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Posts Tagged ‘nostalgia’

“I miss my mongoose.”

Posted in Inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 6, 2011| 2 Comments »

You just never know where inspiration is gonna come from.

Have you noticed on the back of cars there are often decals indicating the make up of the family? White stick figures roughly indicating gender, age, etc.  The usual line up is X number of parents, X number of children, and X number of cats and dogs.   So the other day Steve and I are out driving.  At a stop light, we see different decals on the car in front of us.  They  indicate the family is composed of two adults and their two ferrets.  We knew they were ferrets because the word ferret had been applied to the car under the image of two long cat-like creatures.  I wasn’t hugely surprised.  Over the years I’ve made the acquaintance of a few New Englanders owning pet ferrets.  What surprised me was hearing the following words said softly beside me, “I miss my mongoose.”

My only childhood experience of a mongoose was watching the animated version of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi on television with my younger brother when I was seven.  As far as I know there were no mongoose in Virginia.  But Steve, whose father served in the U.S. foreign service,  spent several years of his childhood in India.  And there, in a bungalow in Bangalore, he was allowed to add a pet mongoose to his menagerie that already included a Dachshund and Siamese cat.  “The cat used to carry the mongoose around like a kitten, with a hold on the back of its neck.  And the dog allowed the mongoose to pummel its stomach as they all settled down to sleep together.  Quite clearly the mongoose was in charge.”

“Just imagine,” Steve adds with a smile, “A Dachshund, a mongoose, and a Siamese cat walk into a room.  There’s a story there, don’t you think?”  Undoubtedly, especially when you add in a towheaded little boy.

Animal images from http://www.fantom-xp.com/

Steve image by his father circa late 1950’s.

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City by the Sea

Posted in Inspiration, Nature Notes, On the Road, tagged , , , , , on March 30, 2011| Leave a Comment »

With spring’s onset, I look forward to hikes in the woods and by the river, gardening and other earthy pursuits.  Steve yearns to return to the water.  I don’t share his passion for riding the waves but he sometimes lures me out there with the promise of unique photo opportunities.  This photo was taken from Boston Harbor a few years ago.  I’ll be curious to see what’s captured from the water this year!

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Who Killed Cock Robin?

Posted in Inspiration, Nature Notes, tagged , , , , , on March 5, 2011| 4 Comments »

Do you know the story of Who Killed Cock Robin?  I was reminded of the tale (and of this photo taken years ago) while visiting with family this past weekend.  My uncle told a tale of growing up in rural Virginia, in the ’40s I believe, and of being infatuated with little speckled sparrows.  One day, he had a grand idea.  To capture a sparrow and make it his own.  And how would he do that?  Well, he chose a mouse trap as his device with bread crumbs as his bait.  The bird was of course caught and the bird was of course killed.  As for the connection to robins …

For years afterward, his sister, in the way of older siblings, found a unique way to mess with her little brother when he was getting on her nerves.  If he was getting too big for his britches, she would simply start reciting that poem about the murder of a little bird.  “Every time,” my uncle said with a chuckle, “Every single time, she had me in tears.”  And then he began to recite:

Who killed Cock Robin?
I, said the sparrow, with my bow and arrow, I killed Cock Robin.
Who saw him die?
I, said the fly, with my little eye, I saw him die.
All the birds of the air fell a-sighing and a-sobbing
When they heard of the death of poor Cock Robin,
When they heard of the death of poor Cock Robin.

Who’ll catch his blood?
I, said the fish, with my little dish, I’ll catch his blood.
Who’ll make his shroud?
I, said the beetle, with my little needle, I’ll make his shroud.

Who’ll toll the bell?
I, said the bull, because I can pull, I’ll toll the bell.
Who’ll dig his grave?
I, said the owl, with my little trowel, I’ll dig his grave.

Who’ll be the clerk?
I, said the lark, if it’s not in the dark, I’ll be the clerk.
Who’ll carry the coffin?
I, said the kite, if it’s not in the night, I’ll carry the coffin.

Who’ll bear the pall?
I, said the wren, both the cock and the hen, we’ll bear the pall.
Who’ll sing the psalm?
I, said the thrush, as she sat in the bush, I’ll sing the psalm.

Who’ll be the parson?
I, said the rook, with my little book, I’ll be the parson.
Who’ll be chief mourner?
I, said the dove, I’ll mourn for my love, I’ll be chief mourner.

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Your First Book?

Posted in Books I Love, Inspiration, tagged , , , , , on December 1, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Steve's Bookcase

Books are on my mind today in part because I sit in Steve’s living room surrounded by his floor to ceiling bookshelves.  Handmade out of a dark wood, the shelves are asymmetric and stuffed with books, maps, correspondence and all sorts of object d’art from throughout his life. If you were to walk around that room — please try to avoid tripping over the books piled in various corners — and scan those bookshelves, you’d have a sense of who he is and the journey of his life.

The journey of one’s life is what comes across in the pages of Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings, a thin lovely little book based on a series of lectures she gave at Harvard University in the 1980’s.  And that is the book next to me this morning which, along with Steve’s bookcase, makes me nostalgic about the place of books in my life.   The passage currently lingering with me is where Welty describes how her parents sacrificed to buy her and her brothers books.  I was reminded of my own parents who did the exact same thing for my brother and I.

Of course, not every book was bought.  My father worked for the sanitation department and so on trash days he would find all sorts of things that people would throw out.  He always brought home the books.  Some things he kept separate from us kids like the Joy of Sex which my younger brother and I did eventually discover in a bureau drawer.  After we were caught my parents placed that book high on top of the refrigerator with my dad chuckling and my mother hushing him.  But all other books were fair game for viewing from onion-skinned bibles to old encyclopedias and modern biographies of movie stars.

I rarely remember my father picking up any of these books though he read the daily newspaper religiously.  My mother read all the time.  Together they encouraged our love of books and reading and so when our elementary school sent home a book order form for the Weekly Reader Book Club, my parents found the money to allow us to order a book.   We must have selected more than one but the first book that comes to mind is Gus the Friendly Ghost.  It was a small purple book, about a shy ghost who makes friends with a wily mouse in an empty house.  My brother had me read that book to him many nights in our early years.  It was his comfort food, especially the time after having a bad dream in which he got mad at me and pulled my head off!  I crawled into bed beside him as he cried and read him the book.  The whole time he patted my shoulder to make sure that I was there.

 

Anyway … that’s me and my early morning memories of books.  What first books do you remember and why?  😉

 

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Old Books with New Resonance: Little House on the Prairie

Posted in Books I Love, Inspiration, tagged , , , on January 31, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I recently stumbled upon a series of books I had not thought about in years. Little girls everywhere love an adventure. That’s why, regardless of race, class and even chronological age, girls everywhere have enjoyed the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder depicting her family’s journey across the American midwest in the late 1800s. I certainly did as an African American girl growing up in southern Virginia.

I remember reading the books in elementary school. Even after I got tired of the series (my attention captured by Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web), I continued to bring books home because my mother was reading them. It may be nostalgic embellishment, but I’d swear that I remember seeing her finish one, close the cover gently, and sigh. That sigh was filled with pleasure at a lovely read and sadness that the read was done.

There are numerous books in the series, some published during Wilder’s lifetime and others posthumously. My favorite versions are the early editions illustrated by Garth Williams.

The books are widely available in bookstores. You can learn more about Laura Ingalls Wilder here and about illustrator Garth Williams here.

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A Quiet Patch of Green

Posted in Nature Notes, tagged , , , , , , on July 22, 2009| Leave a Comment »

For most of my professional life, I have worked for environmental organizations where staff often ponder questions like what does it mean to connect children (especially urban youth) to nature (especially in the big city)?  I find myself reflecting on my childhood in a small Virginia city where people kept a chicken or two in their backyards.  One neighbor even illegally kept a goat.  I write often about being able to see the Blue Ridge Mountains from my back porch.  In a yard the size of postage stamp, my younger brother and I discovered bright blue bird’s eggs in a nest near our house, a monarch chrysalis under our backporch, and garter snakes burrowed in the ground near the dog’s water dish.  I never visited a national park in my youth but I certainly felt connected to nature.  I now live in a metropolis of three million plus people.  There is no place I can go without hearing the rumble of cars in the distance, trains rolling by or planes flying overhead.  I believe in the magnificence of cities and in human ingenuity but there is something to be said for a quiet patch of green.

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