Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Monthly Archives: May 2022


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Cowslips for Mom

Happy Mother’s Day up in heaven, Mom. It’s been sixteen Mother’s Days without you now. That doesn’t seem possible, it been only moments since I got the news that began the landslide in our family.

But today let’s just remember the happy Mother’s Days, lots and lots of them, when you were here to get our homemade art projects and cards and all the flats of petunias and marigolds we brought home for you from the local nurseries.

This year I found cowslips for you just like we used to when we were young kids. You remember those golden yellow flowers that bloom right around Mother’s Day.

Glowing in the swamps we used to tromp through they were obvious gifts that we lugged home in buckets overflowing with black peat sludge that ran down our legs and into our boots.

We planted them for you along the lakeshore in the backyard. I don’t remember that any of them lived, but it was the thought that counted. Right?

Anyway, this year I found some cowslips for you but I didn’t dig them up. Didn’t even get my feet very wet. I figure it’s easier to send an image up to heaven than a bucket full of mud, roots and blooms.

I hope you enjoy the flowers, Mom. We miss you every day, but we smile, too, with all the great memories.

Sending you hugs, please share a few with Dad.

Happy Mother’s Day.


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Hope

I’ve told you about this fluffy bit of joy before. But I just have to tell you about my experience this morning.

Even though I stopped filling my bird feeders this spring, due to the bird disease in our state, many of my little birds are still stopping by. I watch them check out where their feeders used to be, or be-bop among the branches of the trees and shrubs we planted just for them.

And lately whenever I go out on the deck one particular chickadee arrives, almost instantly, and looks at me intently.

So I go down the steps to the seed bucket and grab a small handful. By then the little bird is waiting expectantly in the beech tree near the bucket. He won’t come land on my hand, but if I move it toward him he doesn’t fly away. And he will move closer and closer, until he’s on a branch within my reach. Then he carefully leans over and selects a seed from my palm.

From another encounter a few years ago.

Generally he flies to a higher branch and eats it, then flies away. He has never come back for a second helping, though he always makes me smile.

But this morning, as he was hopping down the branches to my hand another fat chickadee landed near the top of the beech tree and started to make a lot of noise while flapping it’s wings. I thought it was admonishing my little guy for getting too close to me.

Still, he reached down low, hanging almost upside down and carefully selected a seed, then flew part way up the tree and cracked it open. And then he flew up next to the noisy chickadee and fed the precious treat to the other bird!

Visiting the birdbath last summer.

By now I was smiling ear to ear as I stood still, hand still out, more treats awaiting. Would he come back?

And he did; almost immediately he bounced back down to the branch near my hand, grabbed another seed, moved up and opened it and then took it to the chirping fat bundle of feathers near the top of the tree.

Then he came down a third time. This time he and his friend (or mate?) took off with the seed, maybe to their new home.

Last fall at Kensington.

I think there’s something right in the world when a tiny little bit of nature can trust us scary humans. I’m still grinning hours later.

I hope you’re smiling too.


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Blackened

I went for a walk at one of my favorite parks a couple days ago. It wasn’t a pretty day but at least it wasn’t raining. Or snowing.

Between winter and spring.

I went because I hadn’t been in awhile and because I was feeling sad about a friend of mine who is going through some tough stuff.

A place to rest and contemplate.

When I got to the park there was a warning at the gate about a prescribed burn. That’s when parts of the land are deliberately burned to ward off weeds and nonnative plants.

A scorched earth walk.

Much of the nature trail area was black, which accentuated the hills that I’m always trying to photograph. For that reason alone I didn’t mind walking along the scorched earth, or the smell that can sometimes be overwhelming.

Overlooking his park, wondering what happened.

As I walked I stopped often to take pictures. No surprise. It took me forever to walk the four miles, but it didn’t feel like forever.

Back in the woods spring is taking hold.

It felt wonderful. Spring is arriving, though slowly. Tiny wildflowers are popping up. More will follow.

So tiny you might miss the evidence of spring right under your feet.

I thought about my friend and hope he is able to come on a walk with me soon. He’d find hope in the woods, even the burned parts.

Sometimes it’s hard to let go.

Of course yesterday, listening to the Supreme Court news, I felt sadness overtaking me again. The world seems to be a darker shade of burned right now.

Nothing but darkness.

I’m trying to remember that deep in the woods hope is poking up from under last years debris.

Little umbrellas of hope.

I think I’m going to need another walk real soon.


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Lunch N Learn

The Truck Safety Coalition has started a series of interviews, done during lunch hours, of different people working on issues within the truck safety world. The series is titled Lunch N Learn.

Earlier this year we did an interview with Michael Belzer, former truck driver and now a PhD and professor at Wayne State University, focused on the purported driver shortage. Dr. Belzer authored “Sweatshops on Wheels,” a book about the deregulation of the trucking industry. You can go to the video library on the Truck Safety Coalition’s website (trucksafety.org) and click on “Debunking the Driver Shortage” to see that interview.

This Thursday, May 5th, at 12:30 p.m. eastern daylight time, we will be interviewing Representative Andy Levin who has authored a bill, H.R. 7517, the Guaranteeing Overtime for Truckers Act. We’ll be finding out what led him to the writing of this bill, and how he hopes to move it forward.

You can tune in to hear about this industry changing idea yourself, just by clicking this link on Thursday at 12:30 eastern.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a long time you’ll know that most truck drivers are paid by the mile, not by the hour, and that creates a lot of the safety issues that we all face when we’re sharing the roads with big commercial trucks.

I think you’ll find the Congressman interesting and informative. I hope you can join us. And if you can’t, I will post a link later for you to watch at a time convenient to you.


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A day at the beach

You all know that my happy place is just about anywhere on the shores of a Great Lake, but especially Point Betsie, a lighthouse on Lake Michigan.

This is Ace, 2 years old, and Deuce who is 10.

It has sentimental value because it was a favorite place for my parents, who camped near it on their honeymoon back in 1952.

Ace likes to swim.

Though when I think about camping in a green army pup tent in October I have to wonder what my dad was thinking.

Mom and Dad at Point Betsie in 1994.

But they stayed married for more than fifty years.

Deuce likes to stay on dry land.

This week I had the opportunity to wander the beach at Point Betsie with a friend and her two cocker spaniels. We had a beautiful day, cool for the dogs but a bit of sun for us.

Ace got to run free for the first time in his life.

I took my camera equipment including the tripod, in case it looked like we’d have stars. My friend was willing to stay up late with me while I tried to capture the Milky Way.

Deuce is an old hand at managing his freedom. (photo credit, Deuce’s mom)

I don’t think she realized how late that would have to be; the Milky Way isn’t really visible until almost morning at this time of year.

A beautiful beach, and no one around.

But as we walked the beach the clouds rolled in and after a few hours of rock hunting, and a great lunch at a park beside the Platt River in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, we decided to head home.

Posing for treats.

The next day I saw beautiful images posted on Facebook of stars and the Northern Lights, taken the night before at Sleeping Bear Dunes.

Sleeping Bear Dunes from the boat launch at the end of the road.

Yep. I told my friend if I ever suggest we head home early she should just kick me.

Sometimes life throws you a curve.

Katie says it serves me right for going on an adventure without her.

There’s always next time.

Sigh.