The Big Party - September 4

Sonja de la Parra Hershorn threw a big party for her retirement,
after 26 years of teaching in NM, and for Shel's 75th birthday.
Here's a couple of shots from the party :

Sonja



The geese - and Sheldon's Point at sunset:



Nora Anthony:



Shel


The Real Buzz Ballard


The cake!


Harv & Gayle - and Mr. Bill Davis




Rain on red dirt - before the party

Flanders Fields
By Lt. Col. John Mc Crae, M.D.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
between the crosses, row on row,
that mark our place, and in the sky
the larks, still bravely singing, fly
scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead, short days ago
we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
loved and were loved, and now we lie
in Flanders Fields.

Take up the quarrel with the foe.
To you from falling hands we throw
the torch; be yours to hold it high.
if ye break faith with us who die
we shall not sleep, though poppies grow
in Flanders Fields.


Lieutenant Colonel John Mc Crae, MD (1872-1918) was a Canadian surgeon
who served in the first World War. Although he attended many wounds in
many battles, he never got used to seeing men suffer, scream and bleed from
their injuries. In the spring of 1915 following "the terrible battle in the Ypres salient"
Mc Crae expressed his anguish in this poem. Another officer told how he saw McCrae
write the poem as he eyed the grave of a young friend and former student-- he helped
bury the previous day. Mc Crae tossed the poem--which was later retrieved by a
colleague. He sent the poem to The Spectator in London--but they rejected it.
Punch Publishing later accepted it and issued it on December 8, 1915.
It is one of the most memorable war poems ever written.
(Let's think about outlawing war this Memorial Day--it can happen.
As JFK once said about peace-it may not happen in our time but let's
start somewhere. )- Doris Cadigan, May 26, 2003 from Axis of Logic


Silver wood Regina NM

Bubbles




We took Noah to the Explora museum - He had lots of fun making bubbles!

For My Grandson

This is your first night in Carrigskeewaun.
The Owennadoraun is so full of rain
You arrived in Paddy Morrison's tractor,
A bumpy approach in your father's arms
To the cottage where, all of one year ago,
You were concieved, a fire seed in the hearth.
Did you hear the wind in the fluffy chimney?
Do you hear the wind tonight, and the rain
And a shore bird calling from the mussel reefs?
Tomorrow I'll introduce you to the sea,
Little hoplite. Have you been missing it?
I'll park your chariot by the otter's rock
And carry you over seaweed to the sea.
There's a tufted duck on David's lake
With her sootfall of hatchlings, pompoms
A day old and already learning to dive.
We may meet the stoat near the erratic
Boulder, a shrew in his mouth, or the merlin
Meadow-pipit-hunting. But don't be afraid.
The leveret breakfasts under the fuschia
Every morning, and we shall be watching.
I have picked wildflowers for you, scabious
And centaury in a jam jar of water
That will bend and magnify the daylight.
This is your first night in Carrigskeeaun.

Michael Longley (from The New Yorker)




In Mimi's Garden



Last day


I loved typing this poem For My Grandson, listening to the words
trill and thrill the tongue. It was so appropriate since the issue arrived
the last day of Noah's visit with us. What an amazing little boy, so curious
and alive, so full of love and intense wonder at the world.

I planted a garden this year, watered the seeds and pulled the weeds
and watched the abundance manifest from the dark earth - and I wondered
at times why I was doing it - Who is it for, all this beauty? I am nearly the
only person who looks at these flowers, or tends these fragile plants.

Then, Noah came - and he loved Mimi's garden! He learned about tomatoes,
how to pick them gently so they didn't squeeze or bruise. How dill tasted,
and how basil smelled...how to pull the baby carrots.The tassels of cornsilk
and the thorns of roses were of equal interest, and the great sunflowers,
towering and bobbing...He watched lizards and beetles with delight and even
kissed a toad on the mouth, much to our surprise!

Two Monuments

by Elise Partridge

1. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

White marble. Rolled sod.
Black-shod guard: shining shoes
glide up and down red carpet.
The steed's bronze lip disdainfully curls.
Inside a colonnaded rotunda,
under a Latin diadem,
cases of medals and rosettes.


2. Civil War Battlefield

One-room museum:
a letter from an eighteen-year-old, bragging
we’ll whup ‘em yet!
His dingy, bullet-shredded epaulet.
The wire-rim glasses and dogeared Bible
of the grandmother who refused to leave her house
when the battle started.
(She died at noon under an exploding shell.)
A grasshopper, clinging to a swaying stalk.
A mower roaring over the field.


(from the W.B. Yeats Prize poems, 2001)

It is September 11 - and so we cannot help but remember.
But what really happened? an excuse for war?
sacrifice of the innocents? Now that we have surpassed 1000
dead US soldiers and countless thousands of dead Iraquis,
what has been accomplished? why are people cheering for a
president who prides himself on this horrid accomplishment?
It is September 11 - and we wonder why our world changed.

Bitter Sweet

Once I was young, the children small,
There was not time to finish all
The tasks, it seemed.
These things I dreamed:
A clean, still house, no urgent need,
A little time to rest and read.
Now I am older; day by day
I read the lovely hours away.
The still house gleams.
These are my dreams:
A piping voice to call its need,
A hungry little mouth to feed,
A tear to wipe, a hole to mend,
A boundless energy to lend.
Vain, idle dreams!



I found this poem today on the Mothering.com
website, and I don't know who wrote it - whether
it was Anonymous, or just an omission. I used to
proofread for Mothering, and it comes naturally to
me. ...But I was bowled over by this poem. Who wrote it?
It reminds me of a poem in a children's anthology
I might have read myself as a child, accompanied by
b&w illustrations of Mother with her chicks, and later
by the fireside, knitting...