won’t you be my neighbor

“Love is sacrifice.
Love sacrifices itself for its neighbor.”
Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

“People are almost always better than their neighbors think they are.”
George Eliot

(the next generation of neighbors / Julie Cook /2023)

In my neck of the woods, neighbors can have either two legs or four.
However, if the truth be told, the majority most likely come with four…
that is unless we count all the birds…be that songbirds, crows, turkeys, grouse,
etc…but I digress.

So imagine my surprise while I was mindlessly walking toward the kitchen sink
when suddenly something odd caught my attention.

It was as if some sort of super power laser vision took over—-
my eyes immediately locked on the eyes of another….

There were wee brown eyes curiously peering in at my green eyes.

All the while, eyes locked… this curious wee one was making a bee line
toward my kitchen window.

Seeing how small my inquisitive new friend was,
I knew mother couldn’t be too far away.

And just as I suspected, it just so happened that mother was close…
close near the front door. Yikes!

Throwing caution to the wind, I grabbed my phone, heading out that same door..
all the while my young friend had quickly retreated
meeting back up with mom on the opposite side of my car.

It seems my wee friend has a few siblings who aren’t as bold nor as
adventuresome.
Yet that matters not because a new group of neighbors have made their presence known…
and I am the better for it.

“When I say it’s you I like,
I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more
than anything you can ever see or hear or touch.
That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without
which humankind cannot survive.
Love that conquers hate,
peace that rises triumphant over war,
and justice that proves more powerful than greed.”
Fred Rogers

Good-bye my dear old friend…

Love takes up where knowledge leaves off.
Saint Thomas Aquinas

Animals are such agreeable friends –
they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.
George Eliot

(Peaches in her beautiful prime / Julie Cook/ 2017)

How do you pick a day, a time or even the place for the death of another?
The death of someone you love dearly?

How can you be the master of another’s right to live or die?

Or perhaps more simply, how can one be given the tremendous responsibility
to glibly turn the hand with a thumbs up or a thumbs down?

…just like those various Roman emperors,
those long ago bloodthirsty leaders who were burdened, or perhaps gifted,
with such decisions— never seemingly having any internal
moral turmoil…none like I have had…

How in the world can one balance both mind and heart in
such everlasting ending sorts of decisions?

Oh there are those out there who seem to give such thoughts no never mind…
Those who have little if any regard for the living or the sanctity of
their, or anyone elses for that matter, life.

The phrase moral responsibility has been tossed at me like a
dead weight over the past several weeks.
As in…. it is my moral obligation to do the “right thing” by my
cat…my pet, my tender responsibility.

That being Peaches, the older of my current two cats.

She is/was 15 years old…
diagnosed with aggressive and advanced bone cancer in her jaw
just a few short weeks ago….

I’ve had a cat in my life ever since I was 6 years old.

Oh there was the occasional bird, fish, mouse, along with several dogs
over the years, but cats have been the constant.

So I did a little counting….
during the course of 57 years… that being from age 6 to 63, I have had a total
of 7 cats.
7 cats spread out over 57 years.

Some of them were more cat-like, while two of them were more dog-like.
(Yes even a vet once told me one of my cats was more dog-like than cat-like…
meaning they had a deeply bonding personality…not aloof and independent like
most typical cats.)

Peaches, who was more cat-like, came into my life in 2007.
She came as a lonely, lost and starving 8 month old kitten.

Our son had just graduated high school and had left for college when Peaches showed
up—it was as if on cue she came into my life when there was a drastic void.
She readily filled that void.
She was tenacious, street wise and determined to live.
And yet faithfully, throughout both the good and bad, Peaches stood by my side.

So fast forward to a recent divorce, upheaval and obvious loss…
all multiplied by a major move—
and suddenly, and oh so sadly, it came time for her to leave her post…leaving me.

So having overseen me resettled, I suppose she believed her job was complete.

It’s just that I wasn’t ready to make that decision for her, for me, or…for us…
not yet…
but whoever said life would be fair…

And so I thank you Peaches, my dear tenacious friend,
Mommy will always love you!!!

(sporting her “Mimi” hat)

(holding on to Percy’s tail, her surrogate child)

(Wednesday at the Vet’s when we said our good-byes)

“The Lord manifests Himself to those who stop for some time in
peace and humility of heart.
If you look in murky and turbulent waters,
you cannot see the reflection of your face.
If you want to see the face of Christ,
stop and collect your thoughts in silence,
and close the door of your soul to the noise of external things.”
St. Anthony of Padua

lunatics at large!!! Where have all the sane people gone?????

“Sane people did what their neighbors did,
so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.”
George Eliot, Middlemarch

(edvard-munch.org)

About 8 years ago, when I first began this little blog of mine, I posted a little disclaimer …
that being—as a newly retired teacher, I still felt as if I had a few things left
in me to teach..things that still needed to be studied…

Two key components to that need of continuing education were–
A) the history of our Western Civilization and that of her Judaeo Christian bedrock
on which it was built—as well as…
B) the importance of knowing from whence we came in order that we could know where
we were going.

There were also other pressing issues but knowing one’s history,
as well as one’s foundation, were the lynchpins.

And yet we are currently watching our culture throw that proverbial baby out with the bathwater.
All because our oh so woke world cares not about her past but rather only about her
own selfish agenda.

And that my dear students, is what we call ignorance.

Or maybe it’s what we call stupidity.

Or maybe it happens to be both—ignorant stupidity.

Madame Speaker has demanded that all the portraits of all Civil War era
Speakers of the House be removed from public view.
Much like that crazy uncle who needs to be hidden away from the guests during the holidays.

Statues around our Western Civilization…statues of Columbus, Winston Churchill,
and all Confederate leaders are being defaced or toppled.

Rioters are commandeering our cities, claiming swarths of city blocks as new sovereign lands.

Our police have lost all due process and are leaving their posts.

Lawlessness rules supreme.

Face maks are mandated.

Rioters do as they please.

Where is our sanity in the midst of this chaos?

Your history matters people.
It defines you–for better or worse.
We pray that the worse part is what will serve to make you better.
But if you continue to stick your fingers in your ears, ignoring the facts,
then you are bound to the ties of failure.

Let me share an intimate look at history.

When our two-year-old granddaughter comes to visit…in order to
consolidate the hurried pace of getting ready for bed, she and I
will hop in the shower together.

If ever a kid loved water, it is her.
She could stay in a tub or shower all night if possible.
Happily turning into a wrinkled prune.

She will sit on the shower bench telling me to sit beside her,
this as the warm rainfall showerhead gently rains down over our heads.

I’ll scrub her little feet and lather her head as we style
soapy hair into fun and fanciful shapes.

She asks that I cup my hands together, filling my hands full of water so
she can try and take a drink.
She asks that I fill her pink water pitcher full of water so I
can pour it over her head.

I think of us sitting together in this shower, warm and happy…
an intimate setting when everything seems right in the world…
all within our happy little world.

And then I think of a different time…
a time when other women and their children and grandchildren
huddle together, all awkwardly and yet intimately naked, thinking that this
was to be their last sacred time together.

They had been herded into “the showers” ridiculed, naked, and afraid.
Holding tightly together in a final intimate last moment before
the deadly ‘showers’ began.

I am removed from their nightmare by 75 to 80 years.

At this moment, I am happy and feel a deep sense of gratitude to be able to
share in this rather intimate night-time ritual with my granddaughter…

Yet there were other women who would have also relished in such an opportunity…
but rather theirs was to be a final solution to a culture’s perceived problem.

Madness.

Yet madness still prevails.

Learn from your history and your past my dear students.
Do not repeat the same errors of previous “woke” generations.

However, I fear your pride has blinded your eyes and chilled any hope of compassion
from your heart.

Continue on this path and we are all doomed.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar,
and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved,
and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought
you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming
of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved,
and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise
we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
2 Peter 3:10-13

Indian Corn, a kernel by any other name should be so colorful. . .

“Colors burst in wild explosions
Fiery, flaming shades of fall
All in accord with my pounding heart
Is not this a true autumn day?
Just the still melancholy that I love — that makes life and nature harmonize.
The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one’s very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit.
Delicious autumn!
My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
George Eliot

(Indian corn / Julie Cook / 2014)

Images of Indian or Calico Corn, otherwise known as Flint Corn.
Did you know that Flint corn is one of the original species of corn grown by most tribes of North American Native Indians? The yellow and white sweet corns, that ubiquitous staple found at most back yard BBQs, that humble buttery and salty corn on the cob, was developed many years later, long after corn was introduced to the first European settlers.

Indian corn is also known as Flint corn because of its very hard exterior–as in, it is as hard as flint. This variety of corn consists of less water molecules and less starch then what is known as “sweet” corn, so when it dries, its kernels remain uniformed and compact unlike more traditional corns whose kernels pull away from one another leaving the familiar “dent” around the kernels— therefore earning the more familiar yellow corn the name of “Dent” corn. Because Indian corn does dry compact, leaving the cob appearing full, it is a wonderful little byproduct of Nature suitable for Fall decorating.

And because Flint corn contains less water, it is much less prone to freezing—which in turn allows for the corn to be harvested much later, well into the late months of Fall. It was one of the few, if not the only, crop recorded in Vermont to have survived the harsh harvest season of 1816 when Vermont and her sister New England states recorded the phenomenon known as “the year without Summer.”

The year of 1816 was recorded globally as one of the coldest and harshest on record. Many people were left to starve due to the lack of harvestable produce as snows and frosts were recorded late into the Summer months. Many people in North America and Northern Europe froze to death during the long brutal winter. Climatologist associated the never ending winter with the 1815 volcanic eruption of Mt Tambora in Indonesia. The thick suffocating and wide spreading ash cloud literally dimmed the warming effects of the sun on a massive and global scale— which in turn caused a catastrophic food shortage. Indian corn was one of the few sustainable crops to survive.

Flint corn is most often ground into meal for polenta, posole, or even for animal fodder. It is the preferred corn for the making of hominy and is a popular corn used for “popping” corn—

Can you hear his heart beat?

“If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.”
George Eliot

I relish in these wonderfully intimate touches from nature–a chance to be so close to a squirrel that I can see the sunlight reflected in his eye—such opportunities are rare and very special.

And did you know that George Eliot was actually the pen name for Mary Ann Evans—a British victorian writer—who knew 😉