Iowa Snow May 3, 2013

Window Tree

The day before the snow in Iowa, we sat at our breakfast table and watched this beautiful
Bradford pear tree toss and turn in the restless wind.  I was reminded of the Robert Frost
poem:

    Tree at my window, window tree,
    My sash is lowered when night comes on;
    But let there never be curtain drawn
    Between you and me. . .

   Vague dream-head lifted out of ground,
    And thing most diffuse to cloud,
    Not all your light tongues talking aloud
    Could be profound.

    But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
    And if you have seen me when I slept, 
    You have seen me when I was taken and swept,
    And all but lost.

    That day she put our heads together,
    Fate had her imagination about her,
    Your head so much concerned with outer,
     Mine with inner weather.

Envy

A friend told me that her mother told her if she was going to be jealous of someone, she needed to be
prepared to take the whole package.  That changes one's perspective. . .

Tulip time in Pella

Five inches of the coldest, wettest, latest snow I have ever experienced!

I think Pella Iowa is more Dutch than Holland.

Deceived by GPS

My friend Nancy and I were deceived by the GPS lady on the route to Pella, Iowa. . .this road turned
to dirt before we finished the 10 mile stretch!

Navajo Reservation

We recently took a Road Scholar course on the Navajo and Hopi Reservations in northern Arizona.
One morning we sat around the central fire in a hogan out on the desert and a colorfully dressedNavajo woman spoke to us about their culture.   She  talked about a Navajo poem. . .

With beauty before me
With beauty behind me
With beauty above me
With beauty all around me
With old age, wandering on a trail of beauty, lively
It is finished in beauty.

She explained that to the Navajo "beauty" means the natural world, to be constantly connected to
the out of doors, open to everything that is going on around you and sharing those experiences
with others for a lifetime.

Carl Sandburg unpublished poem

                                                   The Gun

Here is a revolver.
It has an amazing language all its own.
It delivers unmistakable ultimatums.
It is the last word.
A simple, little human forefinger can tell a terrible story with it.
Hunger, fear, revenge, robbery hide behind it.
It is the claw of the jungle made quick and powerful.
It is the club of the savage turned to magnificent precision.
It is more rapid than any judge or court of law.
It is less subtle and treacherous than any one lawyer or ten.
When it has spoken, the case can not be appealed to the supreme
   court, nor any mandamus nor any injunction nor any stay of 
   execution in and interfere with the original purpose.
And nothing in human philosophy persists more strangely than the 
   old belief that God is always on the side of those who have the most
   revolvers.
                                      Carl Sandburg