The Top of the Swing

photog Current Events, OCF, photog's Corner

Tomorrow is the unofficial end of summer.  My family will gather for one last barbecue and the kids will swim in the pool one last time.  Hot dogs and burgers will be cooked on the grill and everyone will talk about what’s coming up in the fall.  We’ll throw around a baseball and swat mosquitoes.  Good stuff.

But the forecast is recording an oddity.  At least it’s odd for this year.  We have a seven-day forecast where the chance of rain is zero.  So now that it’s September and the kids have to retreat to the schoolroom it’s going to be real summer weather with highs in the nineties, something we rarely saw at all in July and August.  Ah, the weather gods!

Well, it’s very ungracious for the kids but a late blast of heat will be welcomed by me.  It won’t revive my vegetable garden or provide new life to the flowering plants but it will provide a backdrop to enjoy the transition to autumn.  And it will give me a chance to do some of the repairs and the preparation for winter.  I can collect up all the yard and lawn equipment and store it away more carefully than I usually do and fix that gate that’s been hanging crooked for a couple of years.  And this year I’ll bed down some of the more sensitive shrubs so they don’t get frost-burned if the snow cover fails again.

So, the late heat wills serve a purpose.  But more than that it will give me a chance to reflect on 2023.  Most people do their thinking in the winter.  The long evenings and the retreat from the outside are conducive to reflection.  But I like late summer.  I like to walk around after the kids are back in school and think about how the world is shifting.  I like to feel the shift in the cycle.  The days are already shorter but the heat of summer is still there and the growth is about to stall.  It’s like we’re at the top of some kind of pendulum swing.  The forward momentum has died and for just a second, we’re suspended in free fall, just hanging there.  In the next moment gravity will pull us down, but just for that moment we can imagine the whole of creation at perfect equilibrium and with no future or past to consider.  The Garden of Eden before the Fall.

And that’s the payoff of the year for me.  If I can have those few golden days at the end, I’m reconciled to the reality of a New England winter.  After all we’ll have Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas to break up the dreariness and I’ll be busy with work and snow removal and chores and I should be busy with writing so the time will pass.  And Camera Girl will have her new puppy to keep her busy.  So, the world will take care of itself.

But for just a short time every year I try to shake loose from the day-to-day thoughts and just try to feel the Earth turning under my feet, try to hear the cicadas running out of sap and watch the mechanical dragonflies winding down to a stop.  At play in the fields of the Lord for at least one more year.

 

Fifty Years in the Blink of an Eye

photog Current Events ,

Fifty years ago today J.R.R. Tolkien died.  Here’s a link to the article that doesn’t have a paywall around it (to hell with the Murdochs).

A very old friend of mine sent this to me.  Tolkien’s creation of Middle Earth has turned out to be a reflection of the story of western civilization.  Because at its root it directs us to observe the choice between the sacredness of normal human life; existence under the biblical precepts; under God, as one choice.  And the other choice is nihilism and the lust for power and control; the collectivist model; life under the god-emperor.

Of course in our real world we’re not doing as well as Frodo and company.  Saruman and the orcs are firmly in control of what’s left of western civilization.  I suppose you could say it’s not over yet but to analogize our situation in tolkienian terms, Sauron’s wearing the one ring, Minas Tirith, Rivendell, Lothlorien and Edoras have been burned to the ground, the heads of all nine members of the fellowship of the ring are displayed on spikes over the gate of the Barad-dûr and the last hope for the West depends on the work ethic and attention to detail of Tom Bombadil.

In the essay the author seizes on the religious basis of Tolkien’s creation.  And that is something that many people today miss or ignore.  Middle Earth is a reflection of the Christian medieval model of the universe with Sauron and his minions as the fallen angels and Gandalf as an archangel sent to stave off the end of the world.  But consciously or not, Tolkien was reflecting the crisis of faith in the West.  He had fought in the trenches of the Great War and he saw that his civilization was committing suicide.  And he longed for a time before the machines had overpowered us.  Things of course have only gotten worse since his time.  And the analogies have only become more apt in our time.

But Tolkien has provided a beautiful tale that can inspire and cheer our hearts when we have the time to read it (or now watch it on the screen).  Fifty years!  Where did the time go?

Meet the Breeder

photog Current Events, OCF, photog's Corner

I am a profoundly lazy man.  Disrupting my routine for onerous activities is highly disagreeable to me.  But Camera Girl possesses super powers that no one else in the world has.  At the utterance of a word, I will move heaven and Earth to keep her happy.  So as promised today I crossed beyond the reasonable boundaries of time and space so that she could meet with the breeder of her new puppy.  And there was much joy and rejoicing for Camera Girl and for me, the wailing and gnashing of teeth, because I know what lies before me.  But as a veteran husband in good standing, I know that a happy wife makes for a happy life.  Well, at least if the wife is a good one.

But I fully realize that this new addition to the household will wreak havoc with my peace of mind.  It’s bound to do many things that will irk me.  It will chew and destroy many of my possessions.  It will inevitably decide that my feet are the chew toys that it will choose to embed its pin sharp baby teeth in.  And without a doubt it will pee on anything I leave around within its sphere of control.  This will not be easy.  But it must be done.  So off we went to the breeder’s.

Now all dog breeders are crazy people.  This is indisputable fact.  But the level and type of insanity varies greatly within the group.  And the breeder we met with today was a very benign case and also a very nice woman to boot.  She had kids and grandkids and even sounded like a conservative based on her statements about crime and punishment that came out incidentally while we conversed.  I guess whenever I speak to someone some of my preferred topics bleed into the conversation unintentionally.  But hearing it did make the conversation more pleasant.

And when we met the little whelp, it would have taken a heart of stone not to smile at the sight of this floppy eared furball cradled on Camera Girl’s lap while she petted and crooned at the diminutive canine.  She smiled and carried on with the breeder about all their opinions about this type of dog and all the qualities real and imaginary that they imbued them with.  She was ecstatic.

Now this is directly linked to our granddaughter’s entry into kindergarten yesterday.  Camera Girl has been in a period of mourning over the loss of her time with this little girl.  Her maternal instinct was crying out for something to mother.  Well, in my book a puppy isn’t a child.  But it is a surrogate for one.  It is small, helpless and needs mothering so if this creature can transition her through the maturing of her grandchildren from babies to school children, then so be it.  I’m on board.

And it’s definitely better than the Belgian Giant rabbit that she was earlier proposing.  That would have seen me trundling all winter out in the snow to feed, clean and water said rabbit.  And when all is said and done a dog is a hundred times better than a rabbit.  And a Belgian one at that!

So, I spent all of today travelling back and forth to wilds of northern New England on this quest and a return journey will be necessary in the next week or so to pick up the little refugee not to mention the thousands of dollars needed to purchase, medicate, vaccinate and equip it for life at the Compound.

But it’s short money.  The good will I’ve already purchased is priceless.  Suddenly I’m the conquering hero.  I’ve made all her dreams come true.  Of course, it won’t last forever but for at least the next year she’s got a project that will energize and satisfy her feminine instincts.

And I won’t have to deal with some stupid Belgian rabbit.  Take that Brussels!