79: Sated

Monday night was one of those nights you store into your memory and heart: a night of good food, good company, good poetry. (I feel, since I am headed to Michigan that I ought to inhabit that part of my lost grandfather who proclaimed everything good, good. You have to say it slowly, contemplatively as well.)

Monday dinner: with a former high school student (new friend) and a former high school peer (old friend) at Everest on Grand, food from Nepal and India. Yak momos, mango lassi, chicken curry, daal.

Monday after: A poetry ready by Eireann Lorsung and Shana Youngdahl, two people very dear to my heart. And two women with such incredible talent. Shana's chapbook, Donner: A Passing has just been released by Finishing Line Press and is about the tragic journey of the Donner party; Eireann's book music for landing planes by was recently a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award and her second book is due to come out in 2010.

And still after: a cake reception at the home of the Lorsungs. We sat in the late evening summer warmth and talked about poetry projects, about the tilt of the Earth and the sun (will Eireann be flying with or against the orbit as she returns to England this Thursday?), and jokes about literary theorists.

And yesterday: a quiet return to Eireann's, growing anticipation for next year, and, I fell in love, so I had to bring it home:


Isn't she wonderfully talented? There are more shadowboxes going to the MCBA soon.

(E, I made a set on flickr for you: on my walls. Now you can enjoy the "grown up" art vicariously until you are finally settled in a beautiful house in the countryside with rolling hills and sheep nearby. And plenty of pretty things to take to the framer's and make you completely broke.)

78: Housebat

I woke to a chittering sound, like a wobbly ceiling fan. Libby and Gatsby were staring at our window fan and though these days, our house has air you could swim in, I knew that couldn't be why those two were staring so intently at the fan. The double fan, which whirs constantly: the little bat was scrunched up behind it, and after my mouse catching talent of a few summers before, I tupperwared him slowly and cautiously and I have to admit it, I'm a little puffed chested with pride. I had woken my husband just nights before, hoping he would do the dirty work, and he stumbled downstairs, a rainbow dog towel at the ready, then stumbled back when nothing more exciting happened.

In fact, I had decided I was imagining the bat.

But, apparently, I had not.

Now he's sitting in a tupperware (with holes, of course!) next to me as I type this, scrunched up, furious I took him away from his reading, which I know he does while we're sleeping. I left out a little poetry from last night's reading and he agrees--I am truly lucky to know such talented people.

I know this is three thousand percent wrong, but I am having serious trouble letting him go. I want someone else to see him in person before I fling him outside (and where? just by our house so he can get in again? farther away from home? and why do I always seem to misplace my cell phone?), to witness that I caught a bat and IT'S A BAT!. I mean, really. This is the girl who kept picking up toads while she was camping, as if no one had seen a toad before. Besides, doesn't some nature center want him? Somewhere to nurture him with all kinds of wonderful bugs and a good perch (and some Adrienne Rich)?

Well, I've caught the little one anyway, so the mothers who read this blog can rest easy. And to my own mother: I read that only one percent of bats actually carry rabies. Also, to dispel a myth: bats are not blind, but they cannot see very well. They are actually very well-read. At least mine is.

(Can I keep him?)


Edit: Here's a good website on what to do if you find a bat indoors.

Also: More pictures of the little bat here.

77

76: BAT!

Above: a bat Lane spotted at Frontenac State Park, wedged in one of the educational displays. (Note: upside down, his little feet are sticking out--this one is alive and snoozing.)

In our house last night: a bat swooping through the living room and dining room. It was near-midnight and I was reading peacefully on the sofa when this black thing darted around, and with my head ducked, I scampered upstairs, waking my long-suffering husband, whispering, Bat. In the hoooouse. Then I clung to his legs while he struggled to wake up. A pause. Then I whisper in the dark, Do they, um, bite? I pulled on a hoodie, ready to go downstairs, ready for this bat to swoop a bit more, but he was no where to be found. I don't know what happened to the bat. It's somewhere, maybe folded into the bookshelves, waiting for night. My husband said we should usher it into the basement, perhaps let it take care of some of the buggies down there. I prefer to imagine he's a literary critic, checking out my collection, opting for Fitzgerald over Faulkner.

75: Wm O'Brien

And, as always, more from the camping trip here.

74: William O'Brien State Park

We went camping--our third trip this summer--with Emily and her husband Pat this weekend. I've come home slimy and exhausted, but content. It was the first time Emily's two dogs (Jersey the Pointer mix and Phoebe the German Shepard) had gone camping and though the first night was cautious, full of low rumbles from Jersey and the occasional bark at the passers-by, I think it went well. They hadn't met Penelope and Zephyr either, and as you'll later see, once they got into the water, they were the best of friends, even if Jersey and Zephyr never did figure out who was the alpha male or the stick catching champion (those two titles, I believe, just might be the same thing).

Last night, I woke at quarter to five, the drunken screeching laughter of a neighboring set of campers jolting me awake. The other three in my tent slept obliviously on, so I waited as they continued conversing, one eventually getting sick, I believe, watching as the morning crept in. I fell asleep just before the sun broke, as the world was still a slight deep blue slowing turning over to light.

So now I am back, wondering if the push-pull of shower versus nap will end in a combined effort. I will take my book upstairs, settle beneath the clean sheets with clean hair, sleep part of the afternoon away. Just before we left for camping, I turned in what I hope is the final draft of my M.Ed thesis, which means I will work on paperwork this evening in hopes that all can be moderately squared away before we depart for Michigan and the land of my grandmother.

Photo series from camping to be posted later today. Post-nap, post-shower, post-reading.

xo

73: Hope

On an anniversary of such a sad day for this place I call home, I wanted to point out an article I discovered on the New York Times, something that I think is particularly touching to me as I am pulling books from my shelves, reading as much as I can, creating a stack for my grandmother in preparation for the trip Ryan and I will take in less than a week. I think it's important, don't you, to keep hope close to your heart, to put things in perspective?