Life and Times at Cranberry Lake

This blog is about the life, wild and otherwise, in this immediate area of Northeast Pennsylvania. I hope you can join me and hopefully realize and value that common bond we share with all living things... from the insect, spider, to the birds and the bears... as well as that part of our spirit that wishes to be wild and free.

Friday, August 31, 2012

CARTOONISTS

 John Wagner said, 'Cartoonists are sensitive to the insanities of the world; we just try to humanize them.'

Wagner is the cartoonist that brought us Maxine.  I like what he said about cartoonists, as, when it comes to the human race, I think I see only the insanities, and for most of my years they've helped me to put those insanities into the perspective of our very human civilization(?).  If we are a civilization, we've got to become more civil... especially with 7 billion of us humans now on this small planet. 


 Thank God for Cartoonists... they have helped me so much to get a grip and not take life so seriously.  Cartoonists must be inspired by the Creator, as When you think of the Elephant... The Giraffe... the duck billed platypus, armadillos and all the strange animals that mostly bring a smile to your face the first time you see them... and you think, as a child, there must be some mistake... there can't be an animal like that.  But "The Great Cartoonist from above" created them.   Take a look at the insects: Walking sticks; the praying mantis; June bugs (the way they bump against your screen late spring, then lay on their backs wiggling their legs helplessly waiting for a dog's nose to help right them); .... And look at the birds... the spoonbills, pelicans, and gooney birds, just to name a few; and arachnids...eewwww!  Spiders; etc....


Cartoonists are just drawing people along the same strange exaggerated lines as the Creator drew those beasts for real. And they just explain what my online dictionary on my iMac says about our idiosyncratic ways:
distinctive, individual, individualistic, characteristic, peculiartypical,
 special, specific, unique, one-of-a-kind, personal; eccentricunconventional,
 irregular, anomalous, odd, quirky, offbeat, queer,strange, weird, wackywingy,  
 bizarre, freakish, abnormal; informal, freaky, far out, off the wall.






My online dictionary just about covers it... the cartoonist does the rest. ;-)


Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Review of Nora Ephron's I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK




It says on the cover flap of Ephron's hard cover book, I Feel Bad about my Neck, "With her disarming, intimate, completely accessible voice, and dry sense of humor, nora Ephron shares with us her ups and downs..."

I thought it quite frivolous and so not me at the beginning, but the more I read the more I realized just by being a woman near her age (I'm two years older), we had lots in common.  We older women all worry about losing our looks--knowing fully that it's more important to us than anyone else who knows and loves you.

She takes the complex idiosyncrasies of life and laughs at herself and in seeing life through her eyes, she holds them up to the light so we can see how simple and humorous, yet beautiful our life and ourselves really are.

If nothing else, Nora Ephron helps a woman to realize how much we love ourselves and this it is not egotistical, but just natural.  We weed our lawns and gardens because we love our land and our flowers, do we not?  If we didn't love ourselves, why would we bother doing things to make ourselves feel beautiful?  No one is going to love us better for looking younger, lovelier, for dressing ourselves up in the same ilk as putting accenting fern or lacy flowers in a vase with a rose.  But we know by doing so we show the world what a unique and wonderful flower that is... and aren't we all unique and wonderful in our own ways?

Ephron points to how futile it is to stay young or to try to look young, but still does it.  More power to her and other aging women.  We aren't "...going softly into that good night," but fighting the decline of our bodies and minds ALL THE WAY.  After reading her book, I feel one can either be a character and play up that personality, or show off who you really are in your own way, whether to wear a hat at a tilt, paint your nails, totter around dangerously in high heels, or wear wacky socks with your most comfortable sneakers-- Do it your own way.  Adorn yourself, not to be an advertisement for a better pair of jeans, but to show off your shape and person whom Creation made.  Find "your" own look; your own nook, and BE your own kooky self.

Thanks Nora.  I needed that!  I think we all need that.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

The Hermit In Me

I suppose there's a little hermit in everyone.  The word hermit comes from the Greek word for solitary.  When I'm on my walks in the woods, I like being solitary.  Tom sometimes comes along, but mostly it's just the dogs and myself.  It's my church, my meditation, my inspiration, and when suddenly I hear a motor, and am in view from the road, I've been known to dive down into the weeds and grass of the field above, or stand behind a broad tree if in the wood at the end of the path towards the lake.  But... Really, it's not to be rude, or to avoid certain talkative people with whom we get all the "Lake" news. I enjoy those conversations at times when I'm receptive to that. I think it's just that when the place that I'm in is sacred, and I don't want to interrupt that spiritual flow with worldly things.

I'm reminded of the nuns who had a vacation sanctuary on Peakes Island Maine.  They at times would be walking together, but each in their own world of sacred silence, and we could not converse with them... they'd only nod their heads in recognition of our being there and keep very silent.  This fascinated me as a child, but I understood that I think even back then.  I had always taken quiet walks with my various dogs throughout my lifetime, and needed that spiritual refreshment as much as a thirsty man needs water or a hungry person... food.  Which reminds me... I'm back, it's late for lunch, and I'm
Hungry.


Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Grandma's Babysitting

When I got the email from a friend that her daughter in law needed a babysitter, thinking I'd spread the news in hopes of a teenager or young adult who happens to be home when most needed, would ask for the job.  I did forward it, but then answered the request myself. For me it was like an answer to something missing in my life... Babies.  All my grandchildren then were school age, with the youngest in kindergarten.

I wasn't asked often, as the only time I'd be needed was when the baby's own grandmother was busy.  My first time, when I arrived and introduced myself, little Harper was in her mother's arms, and the nine month old shyly smiled at me, and I smiled back while I was chatting with her mother.  Then she reached out with both arms as her way of saying "I want you to carry me."  I was so pleased that tears practically came to my eyes.

Harper took a liking to me from the start.  When her mom left, I simply melted down to her size the best I could.  I wasn't really babysitting, I was merely a playmate.  I wished I'd had an opportunity to do so with my own grandchildren.  I think when I was first made a grandmother I was actually afraid of very little children.  It wasn't like my own offspring, and if left alone with my first grandchildren, I felt almost an overwhelming sense of responsibility.  Something changed throughout the years, so later, when helping one of my daughter in laws with her new twins, I began to relax a little.  By the time the last grandchild was born, I was able to cuddle the infant on my shoulder and rock her to sleep with such a feeling of contentment and completeness that I felt magical... like some grand-mummy in a fairy-tale.  I was finally realizing how wonderful the tiny babies were... and once they became school age, I missed the baby thing.

Now I had a chance to visit that area of my psyche that could just become part of an infant's life.  Harper would squirm along the floor, and beginning to learn the rhythm of crawling.  She had already advanced to pulling herself up at the heavy wooden coffee table.  I lay right on the floor with her and her toys and we played while I watched and felt as if I could see the world through her eyes.  What a wonder.  All the new things they are learning practically every waking minute.  She'd pull herself up and bang her little palm on the smooth varnished top of the table, listening the the sound, and feeling the shiny surface.  (What was going on inside her head?)  They don't yet have words that go with all they see and feel.  "The table is hard," isn't something they'd think in words, but realize by feeling.  "It's smooth and shiny.")  She takes a block and bangs the table... "It sounds different..." she tastes the block... "...tastes the same ...that wooden grainy taste of the block with the red letter and yellow number"... not yet having names for either--or anything but Mom, Dad, and simple words that have taken on meaning--unable to pronounce yet.  What a wonder.  More wonderful than watching a time lapse video of an opening bud.... we watch the opening of the mind.

She was nine months old then, and the last time I babysat, was just before her 2nd birthday.  Her mother had some bookwork to do in the house, and it was a warm summer's day, and we walked around outside for the whole two hours.  We picked wildflowers; watched butterflies; and picked raspberries and ate them.  It brought me back a thousand years to when I was a toddler and following my brother-one year older-as we explored the outdoors with wide eyed wonder, yet we took the wondering for granted.  At that age, everything was a wonder.  We lived the fairy-tale.  We saw walking sticks.  One has to be in no hurry, and just wide open to everything in the grass and bush to see these things.  I don't even know when I saw a walking stick last.

That wonder-full day with Harper, was as magical as the memories of my toddler past with discoveries becoming refreshed in my head.  We saw the tiniest of hop toads in the grass.  At first I thought they were small grasshoppers, but found they were toads that could sit on even this two year old's fingertip.
We sat in the shade on the edge of the back porch and watched butterflies dip into the flower heads of the hostas, and I realized the butterfly couldn't see us while sucking out the nectar, and we could reach out and gently touch their beautiful wings folded tightly together when they entered the flower.  If we were careful, they didn't know the difference, but if the flower was moved by other than a gentle breeze, they were off and elusive.  I'd bought Harper some bubble stuff to make bubbles and we did, watching them glitter in the sunshine, turning rainbow colors... and then burst into nothing.  What does a two year old think about that?  Probably not as much as the philosopher with a PhD, but still, the child would think they are more wonderful, because they can still just wonder and not try to figure everything out scientifically nor philosophically.  Just wonder...  And enjoy every new experience of life with the freshness of our own Eden at dawn.