Taps

Taps

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Over the weekend I had a chance to do something I’ve meant to do for years, to be part of an 8th Air Force Historical Society event, thanks to a friend who’s a member. My dad flew in the 95th bomb group of the 8th Air Force and was active in both the 95th Bomb Group and 8th Air Force organizations. I cheered him on through the years but never had time to join him.

Now, of course, I wish I had. Because as much as I enjoyed meeting a couple of the WWII veterans present, all up in their 90s, of course, I only missed Dad more.

There was the familiar 8th Air Force insignia, the talk of where stationed, at some village or another in Britain’s East Anglia. There were the facts and figures, amazing to recount. In 1942 the 8th Air Force had a dozen members. Two years later, there were 300,000. 

And now they’re contracting again, have been for some time, at least when it comes to those who served in WWII. In a crowd of 400-plus … only seven were veterans of the Second World War. 

Far Away and Close at Hand

Far Away and Close at Hand

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Since witnessing sunrise on the beach last week I’ve been thinking how nice it is to have a view of the horizon. It doesn’t have to be the Atlantic through a scrim of dune grass. I’d welcome any view that took me out of tangled green. 

Be careful what you wish for, though, I tell myself. Spending time in bare, flat places makes me realize how soothing is the company of trees, how subtle but important is the rise and fall of the land on which we find ourselves.

How lovely it would be to have it both ways, to have the openness of the horizon and the coziness of trees — the greensward and the den, the faraway and the close-at-hand. It just occurred to me that I grew up in such a place, the natural savannah land of central Kentucky, the Bluegrass. No wonder I want it all.

(The sun slants low over the Osage orange trees on Pisgah Pike in Woodford County, Kentucky.) 

Deadlines

Deadlines

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I’ve been alarmingly sedentary the last few days, working on a paper for class and other writing assignments, proving once again that one thing I don’t have is ADHD.  

Yes, I can sit still for hours, noodling over some nuance, re-reading the paragraph I just wrote more times than is necessary, looking up an arcane fact I could live without. But the rabbit holes are tempting and I finally have time to explore them.  All of which is to say that I can sit still and write (or pretend to) for the entire day. 

And so … thank God for deadlines. I’ve lived with them since I was in grammar school and had to write book reports and term papers, worked as a magazine writer and editor where they were so much a part of the furniture that I hardly gave them a second thought. Now I have deadlines to submit analytical essays and research papers. 

Of course, I deplore deadlines. I rail against them. But without them the learning — and the sitting — would be eternal. And we can’t have that. 

Library in the Forest

Library in the Forest

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I see them everywhere these days, around the ‘hood and across this land. Along a street or in the woods. Little Free Libraries, they’re called, and what an excellent idea they are: a way to share books, to offer them gratis, to provide a new home for books that need one. (I can imagine the volumes waving their arms, shouting “take me”!)

Several of my walking routes have little free libraries along the way, but this one seems most ethereal and unlikely, situated as it is along a woods trail that sees fewer walkers than most. For that reason I’ve found at least one gem in its reaches. 

Yesterday, no such luck, but it was fun to look, and to savor the very idea of a library in the forest. 

Weather Denier?

Weather Denier?

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It was 35 when I woke up this morning, a temperature that I associate far more with winter than with fall. It’s too early, I want to shout from the rooftops, knowing of course, that the weather gods will ignore me. 

But maybe I should not go gently into that (not) good night. Maybe I should be a weather denier, one who strolls through gales in shirt sleeves and shorts. 

Unfortunately, I’m just the opposite. Right now I’m wearing two layers of wool and one of cotton, and my warmest stretchy pants. One of my sweaters has a hood. I’m feeling a bit bulky … but almost warm. 

(Looking at last week’s beach shots to warm myself up.)

Ignoring the Roses

Ignoring the Roses

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It’s nothing personal, but sometimes I ignore the second bloom. Roses seem out of place this time of year — even a tease. 

Their petals are so smooth and soft, not fluted and dry like the chrysanthemum.They belong to spring, to longer days and shorter nights.

But here they are, a final benediction, a farewell to summer. So I try to take them philosophically, to see in their freshness a promise of spring.

Merry-Go-Round

Merry-Go-Round

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It was almost 6 p.m. when we dashed down to Frying Pan Park, less than three miles from home. There was a carnival there, and the place was swarming with kids and parents, including some very special kids and their kiddos, our children and grandchildren. We took in the big trucks and avoided the cotton candy, but what we could not miss was the carousel.

Is there a better ride in the park? I say this as a reformed roller-coaster rider, my last foray on one of those contraptions giving me a headache so powerful I thought I was having a stroke. 

But give me the merry-go-round any time, and call it a merry-go-round, too, not a carousel, because that name carries with it the madcap quality of time’s passage. Watching it last night, trying to pick out my children and grandchildren, it could have been my own girls who were squealing in delight, not their toddlers … so quickly does time pass … sometimes, it seems, even faster than the merry-go-round itself.

The Archive

The Archive

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I’ve been working on a writing project that has me dipping into the archive of posts I’ve been accumulating for years. I recently fished out one I wrote about a local historian who gave tours of the area and, for comic but also historical effect, passed around a 12-pound cannonball.

I found another about a two-room schoolhouse at a crossroads near here. It’s been named to the Virginia Landmarks Register, thanks to the efforts of those who love and want to preserve it.

And then there was the post about buying last year’s Christmas tree not from the oh-so-chi-chi place west of here that charges you a fortune to cut down their firs but from a small lot and a native Virginian, a place I’ll be frequenting this year, too.

These and other local efforts have made the quality of life here so much better than it would be otherwise. And I can thank the blog — and the walking that inspired it — for many of these discoveries. 

(The Vale Schoolhouse, now on the Virginia Landmarks Registry.)

Changing of the Guard

Changing of the Guard

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The beach was only five hours south, and I was away only four days, but I returned to a world of autumn color, more than I’m used to this time of year.  A shot of cold air must have shocked trees into turning. 

It was a pleasant surprise, a suitable homecoming for mid-October, as if while I was gone there had been a changing of the guard.

As I write this post, a shiver of wind shakes yellow leaves from the poplar and the witch hazel. The leaves are dancing as they fall, swirling to earth, covering the lawn, which has seen better days.

Yesterday I left summer behind. Now … it’s fall. 

Punctuation

Punctuation

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“I wandered lonely as a cloud,” wrote William Wordsworth. Though his cloud floated “on high o’er vales and hills,” mine was perched in a perfect blue sky above a sand dune. 

How solitary it looked, this cloud, how out of place, as if it had stumbled into the wrong act of a play. 

Where were its compatriots? There were other clouds in the sky that day, but nowhere near this one, which had dared to move inland instead of out to sea. 

Its out-of-placeness only emphasized its ethereal boundaries, its contrast of white with blue. It looked like the dot of an explanation point, punctuating a late summer day.