Among the innumerable stars

The stars were very numerous and bright at Stone Cottage Farm. Even in our small town, the street lights obscure the stars. But there, nestled in the hills miles from any town, the stars shine unimpeded by any man-made light.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s words in The Silmarillion
came to mind while I was looking upward: “…the Kingdom of Earth amid the innumerable stars.” I was seeing the stars somewhat like Abraham did when God promised to give him descendants like the stars in the heavens. “‘He (God) took him (Abraham) outside and said, ‘Look up at the heavens and count the stars — if indeed you can count them.’ Then He said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’” - Gen. 15:5

Because the house’s thick stone walls drown out most noise, staying there is an oasis of quiet.

I sat in that lawn chair in the picture for awhile and read. I could feel myself unwinding.

Beautiful scenery, interesting books and innumerable stars: A recipe for relaxing. Next time we stay there, and I intend to have a next time, I look forward to laying in their hammock to stargaze.

Abraham and J.R.R. Tolkien make good company.

Standing stone

We took a several-hour trip to Lucas, Kan., over the long weekend. We stayed at Stone Cottage Farm Bed and Breakfast. Lucas is in Kansas’ Post Rock Country. On the treeless plains, settlers had to use whatever they could find for fence posts and building materials. Limestone lies very close to the ground in that area, so the settlers cut it out of the the earth to use.

Stone Cottage Farm features several buildings, all of post rock. They’ve landscaped with numerous post rocks. This one reminds me of a passage in my favorite author J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece The Lord of the Rings.

…Still round the corner
We may meet a sudden tree or standing stone
That none have seen but we alone…

Still round the corner they may wait
A new road or a secret gate
And though we pass them by today,
Tomorrow we may come this way
And take the hidden paths that run
Towards the Moon or to the Sun…

Double, double, toil and trouble

If I could choose a part to perform, I would pick one of the Weird Sisters in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”. I own my grandfather’s schoolbook copy of “Macbeth”. I often read the Weird Sisters’ cauldron scene to amuse myself, trying out various scary voices.

Hubby loves this piece. He said I should post a reading for Halloween. Link is in the post title. (iTunes or other m4a player is required.) Happy Haunting!

Scene script follows (full play is here):

SCENE I. A cavern. In the middle, a boiling cauldron.
Thunder. Enter the three Witches

First Witch
Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.

Second Witch
Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.

Third Witch
Harpy cries, “’Tis time, ’tis time.”

First Witch
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.

All
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Second Witch
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

All
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Third Witch
Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Silver’d in the moon’s eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.

All
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Second Witch
Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.

Ozymandias on the High Plains

OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
— Percy Bysshe Shelley

This poem often comes to mind when I shoot pictures of old, abandoned buildings. Someone had a dream. Someone had hopes. Someone had plans for the future that included this building and the land it stands on. But something happened to those plans. And the people who owned the building and the land walked away.

What happened to those people? Why did their dreams die, their plans fail?

I will never have an answer. In the open door of an abandoned house, only questions and silence remain.

And the lone and level plains stretch far away.

Dust Bowl Blues

Hubby and I watched American Experience: Surviving the Dust Bowl a few nights ago. Grandma's stories of life in the Dust Bowl years returned vividly to mind, made more real by the footage of that time.

Many people fled the Dust Bowl conditions, packing their belongings into whatever motorized transportation they had, then driving off with their house door standing open.
They were "Dust Bowl Refugees".

But many stayed, including my grandparents.

Dust filtered into everything. People caulked their windows with rags. They hung wet sheets in front of their doors. And still the dust filtered in.

Grandma reminisced about hanging wet towels above my aunts' beds to keep dust out of their lungs. They still coughed black phlegm.

When she served meals, she covered each plate and serving dish with wet towels, but they still had to eat grit with their food.

My grandparents' hired men did not get cash wages, just room and board. That was enough in those days. At least they had a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs. Many did not.

My great uncle was caught in one of the terrible dust storms and died of dust pneumonia. Pneumonia was epidemic during those years. Aunt Betty never remarried.

No wonder Woody Guthrie recorded "Dust Bowl Blues".

We read "The Grapes of Wrath" in high school, about a family who fled Dust Bowl conditions for "the promised land" of California.

I asked Grandma once why they stayed on the land.

"Why didn't you flee?"

"This is our home," she said.

Life is like a box of chocolates

As a substitute teacher, I truly never know what I'm going to get in a day's work. Yesterday, I was scheduled to teach German in the morning, then be done for the rest of the day.

When I turned in my key after teaching German, the secretary asked me if I could fill in for an English teacher. Her father had fallen ill and needed to be taken to The Big City for treatment. So I taught English in the afternoon.

Teaching certainly does test my memory. I took two years of German in high school and a semester of it in college, but that was nearly 30 years ago. Fortunately, Frau Deutschelehrerin has me show videos, "Anna, Schmidt und Oskar" when I take her place. Wikipedia says that "A, S & O" is the German equivalent of "Sesame Street" in the US.

They are the cheesiest videos imaginable and I cannot get their tune out of my brain!

"Ich heise Anna. Ich heise Schmidt. Der Hund ist Oskar!" [I am called Anna. I am called Schmidt. The dog is Oskar.]

Anna is a teenage girl who befriends her neighbor, the 70ish Herr Schmidt. Schmidt adopts the stray dog Oskar in the first video. Schmidt possesses some magical abilities, but doesn't always use them. He broke his chair and ruined his sweater in one episode yesterday and had to go buy replacements. In the next, he lost his glasses.

This man had enough magic to repair a junker Volkswagen in an earlier episode, but he can't fix his chair and sweater and he can't find his glasses.

Makes no sense to me.

After each episode, I go through some questions about the episodes with the students. I am surprised how many of these words I remember. I learned a new one yesterday, "lecker", meaning "delicious".



In English, I had to lead discussions about "Lord of the Flies" in one class, then "The Great Gatsby" in another. I remembered "Lord of the Flies" rather well, probably because I was fascinated by the boys' quick loss of all civilized veneer. We read "The Great Gatsby" in high school, too, but I mostly remember being frustrated by that book. I just hated the shallow characters and wanted to learn nothing about them.



I crammed with the Cliff Notes Mrs. English Teacher had left on her desk and hurriedly read the chapters, but I'm not sure how much real teaching I did.

At least I wasn't trying to teach math. Now that would be hopeless.