Persimmons

Persimmon Tree (1816)
Sakai Hōitsu (Japanese, 1761–1828)

Print derived from a two-panel folding screen
at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Detail

A few related poems:

American Persimmon
by Rose McLarney

Falling Persimmons
by Chŏn Byŏng-gu

Persimmons
by Li-Young Lee
[also Peaches!]

****************************

Many years ago,
I used to go out with my grandparents
in Southeast Kansas and pick wild persimmons
on the day after Thanksgiving
-- such an odd taste, but a happy memory.

My Father's Parents in 1969
Willard Samson Carriker (1898 - 1974)
Melvina Adeline Beavers Carriker (1901 - 1981)

For more about
taking a walk down the tracks,
through the woods, or on the sidewalk

see my recent post

Going For a Walk

@The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A literary blog of connection & coincidence;
custom & ceremony

The Hydrangeas Keep on Giving

It seems that for the past six months or so,
everywhere I turn,
stunning hydrangeas have been on view!
Above, in England ~ below, in my own backyard:

Hydrangeas

Dragoons, I tell you the white hydrangeas
turn rust and go soon.
Already mid September a line of brown runs
over them.
One sunset after another tracks the faces, the
petals.
Waiting, they look over the fence for what
way they go.

Carl Sandburg (1878 - 1967)
beloved American writer, editor, poet
winner of three Pulitzer Prizes

Spring 2023
Out with the old; awaiting the new

Our Hydrangea Paniculata
aka "Fire & Ice"

Flourishing in the traiffic island
in the middle of our road
August 2023

One of our lovliest
October 2014 ~ Indiana

An even longer season in England
December 2021

England ~ October 2023

More Hydrangeas:
Sadness & Potpourri & Oakleaf

And Fuchsias!

Thanksgiving Fuchsias

Why you have to love England . . .
because there are not only hydrangeas
but also fuchsias in Grandpa’s front yard
every year in November!

~ 2022 ~

This year’s British fuchsia pics ~ 2023
As my friend Natasha* says:
"Gorgeous color and so dainty
with their tutus and spindly legs."

Photo tip:
get as close as you can without using the zoom.

" . . . what was art but an effort to make a sheath,
a mould in which to imprison for a moment
the shining, elusive element which is life itself,
-- life hurrying past us and running away,
too strong to stop, too sweet to lose?"

Willa Cather
from The Song of the Lark
Part IV ~ "The Ancient People"
(chap iii, p 195)

Autumn on the Blue Ridge

That sign we hate to see!
Well, I always said if the pool was closed,
I could go for a walk instead,
so here's my chance . . .

I quickly reached the point where
paved becomes gravel becomes dirt.
More rustic than I expected.
Feeling a little cautious . . . safe to progress?

Beautiful sunlit path, but also
seems like weirdos could be lurking.
Where were the other normal hikers?
Remember, I was raised in the Age of Fear.
[Still a thing.]

I wanted to see the old graveyard, somewhere up ahead,
but turned around before I got there because I couldn't gage
how much further and had to account for turn around time.

So I returned to civilization while the sun was high,
even though I was probably just a few steps shy
of the cemetery and gave up too soon.
I walked around the lake instead,
scenic but less adventuresome.

See that nice sidewalk? Not for pedestrians.

Lewis Mountain, Virginia
Meriwether Lewis was born over there!

Planning to go for another walk soon,
with map in hand for increased confidence.

A couple of grand old houses
in Charlottesville, Virginia:

1.2 miles from our house:
House on Lewis Mountain

1.9 miles:
Birdwood at Boar's Head

The Only Day

Yuletide Camellia ~ So vivid!
Holiday Time at The Boar's Head

A guest blog from my twin brother,
Bruce L. Carriker, who once upon a time
portrayed George Gibbs in Our Town

I know how much you like Our Town and Emily's reflections on appreciating life while we live it. Thought you might like this quote from the movie Field of Dreams, attributed to Archibald Wright "Moonlight" Graham (1876 – 1965).

"Moonlight" Graham played exactly ONE game in the major leagues, as a defensive replacement in right field for the New York Giants. He never got to bat in the major leagues. Playing baseball in the summers and going to college in the fall and winter, Graham completed his medical degree from the University of Maryland in 1905.

Not sure how he wound up in Minnesota (he was born in North Carolina), but from 1909 to 1959, "Doc" Graham was the doctor for the Chisholm, MN school district, as well as maintaining a private practice in Chisholm. He set up a donation program to have used eyeglasses sent to his office, and on Saturdays, he would have the children of the local miners come to his office, check their eyes, and try to find them a proper set of glasses, free of charge, from the donations he'd received.

Anyhow, that's the background on the real "Moonlight" Graham. In the movie, which I'm sure you've seen, "Moonlight" Graham is one of the players who shows up, because he wants the chance to bat against a major league hitter just one time.

And all of that leads to the quote, about his ONE appearance in a major league game:

“We just don't recognize life's most significant moments while they're happening. Back then I thought, 'Well, there'll be other days.' I didn't realize that that was the only day."

Rest In Peace Drummer Hodge

An English Drummer Boy (1902)
by George W. Joy (1844 - 1925)

Thanks to Gerry
for calling my attention
to this sad historical poem,
so appropriate for Veterans Day.

Drummer Hodge

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined — just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around:
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.
Young Hodge the drummer never knew —
Fresh from his Wessex home —
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.
Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge for ever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow up some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.

Thomas Hardy (1840 – 1928)

For more on
Thomas Hardy's "Drummer Hodge"
Caroline Sheridan Norton's "Bingen on the Rhine"
Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat"
& Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables

see my recent post

A Soldier of the Legion

@The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A literary blog of connection & coincidence;
custom & ceremony

On Veterans Day and every day,
"Let us remember . . . all those who have served
upon another shore and in a greater light,
that multitude which no one can number . . . ”

Autumn Porch

"We are always together in spirit."

I must confess that this is not my own still life.
It is the cover of an old favorite Halloween card.

As my friend Sheri says:
"My heart and soul are on that porch!"
Ah, so true! I would dearly love
an old wooden and lace porch such as this,
but alas my Victorian days are over . . .

. . . moving on to more modern concepts,
in keeping with my mid - century front porch.

A shiny autumn wreath
for our shiny "new" (1956) house

Crystal Birds from Gretel's
Thanks Melinda!

Trees &/or Humans

Maybe I should have saved this for Arbor Day,
but I found it perfect for Veterans Day:

However true these words are of trees,
they are equally true of humans.
That's why war is so wrong:

"When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

"Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

"A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail."

~ Herman Hesse ~

“Sentimental, you say? Anti-social?
Oughtn't to prefer trees to men?
I say it depends what trees and what men.”

~ George Orwell ~

Thanks to Chris Jarmick for sharing
these wise words from Hesse & Orwell.

Not about trees,
but this goes here:

"Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out . . . and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel. . . . And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for 'the universal brotherhood of man'-- with his mouth."

~ Mark Twain ~

Thanks Doug Lee!

Such Stuff as Dreams

From Today's Episode

When this question came up on Jeopardy!,
I realized that I needed a refresher course to keep
these three dreamy passages distinct in my head:
HAMLET:
To be, or not to be--that is the question:
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--
No more--and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--
To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprise of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. -- Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia! -- Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered. (III, i, 57 - 91)

Moonlit March
by Annie Stegg

Halloween Magic!
PUCK:
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends. (V, i, 440-455)

PROSPERO:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex'd;
Bear with my weakness; my, brain is troubled:
Be not disturb'd with my infirmity:
If you be pleased, retire into my cell
And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk,
To still my beating mind. (IV, i, 146-163)

More About Jeopardy:
Hail Purdue! & Kale, Caesar!

Mindfully Mismatched Monday

Thanks to my friend Cathy
for introducing me to the concept!

For Halloween:

For My Highschool Reunion:

***************

Also fun . . .
seasonally mismatched earrings!

Day of Dead Gram & Gramps, Ghost & Pumpkin
Gold Moon & Silver Moon, Earth Parents

Mask & Pyramid, Mummy & Autumn Leaves
Bats & Soccer Ball

Ghosts in My Dreams

Love these tin signs!

Many thanks to my friend Victoria
for sharing this beautiful song,
so appropriate for Día de los Muertos

Ghosts

[Verse 1]
Ghosts
Glide in my dreams
Softly float around my bed
Ghosts
Your shadows clustered about my sleepy head
Solemnly I evoke the dead

[Chorus]
Grandpa, grandma, mother, father
Daughter, nephew, cats, husbands, and friends
Grandpa, grandma, mother, father
Daughter, nephew, dogs, husbands, and friends

[Verse 2]
Ghosts
Fallen angels
Hold me tight in open arms
Ghosts
On your back swings
Showed me how with cryptic charms
Remember
A nursery rhyme I knew
As through the dusk, we flew
To the land we knew
I remеmber you
And you
Do you?

by Jane Birkin (1946 - 2023)

Day & Night of All Souls
Loreena McKennitt

Skylight

All Saints Day:
"It begins with your family,
but soon it comes round to your soul . . . "

"If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn
The Sisters of Mercy will bind you with love
that is graceful and green as a stem . . . "

Photo by Nikki Evans-Greek
Sisters of Mercy

Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone
They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can't go on
And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song
Oh I hope you run into them, you who've been travelling so long

Yes you who must leave everything that you cannot control
It begins with your family, but soon it comes round to your soul
Well I've been where you're hanging, I think I can see how you're pinned:
When you're not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you've sinned

Well they lay down beside me, I made my confession to them
They touched both my eyes and I touched the dew on their hem
If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn
They will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem

When I left they were sleeping, I hope you run into them soon
Don't turn on the lights, you can read their address by the moon
And you won't make me jealous if I hear that they sweetened your night
We weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be all right
We weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be all right

"When I left they were sleeping,
"I hope you run into them soon
Don't turn on the lights,
you can read their address by the moon . . . "