The Urban Pantheist

Alex and Jim stayed over this weekend, while some of my friends stayed in her house.
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I was looking through my Aunt and Uncle's Flickr account when I came across this picture, and realized it was probably my first visit to a zoo. The kids with glasses are my cousins Peter, David, and Joanna; the little blonde boy is my brother Andy. My mother is holding me, it must be in the summer of 1970. The photo is labeled "Thornton Burgess Museum," but I think that's not true: the place called The Thornton Burgess Museum is in Sandwich, Mass., on Cape Cod, where the author and conservationist Thornton Burgess was born. However, he moved to Hampden Mass. later in his life, and the property where he lived was purchased by Mass Audubon. That place was very close to where I grew up, and I seem to remember our family visiting it more than once.
That property is called Laughing Brook, and is a Mass Audubon sanctuary that had a collection of native wildlife up until a decade or so ago. If my memory is correct, Laughing Brook sent some animal ambassadors to a park event that the family went to when I was about 5 or 6, and I got to hold a black rat snake. That experience never left me, and made an imprint that is more obvious now than almost any other time of my life.

Thank you Dotty and Scotty for sharing your photo albums!

On my mom's birthday (11 days after she died) my dad, Charlie, and I went to the nursing home where she (and my dad to a large extent) spent the last 15 years of her life. Many residents are happy to see a dog, and derive comfort from petting Charlie.

My mom's memorial service is in a few hours. I've already posted my eulogy here and at facebook, but I'll read it today at 4:30. I've posted her obituary, and many people have said many kind things. Thank you. I'm not sad. I'm relieved that she's been released from sickness. I also posted a whole bunch of photos of her on facebook (where her sister and her family can see them), and I thought I should share them here, too, since I've brought you all this far on the journey.


( a bunch more )

My mother has been leaving us for a long time. Fifteen years ago she became too sick to live at home, and she had been slowly moving further from us until this moment, and now she is at peace.

I want to thank my mother for the many gifts she gave me while she was with us. Not only for life, her first and greatest gift to me, but for the spirit and strength and love she put into every gift she gave following that. Her attitude toward raising my brother and I was to treat us like people; as people that she adored and protected, but also as people she liked, and respected. We were all passengers on a trip through life together, learning and experiencing, and sharing adventures.

My mom gave us the gift of true sight: to see the world as it is, and to judge it using evidence. Sometimes we don't know what the explanation for certain things is, but she made me understand that there are explanations if we look for them. That nature's mysteries are there to be studied and contemplated. That plants and birds and insects all have names and roles in the universe, and that studying them is worthwhile and fulfilling. The deep awe for nature that she felt is part of who I am, and I can see it living in myself, and in my brother, and in my brother's children.

She gave us the gift of not taking things too seriously. My friends and cousins all remember the home of my childhood as being full of laughter. My mother laughed at our jokes, and at the funny situations we created. She was full of joy and whimsy; it was so much a part of her that as other parts of her were claimed by sickness, she still laughed. We don't know what she found funny, but I bet it was good.

And she didn't hide from us the fact that the world isn't always positive; that others don't always have the best intentions; We had a placard on our wall that read in Latin, Nill illigitimi carborundum: "Don't let the Bastards Get you Down." That's a motto to live by.

Perhaps most importantly, she gave us the gift of love. Our home was above all a place with people who loved each other. She gave me the courage to open my heart to love. The most honest thing you can do in this world is to truly, fearlessly love the people in your life who are worthy of your love. And if you can extend your love past that, all the better.

Thanks mom, for all of this. I hope I said it enough while you were able to hear it. I miss you very much, but I am very grateful you are at peace.

I was thinking about my third day of posting what made me happy (the thank you letter to the Chief was my second, by the way) and I had a few contenders after spending the day with my dad yesterday. We had lunch at a place to dispel a bad memory of it (it worked). We went to the nursing home where my mother lives, and Charlie brought joy to many of the residents and visitors there (less so to a lot of the mostly Caribbean staff, who probably have different associations with pit bull type dogs). But these old photos definitely win for what made me the happiest.( Read more... )

I've been on a little vacation from livejournal. Trying to figure out what I could cut back on to get more time in my life for bicycling and housework, eljay was an obvious choice. I haven't read my friends list since Saturday morning, and I doubt I'll catch up. If you had something important happen that I should know about, let me know. Or if you posted a cool bug photo looking for an identification, I'd like to know about that too.

I visited my dad this weekend. That's him up above going into the nursing home where my mother lives. She's wasting away; she weighs 90 pounds, which is probably half of the weight she was when she went in there 15 years ago. She can't eat by herself, and even when someone helps her she often aspirates her food. That's why Alzheimer's patients often get pneumonia. It's really odd to see her as a skinny old lady. I had to accept this time that this may be the last time I see her.

I still want to tell her story here, and I've written out a lot of what I know, and now I need to fix things that my father clarified for me. Today, as we wandered dirt roads in Union Connecticut, he told me that she was bold and adventurous, before her disease made her afraid of everything.

I enjoyed the weekend, spending time with my dad. We walked the Connecticut River Towpath today, as we did about this time several years ago. I knew more birds, was able to identify yellow warblers by song, and we saw signs that beavers live in the area. Charlie enjoyed swimming in the canal and being off-leash in a safe context outdoors.

Today we went to Bigelow Hollow State Park, a truly huge park by southern New England standards, definitely a bigger chunk of protected forest than anything I've been in in Massachusetts. Charlie swam himself sore; he's still on the couch three and a half hours after we got home.

On the way out of town I bumped into a couple Indian guys, a father and son, who were on their way to Six Flags when their car broke down. They were in a convenience store asking, with an edge suggesting desperation, to use a bathroom. The clerk told them that the nearest public restroom was a mile away, by the amusement park. I tidied my car a bit, shoved Charlie over to one side, and offered these guys a ride. I'm still astonished that the convenience store guy wouldn't let them use their lav. What's the big deal? I guess being so close to a big tourist attraction they must get hundreds of people asking every day, but come on, their car broke down and they were desperate! I was glad to help out, any way. I feel that since I didn't get my license until I was 30 that I have 14 years of rides to give back to the universe.

Unfortunately, Karma is mysterious and non-linear, and like luck, it requires your active participation. That's my explanation for getting caught in Red Sox traffic on my way home. The really stupid thing is that I had been watching the game a couple hours ago, so I can't claim ignorance, just thick-headedness. It was so frustrating to be less than a mile from home, poking through traffic for 20 minutes. At 2;30 I was a Red Sox fan; at 5;45 I hated all Red Sox fans.

I have a ton of pictures to fix up and share, most of which are silhouettes of birds. I'll try to be a ruthless self editor. Soon Alexis and I will be reunited. She's been in Vermont while I've been in Connecticut. Her pictures will be undoubtedly better than mine, but it will be nice for those of you who read both of our blogs to see pictures of different things for a change.


Charlie is always a little out of sorts when he visits my Dad. I think he's worried that I'm going to leave him there forever.

I should have mentioned it earlier, but Charlie is a big hit at the nursing home. It's amazing to see people who rot in their wheelchairs all day brighten up when they see him. Today one of the younger residents--a woman in her 40s or 50s with some kind of degenerative illness--showed some interest in him. She seemed physically unable to change her facial expression, but once she started petting Charlie, the corners of her mouth turned up ever so slightly, hinting the smile that she was feeling. The joy that the dogs bring us is nice, but the joy they can bring to people who otherwise live without it is something pretty miraculous.

2007 was an eventful year for me, with a major change of job as its centerpiece.( Read more... )
On this day in 365 Urban Species: Human, the weirdest species ever to evolve.

Another red maple (and it's many fallen leaves) in my dad's yard.

( more fall and family pictures )