the sky is falling

Once upon a time there was a dear little chicken named Chicken Little.

One morning as she was scratching in her garden, a pebble fell off the roof and hit her on the head.

"Oh, dear me!" she cried, "the sky is falling. I must go and tell the King," and away she ran down the road.

By and by she met Henny Penny going to the store. "Where are you going?" asked Henny Penny.

"I'm going to tell the King the sky is falling," answered Chicken Little.

"How do you know the sky is falling?" asked Henny Penny.

"Because a piece of it fell on my head," she replied. "May I go with you?" begged Henny Penny. "Certainly," answered Chicken Little, and she hastened on, followed by Henny Penny.

Continue with Chicken Little, Henny Penny, Cocky Locky, Ducky Daddles, Goosey Poosey, Turkey Lurkey, Gander Pander, Foxy Loxy and the King. The Chicken Little story was one of the Jakata tales from Buddhist Indian folklore.

Sometimes it really does feel like the sky is falling. 

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for winter inside

Great Northern beans

carrots

celery

potatoes

red onion

garlic

ham shanks

comfort

Please bear with me while I love winter a little longer. (I really wasn't trying to escape it with my walking out of winter poem, but how could you know that? I just wanted to be like a bird in it: warm, light, industrious and with a broad vantage point.)

We who love winter love it not only for the beauty of snow blanketed landscapes, snowflakes falling softly on our faces, ice crystals in the air sparkling like a million diamond suns, blizzards, north winds, sledding, sliding, tobogganing, skating, downhill skiing, cross country skiing, snowshoeing, the squeaky crunch of boots plodding in snow, red cardinals scattering snow on a spruce bough, frosted skeletal flower stalks, snowmen, icicles, drifts, shadows, snow angels, snow forts, snowball fights, quirky hats, rosy cheeks, blue nights, moon haloes, and bare black tree limbs against pink sunrises.

We also love winter for Christmas, pink grapefruit, oblique daylight, Vivaldi, candles, the scraping sound of snow plows heard from bed after school was cancelled due to inclement weather, building sizzling fires in the woodstove or fireplace, reading by lamplight under a handknitted afghan, gingerly sipping hot cocoa, and . . .

. . . eating hot soup       

after smelling it

simmering

in the crock pot all day.

If you love food and cooking, here is that Website again that I shared before: Laylita's recipes. Wonderful!

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feeling yucca

What must this yucca think of Michigan? Yuccas love dry, hot climates. No wonder this one's leaves look a little combative jutting through the snow, but the tall stalk of blossoms looks happy in the July heat last summer, below. Well, I guess it's me who's feeling that it doesn't belong here. Do plants feel?

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I don't really understand planting yuccas in the Midwest (what does "Midwest" mean anyway? We are not west at all - see the red area in the map - though we once were, compared to the "East," that is, New England there along the Atlantic and thumbing up into New Brunswick and Quebec.) Even though this is a hardy species, the plant seems like a desert misfit here in the north. (Amazing how it stays evergreen through the winter. Tough plant.)

Spiky points? They belong with Saguaro cactus, Joshua trees and Birds of Paradise -- all picturesque. Oh, the desert must be beautiful in bloom in springtime. But that's where they belong, in the desert. We have lived on two farms in Michigan, and both had yuccas planted by the previous residents. The energy doesn't feel quite right, but I can't bring myself to remove them.

When we lived in California five years I was a misfit living there among yardfuls of succulents - a northern girl in a desert landscape. I am at home among pine forests, goldenrod and Timothy grass, white sand dunes in view of Lake Michigan's layered aquas and blues, autumn leaves, winter snow and ice, and a wood stove glowing with heat. I suppose it doesn't always follow that where you grow up you also feel at home in the landscape. Or that you don't feel at home where you didn't grow up.

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As for this yucca, does it long for the Mojave Desert, or feel glad to cool down here? Just because it's a tough plant doesn't mean it has to live in a hot arid place. Maybe its toughness helps it thrive through Michigan winters.

When the spent yucca blossoms fall from the chandelier atop the stalk and get impailed on the spiky leaves, would you call it self mutilation? Ouch!

This is the only photo I have of a full yucca plant - cropped from one Peter took with my Holga. The tall stalk's blossoms have passed (and a second next to it without a flowering stalk, and another behind it). It's hard to see the 10-foot stalk in this shot, but in case you're not familiar with yuccas, I wanted to show you.

Oh, I miss hanging laundry outside.

Truth is, the yucca stands just as tall and striking in Michigan as it does in the Mojave Desert. Maybe I just need my Bedouin receptors opened, and I could learn some toughness from the yucca too.

Map image, above, used under Wiki Commons agreement from this site. (My words added.)

Yucca illustration, right, found here.

Please check out Charlie's February alphabet challenge here and on my sidebar. I've already posted a photo a day for 3 months at East Lansing Daily Photo back in 2006, so I won't be participating. But if you want to try, it's fun to do at least once! And February is a short month, so here's your chance.

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I am walking out of winter

I am walking out of winter

one booted foot

up and down

after another

like iron pistons

in deep snow

starting at the pines'

hollow deer beds

into the deep

white bowl of the meadow

aching up the hill

past the barn

and its stones as heavy

as my snow-drifted feet

past the iced herbs

and silvered

scraps of wind and sleep

past the column of moon

(ah,

loose white feather

floating in the blue sky)

Trudging out of winter

toward the house

toward my birds

slipping off my knee boots

I climb up with them

my birds

my birds

descend

and ascend

the leafless black ladders

of trees

to and from the feeders

my birds

my birds

- Ruth M., January 2009

I created the bird image using my photo of starlings, then at picnik.com processed it with the the panography effect and framed it with the mirrored frame.

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stars and stripes

When we moved to the farm five years ago there was a flag in the basement, which we were not inclined to hang. We didn't have anything against displaying the American flag in the holder on the front porch. We just weren't flag wavers.

Tonight after watching the inauguration, we decided it's time. For the first time in a long time the American flag feels like a symbol of unity, not division. So we dug out the flag with its little eagle at the end of the pole, and I trudged out in knee-deep snow at 8pm and mounted it in the bracket, near the snow-covered spirea bush. We turned on the porch light, since you're supposed to have a light on it if you leave it out at night.

But there was already a light on it, a 'star.' You can see the planet Venus in the western sky behind the flag, the planet named for the goddess of beauty and love. 

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Inauguration Day: for the eyes

A photo-booth shot of John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, possibly taken during their honeymoon, in 1953. From the John F. Kennedy Library.

I am a visual person. So much so that I think it trumps every other sense a lot of the time, making me vulnerable to the beauties of cinematography, paintings, a sunrise, an ornamental chicken, and photographs.

The advertising industry knows many of us are in this same boat. Gorgeous images of beautiful people sell products. The Marlboro Man - simultaneously macho on his horse and romantic in the great wild West - sold lots of cigarettes, including to himself: Wayne McLaren, leading to his death from lung cancer at age 51.

In politics, being handsome and charming sure doesn't hurt. In the famous debate between Nixon and Kennedy, Nixon's chances to win might have slid into thin air, like the sweat off his ski-jump nose - partly because of that visual.
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We'll never know how much of the Kennedys' Camelot was based in visual appeal, but it has to be a lot. How do you not stare at Jackie and Jack's faces in the photobooth image, above, and then want them to be your mom and dad, or leaders (king and queen)? Anyone with such genuine gorgeous smiles has to want what's best for me, right?

VF Feb. 2007 cover, one of 20 different covers for the Africa issue, guest edited by Bono, photograph by Annie Leibovitz

When I found Vanity Fair's slideshow of their Presidential portraits over the years (all the photos here are from that gallery), I felt the power of the visual image. Even this cover of Rice and Bush, above, conjured sympathy and even some affection for a man I have found little of either for these long eight years. It's a brilliant stroke, actually, that we will always have Liebovitz' portrait of Bush for the Africa issue, since his contribution to raising funds and awareness for the AIDS epidemic in Africa is a true legacy. How many lives have been, and will be saved and improved because of him? That is a strange question, and my insides do somersaults around it and the conflicting answers. But I can't deny this, and if I were one of the saved ones, I might gently hand him my shoes, gratefully.

photograph appears here, by Jonas Fredwall Karlsson

Our new President takes office Tuesday. People have compared his wife Michelle to Jackie visually, and not all favorably (yeah, Ann Coulter). The new First Lady's style is of utmost importance to some: she wears sleeveless dresses like Jackie, what does it mean? (There wasn't a portrait of Michelle in the Vanity Fair gallery, so I didn't include an image of her here.)

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As for Himself, there is so much going on in images of him, that I have to keep checking my emotions with hard facts to keep myself from hoping too much. He's handsome, tall and lean (my instinct is to follow him), African American (a hallelujah FIRST!), has a genuine-looking smile (I want to have a cup of coffee with him and tell him about myself), dresses well without flash (I don't want to see a man dress with too much attention to his clothes), walks with a confident - almost cocky - gait (he reminds me of guys I didn't like who thought too highly of themselves), puts his hand on people's shoulder - including President Bush's (making me think that he feels a little sorry for him too), wears baseball caps and cargo shorts (he's like me), has impressive abs (not like me), scowls at the press when he isn't left alone at times of grief (cool, he's real and doesn't always have to be Mr. Nice), looks people in the eye (nothing to hide), wore shoes during the campaign that had holes after already being re-soled (a sense of thrift and recycling), and puts his hand on his wife's knee, snuggling with her during TV interviews (he respects his wife and genuinely loves her, but maybe too much PDA - public display of affection? Nah.).

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Decisions, policies, crises, mistakes and thousands of mundane details that lie ahead for this President will be communicated to us in more ways than during any other Presidential term, from the puppy the Obamas bring to the White House, to protracting the war in Afghanistan. Visual images will help me relish them or cringe, but I'm going to try to balance them with the facts the best I can - that is after curling up on the couch watching Tuesday's Inauguration, relishing the visuals of a million people crowding Washington's mall and Mr. Obama being sworn in on the Bible with his wife standing behind. And will she be wearing a hat?

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Jan. 20 12:34: You can read the text of President Obama's inaugural speech here.

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thanks to Blogger

It's time to put some flowers round the room! I was stunned to see that synch-ro-ni-zing got Blog of Note Friday. Thank you to Blogger, and to all you nice people for visiting. Have a warm, cozy weekend.

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