All in This Together

All in This Together

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My classes are winding down. The final projects await, looming like giant icebergs on the horizon, but I can count remaining class meetings on the fingers of one hand. Which gave last night’s words the ring of finality.

We were talking about the responsibility the Global North has for the Global South. We might think it’s not our problem if climate change drives residents of densely populated, low-lying Bangladesh to leave their homes and families. But these people must go somewhere.

None of us brought up the meeting taking place in Azerbaijan even as we spoke. But COP 29, the United Nations climate change meeting, is in its final days and there is still much work to do. How will developing countries help less developed ones?

Most of the migrants in this world are from places where weather, hunger and civil unrest are driving from their homes. We can’t think all of this is someone else’s problem, the professor said. Meaning we’re all in this together. Meaning it’s a smaller world than we might think.

It’s a frightening thought … but also an exhilarating one.

Japanese Maple

Japanese Maple

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These days I wake to November grays. Most backyard trees are stripped of leaves, except for one: the volunteer Japanese maple. It waits until the other trees are done to strut its stuff.

This is how it’s done, kids, it seems to say. With these scarlets, these jewel tones. With this patience and this grace.

Am I reading too much into the timing of this turning? Of course I am. I always do.

Changes Afoot

Changes Afoot

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I grew up in a neighborhood that rang with the sounds of hammer and saw, with the building of small brick and stone bungalows. The houses weren’t large but they were well made, and when I drive through the area on visits to Lexington, I’m impressed with how well they have held up.

Construction methods have changed since then; house sizes have, too. One of my neighborhood’s best features has been the ratio of house to lot size. Split-levels and center-hall colonials are tucked away on treed lots, in some cases almost hidden among the greenery. Harmony and proportion reign. Or at least they used to.

The newest house on the block is a renovation that more than doubles the size of the previous dwelling. It dwarfs the houses around it. The owners are good neighbors who want a larger home, but this larger home is not the kind of house you normally see around here, and I fear it will open the floodgates.

McMansion subdivisions surround us. I was hoping we would never become one. Now I’m not so sure.

A Quorum

A Quorum

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It was a cold, rainy November evening; it begged for a good movie and a bowl of popcorn. But I’m glad we trudged out to the annual meeting of our neighborhood’s home owner’s association last night. Our street was by far the best represented, and there were people from other streets I hadn’t seen in years.

There was only one problem: we didn’t have a quorum. Which meant that the meeting was unofficial, for information only. We couldn’t approve last year’s minutes (oh no!) and we couldn’t vote in next year’s officers (slightly more troubling).

Apparently, though, if you miss the 40-percent quorum (in person or by proxy) the first time, you need only achieve a 30-percent quorum for the re-do. Since 30 percent of people sent in their proxy votes by mail, the slate of new officers will be approved at the board meeting next month.

And what of last night’s affair? It may not have met the minimum legal requirements, but it met the minimum social requirements. Most of us left with more fellow feeling for our neighbors, and what could be more important than that?

(A quorum of geese?)

Acoustic Season

Acoustic Season

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We come now to the acoustic season. On paths and trails, lawns and clearings, leaves pile and crisp. They gather in corners and culverts, land softly on hedges and hollies. And when I walk through them, they talk back.

They crinkle and crackle. They swish and snap. They carry in their once full-veined selves the memory of green days and insects singing.

You cannot move through them quietly. Even small squirrels make big noises when they play. Autumn leaves amplify our footfalls, reveal our passage. They keep us honest.

Eleventh Hour

Eleventh Hour

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It’s almost time for 2025 New Year’s resolutions, so why think about 2024’s? Because I’ve fallen way short on one of them, an important one, as it turns out.

While I’ve cooked a little more this year and added a few new dishes to the repertoire (sweet and savory granola, chicken shawarma, cucumber salad), I’ve been less successful meditating. In fact, the “meditate more” resolution is in danger of becoming one of those fond perennial hopes (“don’t worry so much”) that clog the gears of self-improvement.

But the more I think about it (don’t think!), the more I realize that stilling the mind is one of the best tools we have to living with uncertainty and doubt. All I need to do is open the newspaper every morning to understand how important it is to co-exist with uncertainty and doubt.

So what to do? Publish this post, close this machine, sit still and think about nothing. It’s a tall order, but I’d like to enter 2025 feeling a little bit better about 2024. This might help.

Footprints in Time

Footprints in Time

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These are dry days in the mid-Atlantic. Though we finally received rain on Sunday, there was precious little of it and it arrived after a record-breaking 38-day drought.

A funny time to be thinking of footprints, then, because I can’t imagine the hard-packed ground would yield to a pickaxe let alone a hiking boot. But I was just skimming a book called Ways of Walking: Ethnography and Practice on Foot by Tim Ingold and Jo Lee Vergunst, who discuss the importance of footprints.

Footprints are clues to the presence of natural resources, the authors say. They embed us in a landscape. If we pay attention, the impression of a boot or a paw tells us who has come before.

Here’s how Ralph Waldo Emerson puts it: “All things are engaged in writing their history … Not a foot steps into the snow, or along the ground, but prints in characters more or less lasting, a map of its march. The ground is all memoranda and signatures; and every object covered over with hints. In nature, this self-registration is incessant, and the narrative is the print of the seal.”

(Dinosaur footprints from the Algarve region of Portugal.)

Mind Bending

Mind Bending

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By now most of us recognize the Blue Marble photograph. Even if we don’t know it’s called the Blue Marble photograph, we’ve seen this picture.

It was a meta moment for our planet, as the Apollo 17 astronauts looked out their window and snapped a shot of our globe floating like a blue-and-white dream in a sea of darkness. The first time Earth was viewed from space.

What I didn’t know, but only learned by reviewing a new book, is that the raw image originally submitted to NASA placed the southern hemisphere at the top of the frame. (Those weightless astronauts didn’t know which way was up!) NASA flipped the image before releasing it to the public. It would have been mind-bending otherwise.

To learn why North landed on top, you’ll need to read the book. But isn’t it interesting to ponder a world where what’s up is down and what’s down is up? Kind of puts us in our place, doesn’t it?

Tap, Tap, Tap

Tap, Tap, Tap

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The question of the day is this one: Is it easier to skim books while reading them electronically? My answer would be yes.

It’s easier to tap a page than to turn one, and I’ve been tapping plenty while reading The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws by Margaret Drabble.

It’s not that I’m not enjoying the book; I am. I’ve always liked Drabble’s novels. I would follow her voice anywhere, even into a 344-page book on jigsaw puzzles. In fact, it’s about much more than that, dipping into games, mosaics and children’s books.

Still, the book has much more puzzle than it does personal history. There’s a remedy for that, though: tap, tap, tap.

A Close Call

A Close Call

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It came out of nowhere, wings flapping, talons at the ready, and before I could process what was happening I was fighting off a red-shouldered hawk. It didn’t want me for lunch. But it was definitely interested in the parakeets sitting outside with me, blithely chirping and hopping around in their cage, taking in the unseasonable warmth.

The red-shouldered hawk is a substantial bird, weighing a pound or more with a wingspan of several feet. I often hear hawks, and I see them occasionally, too, either in flight or perched nearby.

I never thought I’d have to fight one, though. Because the raptor was not discouraged by my first swat. It circled around and came back for more. It knew what it wanted and was determined to have it. Had I not been there it would likely have killed the budgies; its talons are long enough to reach inside the cage.

I often rhapsodize about the natural world — and why not? It comforts and inspires me; it connects me with the divine. But to live among wild creatures means to accept them on their own terms. The hawk is a predator. Parakeets are prey. The flimsy bars of a birdcage are a very small part of this equation.

(A closeup of Toby before the attack. Afterward, he made himself very small and didn’t move a muscle.)