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By Lynn, on July 12th, 2010%
Last Friday I said I’d be going back to the ALF around the corner to see how Ethel was doing, and I did. Friday afternoon I learned that she had indeed broken her hip and that she and her daughter, who lives in a nearby town, and the doctors were evaluating her as a candidate for hip replacement surgery. I also learned that she had been lying there on the hot asphalt for at least fifteen minutes and that she wasn’t in her mid-80s, as I’d guessed, but 93! Which proves that no matter how old you are, you can always look younger.
The other residents and staff members went out of their way to thank me for intervening. In a very small way, I understand why heroes insist they didn’t do anything heroic: I heard a call for help and several thousand years of civilization and natural selection simply took over.
But, anyway, the staff insisted that I leave my name and address because they were certain that no matter what else happened, Ethel’s daughter would want to thank me. And she did, knocking on my door late this morning. Once again, instincts took over and we hugged as though were friends reunited rather than strangers meeting for the first time. Ethel’s daughter was on her way to the hospital because Ethel herself was scheduled for hip replacement surgery at 1:30PM. Ethel’s daughter promised that she’d let me know tomorrow how the surgery went. I’ve kept my proverbial fingers crossed all afternoon and evening
For many reasons, some of them very selfish, I hope Ethel returns to the ALF and that a couple months from now we can have a cup of tea together.
By Lynn, on July 9th, 2010%
I had a client coming over this morning for some data/publications consulting, so, naturally, I rounded up the trash and used kitty-litter to haul down to our dumpsters. I’d just dropped the lid on the big, blue steel box when I heard a sound. A cat? I thought, because we’ve got quite a few feral cats in the area. Then I heard it again and it sounds almost as if someone were calling for help, but I hadn’t been paying close enough attention to vector the sound. My suspicion, since I was alone in the dumpster lot and the nearby streets and sidewalks were empty, focused on our around-the-corner neighbor, Wedgewood – a well-maintained Assisted Living Facility based in a renovated motel.
Sure enough, the third time I heard the sound, it was definitely a call for help. I ran over to the wall that separates the properties. Each of the rooms has a little patio, divided from the adjacent patios but open to our parking lot. I scanned those as I approached the walls, saw nothing, and thought the person in distress must be inside…but no, when I looked to the right I saw a woman, probably in her mid- to late eighties, lying on the hot asphalt between the ALF’s dumpster and a row of parked cars.
Adrenalin really does marvelous things: I jumped over the wall. Ethel—I learned her name a few minutes later—was alert but obviously in pain, clutching her hip and trying not to move or make things worse. Waving my arms and shouting, I ran around to the front of the ALF, easily attracting the attention of two managers, one of whom ran into the office to call an ambulance while the other followed me back to Ethel.
I didn’t stick around….there was nothing more I could do (though I plan on walked over later in the afternoon to make sure she’s okay), but as with so many things these days, the event gives me pause. It’s getting easier to imagine not only my parents but me in Ethel’s predicament. I’m going to start carrying my cell phone more often
….and I’m going to dress better when I take the trash to the dumpster. If worse comes to worst, I want to look as good as Ethel because, yes, I would have jumped the wall for anyone, but I fear I jumped higher and ran faster because seeing her there, all neat and tidy, red-lined my compassion.
By Lynn, on February 23rd, 2010%
Spring arrived in Central Florida last Friday afternoon. After twelve of them, I’ve grown wise to the signs….the sun’s out, the temperature’s up, and, suddenly, the air’s juicy. Juicy—that’s the local word for “somebody’s going to get pounded by a thunderhead this afternoon.”
At the very least, the change in seasons meant that I wouldn’t have to load up on the layers when Gail and I headed off for what’s become an annual February nature day. (Fact is, when it comes to hiking, there’s a rather small comfort window – we don’t want it cold and blustery, but with our sun, seventy degrees can be uncomfortably hot out in the scrublands. We had a fairly ambitious agenda – a morning hike through the Lyonia Preserve – a fairly new habitat-reclamation project hosting its first Scrub Jay Festival, then, after lunch, a visit to Blue Springs State Park where, with luck, we’d be able to see some manatees.
Since last Saturday was the best Saturday we’ve had since, oh, November, the Scrub Jay Festival was successful beyond its organizers’ wildest dreams Gail and I wondered if the crowds might scare the birds away. We needn’t have worried: only a few of the attendees were actually interested in walking the full loop through the Preserve….and scrub jays…well, they’re not exactly shy.
So, this was the sort of terrain we walked through—sugar sand scrub… I’ve been on any number of beaches where the sand isn’t as deep or slippery as what we were walking through, so even though the hills aren’t much to look at, you feel like you’re climbing a sand dune. So, I was getting my exercise, and then some…and walking through a variety of ecosystems. We’re the home of pocket ecosystems: take ten steps and you’ve gone from sugar sand to ice-age peat, or “climb” a three-foot-high hill and you’ve gone from scrub to pine forest. And that’s not factoring in flood and fire. It’s very changeable….and quite challenging to the folks charged with preserving a bit of “Old Florida” in the midst of rampant humanity.
But they’re doing a good job at Lyonia. We weren’t far from the madding crowd when we spotted our first scrub jay…
 and a second
 or a third keeping an eye on things…
but it wasn’t until we stopped to shed a layer of jacket, that I got a picture of one in its native habitat…
 He (or she) perched on my head first, which meant that I was prepared when he (or she…it’s almost impossible to tell with jays) flitted to an alternate perch. At least it didn’t decide to dig for acorns and, when it left, it left of its own accord…’cause you know what happens when you scare a bird off its perch.
Anyway, we either saw about thirty scrub jays on our hike,(or we saw the same five or six birds several times). They’re officially endangered, so I’d like to think that it was thirty.
We finished Lyonia around noon and headed over to Blue Springs. Several hundred other Floridians had had the same idea and the park was closed on account of overcrowding, so we took shelter at a public boat slip at the end of a dirt road and had our lunch. By the time we finished, the crowds were starting to thin and we only had to wait about 15 minutes before being let into the park.
I complain (a lot) about Florida…but it really can be a beautiful place and few places are prettier than Blue Springs on a bright, sunny day. The water at the boil is the same temperature year around. In the summer, it’s wonderfully cool, but in winter, the manatees follow the warm current back to its source. As recently as a few weeks ago, there were several hundred manatees holed up at the Blue Springs boil. Saturday, though, was head ‘em up, move ‘em out day. As we walked along a boardwalk from the parking lot to the boil, we watched manatees, singly and in groups, going with the flow.
I took about twenty minutes of video, which I edited down to five minutes and uploaded to YouTube, which has been “processing” it for the last little while. If it passes inspection, I’ll edit the URL into this post. (It did! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX-w1bh0Cqs ) OTOH, as great as it was to watch the manatee parade, the new “Old Florida” ethic keeps people well away from the wildlife (scrub jays notwithstanding), unlike the old “Old Florida” which was big on face-to-face interaction. There are still some bits of old “Old Florida” around, and back in 2008, Gail and I went to Haulover Canal (cheek-by-jowl with the Kennedy Space Center) and got some close-ups….
By the time we’d walked to the boil and back, we’d walked nearly nine miles altogether and were ready to call it a day…but I had one more “event:” the Leesburg Mardi Gras Parade . When you live on Main Street, your choices are simple: you either get into the parade spirit, or you spend the night some place else. I was too worn out to do much celebrating, but I did score some beads…
Quite a day…
By Lynn, on December 22nd, 2009%
Philosophically and theologically, I’m agnostic, without knowledge or wisdom, though what I really lack is faith. It takes faith to believe in a god and just as much faith not to believe in one either. (Where faith equates to a willingness to accept as true that which cannot be empirically proven.)
Culturally, though, I’m Christian (I’m a confirmed (and therefore apostate) Presbyterian who paid attention in Sunday School) and I love Christmas, especially Christmas music. Not the Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire sort of secular holiday music, but traditional carols, carols that are not so traditional, and hard-core sacred stuff, the older the better.
When last I checked my mp3 library, it contained nearly 1,000 Xmas-themed files and over 60 hours of unrepeated music. It contains more now, if only because I succumbed to Sting’s Christmas album last month.
I mean, I’m seriously into the sounds of the season.
So yesterday, when I went to the Melon Patch for my second round of their Christmas fund-raiser, (My friend and neighbor, The Ballet Mistress, does a lot of the theater’s choreography) I was well-prepared to answer a performer’s questions: Do you have a favorite Christmas song and Are there seasonal songs that completely describe a moment in your memory?
My favorite Christmas song is relatively easy. It’s the one that distracts me whenever it cycles up to the speakers, regardless of which arrangement I’m hearing. (Just because I have 60 unique hours of Christmas music, that doesn’t mean I don’t have multiple versions of some of the more popular tunes.) And that one is Riu Riu Chiu, because, really, what says Christmas more than a song referencing rabid wolves? I first took note of the song when I was living in New York City and invited my parents to join me for a Waverly Consort Christmas concert in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s famous Christmas tree in the Medieval Sculpture Hall.
Which is as good a segue as I’m likely to get between the two questions….
Christmas music, that when I hear it, instantly transports me to another time and place.
I Believe in Father Christmas / Greg Lake – I first heard it in 1975 and played it for my parents when they came to my apartment in the Bronx for Christmas Eve dinner. The refrain incorporates a theme from Sergei Prokofiev‘s Lieutenant Kijé Suite.
The Little Drummer Boy – is not actually one of my favorite songs, but I clearly remember that it and The Chipmunk Song were all over the radio in 1958.
Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day – My stepson was (and remains) musically talented and, in fourth grade, his teacher suggested he join the Ann Arbor Boychoir, which he did, and Bob and I dutifully went to the Boychoir’s Christmas Concert at a beautiful Victorian-Gothic church. We weren’t expecting great things, and were not disappointed. Then, late in the program, the boys made their way through an uptempo, syncopated setting of a carol that had never really appealed to me. I looked at Bob, he looked at me, and we observed the parents of all the other choirboys we knew doing the same thing: our boys had actually learned something! I spent nearly twenty years trying to find a commercial recording of that particular setting, and finally did. It’s on What Sweeter Music, which, needless to say, I bought immediately.
BTW, I wouldn’t have had such a difficult search, where I to start my search today rather than in the mid-eighties. Now I could use Shazam to precisely identify bits of music.
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What I'm working on these days
Exiled on Main St.
Short Story
Status: Active
Word count: 5500
as of: 7-12-2010
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Look Who’s Talking…