Kaleidoscope of Autumn

We always forget don’t we?

 Oh sure, we say Fall is our favorite time of year but still we forget. 

 We forget the cascades of color falling down the mountainsides.

We forget the rivers turning to gold and the kaleidoscope of autumn 

 Overhead

And underfoot 

Amazing and ephemeral 

And incomparable 

Hallelujah.

OLD CATS

Unlike old dogs, old cats can learn new tricks.

Guinness is about 11 years old, the equivalent (according to the Internet) of 61 human years; Herbie is about 12, the equivalent of 65 human years.

They are almost as old as I am.

From the day I brought him home from our local Humane Society, Guinness has loved playing on my bed. At first, he attacked my toes. But claws are claws and I decided it would be safer if I substituted a cat toy. So he attacks the toy – scrunching down, attentive, then leaping on the plastic or feathered prey. Making the bed creates momentary mountains and valleys that add enticing mystery so that a successful pounce becomes more triumphant.  Making the bed under these circumstances can take twenty minutes, but who’s counting?

I brought Herbie home from the Humane Society a few days after Guinness. He had to undergo required surgery before being released. Because he’d picked up a slight infection, he had to be isolated for two days. At 4 p.m. on the third day, I opened the door to the bathroom in which he had been confined.

They met.

Eventually, they bonded.

It is hard to tell which is the alpha cat. Sometimes I think it is Herbie because he is older and more dignified. Sometimes I think it is Guinness because he tends to eat both his own and Herbie’s food. Each of them has been known to attack the other, lurking then jumping before they tussle.

But the bed games have always been Guinness’s territory. Often Herbie watched, standing out in the hall, sometimes half hidden around a corner. Occasionally, he would come closer, standing solemn at the bedroom door.

Once in a great while, he would venture onto the bed, bat the toy then leave.

Now, after ten years of cohabitation, the games have changed. Now they both help me make the bed – taking turns playing mighty hunter.

And Herbie, old cat, has equal time.

Long Pause

After a trip into the American past (Feast of the Hunters Moon, Lafayette, IN)

and my own past (friends in Indiana and the Chicago area), a visit with my younger son, a ride on the Chicago river, and an interlude in a butterfly haven,

I came home to Loveland, Colorado in time to prepare for the inaugural readings and sales/signings for my first published book, Tree Lines, A Memoir.

I first realized that writing was what I wanted to do when I was about five or six years old (many, many, many decades ago).

Now I have a published book and, possibly, a future of more books and more readings and more sales/signings.

It's taking a bit of getting used to.

But it's awesome.

Whatever Happened to Richard?

Earlier this month there was small item in the Sunday edition of my local newspaper reporting that the remains of England’s King Richard III may lie beneath a parking lot in Leicester.

Richard was the one Shakespeare portrayed as a villainous hunchback who, in the midst of battle, cried, “a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!”

 He died in defeat Aug. 22, 1485, conquered by the forces of Henry Tudor (later Henry VII) at the Battle of Bosworth Field about 15 miles away from the Leicester parking lot where archeologists are currently digging.

 Historical accounts report that Richard’s enemies stripped his corpse and paraded it in Leicester before allowing Franciscan brothers to bury it with no pomp or ceremony.

 The burial was probably near the altar in the Franciscan friary and there were plans to mark the spot with an alabaster monument but that project was abandoned when the next king, Henry VIII, shut down all of England’s monasteries.

 So much for glory and power – and the rewards of purported villainy. The former king of England may well lie, anonymous, somewhere underneath a 2002 gray-blue Jaguar.

Relentless Raspberries

I used to love raspberries.

 I probably would have paid more for my house had I known it had raspberry patch in the backyard.

 I didn’t really discover them until spring, about six months after I moved in. I was thrilled.

 And I continued to be thrilled each year when the first ripe berries appeared.

 This year, I thought, was no different.

 Early in the summer, a few small berries appeared – enough to garnish breakfast at least once a week. And I was thrilled.

 Later in the summer, larger berries appeared – enough to garnish breakfast several times a week. And I was thrilled and grateful.

 Now there’s a mix of large and small berries – every day. Relentlessly.

Enough to garnish every breakfast and an occasional dessert. And they don’t stop coming. And I am no longer thrilled.

 I am sure that if Aesop had created fables about fruits, he would have come to some profound conclusion about my relentless raspberries. But he didn’t. And I haven’t – although there may be some analogies to American’s standard of living – but I’m too tired (and too full of raspberries) to figure it out.

Peaches are amazing.

And delicious.

Before moving to Colorado, I assumed that all good peaches came from Georgia (or other warm, moist states). Not so. Native Americans had peach orchards in the very dry Canyon de Chelly (before Kit Carson and the Army devastated the Navajo farms in 1863). And even during our drought, Colorado has wonderful peaches. Actually, they apparently grow almost everywhere (thank goodness).

Like almost everything, it seems, they originally came from China. They first appeared there around 2000 BCE. Peaches migrated along trade routes into Turkey and Iran then, later, North Africa and Europe. They were introduced to America in the mid 1500s. French explorers established them along the Gulf coastal region near Mobile, Alabama, and the Spaniards planted them in Saint Augustine, Florida, and along the Atlantic seaboard. Then the Indians took over and they are all over our country.

Most Colorado peaches grow on our western slopes and are then trucked to farm stands and grocery stores all over the state.  We have easy access to the golden, fuzzy orbs. What a delight. They, like all things really, should be savored in season. Find them. Have the good sense to buy them. Wash them, peel them, slice them and enjoy.

 You may, if you wish, fuss with them, cook with them, even can them. But save one at least to just eat – standing at the sink or sitting on the porch.

Let the juices of summer slide into your being. And be glad.

PUBLISHED, PRINTED AND REVIEWED

TODAY my book -- published and printed was delivered! And, the following review by Pat Maslowski was printed in the publisher's newsletter.

Tree Lines, A Memoir --- There are few books that I will reread in my life, but Mim Neal’s Tree Lines is one I will keep on the shelf near my bed so I can reread those passages that are poetry, philosophy, wisdom and prayer.
     There’s a reason memoir is so popular. With every new generation, many lose their connection to family, place, ritual, folklore and wisdom. Who are we? How shall we be? What is my purpose? What is my life’s meaning? These questions pulse despite the blare, hurry, distraction and commercialism in which we are enveloped, and memoir offers some helpful attempts at answers.
     I’ve read that culture is the air we breathe, and I agree. To experience another culture is to learn to breathe in different air. Mim Neal is an extraordinary woman who does just that. From a traditional middle class, Protestant background, she marries, has two children and is a stay at home mother. In her thirties the culture shifts, the air changes, and the author realizes her marriage is destructive, her husband controlling and emotionally abusive.
    Her divorce is the exit from the oxygen-rich conformity prevalent in American culture in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and even 70s. Suddenly she’s at high altitude; the air is thin, and there’s no turning back. Her struggles to support her family alone, her sense of duty and obligation, her aspirations as a writer and her understanding of who she is as a spiritual being are all related so candidly and vividly I had a sense I knew her as well as I know myself. Her memoir brings the reader into the immediacy of her personal life as well as her work life, which as Director of Media for Rotary International includes trips to Brazil, Guatemala, Japan, South Korea, Africa and Switzerland.
   Fully present and engaged, Mim Neal shows us what she experiences and seeks. We become seekers with her. What is our place on this planet? What do our relationships with people, earth, plants, animals and ancient wisdom mean? She is not afraid to experience other cultures, other places, but she is also aware of her self-doubt, guilt and feelings of inadequacy. She discovers a spiritual path that joins traditions from Buddhism, to Islam, to Christianity, to Native American belief systems. She participates in vision quests. She promotes an event that includes Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama. She visits ancient, sacred sites such as Hiroshima and Nara in Japan and Table Mountain in South Africa. The air becomes rich with diversity instead of conformity.
   Her memoir is not just the narrative of a woman’s life; it is also the narrative of a human quest to understand our place on the planet, to find holiness. She offers the reader an examined life, a hard-won wisdom we need now—a new way to breathe.