Friday's Flowers

All that is left

There are many meanings for "left" which is one of Sunday Scribblings prompts for today. One might be left behind or left over or left in the lurch. One might have left the party early. This post is about all that is left when everything else is gone. I didn't write this poem today, but it seemed appropriate.

,The Gift of Words

You say I have the gift of words.

Someday my words may fail me,
lost in a maze of neurons, wells of words
with no bucket to retrieve them,
or they may tangle on my tongue
like Hannah’s yarn after her stroke
when she worried helplessly
among the skeins and needles.

Gifts are for giving.

Thus I would bequeath to you
a shimmer of words when I no longer
can order them into their patterns.
They will glint like breeze-tossed aspen leaves
or glimmer like showers in sunshine
where each drop holds a rainbow.
They will be as numerous as stars
as facets of waves
as moments of our love
and fragrant like water touching parched earth.
They will hold bird song and wind song
but, alas, no Mozart, no sonnets, no meaning,
just their fragments.

I will scatter them at random on a fragile web
spangled with words and syllables like sequins
and toss it scarf-like over you.

This is my gift.

Wealth

Photo by grandson Byron Shock
several weeks after midsummer's
maximum light show.

MIRROR MIRROR (Sunday Scribbling prompt:"Money")

This morning I awoke with the rising sun just as it struck a building across the bay in such a way that it sent a blaze of reflection to my bedroom, almost like a bright message from a San Francisco window to my Berkeley one. For a few minutes it was a brilliant diamond.
My husband still slept peacefully . Knowing that the phenomenon would probably recur for several days, barring rain or fog, I didn’t waken him. Besides, bright as it was, it could not compete with our annual midsummer show.

Starting on about the fifteenth of June at about five minutes before eight o’clock in the evening, the setting sun hits the windows on one of the slanting sides of San Francisco’s Transamerica pyramid at an angle that shoots the light directly to us. The first night it is impressive but affects only a few of the pyramid’s windows, making them sparkle and glint. Then, night by night, it changes, light moving down from the spire to encompass more windows until, at the height of its brilliance, the pyramid becomes a molten pillar of fire, too bright to look at directly, brighter by far than any sight we have seen save for the sun itself. The triangular shape of the tower is lost in the swell of flame.

Each night the show lasts for about ten minutes from first gleam until the last window winks back to darkness, the peak of brightness being at eight o’clock. So too does the yearly spectacle arrange itself symetrically about midsummer. By July we no longer invite our friends to come see “our” Transamerica pyramid.

But by what stretch of the imagination can we call it “our” Transamerica pyramid? We own no part of this temple to wealth. Nor do we wish to. As former workers with homeless poeple, we are all too aware that, in the shadow of this impressive edifice, desperate folk seek a sheltered spot to sleep in doorways and alleys, their meager possessions heaped protectively beside them. We are reminded of what we consider to be one of America’s troubling problems, one that becomes constatly more acute. It is the growing disparity between the rich and the poor.

I would like to call to the attention of anyone visiting my blog the latest issue of National Geographic and the article(s) about the Mayan civilization. One of the main reasons for the collapse of this complex society was that it had become top-heavy, with the privileged demanding more and more.

Is that where America is heading?

Still, I shouldn't be too hard on the Transamerica pyramid. Not only is it a symbol of wealth: it is also the donor of a midsummer gift of pure molten gold.

Halloween Today!

The wooden candy plate, centered with a miniature pumpkin and Otto's artistic arrangement of assorted small packets of M&Ms, is waiting by the door for small goblins. Now, at 9:pm, we no longer expect to greet our first trick-0r-treater. No one came last year either. Our neighborhood seems devoid of small children. Where are they all?

This photo is of great-grandson Jon a few years ago. He is now in kindergarten. This is just my attempt to remember halloweens as they used to be...

photo by Cedric Shock

Enjoy your Hallowe'en!

Elnor

Elnor Ragan, 1914-2007
(This photo was at her 90th birthday celebration in 2004)

My beautiful sister-in-law died early this morning. Until a little over a year ago, when she fell and broke her hip, Elnor was super active. She taught violin, trained trios for competition, repaired stringed instruments for orchestras and schools, planted extensive gardens around her self-designed earth-sheltered house, went on Elder Hostel trips that involved long hikes, cared for her latest well-trained dog, etc.etc. I will miss her, although we didn't see each other often. She lived in Stillwater, Oklahoma, a long way from Berkeley, California. She was a lifelong peace activist and, as older sister, introduced Otto to her ideals, now his - and mine.

This week's Sunday Scribblings has the word "hospital" for its prompt. I don't need to stray from the subject of Elnor to find an amusing story. While Elnor was still in the hospital with her broken hip, her daughter Lenore asked her what she might want that would make her happier. What she wanted was her violin! Not flowers or pretty nightgowns or goodies to eat. She couldn't play it, but having it nearby gave her a sense of well-being.

Yes, that's the whole of my Sunday Scribbling. Do I get an award for brevity?

If I Were Queen Of The World

Sunday Scribblings( Prompt-"If I were king or queen of the world")
The first thing that I would do, were I queen of the world, would to make breakfast for the king. Just kidding! Otto and I have been working with the same motivations for so long (66 years) that I can't imagine going solo with what have always been our shared dreams. Granddaughter Daria took the above picture (which I have abridged) at the August Smith reunion and birthday parties, showing that sometimes we even are arrayed like king and queen.

I will assume that we have but one lifetime to accomplish at least one of our many goals, and we would almost surely choose the one with the most urgency - global warming. It isn't that we would wish to ignore our dreams of world peace and universal brother/sisterhood, for instance. But to neglect the accelerating rate of global warming would be to exacerbate the rest of earth's problems in the struggles for survival that would follow. The naysayers to the dangers of global warming don't understand the nature of positive feedback systems. Global warming is not just a steady state of increase in earth's heat. It is an ever increasing rate of acceleration. If any readers of this wish to joust with me on these points, feel free to do so. I would welcome the opportunity to explain further.

I am assuming that if we are Queen and King of the world we would have a rather large treasury. From this treasury I would draw enough money to build solar-thermal electric power plants in desert areas - such as the Gran Desierto of northern Mexico, the Yuma desert of Arizona, the Sahara and Gobi deserts. The power plants would be the conventional steam turbines now used, with the schematic below showing a more economical design than any current solar plant. Low-cost parabolic trough concentrators would boil water. The wet steam would then be dried and superheated by the focused solar light of tracking heliostats..
This would significantly reduce dependence on fossil fuels. It would be a first step toward slowing the accelerating pace of global warming before it reaches the point of no return.

This leaves the problem of transportation. I trust that we are not the only ones tackling global warming issues. Very good work is being done to improve batteries, which would make electric cars extremely desirable, and an electric car can be plugged into the electric energy generated by the afore-mentioned solar power plants.

Oh, yes. I wasn't entirely kidding about making breakfast for the king. Most days I do just that. But most nights the king brings me a dish of mint chocolate chip ice cream at bedtime. Who could ask for more?