Carla – Page 6 – Blog Bits

April 28, 2020April 28, 2020

Nature reclaims its own

The news media have reported on the environmental impact of the quarantine. Clean skies over Los Angeles. Goats wandering on the streets of a village in Wales. Nature reclaiming its own.

Close-up of a young wild rabbit in a green field.

So when I saw a young bunny nibbling on the grass in my neighbor’s yard, I chalked it up to that. We have lots of squirrels and the occasional opossum, but not rabbits. Maybe this was a local example of what was happening globally. Isn’t nature wonderful?

This morning the neighborhood feral cat dropped the bunny, still twitching, in the middle of my back yard. Eventually it lay still. I went to the kitchen to make some tea, and as I write this, both the cat and I are having breakfast.

Later on, I’ll take a shovel to whatever is left behind. It has been a good spring for cardinals and robins – I’d rather not have crows or hawks dropping by.

As Emily Dickinson once observed, “Nature, like us, is sometimes caught / Without her diadem.”

April 27, 2020April 28, 2020

Navigation by Landmark

Some people navigate with precise instructions. “Go north on Central Avenue to 30th Street. Turn left. Go three blocks, and the office will be on your right.”

Other people navigate by landmark. “Take this street up to the stoplight. Turn left. Turn right just past the big maple tree, and the office will be there.”

When I was learning to drive, I was the despair of my precise father. “You can’t drive by landmarks,” he would say. “What will you do when the big maple tree isn’t there any more?”

I was rather smug when, years later, I was able to get around by noticing the daylilies or remembering where the farmer’s silo used to be.

But today I learned the lesson Daddy tried to teach me all those years ago. I was delivering food to a trailer court that doesn’t show up on Google Maps. Megan said, “Go out past the old campground and there’s a barn that they converted into a church, but I don’t know if it’s still a church. Turn right. You’ll see it.”

Signpost indicating the intersection of SR 121 and CR 175S

Just past the old campground the highway curves to the right, and I was past the intersection – didn’t even see the intersection – before I saw the steeple on the converted barn. I figured my turn was up ahead. I drove in circles for 15 minutes until, approaching from the south instead of from the north, I found the right road.

If Megan had said, “Turn right on 175 South,” I would have found it right away.

Somewhere in heaven, my dad is laughing.

April 8, 2020

A Drop of Oil

I haven’t sewed anything for years, but when we were asked to wear masks in public, I decided to dust off the 1981 Kenmore and try my hand.

Last night after repeated clumps of thread threatened both my masks and my sanity, I started trouble-shooting. I changed needles. I tightened the tension. I hauled out a can of air and sprayed the bobbin case. No luck. Today I made a trip to Walmart and bought sewing machine oil (and groceries, I promise!). One drop of oil later, I am back in business. One drop.

A plastic bottle of sewing oil surrounded by sewing paraphernalia: thread, pins, fabric, elastic, and scissors.

And because my mind moves to metaphor naturally, I started wondering about other situations in which “one drop of oil” might resolve an issue and get things back on track. A good joke. An apology. A well-timed silence. Finding a point to agree on. A quick negotiation.

It won’t be long before we don’t need these masks. They’ll become part of a Coronavirus documentary we’ll watch 10 years from now and say, “Oh, yeah, I remember those!”

But a drop of oil – we always need those. The trick is to figure out how to be one.