Due to font issues, and WordPress changes, I am reconstructing this blog’s layout. Please excuse the mess. In the meantime, check out my other blog, Strange Wetlands.
It’s hard to imagine my life without my little secretary, my little dominatrix, my little double-Scorpio calico, Narnia, who just turned 18 this Halloween—and developed a fatal condition involving severe anemia. I had to let her go. Fierce from the start, she came into my life in an odd and unexpected way: in December 2005, my then-hairdresser told me her cat had a litter of kittens on Halloween, 2005. Her conservative Christian family believed the kittens must have been demonic—and this little white calico with a black eye mask—the most threatening of the litter, to them, so I raced over in my 1986 Volvo, with a carrier, and rescued the white puffball the size of a tennis ball out of a shoe box in their garage near MDI, Maine. That was New Year’s Eve, 2005, and I named her Narnia—because she was almost all white except for a few caramel & black markings like a character out of CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. We lived on MDI until the next fall when we moved to southern Maine. Eventually, I bought my house at Nixie’s Vale in 2009, and she reined over the yard and woods as Queen Narnia. She certainly had a feisty, mischievous and magical personality!
In fact, it was Narnia’s first forays into the woods of Raymond that inspired me to name our new home “Nixie’s Vale.” As we explored the ferns and moss, and she crept along the stone wall, it felt like a magical wood, right out of Chronicles of Narnia or Tennyson. 🌿
Over the years, Narnia inspired poems, beheaded small rodents, climbed trees and haunted the woodpile. She surveyed our yard at Nixie’s Vale, 2009-2022, and monitored the various chipmunk holes. On sunny afternoons, she liked to roll in the dirt driveway and sprawl in sunshine across the hood of my car or in a sunny patch of grass by the lilac tree. Inside, or on the deck, Narnia never strayed far from my desk while I worked, wrote, studied and read. Sometimes she edited my papers by sprawling on top of them and crumpling the edges, smudging ink. Usually she kept me company sitting on my lap while I read or typed on my laptop, especially in winter-time as I wrote by the woodstove. In the summer, she liked to hang out on the deck under my chair in the shade, or in the shade of the big beautiful maple tree, which she occasionally climbed, just to prove she could. Of course, sometimes this got pretty dramatic. I never called the fire department to come rescue her because she always figured out how to get down on her own.
Maybe it had something to do with her Halloween birth, or double-Scorpio purrsonality~~ but she preferred when we read Gothic novels, or thrillers. She kept me safe when we watched ghost stories and old Hitchcock films on TV. (We loved “Haunting of Hill House” and reading Shirley Jackson stories!) If a mouse dared enter the house, Narnia and Sophie-Bea, my late dachshund-pointer, hunted the foolish vermin. Narnia had a funny habit of dropping dead mice on my bed, pillow or beside my bed—out of some kind of dark show of affection, she assured me! She’d purrrrr in my ear and chatter about her fresh kill and look, there it was on my pillow! How nice! 😖😬🙈😕
In 2019, she helped me plan my first trip to Ireland. She curled up with me as I read Sharon Blackie’s book, If Women Rose Rooted, and travel guides—and then sprawled across the map of Ireland in an arc pointing to West Cork. She knew me well.
Narnia
Occasionally, she followed the red fox across the yard into the woods—but she always came back with a story, chattering and chirping about her adventures. Her longtime beau, Macho-Man, was buried there, at Nixie’s Vale, and I have to believe they find each other in the animal spirit world now. (He died at age 18 in early 2015.) Like any Scorpio, she was extraordinary and beautiful—truly striking but didn’t like to pose for the camera. No portrait really does justice to her beauty, or intelligence, or how in tune she was with me, intuitively. I will miss her unbearably.
In Mary Wollstonecraft’s first novel, Mary, A Fiction, which is really truly a hybrid memoir, she writes of her own love for her friends, and fleeting happiness.
“I follow a fleeting good, an ignis fatuus; but this chase, these struggles prepare me for eternity—when I no longer see through a glass darkly I shall not reason about, but feel in what happiness consists.”
(-Wollstonecraft, from Mary, a Fiction)
And from her unfinished novel, Maria, Or, the Wrongs of Woman, which she was writing at the time of her death, ten days after giving birth to her daughter, Mary (Godwin) Wollstonecraft Shelley in 1797. In this unfinished novel, Maria, is a woman kept in an asylum; her husband committed her for hysteria.
“A magic lamp now seemed to be suspended in Maria’s prison,
and fairy landscapes flitted round the gloomy walls, late so blank.
Rushing from the depth of despair, on the seraph wing of hope,
she found herself happy.
—She was beloved, and every emotion was rapturous.”
(Wollstonecraft, from Maria, Or the Wrongs of Woman)
Today is May Day, and so I feel hopeful: my dachshund-pointer, Sophie-Bea turns 13 years old sometime this month, or the next. I watched her sitting in the backyard today and wrote this poem. It may seem like a strange combination or association, but Mary Wollstonecraft was a double-Taurus, and we are now in the “season of Taurus,” and my dog is Taurean, and I, like Mary Wollstonecraft, and my dog, were all born in what is known as the “Third Lunar Mansion” with the moon in Taurus. I used all of the words from the two quotes from Wollstonecraft to help me articulate my emotions around my love for Sophie-Bea.
A magic(-ical) moon in Taurus,
at that degree between Rousseau and Mary Wollstonecraft,
I share their possessive tendencies
toward appreciating good and beautiful things. We were born
in the third lunar mansion
as though we possessed a genie’s good will
and an instinct to follow a glowing lamp
lit us up led us along
that path of the will o’ the wisp,
now it’s fleeting,
this good fortune and not one of us (well, maybe Rousseau)
languished in its light. I tend to think that the little pleasures
birdsong, a lake swim, hearing the foxes in the woods
under a full moon, or the heart-wrenching call of the loons,
or watching my beloved dachshund-pointer recline in the grass,
her hind legs splayed frog-like,
sniffing the spring air,
all seemed so good for a few years.
We hiked and swam, romped through meadows;
she followed butterflies and splashed into the waves
at the ocean. But these days, these perfect days
of joy and unrelenting freedom, at times of crisis, or illness,
I now realize they turned out to be an ignis fatuus
a meandering marsh fairy leading me along a lovely
sunlight dappled forested path to an unknown meadow, or glade.
My dog is equally enchanted,
and we just keep going, no intentions of
ever returning to the car
or wherever we have to be.
It started with a funny cough. But this
merely suspended our runs through the land trust preserve,
and brisk beach walks in November.
She fainted once, then in the fall,
her lungs filled with fluid; she went into congestive heart failure.
In delirious optimism, or denial, we chased
remedies and recipes for low-sodium diet for her.
I started cooking for my dog. Sweet potatoes,
chicken (no salt), grilled asparagus, turkey, salmon fillets,
and kale—surprisingly, she loves green vegetables,
and cucumber slices (and fish).
In the summer heat of a Maine heat wave,
I filled the kiddie pools in the yard, and she waded.
We visited my mother by the river, and Sophie-Bea
lounged in the marsh, a healthy curve to her back,
she reclined like an empress in a salty breeze
while I swam. She watched me
From the riverbank, occasionally wading into the water
herself to cool her round belly.
Perfect days like this I find myself singing to myself,
“How do you solve a problem like Maria’s?”
All of my favorite things—and my lovely little dog
In one place: the river, the seaweed,
the hummingbirds swooping as I rinse off in the shower—
And she seems comfortable, breathing easy,
meanders like a four-legged elf along the shore,
Her black spots on her white body almost resemble
a longer version of a cartoon “Snoopy,”
But with an elegant Elizabeth Taylor
from “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” feminine self-assurance
She knows where’s she’s going, and what she wants to do.
These small pleasures I cherish watching her.
In winter, I know, it will be the opposite:
the freezing cold temperatures and storms,
the storms I used to love for all of their dramatic appeal—
the warmth of the woodstove — Instead, these stormy
wintry nights feel like an exhausting prison. I turn on the humidifier,
I make the air as breathable as possible for her. She struggles.
I worry and prepare for the worst.
February, my favorite month, becomes a nightmare of sorts,
and I think I’ve lost her. But, like the forest, this heart disease
of hers is a weird unpredictable experience. She tells me,
“I’m happy.” She flits about the house, playful with her toys,
interested in new foods, and charming new side of her emerges
nearly like a marsh fairy. Suddenly, my dachshund-pointer
is cheery again, the worst is over: it’s spring again; she’s pointing.
She’s in the yard, looking for birds, or squirrels,
but not chasing anything.
She walks calmly.
She traverses the woods
soft-stepped, a sure-footing,
and doesn’t take her chances
with more than a trot through the yard in the rain.
This rare time of year we see the pond
through the trees, and feel grateful for these warm,
sunny landscapes – patches of blue buds of green and
red on the trees. My dog is nearly thirteen-years-old,
either this May or June—
(hard to say because she was a rescue)
but she was definitely born under the influence of Taurus!
One of her most defining characteristics,
besides strong neck and shoulders, her independence!
When not on her 50’ long “training leash” in the yard
(a precaution, post-diagnosis)
She flitted through the woods like a wood frog or songbird,
or fairy. She’d disappear, and reappear
with black legs—evidence of her visit to the Bog of Eternal Stench
in the black ash seep just beyond Fern Gully here at Nixie’s Vale.
I forgave the eternity of bog aroma because I love her—
and lavender coat conditioner works quite nicely.
When we swam out deep
Together, that first August of 2009,
in the lake I knew like the back of my own thigh, I knew
She was a keeper—my soulmate,
the kind of dog with a pointy-dachshund face and a round
curvy torso, wagging full-bodied, and could jump six feet into the air
from a standing position—
Unusual and completely unexpected.
I had known the gloomy days of post-traumatic stress, months,
no, years of the gloom I could not quite pierce (even with my herbal remedies)
Until I found my dog. No, I don’t think my dog was a “crutch,”
as one psychologist suggested.
We found our footing together;
she was recovering from whatever horrible trauma in Arkansas,
I think she was a recovering model for Purina,
or a hunting school failure, abandoned
on a highway in Hot Springs. Together, in my house in the vale,
our walls came down. Some nights, she slept-walked into the closet,
and climbed into my laundry basket,
I’d go and turn the light on, and wake her; she’d look around,
disoriented. The longer she
She’d go without sleep-walking, for months—
this happened late at night, she did so without
ever once making a noise—not a bark, not a yip,
no sound uttered from her throat.
It was as if her ululative instincts were inhibited,
or dysfunctional; she could not ululate.
We formed a language in other ways;
I made hand gestures, and she mouthed my hand
While we walked side-by-side. In the night,
she began making little sniffy noises, huffs, and sighs
until a year had gone by, and she finally, for the first time, barked!
And then it was as if a window had opened.
Her personality shined through in the second year—so see-through
We were transparent to one another.
She knew my secrets, and I knew hers.
Her expressions
Just a look and I could read her eyes;
we talked a myriad of miscellaneous trivia her news of the woods
The kinds of conversations you can only have
with a dog who already knows your past
by smelling all that permeates your skin
your bedsheets your clothing and your wall is blank glass
The two of you together—dog and woman—
might as well be mother and daughter,
Or confidantes, or two lovers, as weird as that may sound—
at least, two souls darkly
Aware of one another’s dreams and nightmares;
we wake the other up when the images
Come rushing in the night like a thunderstorm, or howling wind.
I guess she is a part of me from every vulnerability
and the parts that we cannot eat, or climb under to make a den,
Or swim through to cool our bellies, we shall make do with,
she and I know the depths
We go to avoid death. Of more than one occasion,
this dog has simply saved my life, and then
Saved the lives of others, who never knew her name,
or cared. She also helped small children
Overcome their cynophobia (and their parents,
delighted, stood back and let them pet her)
Sophie-Bea took this responsibility very seriously—
on her back, motionless, full submission
Not to interfere, I stepped aside to let her shine.
She thrives in the company of admirers.
In solitude, during isolation, we do not despair.
We take solace in the slope of the yard,
The birdsong and sunshine, a reason for living—
she reclines on the deck.
A phoebe swoops and lands on the back of my chair.
Up close, I make eye contact, and wish
This is an on omen. Sophie-Bea glances over briefly,
the seraph-like bird flexes her little wings
And is off again. I sip my tea and make a wish
about this day, but of course I know
I can only hope she will still feel content
and comfortable tomorrow and in the days that follow.
Today I found out she will not eat liver
(another thing we have in common)
What she will eat, and when, is a mood-dependent lunar thing.
She knows herself.
Now that the sun and the planets are in the sign of Taurus,
I feel happy, and hopeful.
She is breathing easy tonight, this May Day,
and was able to walk about her beloved yard.
And inspect the perimeter of every corner of her territory.
These small victories
Conjure an emotion in me that stir that magical lamp
and I again call upon the genie, if he, or she,
Might still be listening, and if the genie was willing to make note:
my list consists of her happiness
All these spring afternoons, for her,
I wish for easy breathing, birdsong, and breeze-sniffing:
and dreaming butterfly meadows
and grassy beds on the riverbank rapturous.
One of the few helpful aspects of social distancing and self-isolation during this horrible time of the COVID-19 has been taking the time, in solitude, to read, write, organize, create, sketch, and to revisit old favorite hobbies, and passions, like art. Back in March, when my university transitioned to online courses, and my state governor issued a Stay-at-Home order, I felt reasonably “ok” with that, since I felt it was a good time to focus on my graduate study, which requires a lot of reading and writing. Last fall, two of my faculty advisors asked me a difficult philosophical question about why researching the topics I’d proposed was important to me–personally--and my answers then seemed flaky, e.g. “I am Lady of the Lake!” So, I have been thinking about how to answer those questions. It seems like I should be prepared to answer thoughtfully.
In May, I received Honorable Mention for my poem, “My Glacial Erratic,” in the 2020 Fish Poetry Prize, judged and selected by former US Poet Laureate Billy Collins. My poem will appear in the 2020 Fish Anthology, coming out later this summer. (That’s with Fish Publishing, which holds a number of writing contests each year, based in Ireland.) Since then, I’ve written new poetry, and started drawing images that go with my poetry, and some of it is inspired by recent coursework. Selkies, mermaids, the Irish merrow, bog-women, the Lady of the Lake, and other supernatural female figures in literature (Romanticism as well as other periods, particularly Gothic literature and Arthurian lit) have captured my imagination.
Enter art journaling. To work through some of my ideas, I’ve returned to art journaling, which is something that I used to do as a teenager, and in my early 20s. It’s now summer, and I’m still self-isolating, and spending a great deal of time at home, on my own, creating. I’ve started working in a blank canvas art journal (Jane Davenport’s supplies). One thing that art journaling allows is for storytelling and concept mapping.
It never occurred to me to use my art (and poetry) to think critically about my proposed research, or to answer philosophical questions about my interdisciplinary research. I’d been approaching it methodically, seriously–with critical annotations, a working bibliography, term papers as building blocks, outlines. Now I’m approaching it differently, and I’ve got images of mermaids, selkies, bog-women, and memories of Ireland in my head.
Part of that’s influenced by the research I did on Traditional Ecological Knowledge of seaweed harvesting in Ireland for a term paper. Part of it’s inspired by a Celtic Studies class I’m taking led by Dr. Sharon Blackie. I read her book, Foxfire, Wolfskin, and Other Stories of Shapeshifting Women (September Publishing, 2019) which I loved.
There’s something very liberating about making art. And it’s a good exercise to pick up a different tool–any tool–whether it’s a paint brush or fountain pen–but a physical tool, one that can be held in the hand to transmit ideas from the mind to the page. I love color. I’ve always responded emotionally to color. As a kid, the gift of a set of colored pens delighted me more than dolls or toys. I made art consistently throughout my teens, twenties, and early 30s but then paused while I focused on other projects (teaching, writing and editing, and founding a coalition–didn’t leave much time for art-making.) I still love art supplies and colored pens. Recently, I’ve become quite smitten with art supplies by Jane Davenport, an Australian artist and designer, known as an “Artomologist,” a play on her nature photography, and particularly her love for ladybugs, and other insects. I’ve also really enjoyed her books, such as Marvelous Mermaids. Jane Davenport has a series of art tutorials on Youtube, and I’ve really enjoyed rediscovering my love for making art, partly inspired by her wonderful books, tutorials, and using some of her supplies. The “Mermaid Markers” are some of my favorite supplies, a water-reactive brush pen, like a watercolor alternative, that’s been fun to use. But my absolute favorite thing of hers is the fountain pen, an INKredible pen.
Twenty years ago, I filled a portfolio while taking a watercolor painting class at College of the Atlantic. Prior to that, I was a writing-art double major (or English major, art minor) at St. Lawrence University, where I studied art and art history quite seriously. For at least ten years, from high school through college, at four different schools, I loved making art. I incorporated art visuals into my poetry projects and liked making books. Then, in 2004, while in grad school at COA, I was living in a small cottage with a 15-year-old water heater, which leaked badly, flooding my little home, and saturating all of my possessions. My draft master’s thesis, which I’d meticulously organized into piles and chapters, along with my notes and data on my living room floor, floated in ankle-deep water on a soggy shag carpet. Even my old Dell laptop was submerged. One of the fatal losses that really crushed me at the time, three full art portfolios containing all of my art from more than four years in studio art classes–drawings, paintings, photography, self-portraits, watercolors, some of which I’d planned to frame someday (when not working on my master’s thesis). All of my art disintegrated. It was so shocking and sad, I focused on other things, like completing my master’s degree, and moved forward with other projects, and left my ruined art and love for making art, in the past. I still sketched with pastels and colored pencils, and used graphics design in my work…but I took a break from painting (a hiatus?) that seemed to last years.
In recent years, I’ve rediscovered my love for Kettle Cove State Park (southern Maine), and I have been lucky enough to swim in that small cove over an eelgrass meadow, where I swam and toddled around as a baby more than thirty-five years ago. Recently, I swam at high tide, in the wake of the New Moon Solar Eclipse in Cancer this June.
Every time I swim there, I am flooded with sensations, poems, ideas, and epiphanies. I’m rediscovering myself. I’m reinventing myself. Below is a weird “inner self-” portrait I painted, using watercolors and real Maine eelgrass, which coiled and wrapped around my neck and arms as I swam at Kettle Cove in June.
I collected a few blades of eelgrass, which were floating in the water, and coiled around my wrists as I swam to shore. It also washes ashore along with rockweed, so it’s easy to find there. I incorporated the eelgrass into my art journal.
Now, twenty years after my watercolor class in spring 2000 at COA, I’ve picked up my paint brushes again. I’ve started making art again, almost on a daily basis, for the past month. At some point, during the process of social distancing, self-isolating at my home in the Lakes Region of Maine, I felt inspired to start sketching some drawings of symbols and seaweed as part of projects, like the one I did for Folklore and Environmental Policy class. Then, I started sketching ideas for other aspects (inspired by literary works by Romanticism-era writers like Ann Radcliffe and Mary Wollstonecraft) while I organized a strategy for doing my graduate research. That led to the idea of starting an art journal that’s connected to the research I’ve been doing as a student in the Interdisciplinary PhD program. I’m a poet and “ecoheroine,” researching the Eco-Gothic and Arthurian lit in a tenacious pursuit of deep Romantic ecology of wetlands. Please see more of my work at my portfolio: https://www.blueheroneditor.com/
All of these images and photos are mine. Please don’t share my images. My art is work-in-progress. Thank you!
“The Invocation of Mary Shelley”
I contemplated the lake: tempted to swim, I stood on the shore in pitchy moonlight, a cascade of shadows in shapes of trees that tricked the eye into seeing some gigantic being, a monster from my past. To escape that memory of hell, I dropped my cloak, and retreating like an innocent-accused into her prison cell, I plunged into the calm, cool water. Whispering a poem as though it were prayer, it seemed that a fallen angel was quick to answer me. Bright flashes of lightning suddenly revealed clouds previously invisible in a black sky; the quiet storm illuminated the lake for several minutes until a dark, lacy veil descended like the faint sketches of an artist, crossing out first lines and drawing a new design, a pentimento of seasons. Summer rains had ceased; the cold miserable fall torrents replaced them, and my placid heart became agitated and weary. Wind licked waves and levitated them from their usual occupation. To my horror, a few curled into dorsal fins, a beast of prey in a troubled sea; I swam away, and slunk ashore, breathless with the thrill, and afraid.
Thunder erupted. Exhilarated, I pulled my shawl around my shoulders and watched the storm bestow a sublime, terrific power. Was I the only thing that beheld this beautiful scene? The frogs, I imagined, long had buried themselves with the worms in the earth. A loon wailed like a banshee. Once my eye recovered from the repeated flashes of lightning, I again retraced my path to the cottage where I took refuge in the most perfect solitude. Upon that vindication I sought from the judge, who bore witness to the depraved deeds of that dæmon, I passed whole days on the lake, often alone, or with a friend, listening to the loons, writing letters and allowing nature to restore me. On many an afternoon, I have seen this lake writhe and turn with the heart of a tempest, reflecting in some manner, the true passions of my nature, the fury and fears of a woman, whose airy singular voice, overwhelmed by danger, could not conquer violence, nor any nightmare, amid the crash and hollow cries of the nightly winds through tall pines.
It was a dreary day in November, many years later, when I tore up the papers that beheld his handwriting—that wretch who loomed like a hangman behind my back, transforming every staircase into a scaffold. I’d discovered the papers in a basket, and accordingly destroyed them, and placed them in the woodstove. I assembled some small branches and built a fire in the stove, watching the flames consume the haunted remnants of that evil spirit. Let those be the last words that fixed my fate to ruin. Here, in this bright cottage in a vale, I became my own protectress. This little wood became my hiding-place. In a nearby land preserve, I walked with my dog in meadows full of white flowers, alive with butterflies and wildness, that radiant sister to innocence. I became an advocate for Nature. It may seem a trifling service, lest I accomplish any small thing to prove myself worthy, at least I will be kind to my fellow creatures, and delight in every fortunate chance to row my little boat upon that lovely lake, or to swim in those glistening afternoons. To its powers of restoration, I owe my happiness. In spring, the ice melts, and a cool mist rises from the lake and flits about the forest; the sun sparkles on the lake, flickering through bare trees, allowing a glimpse of the water from my kitchen window. By late May, rains drench a lush green canopy. It bursts into birdsong. The woods become a fairy-land—rich in berries and nuts for the sparrow, wood frog and deer. -LCS
In the flash fiction experiment above, I was drawn to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s sublime imagery in her 1818 novel, Frankenstein, and her metaphor of the lake. When her hero/protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, rows across the lake, he sees his beautiful native land of Geneva, and he’s filled with a sense of relief–until he suddenly sees the gigantic creature, climbing a mountain in the distance, and Victor is again consumed by conflicted feelings of guilt, horror, fear, regret, and self-loathing. The lake seems to reflect his best and worst feelings about himself. I borrowed the lines, “I contemplated the lake,” “I took refuge in the most perfect solitude,” and “I passed whole days on the lake,” directly from Shelley’s novel, and kept those particular lines in mind as I wrote this flash fiction piece about a time, a dozen or so years ago, when I took refuge on a lake in Maine. There was in fact a “monster” of sorts, but not the kind that Victor reanimates in his apartment. The rest of my flash fiction piece is my own writing although I did experiment with a writing style that aspires to invoke the spirit of Mary Shelley, and a bit of her mother, too, Mary Wollstonecraft, especially in the line, “I became my own protectress,” even though neither Wollstonecraft nor Shelley ever penned that line. Both advocated for the idea of women becoming a “protectress” rather than looking to a man to fulfill that role. (See Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792)
Water is a strong element in Mary Shelley’s writing; she seems to use the water element–whether mist, ice, snow, rain, lakes and the river–to convey human emotion. The type of water she uses and the condition of the weather seems to match the emotional condition of her characters.
©Leah C Stetson, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2024
This past summer, July 2019, I had the honor of receiving “Honorable Mention” in the annual Fish Publishing prize for poetry; one of my poems, “Capes and Daggers,” was published in the Fish Anthology 2019. Poet Billy Collins judged the poetry contest in 2019; Collins will also judge the 2020 poetry contest. This is a huge honor and I was very grateful to be included.
To learn more about Fish Publishing’s future / upcoming poetry and short story and memoir contests, visit Fish Publishing’s website. They are based in Southwest Ireland in Co. Cork. The book is also available on Amazon as a Kindle version.
In June 2019, I traveled to southwest Ireland, Co. Cork, to attend a conference at UCC, to explore nature preserves, to learn more about Ireland’s saltmarshes and intertidal zone. I participated in a traditional seaweed harvesting workshop and paddled a kayak on Lough Hyne, a rare saltwater lake. I also visited a saltmarsh in Kinsale, outside of the city of Cork. I learned a lot while I was there. Here’s a quick overview of Irish saltmarshes:
Sorry about the typo above. This is a map showing the saltmarshes along the Irish coast (2017 data from Wetland Survey Ireland.)
I visited a bird sanctuary in Kinsale. It’s a restored saltmarsh. The marsh is an artificial lagoon with restored saltmarsh habitat for conservation. This includes rare species recorded in the 2007-2008 survey (of all saltmarshes, Ireland). Notable: changes in range, increase in Borrer’s saltmarsh grass (Puccinellia fasciculata) found here. It was a windy day. The wind kept pushing my binoculars against my face as I watched egrets.
For the past six weeks or so, I’ve been taking a course to further my journey toward becoming a certified English teacher. “Methods of Teaching Secondary English” is a required course for teachers in Maine. For the class final project, we were assigned to design a lesson plan that is “original, inspired (or inspiring) and presented using some type of technology, which might be out of the comfort zone of the author.” I am not accustomed to making videos or movies of myself using iMovie or Youtube, other than the occasional cat video that I make in my living room. (Note: I never subject others to these little movies about whatever funny thing my cat did. I think the Internet has plenty of these gems without my contribution.)
First, I had to learn how to use iMovie. I started by calling my best friend, who seems to know all things related to whatever issue I’m having on my Mac. Then, I watched tutorials on Youtube, started practice filming for a different assignment earlier on in the course. I made the dorkiest iMovie, trust me, including action shot of me, weeding my garden as a metaphor for how English teachers have to cultivate the “constant gardener,” or “constant writer,” in their classrooms. Then I set up a Vimeo account, which was fairly easy. I may be the last person to do this (have you done this yet?) I really enjoy working with Vimeo and making video content for teaching.
I made a video for my final project. I designed an original lesson plan called, “The Writers Cafe.” Also, I had to do a rain-dance in my dining room, wait patiently for 22 hours while the video uploaded to Vimeo and “converted,” whatever that meant. It was such a long wait that I thought I had done something wrong. And I had selected the “high” quality resolution but not the best quality/professional resolution. I made it with the recent-most version of iMovie on my MacBook Pro. So far I have received some great feedback from my instructor and classmates on my lesson plan. The video is up on my portfolio here.
In 2011, my family lost my step-dad, Michael, on this day, July 10. I thought of him the other day when I passed a vintage Volvo, a man driving it through South Portland with a very long piece of lumber tied on top to the roof rack. Orange flags trailed in the wind. It reminded me of my step-dad, who drove a vintage Volvo when he first came into our lives (and I later adopted one 1986 Volvo, which had belonged to his grandparents). Michael, a Scorpio, and a self-taught Buddhist, who shared my love of swimming in the lakes and ocean, loved to paint and draw, play guitar and piano, and sing in his band. While he was a respected regulatory lawyer, his first love was probably the ocean and boats. I wrote this poem in memory of him, just after he passed away July 2011.
Sallow, Sailing
The Buddhist believed, as Michael read,
The willow extended compassion. And
Shakespeare spared the sallow
To symbolize loved ones parted.
Leaning, a big umbrella over our little beach,
A weeping willow’s silky leaves tickled us
As it hovered and hugged when we ducked
Beneath soft slender branches, air mattresses
Tucked under our arms as kids at the lake.
Willows wear watery bark, tolerant swimming trunks;
Ancient Greeks believed the tree remedied aches—
A precursor to aspirin, but more likely, ours stabilized
The ground, holding us together with tough tenacious
Roots unseen while we looked upon a dreamy canopy
Of green all summer: our windbreaker, shade-maker,
Father to our shores, a crown of butterflies.
Long after someone felled the willow,
Michael backed the Volvo into the grove
Trailing a sunfish he launched at Little Sebago.
He loved the ceremony of boat maintenance: standing
On principle waist-deep, wrapping rope, tacking
And teaching his son to sail at sunset,
The art of swerving tall torsos
Tango straight-backed
Timed to the boom.
Hot pink blooms on the breeze
Danced chaotically into pines,
Maples and oak trees, their
Backward leaves flipped
By a sudden change
Held like hands
To a face.
Two brothers sailed in bright
Sun & Michael’s windy voice;
We talked while treading water,
Pausing for the faded
Break on the beach,
a wave’s echo.
In loving memory of Michael