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Wang Dang…
A short while ago, there was a ruckus on the back porch. The dogs and I went out to investigate, and when I shined my light around, I saw a hunched, gray figure hurrying up the ridge into the woods. All I can say is that if Joy Cartwright and I get awakened in the wee hours because of this interloper and our dogs’ determination to dialogue with him, someone is going to get a piece of firewood laid across the cranium with precision and dispatch. Like livin’ in Nashville up in here… ~ S.K. Orr
- Bluebelle, Church Life, Daily Life, I Never Thought I'd Be In This Situation, Jinx, Mrs. Orr, Photographs, Reflections
Paths of Freeze
Upon our second awakening this morning, the sun showed the crushed glass rug of frost all over everything, and my bones felt as if someone had injected crushed glass into the joints. Second awakening? Oh, yes. Our first awakening of the day was at about, ohhhhhh, 0230, when the dogs began snorting around outside our bedroom and demanding some attention. We got up to let ’em out and and see what might be yanking their emotional chains. They ran straight to the maple tree in the back yard and started leaping up on it like trained coon dogs. I shined the flashlight up into the bare branches and expected to…
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Two Years Gone
Today marks two years since Bluebelle came to live with us. We still marvel at how this came to be. Jinx’s own littermate was abandoned just as she was, several miles from our farm, and for some strange coincidental reason, I just happened to look at the local animal shelter’s website — something I had never done before nor had any reason for doing — and saw the photo of the little girl. We paid a visit to the shelter and within ten seconds knew this was Jinx’s sister. His former owner had told us about Bluebelle and her beautiful markings. We had no idea we would ever have the…
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Creatures Under Heaven (updated)
“To deal the tortures of hell to the animal creation is a way which too many people have of showing their belief in it….” from A Dog of Flanders by Ouida, 1872 This afternoon we did some needful grocery shopping, and on the way home Mrs. Orr asked me to swing into the drive-thru of our favorite local burger joint. She wanted to pick up a gallon of their tea, the best in the region. Idling behind a couple of other cars in the lane, I looked across at the back yard of a home a couple hundred yards away from the burger place. In the yard is a small…
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Quiet Entry
Purple-Hull pea blossom The first Sunday of fall, and it has strolled in quietly. The sky is completely overcast, but no approach of rain. It was chilly enough on the front porch this morning for me to have to don a light jacket. Mrs. Orr and I sat out there, her shelling peas, me watching the birds. A downy woodpecker was on the downed pine, his steady staccato attack ringing across the valley. A pair of titmice took turns bathing in the birdbath while a goldfinch perched at the edge, sipping and watching. A murmuration of starlings in the next pasture swung and swooped and startled my wife with…
- Bluebelle, Books, Church Life, Daily Life, Dixee, Dreams, Jinx, Mrs. Orr, Music, Photographs, Quotations, Reflections
Royal Pains
It’s raining softly here today, and the valley is quiet except for the protestations of cows who are methodically being separated from their calves. We love the rain and the clouds, but there is an uncharacteristic sad feeling in the very air. And time is passing much too quickly. There is some Alanis-level irony in the fact that the squash we so carefully planted in the garden has done poorly, but one lone “volunteer” plant that sprang up, probably because of a bird depositing a seed, in a bed of shrubs bordering the back porch. This one unintentional plant has provided enough good squash for several meals so far, and…
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The Only Day
Today marks the ninth anniversary of the day my mother departed this life and went on to the next one. My sister and I chatted about this last night, remembering some of the happy times and some of the not-so-happy times we shared with the stoic, flinty old woman who gave us life and fed us and sheltered us and tried to guide us. I miss you, Mother, and I love you. I hope to see you again when my own time comes to sail into the west. *** It’s still hot here and will reach 90 today and for the remainder of the week, but the mornings have been…
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The Thirteenth of August
Today would have been her 103rd birthday, and her absence these nine years has left a divot on my life’s surface. I miss her, and I am glad she isn’t here to see what has become of her country and her region. Seeing such ugliness would have grieved her tough, hidden old heart. Her middle name was Viola, which she hated. I always loved it, thinking it had a Southern literary lilt to it, like Eudora or Flannary, and I would sometimes address her by it, which enraged her. “Viola,” I’d say, “Reckon what it would take to get you to make me some bacon for supper?” And she would…
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Ailing Dixee
Our little elderly dog, Dixee, has been failing today. Mrs. Orr noticed it right away this morning. She was just off, and even though she ate and drank at breakfast, she wasn’t quite herself. Through the day, she has declined noticeably. The most dramatic symptom is a weakness in her rear legs. She walks and moves as if someone gave her a novocaine injection in her hips. They’re splaying out, weak and trembly, and she seems perplexed by this development. She also seems to be retaining some fluid, her belly distended from edema, which causes her to wheeze and gasp as she’s laying on her side, trying to sleep. Understandably,…
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Caught, Released
I’m finishing up a book, a profile of a very interesting man. The book is The Final Frontiersman: Heimo Korth and His Family, Alone in Alaska’s Arctic Wilderness by James Campbell (2004, Atria Books, New York NY). Mrs. Orr and I first learned of Mr. Korth and his family a few years ago when we watched a Discovery Channel series about him and the few remaining homesteading families in the Arctic Wildlife National Refuge in Alaska. We were quite taken with Heimo and his winsome family, and have followed them via interviews and profiles over the years. The series we watched was called The Last Alaskans, and if you can…