Summer is the Season of Escape, Sneaking Past the Lifeguards and Messing Around in Boats

 

“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

After a long, hard winter, I really looked forward to summer, now that summer's here I know winter will come before I know it.

If you've been reading and following this blog you know why I hate winter.  Now it's time for you to find out why I like summer. Many years ago Nat King Cole summed it up quite nicely in this song: (Check out the big guy in that beach chair and the skinny dippers!)


During the summer of 2012,  my husband and I visited friends and family in Seaside Heights, New Jersey for several days.

The ocean was so turbulent that the lifeguards wouldn't let anyone in the water past their knees, and all I heard the entire day was the blast of their whistles. The rip current risk was high that day, and they weren't taking any chances.

My husband, a friend, and I decided to hang out on the beach after hours, and jumped into the surf barely five minutes after the lifeguards went off duty. We found out first hand how powerful the ocean was.. Fortunately, we returned to shore safely, after a few scary moments with strong currents threatening to take us out to sea.

The next day I overheard a lifeguard say "I had to perform a rescue at 8:30 this morning."

Hurricane Sandy destroyed the Jersey Shore three months later, and the ocean claimed the roller coaster. The resort has been rebuilt, but the ocean can reclaim it again.

Usually the ocean off the coast of New England is much too cold for swimming until August, when this picture was taken last year.  Unfortunately, the beaches close in early September because the lifeguards go back to school. It's too bad they don't get a few local people to work the beaches until mid September because that is when the water is warmest.  After what happened at Seaside Heights, I'm not tempting fate again, now that I know how the ocean can lay waste to boardwalks and roller coasters.

  T

What I like best about summer are the long, hot days, the balmy breezes, and going outside without being encumbered by heavy clothing. As much as I like the beach, we don't get their often because it's a bit of a drive and gas is expensive. So we go kayaking on the Connecticut River instead.



My husband and I try to get on the river a few times a year.  Last year we didn't go at all because there were tropical rain storms nearly every day in July, and dangerous high water. He likes to watch the birds and the wildlife, I like the exercise, the scenery, and that  I can cool off if it gets too hot.

We both hate it when people leave trash like red (why red?) Solo cups, empty beer bottles and trash for others to clean up.  We like it when we find unopened beer bottles underwater that people have forgotten.  If they haven't been opened they are drinkable. Free beer is always good :)

Taking a small boat on a large river is a mystical experience.  Foggy mornings are the best.  Although there is a bit of a chill from the fog and the water before the sun burns it off, everything is shrouded in a cloud of mystery.   A couple of years ago we paddled on a foggy morning and watched an artist on his boat, deeply engrossed in painting.  I am, however, hesitant about taking electronics (like a tablet for writing) on a kayak, although the cell phones are protected in the dry bag.  There is enough buoyancy in the dry bag that it will float, and we can retrieve our stuff provided the current isn't too fast.

There is also the challenge of wind and current.  The worst is when you're paddling upstream when the wind is against you, but then it's good for muscles on those arms.  Besides, you get a free ride later in the day when you're tired.

The best thing of all is the warm sun and the cool water. Being out on the river is a sensual experience that can excite all five senses.  (even taste).

Summer is the season of escape.  It is the "get out of jail free" card.  It is, most of all, an excuse to get outside.

This month's poem is about playing tag with the Atlantic Ocean. By the way, the ocean always wins.

A Game of Tag

I stand at

the edge of the

Atlantic Ocean

cold, wet sand

between my toes

while crashing waves

of freezing water

rush to shore

approaching me

as the tide comes in.

Do I really want to play

a game of tag

with the Atlantic?

She's a formidable opponent

whose weapons are the

icy water and the undertow.

I am no match against

something so powerful

so beautiful and

so vast that it meets land

somewhere in Spain,

but yet I am tempted

to join her in her

watery playground.

I could get hypothermia,

you know, or a rip current

could drag me away,

never to return.

In the meantime, a rogue wave

hits me with a numbing blast

of salt water,

knocks me down, pulls me in

and it's time to play...

Tag, you're it!

You can also check out my companion blog The Alien Diaries, if you like dance music from the Balkans. It's good summer reading, with lots of music.

Copyright © 2014 Katley Demetria Brown. Site Designed by Katley Demetria Brown. All Rights Reserved. Photos and A Game of Tag © Katley Demetria Brown (with the exception of the video Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer, song by Nat King Cole, 1963)

The Tornado of June 2011

photo by Katley Demetria Brown: Devastation on Hancock Street

Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore. (Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz)

One of the scariest events in nature is the tornado. They seem to pop up out of nowhere, usually during a round of thunderstorms. When a cold front meets a warm front, violent weather ensues and sometimes results in tornadoes. They are prevalent in the Midwest and Southern United States.

They have always been the bane of spring in the Midwest and some parts of the Southeastern United States. My mom had the misfortune to experience the 1998 F4 tornado in Central Florida. She said it was an experience she would never forget.  Fortunately she escaped it unscathed, with minor damage to her house.

Unlike blizzards and hurricanes,  when you get some warning and can take action before the event (board up your windows, pick up a generator, batteries, and flashlights) tornadoes attack suddenly and destroy everything in their path.

Tornadoes were practically unknown in my area until one hit Springfield on June, 1, 2011. That day was hot and humid with severe thunderstorm warnings forecast.  The storms in my area began at about 4 p.m,  and shortly after, a tornado formed in Westfield, Massachusetts.  It made its way east to West Springfield, Springfield, Wilbraham, Palmer and Monson.  It ended somewhere east of  Sturbridge. The tornado was barely a mile and a half north from my house, so it was visible from the back yard, according to one of the neighbors.

(I never got a chance to take a photo of it because my daughter told me to get my ass in the basement...now!) Fortunately, someone with a camera captured the moment.

photo from Wikipedia Commons: "Tornado in Springfield"

I watched the devastation on TV and couldn't believe what I saw. Three people died and 500 became homeless.

The Springfield tornado was one of the worst natural disasters I had witnessed. Although I was fortunate enough to escape it unscathed (no damage to my house or property, no one in my family was injured), barely two miles from me there was devastation everywhere in the form of downed trees, damaged homes, and downed power lines. I remember driving home from work and being rerouted (because of downed trees) into the area affected by the tornado.  It looked like a war zone.  Rubble was everywhere, and people in a total daze gathered as many household goods as they could salvage,and loaded them into cars and vans. The Mass Mutual Center became an emergency shelter.

My neighborhood escaped the damage and we even had electricity.  One of my friends was not so fortunate and had downed trees in her yard.  She and another friend had no electricity for a week.  The elementary school that my children attended years ago took a direct hit.  This photo is of one of the apartment buildings right next to the school, a few days later.

Apartment Building on Hancock Street, by Katley Demetria Brown

The school has now been housed in mobile classrooms and a new building will be built in a another location in the near future.

Most of the damaged areas have been rebuilt, however, nearly three years later, you can see evidence of tornado damage in parts of town.

I wrote a poem about it shortly afterwards. You may or may not believe in a Supreme Being, but to me God is someone who creates and destroys.

Coming at You From a Pissed-off God

Nature is random

If there is a God

he gets bored sometimes and

natural disasters are his playthings.

Fire, flood, tornado and hurricane

are some of the weapons in his arsenal.

ready to be unleashed on unsuspecting people

when they least expect it.

June first was one of those days.

That afternoon God took out his camera

to take flash pictures of Springfield.

He was in one of his cantankerous moods

and decided to turn on the fan

but he got a little more than what he bargained for

when he turned the switch to “high.”.

The funnel cloud he created was

more than just a breeze and it danced

across the landscape toppling bricks and buildings

and hundred year old trees.

Roofs were torn off houses

from the force of the wind.

Debris flew down the streets and rain

drenched the land.

A city mourned its loss of innocence.

You never know when your time is up

It depends what kind of mood God is in that day.

Just don’t piss him off.

By the way, I have another blog, updated weekly, about music and dance from the Balkans, The Alien Diaries. I guarantee you'll enjoy it!

Copyright © 2014 Katley Demetria Brown. Site Designed by Katley Demetria Brown. All Rights Reserved. Photos and poetry © Katley Demetria Brown (with the exception of the photo from Wikipedia Commons.)

Mother's Day, A Female Activist's Blog, and Feminist Poetry

• 

Tulips, May 2014 

Don't forget to pick up a bottle of wine for your Mom for Mother's Day. After all, you're one of the reasons she drinks.
anonymous

May is one of the most beautiful months of the year as long as the sun shines.

Although we're in the middle of spring, it has been rather chilly.

I think that's why the Mother's Day falls on the second Sunday of May. Whoever chose the time of year for Mother's Day picked a perfect time of year.  The trees are in bloom, and there are flowers everywhere.  Retailers and online florists go crazy because they know there is serious money to be made selling flowers for people to give to Mom on her special day.  As for me, I prefer chocolate and a meal at an ethnic restaurant, the more exotic, the better.

The problem with Mother's Day is this holiday discriminates against women who aren't mothers.  I don't mind it when my children bring me gifts or take me out to lunch.  I think Mother's Day is unfair, however, for women who chose not to have children and women who are unable to have children due to infertility. The role of mother is not the only game in town  nowadays when women can do so much more with their lives than they were able to in the last century.

I prefer, instead, to celebrate International Women's Day on March 8th.  (You can read about it on my other blog, The Alien Diaries). It is a day which honors all women. There is also International Men's Day in November (equal opportunity, you know) in November, although many people have not heard of it.  These holidays are not observed in the States because Women's Day, especially is seen as a Communist plot. After, all, International Women's Day was  a Russian idea, and the Russians have been getting a lot of bad press lately for the situation in Ukraine.

I don't understand why anyone would see a holiday for women as a bad thing. Only women can be mothers, but not all women want to be mothers. So why not celebrate all women?

A young female blogger made a big impression on me by speaking out against injustice, especially against women. The Republican Party here in the States would have women barefoot and pregnant if they had their way,

The young woman, whose name  Madison Kimrey  is an atheist and lives in the Bible Belt.  I imagine she gets a lot of flak from the Bible Thumpers where she lives. I give her a lot of credit for standing up against injustice, whether it is discrimination against the female gender, or the fact that she notices the United States is turning into a theocracy.  It's the Christian Right who are behind this. They feel that the United States is a Christian nation.  This notion makes me very uncomfortable, since this country was founded upon separation of church and state.

Fundamentalist religion subjugates women, and makes them second class citizens. There is a jihad going on in this country, and it's not coming from Islamic terrorists, but from Fundamentalist Christians and Tea Party Republicans who try to force their fanatical brand of religion on the rest of us.  I ain't buying.

Speaking of religion, I have had some bad experiences that I was a little girl in Catholic school.  Back in the old days, the Catholic schools were run by nuns who had no problem hitting young children with ruler and pointers.  It was seen as discipline, you know the Bible aphorism "spare the rod and spoil the child." The punishment they doled out on these kids would be seen as child abuse nowadays. The nuns couldn't deal with the likes of me and kicked me out of school, so I attended public school, which I liked much better.

To this day, I avoid religion which is something that I see as crowd and mind control, although I respect the right of people to worship as they see fit. Just don't try to convert me.

Even though I'm a mother and a grandmother, I raised my girls to be strong women, and taught them to question everything. I'm glad they are following in my footsteps.

It's time to get off the soapbox since I've been standing on it too long.

Several years ago I wrote a poem based (loosely) on Heine's Lorelei.  Heine was a German poet who also happened to be Jewish.  He was persona non grata in Hitler's Germany, (even though he was dead a long time by then) and his books were burned, along with other works authored by those repugnant to the Nazi Party.  Heine, too, would have been burned had he been around during the Nazi era.  This is the kind of thing that happens when discrimination turns into downright hatred, and Hitler and his cronies had a passionate hatred of Jewish people.

Fortunately, the Nazis and their followers did not take over the world, and they lost the war.

Many years ago I had the good fortune to live in Germany, not far from the Lorelei. My husband and I often visited St. Goar, a tourist trap type town on the Rhine, across the river from that infamous rock.  German legend had it that a siren lived on top of the rock and sang to lure the sailors and the bargemen, and led them towards disaster.

This barge, which had just passed the Lorelei, got through the gorge in one piece. If it had crashed it would have meant death by hypothermia (or worse) for those aboard.

Rheingau by St. Goar, in February

Since I've saved the best for last, here's my poem Siren's Song. It's an excerpt from my chapbook The Visionary, and you can also find it in the anthology The Art of Being Human, Volume 7: Sagittarius2-Love Poems. . Also, please pardon the crazy formatting.  Microsoft Word gets lost in translation on Blogger.

I knew you from

another lifetime

and I'm sure I saw you once

in this one.

You were in a dream of mine

and years later I saw you

a young man

standing across the river.

You gazed at me with longing,

your eyes filled me with desire.

Although I never met you

you were so close and yet so far.

 I never forgot

the siren song of your smile

and the beauty of your eyes

for that brief moment.

I search for you everywhere.

You are always on my mind

yet I don't even know who you are.

But if I ever met you I'd be tempted

to leave my husband

and crash on the rocks

to repeat history

this time around.

Something in my soul told me

you had once loved me

and the affair had ended sadly.

Would I sell my soul

for a second chance?

Yes.

Copyright © 2014 Katley Demetria Brown. Site Designed by Katley Demetria Brown. Poetry and artwork on this site may not be reproduced or copied without permission of the author.

Cats, Spring, the Dreaded Income Tax, and A Jeep That Refuses to Die

April is the cruelest month.
It teases you with summer
Then torments you with winter.
Katley

Spring has been a long time coming.  The month of March felt more like January and on the 31st of the month, winter let us know it wasn't ready to quit. There was sleet, freezing rain, and accidents on the road.  The temperatures barely hit the freezing mark most days and there were even forecasts for snow.  Fortunately, there was less than a coating for my region, however, friends in Washington, DC got 7" of snow on the first day of Spring!

April is when "real" spring as opposed to calendar spring arrives in New England, although snowstorms have doused the area with snow in early April.  Back in 1997 we had the April Fool's Day Blizzard that brought 18" of snow.  Everyone thought it was a joke until they woke up on April 1 with enough snow on the ground to put January to shame.

In Europe, on the other hand, my German friend Eric told me they hardly had a winter at all, and spring came early.  I enviously looked at Facebook pictures of he and his wife strolling in the park without heavy winter coats.

With April also comes the dreaded filing date for income tax returns in the United States on April 15th.   I find doing income taxes a tedious chore, but it saves me and my husband at least $150.00 to do it at home as opposed to using a tax preparer or a Certified Public Accountant.  I also do the tax returns for my daughters.  It sames them quite a bit of money. As a reward, they take me to a restaurant.

April also brings to mind my cat Fatso, who passed on three years ago.  His obesity contributed to his demise, he died of congestive heart failure. His birthday was April 20, and he died two weeks before his thirteenth birthday.

Fatso, late winter 2011.

Fatso never liked the flash on the camera, so in most of his pictures, his eyes are closed, or almost closed.

Shortly after Fatso passed on, Fluffy, the next door neighbor's cat, decided to move in. Part of the reason was that the kids in one of the apartments next door constantly chased him and tried to dress him in doll clothes.  Fluffy was primarily an outdoor cat and a serial killer as well; dead chipmunks sometimes littered the yard, and one time I caught him in the act of killing one. Aside from the bad habit of leaving dead chipmunks for me to dispose of (he never ate his kills), he was a very sweet and affectionate cat who liked to watch TV with my husband, and sometimes slept with me.  He kept me warm after a freak October snowstorm in 2011 that knocked out electricity in many parts of New England.  We had no heat for an entire week.

.   

Fluffy the Serial Killer, March 2012.

Fluffy was quite old when we got him, and he had wandering ways.  He left the house one day during the summer of 2013 and never came back. Part of the reason had to do with the cat my daughter brought home after she graduated college the previous year. She and Fluffy didn't get along well and part of it had to do with the disparity in their ages.  She was young and constantly bothered him with friendly attempts to play. It probably reminded him of the harassment he got from the kids next door.

Now that Kitten's grown, and her owner has her own home, I'm going to miss not having a cat around. What I'm not going to miss is cleaning the litter box, and chasing her all over the neighborhood when she escapes out the front door.

Kitten: "I didn't do it!"

One thing all these cats had in common was their affinity for Bulgarian folk music, especially the gaida (bagpipe).  Critters seem to like music made from other dead animals.  It's really weird. Fatso always joined me between 10 and 11 p.m. when the Bulgarian National Radio had its folk music broadcasts, and Kitten often nudged my laptop while I wrote and listened to music.

By the way, you can read something I posted on The Alien Diaries several years ago right after Fatso died.

You can also read the poem I wrote about my son's Jeep.  It is the worst piece of automotive crap on the road, and absolutely refuses to die. The problem is that despite its problems, he has some weird attachment to it.

The poem is on page five of the Fine Flu Journal.

If you're in the mood for springtime silliness, watch this video. This is what we do when the ice finally melts.


Copyright © 2014 Katley Demetria Brown. Site Designed by Katley Demetria Brown. All Rights Reserved.

The End of Winter, Snow Mountains, Shopping Carts, Baba Marta, and March Madness

Winter Haiku #2

winter snow on the
freezing ground lingers
where the hell is spring?
KDB 2014

There is something about the end of winter that's extremely messy.

The large mountains of snow in the parking lots are finally starting to melt, and it's fascinating to see what surprises they yield.  They are also quite disgusting from the road dirt.  I think our air is polluted, too because snow never stays white for more than a day or so.  We are breathing in that nasty stuff.  The dirt in snowbanks and the dust on your furniture is air pollution.  When it comes to pollution, the United States is becoming more like China every day..

An anthropologist two hundred years from now would have a field day analyzing the junk buried in a snow mountain from a parking lot. But the garbage will have been cleaned up long before then. What kind of stuff shows up after the snow melts?

Crusts of pizza, frozen and long abandoned, become sustenance for hungry seagulls. There are soda cans, pizza boxes, and plastic bags: all the flotsam and jetsam of modern society.  Long buried shopping carts, frozen into the ice mountain, magically appear come March.

I'm surprised the Mafia or the gangbangers haven't thought of this method of disposing dead bodies. Think of all the mammoths from the Ice Age that were frozen for posterity and found many centuries later.

There is a book titled The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America, A Guide to Field Identification. The author classified them by category by location and condition, much like a naturalist would categorize flora and fauna. He must be a Virgo with a lot of time on his hands. Read the book reviews, they're quite funny.

Here is the cart I used on a recent shopping trip.  Notice the dirty snowbank in the background.  Some of this snow dates from the first snowstorm in January, and not much has melted since then.  It has been a horrible winter.

Shopping carts have sociological significance. People who can't afford cars use them to bring home groceries. Homeless people use them to transport their worldly goods.  Nothing gets as much abuse as a shopping cart.  Everyone except the store owners (who spend a lot of money on them) see them as expendable. They often get pushed off ravines and into rivers.

The Aldi Supermarket, where I shop for gourmet ethnic food at discount prices, has the right idea.  They have coin-operated shopping carts, and most of them get returned to the store.

Supposedly there is another snowstorm on the way soon.  It's March for goodness sakes, usually by now the crocuses have started to pop up in my front yard.

The Bulgarians have a holiday on March 1, honoring a lady named Baba Marta (Grandma March).  You have to wear a red and white charm, called a Martenitsa for good luck, to ward off winter and bring on spring.  Maybe it's time to get this custom started in the United States, especially since they already have spring weather in Bulgaria.

I am sick of winter!

If you want to learn more about this charming custom, read my companion blog, The Alien Diaries. Maybe it's time to get everyone to wear a Martenitsa. We can make it an arts and crafts project in our schools. It might even take the edge of March Madness, when all the sports crazies are glued to the couch watching basketball.

Here's to an early spring!

Announcement!

Three of my poems (pages 62-64)  have been published recently in The Art of Being Human, Volume 9,  an anthology of international poetry. What a wonderful collection of great poetry from around the world! Thank you, Daniela Voicu and Brian Wrixon, for making this possible.  .

Copyright © 2014 Katley Demetria Brown. Site Designed by Katley Demetria Brown. All Rights Reserved.