Welcome To the Club House

Elizabeth and I began married life in 1962 and soon and very soon
found ourselves living in Washington, DC in a single bedroom apartment
with no furniture and no money to buy much of anything. But that didn't
stop us from exploring our new environment. I remember the time we
decided to splurge and purchase a gallon of vanilla ice cream. We did,
and on the way back to our abode took the wrong exit off one of the
"traffic circles" and ended up traveling across the Potomac River into
Virginia with our precious ice cream melting. No matter . . . we turned
around somehow and came back to DC and then saw the Lincoln Memorial
straight ahead of us. It was incredible to see things we had only dreamed of.

Elizabeth and I stood at the bottom and gazed up the stairs at Lincoln as
our ice cream continued to melt. A little later that year, some good friends
from back home came to visit us! They had a small daughter and when we
took them to see the Lincoln Memorial, I will never forget their daughter
standing at the base of all those steps leading up to the statue of Lincoln and,
in a big voice, confidently reading a small wooden sign on the ground next
to her "WELCOME TO THE CLUBHOUSE."   (The sign actually read:
"Please Stay Off the Grass.")

To me it is amazing to realize that on the day after Christmas in 1862, good
old Abe Lincoln authorized 38 Dakota Sioux to be executed in Mankato,
Minnesota. It was, and remains to this day, the largest mass execution within
the borders of our homeland.

I'm not sure why I think of all this just one day after this year's Christmas. I
wonder how many descendants of those 38 souls choose to think of what
happened that day 151 years ago?

                 May peace and peace and peace be everywhere. 
                                                                              -The Upanishads  600 BC

GREAT GRAY OWL

A few seasons past, the lemming population in the Far North (like northern
Canada) had diminished and the Great Gray Owls fled south to find food.
The call went out from the "Rare Bird Alert" system of the Audubon Society
that lots of Great Gray Owls were to be seen in northern Minnesota and
Wisconsin. Elizabeth and I packed up our stuff (Elizabeth's cameras, our
maps, binoculars, bird guides, and car food) and headed north! We were
not disappointed . . .  the following is one of the poems that grew out of that
excursion.

                              GREAT GRAY OWL

                       She floats moth-like, then glides.
                           Plunges into crusted snow.
                     Curved beak, talons hidden among
                                      soft feathers.
                         She rises with a small rodent
                    extracted from its once secure tunnel.
                                 Betrayed by sound.

E v e n i n g S i m p l i c i t y

a falling snowflake

delicate, labyrinthine

a bed of oneness.



          (A haiku written while watching
            a gentle evening snowfall.)