An old house holds many secrets

An old house makes a lot of noise in the winter. The wood that keeps our roof overhead is almost 120 years old and thus when touched by extreme cold, the result is all sorts of creaking and popping sounds – each one reminding me to be grateful I’m indoors on a night when the temperature slipped below zero.

I’m also grateful that two stories below my bed, down in the scary cellar, a twentieth century marvel – a forced air propane furnace – continues to pump warm air throughout the spacious rooms of this prairie box. It’s an old farmhouse but it’s fairly cozy even though the windows are often so iced over you can’t catch a clear view of outside.

As I ponder the creaks overhead, I wonder about the people who’ve lived in this house throughout its history. Who pulled the woodstove out from the middle of the dining room and patched the hole in the ceiling? What year did the bathroom go in? Who decided to run the floor boards in the hallway upstairs in two different directions? Who replaced the long narrow windows with short ones and who decided the bedrooms at the front needed only one window instead of their original two? And, who set the house facing the road instead of overlooking the lake?

I can only venture a guess at these questions, of course. Who can know the past unless someone in the present takes the time to write up the details of domestic life and then takes further action to save it. Maybe someone once did this; maybe the history of this house sits in someone’s attic in Orange, California. How could I know?

The stories of the past link one generation to the next. In a way, they keep the past alive. This is important for many reasons, the very least of which is waking up grateful your heat comes from the basement instead of wood stove in the middle of the dining room.

Thoughts on Prayer

Committing to prayer can be one the most challenging aspects of modern life. Sure, it's easy to send up prayers in the midst of a crisis, but how often do we remember to pray when everything is humming along just fine? If you're like me, not often enough. Here's a beautiful reminder of the importance of prayer, taken from the great Lebanese poet, Kahlil Gibran:

You pray in your distress and in your need;
would that you might pray also in your days of abundance.

For what is prayer but the expansion of yourself into the living ether?

And if it is for comfort to pour your darkness into space, it is also for your delight to pour forth the dawning of your heart.

And if you cannot but weep when your soul summons you to prayer, she should spur you again and yet again, though weeping, until you shall come laughing.

Today, my prayer of thanksgiving is for all of you who keep visiting this blog.

Birthday Greetings to a Great Fan!

My brother was an only child for four years. Then I appeared and I can only guess at his disappointment over not getting a little brother to which he could pass along his enthusiasm for sports.

Fortunately, Tony adapted to my gender and didn’t let my propensity for all things Barbie to keep him from teaching me about the NHL, the NFL and Baseball’s American League. All throughout the 1960s, our bedtime routine consisted of him, in the bottom bunk, rattling off the names of America’s great sports towns, and me, up top, expected to spit out the name of the corresponding team before I was allowed to go to sleep.

Tony…"Buffalo!"

Me…"Bruins"

Tony…"Cleveland!"

Me…"Indians"

Tony…"Detroit"

Me…"Red Wings"

Tony…"what about
baseball?"

Me…"Lions"

Tony…."NOOOOO. Lions are football!
Baseball!"

Me…"White Sox!"

Silence from the bottom bunk.

To this day, I can’t remember the name of the baseball team in Detroit. What a disgrace!

me…."Tony! Happy Birthday!!!!!"

Winter wonderland

This is winter.




















The river birch.

The vineyard. (It was 70 degrees 3 weeks ago.)

The vegetable garden.























A vertical fencepost.























Fragile fencing.

Note the angle of the icicle. It was a persistant wind.