Full Bammer Grateful Moon

Oh my, yes, it happened, again! Big Ol Bad Alabama beat the pants off of our poor little LSU football team, IN TIGER STADIUM ("Death Valley" isn't that what they call it Dog?)! What? Again? I think it is so funny. I told my students that at least sad little ol second rate UL Ragin Cajuns scored on Bammer TWICE this "rebuilding" season! Oh my, sigh! Groan.

Yes, GRATEFUL, I have so much to be grateful for, a pretty, loving wife, loving family, friends, fab job that I am absolutely thrilled to go to each day and this wonderful, amazing, big blue, wet marble we live on, hacked and torn and beat up it is, but no less awe inspiring, and my brothers and the time i get to spend with them.
I am grateful to David Lee for teaching the poetry writing workshops that took the mystery out of putting my thoughts down on paper and giving me permission to lay it out there for other folks to read. That friends was a big thing for Ol Jim. Thanks Dave.

By David Lee:

           Forth Visitation

Look at that cow groom her calf
that there is a lady of elegance if I ever saw one
and by god knows exactly
what I'm saying about it
don't you know you persnickety senorita bonita

I'd appreciate the hell out of it
you being a man of letters
if you wouldn't repeat the following
until I'm gone
but her name is Juliet

I won't insult you
by mentioning the bull's name
just that this time they made it
unstrangled by their tethers
so what do you think of that?

          From Last Call

10-23-18 My sweet Amy called me to tell me that she thought of me on the way down the driveway to get the paper this morning when she spotted the pregnant almost full moon. Thanks Amy.

10-24-18 The Full Fall Moon rose grandly behind a heavy curtain of clouds. We celebrated it and you our friends by raising a glass of tart red liquid because we knew that somewhere beyond here it was a fine rising.

10-24-18 It is 640am and yet another high octane Oil Train shatters the predawn quiet, splitting the peace wide open.

10-26-18 What a grand moon set it was on my way in to my wonderful day job. My bud Beth E finally broke her silence with a very short comment on oil trains followed by a recommended read, Shatterley's Seaweed Chronicles. 

I am reminded by a comment in Richard Power's Overstory (another recommendation), about how the quickest way to replacing a forest is to do nothing, just quit mowing, much faster and easier than replanting. This is what I did on my four acres of God's great green earth when I backed off of my dream of having a nursery in my back yard, I just abandoned two acres and did nothing and when I turned around three times it was woods. Bird Man Bill had the same experience at his place, oh, and Prairiedog, much to his frustration has a similar experience every time he starts up a new prairie planting, dang gummed trees everywhere!


Pray for Blue Jay Memory to Fail
(Blue Jays are members of the Corvid family)

Pray the blue jays have scoured oak,
pinyon, beech, hickory

and buried their caches
wildly scattered about.

Pray the barren winter scrambles
landmarks inside their delicate,

blue-filled skulls, and
for their picketing and squawking

to occupy them to distraction.
Pray the nuts and seeds

remain faithful, through long cold,
to the anticipation of spring

and for sun-warmth to reach acorns
before hunger.

Then a new forest already pushes
upward though the grass.

          Janisse Ray, A house of branches

10-30-18 Campus Corvid Tornado! (I just finished a conversation with a new post doc guy, Bill, about how since garbage dumps are better managed the huge flights of American Crow went away with the easy food supply, or loss of roosting sites or both, but the daily cloud of crows between the NI dump and N Lafayette is gone). I guess today's gathering is a result of post breeding dispersal, the reason it suprised me is because it was so large and spectacular. Of course I've always been a big fan of the Crow family and nearly always notice and watch them
WHOA! Beth, another scary Oil Train, West bound, 2 engines, boxcar, 120 oil tankers, boxcar and 2 engines, groan, stretching that fragile RR infrastructure to the limit, chasing the almighty dollar no matter the cost!

Crow

Every morning
  crow
     steps 
        along the beach

as though he found the world
   brand-new, 
      and wonderful,
         and, without a doubt,

made especially for him.
   The eiders stare,
      the black ducks are busy
         with their own affairs

as he marches
   along the wrack line
     on his sturdy feet 
         to the bounty of stranded sea worms,

crabs,
   abandoned bags of popcorn--
     "oh yes," his big black beak seems to say,
         "this is good,
here is breakfast and lunch both,
   and as for dinner,
     I'll be back,
      What a good world!"

I wish we could be friends,
   but when he sees me
      daring to look at him
         he opens his strong arms

that are dressed, always, in the darkest ribbons,
   and floats off--
      but only a little way
         and he's down again on the sandy track--

and who has seen yet anything cleaner,
   bolder,
      more gleaming, more certain of its philosophy
         than the eye he turns back

Mary Oliver

 

11-2-18 P and I drove to Mandeville after work today in a pickup full of bikes, headed to the Tammany Trace, a fine Rails to Trails Conversion @30+ miles. We stopped in Denham Springs to eat dinner with Sweet Amy and her kids, sweet Emma and stanky, gnarly-dude Mathew. I don't know if you realize it but I'm no fan of LSU. Well I'm not, however, I make a point of never saying never, like "I'll never go to an LSU game, ever!", usually usually I say probably. Because you just never know... Like when Emma's mom, Sweet Amy sent me a photo of Emma, a blossoming middle school clarinetist, at an LSU game hamming it up with the Clarinet Section of the Fighting Tiger Marching Band. Sigh, oh well, oh my, this is why I never say never.

11-3-18 Alabama 29, lsu 0, IN TIGER STADIUM! P and I had a great day too, slept late, enjoyed a fab brunch at the Hambone, shopped the Trailhead Farmer's Market, enjoyed live music then rode 10 miles north into Abita Springs for a cold stout Abita beer, only one, because the road back was 10 more miles (yes we were whipped, we do not ride far much), went out to eat in Madisonville, the lsu paraphernalia in both towns was suffocating everywhere.
Bama coach Sabin said "We had something to prove".
OK, no more about football ranting!

Disclaimer: To my buds Paul, John, Prairiedog, and Rick all live close to or in Mandeville and I did not even call them, P and I needed a little "us time" and  were headed home by noon Sunday, sorry guys. We had a grand time in your town, thanks for understanding.

11-10-18 Missed seed gathering day with my buddies with CPHPS (Cajun Prairie Habitat Preservation Society), I guess they will soon disown me for lack of participation. My bud Jon and I both wanted to go, we owe ourselves a trip to Eunice with a boudin breakfast on the way in. Soon Jon, soon.

11-17-18 I walked out into a yard full of birds today, WOWSER! Now we have lots of birds but seldom this many. Northern Cardinal, Carolina Chickadees, first of this season's American Robins, blue Jays and a bunch of grey-brown birds larger than English Sparrows, could have been Cedar Waxwings by the way they were mobbing my Ilex decidua, just not sure. The mob stripped one I. d. and left the other in full fruit, go figger.

11-19-18, 645pm, E, our yoga teacher presents NIRD 'Bedtime' Yoga, Mondays at 645, this helps P and I into total relaxation after an exhausting Monday, thanks Evelyn, that was just what the doctor ordered! Yoga is such a gift. Oh, New Iberia Recreation Department, that is where the NIRD, not NERD, comes from!

From Mary Oliver:

First Yoga Lesson

"Be a lotus in the pond," she said, "opening
slowly, no single energy tugging
against another but peacefully,
all together."

I couldn't even touch my toes.
"Feel your quadriceps stretching?" she asked.
Well, something was certainly stretching.

Standing impressively upright, she
raised one leg and placed it against
the other, then lifted her arms and
shook her hands like leaves. "Be a tree," she said.

I lay on the floor, exhausted.
But to be a lotus in the pond
opening slowly, and very slowly rising--
that I could do.

It is hard to say but we may have a good view of this Full Moon rising down here on the Gulf Rim. It has been very rainy of late so who knows? My Lunar Phase App says that Moonrise and Sunset happen at the same time on Thanksgiving night, be there or be square y'all!

peace love possumhugs and gratitude!
BT

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Full MIKIs, what MIKIs? Moon

Full Arbor Day Moon

Full Hummers are Massing Moon