Classes are over for the semester, so it was my first free Wednesday evening (not including vacations) since last summer. I made good use of it by sitting on the deck until darkness fell.
These are days that beg us to linger and look. Days of leafing and blossom when it is enough, I think, just to witness, to be part of the human race.
Looking won’t keep the azaleas in bloom all summer, or the lilac scent wafting from the bush. Looking won’t halt the leafing of the trees or the greening of the grass. But looking makes these small miracles mine — at least for a time.
I’m walking longer these days, and when I don’t drive to walk (which I often do), at some point I must cross a busy, four-lane road. During off hours I might wait for a pause in the traffic, dash across to the median, then wait for another opening to cross the rest of the way.
It’s not what I taught my kids to do, and not something I’m particularly proud of doing. It puts pace before safety. Which is why these days I’m more likely to push the button and wait for the “walk” sign. What a wimp, I tell myself. But a living wimp, so worth the trade-off.
Still, I miss the halcyon days of urban walking. I miss being part of a pedestrian tribe propelling itself from block to block, fidgeting whenever a red light stopped our progress. We were fearless; we had strength in numbers. And sometimes, we walked right through those “wait” signs.
It’s my first outdoor post of the season, and I’m writing it on Earth Day. The glass-topped table is perpendicular to the way it usually rests — a remnant from Easter dinner’s crowd of 20 — so I have an expansive ringside seat on the back yard.
As I type these words a glossy brown fox trots across the lawn and disappears behind the ferns. A few minutes ago I spotted a pileated woodpecker — a primeval-looking creature if ever there was one — drilling down into the stump of an old oak in search of breakfast. Hawks cry, squirrels hop, and a mama cardinal nibbles delicately at the feeder.
Before me flames an azalea that’s far too big for the garden in which it’s planted (a common failing of mine). Behind it, near the trampoline, blooms a pretty pink azalea transplanted decades ago from a friend’s house in the District. Ferns unfurl. Wood poppies pop. The lavender azalea behind the house isn’t as abundant as last year, due to some necessary pruning (we could no longer see out the kitchen window!), but it’s still striking. Did I mention it’s azalea season in my neck of the woods?
And finally, the most exciting garden news: The lilac I’ve celebrated for years has finally produced more flowers than I can count. To inhale its fragrance is to be transported.
Transported is what I am on this Earth Day. The long winter is finally over.
The world awoke to the sad news this morning of Pope Francis’s passing. He had been ailing, of course, and recently hospitalized. But he made an appearance on Easter and, like many, I hoped he was out of the woods and would be with us a few more years.
I remember the excitement that greeted his papacy. Here was the first pope from Latin America, a pontiff who chose to name himself after Saint Francis, patron of the poor. Here was a leader who shunned the trappings of power and called our attention to immigrants and climate change. Here was a leader who spoke out against war and rampant commercialism.
Though at various points of his papacy Francis irritated both conservative and liberal wings of the church, he broadened the institution, and it feels lonely and frightening without him. So much darkness in the world right now. So little light.
What to do but seek comfort in his message, his hopefulness and the words and example he leaves behind. Rest in peace, Pope Francis.
Bells tolled today in Rome to announce the passing of Pope Francis.
Last night’s Holy Thursday service included a tradition that my church has instituted, the washing of the feet. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples at that long-ago Passover supper, assuming the role of the lowliest servant, modeling the behavior he asked his followers to share: to serve others.
If only it were as easy as joining the queue to wash and be washed. But it’s increasingly difficult to be a good person, to understand and not judge, to give others a second, third or even fourth chance. We don’t live in easy times. Of course, first-century Jerusalem was no picnic either.
On Good Friday (and other days, too), I like to re-read one of my favorite Michael Gerson columns. Gerson died in November 2022. I often wish he were still alive and writing. He wasn’t afraid to discuss his faith or his struggles — or to be joyously optimistic when the times called for it.
One of those times was Good Friday. Not that things started off well: “It would have seemed that every source of order, justice and comfort — politics, institutional religion, the community, friendship — had been discredited,” Gerson wrote. “It was the cynic’s finest hour.”
And then, he wrote, something happened: “The cynics somehow lost control of the narrative.” Even those who believe the body was moved must admit that “faith in the figure Rome executed has far outlived the Roman empire.” For those who believe, Gerson said, Good Friday and Easter legitimize both despair and faith. But most of all, they remind us that God is on the side of those who suffer, the side of those who hope.
“There is a truth and human existence cannot be contained in a tomb. It is possible to live lightly, even in the face of death — not by becoming hard and strong, but through a confident perseverance. Because cynicism is the failure of patience. Because Good Friday does not have the final word.”
(A holy water font in the Cathedral of Seville in Spain.)
The professor opened his lecture on quantum mechanics with the statement that people who said they understood it were not telling the truth, and he ended his lecture by saying, “I hope you’re now as confused about quantum theory as I am.”
My professor was repeating this story at the end of his lecture on quantum theory, which was, fittingly, the last class of the semester. Fittingly because how can you top quantum theory, especially when you (read I) can’t even define quantum theory.
Here are a few lines from my notes: “Because the measured electron is radically different from the unmeasured electron, it appears that we cannot describe this particle (or any other) without referring to the act of observation.”
Quantum mechanics both befuddles and ignores the Newtonian world view. Quantum theory “challenges our intuitions by having conscious observation actually create the physical reality.” It’s the stuff of science fiction. Only it’s not fiction. It’s the “most stunningly successful of all the theories in science; not a single one of its predictions has ever been wrong.”
From quantum has flowed the Copenhagen interpretation of Niels Bohr, who posits that there is no deep reality; that the world we see around us is real but floats on a world that is not as real. From quantum has flowed the Copenhagen interpretation number two, that reality is created by observation and there is no reality without observation.
From quantum has flowed the many worlds theory, the idea that innumerable parallel universes as real as our own exist. The fact that I’m writing a post on quantum mechanics is all the proof I need of the many worlds theory.
It’s not your imagination, said my favorite meteorologists, the Capital Weather Gang. It really has been a windy spring. This was a few weeks ago, but the windiness has continued. It was so windy yesterday that Dulles-bound jets were flying over the house seemingly every few minutes. And these weren’t high-in-the-sky aircraft. I could almost have waved to passengers, had they been peering out their windows.
Unsettling, to say the least. A steady drumbeat of engine noise, deceleration, on top of winds that lopped a branch off a tree in front of the house and downed a tree the next street over.
What to do? Learn about it. Dulles uses Runway 30 when there are strong winds from the northwest, and sometimes, from what I can gather, it uses only Runway 30. That must have been what was happening late yesterday afternoon and early evening. It sounded as if every inbound Dulles flight was skimming the top of our house.
Things are a little more quiet today, but the wind has picked up … and it’s early yet.
(My favorite place to encounter Dulles-bound jets: on the ground.)
In the days and weeks since the inauguration, I’ve been trying to understand the seismic changes rolling through the country. The daily newspaper is no longer cutting it. I need more information from more sources — and I don’t have unlimited time.
Enter the podcast. I have for years wandered aimlessly in the podcast universe. People I know swear by their favorites but I wasn’t sure what I liked. I’m still in the experimental stage, listening to a little of this and a little of that, craving intelligent discussion most of all.
And then, there’s the time element. Most podcasts tell you upfront how long you can expect them to last. (Even articles now supply reading times — but that’s another post).
A one-hour listen takes me from here to Franklin Farm, around the main loop and back again. Exercise for the body; food for the mind.
For the last few years, bluebell-viewing has been high on my spring to-do list. This year I worried I’d missed the flowers. Friends had traveled to prime spots and reported peak bloom. But by Saturday afternoon, with studies and errands out of the way, a chunk of time materialized. The weather was iffy — leftover clouds and sprinkles from Friday’s deluge — but I hoped that would keep the crowds at bay.
Riverbend Park is only 30 minutes away, but it’s another world. Unlike Seneca Park, where I’d seen bluebells other years, at Riverbend the Potomac is front and center: a dramatic backdrop for the delicate blooms. We walked a mile or so upriver — and bluebells were with us all the way. A profusion, a wonderment.
It’s one thing to witness beauty, to stare at it and soak it in. It’s another thing to walk through it. Movement heightens the experience, doubles and triples it. That’s how it was with the bluebells at Riverbend.
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.)
