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Jun 11, 2006

Spring has kind of sprung here...today in the Connecticut River Valley the temperature is about 63, breezy and sunny but certainly not too warm...which is FINE with me...I dislike intense sun and humidity!

We have had quite a rainy cool spring...the way I think a spring should be...lately we have been leaping right into the 80's and 90's by May and I really don't like to miss the transition into warm weather.

How I miss my gardens! Apartment life restricts that, you know! But we do have a plethora of house plants and herbs that are all enjoying the milder-then-winter weather out on the balcony for the spring and summer...

Rick and I took a week-long trip over our Memorial Day to Omaha, Nebraska, which is where his father and his father's wife live. His dad is 75 but frail - emphysema, bad ticker, weak legs, etc. but mind as sharp as a tack. His wife is nearly 20 years younger but also not terribly healthy - obese, with bad joints but also a wonderful mind and sweet personality. We did the town and took them to dinner twice. There is actually a good deal to see and do out there in the middle of the prairie, and Omaha fronts the Missouri River so the landscape is actually quite varied.

Rick's heart has been a bit ticky lately too...elevated heart rate started the whole shebang. He did some stress tests and they showed a blockage in the left artery leading out of the heart as well as a "dead spot" at the bottom. The cardiologist sent him off to a cardiovascular surgeon at Hartford Hospital...so the Tuesday after we returned home off we went. The plan was to do an angiogram, locate the blockages with the dye and then do an angioplasty, placing a stent in the blocked artery.

Lo and behold, however, there was no blockage and no "dead spot." NOW we are back to the drawing board to discover why Rick's heart rate is faster than normal and also to figure out why the restricted blood flow in that artery.

My son is off to college in mid-August and I simply can't believe it. I will be glad when he is out there in Iowa and back to the world of academics...I really don't like some of the people he hangs around with out here but try getting a pig-headed 18-year-old to listen to reason about his friends!

My nephew in Iraq was injured when the Humvee he was driving rolled over. We still don't know why it rolled and he was unconscious afterward - but fortunately all of his unit got out safely and the guys were able to get him out safely too, as the diesel was leaking and things sparking. The Army called my brother at 7:30 AM to tell him that Brian was in critical condition. You can imagine how frightened he and my sister-in-law were! A bit later they called again and said he was being airlifted to Germany. After that they called and said he was NOT going to Germany, and then Brian himself called to say he was NOT in bad shape, just a concussion with a resulting headache and a sore back!

What a mess...we are all thankful he is going to be OK. He is now back at his base camp and not being sent out on any missions for a few weeks...This immoral war makes me sick...

Now I think you have ALL the latest news...enjoy the shine!

  Cate
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Posted: Jun 11, 2006 8:33am
Birdsong
May 20, 2006
As spring greens up in the Connecticut River Valley, the avian choir – absent and so missed throughout the winter – is tuning up each morning with a vengeance. Depending on the time one awakes (or stumbles to bed), the sometimes melodious, sometimes raspy voices of our native birds can be heard, heralding the coming day.


Most of my remembered childhood was spent a half mile from the ocean and just up the street from a sprawling salt marsh interspersed with dryish patches and trees. The marsh was home to a veritable zoo of creatures - mice and voles, deer, skunks, possums, rabbits.


Foxes, raccoons, woodchucks. Toads and frogs, turtles and diamondback terrapins. Crickets, praying mantis, spiders, mosquitoes and others from the innumerable insect tribe. Nearer to the meeting of the marsh and sea were crabs and flounder, worms and mollusks.


And the plant life! A stunning mix of phragmites – those tall and graceful reeds who wear their feathered headdresses so proudly – marsh grasses, some growing right out of the water, flowering shrubs and plants such as wild roses, marsh mallow, cattails with their plump and phallic brown heads that some of the more adventurous boys would smoke - we called them  punks - trees and mosses and lichens and who knows what-all. The marsh was a botanical wonderland full of surprises.


But my favorite residents of the marsh were the feathered ones – quail, pheasants released to be hunted that had fortunately escaped the hunter’s bullets and lived to populate the marsh, red-winged blackbirds, grackles and chickadees in the trees, owls large and small, sparrows, bobolinks, meadowlarks, Canada geese, who stayed year-round, sandpipers and egrets on the edges of the grasslands bordering the streams lazily meandering to the sea, and if you were quiet and lucky, you might catch the occasional glimpse of the elusive great blue heron. And of course, whenever there was a storm blowing in off the sea, gulls would wing their graceful way in over the marsh and the houses nearby, screaming out their harsh warning about the approaching rain.


I no longer live near a salt marsh. In fact, through some devious and underhanded wheeling and dealing, a large part of my beloved marsh was eventually drained, filled and covered over by semi-detached residences built to attract and accommodate the hordes of city invaders who, tired of the hot concrete of New York City summers, yearned for what they thought of as “the country” and streamed into little Connecticut in great swarms, willing to pay any price for a smidgen of lawn and a place to plant azaleas as long as their bucolic paradise wasn’t so far away that they couldn’t rush right back into the city Monday through Friday for work.


Today this development would not be allowed to be built. But back in the innocence of the late 60’s and early 70’s, mired in worries about gas prices (hah! - here we are again) and Vietnam, ordinary everyday people in my neighborhood didn’t pay much attention to the environment and the rapacious greed of unprincipled developers who would pave over a cemetery with their entire family lying in it if they thought they could make a buck.


But wait – this is not a diatribe about destroying the environment that protects and nourishes us as well as the other living entities of the earth. This is a paean to the song of spring, the dawn chorus of living jewels who dart from bush to tree to feeder back to bush, pausing here and there to welcome the day with joyous voices.


The songs of the residents of the salt marsh and other birds in the neighborhood that thrilled me throughout my growing up – causing my skin to tingle and my heart to feel that it would burst out of my chest for happiness - are still with me. I never knew what song belonged to what bird until I was much older, but it was these remembered and well-loved sounds that impelled me, decades later, to buy bird books and learn which feathered friend was making what sound. And so I discovered that I loved the soft, burry “kkkronk” of the red wing, the rising and falling notes of the chickadee in mating season, the melodious trill of the meadowlark and the metallic &ldquopkkk” of the titmouse. Avidly I began to watch for birds so I could listen to and later identify their particular greetings.


This morning I awoke to the robust warble of a lone male chickadee searching for a mate. I lay in bed, fully awake but with closed eyes, and heard in my head the myriad songs of the birds of my salt marsh. I marveled that with the passing of time, I still know the individual voices of so many birds that for years enchanted me with their morning greetings. At night, when I hear a soft hoot in the woods next door, I know an owl is on the hunt. Even the grating screech of the blue jay is a welcome intrusion into my day, for I know that as long as we have birds, the earth is not so dead that we still can’t work to save what is left of the marshes and forests, savannahs and veldts, steaming jungles and seashores, plains and tundra and steppes.


I would not wish to inhabit a world without the cacophony of birds to greet the sun and echo in the dark velvet of the night. The silence that would be left behind would be deafening. The rodents and amphibians kept in check by the great night hunters would overrun their habitats. The insects not eaten by swallows and other bug-eaters would overwhelm us. I praise Rachel Carson, who noticed that we were killing off our birds and other creatures by carelessly spraying DDT over our landscape. Her tireless work enlightened a generation and helped stave off a potential environmental disaster of disastrous consequences. Because of her intervention, bluebirds are once again beautifying Connecticut. Indigo buntings live on the edge of the forest across the river. Osprey and bald eagles are not so uncommon residents here still, and wild turkeys wander in my yard pecking up the dried corn I toss out by the bird feeders.


So come, feathered ones large and small, sweet-voiced and screechy. Enrich my life with your beauty and music. Remind me of the golden days when the future loomed bright and beautiful and the worries and anxieties of life were an unknown burden yet to be encountered.


©2006 RC deWinter

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Posted: May 20, 2006 12:09am

 
 
 
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RC deWinter
female, age 62, divorced
Middletown, CT, USA
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