View from a Rural Village

This has been a busy week and temperatures have been surprisingly cool for August.  I know I have accomplished all the short-term goals but, here it is, Friday evening and I'm feeling like I've watched the world go by without me.  Maybe it is me trying to decide if  I should start preparing for a long winter or go read a book and relax.  Truth is that autumn always makes me homesick.  This I do not understand as I've lived in the same house for 45 years and in the same region my entire life.  But homesick I am, every autumn.  I want to be stacking the woodpile and putting up canned goods and freezing wonderful soups.  Time is short to knit the mittens and socks to keep me warm and I need to get to the book store and start building a winter stack of novels. But, I don't have a fireplace and no place to store freshly canned vegetables.  One more day of homesickness unanswered.  Maybe the sun will shine tomorrow and it will feel more lik...

"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary...." Ah. A favorite poem I repeat to myself when my life needs a rhythm and a rhyme. Not your favorite? Sigh. Poe speaks for me when the confusion of life overruns my brain. "Came a tapping at my chamber door." What mysteries abound in the night? Is it the witch creeping closer to the edge of my bed? Is it doom searching along the depths of night on my ceiling? Am I safe in my corner? "Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore'!" Ah! Does this help to explain the darkness of my perspectives? Does it help to know this is a picture of the house of my childhood? Or are you also pondering weak and weary?

As the "feels like" temperature glistened at 100 I realized the little girl in my soul is waiting for my daddy to get home from work and utter those magic words "Let's go for a ride!" Of course there was no air conditioning back in the 1950s so the cure was a long car ride with the windows opened. My brother, and I would be hustled into our pajamas . We'd carry our pillows and out to the car we went. V ery often the rides took us into Wisconsin to search out the northern coolness of a summer night. The firefly show would be intense and the heat lightening danced between clouds. Then the delight of stopping at a drive-up for Green Rivers or (heaven in a frosted mug) root beer floats. Dad would drive us from the heat into cool. He drove until we slept. With the magic of family my brother and I would fall asleep wrapped in the wonder of fireflies, root beer, and love. I don't remember coming home, only waking up in my own bed. Hoping for more summ...

 I'm not sure how many younger people have marveled at this phenomenon on a hot summer night but I know that back in the 1950s (and probably further back) many summer nights were spent watching this on the horizon. The best place to watch this was laying in the middle of the lawn with grass cooled by the evening. The horizon you could see was determined by the height of the grass. Fireflies wrapped around the edges of the view and nighthawks flicked back an ... d forth within the arc of your vision. Security came from knowing your parents were safely seated on the porch steps and your annoying brother was within arms' reach. There! Just to the north. Lightning! Silently flashing in the sky. Then to the west. Yes! The stars, not threatened by any impending storm continued to glow and twinkle. The dew slowly descends and the ground is damp. The parents stand and call you in and even your brother's plea for five more minutes has no effect. Daddy reaches down an...