Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Author Archives: dawnkinster


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Spring? Are you sure?

Pretty

Pretty

This is not my garden.  Did you think maybe?  I can only hope.  First of all chipmunks have long since eaten all my crocus bulbs.  And second, my garden still looks like this right now:

Not pretty

Not pretty

This is, instead, a lovely handwritten note sent by a friend through snail mail, to surprise me on the first day of spring.  And it did indeed surprise me.  But more importantly it made me smile.  A lot.  The whole effect, the beautiful flowers and the getting something in the mail, made my day and I want to say thank you.  Thank you very much.  You know who you are.

In our part of the world it doesn’t look much like spring, though we got rain last night instead of more snow, so there is hope.  And a professor friend of mine posted on Facebook yesterday that the sandhill cranes were back.  She lives an hour south of me, so I expected I’d hear them soon.  They have such a distinctive cry you can’t confuse it with anything else.  And do you know what?  This very morning as Katie and I were out front slogging along in the soggy yard looking for the perfect spot there arose from the treetops across the street such a screeching that we both jumped.  The sound bounced off the houses and careened around spruce trees.  I never saw them, but it was evident they were right there!  I laughed out loud and Katie looked at me in question.  Did you hear that girl!?  Did you here THAT!  And what happened next just added proof to the pudding.

A red winged blackbird sang.  And sang again so there was no mistake.  Sometime last night, while we were lying awake listening to the rain on the roof the real spring arrived in my very own neighborhood.

Katie and I took the camera out back to see if we happened to have anything popping up from the ground.  All we found was this:

Faint hope

Faint hope

Do you see?  Let me get closer:

Proof

Proof

It’s not much, but in combination with my birds, well, I can finally let my shoulders fall back from up around my ears where they were shivering.  I can take a deep breath and taste the warm muggy days to come.  I can look out over my snow covered yard and envision the pear tree and redbud blooming.  Someday there will be daffodils after all.  I had so little faith.

Katie says all today means to her is that there is less snow on the deck and more sticks that need breaking up into sheltie sized pieces.  She thinks that’s good enough for now.

Sticks Mama!

Sticks Mama!

I think she’s a smart dog.

I know I am.

I know I am smart.


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Weekly photo challenge: Inside

WordPress has challenged us with finding a photo that represents inside.  I think we’ve had that challenge before.  I remember seeing flowers inside my kitchen window last fall.  So all the ‘inside’ ideas I thought of this weekend involving windows I chucked.  And of course some of you have seen a photo just like this when I posted about my sister’s visit here last summer.  But I don’t have access to my archives at the moment, so Katie and I went out to the driveway and recreated her version of inside…outside.

Love my tunnel! Got a treat?

Love my tunnel! Got a treat?

Of course this involved me setting her up in a ‘wait’ and then casually walking down to the other end, lying on the cold hard asphalt and yelling ‘COME!”  A couple of times.  And this was the best we could get.  It makes me smile, so that works.

She’s a very good girl.

Here and here and here and here you can find a few of my favorite versions of ‘inside’ from the WordPress blog.  Or go there yourself and see even more!


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Snow dimples

As you know we got a fresh nine inches of snow on Wednesday.  Then the sun came out.  By Friday it was quite a bit warmer, and by afternoon the wind was howling.

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As the sun lowered in the sky and shadows got deeper and longer it became apparent that all those smooth snow canvases that had showcased earlier shadows were now sculpted into hummocks and frozen waves.

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I like to think of them as snow dimples.  And I wanted to show you.

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Because as many of you said we might as well enjoy the weather we’ve got while it’s here.

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Soon enough we’ll be complaining about the heat.

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Shadows

Those of you that live Somewhere Else, somewhere warm and sunny, might have noticed that others of us got hit with another major snowstorm yesterday.  We here in what appears to be Forever Winter were fooled by a day or two of warmth and sun earlier in the week.  The snow banks diminished.  We could see our driveway again.  And, as every year, we were lulled into thinking winter was over.  And then it snowed.

Hey Mama! What happened to my path?

Hey Mama! What happened to my path?

And snowed and snowed.  Where I live, about an hour north of Detroit, we had nine inches of snow in just a few hours.  I know because I measured it before I hauled the snow blower back out of the garage.  Down in Detroit where they measure these kinds of things officially they got a little over 6 inches, leaving the region just about 2 inches shy of breaking our record for the all time snowiest winter in these parts.  Gee.  Maybe I should wish for one more storm.

But I probably don’t have to wish.  This is, after all, Michigan.  And it is not unusual for us to get snow in April…sort of a Michigan April Fool’s joke…on us…year after year.

Lonely leaf.

Lonely leaf.

I didn’t make it to work yesterday.  I tried..really really tried.  But there was too much snow falling during rush hour, too many accidents to maneuver around, too much ice on the windshield.  I called my boss after an hour of driving and turned around.  Katie was glad to see me.

This is supposed to be my NAP time Mama!

This is supposed to be my NAP time Mama!

And then….later in the afternoon the sun came out!  It was a miracle!

Happy sun.

Happy sun.

And I was so glad to be home to watch the sun create the prettiest shadows.

Shadows creeping across the yard.

Shadows creeping across the yard.

And even though it was very cold I couldn’t help but go outside every time I saw something beautiful.

The moon smiles down.

The moon smiles down.

And whenever Katie asked to go out.  Which seemed to be quite often.  So I got a little laundry done, some cooking done, some reading done.  But mostly I sat and watched the snow come down, then watched the sun play with lines and shapes on the fresh snow…

Shadows on the deck.

Shadows on the deck.

…and took some deep breaths and tried to relax before heading into the office again today.

I don’t want to think about any more spring snow storms.  So I think I will just hide my head in the sand…um…snow until it’s really summer.

I don't see any snow Mama!

I don’t see any snow Mama!


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Weekly photo challenge: Perspective

The photo challenge this week from WordPress is to show perspective.  As usual my mind pulled me this and that way when I considered what to do with that concept.  I think I know what the photo challenge developers are getting at with the assignment.  But I think, this  week, I have to go in another direction.

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Because, you see, I’ve been thinking about truck safety stuff more lately.   My family was permanently upended in December of 2004 because of a truck, but that doesn’t mean I eat and breath trucking issues every day.  I slip into complacency just like anyone might.  But this week a letter was published in the New York Times from Joan Claybrook, who once headed NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration), the Joan Claybrook who helped get seat belts mandated, the Joan Claybrook who fights the good fight for all of us on highway safety issues still today.  You can read her short letter here.  So this week my thoughts on perspective are slightly skewed toward safety and trucks.

I see some awful stupid stuff on my long commute to and from work.  In our hurry to get where we’re going some of us driving the cars are making moves that aren’t worth the risk.  Let me plead with you.  Please, never cut in front of a semi.  Never careen crazily around a slower truck.  Never shift lanes without warning to gain an extra 100 yards in stopped traffic.  Never tail gate behind that big rig.  Put down your phone.  Pay attention.  Stay away from the trucks.  Stay as far away as you can get.  Because when you look at the big picture, when you see in perspective how small you are next to them, well, it’s obvious who will be the loser in any truck/car altercation.

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No matter whose fault it is, if you tangle with a semi truck you and your family are going to lose.

The trucking industry is still lobbying hard to get bigger and heavier trucks on the roads.  The roads they share with you and me.  Despite overwhelmingly public disapproval for larger or heavier trucks, they are still trying; in just about every major bill before Congress there is an attempt to override states law size and weight limitations.

You can help by calling your Senators and Representatives and telling them you don’t want bigger or heavier trucks on the roads you and your families drive.  People are already dying.  People are already living with life long injuries.  Bigger and heavier trucks will not make the numbers of deaths (approximately 4,000 a year) or injuries (approximately 100,000 a year) go down.

Let’s keep trucks in perspective.  Let’s stop bigger trucks.  Visit the Truck Safety Coalition’s website for more information.

Please.

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Enough already! It’s March for pete’s sake!

One more time.

One more time.

When I was a kid I always felt like winter was half way over at Christmas.  I know.  It is not.  But that’s the way I felt back then, a million years ago and light years away from this winter.  Oh yes, by Christmas you were half way home, you only had to get through January, then it was February and February was short, right?  And then it was March and everyone knows that March is spring!  Sure it might snow a couple of times, but the sun shone and the snow melted and you got days and days of warmth creeping back into your bones.

Right.

The record snowfall in our area of Michigan is 93.6 inches set in 1881.   No one around today would remember that snowy winter, and no one back then would be commuting to work in bumper to bumper traffic on a freeway in all that snow.  No, this winter, though it will probably end up being the second snowiest winter, is plenty winter enough for me.  People seem to hope  we break the record – we’re only ten inches away now at 83.7 inches (that’s 212.60 centimeters for those of you outside the US).  Wouldn’t that be cool, people say.

It's pretty though.

It’s pretty though.

What I say is that 83.7 inches is plenty enough of a record for me.  It’s the most snow we’ve had here in my lifetime and  I don’t need to experience ten more inches of snow this winter.  In fact I’d be fine if this last snowfall, this last four or five inches received on Saturday night was it.  Done.  Finished.  No more.  No way.  No how.  I’m hoping that I’ve put the snowblower away for the last time this year, felt the last of the cold wet stuff fall down my neck in the middle of the night when I’m out with Katie, shoveled my last chunk of ice away from the mailbox.  That’s what I’m hoping.

Even Katie thinks this is enough snow.  It’s higher than she is tall.  She can’t play in it, won’t squat in it, can’t chase a squirrel across it.  There is no reason that either of us can think of to keep it around.  So if it’s OK with all of you, we’d like to request that it begin to melt, slowly, starting tomorrow.

The only spot to play is the driveway!

The only spot to play is the driveway!

Cause somewhere under all this are little buds of green things just waiting to show us their stuff, there are little peepers waiting to sing and fish waiting to be caught.  Somewhere under all of this is spring, and it can’t get here soon enough to satisfy me.

How about you?

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Weekly photo challenge : Abandoned

This week’s WordPress photo challenge is show ‘abandoned.’  Lots of things ran though my mind immediately.  There’s an old rusted truck  out by the main road and I thought I might do that.  And I will someday.   But as I thought more about the word abandoned I began to feel the city of Detroit pulling me.   Some of you probably know the city is in bankruptcy, the biggest city in the United States to head down that road.  There’s been a lot of abandoning that has happened in the city in the past many years, but hopefully the path is becoming clearer for the emergence of a new, brighter city.

There’s one building that stands, for me, to represent the abandonment of Detroit by so many.  I’ve always wanted to go downtown and photograph it, but it’s a little daunting.  Scary too.  So I haven’t.  This weekend I decided to drive down before our weather gets worse and just see what might be possible.  Turns out there were lots of people out and about right there, going to some event down the street.  So, though I wasn’t able to get really close as they have it all fenced off I was able to get a few shots of the abandoned Detroit Train Station.

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What a magnificent building this was in its day and what a shame that it has come to this.  You can see photos of the inside here and imagine what it once was.  It’s totally gutted now.  When you’re further away from the building you can see daylight all the way through it, from one empty window through to the empty window on the other side.  This year they hung giant lit snowflakes in some of the windows.  I hear it was pretty at night.

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Then I turned around and saw an old hotel, probably the place people landed when they arrived in Detroit and first stepped off the train.  It’s been abandoned too, though not by the graffiti artists.

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And next door to the hotel was an abandoned house, you can still see the good bones of it hidden under the boarded up windows.

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Around the side of the house was this,  which epitomizes abandonment to me…the abandonment of hope.

Someone had dreams here.

Someone had dreams here.

There’s so much more abandonment in this city;  I saw it everywhere as I scurried into downtown and back out to the illusion of safety in the suburbs.  It needs a braver person than me to document the pain there, and to document the return to life of what was once a great city.  I’d love to do it, but it’s just too darn scary.

You can find more photos by creative people that represent “abandoned” to them, up at the first link at the top of the post….or here and here and here are a few of my favorites.

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