Music and Books

Isabelle bought Owl City.  We listen to it a lot.  It has that 80’s disco/synth sound, but with dynamics!  Remember Jean Michel Jarre ? I think I got rid of his albums this year.  They went to the book sale.  That and disco music is what Owl City music reminds me of.  Lots of layers with dynamics.

But the lyrics!  They are fun.  They are witty. They bear listening over time.  For pop music, a definite plus.

The Fireflies song in particular made me cry when brother Jay was declining. The part about dreaming the world stood still.  I was wishing it would.

Planet Narnia was such a wonderful book I bought it.  Medieval cosmology in Lewis’ Narnia series “discovered” by PhD student Michael Ward.  He invented a new word,  “donegality”,  to express the use of an atmospheric (pun) motif throughout a story without the author directly indicating its use.

Soon after that, friend Amy told me about Eifelheim, by another Michael, M. Flynn.  This book also has to do with medieval cosmology, though in a more science fiction way.  A great, great sci-fi story about alien first contact.  Back in the 1300’s in Germany.  During the plague.  When Christianity was the European worldview.

Ah, Angela is here.

 

News Flash

With Isabelle sitting on a bucket below his stand, Jay shot this nine-point buck about an hour and a half ago.  The buck was not in the right place for Isabelle to take the shot.

I saw lots of gray and red squirrels, a screeching hawk and heard a Very Large Owl.

Isabelle wanted this shot.  The deer was difficult to get in the truck with three of us working at it.  Jay thinks it weighs about 180 pounds gutted.

 

 

Four with One Shell

The Saturday my brother died, Jay went out hunting in the morning and got four geese with one shot.

 

Extended TDY

No family likes it when their soldier son, husband, brother, nephew goes TDY (tour of duty).  The separation is oh-so-noticeable.  My brother was an adventurous sort, though.  He loved to travel, and travel he surely did.  This final tour, the extended one, I imagine he will be doing what he did, what he loved to do,  his whole professional career: going on ahead, preparing the way for the safe, secure embarkation and arrival of others.

The sharp new tang of this, his last departure, tends to encroach and overwhelm the reality of the necessity to keep on keeping on.  I need to remind myself of my own duty here.  He surely would remind me, in tones and words not subtle or especially kind.

As I age and friends and family leave me behind, 1 Corinthians 15 has become for me much more vivid, real, and affirming.

John Sackett III is much more able now to perform his duty than ever he was here.  The perishable has become imperishable; the mortal, immortal.

A Fighting Man

“John’s Bar and Grill” is how my brother answered his phone last night.  The phone near his bed where he is hooked up to oxygen and a breathing machine in the new hospice in Tucson.

To our shame, my husband and I found it remarkable that brother Jay is so positive and upbeat.  He is a career military man, a soldier.  No warrior gives up; he fights the enemy to his last breath.  Jay is being a true soldier.

Stout heart won fair lady.  His wife Rose is determined, focused, loving, thinking only of her husband.  She shows up for him dressed as if going to a wedding or a fancy dinner party.  Hair, makeup, dress, high heels, jewelry.  She also is positive and upbeat in his presence.  She is a wife worthy of a warrior. She will not have her man fighting his last battle thinking he married a wimp.  She is there to support and encourage, to stand beside him.

Jay’s military buddies have been coming by to see him.  They talk about work, not about the obvious.

Jay is thinking of life, of others, of his duty.  His situation and attitude  resemble battle scenes written by Kipling about British soldiers pinned down by overwhelming enemy forces in India.  There is not a word of self-pity, regret, no bemoaning fate, no blaming other people or God.  What Jay presents is cheerful steadfastness while doing what God has set before him to do.

God Bless him.

October Snow Beauty

We just started eating a locally grown watermelon, some of us eating more than others:

Then yesterday, after the morning turkey hunt and violin lesson and lunch, as Jay and Isabelle were leaving to go squirrel hunting (she shot two), Jay said “It is so cold for October.  This whole month has been cold.  There has been so little sun.”  While they were gone it started snowing–but nothing stuck.

Last night, as I got ready for bed, the infrequent car driving by the house had a deadened, dull sound that in this latitude is an aural indicator of snowfall.

And sure enough this morning we woke to

Looking towards the blueberries

Looking at the (formerly) tall perennials

The blueberries had to be shaken to remove the heavy, slightly ice-crusted snow;  many of the bushes still have leaves.

Walking up back, Hawthorne spent most of his time snuffing for voles in the snow-covered fallow field.  The sight of  the woods line and hedgerows of trees still in their metallic colors capped with snow  immediately reminded me of the highly crafted artwork or jewelry of finely colored metals worked by repousse and chased with silver.

Often, it is clear to me how artists gathered ideas for their creations from Creation.

The Turkey Trot

No, not the dance; I am referring to the 19 minute hunt Jay took less than an hour ago which resulted in him bringing home another 10+ pound hen turkey and busting up the rest of the flock for the morning’s hunt.

The evidence:

As you see, Hawthorne was quite taken with her.

Here is the goose girl’s goose:

And another:

It is not just her.  It is familial.