Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Unplanned Solution
I thought it would be so simple. Just drop my camera off at the shop to be sent out for cleaning. However, my plan was dashed the very moment I removed the trusty old Nikon from my pocket. Without a hint of hesitation, the clerk informed me there was no repairing this model. In today’s economy, it is cheaper to simply replace it.
This means that my Nikon is basically a disposable camera. That’s just wrong.
Of course, I won’t throw it away. There must be some use for it, even in a world where cell phones are more often used as cameras than for calls.
Admittedly, I tend to rely on my pocket camera more than my phone out of a sense of protection for the phone. I’m more willing to risk the camera to the harsh elements and risky handholds many situations present than I am my phone.
What could I do? I bought a new pocket camera built to withstand the abuse to which I expose them. This go-round I have chosen the Olympus Tough TG-6.
I’m looking forward to the macro mode feature it offers. After I charged the battery last night, the first picture taken was of the reflection of our old Hays family lamp I saw on the surface of the granite countertop below.
I was intrigued that the “auto” mode chose to focus on the image being reflected and not on the actual counter surface.
I look forward to getting to know this camera better and using it to capture a new level of filled-frame images, among the myriad other visuals that tend to catch my attention.
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Feels Colder
We’re growing soft with all these above freezing days in winter. More than one person told me how cold it felt yesterday even though temperatures were in the upper twenties. That’s above average for this week in January.
It did feel cold to me, which just seems wrong. It’s as if our blood isn’t making the usual adjustments for winter with so many warm days.
Normally cold temperatures serve as the winter reference point such that we end up leaving jackets unzipped when it warms up to the 30s because it feels so warm.
The up and down toggle around the freezing point is messing with our snow cover. Cyndie gave me some pictures that look a little like the moonscape.
It was a result of the snow dropping off tree branches onto the ground below.
The snow gets soft during the day and the sun pushes down on any dark spots on the surface. Overnight, it freezes again to lock oddities in place. That keeps cycling until a new dump of fresh flakes smooths it all off and it starts all over again with a clean white coat.
Honestly, more snow seems to temper the cold. As long as there is fresh powder around, the chill seems less harsh. After everything melts down to a hard crust, the air seems to offer a more severe bite.
It’s a bad combination when our bodies remain calibrated to above-freezing winter temperatures.
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Thinking Thoughts
Imagine if we all thought kind and generous loving thoughts about everyone and everything that comes into our minds and we did it at the same time all over the world. What if we all did that for days on end?
What’s the worst that could happen?
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Hays Siblings
Yesterday we made the surprisingly easy drive up to my sister, Mary’s house for a post-holiday gathering of the Hays siblings. North Branch wasn’t as far away as I expected. These are my peeps. I always find it refreshing to discover how special it feels to be with my brothers and sisters again. No one else in the world can match the connection we share with the people we lived with during our formative years.
Thank you David, Mary, Judy, and Elliott for all the years!
You are the best.
Here’s to a bigger reunion of our relations this summer. We’ve got a date!
Somehow, the Vikings pulled out a victory while we were half-watching. Cyndie and I tried to listen to the end of it on the drive home over a radio signal that was only barely discernible.
There was no question that Pequenita was happy to have me home again. She made haste to claim one of her favorite perches when I settled down to see who was getting recognized by the Hollywood Foreign Press on the Golden Globe Awards show.
She is so not a Hays sibling.
We did not have a cat when I was growing up. Judy or Elliott can correct me if there was a barn cat on the farm before I came along.
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Grasping Hope
I’m trying. Against an onslaught of gloom and doom coming from the extreme escalation of Middle East tensions by an impeached President who hasn’t been removed from office, I am trying to dredge up some hope for the triumph of peace and love around the planet. It involves squelching a feeling that my tiny contribution to the world is woefully inadequate toward fulfilling this dream, and as a result, futile.
We are back at Wintervale this morning, being smothered with love from Pequenita and surrounded once again by fields and forest, animal tracks, snow, and chickens.
There is a fire in the fireplace. I’m home for most of the weekend before returning to the regular routine of my 4-day work week and the commuting it involves.
We will be out for a little bit tomorrow to gather with Hays siblings for a post-holiday get-together that tends to happen only rarely.
Cyndie’s increasing role of support for her parents as needs dictate will shift a little as they prepare to return to Florida. I expect she will be taking an increased number of flights south in the coming months as a result.
Today we will try putting away Christmas decorations and clearing snow from the icy valleys on the roof, as well as shovel the deck and a few paths that I skipped when I came home to plow last Tuesday.
This place is such a sanctuary. It is hard to meld in my mind the peace here with unrest in other parts of the globe.
I will grasp for hopeful embers of energy to fuel an escape from worst outcomes being bantered about in the media and within the vengeful souls who have suffered offense. Somewhere in the universe, there must exist a remedy with power to forever sever cycles of violent revenge.
I tend to perceive it as, simply, the power of love. Obviously, it requires significant investment from all parties involved, but the secret (and not-so-secret) ingredient has to be love.
Unfortunately, love isn’t a very quick solution for the climate catastrophes of fires and floods that Australia, Indonesia and other parts of the world are suffering.
I don’t envy the task of mustering hope by the people living in the vicinity of major weather impacts.
It makes the blessings of our precious home all the more impressive.
Sending love as best I can!
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Good Sport
Last night Delilah showed me she had an idea of how to get some exercise indoors while we are staying in the suburbs. First, she brought me her oft preferred squeaking yellow monkey for a little game of tug-of-war.
Then, she took it and spun around to run away in the hope I would chase her.
Of course, I did. Around and around and around the couch and then the pool table until I was too dizzy to keep up.
I’d stop and she would turn for a little more tug-of-war. Then, off she would go again.
Rinse and repeat.
Delilah is being a really good sport about being away from home all these days and having her world shrunk to mostly the basement with walks on suburban streets.
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Plowing Challenge
Last Sunday, when we left home in Beldenville to drive to Edina for a few days, it was raining outside.
On Monday, the precipitation turned to snow. In Edina, the accumulation was about four or five inches. On Tuesday, Cyndie texted our current animal sitter and asked if she would stop by our place to check on the chickens and Pequenita. The answer was yes, but after she arrived we received a report that there was too much snow for her to drive up the driveway. She walked the quarter-mile up to the house.
That triggered me into action and I drove home to plow.
There was 6.5 inches of snow up by the house, maybe an inch more farther out in the open. It was the most snow at one time that I have needed to plow so far this year. Between the large amount of snow and the icy coating beneath it, I needed to get a little creative about plowing angles. There was a fair amount of time spent sliding sideways as the wheels spun when I attempted to back up after pushing snow all the way off the edge of the paved surface.
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It was a beautiful day to be outside working in the snow, but I needed to get cleaned up and drive right back to Edina so Cyndie and I could attend a New Year’s Eve party with friends who invited us at the last minute when they learned we were in town.
I had successfully managed to drive my Crosstrek all the way from the road to the house without getting stuck, but I didn’t think to clean the snow out of the wheels after I pulled into the garage.
The return trip to Cyndie’s parent’s house was like driving on a washboard because of vibration from the wheels being a little out of balance. On the plus side, it gave my voice a great vibrato when singing along with my music the whole way back to Edina.
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First Time
We are on something of a “stay-cation,” in that, we didn’t go up to Hayward with Cyndie’s parents for the New Year celebration, but we are spending a few days with them at their home in Edina. Like we did for Christmas, we’ve brought along Delilah and left the chickens cooped up and Pequenita by herself at home.
Cyndie’s eyelids are showing signs of good recovery and she has begun to only occasionally stray from doctor’s orders to NOT bend over. Most importantly, she has thus far successfully avoided inadvertently rubbing her eyes as the healing process causes them to itch.
I can’t say the same for myself. Since the day of her surgery, I have been rubbing my eyes more than ever out of sympathetic response to her situation.
For the most part, Delilah seems to be taking to our sudden suburban living with impressive ease. I, on the other hand, am being pushed beyond my boundaries. For the first time in my life, I have needed to pick up my dog’s poop. I never thought I would allow myself to be stuck in this situation.
Cyndie and I have taken turns walking her around the neighborhood and both of us are making adjustments to avoid contact with any other dog walkers. She has failed to accomplish successful introductions so many times that we have pretty much quit trying. The only way I would try again would be if someone told me they wanted their dog to be grabbed and shaken like a rag doll. Delilah has proved she is able to offer that service. Otherwise, I’m thinking we are beyond the point of trying to socialize her with other dogs.
While out with her last night in the latest snowstorm, my feet slipped out from under me on the polished packed snow beneath the new-fallen layer on the once-plowed street. Can you say, “Hip plant!”? I’m gonna have a bruise there, I think.
Delilah seems to be doing her best to claim territory on the streets surrounding Cyndie’s parents’ house. Mailbox posts get an awful lot of attention. Safe within the confines of the basement rooms, she boldly barks at the sight of any activity at neighboring properties.
It’s certainly not the first time she has barked at something she sees outside the window.
Here’s wishing you all a safe celebration of the end of a decade and dawn of a new one!
Tomorrow will be the first time we’ve ever been in the year 2020. May all of us experience a new year filled with more peace and love than ever before.
Wouldn’t that be a priceless first?
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Familial Bonds
I align with the perception that simply being human puts us all in the same family, but it’s hard to deny a reality that some people are more family than others. It’s not all that surprising when people who share a bloodline experience a connection born of common ancestry, but I have experienced enough occasions when I am drawn toward kindred spirits with whom I have no blood relation that I know there are mystical bonds deeper than our brains can explain.
Last night we had a chance to brush up against this fascinating phenomenon when the Grinnell families who had gathered in St. Peter for the memorial service of their patriarch, Robin (who was Fred’s cousin), drove up for a spur of the moment gathering at Cyndie’s parent’s home in Edina.
As an in-law in the gathering of Norwegian Friswold and Grinnell clans, it was a treasure to witness the threads of connection and hear the sharing of family stories. I have enjoyed short visits with the Grinnell brothers less than a handful of times over a span of several decades, so my relationship to them could easily be described as acquaintances.
So why does it feel like so much more than that?
Likely, for the same reason that I feel like a brother to Ian Rowcliffe and like a member of Dunia and Marco’s family.
There is a magical aspect to the attraction toward kindred spirits that defies definition by words. It is an energy of the heart. It is a special form of love. It is a unique feeling that blossoms for a select few.
It is a brush with things sacred, which tends to make me feel more fully human.
At the same time, that begs a question of why I don’t feel more of a connection to all who make up the human family. Wouldn’t that be ideal?
A lofty goal for which to aim. For now, I will enjoy the special warmth of sharing time again with people who mean more to me than I can understand. It fits nicely within the mysteries that I don’t really feel a need to have explained.
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Relative Something 