Lamont
March 7th, 2010 at 9:35 am
Front
March 6th, 2010 at 10:16 pm
A front (cold? warm?) moved in this morning as Dave and I headed south from Emporia. They began to overtake the sun and then they backed off.
New bridge being built south of Olpe on K-99.
The clouds came back later …
As we returned on I-35 from our day trip to SE Kansas, shafts of light streamed through the clouds. That’s Emporia in the background.
Not so sweet
March 6th, 2010 at 6:21 pm
Greenwood County
No one cuddles up with a honey locust. No kid with any sense climbs one. There was one on my grandma’s farm, right near the washhouse and sometimes its claws would reach out and poke me. Sharp needles!
For scale.
Score!
March 6th, 2010 at 8:48 am
Dave went to a techie conference in Manhattan this week and brought me home a fresh batch of pens!
A Field Guide to Now
March 2nd, 2010 at 6:04 pm
One of my favorite bloggers, Christina Sbarro over at My Topography, has a project up on Kickstarter. I hadn’t heard of Kickstarter until she mentioned it, but it’s a way for artists and writers to obtain financial backers for a project. In return, the artist offers “rewards” to their supporters. A pretty cool deal.
Anyway, Christina (who lives in Vermont) has a project up on the Kickstarter site: A Field Guide to Now. Go on over there and take a look at her video:
This Kickstarter thing is all or nothing. The artist has to meet the specified goal in the time allowed or they don’t get the money – and backers will not be charged unless and until the goal is met.
I don’t know Christina personally, but I’ve followed her blog for several years and time after time her prose just blows me away. I’m going to invest in Christina and her project because I love her work – both her writing and her art. I predict that she will having a shining future in writing. You heard it here first.
From her Kickstarter page:
Her short fiction and essays have recently appeared in the Sun, Mothering, Blue Print Review; with a new story forthcoming in the L.A. Review.
Her story, “The Things You Forget,” was nominated for a Pushcart prize and her her story “If You Fall It Is Your Fault” won the Red Hen Press Short Fiction 2009 Award judged by Judith Freeman.
Christina is currently working on her first novel.
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On Facebook? You can become a fan of A Field Guide to Now.
Clamoring for Color
March 2nd, 2010 at 12:37 pm
Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette:
CLAMORING FOR COLOR
The sunroof isn’t working these days. I keep pushing the open button, but there’s no sun, no blue sky.
For months we’ve had a smear of white-gray above us, a dreary monologue of clouds.
Sure, gray happens this time of year, but during a normal Kansas winter, January and February traditionally offer up an abundance of bitterly blue skies. This year, no blue.
The grayness is not just in the sky – the whole world is in bleak mode: dead grass, empty fields, leafless trees.
Usually I’m the canary in the coal mine when it comes to light issues, but this winter everyone seems to feel smothered by the gloom. Grocery store clerks mention the cloak of clouds, as do people on the streets and friends on Facebook.
I can’t help but think that somewhere there’s a Sunshine Now gismo and all we have to do is locate this machine and plunk in some quarters to get the clouds to disperse. Hey, I don’t know about anyone else here, but I’m about to the point of chewing on crayons to get some color into my system.
Right now, I spend more time than necessary in the produce aisle at Reeble’s, letting my eyes rest on the rainbow of vegetables: green, red and orange peppers, cilantro, eggplant, carrots, yellow squash.
Nothing against vegetables in the supermarket, but I’d prefer to see my color live on the land: that unexpected purple crocus, a smile of yellow daffodils, a shout from the red tulips.
Ah, remember Bradford pear trees – the white polka dots of blossoms that dance against the blue backdrop of sky? Remember the screaming purple-pink of redbud trees? Remember how grass turns as green as green can be, and that trees bear leaves? Yeah, sign me up for that.
On a snowy Saturday morning in February, I spent some time in the coffee shop, Java Cat-5. I sat near the front window trying to absorb some light and energy from the lifeless sky. Large wet snowflakes fell and dissolved on impact.
The American flag at the post office added a bit of color, but the flag just doesn’t have the same punch as it does when displayed against the brilliant blue Kansas sky. Red cars drove past, but that shiny red was mottled with mud.
In a corner of the coffee shop sat a band of knitters, sharing tips and knowledge as their needles clicked. I’m not a knitter, but it seems that knitting is a winter sport – the project warms your lap even as you are making something that will provide warmth later on – a hat, a scarf, a sweater.
“You’re going to do something called yarn-over,” one knitter showed another. “What you have to remember is that you’re adding stitches, so you have to compensate. Slip, slip, knit.”
We are adding days, even if it seems that the calendar has slipped and is running in place on the treadmill. Days and weeks slide past us, but it doesn’t feel as if we were moving forward. Instead, we are stuck in winter with that grisly old groundhog.
But now, halleluiah, March has arrived. And with spring, our rainy season, we’re certainly not guaranteed blue skies, but at least we can watch the red line in the thermometer rise.
Before you know it, we’ll be taking walks with friends after supper, planting tiny lettuce seeds in the ground, hitting the yard sales and picking through the treasures that have been hidden away in other people’s closets, basements and garages.
I think it’s safe to say that we’ve worn the fun out of winter this year. Or maybe, it’s worn us out, pushed us to boredom with its blandness.
We’re ready for a new season. We want to smell the freshly-turned earth, see worms squiggle away into the black soil, inhale the sweet fragrance of hyacinths and lilacs once more. We’re eager to see flowers splash across our line of vision.
During these months of huddling inside our homes, we’ve been like the bulbs buried underground, waiting for the sun to pull us out into the world.
Hurry up, spring, set us free – and send us some color, would ya? ‘Cause these crayons may be pretty, but their wax is sticking to my teeth.
Copyright 2010 Cheryl Unruh
This is what spring will look like when it gets here.
Green! Blue! Warm!
