Summer Home

On last year's annual walk through the British Pine Forest,
we stumbled upon this little lean - to, or as Ben entitled this photo:
"Summer Home" ~ May 2013
from Chapter 2, "House and Home" (p 29)
in Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World
by Scott Russell Sanders
[see previous excerpt from Hunting for Hope]

The word house derives from an Indo-European root meaning to cover or conceal. I hear in that etymology furtive, queasy undertones. Conceal from what? From storms? beasts? enemies? from the eye of God?

Home comes from a different root meaning 'the place where one lies.' That sounds less fearful to me. A weak, slow, clawless animal, without fur or fangs, can risk lying down and closing its eyes only where it feels utterly secure. Since the universe is going to kill us, in the short run or the long, no wonder we crave a place to lie in safety, a place to conceive our young and raise them, a place to shut our eyes without shivering or dread."

These selections and more on
TODAY'S FORTNIGHTLY BLOG POST:
~ Safe Home ~

Thanks for reading
The QUOTIDIAN KIT and
The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker:
A Fortnightly [every 14th & 28th] Literary Blog of
Connection & Coincidence; Custom & Ceremony

First Day of a New Year

Thanks to Maggie Mesneak Wick
for posting this sweet card,
to Peter Bunder for the excerpt from Sanders,
and to Gerry McCartney for typing it up!
"I write these last few paragraphs on the first day of a new year. Thin snow covers our patch of Indiana and the day has dawned clear. With early sunlight streaming through the windows, Ruth and I take down the Christmas decorations, wrap the homemade ornaments in tissue paper, loop the colored lights into bundles, and store everything away in the attic. I carry the tree out the back door and across the yard, leaving a trail of needles the whole way . . .

" 'Memory grips the past' as my friend wrote to me, 'and hope grips the future.' I think of the scarlet seeds quietly burning against the cold, black dirt, waiting for spring. I think of my children, and of the children they may have one day, and of those children's children, on and on, like the ridge upon ridge of mountains stretching out before me as far as I can see.

"I think of my students hard at work, learning what our clever species has already discovered, and adding their own new knowledge to the store. I imagine the host of ancestors, humans and non-humans, whose lives and labors have made this moment possible for those of us who breathe. I draw a breath, savor it, and bless them all" (190).

from Hunting for Hope
by Scott Russell Sanders