consolationland

Bedtime routines are a real help. It’s a pleasure when I manage to tune out non-essential distractions, tick through a list of evening chores, and settle in early.

Recently it occurred to me that my spiritual practice wasn’t as close or comforting any more, and rest was not as restful. Finally it dawned on me: the kitchen stove light, a small incandescent bulb, burned out several weeks ago. It was the perfect illumination: soft enough for transition to sleep, and a reverent sidelight for the icons and flowers on the fridge. It made the kitchen a nice place to stand and pray in front of the icons and study the Bible as an end to the day.

Well, the overhead fluorescent kitchen lights were much too bright for bedtime or prayer, so I’d taken to lying on the floor outside the bathroom. But that’s not nearly as comfortable for reading, and no way to contemplate icons, so that bedtime devotional time was just not taking place.

Finally while chatting with a group of neighbors I told them my brilliant insight that the difference in devotional zeal was really just an ergonomic lighting issue. Arriving home, I put down the groceries and heard someone knock on the door. It was one of the neighbors. He held out a stove-sized light bulb.

As he and I agreed, Don’t wonder why God doesn’t feel as close any more; just change the darn bulb!

At midnight a police car shot down our main road at breakneck speed. The officer switched on alarms which (according to the teacher at our precinct’s Citizen Academy) indicated a highest-priority distress call; perhaps another police officer in mortal danger. I listened intently, lying on the floor in my blankie roll, voicing prayers for everybody’s safe return.

A few minutes later there was another sound close by, a highly magnified male voice shouting out one word: “FIREARM!”

It is astonishing how much adrenalin and cortisol are ready and available in unlimited quantities, catapulting one from half-sleep to roll halfway across the room and away from the windows. My immediate fear was that this was a police car megaphone, telling the neighbors that we had an active shooter prowling around. (There’s no indication of that, though; today’s precinct feed and city news outlets and 911 incident maps don’t show anything unusual.) Still, while bolting those six steps I grabbed the cell phone, checked the security peephole to scan the hallway, then went diving into the windowless bathroom to get dressed and shod and to wait in the dark for further signals.

After tuning in for a good while to the vibes of our apartment building and the streets outside, I finally shut the bathroom door and turned on the light to calm down with an inspiring book on education (The End of Molasses Classes) by Atlanta school teacher Ron Clark. Having seen videos of Mr. Clark’s teaching style (bursting on to stages, dancing on desks, bungee jumping in the school library) I had to smile at the realization that for one golden midnight moment, I’d been moving just as fast as he does all day.

Back on the floor and blankie-enrolled, attending to the darkness outside, I heard another sound: “Eep!” That’s a favorite familiar night noise, some little spring peeper or bug or whatnot. It’s a tiny pure hopeful cheep, like the triangle at the very back of the symphony orchestra. Night after night our Eeplet is a sweet sound in the city, something tender and true to make silence even more golden. Like the plaintive hesitation notes of killdeer winging through the dark, or the barred owl in the Douglas firs asking “Who cooks for you-all?” it’s a nice sound for falling asleep in our neighborhood.

The Eep-in-the-siren-aftermath calls to mind the day I quit the Audubon Christmas Bird Count. My participation days were numbered anyway, because year after year to my bewilderment the Audubonnaires were really only there to count birds, not to be friendly to other bird watchers. (To me, sloshing through mud on a pre-dawn winter day tallying sparrows is really just a prelude to friendship with kindred souls. I guess this backwards thinking just puts the “rank” in Amateur.)

Anyway. On that fateful New Year’s Day several years ago I was duly up and out the door at 5:50, running through main roads to the residential street entrance of an urban forest trail. The intrepid leader of our large party named our group reunion point up ahead, and assigned me to join three fit yoga-trim senior women in sensible shoes. Off we went.

The women flowed right along over fallen logs and boulders through moss and mud, discussing search strategies among themselves. Clambering and thrashing along with them, I suddenly caught sound of a very distant thread of voice. Deep in the woods, down gulleys and gulches by a running stream, there was a man shrieking at the absolute top of his lungs. He was venting his displeasure with life and the human race. Clearly his New Year’s Eve had done him no good; the same adrenalin and cortisol that catapults sleepy people right across a dark room were impelling him to rave the most explicit profanity at an impossibly rapid rate. For the next ninety minutes, while we steered almost a mile all around him, he did not skip a beat in this tirade of graphic invective. And then, with their comfy homespun little noises the birds themselves, little troupers all, began to stir: nuthatches, flickers, robins, starlings, crowned kinglets Ruby & Golden, Steller’s Jays, on and on. The contrast made a surrealistic acoustic layer cake:

Birds: Rrrrrrrr. Oop oop. Weech! Bah walla. Tick tock.
Man: !@#$%^&*()+! [Sending Colonel Mustard, with the candlestick, to the Conservatory.]
Ladies: “Yes, jot that down: Three more Haberdashered Wooty-Woots.”

That’s when I stepped outside the park and walked home thinking about our culture, where at Christmas every sparrow is counted by civic-minded people, where even its discarded feathers and nests are protected by law. But a human being in obvious need of intervention can slip through the cracks and sit screaming in a public park all night.

And yes, nature is no pre-fall Eden either; there is plenty of danger going on there right under our awareness. But what’s amazing is that the birds and frogs can share space with us, and still have the heart to go right on chirping and beeping. One sunset on the Olmsted Emerald Necklace, distorted decibels boomed across the water and phragmite reeds, from an overly magnified “We Will Rock You” at Fenway Stadium; but somehow, one Goldfinch kept right on trilling from his seat atop a flowering thistle. One rainbowed evening at the Granary Burial Ground (founded in 1660), two boys tuned their boom box to “Let’s Go All the Way” and started a fist fight among fragile historic headstones while a robin unveiled a first spring song right overhead.

In sounds of everyday ruckus and mayhem, it’s a great comfort and uplift to stop and notice and breathe thanks for all the small things that keep on singing.

You can learn things just by taking the garbage out to the garbage cage and saying hello to people that you see walking down the street. Last Sunday some folks passing by said a hearty hello back, speaking in a faint but very pretty accent. It turned out that they speak Polish. Well, so did I, back in college days, so we had a nice chat. “Wait right here,” I asked them. “There’s something for you upstairs.”

Running up to the kitchen, from its place of honor on the fridge I took down an icon of Our Lady.

That icon came from the thrift shop, where it sat on the bargain shelf because someone had defaced the bottom of it with a magic marker. At the time, wondering who would do an irreverent thing like that, I picked up the icon for a closer look. And glory be — the inscription was in Polish: “With Blessings — John Paul II.” Well. If anybody gets to write on an icon, it’s probably the Pope. So for 99 cents I brought the icon home. It’s lived on the fridge for 12 years, while I took it on faith that some day a nice Polish family would appear as the true and rightful owners. And now here they were! So I ran outside and handed the icon over to the family.

What I didn’t know, though the Pope probably did, was that this portrait is the beloved Mother of Mercy “Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn” (Polish, Matka Boża Ostrobramska). The original (see above) hangs at the gate of the city wall of Vilnius, Lithuania — which used to be part of Poland, as my Polish neighbors emphasized to me. Then when the Russians took over Lithuania, the family’s ancestors got away to safer ground in Poland, carrying a replica of the icon with them. That icon brightened and warmed the little room where the family all lived together.

Now the next generation has moved here to town, where some total stranger burst out of the garbage cage and presented them with yet another replica of Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn, with a handwritten blessing from their own newly canonized Polish Pope.

They, being Polish, insisted that the total stranger come inside and join them as their guest for a full course Sunday dinner. Then we all discovered that we attend the same large Catholic church, they in their favorite corner on the far right back, I in my favorite corner on the far left front. Next Sunday we’ll try swapping sides and meeting in the middle.

A humble house chore errand, but a pretty good adventure in the end.

Mrs. Gene Stratton-Porter (1863-1924) was a favorite childhood author who I still re-read today. Nowadays we can take with gentle grains of salt her occasional sallies into soapbox crusading (an anti-immigration phase, lamentation about high heels and jazz dancing, warnings about “the scarlet woman” and the “dress of unearned cloth”). Most of all, she deserves credit as an enterprising woman who hiked considerable distances with camera and notebooks. Her novels are a vehicle for her considerable knowledge of nature photography and nature study passages, and glimpses of everyday housekeeping, natural health advice, traditional holidays, family bonds, and aesthetic tastes; these passages are still brimming with charm.

Over the years, browsing dollar-clearance book carts and garage sales, I’ve pounced on any available copies of her novels. Each lucky find was a scuffed worn fragile little treasure, with intricate woodblock or engraved illustrations and ornate covers. Just seeing them in their place of honor on the bookshelf felt like a moment’s interlude to beautiful settings described a century and more ago.

This week it was time to pack up these old friends and donate them to the Gene Stratton-Porter State Historic Site and house museum in Indiana. After all, I can read them at the library, and even on line. But it felt as though those original editions really belonged at the author’s cabin house, back home in Indiana.

I emailed the Museum to inquire. They emailed back right away. And sure enough — the Museum welcomes donations to sell in their bookstore. Visitors enjoy buying vintage copies, and the proceeds go to maintain the house and wildflower grounds. The books were due for delivery there today. Maybe they’re on display now, in this appealing shop:

https://www.genestratton-porter.com/genes-gift-shop

Here below is my favorite passage from The Harvester, my favorite Stratton-Porter book. It impresses me to think that the author took it on faith that the Youth of Today would recognize all of these wildflowers; maybe in 1911 they really did. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone painted them all in a landscape? Copies of The Harvester traveled with soldiers going to Europe for The Great War; apparently the men even read it aloud to one another in the trenches and field hospitals to keep up their spirits! It has certainly done my spirits good over the years.

The Harvester, Chapter 13, “When the Dream Came True”

…Everywhere flamed foxfire and cardinal flower, thousands of wild tiger lilies lifted gorgeous orange-red trumpets, beside pearl-white turtle head and moon daisies, while all the creek bank was a coral line with the first opening bloom of big pink mallows. Rank jewel flower poured gold from dainty cornucopias and lavender beard-tongue offered honey to a million bumbling bees; water smart- weed spread a glowing pink background, and twining amber dodder topped the marsh in lacy mist with its delicate white bloom. Straight before them a white- sanded road climbed to the bridge and up a gentle hill between the young hedge of small trees and bushes, where again flowers and bright colours rioted and led to the cabin yet invisible. On the right, the hill, crowned with gigantic forest trees, sloped to the lake; midway the building stood, and from it, among scattering trees all the way to the water’s edge, were immense beds of vivid colour. Like a scarf of gold flung across the face of earth waved the misty saffron, and beside the road running down the hill, in a sunny, open space arose tree-like specimens of thrifty magenta pokeberry. 

High around the blue-green surface of the lake waved lacy heads of wild rice, lower cat-tails, bulrushes, and marsh grasses; arrowhead lilies lifted spines of pearly bloom, while yellow water lilies and blue water hyacinths intermingled; here and there grew a pink stretch of water smartweed and the dangling gold of jewel flower. Over the water, bordering the edge, starry faces of white pond lilies floated. Blue flags waved graceful leaves, willows grew in clumps, and vines clambered everywhere….

With wide eyes she stared around her. “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME IT WOULD BE LIKE THIS?” she demanded in awed tones.

On a recent trip, there was a free weekend to visit New York. Here were some of the sights.

Here is the Ashokan Reservoir, one view in very early morning with the mist on the water, and one view an hour later in the sunshine.

Here is the Poets’ Walk park, overlooking the Hudson River.

In the town of Rhinebeck, here is the Dutch Reformed Church built in 1807.

It was fortunate that a resourceful co-worker persuaded me to take a walk today. I resisted the whole idea, thinking of all the chores awaiting and the usual state of Sunday meaning-of-life blues. But she persisted in thinking that this was a good idea, and so off we went to a local playground and ball playing field with a little park nearby. And being a team of two instead of a team of one, we ventured farther into the park than either of us would have alone. We found that the shore had plenty of people and their dogs, out enjoying the very unseasonal balmy sunshine. It was such a privilege, to have a space in easy driving distance and a friendly companion to stroll with. It’s easy to feel alone on weekends, and easy to forget that even an hour outdoors can work wonders for the mood and outlook. I hope to carry this sense of gratitude out into the work week and its tasks and chores, and to remember our Sunday walk.

These gulls lined up along the water, with two boss gulls parking their little selves atop one post each.

These pictures show the rapid shades and changes in the clouds, bringing a rain storm expected later tonight.

At a conference a whole bunch of years ago, a social work colleague invited me to her agency, to sit in on a special support program. The program was for adults in their early twenties. The young adults all had something in common: some professional had classified their learning or interactive styles as falling somewhere on the autism spectrum.

I was eager to meet the members. I wanted to experience their support for one another. I looked forward to small-talk-free conversations about their favorite islands of competence: maybe the Fibonacci ratio in the structure of sunflowers, or Jane’s directory of military armored vehicles, or the pioneering formula for the manufactured snow in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

The counselors held the group in a college auditorium with a stage, in an activity corner stocked with art supplies and brightened with handmade festive winter-themed sparklies & bunting. The lead counselor gave me a warm welcome, and explained the educational objectives of today’s lesson plan. Then she opened the meeting by giving instructions to the group.
First, choose a magazine.
Look through the photos.
Find pictures of People Who Are Happy.
Cut out their pictures. Paste them to construction paper.
Fold them into holiday cards for the parents.

The counselor spoke in a strong raised animated voice. “Can you find the happy people? Remember what we said about happy faces? Look: The corners of my mouth go up, like so. My eyes are wide and bright. This is a HAPPY face.”

I was lost already.
Put pictures of total strangers on a card, and give the card to someone else. Was that to create vicarious happiness in the recipient looking at the card?
Was it a living skill likely to prove useful?
Since the magazines showed professional models paid to smile on cue — were we supposed to sort through all that elation and pick just the real Duchenne smiles described in Psychology Today?

The clients sat with folded hands and lowered eyes.
So did I. I was afraid the counselors were going to call on me to pick out a photograph showing happiness. Those aptitude tests that tell you to look at somebody’s face and then figure out what they feel? Well, I can’t make heads or tails of them. Clearly, a career as a spectrum-support counselor (or as a successful spectrum-support group member, for that matter), was not in my future.

A young man slid away from the table and started pacing a short path along the wall, arms stiff in a protective gesture against his sides.
“Jason,” called a counselor. “Would you like to sit down?”
Jason may have wondered, as did I, how his body language expressed a desire to sit down. He walked to one corner, turned around, and walked back.
“Jason,” said another counselor. “You really really need to sit down.”
Jason paced like clockwork in neat squared corners.
“Jason,” they said. “Wouldn’t you like to join the group, with everybody else?”

Then, I remembered a little boy.
He was a child at a faculty holiday party from years before.
The child had a loud unmodulated voice and a formal speaking style.
Despite some laughter and teasing and his parents’ humorous orders to “Chill OUT already!” the boy was showing real frustration, shouting above the stereo music to order the guests to arrange their party chairs as he advised.
“You’ve got a whole system for these chairs, haven’t you?” I asked him.
“Traffic flow,” he explained. “Front door, coat closet, kitchen, bathroom.”
His idea made grand sense. I knelt down and introduced myself, holding out my hand for a shake.
He looked dismayed by the handshake, but was soon mollified by my questions about his toy cars.
Soon he ran off to his room, and returned an hour later with a large poster he had drawn for me. It showed the location of all his model cars on their proper shelves, in case I wanted to play with them. The poster also showed a picture of his house, a cutaway view with all the rooms (and furniture arranged for traffic flow), so I could always find my way back to visit again. The kid had an x-ray mind; he looked at ordinary objects and saw the giblets and innards and connections that made it all work.

Giblets and innards, and how they all work.
At the craft table, that gave me a new idea.
I slipped away from the group to the far end of the auditorium. I sat in the corner, facing the wall. I picked up the heavy maroon velvet stage curtain and grasped a handful, letting it clink. “Huh. It’s a chain,” I said to myself.
In a flash, Jason was sitting beside me. His fingers followed along next to mine, picking up the heavy curtain hem and shaking it at his ear.
I didn’t look at him. “Heavy metal links,” I whispered. “They loop together and make the chain. Then the chain holds the curtain down.”
Through the velvet his fingers traced the link shapes, testing the connections between them.
“So the chain drags the curtain.” I walked away from him to the side of the stage. “Stage curtains run on a pulley. One side of a rope pulls the chain up, and the other side pulls it down. The rope must be in the curtain.”
Jason leaped on the stage, rummaged through the folds of velvet, seized the rope, and held a long loop behind him.
I took the loop. “One side rope pulls the chain open. One side pulls it closed.”
We each took a handful of rope. It took us a few minutes to take turns and work together; but soon we were able to open and close the curtain.

The counselors came and got us.
I guess that’s just as well; you can’t run a group if people start wandering around tugging on things. Besides, up on the stage Jason was on a roll, making an avid beeline for a control panel with buttons and switches. Who knows how that might have ended. Laser light show? Sound system test? Climate changes in the HVAC?

I hope the parents liked their cards; for a parent, that was actually a really sweet idea. And maybe some day some Mom and Dad will get a model as a gift, made by somebody curious and quick with his hands; a little stage with velvet and chains, handwork in another shape of happiness.