Left Behind

Left Behind

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I found the little guy on the deck yesterday, a fledgling that didn’t make it, a pile of bones and feathers and a faint blush of pink that promised the bright hues of a male cardinal.

I work in an upstairs office with two big windows overlooking the backyard. Sometimes there’s a thump when a bird hits the glass or screen, but usually it flies off and survives. Was this bird one that didn’t? Or did it starve? Unlikely given the bounty of seed so close at hand with our feeder, though juveniles can be crowded out there.

Nights have been cold lately. Could this wee creature have frozen in the chill? The pruned azalea offers less shelter than it did pre-shearing. Whatever took him, I hope it was quick and painless. Birds belong in the air and trees, full of breath and life.

(Maybe all that little bird needed was a house like this.)

Testing … Testing

Testing … Testing

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Last night I took the last multiple choice test of the semester … and I hope the last multiple-choice test I’ll ever take. It felt more difficult than the last one but not as crazy-making as the first.

To prepare for these examinations I study about 100 printed pages of notes. I read and re-read. I highlight in red pen and yellow marker. I note the main points of each lecture. I try to figure out what questions might be asked.

Most of all, I ask myself why I’m doing this. Worse yet, why I’m paying money to do this. These are moot questions now, I guess. My regular class work ends this semester. Next stop: thesis research and writing. It won’t be easy … but it won’t involve multiple-choice tests.

Cold Snap

Cold Snap

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I wore a parka and gloves on yesterday’s walk, and last night the furnace whirred off and on more than it has in weeks. Our up-and-down spring is down again … or up, depending upon your preference.

The chilly spring day has one thing in its favor. It pauses the procession of bloom. Today it’s paused the Kwanzan cherry at the peak of its resplendence. It was a tall, scrawny specimen when we bought it years ago. I didn’t even know what it was at the time. A cherry tree, yes, but what kind?

I didn’t know about the gnarled trunk it would develop or its splashy pink flowers or how it would bloom later than the Yoshino. This is a tree to be reckoned with: its roots have spread halfway across the front yard, which gives the mower a bumpy ride.

But for a few days in April, the Kwanzan takes our breath away. And this year, thanks to the cold snap, maybe it will take our breath away for a few days more.

Inside Out

Inside Out

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In the old days, my old days, I’d wake up and go running. No time for a warm-up. Later, when I was raising young children, I’d run whenever I could find the time. Now I have a freer schedule, and could theoretically hop out of bed and into the great outdoors. Only now I coax whatever I can from my brain before coaxing whatever I can from my body.

Still, it’s the odd day that finds me house-bound until evening. Yesterday was one of them. A cold rain fell from morning to late afternoon, and when I left the house at 7 for a meeting I was struck by the difference between outside and in — struck, I should say, all over again, since that difference is one of the reasons I walk in the first place.

What is it about stepping outside that immediately puts matters into perspective? Being under a big sky, open to the elements? The smell of the air? That’s what I noticed last night: the freshness of the air and the sounds of sparrows roosting for the night. It was only a few minutes out of doors, just long enough to climb into my car and drive away. But it was enough.

Horns Honking

Horns Honking

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I live close enough to Washington, D.C., to have made it to Saturday’s big protest on the mall, but a friend suggested we try a closer one instead. Which is how I found myself standing in downtown Manassas across from a cemetery and a Harley shop.

It was not an auspicious beginning, but things quickly picked up. By 12:30 there were hundreds of people lining the road, holding flags and signs, chanting “This is what democracy looks like!” Best of all was the support we received from what seemed like every other car that cruised down Route 28. I’ve never heard so many horns honking: from small toots to big blasts.

This demonstration won’t change policy, at least not right away. It felt like very small payback for all the jobs lost, lives upended, research torpedoed; for the tariffs and the firings and the chaos. But it’s a way to air grievances and feel a small sense of usefulness. And then, there were all those horns honking. They made it feel like a parade, a celebration. They made it feel like the start of something big.

World Without God

World Without God

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In class this week we covered atheism, its direct causes — the French Revolution, Darwin’s theory of evolution, and the new cosmology’s understanding of a much older universe — and indirect causes, too. Those are the most interesting to me.

The scientific method, with its emphasis on experimentation and the need for empirical evidence, created a skeptical mindset. Social theorists like Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud argued against religion, too: Marx said it was the “opium of the people”; Freud said it was a neurosis. These thinkers drew from the ideas of Ludwig Feuerbach, who argued that humans project their best qualities onto an external Being and call them God. More recent and vocal atheists include Richard Dawkins.

Atheism came into its own between 1789 and 1989 says Alistair McGrath in his book The Twilight of Atheism. “The fall of the Bastille became a symbol of the viability and creativity of a godless world, just as the fall of the Berlin Wall later symbolized a growing recognition of the uninhabitability of such a place.”

The professor teaching this class is Romanian. He knows firsthand that state attempts to banish religion generally have the opposite effect. He’s the perfect guide through this fascinating subject.

On the Run

On the Run

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Yesterday I had a conversation with a professor that began with mulch. The topics were thesis requirements and process; that it started with mulch says something about the season and the suburbs.

Every year this time I notice the bags piled neatly waiting to be spread. They speak of industry, of the gardener’s hope that this year she will prevail over weeds.

And then… the gardener weeds the garden before spreading the mulch. What does she find? Wild onions, wild strawberry vines, a weed with a tall stem and shaggy “leaves” that spreads its seeds throughout the yard whenever it’s touched.

Most ugly of all is the sticker vine, or at least that’s what I call it. It’s a tenacious creature that doesn’t want to give up its privileged place near the garden fence, has already began climbing it, asserting dominance. It took all my strength to pull that one from the ground.

Most of the mulch is still in bags. But at least the weeds are on the run.

(In July the garden will already be shaggy, but traces of mulch are still visible.)

Another Chance

Another Chance

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Yesterday I was shocked to learn not just of the firings at Health and Human Services — we had been expecting them — but of how they were executed. Whole departments eliminated. Civil servants waiting in line for hours only to learn as they reached the door that they had been let go. This is more than a “reduction in force.” This is intimidation. This is meanness and cruelty.

I woke up this morning thinking of the institutional knowledge that is being lost, of the kind of country we’re creating with these careless and corrosive decisions. What do I do with this angst and anger? I could protest, of course — and I may. But would it help? The people who can make a difference stand silent and impotent.

It’s not yet light outside, but I hear the first birds singing. I learned recently from Amy Tan’s The Backyard Bird Chronicles that 75 percent of songbirds die before they’re a year old. They starve or fall prey to a hungry hawk. But the ones who survive wake up singing. “Each day is a chance to survive,” Tan writes.

I look out the window. It’s still too dark to see the birds, but I can hear them. I know they’re perching in the trees, waiting for the light. For them, today is another chance to survive. And for us, too.

(A mountain bluebird in southern Colorado, 2019)

Pink Petals Flying

Pink Petals Flying

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Resistance is futile. When D.C.’s Tidal Basin cherry blossoms are in peak bloom, I want to see them. So I trundled downtown yesterday on Metro and caught the seasonal display, slightly less robust than usual due to seawall construction.

What always strikes me on these pilgrimages is not the flowers but the people. I heard dozens of languages, dodged scores of photographers, reminded myself over and over again, it’s the journey not the destination.

Summery temperatures are making quick work of the fragile flowers this year. Thunderstorms moved in last night; the wind was already picking up when I was there. I tried to snap a shot of the pink petals flying, but they proved elusive. If you look closely at the photo above, though, you’ll see them. No fooling!

Warm Dawn Air

Warm Dawn Air

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An early walk in the gloaming, porch lights shining. Some white, some yellow. A globe bulb on a lamppost. Fixtures as varied as the people who chose them.

There are no streetlights here, so nighttime illumination is to order, unless it’s inherited from previous residents. Coach lights flank garage doors. Solar-powered strips mark driveways and garden paths. Doorways flaunt the brightest bulbs. Here we are, world, they seem to say, enter here.

And then there is window light, scarce in the morning hour, but I saw a few examples on my stroll, especially in one house, the only one for sale in the neighborhood. It was almost certainly left on in error during yesterday’s open house. It spoke not of habitation but of vacancy, preternaturally bright.

To drive the road is to miss these particulars. To walk is to imbibe them, like so much warm dawn air.

(Streetlights in Chicago, 2016)