"In numbers warmly pure and sweetly strong" (--Billy Collins)

There are just way too many numbers we have to keep track of in our lives:


Twelve months in a year;   
sixteen oz. in a lb; 
seven notes in a diatonic scale; 
one "X" in a game of Scrabble; 
eight slices in a pizza; 
le 6' ieme arrondissement;
$2.69/gallon of gas; 
four Dove bars in a box; 
channel 23 for HBO; 
2 minutes and 30 seconds to reheat a dish in the microwave;
six degrees of separation;
Mozart's Clarinet concerto in A Major, K 622...




"...and a partridge in a pear tree."


(please excuse the awful photo on the road as usual)

"Too much pepper on my paprikash"*

Well, it's official:
This is the last slice of holiday pecan pie. 


God knows we've had enough.  We had homemade pecan pie, homemade apple pie, pumpkin muffins, chocolate covered dried fruits, and finally, with the leftover turkey dinner we ate tonight, we broke down and picked up one of those Edwards pecan pies from the frozen section at the grocery store. 


And it was just fine.

I spent a pleasant day today digging and planting tulip bulbs with pansies on top of them in beds,  so we'll have lots of color through the cold winter months here in NC.  It's become an annual ritual for me at Thanksgiving time, since I don't get time all fall to accomplish this, and it always feels so good to see those pops of color out there.  

 I'm sore all over now, but I know come spring, when those tulips rear their heads, I'll be so happy I did that.  I leave on Monday for Massachusetts, for my final trip of the fall.  I'm hoping for good weather, but it's the last trip, so surely I can handle whatever comes my way, oui? 


Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. 

"I would be proud to partake of your peeee-can piiiiiiiie..."



*(from "When Harry Met Sally)

"Rest and be thankful." (--William Wordsworth)

This year, I think, more than ever before, I realize just how very fortunate I am...

A Very Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

"There is more to life than increasing its speed" (--Gandhi)

It's been soooo nice to have a few days at home this week.  I was originally expected to be still traveling this week, and heading to Texas.  My trip wound up being canceled, (first time that's ever happened!) and I decided to take a week to just be home, with my sister's surgery and Joe's daughter visiting here in North Carolina, too.   In all the years I've traveled for Duke, I've never had this happen.  I don't ever get a real break in travel all fall, so this is a huge treat!

Home can do the heart a world of good.   Tonight, (Friday,) we're all going to see the Norman Rockwell exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art.  It should be a calm, relaxing evening, and I am really anticipating it with pleasure. 

Here's wishing everyone a weekend full of joy! 

"Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop."  (--Ovid)

"We acquire the strength we have overcome" (--Ralph Waldo Emerson)

I'm happy to say that my sister Claudia is out of surgery and home again.  (Isn't it incredible that after a major surgery you can head home overnight?)  

The bluebirds of happiness are ecstatic at our place today. 

I thank everyone for being so kind, and for letting me vent about Claudia's  mastectomy.  It's an enormous relief to be able to say that this surgery is at least behind her now.    She can cross off lumpectomy, chemo, and now mastectomy from the big list of difficult things.  

She said she feels like she was hit by a Mack truck, but she said if it doesn't get worse, she can deal with it.   

I know a lot still lies ahead: she has opted to have reconstructive surgery, and so she's not out of the woods yet, but she's one step closer towards achieving "the new normal" for her. 

It never ceases to amaze me how the human body is at once fragile and yet fiercely

resilient.   

Thanks for all the kind words of support for her, all you wonderful people in the blogosphere! 

"If there is no struggle, there can be no progress."  (--Frederick Douglass)

(I'm thinking Claudia should feel a lot of progress, then!)

"Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will." (--Mahatma Gandhi)

Monday morning, my sister Claudia is having a double mastectomy.  I'm in awe of her and how strong she continues to be.    She will be in my constant thoughts, and I'll feel so much better when this is behind her.

She's kept a journal on Caringbridge for months now, as she went through an initial diagnosis, a lumpectomy, and months of chemo, and she's documented her feelings and experiences through all of this, with all the humor and panic and love that one would expect. 

If you're interested in seeing what she will be saying during this current period, here's a link to her new blog documenting her procedures with tips on surviving cancer:

http://claudiaspost.blogspot.com/

If you are interested in reading any of her past Caringbridge posts,  type "claudiaschmidt" in the box that says "Visit a website" on this link:

http://www.caringbridge.org/

Claudia, I love you.

"Sometimes, people think it's holding on that makes one strong--sometimes, it's letting go."  (--Unknown)

"Bring me the sunset in a cup" (--Emily Dickinson)

Today, I am in Amherst, Massachusetts.
After I finished up at the college, I thought, "Well, I certainly can't be in Amherst, Massachusetts and not seek out the Emily Dickinson home/museum."   


...So, of course, I did just that:

Above and below are outdoor images of the house in which Emily, "the Belle of Amherst,"  lived.   (No indoor photos were permitted.)  Emily Dickinson was born in 1830, and died all too soon, in 1886. 

I've always been enamoured of Emily Dickinson's poetry, and over the years,  I've read a good bit about her life, but as usual,  it was something else altogether to be stepping on the same ground as she did, at her home, the Homestead, and the Evergreens, the home of her brother, right next door.  

The docent who led the tour I took today was excellent, and she did a great job of "fleshing Emily out as a person" for me.  I learned from her that the neighborhood children used to play pirates, and they'd come to the Dickinson house, where Emily, upstairs, would take gingerbreads that she'd bake herself, wrap, and put into baskets, and then she would slowly lower the basket by ropes out the window for her pirate friends below! 

It's always been incredible to me that she wrote over 1700 poems during her lifetime, but a mere 10 were published while she was alive, and all 10 of those were published anonymously, and without her permission.


While her family knew that she wrote poems, not even they realized the full extent of her writing.  It was only upon her death, in 1886,  at the young age of 55, that her sister Lavinia ("Vinnie") discovered her poems, and began the arduous process of figuring out what to do with her discovery.   Numerous people were ultimately involved in getting her poetry published, and it's only in very recent years that we actually have the definitive collection of all her poems, presented as closely as she wrote them herself, and without the titles that were not written by Emily, but had been ascribed to the poems by others.  


She had a unique manner of punctuation and grammar, and she used dashes, capitalizations, and slant rhymes, all very different from poets of that time. 


During her lifetime, Emily was not known as a poet.  In fact, she was better known as a gardener and botanist.   Something I learned today was that she was an accomplished pianist, and she even composed her own music!   Unfortunately, she kept it all stored in her own memory, and never put a note on paper, so we will never know what she wrote or how it sounded.

She was fairly eccentric, and at some point, she made the decision to stay at her father's home, but she no longer really ventured beyond those grounds.   (At that time, the grounds were about 17 acres of land, and she didn't feel deprived of company or the things she enjoyed.)    While she was social when she was younger, there are stories later on of her having visitors, but not face to face; she would speak to them from another room, through doors and walls:


"The Soul selects her own society,
Then shuts the door;..."


Emily had numerous health problems in her life, and was troubled by what is considered to be "iritis," an illness affecting the eyes.  The docent today mentioned that some people believe she may have actually had (or at least been exposed to) Tuberculosis, since it was so prevalent at this time in history, and the iritis could have been a result of that.  It was soon after her treatment for the iritis in Boston that she became more withdrawn and what the world considers "reclusive."

The image below is of the Evergreens, the house next door, which was inhabited by her brother Austin and his family. 

I could go on for a long time describing Emily and her poetry, but I'll leave you with her own words, and suffice it to say, I was thrilled to be basking in the creative ether that she inhabited.

I'm nobody!  Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there's a pair of us--don't tell!

They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog

To tell your name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!



"The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches" (--ee cummings)

I have a magazine photo of a woman whose face is completely enveloped in an elaborate mass of colorful roses.  I was reminded of it this morning when I headed out the door today in Bennington,Vermont.

I could hear the gentle tapping of ice on the window and the rooftop of the hotel early this morning.

By the time I ventured out, there was a bed of sleet and it was still coming down like stinging needles.  Definitely no colorful roses...

Much, much too early for all this, don't you think? 

I'll be happy to head home to NC in a few days, where I imagine it will still be mild. 

"Where does the white go when the snow melts?"   (--Unknown)

(another awful photo; my apologies from on the road)

About Beets

About Beets
(A Very True Story)

I'd rather eat snails with some raw lizard tails!
I'd rather eat soap scum and witches' toenails!
I'd rather eat fungus, black and humungous,
In fact, I'm sure I would rather eat fungus!
I'd rather eat bugs and the shells of three crabs,
Sticky alien brains all covered in scabs!
I'd rather eat rocks in a giant brown box!
I'd rather eat chickens that have chicken pox!
I'd rather eat cacti that make me scream 'OUCH!'
I'd rather eat hairballs from under the couch!
I'd rather eat bread that has turned grossly green,
Or the biggest earthworm that you've ever seen!
I'd rather eat earwax and slimy eel skin,
I wish that the church would say 'BEETS are a SIN!'
I'd rather eat garbage, a cockroach, or TEN...

Than to EVER-EVER eat BEETS Again!

(from the book A Woolly Mammoth on Amelia Street by Todd Michael St Pierre)

AS FOR ME:

I personally LOVE beets: especially sliced in a salad of fresh farm greens, with orange segments, spiced pecans, and thin red onion slices, with feta cheese or a nice chevre and a light vinaigrette.