentators, apparently hired for their ability to provide hype and drama rather than information, add to the disconnect with which we wrestle. We hear much more from them about performance glitches and failures than what it takes to achieve these marvels of man and woman against nature. Perhaps one day I'll understand the difference among the triple lutz, the triple toe toe loop and a triple salchow, but it's not evident as I watch with my untrained eyes. I seem to remember in some distant past Olympics that these things were delineated, but I guess now they think I'll look it up on the Internet and they won't have to provide that perspective.

These Games, perhaps, are the ultimate reality TV. They are clearly more real than the Real Housewives of Mayberry or whichever locale is next in that series of the absurd. The Olympic sweat and pain are real, the pumping fists and tears are spontaneous.

Sadly, these Games began with a heart-stopping and all-too-real moment when a young luger from the former republic of Georgia was fatally injured in a training run. I choose to believe that his life, rather than his death, symbolizes the Olympic spirit in a way that even a non-athlete can appreciate. From all accounts the 21-year-old Nodar Kumaritashvili went to Vancouver without expectation of a medal, but with the passion for his sport, learned from his father, that drives these athletes to attempt things most of us wouldn't try for any amount of money. A teammate reported that Nodar was excited to be there. There is a poignancy in that excitement, a testament to one person's vision of a life worth living that allows us some consolation.

They are not heroes for what they do in the Games, these Olympians. They are not gods. Some, perhaps, are heroes for what they have overcome or endured. One of my favorite parts of the coverage is those backstories.

Last night it was the figure skater representing France who began life as an infant abandoned on the street in Brazil. Adopted by a French family, Florent Amodio began skating at age 4, then overcame a disease that took him off the ice for 18 months at age 12. Now 19, Amodio is the 2010 French national champion and skates with the world's best in his sport. While his story isn't necessarily heroic, it is heart-warming. His performance was charming, even before I heard the story.

So, while some scoff at sports as Christopher Hitchens did in a rather bitter rant in the latest issue of Newsweek magazine, I will continue to watch and gasp and marvel. After all, this crazy ice and snow obsession only comes every 4 years. Perhaps my preparation for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, will be to have the sofa recovered.

Fear and Loathing in the USA

So I'm thinking a lot about fear these days since much of what we see and hear in "the media" is about that of which we should be very, very "afwaid" as Elmer Fudd used to say. I'm putting "the media" in quotes because I disassociate that designation from anything remotely resembling journalism. If there's no standard, no editorial policy, it's not journalism, it's just "the media." Even some major broadcasters and publishers these days have forsaken journalism, thus qualify as part of "the media."

But rather than go off on that tangent, I'll stick to my concern about our national propensity to seek things we fear. We've gone way beyond jumping out from behind a door to scare our friends when we were kids. We've gone past screaming our way through a thrill ride at the amusement park and our love of horror movies. We've got fear on the front page, fear on the daily TV news and extra fear on radio and cable talk shows. No wonder we need drugs to help with our depression and anxiety. It's a small miracle that we get through each day without simply expiring from the fear.

Every discourse seems to devolve into what we must fear. For instance, the President proposed that all our citizens should have health care coverage. How quickly do the nay-sayers jump from scaring our pocketbooks (it will cost too much) to going for all out horror (death panels will kill Grandma)?

Or how about any of a hundred health reports that have raised alarms about the various threats to our well being, then subsequently been reported to be misleading? We do, in fact, live in a time of such an information glut that any study, however small and biased, can make its way into the public eye without benefit of context, causing anxiety and even panic for some.

I'll only briefly mention the heinous use of the WMD scare that got us into a war that has killed thousands, cost billions and resulted in an unknown advantage to peace in the Middle East or anywhere else. Like other Americans, I respect the men and women who wear our uniforms and go into harm's way, but I have grave doubts about those who send them there without demanding proper verification of what passes for intelligence.

Of course,, I realize that none of this is new. History can teach us, if only we'll allow it. We've had fearmongers from the very beginning and a number of women in Salem were the victims of early so-called Christians who used fear to burn them at the stake. And there was Father Charles Coughlin whose radio sermons of the 1920's turned into virulent political and economic attacks in the 1930's, ultimately ending when his apparent anti-Semitism was too much for his Catholic Church superiors. Meanwhile, it's reported that almost a third of Americans tuned in for his vitriol.

Fear has had its color spectrum. There was the "Yellow Peril" during the 1940's that used anger after Pearl Harbor to imprison thousands of Americans of Japanese descent, even as others served to defeat the Axis. During the "Red Scare" of the 1950's, suburban families built bomb shelters (like the one in my cousins' Atlanta basement) and schoolchildren were taught to huddle under their desks to avoid nuclear annihilation. We laugh about the foolishness of that now, but it was an effective tactic to spread fear then.

It is that fear is a well-worn tactic for manipulation that bothers me so much. My angst about this topic today was driven by an article about the Texas Board of Education group whose multi-million clout with textbook publishers allows them to rewrite history according to a narrow point of view. It's my thesis that this is based in fear of anyone "not like us" and is an attempt to disrupt any chance for acceptance of multi-culturalism in favor of that narrow interpretation of life.

So, you might ask, why the photo that accompanies today's rant? It's my whimsical look at multi-culturalism. Our cat, Mittens (now deceased), a teddy bear named Wilbur and our Shih-Tzu, Annie. They are clearly different species, speak different languages (although Wilbur is ever the strong, silent one) and yet, as the photo shows, found harmony. They could occasionally be found snuggled up together, finding safety in mutual warmth, despite their differences. Sure, Mittens and Annie liked to stage mock battles sometimes, but always ended as friends. Wilbur, less demonstrative, was always there for them. They simply don't do fear and their existences are better for it.

One of my favorite quotes of all time is from Franklin Delano Roosevelt--"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." In my view, fear is an emotion to loathe and to resist. I resolve to to speak out loud against fear. Thus, today's blog.

Who Says Dogs Can't Talk

Who says dogs can't talk? On the left you'll see our 13-year-old Shih Tzu, Annie. For most of her life she was a quiet dog with little vocalizing.Over the past year, Annie has become all too vocal, displaying talents that Sarah Bernhardt would envy. The problem we're having is that it's not always easy to interpret her entreaties.

Does the whine that tears at our heartstrings mean she's hungry? Does she want to go outside? Are wolves surrounding the house and planning to attack anyone who opens a door? Is Timmy in the well? When she groans loudly, does she have a stomach ache, headache, hangnail, earwig or broken bone? If she's running toward us, but suddenly looks at her tail and spins in a circle and barks, is it a trick or a testament to some inner psychological turmoil. Are we simply not paying attention as required?

The vet assures us that she's a great shape for her age. Okay, so her hearing seems less acute than it once was and her eyesight isn't perfect due to a small cataract in one eye. Generally though, she's good. She still runs pretty fast when it suits her and manages to leap onto the bench at the end of our bed, then onto the bed itself without assistance. It's just the attempt to talk that's baffling us.

When we're not moved by her poignancy, we're often reduced to laughter. She's pretty cute, anyway, and there's nothing more amusing than watching her emote as she stares into our eyes with such intensity.

It's reminiscent of a child yearning to communicate, but not yet articulate. There is drama, pathos even. There's urgency, followed by periods of apathy. It's apparent that she is frustrated by our inability to understand her tones. Sometimes it's obvious that our incompetence angers her. She turns the plaintive whine to a growl, first gentle, then more threatening.

Mere sounds don't always suffice. When she's really intent on moving us to some action on her behalf, she backs up to us and kicks out at our feet. This, of course, usually just makes us laugh, so hasn't become her most oft-used method of messaging.

With all the ignorance of humans, we speak to her in English, a language far beneath her royal dogness. We ask all the easy questions about hunger and the need for elimination. We do not, of course, ever speak the word "treat" out loud. Even if that's not what she was seeking, it will be what she must have if the magic word is mentioned. That use of English is both allowed and welcomed.

If all else fails, she or we lose interest in this attempt at communication. We return to other activities, once again blithely unaware of the reason for the farce that has been enacted. She returns to her favorite pastime when off stage, sleeping. Fortunately, this takes most of the hours in each day, leaving us free to enjoy human pursuits.

My idea of heaven is that I'll find Annie and the other dogs and cats that have been part of my life and we will share the same language. I fear none of us will care much for reminiscing about the lives lived on this plane, but maybe they'll share a few secrets from this life. Maybe they'll give me the inside scoop on how they could enjoy the awful-smelling food we fed them or why they licked themselves so much.

It will be fun to talk with each other about the adventures we share in that new place or dimension or whatever it is. Perhaps we'll reverse roles and I'll retrieve the ball and jump up in the air to catch the catnip mouse. Maybe they will laugh at my antics as I've laughed at theirs. Maybe they'll tell me how silly I look.

One thing I'm sure about. If they are not there, it won't be heaven for me.

A Walk in the Cold

A day that begins with a walk in the world--breathing cold air as it sneaks up your sleeves trying unsuccessfully to discourage you--is a day that will be good, no matter what happens later. Sharing the walk with a sentient companion, someone whose humor reaches out to make you laugh, whose bright intellect challenges you, makes the walk (and the day) even better.
There is something about walking, hearing the sounds of ducks and geese, or even the less inspiring sounds of trucks and jackhammers, that opens all your senses to this new day, this new opportunity to live and to learn. This morning's walk was colored by a bluebird on a branch empty of leaves, unconcerned that winter has not yet allowed the buds of spring to come forth.
We walk from our tiny town's arcade along the boardwalk, noting and commenting on the mudflats and shallow pools left because the lake level is down for seawall repairs. It's interesting to see the bottom of the bay, usually hidden in several feet of opaque blue water. Among the branches and tree stumps is a lone shoe, a woman's flat stained by the mud, but retaining its feminine curves, its touch of delicate construction meant to embellish a small foot within rather than the twig-strewn dirt surrounding it now.
All those images, those sounds and even the smell of leaves burning along the shoreline where cleanup is going on, all of those collected sensory pleasures will remain with me this day. They have set the mood, not to be dispelled by the gathering clouds and the wintry mix forecast for later. They have prepared me to find both the beauty that is esthetically pleasing and the beauty in that which is dirty or grating or acrid.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, "there are tongues in trees, sermons in stone, diamonds in dirt and good in everything."

[Photo: A filled Lake Lure by Mike Lumpkin, taken on a day not so frosty]