11.30.2023 – these are tawny days

these are tawny days
bashful mornings hurl gray mist
on stripes of sunrise

These are the tawny days your face comes back
The grapes take on purple the sunsets redden early on the trellis.
The bashful mornings hurl gray mist on the stripes of sunrise.
Creep, silver on the field, the frost is welcome
Run on, yellow halls on the hills, and you tawny
pumpkin flowers, chasing your lines of orange
Tawny days and your face again

Tawny by Carl Sandburg in his book, Smoke and Steel, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., (1920).

The website, https://www.vocabulary.com/, defines tawny as an adjective meaning of a light brown to brownish orange color; the color of tanned leather.

The online Merriam-Webster says that tawny is from the Middle English, from Anglo-French tané, tauné, literally, tanned, from past participle of tanner to tan and that the first recorded use of the word is from the 14th century.

The book of Genesis, Chapter 1, verses 2-5 state:

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

For myself, when the Bible reports he separated the light from the darkness, I think that God set up what we know as the planet earth and when he separated the light from the darkness, God gave the planet a push that started it in motion so that on the planet, day was separated from night by the rotation of the planet.

From that moment all laws of what we now know as physics came into play.

Neither here nor there, that means, for me anyway, that God had a timer running as the earth revolved on its axis and when the Bible reports “… the first day”, God knew just what he meant, but I digress.

Anyway, at the end of that first day, the light sank below the horizon and on the morning of the 2nd day the light came up.

I am betting that when that light came, it was a tawny day and anyone who might be there to see it would see that the bashful mornings hurl gray mist on the stripes of sunrise.

My wife is not fond of these sunrise pictures I take with my iPhone because she knows that to take them, I am driving one handed, with my other hand holding my iPhone as I cross the Cross Island Bridge on Hilton Head Island.

I know it’s goofy but what can one do?

We live in the low country and it is flat.

There are few views to be had anywhere.

The Cross Island Bridge is one of few places you can see anything of the area.

And, as Augustus McCrae said the book Lonesome Dove, “, and “…if he missed sunrise, he would have to wait out a long stretch of heat and dust before he got to see anything so pretty.”

11.29.2023 – snow drifted, the wind

snow drifted, the wind
crying because it could not
get in by the fire

From the book Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder and the line, “But Laura and Mary listened to that lonely sound in the dark and the cold of the Big Woods, and they were not afraid.

They were cosy and comfortable in their little house made of logs, with the snow drifted around it and the wind crying because it could not get in by the fire.

It was 32 degrees Fahrenheit this morning in the low country.

I didn’t come here for the cool weather let me tell you.

Much is made of, in the News, when the snow storms in the South because the South doesn’t think about snow.

There are no snow shovels.

There is no road salt.

There are no snow plows.

There are no shoulders along the roads to put the snow or to direct your car when you lose control.

It is a big deal.

More so it seems to the people up north that the people in the south don’t prepare for snow.

Do you know why the people in the south don’t prepare for snow?

They DON’T HAVE TO!

If it snows down here, it IS a surprise … not something you have to prepare for like you do up north.

Today there is no snow, no ice.

Just cold.

And the south doesn’t think about cold.

I am sitting in my office and my fingers are numb.

My feet are blocks of ice.

I have on 4 shirts and a fleece vest.

BTW, the vest is something I picked up on sale one summer in an outfitters store in Mackinac, Michigan.

It would be just the thing, I said, to wear at work IN MICHIGAN … IN THE SUMMER TIME, when the air conditioning was set to 65.

When I started work here, the building I work in had central air and central heating, South Carolina style, which means these huge on-the-wall units in each area of the building.

We had a remote control for the unit and we could turn up the heat or turn down the AC as we wanted.

Over the summer the building went through a multi-million dollar renovation and standard central HVAC was installed.

The thermostat is NOT in my office.

I am not sure where that thermostat is located.

What I do know is that whatever room it is in, it must be about 85 degrees because in my office, on a morning where it is 32 degree’s outside, the air conditioning is running.

The sunny south.

It IS sunny outside but you cannot see the cold.

I can feel it, but I can’t see it.

What do I miss from living in the north.

The change in seasons?

Somehow that seems to be on most folks lists.

The food?

The beauty of the Great Lake State?

Nope.

I think back to warm heat.

The heat from a fire place.

The warmth of being inside where the wind is crying … because it can’t get in by the fire.

View from my office on Nov 29 – Can’t see the cold can you??

11.28.2023 – ask the question …

ask the question …
want to be helped, heard or hugged?
positive action

From the article, When Someone You Love Is Upset, Ask This One Question by Jancee Dunn.

Ms. Dunn writes that she was talking with her sister who is special-education teacher at an elementary school in upstate New York.

“What do you do when a kid is emotionally overwhelmed?” I asked. Many teachers at her school, she told me, ask students a simple question: Do you want to be helped, heard or hugged?

The choice gives children a sense of control, which is important when they’re following school rules all day, Heather said. “And all kids handle their emotions differently,” she explained. “Some need a box of tissues, or they want to talk about a problem on the bus, and I’ll just listen.”

It struck me that this question could be just as effective for adults.

The article got me to thinking because it sounded so good and so simple.

The part that reads:

Each option — an embrace, thoughtful but solicited advice or an empathetic ear — has the power to comfort and calm.

Receiving a hug from your partner increases levels of oxytocin, the bonding hormone, and helps dial down stress.

There’s evidence that being heard, known as “high-quality listening,” can reduce defensiveness during difficult and intimate conversations.

And some research suggests that couples who give each other supportive advice have higher relationship satisfaction.

Just makes so much sense.

But still something bothered me.

If we are talking about folks with whom we are in a close relationship with, shouldn’t I know the answer to the question before or without needing to ask?

Shouldn’t I know when someone close to me needs a hug, an ear, or advice?

Maybe …

Maybe not …

Ms. Dunn does write, “Now, when one of us is upset about something (if I’m honest, it’s usually me), the other will ask that question. It has been a game changer over the last few months. It clarifies needs. It de-escalates swirling emotions. It helps us take positive action.“

Maybe you need to set some ground rules about when to ask the question.

So I puzzled it someone and I realized something.

There are times when I myself am emotionally overwhelmed.

If someone asked me if I wanted to be helped, heard or hugged, I wouldn’t know what to say.

Anywhere from ALL THREE to AGGGGHHHHHH JUST LEAVE ME ALONE.

Don’t get me wrong, Do you want to be helped, heard or hugged? is a great question to ask.

It helps us take positive action.

Do I want to be helped, heard or hugged? is just as good a question … and maybe the place to start.

11.27.2023 – shadows on the waves

shadows on the waves
frozen on the phone moments
caught once forever

Barriers such as islands and breakwaters intercept the normal transmission of wave energy and thus create a sheltered area in the wave lee from which waves are excluded.

This sheltered area is called the zone of wave shadow.

The size and location of the shadow zone can have great importance in the protection of the coastline and coastal structures and in the control of the longshore transport of sand.

Further, the wave shadow phenomenon can be used as an aid to navigation as evidenced by the early Micronesians and Polynesians and the early explorer-navigators who used the shadow zone disturbances of Pacific islands for island-to-island travel.

Wave shadow by John R. Dingler In: Beaches and Coastal Geology. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, New York, NY. (1982)

A shadow on the waves, brought in by the tide from the sunlight shining as is passes overhead.

A lot of intersections of the moment to be captured by the magic of a smart phone.

11.26.2023 – there is the place now,

there is the place now,
where I look back, look ahead
and dream and wonder

This is the view right now from the Bridge Street bridge that crosses a small tributary of the May River, between the Colhoun Street Dock and the Oyster Factory Dock in Bluffton, South Carolina.

We walked over the bridge the other day and we had to stop and stare.

We walked on to the Oyster dock and stood there as long as we could stand those nasty gnats that can be so tiresome that we have known people to decide living in the low country wasn’t worth dealing with the gnats.

On the walk back I stopped to take some pictures with my phone, one of which I sent to my grand daughter and said that we were visiting the Land of Oz.

She did not dispute it.

I look at this image, which I offer here … and I am not sure, what, which world I AM in.

If you are using your desktop you can view a full size image by clicking here …

I was reminded of the poem, Between Worlds, by Carl Sandburg …

And he said to himself
in a sunken morning moon
between two pines,
between lost gold and lingering green

I believe I will count up my worlds
There seem to me to be three
There is a world I came from which is Number One.
There is a world I am in now, which is Number Two
There is a world I go to next, which is Number Three

There was the seed pouch, the place I lay dark in, nursed and shaped in
a warm, red, wet cuddlmg place, if I tugged at a latchstring or
doubled a dimpled fist or twitched a leg or a foot, only the Mother knew

There is the place I am now, where I look back and
look ahead, and dream and wonder
There is the next place –

It was if all three worlds, the one I came from, the one am in now and the one I go to next, are all in the same place.

For an other other world, I offer the view in black and white.