"live better electrically"

Hi All,
We've seen some sun around here lately. Amazing. I have even been back out to the clothesline. Here is a reminder to everyone to harness solar power when you get a chance. Five billion dollars a year is spent in this country drying clothes. I prefer the free option.
I just came across the trailer for a film being made, sponsored by Project Laundry, an organization started by a Middlebury College graduate. I am on the email list and love the optimism this group has for a simple yet potentially profound act: hanging out laundry. I wanted to practice putting a link on my blog, I have never done it. Thanks to instructions from John Tsien, I finally accomplished it! A new dimension!





View this trailer for the up coming film, Drying for freedom.

Crossing the Atlantic

Madelyn and I have been writing together every month for a few years now.
She turned 97 years old this month. Here is what we wrote today.

Crossing the Atlantic
by Madelyn Phillips O'Neil

What a pity that airplanes were invented.
No more 5-7 days looking out of my porthole at the sea
or lying peacefully in my steamer chair on deck
watching people walk by (ten times around the deck was half a mile)
with a good book in my lap, a cup of hot bouillon in my hand.
Just utter quiet, thinking of the sea around me, smelling the salt air,
knowing that nothing would happen during those days on board.
Just the ocean...until the the first bird on the mast predicted land.
Land again.
How strange it will feel.
We teeter as we walk on it.


Crossing the Atlantic
Barbara McLean O'Neil

In 1965, the year I first crossed the Atlantic, air travel had become fairly common. In early spring, my mother announced to my brother John and me that we would be taking a trip around the world the next summer. My father had been given two first class tickets to attend an important conference in the Philippines. Instead they would trade in the tickets for economy class and the three of us would meet him in Manilla after making stops along the way.

London, Rome and New Delhi would be our first three stops. Next, to Thailand to visit my brother Don who was a Peace Corps volunteer in a small town north of Bangkok. From there to the Philippines with Donny joining us. Stops in Tokyo, Hawaii and San Francisco led us back to the United States, then home to Boston just in time for school to start.

I was twelve years old. My first thought on hearing the plan was, “What if the plane crashes?” I couldn’t express this fear to anyone. I was expected to be excited about this marvelous trip that we would be taking. So I kept quiet.

Summer arrived. At each departure point, as I sat in the plane looking out the round window, seat belt securely fastened, the large plane beginning to make it’s way to the runway I said a short prayer asking for our safe arrival to the next destination. It made me feel better as I looked down at endless blue/grey rippling water, brown snaking rivers, densely forested mountaintops and twinkling lights far below. Although we did experience some bumpy plane rides on the trip, especially over mountains, all went smoothly.

I still say a short prayer before taking off in a plane. Now I pray for everyone who travels, not just me, wishing them all safe passage home.

Concord Adult Education

At the end of August every year, the course catalog for Concord Adult Education is delivered to every mailbox in Lincoln, Concord and Carlisle. Each year, before placing it in the recycle bin, I turn to the writing classes to see what is offered. Finally I have found a class that I would really like to take!! Oh, I can't take it, I am the teacher!

Writing Your Own Story: An Exercise in Memoir

COURSE DESCRIPTION
Do you want to write about your life experiences but can’t get started? Do you love to write but just don’t make time to do it? Have you started a memoir and find it’s more about the facts of your life and less about the soul of your life, the things that really matter? Help is on the way! Join the instructor on a journey into writing practice. Based on the work of Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones, students will write together with an eye to detail, writing short pieces inspired by a word or phrase to get us started. You will work in a “fear free” zone. You will leave the harsh inner critic at the door and keep pens moving across the pages of notebooks. Just as musicians need to practice, so do writers. Barbara will share with you the many lessons she has learned along the way on how to free yourself up as a writer. Each class will include readings from the work of various authors as inspiration, time for writing, and reading aloud. Type: Writing and Publishing
Instructor: Barbara O'Neil
Instructor Bio: Barbara O’Neil is a life long writer, who has kept a journal of some kind since she was in third grade. She has led writing classes for students from ages 8 to 96 and is inspired by the writing of E.B. White, Ann Lamott, Donald Hall and others. Since 2002 she has traveled to New Mexico to study writing with Natalie Goldberg. She is presently leading two writing groups in the Adult Education Program at The First Parish Church in Lincoln.
Course Number: 2771
Day: Wednesday
Start Date: 09/30/2009
End Date: 11/04/2009
Time: 9:30-11:00 AM
Location: Concord Free Public Library
Fee: $95
Filled?: TBD
Cancelled?: N
Additional Information:
* Visa/MasterCard Accepted *

hope springs eternal

Here is the lone Barton, Vermont caterpillar munching on mildweed. One is better than none. Sent by cousin Martha today.

notes from the field

The date should read "8 18", since I took the picture just now, in a field down the road. The very first to be seen this summer! It's in mint condition, so it must have emerged right around here (I have seen not a single caterpillar, despite relentless searching). So, a mystery. Now my hopes are up, and I'm on the lookout for more. Let me know if any show up in your butterfly garden!

The above was sent from cousin Martha in Barton, Vermont.
She also spotted a chewed milkweed leaf on her daily ramblings. We all know what that means!

lepidoptera alert!

I wrote to my cousin Martha who lives in Barton, Vermont about the mysterious disappearance of the monarchs. If anyone would have noticed this, it would be Martha. Here is her response. Lepidoptera. Hmmm.

"No! Not a single one here, either. They migrate in two stages (one involving Central America, the other the Carolinas) and apparantly the weather in both places scrambled both the mating and migration patterns . And the butterfly gap goes beyond Monarchs -- last summer I raised several Black Swallowtails (plenty of caterpillars on the local Dill) but this time around, nary a one to be seen. Disaster! The Lepidoptera equivalent of Silent Spring! Let's hope things get back to normal next time nd! -- M"

Martha has collected butterflies all her life. With net in hand, she would head up the road to the pasture near the place in southern Quebec where our families spent each summer together. Our mothers were sisters.

In that bee-loud glade (yes, Mom, I do remember the line from Yeats) amidst goldenrod and Queen Anne's lace, she caught a wide variety of ....lepidoptera. Back at the Hemlocks, she carefully pinned them to white felt and framed them. I suppose she made the small wooden frames as well. The walls of our summer cottage were covered with them.

Book Bash August 1, 2009

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more on monarchs

Adult female monarchs lay their eggs on the underside of milkweed leaves. These eggs hatch, depending on temperature, in three to twelve days.

The larvae feed on the plant leaves for about two weeks and develop into caterpillars about 2 inches long.

Next comes the chrysalis. The caterpillar sheds it's skin and transforms into a jade green pupa or chysalis attached to the underside of a leaf. It is a lovely thing with a golden band across the top. In a few weeks it becomes transparent and the butterfly breaks free.

We spent a week on North Haven Island in Maine when Carrie and Eliza were young. Before we headed home, a friend of ours who had spent summers there all his life, ceremoniously presented the girls with a sprig of milkweed. Taking a closer look we all noticed the glimmering green chrysalis attached to the underside of one of the leaves. Our friend told them to put the branch in a jar with holes poked in the lid and watch it for the next few weeks.

Taking turns, they carried the jar onto the ferry which took us back to the mainland. They held it in their laps as we drove from Rockland, Maine to Lincoln, Massachusetts. They put the jar on a shelf in the kitchen and school started. Life got busy and an occasional glance showed no change. The pale green shape hung motionless from the leaf week after week. I kind of regretted having taken his object from its habitat.

Then one day, we looked in the jar and saw the chrysalis had become transparent. We could see a fully formed monarch butterfly folded inside. A day or two later, the butterfly sat on a leaf inside the jar.

Stepping outside, I unscrewed the lid of the jar. The monarch flew down and sat on the grass for a few minutes, moving its wings up and down, up and down. Then it flew to a laurel branch nearby, then to another and it was gone. "Have a great trip to Mexico!" we wanted to cry out. But we were silent. Being in the presence of wildness leaves me without words every time.

save the milkweed

I took this photo of a monarch butterfly in my garden last July, 2008. I ran to get my camera and snapped it before this monarch sitting on a zinnia flew away. I knew this was just a short stop on a long journey and wanted to document it. I have chosen plants for my garden which attract birds and insects that live or migrate through here. It has worked! Hummingbirds, butterflies, bees and goldfinches alight on the flowers below my kitchen window.

Monarchs are especially noted for their lengthy annual migration. In North America they make massive southward migrations starting in August heading for Mexico until the first frost. A northward migration to Canada takes place in the spring. The monarch is the only butterfly that migrates both north and south as the birds do on a regular basis. But no single individual makes the entire round trip. It takes several generations to complete the migration.

How the species manages to return to the same overwintering spots over a gap of several generations is still a subject of research; the flight patterns appear to be inherited, based on a combination of circadian rhythm and the position of the sun in the sky

I haven't seen one monarch butterfly this year. A google search informed me that due to a rainy June and July, the migration has been interrupted. Loss of habitat is another reason and with development comes the absence of milkweed, their primary food. Milkweed is poison to birds, and the bright orange color of the monarch warns birds to stay away. In the end global warming is also a culprit in what we hope will be a temporary absence of monarchs. Climate change is causing extreme weather as we have seen this summer. We have seen increased precipitation and cooler temperatures on the east coast, and drought and deadly fires in the west.

On a positive note, milkweed has become a coveted ornamental plant in Bermuda. The monarchs have found it and their numbers are increasing there. So one thing we can do is preserve and plant milkweed that some consider a weed. It could be a matter of life and death for the kings and queens of all butterflies.

August 1, 2009

Seeing my blog audience in person sure put a dent in my time to work on the blog. Now that almost everyone has gone home, I can get back to the business of blogging! I suppose that is the only good thing about saying good bye to the assembled crowd.

Thank you all for coming from far and wide to celebrate Jack's safe return home so many years ago and to raise a glass to his book. His published book. His Random House published book. May HIS accomplishment inspire each of us to pursue our own dreams.

There, I finally got to make my toast. Luckily you don't need vocal chords to write a blog.

Also, let's raise a glass to the lovely Leo's. Eliza, Sylvia and Jessie celebrate birthdays this month.
Brad and Sylvia on to their 2nd anniversary.

Love you all.
Barb