"Orbit"

It seems to me that everything large, and everything microscopic, and everything in between acts the same.  Electrons orbit around nuclei, and moons orbit around planets, and planets orbit around suns, and the entire universe is spinning.  This can all make you kind of crazy if you think about it too much, and I don't even do drugs.

A former coworker once told me she was unfriendly and uncooperative when I started my job because she had really wanted her college friend to get the position.  How could I know her friend applied for the job?  How could I know my coworker's misguided loyalties would make my life difficult?  There were invisible orbits of people around me, and all I knew is that I was trying my best with inexplicable obstacles in my path.

Jennie Cramer was my Grandma's mom, Thomas L. Lee was my Grandpa's dad.

I don't know why I started remembering this, but then I couldn't stop thinking about it.  All this time later, I want to yell "I won't do crazy with you!"  This woman is still in the outer orbit of my life.  She puts effort into looking and acting professional.  You'd never know she'd sabotage her own job for the benefit of someone who didn't qualify for mine.

Sometimes we have to accept that there are invisible forces around us, and we may or may not learn what those forces are.  We just have to do our best despite it all.  I'm glad this woman confessed her motivations to me because she illuminated a life lesson that these people walk amongst us.  They look normal, and I don't think knowing her thoughts would've been helpful at the time.  What could I do?  Quit my job so her friend could be rejected again?

Don't judge my lit -- these are my popular light reading when I have a bad day :)

This is the kind of stuff I thought about while consolidating my library this week.  I built a bookcase because I had a vision of the perfect bookcase -- which of course nobody sells ready-made.  I'm not saying it's the best bookcase, but it's the best for my space.

Advertising on the back of the textbook.

I gathered my books from around the house (which are HEAVY by the way) and hauled them upstairs.  Then I had to sort them all, then of course I had to alphabetize them... well okay, I'm my own kind of crazy, but I was a great page when I worked at the Columbus Library, and now I can find any book in a moment, and all of my series are together.

Anyway, I mused about the old coworker and I handled my treasures, which include these old schoolbooks from my ancestors.  I love seeing the signatures of my great grandparents on the fly leaves and the old illustrations...  It takes a long time to shelve books when I have such lovely distractions along the way.

These books aren't in good condition, but I suppose they could be in worse shape.  To put it in perspective, they're from not long after the American Civil War.  You know, like when people were slaves.  That seems long ago to me -- or maybe the flip side of it is that slavery really wasn't long ago at all?  Which puts the idea of crazy coworkers into perspective, doesn't it?

You can see the bindings on the old books at left are gone or falling apart

If anyone knows the best way to store these books, please let me know.  I'd like to prevent further decay.  I'd like to put them in boxes, but not sure if I should wrap them up in something first?

"Spin"

We used to put our arms out and spin.  We'd get so dizzy we'd fall down and couldn’t stand up again without wobbling and staggering, often running into our playmates and making them fall down too.  Or, sometimes they’d push us so we wobbled more.  We laughed a lot because it was all so silly.  We used to hold our breath and hope to faint too.  I’m not sure if we caused brain damage.

Most of my childhood lacked toys.  I know this sounds impossible for today’s young’uns, but we often just played with our bodies.  Tag, Crack the Whip, Mother May I?  It was kind of a big deal when we got a Frisbee or a Hula Hoop.  Now that I’m thinking about it, a lot of our play involved rotation.

I was expected to go outside to play, without bothering adults, but Grandpa had actual toys. There was a mechanical tin top, a cast iron truck that escaped WWII recycling, games, cards, wooden enigma puzzles… Grandpa liked playing all sorts of things, especially Jarts when they came out.  Flying, lethal weapons were great.  You just wouldn’t suspect it from him since he was so quiet, gentlemanly, and civilized.

I kind of wish I’d kept more of Grandpa’s toys, but there’s only so much stuff I really need to keep.  My plumbing disaster a few years ago went a long ways towards curing me of some of my hoarding tendencies.  There’s nothing like looking at blooming mold on something to break my sentimental attachments to it.  (You know when mold is “blooming” when it gets colorful and lethal.)

I talked of teeter totters a couple of weeks ago.  On the same school playground we also had a merry-go-round.  I loved it.  You push it in circles and then jump on to delight in the momentum.  If you have a group of kids, a designated kid(s) pushes while the others enjoy the ride.

Not my merry-go-round, but close enough

Sometimes I remember myself as a solitary kid.  I felt alone too often -- then I think of swings and teeter totters and merry-go-rounds and know that I played with the other kids often enough to have a world of happy memories.

Mom threatened to keep me home from school if I didn’t cooperate with her.  "NOoooooo!!!”  I’d eat lumpy oatmeal on my deathbed to "get to" go to school.  One time I had to walk, which was miles of pretty much vertical climbing since I lived in the deep river valley.  School was half over by the time I got there, but I still took my turn pushing the merry-go-round with my tired, rubbery legs even though I was criticized by my peers for a lackluster effort that day.

When I substitute taught, I was surprised to see that most kids don’t play on the playground.  They cluster in 2s or 3s and text.  They do that in gym too.  They don’t look happy, and I’m sure they’re missing important life lessons.  Our society says “safe” is more important than play, and I think that’s dead wrong.  Okay, maybe padding under the playground equipment is a good idea, or teeter totters that aren’t quite so high, but take away the cell phones and push kids into the cold to play.  Running will warm them up.

I can still hear the squeals of laughter at my school.  Nice children with active bodies and cooperatively competitive natures.  I wish that for today’s kids too.

"Tropical"

I get a free lunch every day at work.  I like this perk, and I like that I often get fresh pineapple.  I think that's about all I've got for "tropical", which seems like an unfair word for the week in Ohio January where it's gray, wet, and cold.  I wish I was a snowbird.

"Snowbirds" are people who live in beautiful Ohio spring through fall, then go to Florida for the winter.  Lucky, lucky people who've got more money and options than I've got at the moment.  (Hi Steve and Dr. Jim!)

I didn't get to see Florida until I was an adult, but it seemed like everyone else got family vacations to the "Sunshine State".  Other kids went to Disney World.  I camped on a rock in Canada.  Don't get me wrong, Canada is beautiful, and I love the woods, but I think I would've liked seeing Walt in Florida too.

I eventually got to Disney World.  I went with my little brothers and Mom one year.  One of those brothers sulked the whole time because we took them out of school during the school carnival.  The other brother was delighted to see places that they'd been studying in Social Studies.  Clearly, you can't please everyone.

Pete caught actually laughing in Florida
after a big wave just smacked both of them

Some people love traveling.  I like seeing new sights, but often dislike the process of getting there.  Sometimes it's nicer to enjoy seeing other people's travels through the internet without the bother of getting out of my bathrobe.

I like seeing what other people find interesting in their travels.  I like seeing other people's normal when they post pictures or write about their regular lives in other places.  I especially like seeing someone else's art of their normal.  Prickly pears in the back yard?  Great!  Maybe I'll paint the flowers or weeds in my yard sometime.

I threw branches at a raccoon family eating the goldfish in my pond, and someone else didn't know what a raccoon is -- or why I wasn't charmed by the cute little varmints.  Because they carry rabies and were eating my goldfish!  Skunks are cute too, but they sprayed my dog and I lived with a fog of toxic fumes for a couple of weeks no matter how many times I washed her.

I can safely laugh at other people's skunked dogs through blogs without having to actually experience it.  I'm pretty sure I can find an interesting restaurant in Cleveland without having to swat tsetse flies too.

But then, this time of year I wish I were a snowbird.  I'd like to walk on the beach without the arctic blast of wind coming from the north.  I'd pick up pretty seashells and worry about sharks and sunburn or something.  Clearly, I need a real vacation, and the only way to have that is to pack up and go.  "Tropical" sounds great in the winter!

"Moon"

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, and then spent a stupid amount of time thinking about that expression, then thought about why things that bothered me before have suddenly become intolerable.  This must happen to others or the expression wouldn't exist, right?  Let's blame it on the phase of the moon.

I've spent the last couple of days doing some heavy lifting and cleaning.  Maybe all that effort broke down defenses that I didn't realize I had in place?  I fell asleep early from exhaustion and my dreams wouldn't leave me alone.  Maybe part of it was from a comment a friend made the other day.  He said nasty people say awful things to nice people because they know the nice people won't say awful things back.

Too true.  Bullies often win.  But it's a new year, I'm sweeping the dust, rearranging furniture, and somewhere in all this I'm tired of licking wounds that never heal.  I'm not much for New Year resolutions, but I am resolving to quit putting up with people who don't add value to my life.

There are nice, good people in the world.  If you've been blessed to spend your life around those kinds of people, I hope you appreciate them.  If you've spent your life around un-nice people, well, go find the nice ones.

Back in the olden days when children got muddy and played on the playground without safety equipment, we played on teeter totters.  Not the wimpy, plastic rockers that they sell these days, but long, hard, wood constructions.  I loved them.  Proper seesawing meant you needed to have at least one comparably-sized friend to play with.  If you were really social, you could put 2-3 friends on each end.  And yes, in those days the girls did this in dresses (though this pic is from before my time).

Back and forth, back and forth... and then when one of the players had been lulled into complacency... jump off!  If you did this right, your friend would be at the apex of the rocking cycle and suddenly crash to Earth in a tailbone smashing impact... with a bounce and a secondary crack to the coccyx.

Most often we laughed and the victim would laughingly vow vengeance.  The first perpetrator would get their comeuppance, though if you were really on the ball you could jump off before impact.  Once in a while the collision would actually harm a kid (which I suppose is why today's kids have plastic rockers) and the kids on the playground would sympathetically gather around the kid rolling on the ground with a broken tailbone while a teacher was found for her usually unsympathetic supervision.

This was all important education about the laws of Newtonian physics because we were living "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction".

My New Year's resolution is to jump off the seesaw.  What's yours?

"Soar 2"

I hope everyone had a merry Christmas!  I always find this in-between week before New Year's contemplative.  It's dark outside and I don't have to work as many days.  There's time for looking back over the year and thinking about what the new year will bring.

Looking over my past year, painting my floor was the most obvious thing I did.  It certainly required the most time, June - October.  The less obvious element of it is that I used all that time to think about relationships.

It wasn't a happy year for me.  My brother-in-law died, which was very shortly after my friend died, and a co-worker's husband.  I was effected by the Paris shooting, which was only one of many shootings in 2015.  There were a lot of contentious meetings and reports at work.

I just wasn't happy, and didn't feel like I was getting the outside support I needed.  I pondered who was good for me and who wasn't when Danny's cancer recurred and almost killed him just when Gary killed himself, and that was followed by 2 more suicides.  I fell off my deck so hard that my body hurt as much as my heart and mind.

So the year started hard, but spending all that time painting the floor made me more flexible in more ways than one.  My general outlook on life improved, and the ladies at work went out of their way to feed me positive thoughts.  I helped avert another suicide, and feel pleased with myself that I set and maintained my boundaries in the process.  The year is ending with 2 new babies in my environment and I feel happiness to be in the afterglow of those families' happiness.

Against all of this, I repeatedly met ghosts from my past this year.  We stood on my floor and shared stories about the Glen.  I saw their positive memories of me reflected in their faces, and I was given a chance to redefine myself to myself.

I drank bourbon in Kentucky, which has turned into a lesser hobby.  So far I've enjoyed cherry-aged and honey bourbons the best.  I got a new neighbor and was assigned an extra hobby of staring out the kitchen window to look for her missing cat while I made a lot of applesauce.  My dog got skunked.  I took a painting retreat to Lake Chautauqua, NY and started illustrating things for a magazine.

Helen and her halo

This is life.  Sometimes we have challenges and grief to deal with.  Sometimes we get to smile at a baby.  This week I helped Helen, our cheerful, colorful, and kind volunteer with her Christmas cookies.  She knows all about life's ups and downs, and usually has an off-color quip and a hearty laugh to get through those peaks and valleys.  She made 17 kinds of cookies this year and gave them to people she appreciates including her doctors, church, friends, family, etc., etc.  Her spirit of gratitude and giving is inspiring (and her cookies are delicious!)

Helen supervising cookie trays

Josie helped package cookies too

Here's to hoping that all of us have a wonderful New Year filled with cookies!

"Soar"

Gentle breezes waft around the Glen, but you need actual wind to fly a kite.  I ran and ran on my short child legs without much to show for it.

We went to see our grandparents every month.  Grandpa would take us to GoodyearHeights Metro Park after lunch.  Women washed dishes while children and men walked to the pond and woods.  

In winter we went sledding.  There’s a little but steep hill close to their house, and a very big hill on the other side of the park.  The little hill has the extra thrill of trees in the wrong places.  The big hill has a bump which sends whole toboggans of adults airborne.  That hill is also great for kites in summer.  Kites soared from a standstill.  They flew so strong, I worried I’d be dragged to the sun and die like Icarus.

One day my siblings ran down the steep little hill to the pond, and Grandpa and I stayed behind.  He really didn’t say much.  Well, to be perfectly honest, he never did, but what he did say was in a soft Tennessee accent that makes me feel safe, loved, and happy.

On that last day at the park I just held his hand and absorbed our alone-time together.  I don’t know how I knew it was our last day, I just did, and I relished it.  He lived a long time after that, he just didn't walk to the park.  He drove us to the big hill to fly kites.

I miss Grandpa.  Happy birthday!  Happy birthday Sue!  And Dad and Tami, and coming up Bill, ML, and Gail... plus my grandnieces and whoever else I might be forgetting.  Oh yeah, Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Joyous Solstice too!

Mess Hall

Totally unrelated to birthdays, holidays, and kiting, but everything to do with parks, my friend and I walked in my old Girl Scout camp last weekend.  It has been bought by her city, and now is open to everyone.

Amity House

Boat house

I looked forward to August all year every year when I was a kid.  My sisters and I had a week at Grandma and Grandpa's, and then we had two weeks at Camp Hilaka.  Yay, yay, yay for me!

The old metal bridge is the same as when I was a kid

I was great at camp.  I could start a fire, paddle a canoe, braid a lanyard, and sing campfire songs with the best of them.  I learned early that fearlessly ridding a tent of spiders and mice ensured me camping friends.  Some girls cried when their parents dropped them off at camp.  I wanted to cry when I left.

Outhouse -- a very memorable part of camping!

The camp is pretty dilapidated, and I hope volunteers will get it looking nice again.  I walked the paths and felt my younger self running through the woods while my current self was kind of befuddled about what used to be where and such.  I remembered the handsome boy counselor with a guitar well enough and the very nice girl with a raspberry stain all over her face and over a lot of the rest of her too. 

It's the smells and sounds and projects which I remember best, and it all feels very strange to place all that living into a neglected park.  I'm going to walk there again and bring back more memories and more of that childish enthusiasm back into my being.  Camp Hilaka is like Grandpa -- part of who I am.

"Unicorn"

My boss looked at my flower photos on my office wall this week and told me to take a half day to see "Painting the Modern Garden:Monet to Matisse", a special exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Art.  I like flowers, but impressionists?  Eh.  Yeah, I know, a lot of people love them.  It's just one way I'm a unicorn, but hey, paid time for art?  Yeah!  (Okay, I'm salary and work too many hours so it's not like really getting paid, but still.)

I parked far away because I'm too cheap for the parking lot, and a nice looking man who's originally from India, now from Chicago, asked me if the museum is really free.  It is too, but you've got to pay $18 for the impressionist exhibit.  We had a lovely conversation while we hiked to the front entrance where he held the door for me and soon disappeared.

I hiked more miles to get to the line for the exhibit, stood behind crowds of people standing in front of paintings who were glued to their museum-distributed hand-held devices.  I was getting cranky and my knee hurt.  I felt bad for the old people who had to get on and off the endless escalators in the vast emptiness of the newly, and expensively, remodeled museum interior.

More disgruntlement that they
closed access to the pond
and Rodin's "The Thinker"

I have long-held grievances against the museum.  I've considered lifting the feud since I'm the only one who knows it's in place and it only hurts me.  I even considered getting a museum membership.  Nope.  Feud stays in place.  I hate what they've done.

There's still lots of world-class art there, but somebody has been "fixing" eyes in portraits so they look wall-eyed.  I didn't see Edith Barretto Parsons' Turtle Baby, I don't like the organization, it feels like a mall with gift shops everywhere...

It wasn't always like this.  My dad was a cop in the area, and sometimes took me with him to work and let me loose.  He enlisted all the security guards and policemen as my babysitters even though I was blissfully unaware of this until I tested my boundaries one day and a cop showed up out of nowhere to say, "Miss Hensley, I don't think you're allowed over there."  Oops.

I followed the rules after that.  I sat by the pond and teased the giant carp.  I helped archeologists mend broken pottery.  I stared at the Rembrandts and felt my heart pound.  I fell in love with Jacques Louis David's Cupid.

Some parts of the museum were left intact.
This is the style I remember and love.

Sometimes I'm aware my childhood wasn't like other people's.  I lived in the lonely  woods which hid the remnants of an artists' community -- and once in a while I went to the big city without obvious supervision to bask in the glow of the Masters and listen to the Cleveland Orchestra rehearse for an audience of one.  I suppose it's no wonder I became an artist, but I suppose it's all part of why I'm a unicorn too?  An extinct, mythical creature with magical powers.

Somehow, I think we're all unicorns.  We just have to embrace that about ourselves and hope nobody tries to saw off our horn.  Or remodel our home against our will.

BTW, most people seem happy with the special exhibits and the remodeling.  If you come to town you should go to the museum.  I'll sulk quietly and smile at my memories of having the place to myself other than indulgent docents and archeologists.