What the Muses Leave Behind

May 12, 2020 Today’s image – In life, there are takeaways, and then there are TAKEAWAYS. My hallowed ground, wildlife refuge trip sent me off with a significant takeaway, and one that took most of my attention today – deer ticks! Only minutes into that walk along the levee, I was commending my good providence for hiking on the slough on such a beautiful but chilly day, and glibly remarking to myself about the absence of mosquitoes.   My comeuppance arrived around 9:00 pm last night as I noticed a little tickle of something moving across my hand. I looked up from my book – augghhhh! TICK! TICK! TICK!   The red lights in my brain flashed as the sirens of my amygdala screamed.   I search my arms and legs; I felt around my scalp and armpits. I looked at my pup, and a primal nitpicking session commenced as I combed his fur and my head with frantic fingers.   Dozens of ticks had hitchhiked home on us from the tall marsh grasses. Before retiring, I stripped down and re-se...

May 11, 2020 Today’s idea – On the class agenda was economics.   The word economy originated from the Greek word “ oeconomicus ” for household management, which included consideration for the value of free men’s work in a household and that of exploited women and slaves. Later these ideas were extended from households to city-states, and later to nation-states.   The shape of its letters resembles a warren, and I added more rooms by contrasting neo-classic economics with eco–economics and doughnut economics. The word begs the question, what do I consider home? Where is my Ecos ? This existential query should be the Axis of any economics question; and its answer would be the Mundi. Unless the home is defined or described, how can we know what we are managing? A clear sense of habitat is rather essential to shape the perspective and frame the response.   This afternoon I mulled on this question as I sat on a levee beside the Mississippi River in a massive wildlife ref...

May 10, 2020 Today’s reflection on the evidence of a durable normal and the things we do to keep hope alive. The weather on this Sunday is definitely dogwood winter, chilly, gray, damp. It provides a fine backdrop for reflections over a cup of coffee of yesterday’s quintessential spring loveliness—the perfect Saturday for outdoor living.   And t oday is the perfect Sunday for small tasks, reading, lesson prep and even baking.   Yes, I baked a French Apple Blueberry Galette for myself.   It was that kind of cook up some comfort day.  As the pie baked and the day outside skulked about, I reminisced on Loud Thunder Forest Preserve and the gifts from the Bike Man.    The preserve was a place the school cook suggested as I checked kids in at brunch.   After last weekend’s livestock experience, I was keen on finding a Saturday trail walk that would be less adored. And as I loaded a few fellow hikers into the school van, I felt optimistic that we’d ...

May 9, 2020 Today’s mind experiment – this morning, I launched the thought experiment by watching a shared video called Coronavirus from Outer Space – Professor Wickramasinghe, Astrobiologist.  The channel is Green Tara Guru. The production behind Dr. Wickramasinghe’s mini-lecture was fun; his home office video was surrounded by a frame, embellished with space CGI and supporting image video clips for what he is describing at any moment, as well as, a celestial music soundtrack.  (My students would love if I were able to produce such lecture videos for them.) It was released May 1, 2020, and has a paltry three hundred fifty-nine views, one of which is mine.  After watching the video, I did my customary search about Dr. Wickramasinghe’s background.  He is a broadly publish an award-winning British mathematician and astronomer born in Sri Lanka in 1939. In the 1960’s he worked with theoretical physicist Dr. Fred Hoyle on a radical kind of panspermia (the idea that life ...

May 8, 2020 Today’s image – Yesterday had a full moon, albeit behind cloud cover.   While out that afternoon in a prairie park, I called my good friend and creative collaborator to talk about things going on.   She and I have published on a collection of art and poems and are compiling another. She paints break taking cosmic starscapes on enormous canvases, a painting wherein its viewer can get lost. She sees herself as a light work on a mission to assist with a vibration elevation that will create a beautiful ascension event that brings people into the fifth dimension. When I try to wrap my mind about what that means, I can only imagine the music group from the sixties. She has trained as a hypnotherapist, taking clients during a session that might last three or four hours back into past lifetimes to look at previous events or relationships in those lives that might be playing out still in a current lifetime.   Yes, she is an esoteric thinker, living within a very ecce...

May 7, 2020 Today’s departure – it is a full moon, the Flower Moon in Scorpio. It is May, and my astrologer writes: The truth of your needs only helps you clarify what kind of space to prepare for the partnerships you're ready to bring in.   My muse tugs at my sleeve. I write a love poem.   (I posted it before this entry.)

I love a woman with a wheelbarrow. Her strong brown arms, maybe gardener tanned are as much sculpture as anatomy. I love how she puts her load Ahead of her, pushing it to do her bidding. I love a woman with a wheelbarrow.   I love a woman on horseback. The voluptuous stack of buttocks Stitch the air with a sweet sashay How a woman holds a mare with her knees How a mare holds a woman with her scent, How I hold them both in my gaze. I love a woman on horseback.   I love a woman on a rock face. Arms stretched, fingers gripping small lips of stone, Toes attentive to the dance that follows. She climbs as much in mind as in body She dwells as much in molecule as in being. Serenity follows the ghosts of chalk. I love a woman on a rock face.   I love a rock face challenging the woman. First impressions of peril didn’t work She trusted a deeper call and attended, now Its rough face is drunk on her perspiration, It taunts her temerity as she drags a leg Across one precipice and on ...