Not Going Back

I see a lot of posts nostalgic for days gone by, say the early 70s. Wanna know what it was like? Try this for one day of what it was like before I was 16 years old:

- Better plan to try this when it is not summer - no air-conditioning for most people, not in your car either.

- Take your cell phone and find a spot on the wall where you might have a land line. Keep your phone on the counter next to that spot. You may use your phone, but you may not go more that four feet from your imaginary land line.

- No computer

- No social media

- No dishwasher - they started becoming more common in the later 70s. 

- You can watch broadcast TV (3 channels) and PBS

- Probably no remote control on TV - use your remote to walk up to the TV to simulate changing the channel each time you want to do so or adjust the volume

- No microwave

- If you want to take a photo, you need film, flashbulbs, and a camera that will take 12 bad photos and maybe one good one. You won't know this for a week though, because it takes that long to get the film developed.

- No ATM

- No automatic lights or Alexa

- No seatbelts. If you had a newer car, you might have had seatbelts but it wasn't until the 80-90s before we had seatbelt laws.

- For this one day, no email

- Music must be played either on a record player, radio, or cassette tape. You will be nervous if you try to record from the radio or copy a tape because you can be arrested for that.

- Research for school: you'll need to go to the library and use books.

- You can't drive your car more than 55 mph

- If you are in school, take the bus while it is still dark out. Teens didn't have cars.

And this is just a one day experiment of some things to simulate a day in the early 70s. These are just a few at-home conveniences. We could make another whole list about how pregnant women could be fired from their jobs, women likely not be able to get their own credit card or mortgage or business loan. How women could not access birth control or reproductive care. How LGBTQ+ people had no rights. How we, nationwide, treated people of color and other cultures and denied them their civil rights. How young men were being sent to die in a war we never should have been in. Young men, think of waiting for your number to be called and having no say if you want to go or not.

I challenge you to pretend for one day, in your own home, that it is early 1970s. But I also challenge you to think, while you are not on FB, of what we as Americans want for our future. Do you really want to go back to the "good old days"? I don't. There are lessons in the simplicity, but we aren't those people anymore. We are better than that.

Symbiosis

Yesterday, I noticed a bunch of insects on the backside of some sunflower leaves. Having never seen them before, I wondered if they are beneficial or invasive pests. I also saw that ants were climbing all over them and in a moment of misplaced empathy, felt sorry for them. Are the ants eating them alive?

That was, however, until I used Google Image search to find that these were Entylia carinata, or Keeled Treehoppers. Keeled Treehoppers and ants live in symbiosis. The ants "tend" both the nymphs and adults, providing housekeeping and also protection from predators in return for feeding on the sticky honeydew substance the treehoppers excrete. They help each other. Such a little thing, insects living together peacefully, helping each other. Neither are terrible pests to my flowers. If only the rest of the world could live in symbiosis.

Oh, and the adults look like little miniature sailing ships. Read more about them here.

'Shrooms

 

With all that has happened in 2020, you can't tell me you haven't considered the possibility of the end times and of having to forage in the woods to survive. Could we, would we, eat this mushroom or that berry if there was no Kroger? My natural curiosity is balanced with a healthy distrust of my knowledge of edible mushrooms. I found this clump of mushrooms along my daily walks with my mom and her dogs. Aside from the fact that mom's male dog regularly waters the bush under which this mushroom now grows, my research confirmed that I will not be sampling it. 

The "Picture This" app identifies it at Tricholomataceae or the Pale-Spore Mushroom. Googling, it seems some of the mushrooms in this classification are edible but "one thing you have to watch out for is the possibility that other [toxic] species of mushrooms could be mixed in with a fairy ring". Nope, not eating mushrooms that might be dancing with toxic mushrooms in a fairy ring.

The toxic mushroom to avoid is clitocybe dialata. In a fairy ring. Who, pray tell, named this mushroom? Huh? Really? Nope. Apparently, botanists have a sense of humor.

Closer to home, I did find "hen-in-the-woods" (which sounds considerably safer and tamer) in, of all places, the woods. It is a maitake mushroom and eaten around the world - but I'll wait to take that chance in the end times. 

hen-in-the-woods

Source of quote

Stay Safe

When COVID-19 quarantine started, people, strangers even, started saying something to me when I was out, "Stay safe." Stay safe. I know they really mean, "Stay healthy," right? As a mother, I have had some "stay safe" moments: the first time your child drives away solo with a new license, when your adult baby takes off to another country, when...well you know, something new or challenging.

I guess I'm always thinking about my children and praying for their safety, but I don't worry each time they leave our/their house that forgetting to signal a turn or going for a jog could result in their death. I don't worry that they'll be shot sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal. or while sleeping in their own damn bed I don't think every day, they could go out into that world and not come back all because of the color of their skin. I don't worry that they'll be falsely accused, detained, because of what they look like. We have that privilege.

Black Lives Matter - and before you say "All lives matter". Stop. Listen. I have challenges and heart stopping moments, too. I can talk and write about them another time. But we need to sit still and just absorb the message without answering back, hearing the pain, listening. It doesn't mean you condone violence or that you don't also have pain and need to be heard, but as long as you are talking, you aren't listening.

I am not going to white-splain what is going on - listen to the black voices. It isn't comfortable to hear the America they experience, but it is real. We don't need to "Make America Great Again". We need to make America Just. Listen, be still, and understand. Understand that Stay Safe carries more significance for our black and brown family, friends, and neighbors.

Things That Go Bump

It was several years after moving here before I figured out the sound. It didn't happen often. At first, I was sure that our old rough cat, Jack, was out skinning a rabbit. In the middle of the night, I would go out in my nightgown intent on saving whatever he was killing. I could never find him. Later, I mistakenly thought perhaps it was a small screech owl. Finally, I came to know that the awful sound was a fox, likely the mating call of a vixen. It is an eerie sound. 

I'm not afraid of the foxes. More than one season, we've had them make their den back by the creek. They are very territorial and bold. Sometimes, I came across one in our front yard staring at the front porch and all off our cats cornered there. I believe they finally left because Daisy killed a kit.

I'm even a bit cavalier about coyotes because I've only ever seen one on our property in the twenty-two years here. It was a loner, likely sick, chased off by the miniature horses and then, by me, as it headed to the hen house. But, I hear them at night, high pitched, at a safe distance. Two nights ago on the way to the barn, it was very dark. I heard them closer than ever I have. I have to admit it was a little hair raising and I might have picked up my step a bit. 

Most of the time here, I would walk anywhere in the dark without fear. I enjoyed the stars and the quiet. Even in my imagined safety, however, there were things out there. Had I been raised in the woods, likely I would have known these sounds. I had to figure them out. I could tell the new owners, but perhaps, I'll leave the joy of discovery to them.

Before

Living here made me feel "rich". Up on the hill, my gray Arab mare grazed peacefully. We are able to support two mini horses that do nothing but eat money. In the summer, our cats lazed on the driveway, doing their best imitation of an inch worm as they enjoyed the blacktop heat. Around us is a grove of pine trees and oaks that make me proud.

Murphy and I like to stand up on the hill watching the deer in the back of the property. It seems five live here now, three large mamas and two yearlings. I worry that the new owners will appreciate and not hunt them. While we always considered them "our" deer, we share them with the neighbors. Indeed, yesterday, we saw "our" deer join in their pasture with four more deer - the most I've seen in one spot at one time. During the snow, they came often closer than they normally would, looking for food.

I even worry over the birds here. My feeders outside the office are always full, the birds used to that location. The feeders, however, were given to me by my father and I plan to take them. The birds will have to fend for themselves. 

I am looking forward to our new adventure, all the while cognizant of that we leave behind. I will find nature where we go. Perhaps even, I will have more time to admire nature once we are settled. I won't "own" it, but then, whenever did I really?

Scraps of Our Lives

As I pack for moving (which will be another blog post entirely), I have hard decisions to make. When you've lived in a place for over 22 years, you accumulate a good number of things that "I might need some day" or "might some day be worth something" or in the case of my sugar Easter egg, something I just can't bring myself to discard.

I've cleaned out several houses after the owner passed on and you come across items, such as a dead locust in a box in my uncle's drawer, that begged the question, "what did this mean to him?" There was no note or description. The weight of my belongings is heavy on my shoulders and I don't want to pass this weight along someday to another generation.

The egg in question was given to me by my grandmother, Eleanor. Constructed of sugar, egg albumen, artificial flavorings and colors by Hooper's Confectioners, my guess then and now was that it was prettier to look at than to eat. I liked looking inside the hole at the end at the make-believe world of a little bunny.

Sadly, the jelly beans and the edges have started to brown, possibly mold. Time to retire it to the landfill. Apparently, they sell on eBay (without browning) for $8-$10. This packing could take a long time.