Category: Observations

The Way to the Heart is Through the Tastebuds

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I ate my way across America today. California scones on the plane to Charlotte. They hid out in my bag like hitchhikers on Route 66. At the Charlotte airport, chicken tortilla soup is served at my favorite taqueria and at the 1897 Market. Maybe it’s the same. Airports, the great equalizer.

I had dinner in Sarasota. Lox and cream cheese served by a Peruvian bartender who was adopted by an Italian-Irish couple at the age of six months. Is there a more American story? Or a better way to experience the continental United States?

Art Makes Life

Photo by Nguyu1ec5n Thanh Ngu1ecdc on Pexels.com

The artist is not in sight, but dinner is waiting for her. The long thread that holds her web to a fence on one side and a hedge on the other stretches at eye level. We bend to avoid it. We take care because we can. Because we have time to notice.

We are not running from war, wildfires, earthquakes, floods. We are not doom scrolling, furious, hunkered down. Instead, we appreciate the utile beauty of a spider web. It has survival value and strength, a work of art glistening with dew in the sun. A reminder of tenacious life.

Crow’s Wing

Photo by Monica McHenney November 2023

We kept the dogs away. The severed wing lay at the corner, iridescent, shiny, black. How could it happen, a crow’s wing but no crow. Was there an epic battle with a hawk? Was the wing collateral damage? We wandered on, dogs incurious, my husband and I trying to solve this puzzle. 

“Evidence. I want a picture.” 

So we went back. The clues were obvious. There was no blood. The dogs had no interest. On further examination, a bit of fabric, synthetic feathers, the wing a costume piece. A case of overactive imagination; the best and worst of being human.

They Carry the Burden

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Let’s hear it for a different kind of war hero. Tim O’Brien tells war like it is through characters like Rat Kiley, who saves a buddy one day and another day shoots himself a ticket home through the foot. You know that book, The Things They Carried. The hero carries many things into and out of war. A photo to inspire, to torture, to raise false hopes. A first aid kit for when a grenade blows a buddy sky high. An army manual to list the protocols that caution against feeling. Read that book, or reread it. For the heroes.

Autumn Chill

Photo by Monica McHenney
The dawn light has changed
to a grey gold cousin of the blue brilliance that brightened my summer. 
Max's golden lab fur blends into the tawny tall grass. 
He looks at me. “What do you want? The works? Right.” 
He pees again, strolls to the center of the meadow lawn, and squats to do his business. 

His business is to 
please. It is the thing he does best, most naturally. Despite arthritis, 
his portly, chunky body seems to yield. Face aging white, 
he's older than I am. Seventy-seven. 
At seventy-two, cranky and arthritic, I won't age gratefully or graciously.

Some Equinox Thoughts

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After March 21st, light outruns dark. Human beings create stories across many cultures to acknowledge, to understand, to make meaning of this phenomenon. When the darkness is finally conquered by the longer days of spring and summer, tales of heroes and villains emerge. Moses and the Pharaoh (Passover), Jesus and Pontius Pilate (Easter.) Krishna and Radha conquer doubts through divine love (Holi) and the forces of good triumph over evil (Nowruz.) Remembering ancestors and preparing to plant come together (Tomb Sweeping Day.)

In September, we’ll prepare for winter decline. For now, be fruitful, make the Earth a better place.

Springiness Delayed

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Watch me spring forward and fall back, sleepy and dazed, assaulted by the time change.

I wish to stay in bed an extra hour. I can’t. The dogs can and do. The delay in daybreak confuses them. I understand because I’m confused as well.

It has been two weeks of gradual adjustment, falling asleep early, doing yoga in the dark. But the light keeps changing, the spring keeps springing, every day is longer than the last.

I am almost persuaded that the sun will shine bright and clear on the world’s dark doings. If not, give me back that hour.

Candlelight

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Candlelight warms up dark days and nights, melts hearts hardened by cold wind and colder thoughts. Candles feature in solstice celebrations that have lifted spirits for centuries. The welcoming village, the holiday stories, the light of the fireplace and the smoky smell of it, the wood fire cooking traditional foods. These images burn in collective memory. They carry humanity through conflict and scarcity. Celebrations can jolt us from the amnesia that makes us forget the things we have in common.  Light emanates from churches, temples, campsites, and shelters uniting us to hope that the first flower of spring will arrive.

Thanksgiving Thoughts

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I’m thankful that 300 years after the Treaty of New Echota was signed, the American Congress is considering seating Kimberly Teehee as a delegate from the Cherokee Nation. It shouldn’t have taken this long. Not every tribe gets a seat at the table, albeit a non-voting seat. But it is a step.

I am grateful to Deb Haaland, Interior Secretary, for her support of Native language recovery, a reversal of the agency’s historic efforts to destroy Native culture. Throughout history, language has kept subject cultures alive, preserved the dignity of their peoples, and fostered a richer experience for all.

Migrants

Photo by Peter Kessler

They flew in shield shape, banking together. Not a bird was out of formation. The fluid group landed in a mulberry where they plucked juicy fruit, bringing the tree to life with their acrobatics and mid-air high jinx.

Such handsome fellows, masked like robbers, with subtle rusty red and muted yellow highlights on their mourning dove grey cigar bodies.

My camera disrupts them, but not before I have a picture. A silent order travels through the troupe, wings flutter together, they move with one mind. They will be back; they have no choice. It’s how they earn a living.