THERE'S A REASON TO LINGER TODAY IN AMERICA

 Live your life in such a way that the

entire planet doesn't dance in the

street when you lose your job.

               Anonymous

This quote is making the rounds.  People are in a playful mood.  Not everyone of course.  Some Americans today feel like other Americans felt four years ago when the election was over.  But most of us have been trying hard to find our calm this Fall.  Americans have been planning how to safely vote since early October at least.  This week we've been counting on our latest essential workers to get the job done.  And they have.  Poll workers in all 50 states have repetitive-motion aches and pains from opening and tabulating thousands of ballots.  Under stress to be careful and thorough, Republicans and Democrats have sat at tables together and counted votes. They deserve our thanks. 

So often we have taken pride in busyness, in checking things off our lists.  But there's a respite now.  Last night people were celebrating in the streets like children.  Yesterday it seemed no one could sit still.  Dancing, fireworks and speeches of a lifetime, one by our first woman Vice President-elect, the other by a man who promises to tackle the virus and work for unity.  I awoke with a sense of lightness I haven't had in a long time.  

When we were children our lives were simpler.  Maybe because we didn't have smart phones or Fitbits and could hang out in person rather than on Zoom, a technology whose very name is synonymous  with rushing.  Or because the grownups did the worrying.  But for this moment, like children, we want to play.

Friends just texted to stop over for a glass of wine in their garden.  Other friends are coming to our patio tomorrow morning for coffee and cake.   So right now, let's linger in this moment and let our lives be simpler.  Let's enjoy our democracy.  Court challenges or no, everything is working.  There's a reason to linger today in America.  

Local Celebration, Lucky Strike Tower

 

 

 

FINDING SOMETHING NEW IN THE FAMILIAR

 

Fort Macon State Park, Bogue Banks, NC

Finding something new in the familiar is happening more and more these days.  We know why.  The familiar has become our all.  We're staying put and valuing our routines.  This often happens as the days shorten.  But even more with the virus still making many of our decisions. Today I found something new in my familiar.  

We alternate between home in the North Carolina Piedmont and home at the beach, where my parents lived before my mother's final illness.  So much it became home to them that they asked for their ashes to be commingled and scattered in the ocean.  Many of my beach memories include my parents.  I feel them as we cross the causeway onto the island.  So yes, it is a familiar place. 

There's a fort at the eastern end of the island, Fort Macon, built between 1826 and 1834 further inland from the site of an earlier fort subsumed by water when the high tide line advanced.  Everyone goes there.  The Fort for years protected Beaufort Inlet; Blackbeard's pirate ship, Queen Anne's Revenge, lies in just 20 feet of water off the shoreline.  We have lots of pirate re-enactments around here.  Fun for everyone.  

The other day I found a 3.3 mile trail winding through the sand dunes, maritime forest and wetlands in Fort Macon State Park.  I had never seen it before.  Just a narrow path of wood chips on sand.

Most of Bogue Banks is developed so there aren't too many spots where the dunes are high enough to obscure any sight of the ocean.  Here they are.   

We had a wonderful leisurely hike, except when pockets of tiny black salt marsh mosquitoes assaulted us in the wetlands.  We picked up our pace then, slapping our arms and legs and necks as we hurried on. Somehow we had forgotten that even in late October we might need bug spray.  Still it was worth it.  We saw a lot of Painted Lady butterflies, a few herons daintily stepping across the wet grass and a corn snake or two. 

When the trail we were on crossed the Fisherman's Path we could see the ocean and the rock jetty.  (See "Visit North Carolina for the Simple Pleasures," 2/23/19)

These days this was more than enough adventure for me, something new in my familiar. The pleasure seemed out-sized.  I still feel it.  A walk through a local neighborhood, a different part of the city, an adjacent town, a forest trail, or a bike ride somewhere new.  All safely outdoors and socially distanced.  Perfect. 
 

AUTUMN FORAGING

 

 My foraged fall tablescape came out just right.  Just a handful of acorns, autumn leaves and a couple of blooms from red-tipped mums.  Treasures from a brief walk outdoors.  I also found some coral mushrooms for the first time in my woods.  

As you can see from my bare toe-for-scale, it was a moist warm afternoon.  I had to look these mushrooms up.  Clavarioid fungi they're called.  There were quite a few in this cluster, some yellow, some white,  springing up from decaying vegetation.  The part we're looking at is the branched coral-like fruit body.  I watched a YouTube video, "Cooking with Tam" which included how to harvest, but decided to leave mine alone. 

I'm also hoping to better capture the turning leaves this year.  This is a scrawny old dogwood, but still the hints of red drew my attention.  A hanging basket of mums brightens the foreground.  

I'm following up on all the pleasures I wrote about in "Note to Self," 9/26/20.  That post ended with the admonition "Vote. Pray. Create. Love. Believe."  I've done a bit of each today--even voted.  We stood in a socially-distanced outdoor line for 2 1/2 hours to cast our early ballot.  How good that felt!  As you can see, in North Carolina tangled undergrowth encroaches even on polling places.  We vote in Hillsborough, a historic pre-Revolutionary War town located on the Eno River.  Beautiful in the fall.

Don't you love the changes follow the seasons? Funny how many years we can live and never tire of the simplest pleasures of them all.  Sunshine, rain, falling leaves, bright berries, birdsong, breezes . . . .  As I write these words I actually feel them.  How the sun, rain and leaves in autumn rest so gently upon us.  Breezes not too warm, not too cool. By our walkway the late-fall camellias are a breath away from blooming; the ready buds dip impatiently.  Soon, soon ready for a picture.  Ready for my tablescape.

I'm not sure what foraging is a metaphor for.  I know sometimes we forage not just outdoors, but in the attic of our own thoughts.  Gather, collect, manage, craft, build . . . . We can forage anywhere.  

Enjoy the season!

DAYS OF LONGING, VERSE FOR TODAY

 

It was quite chilly today.

It reminded me of my longing for Christmas.

For the coming of God in the humanest form.

Amid presents, greenery, ribbons and love.

Love all around.

Love in the Hallelujahs,

Love in the sweetmeats and drink,

Love in the loneliness, even there.  

Even there where someone worships alone, all alone.

Longing for Christmas, longing for love. 

 N.N.

 

It was quite sunny today. 

It reminded me of my longing for peace.

For the coming of Christ amid sunbeam and shadow, 

straw and the braying of donkey and fool.

Love all around. 

Love in the dust motes, the warmth of a touch.

In the languor that clings to a quite sunny day.

Alone or together we seek it.

Alone or together we find it.

Alone.

Or together.

N.N.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FOR THE SOULS OF THE DEPARTED, TODAY AND TOMORROW

Trinity Church, Copley Sq. Boston

For the 218,746 souls of whatever faith or none who in our land have as of this day lost their lives to this virus let me offer the following: 

Isaiah 3:1-3

But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.  When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.  For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.  

Romans 14:6-8

Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the LORD.  Also those who eat, eat in honor of the LORD, since they give thanks to GOD; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the LORD and give thanks to God.  We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves.  If we live, we live to the LORD, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the LORD'S.

Salat al-Janazah

O GOD, forgive our living and our dead, those who are present among us and those who are absent, our young and our old, our males and our females.  O GOD,  whoever You keep alive, keep him alive in Islam, and whoever You cause to die, cause him to die with faith. . . . O GOD forgive him and have mercy on him. . . . 

May they rest in peace. May the hundreds who will die today rest in peace. May those who stand before their GOD on a day that for many could have been avoided rest in peace. For each of us who will die from this plague, whether by carelessness or of necessity, whether preventable or not preventable, may we find rest eternal and perpetual light. May our memory be a blessing.  In peace let us pray, Nina Naomi.

 

TO GOD ON SEPTEMBER 17, 2020

Thank you God for this soft rain,

For these green trees

And the faraway train.

For this dog curled

And my shortbread and tea, 

For the lover who brought them both to me.

Thank you God for my body and heart

In the Fall of my life that can feel like Spring.

How, I wonder, can this day begin

With such small blessings in this year of fear?

In this hellish year of demise and fear,

In this year that is Godforsaken not at all. 

Nina Naomi 

WEATHER BROWSING, A SIMPLE PLEASURE

Hints of autumn today with a high of only 82°F.  That may not sound like much relief from the heat but in the North Carolina Piedmont it is.  Here the leaves don't change until late October.  They begin to fall in mid-November and the trees aren't bare until January. Late Fall, short Winter, early Spring and long Summer.  September will continue hot with rampant mosquitoes and the mighty chigger.  The idea of lying in the grass to star gaze would be folly.  Chigger welts heal slowly! 

I love my weather app.  Our temperature is always about the same as in Rome.  High there today 86° F.  No coliseum here or motor bike rush hour; no il primo pasta course or il secondo meat or fish course.  No house Montepulciano.  But we do have similar weather.  

London, where I wish I could live one month (or more) out of every twelve, is pretty dreary weather-wise. Mostly wet or less wet.  Sun at around 3 p.m.  Although right now late afternoon it's 64°F with blue skies.  Really lovely for London.  Even with the pandemic Londoners must be enjoying their outdoor cafes.  Somehow the weather seems irrelevant when we're there.  Some places we love rain or shine don't we?  

In Keswick, England, a market town on a tranquil lake called Derwentwater, it's raining and 51°F.  No doubt it feels colder.  We spent one glorious chilly week there in full rain gear tracking down a stone circle from the Neolithic era.  After a long hike we found out we could have taken a tourist bus.  So glad we didn't! I've got exuberant video of sheep clambering on the stones, their bleating outdone only by the relentless wind.  

And it's always fun to check Fairbanks, Alaska.  Right now it is 43°F in Fairbanks.  Not bad at all.  (Post: "Slow Journeying Through Alaska," 9/9/17) When I check the weather in places I've been or lived it brings back memories.  Living in London where our daughter was born; a wonderful visit to here or there; a sabbatical year . . . .  I know we can't travel right now, but I've enjoyed weather browsing for years.  It's not just pandemic-yearning, though there is some of that I'm sure.  

Maybe the pleasure springs from the miracle of nature, the changing seasons and the beauty of the world.  Maybe a small detail like the weather in Yellowstone National Park (Post: "Adventure Therapy," 3/31/17)  sparks the imagination.  Or Bryce Canyon, Utah (Posts: "About Awe," 10/18-20/19) where the temperature swings 40 degrees in a day! 

Bryce Canyon

People everywhere enjoying the sunshine, looking for rain, foraging for food, lighting outdoor fires, bundling against the cold and seeking the world's wonders.  Our commonality.  

It's a good hobby.  A simple pleasure.

                                                                         Nina Naomi