Questions for Winter Oak Leaves

                                                             Winter is the season for
                                                              paying closer attention
                                                              to the commonplace.
                                                              Certain species of oak
                                                              trees retain their leaves
                                                              throughout the winter.


Brown leaves on silent trees,
why do you cling so tight?
Grasping the twigs that
gave you birth?

Through winter's icy grip
and punishing winds,
you stay - you persevere.
Did I hear you say
"we aren't done yet?"
Are you holding
your breath until spring?

What will signal
a lessoning of winter?
Clinking of falling icicles,
like chiming
of distant bells?

Come spring,
buds, surprised by warmth,
will swell beneath you.
Your dry leaves must
release and fall.
Announcing
to the warming earth -

     let go, breathe,
     make way for
     the new, aware
     of beauty
     in the present.

                                      -Clem Nagel


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                           "Comment" at the bottom)

The Year Ahead!

The sun streams in through my study windows this morning . The sky is blue after weeks of being grey or white as the snow. Christmas celebrations are almost over. My mind goes to the year ahead.

In my younger days, the new year started in September. Graduate school and decades of teaching organized the cycle of life in our household. Armed with pristine notebooks, every year at least one member of our family headed off to school. Oh how I loved those notebooks - clean slates waiting to be filled!

It took a long time before my internal clock began to reset - rather like jet lag after a long trip across many time zones. For now at least, my internal rhythm feels in sync with the need to write 2011 instead of 2010, when a date is needed.

I think part of that shift within me has to do with the cultural realities in which I live. Major shifts in the political balance in this country emphasize that this is a new time. My sense is that this country teeters on the edge of fear and despair on one side and resilience and determination on the other side. Despite terrible personal losses for many due to the Great Recession, there is the glimmer that comes when the sun rises - and a person rolls over and says "huh, in spite of it all, I am still here" Still alive.

Whatever motivated voters in the voting booth in November, the result was a massive revolt. It would be easy to attribute the changes to movement toward the right or an embrace of Republican or Tea Party ideology. But perhaps when the legislative process resumes in January, people will sit back and say "huh, look what we did." What power we had at a time when we were feeling so powerless.

My hope is that this new sense of power will be used not to pursue of particular political agendas. Ideology does not put food on the table, provide for people's health, or give them meaningful work. With our new found power, what else can we do to get our lives and our country back on track?

On paper, it looks like a Republican country. But the reality is that Tea Party is not synonymous with Republican. Good luck, John Boehner with herding cats! Just as lack of unity in the Democratic party made for some interesting dynamics for Democratic leaders - including the President.

I love a good political discussion as much as anyone. However, my personal life is about relationships with friends, family and colleagues. Taking care of my health. Planning my garden for the spring. Having the financial resources to pursue a creative life. Concern for others who do not have what they need - here and around the world. It is not political ideas that feed my daily life. And I suspect the same is true of everyone.

Happy New Year means something special! It's pristine notebooks waiting to be filled!

Important Snowpocalyptic Questions

The recent snow has been called a number of things besides mega-storm - even before the Vikings' Metrodrome collapsed.. Two of my favorites are snowmageddon and snowpocalypse. What ever the name given to it, life did slow down for a few days.

The following piece of poetry came to me during that time. What else would a poet do when going somewhere, anywhere is impossible!

 When I was a child, we used to dig holes as deep as we could. We were trying to dig a hole all the way to the other side of the earth. An impossible task, but children often don't know the meaning of impossible.


Important Snowpocalyptic Questions
From the Effects of Being Housebound

Do things fall out of people’s pockets,
who live on the other side of the world?
After all, if you find a big hole
dug straight through and peer into it,
you would see the soles of their feet.

To find nesting places in trees,
do birds fly upside down
on the other side of the world?
Or do they fly right side up
as they do here, peering
into clouds for soft places
to lay eggs and raise their babes?

Instead of choosing blue,
are leaves on trees green,
because they want to match grass?
If leaves were blue, it would mean
looking up through trees,
and not being able to tell blue sky
from a thick crop of leaves.

Does snow fall sideways
in a blizzard because it surveys
the landscape, searching to find
the best places to land?
And does ice hold tight to roads
so it won’t slide away
into heaps of plowed snow?

If your brain did not invert what
your eyes actually see,
would you walk around believing
everything was upside down?
Your feet in the air with your head
scraping along on the ground?

Like people who live
on the other side of the world,
with hands holding tight to pockets,
not wanting stuff to fall out.

Snow! More Snow!

For all practical purposes, we are snowbound! At times, I can't see the houses across the street through the swirling snow. The wind howls around the corners of our house and through the evergreens. Birds are flocking to the bird feeders. The watchful squirrel already has made off with the extra waffle Clem tosses outside for him - or her.

My photographer's heart itches to be out taking pictures. I console myself that this snow will not make for good images, because the wind will not let it remain where it falls. And I marvel at a sky as white as the snow. Strange how we have built in automatic responses, dependent on where in the world we live. When people here are asked the color of the sky, the first response that comes is blue. Grass is green, even though the ornamental grasses that stand all winter are subtle shades of brown. Such assumptions we live with - to reassure ourselves of the earth's stability.

I am grateful for my own warm home and a pantry stocked with options. Being able to simply enjoy this blast of cold and snow from the north. But I can't forget not everyone is so fortunate. My heart goes out to those who are homeless in this fierce weather. My ever present hope that there will come a time when everyone has the basics of life. And only the young at heart fall down laughing in snow drifts.

Lake Superior Snowfall

Lake Superior Snowfall

In the stillness -

a raven calls.

Early morning

snowflakes descend

gently.

Arms interlock to

knit networks of

jewel-lace

blankets.

Slight

puffs of air

pilfer

myriads of

connections.

Crystalline hush

of snowflakes melt

seamlessly into

leaden lake.

Stillness merges

with quiet moments

of unity.

From: Listen for the Silence: A Walk

                  Through the Natural World

                             by Clem Nagel


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 "comment" at the bottom)

Travel Anyone?

Yes? Have a yen to travel somewhere? You might want to take a look at the world weather map . . .

Let's see. Yesterday, Paris was paralyzed with snow. The Panama Canal was closed due to excessive rain. And a small cruise ship was disabled by a rogue wave and fierce winds in the Drake Passage at the southern tip of South America. The disabled ship is now limping toward Ushuaia, where the temperature is 39 degrees - in the middle of summer. Today, Europe's snow has moved east into Germany, closing airports and cancelling flights. Last week Venice was flooding - again. Pack hip waders.

Been to those places . . .

Closer to home, last week the Buffalo, New York snow trapped people on freeways for hours. Followed by more heavy snow yesterday in upper New York. The weather forecast for this weekend is for a monster snowstorm from the Midwest to the east coast, stretching from the eastern Appalachians into Quebec. Pack warm clothes, emergency gear, and snow shovel.

No thank you. A couple of Holiday parties close to home sounds like a much better idea.

And who can forget Iceland's volcano and its disruption of European travel last spring. The one with the name they tried to teach me to pronounce when I was there. Or the earthquakes in Chile just days after I returned from there.

Then there are the plane flights. Not a week goes by without some "incident." The small dog who got loose, and ran up and down the aisle biting several people. Planes diverted because of unruly passengers. Fights between passengers. Unidentified parcels that cancel flights. The debate about whether it is a right "to recline one's seat." Or plain rude. Women who go through security in bikinis (come on men, where are your spandex swim trunks?). I won't even mention what passes for food.

Right now, a cup of hot chocolate in front of the fireplace with Rick Steves' book, Travel as a Political Act, sounds good to me. With a stack of travel DVDs handy.

Making a Case For Social Media

Everyday, it seems like I read another article about how Facebook, cellphones, and the Internet are ruining humanity. Perhaps the people writing most of these articles are too young to remember the "olden days." The days of party-lines before the term landline even was invented. When finding answers to your questions involved going to the library and using the card catalog. Writing letters (to one person at a time) - and waiting for them to be delivered - was the best way to communicate with someone at a distance. And then wait for a response. When people were only concerned with what happened in their neighborhood or their town.

Yes, today's instant connections can swallow up a person's time. But it is like blaming alcohol for people's addiction to it. Prohibition was a notable failure - as was making abstinence made a religious premise. Learning habits to regulate one's time spent on-line is as essential as learning that consuming excessive alcohol is a poor idea. Too much of anything is a poor idea.

When I go lunch and look around me, I see people eating alone on their lunch breaks - and chatting away on their cell-phones. I think, go for it, because there was a time in the past where phoning someone meant finding one of those phones attached to the wall with an umbilical cord.

When I sit down at my computer in the morning, news of world events is just a click away. My image of the world as a globe has shrunk and includes places that do matter to me and the rest of humanity.

When I check my Facebook account, I know some of what is going on today among my family's and friend's lives here and far away. A time-consuming task if I was limited to a landline phone and letters.

When I am writing and want to know something, I can search the Internet, rather than put down my pen, get in my car and drive to a library. And hope the book I want is not checked out.

When I use my credit card or bank account, I can track my purchases, checks and deposits. Rather than waiting for the end of the month to discover problems. And it has made it much easier to budget my finances.

When a family member (or me) buys a family member a gift they want, we can send that info out to the rest of the family - rather than multiple gifts to be returned after the holidays.

Perhaps you get my point?

The problem is not that all these tools are bad for us, like eating a whole bag of my daughter's Christmas toffee all at once. It is learning to use them well.

Have a guilt-free time on your computer today - and know when to stop. A face-to-face lunch with friends will never be replaced by the clicking of the keys in front of me.

The Verdict Is In

It is clear that the snow-season has arrived. And it is not likely to go away soon. Trees are laden with white fluffy clumps. The temperature is below zero. Cars move with caution (at least most of them).

I remember in my younger adult years how excited I was when enough snow fell that I could play outside in it. Skiing, snowshoeing, sledding down big hills. And flopping down in an undisturbed place and making snow angels - even if it meant getting snow down my neck and my boots. Brrrrr . . . !

It's not like life in San Diego or Costa Rica. Instead, the seasons here are clearly marked by change. I reflect upon my own life asking whether I live out of a Midwestern pattern of changes or in a perpetual springtime. I would say the changing pattern of seasons describes my life.
How about your life? Too often we think a good life consists of stable periods marked by temporary transitions. Normal is living on one big flat-topped mesa - and to get to another mesa requires a lot of vigorous effort.

I'd rather think of life as a process of continual and unexpected changes. I invite a few of those changes. But most of the changes in my life seem to pop up out of nowhere. I never expected to teach poetry-making or be a writer. Photography was just something that everyone did when they traveled somewhere. Nor did I think I would travel so extensively over five continents, see icebergs up close, or round Cape Horn.

And every bit of it has changed me. Just like snow transforms my summer garden into a fairyland.

I watch the snow fall outside and reminded of a cat who once owned the house in which we lived. We used to let him outdoors - before we decided the practice was neither healthy for him nor for the birds and chipmunks. When it would rain, he would look out the front door. His dissatisfaction was quite evident Then he would  go look out the back door to see it was raining there too. No such luck.

I have had the same feeling this past week - wanting to check if there is snow both in the front and the back.

For right now, the verdict is in. Snow is falling everywhere outside. It is seriously winter.

Steadfast

First lasting snow.                          

Two cranes remain

in their summer home.

Our garden offers

secluded safety

among the trees.

There they are.

Quietly standing by

a small freezing pond.

They will carry

the snow's weight

throughout winter.

Their presence

     feeds our souls.

                                                                            

            (Comments are welcome! . . . just poke the word "Comment" at
                 the bottom)