Greetings Gentle Readers,
Father’s Day has come and gone and now Summer is finally upon us. Allow me, if you will, to give a belated salute to father’s everywhere. I have a dear friend that chose not only to open up his heart a second time but to adopt and become an instant father as well. I can only thank the wonderful men out there who decided that they wanted to be not only a teacher and protector but an example of manhood to a little girl or boy out there. So many men I know help to prove that fatherhood is in the heart and mind if not always from the blood. Thank You Gentlemen!
Summer here in Chicagoland has been amazingly gentle and rainy. Solstice was spent near the Bridgeport area collecting Ordivician fossils. While I will admit that fossils are not my most favorite there are aspects that still fascinate and beguile. The ride with the Lizzadro Museum was pleasantly uneventful and as the bus looped its way to the bottom of the quarry I once again was in awe of how one area can be so replete with stone. The day was overcast yet just sunny enough to require sun screen. The quarry piles were filled with fossils and here is the fascination: At one point in the past this area was covered by sea life and aquatic critters to such an extent that even with tides and storms there were yards deep deposited to a sea floor. Climbing to the top of a shifting pile of stones and you feel like the whole small world is yours. Every stone has some sort of fossil from a weathered calcite crystal imprint to snails and clams to the elusive receptoculites. A father was there with his two children and we both managed to find pyrite cubes with calcite and fossils. It warmed my heart to see someone openly sharing the natural world with their children. Even the young girlie girls were exploring the quarry while one young boy decided to tell me about the living creatures that were in the pond. And here I will digress Gentle Reader and admit that I have always wanted to skinny dip in a quarry pond; the thought of all the stone around me with open blue sky above and cool water lapping around my bare legs. But I warn those who are as romantic in vision as I am: Most quarry ponds have a bad ph and will do equally bad things to your skin.
Sunday was cool and pleasant enough to have the air conditioning off and the windows open. Somewhere in the neighborhood there was a live band playing perky modern jazz and the music floated across the breeze. At the other side of the apartment a World Cup Party was in progress and one could hear the cheering and exclaiming. Even with a migraine the day was bucolic and pleasant.
The cotton wood trees are a new experience for me. For a week the street was lined with great poofs of fluffy white while the air looked almost silky when the sunbeams cut through the tree branches. Somehow it was like walking through a fairy tale world and did bring a special feeling to the morning dog walks. Not as romantic but still as poetic in its own right is the great mulberry plopping that comes after the cottonwood tree seeding. The same thunder storms that flatten down the white tree fluff now bring down plump purple-black fruits all over the porch and sidewalk. The ninja squirrels are even more hyper as they feast on the mulberries, running from the seeds at the feeder to the mulberry tree.
And because the mulberry plopping tree is outside by the porch that leads to the laundry, I am reminded, Gentle Reader that I need to go and empty the dryer of it’s contents. So I end this post wishing you gentle winds, glorious rains, and sunny days.
Be Well
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