'No Man is an Island'

The mighty Pacific

No Man is an Island

No man is an island
Entire of itself
Every man is a piece of the continent
A part of the main
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were.
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
                                -John Donne
               

When my college English classes read this poem, I always asked them if it was possible to mourn for everyone we heard about who had died.  They didn't think so or we would be constantly overcome by grief.

In John Donne's day (1572-1631) mourning most likely was contained to those known in the community.  Life spans were shorter and disease was rampant.  Simpler maybe, but still painful.

With our ability to hear news from around the world at any moment of the day, there is more to tug at our heartstrings.  In December when first graders were shot and killed in Newtown, Connecticut, the minute I saw it on the news I started to wail.  I could not stop the tears and the dreadful feeling of grieving consumed me for days.  As a teacher I wondered how something so horrific could happen in a school.  Even though I remembered Columbine, this seemed so much worse.

So many people like to express their rights as Americans.  Is there a time where one person's rights end and another's rights begin?  Do children deserve to lose their lives because someone has the right to own a gun? 

If those who are strong gun rights's advocates feel their gun rights are more important than a child's life or any innocent person caught in the cross hairs, they need to acquaint themselves with Donne's words.  If a person believes that their rights supersede the welfare of the whole than the last line of Donne's poem is apt, just as it is fitting for those of us who mourn....Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

In The Cool of the Morning

I took my breakfast to the deck where I could be wrapped in morning cool.  I sipped my coffee and listened to the bird songs which were prolific.  The sun and shade made patterns on the front yard.

Was someone shaking cherries?  I heard the hum of machinery in the distance.
The creek was lightly gurgling in the background.  There was a simplicity to it all, yet a great complexity.  In the back of my mind is always the question of who are we and how can we understand the life that surrounds us?

Too much thinking for a beautiful July morning.  The car door slammed and my husband was home from early golfing.  Time to start the day. 

 

The Sound of Silence

The house is quiet as the city cousins left to go back home and the country cousins are away for the day.  Grandpa and Grandma's summer camp is closed for another year and the silence is deafening. 







Avery age 8, Bella age 9, Adrianna age 11, Jay age 11 and Carter age 6 gear up for Grandpa and Grandma's summer camp.



Summer camp starts on July 4th when the city cousins Adrianna and Bella come up to stay for a week in the country.  Their three country cousins, Jay, Avery and Carter live within spitting distance of Grandpa and Grandma so there is constant going back and forth, but most of the time the five are at G & G's house.

I just saw a quote on Pinterest which said, "Grandmas...The place cousins go to become best friends."  There is a great deal of truth in that, but in our case Grandpa is also an important part of the scenario.  Bella and Avery pair up and are often seen taking a walk together and chatting.  That leaves Jay and Adrianna who are a day apart in age and Carter who is the youngest.  Adrianna has endeared herself to Carter as she allows him to tag along with her and Jay.

        Bella and Avery are like two peas in a pod as they get ready to watch July 4th fireworks.




Now lest you think this is just a fun free for all, let me set the record straight.  There is a combination of work and play although the play dominates. 

This year the week started out in the basement of our old barn.  I wanted it cleaned out in order to store my accumulated furniture pieces that need to be repurposed and much work had to be done. 


Carter gives Adrianna a hug to show how much
he loves her. 













The basement of our old barn gets a thorough cleaning with the help of five grandchildren. 












The morning was similar to an archaeological dig. Bits and pieces of the past were found in boxes, on the floor and under old pieces of stacked wood.  The constant sound of "Grandma....Grandma...Grandma...look at this.  What is it?  What was it used for?"....echoed through the musty space.  The pieces would be examined and identified and then stacked on a table designated for the treasures.  Very little was pitched in the junk pile.  Old pieces of iron were put in a rusty bucket.  There was much sweeping and organizing.

One rainy morning the children needed some work to do so I typed up a list of chores and the grandchildren army went to work.  In less than an hour the house was cleaned.

Between work sessions all five made up a game that I allowed and only peeked in on a couple of times.  In an upstairs bedroom they spread out my jewelry and with old monopoly money were buying and selling.  This literally kept them busy for hours on two different days.  I never knew what the rules were but there was a banker and sometimes they had to have jewelry sales to make some money to buy more.  When they were finished they put everything back in place.

In the middle of the week they worked an hour for their uncle/father in the woods.  While he cut the wood, they stacked it in the trailer.  They each made $4.  I paid them for their work in the barn and cleaning the house and when they went to Pentwater before going to the beach they had money to spend.


The following day we all went bike riding and rode from Shelby to Country Dairy where there is great ice cream.  Uncle Brett ordered a pizza which was eaten after dessert and we all, Grandpa and Aunt Heather included, biked back to Shelby.  Afternoons were spent in the pool and Grandpa fed them all well no matter which grandchildren were here for the meal. The country cousins often came down for Grandpa's breakfast.

           Above: Carter only posed for this picture on a trike.  He rode a two wheeler on the bike trail. Below:  Carter does an impressive cannon ball into the pool while Adrianna looks on with amusement.  
                                 

This kind of summer camp is not for the faint of heart.  If someone is a neat freak, it would drive them crazy.  Piles of shoes and sandals and flip flops were everywhere.

Despite repeated reminders to hang bathing suits and towels on the deck railing, they were often found wadded in piles.  Just plain stuff was everywhere and even after a cleaning spree, the clutter reappeared.  Toothbrushes littered the sink as one or two of the country cousins slept over at Grandpa and Grandma's house almost every night. 

So for a week I looked the other way, and enjoyed the camaraderie of my grandchildren who are growing like weeds.  I know there will come a time when the sound of silence will be a sad thing for me.  Now it is just a reprieve until the next time we hold summer camp and the city cousins and country cousins can get together and entertain their grandparents with their funny comments, loving natures and yes little spats. 

 

Click on pictures to enlarge.

Cherry Pickin' Time

My mother's record for cherry picking was 22 lugs.  That was when she was a young woman.  My record was eight and I only achieved that once or twice in my picking career.  That will give you an idea of why my mother was always a bit disgusted with my cherry picking ability.

I started young, at around five, when my mother took my sister, brother and me with her to her uncle's farm to pick.  The season usually began shortly after the fourth of July.  When I was five I was required to get 1/2 lug in the morning and then in the afternoon I could go into the farmhouse with my younger sister while she took a nap.

The farm would have been a great place if cherry picking was not involved.  During the lunch hour we were allowed into the barn to play in the hay.  The aroma of the new hay and the fun of jumping off the bales is a fond memory.  At the end of the season, which usually lasted two weeks, my mother's cousin Emily fixed a great picnic lunch for everyone.  It included hamburgers, potato salad, lemonade and wonderful desserts.

We were paid 50 cents a lug at my mother's uncle's farm and it may have gone up to a dollar in my early teen years, but I don't recall as I made only enough to buy a few school clothes.   A lug was a wooden box of a certain size that I now sometimes see in antique stores.  I find it amusing when I see them as I wouldn't be caught dead buying one.  Yet I have seen them sell.  We used a picking pail that was hooked onto straps that went over our shoulders.  They were always stinky and sticky.  On bigger trees we had to haul ladders around to get to the tops of the trees.

In later years we picked cherries for my Uncle Tom.  There were cousins and other kids from town who joined the crew.  Here's where my picking problem started because expectations were higher.  I liked to pick on the same tree with my cousin Susie.  Susie was a good talker and I would sit on my ladder and listen to her while I picked slowly.  Soon Susie would be emptying her bucket and mine wouldn't even be half full.  She could always pick two lugs to my one and sometimes she was even faster than that.  My mother thought she would encourage me along when she said, "I don't know why you can't pick like Susie."  Her words never made me faster.

When boredom hit mid afternoon there was often a cherry fight.  My brother was a good one for hitting someone with a cherry and then the battle was on. Usually it was stopped by an adult who could hear the shrieks and laughter.  The discussion that always went on in the orchard was the wish for someone to invent a cherry picking machine.  We thought my uncle might have some ideas and we always dreamed it would be ready for the next season.  It never happened in my cherry pickin' lifetime.

I must admit though that the most fun was picking the "Lake Farm" which my Uncle Tom owned close to Lake Michigan.  It was a young orchard and we didn't have to use ladders to pick.  We could walk from tree to tree and if the trees were loaded we got our lugs easily.  That is where I set my record of eight.

At the end of the day if it was really hot we might get to go to my aunt and uncle's cottage on Lake Michigan which was just down the road from the cherry orchard.  If we could end the day with a swim in the big lake we were happy.  Even though I disliked picking cherries as a kid I think it beat what my husband had to do when he was young......hoe beans!

 

 

 

 

 

A delightful corner of the world

Sometimes in life we stumble upon a place that draws us back to visit again.  Such was our encounter with Reit im Winkl, Germany.  The village is tucked
geographically into a corner close to Austria.

As a birthday present to myself I requested that we stay two nights in 2010.  It was the second time we had been in this small town and I wanted to do more exploring.  Charming is a little too glib for this place as it was beyond that.

Summer and fall are not the high seasons there, but winter and skiing.  That made it all the more delightful because in September it was not overrun with tourists.

There are many places to spend the night from guest houses to hotels to bed and breakfasts.  We chose the Edelweiss, a name hard to resist.  We had stayed in this small hotel before and loved the atmosphere and the sunny breakfast room.  This time we got the room at the top of the hotel under the slanted roof.  It was a three story climb to the top, but after we had dragged our suitcases up, we were glad for the view.

 

The town is surround by meadows with streams coming down from the higher hills and mountains.  Flower boxes abound and one can not miss the feeling of everything German.  One of our favorite restaurants has a massive green tiled stove in the center and we've enjoyed several wonderful meals there.

 

On this second visit though we discovered a restaurant that had once been a lodge in the mountains but had been moved to the center of a small meadow walking distance from Reit im Winkl.  We ate lunch on the deck.  When we went back at night for dinner, a dog came and sat on a bench by me on the inside of the restaurant.  Dogs are welcome in many European restaurants if they are well behaved and we've never seen one that wasn't.

 

 

One evening we started walking up a hill and discovered a small park.  One part of it was designated for foot relief.  There was a wading pool filled with cold mountain water to give one's feet special treatment.  The following day we followed walking paths that led to small streets with vacation houses decorated with many flowers. We circled back through a meadow

 

On another walk out we saw a guest house, the Alpenrose, that we knew we had to return to someday.  Again the street led us to a path through a meadow.  We were never far from the Edelweiss. 

 

 

Four years previous to this trip I had noticed at the Edelweiss a lovely teapot used at breakfast that had the name of the hotel on it.  I asked Frau Bichler, who owned the hotel with her family, if she would be willing to sell me one.  She said not at that time, but if I returned in four years they would be getting new china and maybe then.  Well, it was four years later and I asked if they had gotten their new china.  She told me no, but it was to come in another month.  I once again asked if she would sell a teapot and she seemed happy to oblige me.  I was thrilled.

Reit im Winkl is a paradise for someone who just wants to relax, hike, eat a good meal, ski in the winter and enjoy the ambience of a small town that sits in a lovely area of Germany.  If we ever return, there is a guest house on a hill calling our names.  Perfect peaceful place. It's a corner of the world worth putting on anyone's bucket list.



                                         Click on pictures to enlarge.   



               

                            

 

 

 

Silhouette Children

Silhouette Children

Backlit children
Bouncing over
Waves of power
And movement

Dancing up and
Down as
Currents
Push and pull
Small firm bodies

Sunlight sparkling
On heads washed
In droplets of
Frothy water
Rushing

Silhouettes all
Against moment
And memory
I watch in
Wonder

                -Joan Ramseyer


               
                      

Windows and Doors

If I were an artist I would be painting small vignettes....flowers in pots, birds perching on branches, interesting doors and small children.  But because I still draw stick figures and square houses as I did when I was five years old, I'm thankful for photography.

Without an artist's touch but with an artist's eye I have noticed that one of the outstanding things about houses in Europe are the window boxes.  They are like snowflakes, no two alike.  Sometimes there are shutters or ironwork or some decoration that adds to the beauty of the flowers spilling over the edges of the boxes. 

Europeans tend to have window boxes everywhere.  Germany and Austria are my favorite countries to photograph boxes that go from the rustic to the elegant.  I never have to look far as flowers overflowing window boxes are around every corner.  I am always captured by the color combinations that are used.

On the other hand, doors can be equally as beautiful.  Many that I take shots of are old and heavy.  Beautiful simple wooden doors or ornate with unusual colors always catch my eye.

Copenhagen, Denmark

Tallinn, Estonia

Going into a place through something beautiful and looking out of a window with flowers at its base are what captures my spirit.  Beauty can be in such ordinary things and it is up to us to see it. In Europe that kind of thing can hardly be missed.                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

                                                    Reit im Winkl, Germany



                                                                               Prague, Czech Republic                                                                                              





Flower boxes in Germany

Click on pictures to enlarge.