Little Happy Moments

Mostly I use this blog to reflect and recollect about things that I have experienced. A great deal of my focus for these pieces comes from looking backward. Wistfulness, bitterness, gauzy memories these are the things that I set down in what I write. Today I want to look sideways.

Good things have happened of late. I have reason for joy in my life. Joy no matter how small must be savored and celebrated.

For whatever reason my oldest son, the one that is ASD is doing well in school. The first marking period has passed and he has an A – average. I understand this could be better, but it is far better than what it was last year. It makes me really, really happy to see him excel. He also seems to be getting into the rhythm of dealing with other people. He still does not want to look people in the eyes but he can make some small talk working off a rudimentary script he has internalized.

These are good things, real good things.

Last night I received my election certificate in the mail. An election certificate comes in the mail to verify that the post you sought has been obtained. Why I ran is God’s own mystery but run I did. To come out on top is really a unique feeling. It wasn’t like I got a mandate I won my less than 2% of the vote but I won. This too is good.

While the giddiness over each of these things will not last, I am happy for now.

Winter Photo as Poetry

 

Winter light poured over a cold landscape as I walked home this night. Silently the trees around me reached up against the darkening sky. As I glance skyward through these bare branches I was adrift in memory. Stopping I set my camera on the ground and I snapped the picture above.

When I was eighteen I loved an album cover with one bare tree upon it. While I never bought the album the band who made it became one of my favorites. The title was From the Witchwood. For years I assumed the title was From the Winterwood. My guess as the why of this has to do with my myopia and because of the bareness tree on the spare two tone album jacket. Only recently was I disabused of that notion when I decided to look the disk up and give it a listen. To me the Winterwood will always remain part of the title. It was apt to my mindset at the time. Michigan was the Winterwood.

The album cover’s fascination for me had more to do with my arriving in this north country inexperienced in the ways of winter as opposed to anything else. To me winter started in mid to late December and was done mostly by mid March or April 1 at the latest. That year, my first year here the time was not long before the autumn of late September turned into the Winterwood of late, late November. Golden leaves gone the spidery fingers of the trees reached up into the dark sky. They looked a great deal like the image on that LP.

No fear rose in me when I looked at those webs of wood woven skyward. Instead I saw the art of life. It was not long before I saw the beauty of black and grey branches coated with white crisp snow. The Winterwood was not something troubling or scary. It was instead part of life’s gallery of beauty.

East Lansing's Response to WBC

C3173@aos-sharp.com_20101117_091134[1]

Tournament Helpful Info

I looked up the rink based on the pamphlet for the tournament.

Here is the link and here are directions to the rink from the hotel.

http://www.arcticicearena.com/



Country Inn & Suites Edit

18315 la Grange Rd, Tinley Park, IL 60487 - (708) 444-4384

United States



1. Start out going NORTH on LA GRANGE RD/US-45 N toward 183RD ST/ORLAND PKWY. 2.9 mi

2. Turn LEFT onto W 159TH ST/US-6. 1.5 mi

3. Turn LEFT onto 108TH AVE. 0.1 mi

4. Turn LEFT onto 160TH ST. 0.2 mi

5. 10700 160TH ST is on the LEFT.


Arctic Ice Arena 10700 160th St, Orland Park, IL 60467 - (708) 403-4231

Hard Wired

Walking to the bus stop the other day I found myself whistling/singing David Crosby/Graham Nash’s Wind on the Water. Penned many years ago the song decries humankind’s hunting of whales to the brink of extinction. Why this song over twenty years old is stuck in my head I really can’t say. Couplets about whale meat being used for ephemera such as lipstick and the like really shouldn’t be the default song in my personal RAM. Animal rights activism has not been a hall mark of my life, take kibbee for example.

There are other songs in the rapidly accessed storage portion of my brain. Most of them however are Merle Haggard songs. There is Momma Tried, God’s Own Singer and Sing me Back Home and they crop up all the time. Wind on the Water has an incredible hook. Still there should be for any number of reasons a hundred other songs that should be hard wired into my head.

I mean I get to some extent the why of the Haggard songs being stuck in my head. There are trains, mama, a misspent life and remorse at death woven into each one. About sums up the rural American experience that I wanted to believe was to be my life when I was fourteen or fifteen. Life did not head that way for me. My life is not rural and I am not in jail, mom is dead but my life has not been totally wasted. Still I get the mythology that keeps those songs inside me. What I don’t get is why Wind on the Water is there.

Maybe it was some lass that had it on a LP when I was in those psyche molding years of undergraduate studies and my infatuation with her wove the words and music into my mind. Maybe it is the real lure the ocean, the Atlantic Ocean holds for me that keeps it close. Sunset behind and the moon rising the water is always my image of my chosen home.

I assume other people have hard wired musical memories. I wonder what they are. Here’s another one….

Autumn

 

Autumn is the best time of the year. Today I stopped for a moment and noticed Mid-Michigan is well into fall. With the demands of parenting the time just seems to fly by. As I walk I pray for a few quiet moments of awareness. I look into the blue sky and I know it will not be this way for long. Still and warm the morning snow cannot be far off.
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On the Capitol lawn the maples are gold and red. The red one I looked at was well past prime. About half the leaves had fallen. But there was an organic beauty to appreciate in what I saw. Life and it cycles.

1974-2010, 36 years I have watched this place as it changed from summer to fall and then onto to spring. There is a serene beauty in the maples that I will never comprehend. Maybe it is serenity I will never comprehend.

The sound track for this world is not George Winston, although his Autumn is a great disc to get laid by, or it was when I was in my late 20s. Me I am listening to a deep rhythmic groove called The Ghetto by Donny Hathaway. Deep vocals and kind of a mild afro Cuban feel and I keep stride in the wonder of golden autumn.

Beflore the Light

 

When I am just about to walk in to pick up my morning caffeine this is the view I see. I won’t see it much longer because they are moving my office to a strip mall. Glancing down toward the east it is a typical urban view. Glass, bricks and concrete create a street canyon that leads straight to the river. I have been turning and opening the door at this store for a decade. Soon that repetitive act will end and the canyon will be a memory for me.

The manager of the coffee shop is a close friend. He too will be leaving soon. His wife will be taking employment somewhere else and he will follow. My conversations over the years with both he and his staff have been some of the most fun I have had. In a few weeks the canyon will remain but the world I have known there will be gone. Like a real canyon the place will be empty to me except for the wind blowing ever eastward.