Blog-azic

 Adella past the one year mark. To celebrate, we threw her a birthday party. Grandma and Grandpa Lyons were in town. Other friends included: Liz and Eric, Ben and family, Hafed and family, Eric & Alice (and Caroline), Kory and Evan. I cooked a couple chickens and baked a pan of cabbage slaw. I also disgorged our last bottles of champagne before the party. Susan made a no-sugar smash cake for Adella (oats and bananas), and we also bought a half sheet cake from Harris Teeter for everyone else to enjoy. I tried to be a good host, and I did manage to greet all the guests as they arrived, but after that I lost focus on guest and did what I really enjoy: following Adella around. After some time, we got things together enough to sing to Adella. I cut giant pieces of cake for the kiddos while Adella delicately ate her smash cake. Grandma enjoyed the smash cake, too. Then, I played piano and sang tunes while Eric plunked along on banjo. Susan read a story for the group. 

2020 nuff said.

An earth tone drive through Ohio rain. Direction: southeast, into old hills. I thought about the Native Plant Rescue as we sped through the Nelsonville bypass. I peered into high oak hollows. In each or some of those crinkles of earth is maidenhair fern and other plant treasures, things that evoke mystery and speak of age. The maidenhair. It evokes another memory. I remember an old visit to Cantwell Cliffs: the maidenhair in the valley, scrambling over timber and ferns, revelations of a lost sister, really getting to know someone, barbecue for dinner.  We were bound for - I think I am bound to - Athens, sleeping in the wide, alluvial plain of the Hocking, and bustling up above that fertile ground on brick paved, pock marked streets. Up the hills it creeps. Children in rotting houses slummed out over the hills that are close enough to the past that they still remember woods. I am one of those children. This time, I come with my own child. Earlier in the trip, safe an...

I went out back behind work yesterday (building 11), into an area where the scrub woods, pines and young hardwoods, are bisected to open a wide shady space. The space has been un-neatly filled with various plant debris (clippings, dirt, defuncted annuals), probably by Cisco facilities. You can walk over the mounds of detritus to Lake Betz (the northern side). I walked there sloping from pine to grass to soggy ground, cattail muck, recurred bramble thorn, a trampled deer path. I stopped short when a noticed a patch of grey under a beech tree. I went down - yoga squat - close to mud, close to grass sweeps where something goes in and out of the lake, brown water but settled and clear, trying not to disturb the solemnity. After a few minutes, I bowed and humbly picked my way back through the brier as the heron watched. That little natural jaunt sort-of changed me in a way that slowly washed off as I waded through the next day. We left North Carolina on I-77 north, and I felt like I sa...

Winnipeg was unlike I’d ever seen. Maybe because of repeated visits (this my fourth), maybe because of nostalgia, I found myself seeing more in this trip. So many murals, patient trees, people bundled for the weather (which was mild). I walked one evening to a Safeway grocery (against advice from a customer-colleague) in an aging neighborhood. I distinctly felt like a foreigner, like the cashier and I were speaking different languages, like I felt in Mexico City. Most nights, I ate a quiet, deliberate dinner at Stella’s at Plug In, a hip restaurant near my hotel, while reading a thick biography of Dr. King, musing about duality - not good and bad necessarily, but inner and outer selves, being great and being average, being remembered and being forgotten. The last night, I lay in bed feeling anxious and defeated, having been reminded by a conversation with my trainee that I gave up on the hardest (networking) test I’ve ever taken. Then today I thought, “I’ve found my limit, and...

I’m bound for Winnipeg, the fourth and maybe last time to support a long project I’ve been assigned. It’s a dirty and cold city full of elms, tall with up stretched arms and down turned finger (spooky looking at night). These past months have past by very peacefully, and I haven’t had the strong urge to blog through it. Though I would like to save some memories before the end of the year. I spent the morning with Adella. We laid on the futon in her room for a while, looking at the oak trees out the window, talking about the bells, laughing at Benji, wiping up drool. I’m sure there will be a time when such unabashed affection will only be a memory. Susan let me alone with her the other night, and I handled all the night wakings. Certainly a tiring event, but also it feels good to be so needed by her. Susan’s folks were visiting last week. It did feel good to have them, and I think it’s very good for Adella. We need to get back to Ohio. Maybe Cincinnati. Yesterday, w...

Susan wanted a walk, so we drove down a big hill to the bottom land of Woodcroft and walked back on the Third Fork Creek Trail. While we were still on the Woodcroft Trail, I noticed the mature oaks and beech trees lining the road. It made me think that this was a rich forest before it was developed. Perhaps there are small pockets remaining where it is still wondrous (though, it has been called one of Durham's dirties waterways ). Some early morning, while Susan and Adella are still sleeping - or perhaps they'll come along - at about 6 am, when the unrisen sun starts to grey the horizon sky, and as the birds are joyfully singing about lush spring, I’ll come here with Benji and sneak about, sweating under a heavy wool shirt (to keep away the mosquitoes), looking for adventure. As it stands, we had a small adventure yesterday on the trail. There were massive ants swarming the parking lot we used. We grabbed Adella and Benji and set off. We decided to walk without a wrap, and...