How fast is it coming? Spring, I mean. The Real Spring, I mean – not that useless calendrical equinox.
Well, opinions vary (I bet you didn’t see that coming), but here’s one estimate for North America.
Spring moves northward at about 16 miles per day, or about 100 miles per week. This only applies on ground level (say, the Great Plains). Spring moves uphill at about 100 feet per day. – An Adirondack Naturalist in Illinois
Why doesn’t it fall down? Why don’t the two halves fall off?
I’m sure there’s a sound reason — something to do with loads — but I’ve grown so used to seeing cable-stayed bridges with cables on both sides of the driving surface (here and here and here and here [in hybrid form with a suspension construction]) and, more recently, here . . .
. . . that seeing a bridge with cables just in the middle was disconcerting somehow.
And yet when I go back and actually look at other bridge photographs, I find that some of those bridges also used just a middle set of cables. Here, for instance. So much for my visual memory.
Anyway, this bridge did not fall down nor did it show any sign of distress. So much for my engineering intuition.
Maybe home is where we live right now. Or almost.
Maybe home is where we grew up and still feel that we belong. Maybe home feels like a million miles away or maybe it feels so close that country roads can take us home.
Maybe it’s a way of life that’s almost gone. Maybe it’s a place that both calls to us, and repels us.
Maybe home is a whole country, or a province or state, or a city or small town, or maybe it’s more tightly defined: a specific house.
Maybe home is family. Maybe it’s friends with whom we share a sense of humour, however goofy. Maybe it’s just one person along the broken road.
Maybe home is the way we felt when we were young or when we were young and in love. Maybe it’s something we recognize best when we leave it.
Maybe it’s our final destination, as we head for our own version of the green, green grass of home.
Maybe someone can sing us back home or maybe we can’t go home again. At least we can turn our faces homeward bound.
Look homeward, angel. Whatever home is to each of us, may we find it.
It doesn’t take much to expose the limits of, and curious gaps within, my knowledge. This past week all it took was two tiny lizards on the wall of a friend’s house in Myrtle Beach.
Looking at the lizards, I realized that while I feel that I can recognize a lizard, I can’t describe or define one. That’s OK. The Oxford Languages dictionary is happy to oblige (although only in Google’s search results, not via direct access if you, like me, lack a subscription).
lizard (noun); a reptile that typically has a long body and tail, four legs, movable eyelids, and a rough, scaly, or spiny skin.
Thus armed, I checked my specimens or, more accurately, my phone photos thereof.
How big is Texas? Even driving at the posted speed limits of 75 or 80 mph, it takes two overnight stops to traverse it. The bad news is that they generally didn’t route the interstates through the best scenery (something about the good stuff being already busy or elsewhere or both). The good news is that the route doesn’t much affect the sunrises and sunsets.
I was inspired by said rises and sets to tackle two haiku, one free verse, and a few photos taken at speed through the car windshield and on foot in a motel parking lot. Under Music of the Week, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick tackle them metaphorically in music.
Bright slivers widen,
Frosting the far horizon.
Night loses its grip.
Earth slides up to meet
the sky, concentrating hues.
Day’s last gasp. Today.
A hinged lid on a kettle barbeque,
the sky cracks open in front of us,
barely lighting the punctuated flatness all around
but blinding with a glimpse of what lies beyond.
What lies ahead.
Rolling open above us
it pauses for what seems like hours
with hardly any change and rarely any comment.
Is it sleeping? Thinking? Off doing errands?
Ohmygod, is it stuck?
At the last possible minute it bolts into action,
swaddling the mundane and transforming the ugly
with warm light, deep shadows.
Glory flares as the sky thunks shut behind us,
firmly but not finally.
This is the planet’s daily routine:
reliable, predictable, even boring through repetition, and yet
miraculous.
As ancient as Earth below us,
but ever new.
No, no, that’s not right. How could I be the walrus? After all, I am the cormorant. The thoughtful one on the right, not that gauche fellow on the left.
I admit it freely. I am a novice with wasp feeders.
I understand the basics, of course. When you consider all the steps involved, there’s really quite a lot to learn:
I’ve heard that advanced practitioners seed adjacent lawn areas with grubs, to serve as additional wasp food. Some even set up tiny insect-chopping tables for adult wasps to process their insect prey into suitable food for their young. Maybe next year.
Above all, I have learned not to add red dye to the sugar-water solution. It’s true that it’s more attractive to the human eye but it’s not good for the wasps. It can also attract unwelcome pests, like hummingbirds, to your wasp feeder.
This week we have feathered entrants in several performance categories.
Stopping at a rest stop to fuel and defuel, you walk through a doorframe just to the right of the cashier and this is the first thing you see.
Well, you see a little foyer with this whole green door on the far wall, maybe 6 feet away. So where are the restrooms? Through this door, and then to the left or right, yeah?
No.
As it turns out, the restrooms are through doors to the left and right of where you’ve paused. As the little sign *above* it makes clear, this door is an emergency exit.
Now, why someone thought it helpful to label an emergency-exit door with a huge sign saying “Restroom” is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. What is not in the least surprising is that enough hapless travellers have barged through this door, thereby setting off the emergency alarm, that someone decided another sign was in order. And someone else felt the need for a clear and important amendment.
Posted: 2025 May 17
Thanks to John Whitman for this slightly dismayed face from downtown Ottawa.
This space is available for other submissions.
