Acair Fearann

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http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html

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I do wish that the robin nesting on the porch outside the library would figure out that it does not need to fly every time I come into the room and walk past the window.  This is getting old.  The mourning dove down on another porch is apparently a smarter bird….

Windy day, rather pleasant in some ways, but almost chilly. It always puts me in mind of the coast somehow, the big house on the hill, a white ship on a green wave.

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I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of watching them in the late June nights.  Something more magical than the passing airplanes’ guiding lights, the high ones bound for Europe, the low ones bound for the sprawling cities of the East coast.  No, the fireflies can’t be mistaken for those, nor for the high, remote grandeur of the stars.  Yet, there is a magic of life in the those lights in the trees, drifting down and across the meadow.  Made, perhaps, even more so by knowing that in the day, they are truly unprepossessing bugs.

In today’s world of manicured, short lawns well sprayed with God knows what and trees conjured from the architect’s rendering, fireflies are ever rarer. That I can watch them from the porch, that is a rich gift and not a small one. They launch from the great vastness of the Magnolia, the Tulip tree, the oaks, and the hedgerows.  Out, out into the wide space of the meadow. What a journey for that tiny spark, not knowing what lies ahead, but the promise of instinct and of life.

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I could write about gardening, about hay, about the weather

I could write about Brexit and the aftermath, this editorial sums to up nicely: http://spectator.org/brexit-democracy/

But, I’d rather listen to this utter nonsense, brought back to my attention by another blog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN5dAQLYYrs

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Remarkably there are still a few hayfields in this town, including ours.  One good thing about this continued dry spell is that it is ideal weather for cutting hay.  Ours is half cut as of today.

The challenge is when and how….hay is a very, very weather dependent crop.  You need a string of days without rain in mid June.  Thunderstorm season.  That was fairly doable when the people making hay were full time farmers.  Not so much these days. The man doing our hayfield works a full time job and cuts hay, mostly for his cows, on the side, in between, nearly at night, by himself. His fields are scattered up and down two hills on both sides of the town center, as are the fields of the biggest operation in town. I have to give him full credit for his determination and willingness to work hard.  I suspect he took today off to do some cutting and he doesn’t work the sort of job that exactly hands out vacation time.

So, as a PSA, for next few weeks in New England, mind the blind curves….there may well be a tractor with a cutter bar, or a tedder, or baler, or a string of wagons taking up the lane.

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It doesn’t seem possible that tomorrow is the longest day of the year….It seems that summer is both early and late this year. There has been in my life a sense of both lost time and the living wonder of present joy, that perhaps accounts for the sense of being slightly jetlagged and out of step.

It is funny how we visualize things. I saw the first fireflies last night, deep in the trees and the moon lit shadows of the road.  The heavy, languid heat of summer brings them alive. They belong to those velvet nights. I couldn’t picture them in winter or in spring.  Like lightening (which is always so weird in a snowstorm), they would be entirely wrong in winter. Their bright spark would be lost in the sharpness of a winter night when the stars rule the sky, but in the soft summer night they fit as a counterpoint to the, for lack of a better term, denser darkness.

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one canoe is Not like another canoe

The big one above is an 18 (a generous 18!) E.M. White, broad of beam and very stable. However, it needs to be re-canvased…which is clearly not something that can occur in the basement, it is Bigger than we remembered!  The other is our 16 foot unknown, c. 1905 maybe Chestnut company, maybe an Indian Girl, re-canvased with Dacron.  Seaworthy, very nimble, the trade off for being nimble is that it is tippy.

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I have a certain ambivalence about Memorial Day, I’ve not been able to honor just the American dead after a number of years in the UK. I can’t imagine the internal conflict of those who first purposed Memorial Day, and admire even more their ability to state that it was to include both Union and Confederate dead.  We would do well to remember that. In some ways, it is a pity that Memorial Day has not remained as a memorial to the Civil War, it just might be good for us.  Time moves on, though, and memorials tend to shift to the concerns of the living, as well they ought.

But when the twentieth century rolls around, limiting Memorial Day to American dead makes me uneasy.

So for the fallen, whomever and wherever, who died so that others might live more freely.

The original poem for taps, written by Major General Daniel Butterfield, Army of the Potomac:

“Day is done…
Gone the sun
From the lake…
From the hills…
From the sky.
All is well…
Safely rest
God is nigh.

Fading light….
Dims the sight
And a star….
Gems the sky….
Gleaming bright
From afar….
Drawing nigh
Falls the night.”

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It is really an overnight transition.  It is most evident in the tree leaves.  The hills lose that light, soft green with its yellow, silver, and pink tones.  All of a sudden they are the green, with blue shades, that characterize the June landscape: clean green, blue skies, white puffy clouds.  Later in the summer they will start to pick up olive and brown tones as the leaves harden and absorb the damage of wind and weather.  But right, now for a few days or weeks, they are at their fullest extent, their greatest promise, undamaged.  A few are still expanding, but most trees have finished this year’s growth.  Now the work of the summer follows.  Young branches will stiff and harden, leaves will absorb the hours of sun and endure the rain or wind, buds will start to form at the level of the cells.

Summer is here.

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