The Moorings' Gardens

This is a piece I wrote about The Moorings' gardens for the Garden Conservancy tour in 2008

The Moorings’ Gardens

The Moorings, surrounded on three sides by Buzzards Bay, is the main house of Converse family’s summer estate in Marion, Massachusetts.  Built in 1903 by Harry E. Converse, the original estate encompassed approximately 60 acres.   Passing through the stone and iron gates which mark the original entrance, one can look ahead down the main drive lined with ancient giant rhododendrons to the bay, nearly a quarter of a mile away.  

The final drive to the house, sweeping along the shore of Sippican Harbor, is lined with salt-hardy rosa rugosa on the left and on the right the remnants of what was once a beautiful Japanese-style lily pond .  

The Japanese Lily Pond from an old postcard :

In addition to the 45-room main house, torn down in 1922 and replaced with the more practical home you see today, the property included a gate house, caretaker’s home, carriage house, ice house, and fire tower – all still standing but now adapted for 21^st century use as private homes.  

The present gardens around the main house are laid out on the footprint of the original gardens, and remain very much as they were over 100 years ago: front gardens enclosed by high boxwood hedges, a cutting garden for house flowers and a vegetable garden to the west side of the home, a sea-swept sunken garden on the bay side lined with fieldstone wall, and a glass-enclosed camellia garden off the dining room.  The Converse family has attempted to maintain a relaxed natural atmosphere with a distinctly English country garden look and feel within the formal framework of the original gardens. The surrounding salt bay with its strong breezes has much to say about the choice of flowers you see in the gardens.  

                                      Cutting garden with high hedges for protection against strong SW winds from the bay

Both the front garden and cutting garden today consist mainly of perennials, with blooms beginning with early crocuses and other Spring flowers and continuing throughout the Summer and well into the Autumn.   

                                                     Sunken garden on the bay side of the house

________________

And this is an excerpt from personal memoirs I'm in the midst of writing about my childhood on Converse Point and elsewhere:

The Gardens

Outside the house, the gardens in summer were magical places, filled with color and aroma.  In the spring, tall purple iris.  Then later, snapdragons, asters, peonies, hollyhocks, fierce tiger lilies, calla lilies, delicate white babies breath, purple ageratum, white alyssum, bright yellow and orange marigolds, mounds of white daisies.  It was a riot of color and smell. Rich, warm, fecund. I loved those gardens.  I’d help Nan or her caretaker, Domingo Nunes, cut flowers in the back cutting garden and bring them into the greenhouse for trimming.  Then they’d go into the house to Nan’s sun room where they’d be arranged in vases for various rooms in the house.    

                                      Perennials in the Cutting Garden

The front garden is an English country garden, and was Nan’s: Domingo wasn’t allowed in there except to cut the lawn and do weeding.  She designed it herself, chose all the flowers, and planted them herself.  I have a wonderful memory of kneeling in the grass beside her while she dug.  She had rubber pads that she strapped to her knees.  The back garden, used for cutting flowers for the house, was Domingo’s domain, and my grandmother wasn’t allowed in there except to cut flowers. He designed it and chose all the flowers for it.  So there was a truce of sorts:  the back garden for Domingo, the front garden for Nan.  

                                           My Apple Tree Hiding Place in Winter

Up next to the front door is an apple tree, with the most amazing branches that went every which way.  At ages 3-6, I was small enough to climb up into it, and there was one, perfectly level branch just my size. I’d sit on that for hours watching…boats out on the harbor, people walking beneath me, my grandmother cutting flowers, my grandfather sitting at his desk in the rumpus room.  It was a great hiding place to watch the world from. I can also remember as a child rolling around on the lawn, the damp warm grass on my face, even watching ants way down at the bottom of the grass.  

                                       Front Garden perennials…

I remember summer cocktail parties on the lawn in the front garden, with blue wicker chairs brought out and wicker tables as well.  

My grandfather would set up a bar over in the corner between the rumpus room door and the front vestibule – right behind his chair inside in the library.  Eleanor would serve hors d’oeuvres, wandering around the garden, probably very glad to be out from under her white half-ironed sheets.  We kids, mostly cousins, but also other kids who lived on the Point, would play on the beach outside the hedge, usually with somebody’s baby sitter riding herd on all of us and making sure we didn’t drown each other.  Our parents could forget we were there for a while. 

The Moorings had two vegetable gardens – one right next to the cutting garden, and also surrounded by 6-foot hedges, and another larger garden down the road between  Gosh Hollow (the Ingersoll/Olsen house) and the Francis’s in the Gatehouse.  This was mostly corn, squash, and pumpkins.  (My mother later built a house on that five-acre  lot, in 1977.) The house vegetable garden had all the rest – carrots, beets, onions, peas, beans, radishes, lettuce, tomatoes, some squash, and about eight rows of corns across the back.  We’d pick vegetables on Sunday mornings after church for summer Sunday dinners, and then help shell peas and beans, and take the husks off the corn, for Hannah. Also, I remember shelling peas at home on the steps of Mum’s bedroom garden, and we must have picked the peas in the Moorings garden because we didn’t have one at home.    

And then there were the greenhouses, one especially built for camellia trees Nan had brought back from China on her honeymoon.  Beautiful red, pink, white, and peppermint flowers that bloomed through the winter.  I remember going in that greenhouse during a raging blizzard and standing in awe in the humid, warm air with those beautiful deep green leaves and flowers bursting all around me -- and only an eighth of an inch of glass separating the flowers and me from icy winter blasts of snow.  Pure magic… Later as we grew older, those camellias made wonderful, and very impressive I thought, gifts for the various girls we dated and loved.   

A second greenhouse, attached the the camellias’ home, was more of a working greenhouse, with potted flowers of all kinds -- I remember lots of red and white geraniums, huge jade trees,  and droopy bell-like purple and pink flowers, wonderful aromas, mosses on the ground, and a work room with barrels full of different potting soils and organic fertilizers (no chemicals in that greenhouse!)    

-- More to Come --

Five Ways to Guarantee Failure

I heard a wonderful TED Talk this morning by a young Brazilian woman named Bel Pesce.  

In six minutes she managed to spell out five things we can do to sabotage success at almost anything we try -- and their opposites, which if done, will result in achieving our goals and dreams, and more importantly, enjoying life along the way...

They are:

1.  Believe in overnight success.

She may have gotten into MIT as the result of spending a few hours filling out an application, but it took 17 years of hard work to get to that point.  Get used to it.  Overnight success is a myth.  It takes hard work and perhaps years of growth and experience.   

2.  Believe someone else has the answers for you.

Your dreams and goals are your dreams and goals, no one else's. Ignore what they say your goal and dreams should be.  Look within.  That's where you'll find them -- and the path to them that is yours alone.  

3.  Believe that when growth is guaranteed, you should settle down and rest. 
Keep going, and you'll be astonished at what more you can accomplish.  Don't settle for less, or for enough. Work a little harder and see what happens.

4.  Believe the fault is someone else's.

 Each of us is totally responsible for our successes and failures.  We can't blame a bad market,  or a      lousy upbringing, disabilities, bad luck, or, indeed, circumstances "beyond our control."  We will surely fail if we do.  If we fail, it's our fault.  And if we succeed, it's our success, our doing, and no      one else's -- though others can certainly help and support and encourage us.

5.  Believe only the goals matter.  

Reaching a goal or attaining a dream is one moment in time.  The only way to achieve a dream or a goal is to enjoy the journey every moment along the way. What matters is today. So lean into it, or as Deborah Elfers and friends would say: Have a one-buttock day! It's not about winning the race. It's about having a hell of a good time and leaning forward up the windward leg, and back down to the finish.   A remarkable thing happens when you do lean into whatever you are doing.  Instead of you leaning and pushing, the activity itself starts to pull you in -- and then it becomes almost effortless. BTFI!  That last insight isn't mine, or Bel's.  It comes from Benjamin Zander -- Deborah Elfers' amazing teacher.      

Here's a link to her talk: http://www.ted.com/speakers/bel_pesce

Her website:  www.belpesce.com

Zephyr 2015   Spring Commissioning

Spring is finally here -- and with it a LOT of joyful work to do on Zephyr. When I uncovered her, she had quite a lot of water in her, so obviously my home-made tarp didn't work very well. Luckily, no damage seems to have been done.  Next Autumn, she either gets shrink-wrapped, or stored under cover.  Here's my initial list of things needing to be done before launching, which I hope will be mid-May at the latest:

1. Move boat into garage for varnishing. 

2. Replace broken gooseneck on boom (CCSB). 

3. Replace lost hoop on gaff (buy from CCSB).

4. Check all spar and hull fittings and stays for wear. Replace if 

    necessary.

5. Add SS fitting on front of mast for spinnaker pole.

6. Clean, buff, and wax topsides.  

7. Sand bottom and repair dings in gelcoat.

8. Paint bottom:  Blue?  

9. Sand all trim on hull.  

10. Add 2 coats of varnish to trim.

11. Sand all spars.

12. Add 2 coats of varnish to all spars. 

13. Replace main sheet jam cleat.

14. Replace cleats for main and jib halyards with Harken jam cleats. 

15. Install port & starboard oarlock fixtures (CCSB).

16. Install “Quisset” blocks in oarlock fixtures.

17. Open and, if necessary, drain air tanks on both sides of bilge.

18. Create and install swiveling platform for compass on aft side of mast. 

20. Check all halyards and sheets for wear and tear.  Replace as 

      necessary. 

21. Ask Sperry if they can install clear panels in jib for telltales.  

22. Install twings for spinnaker sheets.  

23. Measure and drill holes in coaming for jib sheets.  

24. Check mooring and pennant!  

25. Clean and oil teak sole.

26. Sand and paint bottom of dinghy.  

27. Purchase spinnaker and pole from CCSB.  

Like i said, lots of work, but...

BTFI!  

The Moorings' Camellias

I've been spending some time this winter helping my brother Derek tend to the camellias in the greenhouse of the Moorings on Converse Point. 

Derek pruning extra buds...

In the dining room of The Moorings, right beside  a portrait of our great-grandfather Elisha Slade Converse, a door opens into another world...my grandmother's greenhouse, an amazing, rich, damp, fertile Eden in which to hide and play with dirt when we were kids.    

One room contained (still does) sixteen tall camellia trees with dark shiny green leaves and blossoms that bloom all winter. It was a moment of magic for a child then -- and I'll admit, an adult now -- to pass through into that utopia on a cold snowy February day and see such delicate beauty,  safe and moist and warm, while inches away from a raging northeast blizzard just outside the glass.  I loved going into that greenhouse, felt somehow secure and beautiful in the face of the storms raging around me both outside the house and in...

Later, when I was older, that greenhouse held beautiful and impressive (I thought)  gifts for the  few girls I shyly courted and loved as a teenager.   My grandmother had a stack of special boxes for them, cardboard, with clear cellophane tops with "The Moorings" in cursive script across the pane.   Into each box on special occasions, went 4-6 of those lovely delicate flowers, sprinkled with water to keep them moist. 

The camellias came from China with my grandparents, who had been honeymooning there in 1919-1920.  Long before the Dept. of Agriculture put its restrictions on importing nefarious flora, it was easy for my grandmother to slip four small camellia plants into her steamer trunk, and when they built their summer home in Marion shortly thereafter -- which she designed, by the way -- she convinced her young husband to include the cost of a home for those little plants in his budget for the house.  

As the plants  grew, her gardeners, first Tony Cruz and then Domingo Nunes, got interested in propagating and grafting the original four plants, which I suspect were all a pale pink or red color, and today those four little sprigs have grown into 16 trees, each 10-12 feet high.  And the flowers, which bloom from December to mid-March!  Deep red, brilliant white, some with yellow centers, delicate shades of pink, and -- my favorite -- peppermint, with streaks of pink on a white background.   

Peppermint Camellia

As I write this in mid-March, the blooms have mostly passed, and now it's time for pruning, fertilizing, and getting rid of any little bugs that like to make their homes on those dark glossy leaves.... But December will come again, and with it next year's beauty...

Gentle, delicate pink camellias protected in their dark green dells...

Waiting to bloom next year.... Pruning one of those two buds right next to each other will allow the remaining one to flourish...

Nanny, Rose, and I

Last night I was down in my basement hunting for some family photo albums, and I came across this print of a painting I'd framed and had hung in my office many years ago. It is one of my favorite pieces of art.  When I first saw it, I would have sworn it was a photograph because of the incredible detail.  The 2nd thing I noticed was the smile on the young woman's face.  I am probably not the first to immediately think of the Mona Lisa when I saw it the first time, but that's who the woman reminded me of.  She has that same look of self assurance and satisfaction -- as if she's either just had sex or is about to. (I think the former).  The third thing I noticed was the energy and patient contentment the golden retriever is emoting.  Like her owner.   

Finally, the three subjects of the painting — the woman, the dog, and the artist… I have the feeling the artist and easel are right there, part of the scene. I can almost put myself in his place, noticing the small intimate details he is seeing and recording, and I can tell he and she are very much in love, knowing each other in ways only a married couple can. The dog, too, is one with them. I was just falling in love with someone who looks a bit like Nanny, but we were missing the dog.  I knew then I wanted a golden retriever.  I fell out of love, but Grace happened...  

It's a summer weekend morning in Northampton, Massachusetts, with the sun streaming in through the screened porch from above the house next door. The dusty screen needs a good wash. There's a hydrangea tree (not a rhododendron -- too far into the summer to be in such full bloom) down the street, and the grass around the house is turning brown and needs cutting. It's going to be hot again, but right now there's still a coolness that requires a flannel bathrobe.  The house next door needs a paint job, the old paint chipping and flaking off in places, and the white trim on this porch could stand some touching up. There’s a stray leaf or two on the newly painted floor. She has begun a list of things to do on the small pad of paper under the spoon on the folding table. But there’s no pen.  The light and shadows fascinate me, especially the sun coming through the wash of the screen.

The painting is titled "Nanny and Rose" and is by the American artist Charles Prior.  The woman is his wife, Nanny Vonnegut (Kurt's daughter), and the golden retriever is Rose.  The painting hangs in the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, where I first saw it many years ago and bought this print.

So this morning, with my own cup of tea in a green mug, I'm leafing through this month's issue of "Yankee" magazine, and flipping over a page came across Naomi Shulman's wonderful article, "Nanny, Rose, and I" about her own first encounter with the painting, and then -- blessed woman -- years later meeting the subjects (including the artist) when she and her husband moved to Northampton. The subtitle is: "A painting showed a young woman what love looked like, And then it came to  life.”   

I will have to give some thought to the grace-filled synchronicity of these two happenings within 12 hours of each other….What does this mean? 

Gracie

Grace

5 July 2000 - 23 November 2011

As most of you know, Gracie died on 23 November 2012, the day before Thanksgiving. Having to put her down seemed at the time to be the most difficult decision I've ever made, and it took about three weeks of agonizing anticipatory grief and three visits with her to the vet before I realized that in letting her go I was giving her a pain-free death.  If I'd waited any longer, she would have been miserable. 

Gracie's Last Swim

As it was, neither of us had much of a life those last few weeks.  She was lethargic most of the last two weeks, with some respites when she got some of her old energy back.  But even those days weren't perfect.  Her arthritis was bothering her, she couldn't run very much at all, and her hips seemed to give out once or twice.  The last time she went swimming at Converse Point -- about three weeks before she died -- she was eager but slow.  

Waiting for the ball

Last Swim

I could tell she was hurting, even though swimming  was what she loved best.  She did her usual thing though:  swam after the yellow tennis ball, which I threw only a few yards out in the water, brought it back to the beach, dropped it in a pile of sand and seaweed, and then rolled over on it with all four dripping legs flailing in the air.  

Really weird dog!

 Then she rolled over and placed the ball protectively between her two front legs. A classic Gracie position she'd maintained from puppyhood. There was no way anyone was going to take that ball from her unless it was to thrown it out in the water again.

 This is how I'll always remember her -- age 3. 

After the 2nd swim, I stopped, let her rinse off, and then took her up on the lawn to walk and dry off.  I knew it was her last swim and last walk on the Point, and that's really when the grief began for me. 

Diagnosis

A few days later Gracie seemed tired and lethargic, and wouldn't eat. 

Not the usual exuberant Gracie

I took her to her vet, Jean Pitcairn at Chase Farm Animal Hospital in North Dartmouth, who diagnosed her with inoperable cancer of the spleen.  We put her on some medication, including some homeopathic stuff that sometimes can slow cancer down and extend life up to a year.  It didn't work. 

At the next visit, a week later, I asked Jean if this was my fault.  Was there anything I'd done wrong?  Why so young?  Jean said, first of all, the average life expectancy of a golden retriever is 11.6 years.  Grace was just shy of that at 11.3.  So she's in the ballpark.  (Somehow I'd gotten it into my mind that golden lasted 14 years, so this seemed much too soon.)  

Second, even if I'd fed her organic dog food, vegetables, vitamins, and supplements, it wouldn't have helped.  She told me of a yellow lab whom she had to put down recently at age 7 -- because of cancer.  That dog's owners were fanatics about health, including their pet's -- making sure the animals ate healthy, organic, natural foods, drank bottled water, and got plenty of exercise.   None of it helped.  This dog died much younger than he should have, and no one knows why. 

So no, I was off the hook. Grace got good food, enough exercise, and a lot of love.  It simply was her time.

Gracie's Last Day

The cancer must have been spreading rapidly. Within two weeks, she had almost stopped eating, had days of lethargy when she wouldn't eat at all, with a day of grace between them.  On one of those days, I asked my cousin Annie, who is a professional photographer, if she would take some pictures of Gracie and me together, and some of Gracie alone.  So we traipsed out to the Point one last time, and Annie took some wonderful photos of the two of us, as you can see.  

 These six photos and the last one below, 
taken on 13 November 2011, 

are by Anne T. Converse, copyright 2011.
http://www.annetconverse.com/

Meanwhile, my heart was breaking because I knew this is the last time Grace and I would be together in that favorite place of ours. We went for a short walk too down to the pond and back.  Gracie, of course, headed right for the pond to swim, but I held her back.  Not today, sweetheart. 

The next day, I took Gracie back to Jean once more, adjusted her meds, and went home.  But a day later, finally I knew it was time to let her go.  She was getting worse by the day.  So, I put her in the car -- in the front seat for once, which she liked, since she'd been allowed there only once before -- the day Judith and I brought her home from the breeder as a puppy and she sat in Judith's lap.

We drove over in the late afternoon the day before Thanksgiving -- I recall it being cloudy and threatening rain, but not too cold -- and went in to see Jean.  I was hoping she'd have some magic cure, that there might be another medication that would help so that we could go home together. 

It wasn't to be.  Jean looked her over, and then took a sample of the fluid in Gracie's abdominal cavity.  It was cloudy with blood.  She looked at me with tears in her eyes, and shook her head.  You know things aren't good when your vet weeps.  We talked about it, with Jean not recommending anything one way or another, and I looked at Grace lying there.  She looked at me with those brown love-filled eyes of hers, as if to say, "It's ok.  I understand.  It's time to go.  But I'm sorry I'm letting you down." 

So I said to Jean, "It is time.  I don't want her to suffer.  And I'm suffering too. We better go ahead now"  -- even though I wanted so badly to take her home one more time.  But I knew it would be putting off the inevitable and just creating more suffering for both of us.  I realized I was being unfair and selfish to Gracie to postpone any longer. Jean agreed, and said I'd made a good decision.    

Jean explained carefully what she was going to do, saying it would take about 20 minutes.  So I got down on the floor with Gracie and put her head in my lap, stroked her gently, and thanked her for...being Grace. 

God's grace, coming to me though this amazing, love-filled, forgiving, funny, intelligent, mind-reading, mood-altering companion of 11  years and three months.  Thanked her for loving me so completely and unconditionally.  Thanked her for the joy she gave me.  Thanked her for always being at the door, so glad to see me  when I came home. Thanked her for her patience and forgiveness when I was late. Thanked her for allowing me to love her with no barriers.  Thanked her for always being there when I needed her.   Thanked her for the gift she was to me. 

And just before she closed her eyes for the last time, I kissed her and told her I loved her.   She died gently in my arms a few minutes later, at 5:25 pm.  May she rest in eternal peace.   

 Gracie's memorial stone

After Gracie

I drove home with her empty collar and leash -- numb, empty, drained. As I opened the door and she wasn't there waiting, then the tears started, and I wept and wept.  Hours later, I wept again in the kitchen when I saw her dish with its uneaten breakfast.   It was a difficult night, and I must have cried myself to sleep.  I honestly don't remember.

The next day, after a suggestion from a friend who has been through this many times with her goldens, I picked up all her toys, tennis balls, dishes, and towels and put them in a box for the Dartmouth Humane Society.  I took her leashes of their hooks and put them in too.  I threw away her bed under my desk, along with whatever food and meds were left.  And I vacuumed the whole house, so that no trace of her could be seen.  

The house seems so empty, so silent without Gracie. There is no other living presence here.  I know that as soon as I walk in.   I still expect her to be at the door waiting for me. I expect her to come lift my hand off the computer keyboard to say it's time to go out. I am surprised to find 6 pm has arrived because at 5 she always would let me know it was her dinnertime.

And yet... late one night a week after she died, I would have sworn I felt her put her head on my knee while I was at the computer, as she would sometimes.  In fact, I hardly took note of it and said absently, "In a minute, Sweetheart."  Perhaps it was her spirit, come to coax me up and out and then to bed.   God, I miss her, even three months later.   But I also know today is the last day I will cry for her. 

I admit that an upside exists.  Gracie's transition to her next form of energy, whatever it may be,  and absence here isn't all bad for me.   For one thing, I don't have to go out in the cold and snow and ice late at night anymore (though for a while I thought I missed not doing that!). I don't have to get up at dawn to go out either.  I can stay out as long as I want on a date and not worry about getting back to Gracie to feed and walk her.  I can even go away for the weekend if I want to.  I'm saving money on kennels for that, and on food and medicines.  I am also now free to go sailing!  And sometimes -- only sometimes -- it's nice to sit quietly to meditate or pray and not be interrupted by a cold nose in my praying hands.

Before Gracie died, in those last fearful days, I swore I would never have another dog.  For one thing, no other dog will ever be able to replace Grace. For another, back then it seemed disloyal to her and her memory. And I didn't think I could go through such pain again, and I don't want to watch someone I love go through that last part of life again, knowing she'll be gone soon.  Now, that seems selfish.  And unrealistic.  Death is part of life.  The Buddha says "Life is suffering."  He's right -- part of life is suffering.  That's just the way it is.   But part is also joy, and Gracie gave me much joy -- far more joy than suffering, for sure.  
I wonder now, why it's so easy for me to be with my dying hospice patients, why I feel so blessed, when I know how much the family sometimes is grieving and know what it feels like. I suppose it's because it's their pain, not mine. Good boundaries, I suppose a psychologist would say.  At least I can now empathize much better, knowing what they go through.


I certainly am not ready to have another dog.  Friends keep sending me emails with notices about poor abandoned dogs in shelters who are going to be euthanized in 24 hours unless I adopt them!   Sorry, pooches.  Someone else will have to take you to be theirs.  I am just not ready,  yet.  When, or if,  I am, I suspect the right dog will present herself -- perhaps in a surprising way.    

My friend Carol lost her dog a while back -- last Winter I think -- and she reports having gone through much the same as I have.  Carol kept saying she wasn't ready for another pet.  Last week, however, she and a little dog named Miss Molly found each other, somewhat serendipitously.   Molly's a scared little dog about a year old, and of very questionable background and breeding.  But she has love in her eyes, and I think that's what finally made Carol realize she is ready to love again and be loved. 

I know they will be good for each other.  Carol will quickly coax Molly out from her shadows, and perhaps let Molly do the same for her.   Molly's already been on Joy, and no doubt Carol will be teaching her soon how to tail a sheet.  (Sorry.  I just had to get that in.)  

If I do get another dog, I know she won't -- can't -- replace Gracie.  I've had other dogs before, including Astra, with whom I grew up.  I loved her dearly, and Gracie wasn't a replacement for her either, could not have been.  Astra was important to me back then, more so than I realized at the time.   

But Grace.  Gracie is without doubt the best dog I've ever had, and for that reason alone another dog  is unlikely to take her place in my heart. That part of my heart will always be hers.  

That awful gray and cold afternoon,  just before I left Grace to drive home alone, Jean said with a little smile, "Someday she'll meet you with joy on the Rainbow Bridge." I didn't know to what she was referring, but knew immediately what she meant.  Later, I looked up the reference and found this.  It's a little hokey, but I imagine it vividly in my mind today.

Just this side of heaven is a place called the Rainbow Bridge. 

When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to a place called the Rainbow Bridge. 

There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together. 
There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable. 

All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor; those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by. 

The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing: They each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind. 

They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. Her bright eyes are intent. Her eager body quivers. Suddenly she begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, her legs carrying her faster and faster. 

You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart. 

Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together.... 

And I will, with Gracie.  

Grace, 
5 July 2000 - 23 November 2011

Rest in peace.

Tsunamis, Earthquakes, and Nuclear Power

Video of tsunami hitting Japanese coastal towns

Some thoughts on what's happening in Japan after watching this video...
I cannot begin to imagine what it must have been like to hear and see this wave approaching and not be able to do anything to escape it. The sea's power is simply overwhelming physically and mentally. Even watching this footage, it's incomprehensible. It makes me feel, selfishly, relieved to know such waves are extremely unlikely on the East Coast. (Most of Marion would be inundated and destroyed in minutes, of course, to give it a local perspective.) 

But those poor, poor, frightened people…moments of terror and then, nothing. It is, again, incomprehensible -- and terrifying just to think about. For those who survived, shock and grief.  How on earth Japan is going to recover from this, and the nuclear problem, is hard to imagine, but they will in time and with help, at least economically. But is that what's so important? Emotionally and mentally is another matter. Life is dramatically altered for thousands of people now and for generations and lifetimes to come.

Though obviously God had nothing to do with this event, just watching this small portion of it, one can easily understand how earlier peoples with no knowledge of geology would see the hand of God in it -- and be terrified. For us, though, who supposedly know better, how do we approach this spiritually? How do we bring meaning to it? What are the moral and ethical issues this event raises? 

On the other hand, I'm sure someone will see the hand of God in it, so let me anticipate their cretinous reactions:

God did it as punishment for…choose one:

A.  Pearl Harbor

B.  The Martyrs of Japan

C.  Being an unChristian nation

D. Toyota and Honda outselling Ford and Chevy

E.  Buying Rockefeller Center

F. The Bataan Death March & POW treatment

G. The Gay liberation movement in Japan

H. Simply being Japanese

I. Whatever wacko reasons Glenn Beck, Pat Robertson, et al. can come up with

It occurs to me, looking at a photo of our Earth from space, that from that perspective, the earthquake and resulting tsunami  weren't much of an event actually.  The wave hit only a very small portion of Japan's coastline, and only a tiny percentage of all our coastlines. It's effect was localized to that part of Japan, at least physically. It was just Gaia, mother Earth, doing her thing. It is only because we are here on this planet that the tsunami takes on significance.  I know, I know…If a tree falls in the woods…

The nuclear problem is another issue.  If we weren't here, it wouldn't have happened. We did it. Good old American know-how.  Companies our retirement plans invest in built those reactors. We paid for them and made money from them. I know Derek will disagree with me, but what's happened in Japan is exactly why we need to come up with alternative sources of clean and safe energy -- and close all nuclear plants ASAP.  That's the intelligent ans reasonable thing to do, but will we?  Probably not. We never seem to learn.  The almighty dollar always comes first in our capitalistic corporatocracy.  Like Mother Nature, human nature seems to stay the same…until the 100th monkey washes her food.  So there is hope for us perhaps…