Monday Meander - February 15, 2021

 It's Family Day in these parts, a relatively new provincial holiday begun in 2008 to relieve the stress of winter.

My family has yet to establish any set traditions for this, which is a good thing for the 2021 pandemic edition of this holiday Monday. It means that the list of  "Things that Cannot be Done due to the Pandemic" has not been added to today.  

Today I can sit back and ponder the memories of family times, from the poignant to the hilarious and everything in between. And here we are:

1959

1962

1972

And our lives would be so much less without the four-legged furry-pawed wonders who have greeted us with their big tail wags and bigger love.

One more thing: we are still growing! Grandbaby #2 is in the wings awaiting debut in late June 2021.

God bless us, every one - past, present, AND future.

 ©2021 April Hoeller 

Thursday, or Thereabouts – February 11, 2021

Train of Thought

While the polar vortex chugs along outside, I’m happy to be stuck at home today letting my mind do the traveling. A little time travel seems right. Back to the early 1960’s…

A blue station wagon pulls in the driveway of my house and out pops a young guy delivering the groceries my Mom bought at the IGA earlier in the day. He plunks the boxes down in the front hall. The deal is that if I help unpack and put away the stuff, I get to spend the rest of the afternoon with the boxes. I eagerly and often way too quickly empty the boxes of tins, jars, cartons, and packages. The magical time is about to begin. No construction, no decoration required, just two empty boxes full of possibility. And two empty grocery boxes become trains. 

I cram myself into the front car. The car behind me might be carrying coal, or gold, or my little sister.  “All Aboard!” I shout then “Wooo! Wooo!”  I lurch my body forward, “ Chuga, chuga, chug, chug.”  And we’re off bouncing and jiggling our way along the rails, steel-on-steel screeching around curves. There is no destination in mind, no amazing scenery to behold, no point to the travel other than just the wonderful imaginary experience of riding the rails, and it was grand!

If my Dad was home, he put on the record of train sounds that he had and turned the volume way up.  Now that just boosted the experience to a whole new level of reality. Have a listen: here. The album cover pictured in the link is different but this is the cover we had.

Not only were the sound effects unique (the recording was made in the rain along the tracks of the New York Central Railway in 1952), but the record itself was a deep cranberry colour vinyl not the usual black. Very special to my primary school self.

Ah well, time to return to the here and now. A truck pulled into the driveway earlier and my grocery order now sits in the kitchen awaiting sorting.

Can you hear the train whistle?

All Aboard!

 

©2021 April Hoeller

Monday Meander - February 8, 2021

 Poking my head out the tent flap today, looking to see if anything has changed...

Nope. 

But at least the great day star is doing her best to warm us all up. She's got a long way to go seeing as we began at -17°C (1°F) first thing this morning. February always feels tedious. February in a pandemic lockdown the tedium is just piled higher and deeper. Oh to escape to somewhere lovely, comfortable, and safe where the sun doesn't have to work so hard to warm me up.

Great escapes in February or any time of the year remain the stuff of dreams for now. Last week the Canadian government extended the ban on passenger vessels operating in our waters until February 28, 2022. Not a surprise really but still it means that our  Arctic expedition punted from last July due to the pandemic to this August has now been kicked into 2022. And we're also being advised to avoid all travel on cruise ships outside of Canada. I understand that too, but still...

I just want to get out of Dodge. Don't we all?! Apparently, the fastest way out of here is to stay put. Now doesn't that just warm the cockles of your heart?  I guess armchair travel and trips down memory lane will have to suffice. Where shall it be today? How about the Galapagos for a bit of adventure?

That feels better. 

Onwards my friends. Stay home. Stay safe. Dream on! 

©2021 April Hoeller

Thursday, or Thereabouts – February 4, 2021

Noon Report: 7°C (45F) in brilliant sunshine outside my door.

It is a joy to sit at the table in the sunroom, writing these words. The groundhog apparently declared an early Spring on his day of prophecy, February 2 and so here we are basking in the thick of it. It won’t last of course. The official forecast does not uphold the rodent’s prediction but rather declares a return to minus double digits by the end of this weekend. Ah well, it is still luxurious to simply sit in the sun-warmed room without being encumbered by woolly sweaters. It’s soothing to let sunlight energize dreams of warmer days, buds and flowers, BBQ's and butterflies.

I picked up a whack of birdseed this morning (curbside of course), so I’m ready for the return of hungry fliers as well as keeping the hardy ones that stay all winter well fed. This year is the first time that I have had crowds of redpolls at the feeders. Usually I’m lucky to see even just one or two each year, but this time often both tube feeders are full stacked with these finch-type birds while the ground beneath the feeders a half dozen or more are gleaning. Without our resident canine here to bark or chase them away, the squirrels have returned in number. They also glean the seeds that fall to the ground.

The bottom line for today is

“It’s a beautiful day in the neighbourhood!”

Away from the news, the tweets and posts of the virtual world, away from the chirps and pings of electronic devices, this is a perfect day to be in the natural world right outside my door in the warm sunshine. Cant’ beat that!

 

©2021 April Hoeller

Monday Meander – February 1, 2021

Starting Over

Let’s face it – as a first month of a new year, January 2021 was a bust! Nothing new about it in my part of the world, unless one counts a new lockdown, a new State of Emergency, a new Stay At Home order, new virus variants, new uncertainty, and new disappointments. Oh, and let’s not forget new bickering over vaccine supplies on both a local and global scale. 

Not a single one of these new year things was even close to being on my wish list!

My first task this morning was to tear the January page off the wall calendar. Never has the sound of ripping paper given me such delight, such resolve to begin again, to kick off into the day, the month, the year anew – restrictions, uncertainties, and all.

“February…

Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth,

It kissed the forehead of the Earth,

And smiled upon the silent sea,

And bade the frozen streams be free,

And waked to music all their fountains,

And breathed upon the frozen mountains…"

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

 

 

 

 

“With the lengthening days which distinguish the third month of winter from its predecessor, come ardent desires for spring, and longings for the time of birds and flowers. An adventurous swallow too early flying from the south, a vision of snowdrops in the snow, a day of April warmth lit by a slant February sun, are all hailed with pleasure as harbingers of a more gracious season on its northland way.”  

Oscar Fay Adams, January 1886

“Today is the first of February, snowy, brilliant, but dripping with the sound of spring wherever the sun lies warm, and calling with the heart of spring yonder where the crows are assembling. There is spring in the talk of the chickadees outside my window, and in the cheerful bluster of a red squirrel in the hickory.”  

Dallas Lore Sharp, The Atlantic Monthly, February 1908

February makes a bridge and March breakes it.

Selected from the Finest Fancies of Moderne Muses, with a Thousand Outlandish Proverbs

(edited by George Herbert, 1593–1633)

  

It’s  first day of the first month of the rest of 2021. Let’s build some bridges!

 

©2021 April Hoeller

New Year’s Eve – December 31, 2020

It’s grey and gloomy outside my door, mirroring my feelings on this last day of 2020.  Though  I am guardedly optimistic about where we all will be at this time next year, I am unhappily resigned to the tough slog that will be many of the days between now and then.

This most wretched yet rich, scary yet encouraging, unfamiliar yet adventurous year, the resultant emotional rollercoaster of it all has taken a toll. I am restless and weary…

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
        “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
        “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
          That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way."

So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.
And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.

So heart be still:
    What need our little life
    Our human life to know,
    If God hath comprehension?
    In all the dizzy strife
    Of things both high and low,
    God hideth His intention.

God knows. His will
    Is best. The stretch of years
    Which wind ahead, so dim
    To our imperfect vision,
    Are clear to God. Our fears
    Are premature; In Him,
    All time hath full provision.

Then rest: until
    God moves to lift the veil
    From our impatient eyes,
    When, as the sweeter features
    Of Life’s stern face we hail,
    Fair beyond all surmise
    God’s thought around His creatures
    Our mind shall fill.

 Minnie Louise Haskins (1875 – 1957)

I am soothed and quieted by these words. They urge me to rest not fret, and for a time the poetic remedy works, but all too soon my restless soul cries out, raising a fist in protest. Other words rise, those of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 – 1892).

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky
   The flying cloud, the frosty light:
   The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
   Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
    The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
   For those that here we see no more;
   Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
   And ancient forms of party strife;
   Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
   The faithless coldness of the times;
   Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
   The civic slander and the spite;
   Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
   Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
   Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
   Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Ring Out, Wild Bells – written in 1850

Whatever 2021 holds for you, for me, whether it brings gentle restfulness, wild bells or both,

may there be much more health and prosperity, 

happiness, kindness, and compassion for all.

May 2021 be vaccine-blessed!

 

 

©2020 April Hoeller

Monday Meander – November 2, 2020

More of a slog than a meander…

A poet’s words written back in 1844, surprisingly capture so much of these days, this month, this pandemic time:

No

No sun - no moon!
No morn - no noon -
No dawn - no dusk - no proper time of day -
No sky - no earthly view -
No distance looking blue -

No road - no street - no 't'other side the way' -
No end to any Row -
No indications where the Crescents go -
No top to any steeple -

No recognitions of familiar people -
No courtesies for showing 'em -
No knowing 'em -

No travelling at all - no locomotion,
No inkling of the way - no notion -
'No go' - by land or ocean -

No mail - no post -
No news from any foreign coast -
No Park - no Ring - no afternoon gentility -
No company - no nobility -

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member -

No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds, -
November!

Thomas Hood (1799 – 1845)

Need something a little more hopeful? How about this from Henry David Thoreau:

"This is the month of nuts and nutty thoughts, —that November whose name sounds so bleak and cheerless. Perhaps its harvest of thought is worth more than all the other crops of the year."

 

 
Take care. Stay well. 
Let's be nutty together by staying apart.

©2020 April Hoeller