The recent events at Websters, and some of the letters that have been written- the self righteous ones that read as though they take pleasure in the hurt and consternation and real distress that this event has caused a good many people, (and given the odds, the meanest writers are likely to be churchgoers)  have spun me into a different direction.   I'm heading off to wander in the parallel universe for a while, over at a blog I need to write for the time being, called I Have My Doubts. 

Not that I've given  up the real world...I'll be walking and working on the world, as ever. I just need to write about something different, because that's how I puzzle things out.   

last weekend I spent more time in the sun than I have in a while... walking and biking. Because I hate to be bothered with stuff, I didn't bring water, or wear a hat or put on sunblock, all the recommended precautions that we now must take before going out of our climate controlled dwellings. (I did wear a helmet, mostly because I leave it on my bike, so it was not a big deal.)   I am old enough that I remember just going out to play, entire summers spent laying in the sun, and turning properly brown while I read book after book after book, taking breaks to throw myself in the water to cool down, then going home to lay in a hammock and read some more until supper magically appeared..  Recalling it, I wonder if I actually lived through my own childhood  (idyllic until I hit puberty, after which idyllic let itself go and bloated out into  boring.) or whether I just view it through a hazy glow of golden nostalgia.  Nothing was that big a deal, babies sat on their mom's laps in the front passenger seat, while dads drove and smoked, flicking their cigarette ash out the driver side window.  In any case, this weekend, I threw myself back to those days and went out and about with as little fuss as I could manage. Problem was, I think I nearly fried my brain. It took me the whole of Monday to get a grip on my thoughts.  I ended up in the wrong place to meet my afternoon class (they went to the right place, actually read and followed directions!) got everyone's name wrong and went out like a light when I dragged myself home from work.   The next day was better, and it dawned on my that I might have been suffering from de-hydration. Maybe it was something all together different, but from now on, I will bring H2O with me. I will have to be my own  modern mother.

Walking over to the Minitab Building from my house, it is possible to avoid the cars on Rte 26  by cutting through  a graveyard behind a church. This particular day was very sunny and hot, with a slight breeze. Graveyard are not very noisy places as a rule, I guess that's where the phrase silent as the grave comes from, and since it was mid afternoon, it was peaceful rather than scary. But gradually a very strange persistent noise broke through the silence. It was all around, a musical pinging that repeated all around me.  I was startled, it was a sound that was vaguely familiar and appropriately haunting. It took me a few minutes to discover its source- All throughout the cemetery, at regular intervels were flagless flagpoles, halyards hanging forlornly. The breeze was flapping them, and every time a rope hit the metal pole, it pinged.It was an eerie, hushed disembodied wind chime, as if an actual wind chime had its own ghost. I was glad it was sunny.

There are a number of denizens walking the neighborhood.  I just found out a staggering bit of info. I thought there was one black and white cat who ruled the yard.  Now I am not particularly visual so all I noted was a black and white cat. Turns out there are at least three different ones walking around. I found this out from a neighbor who owns cats, both house cats, but the cat people know the cats and the people.  So no wonder I couldn't quite get a fix on how Tuxedo looked. And besides the cats, there are a number of squirrels and rabbits, and by a number I mean a bazillion AND one big fat honking groundhog whom I have named Bozzle.  Bozzle's doorway is cleverly dug underneath a very prickly barberry bush that lines the back of my yard. From there she ventures forth to destroy the neighborhood vegetable gardens.  There are some long term guerilla actions going on that I observe, sort of like an impotent UN Peacekeeper. or more to the point an unpeacekeeper.  I don't have a personal gripe against Bozzle, but I sympathize with the humans whose veggies are being raided.  So I do nothing. When I walk around the neighborhood, I note things, but as the realization dawns that I have been watching three cats instead of one,  my noting needs work.  Or maybe it doesn't.  Going around in a blur worked out OK for Monet.

Today, as part of my job, I am going out to walk in a field of thistles that has been set up to catch bees.  (I think!). It's part of the summer program in which I am teaching.  I'm going with a group of three HSers and a grad student, who is going to teach us about her research.  She told us to bring sunscreen, hat and water.  I really don't know what to expect. I have taught general science (For a bazillion years) to middle schoolers, part of another existence, so I'm fairly aware of the methods of scientific inquiry. But I never have walked with a researcher out in the field.  I did once go on the Clearwater, a sloop that was part of the cleaning up the Hudson, back in the very early 1970s, so that's something. But it points out to me that there is a gap that's wider than I imagined between the people who live and breathe research and the rest of us, who only hear or read about it.  Hoping for an enlightening walk.

Here's a puzzle, or something to acknowledge. I walk to work, my husband walks to work. We have one car, which we often leave undriven for days at a clip. And yet, the odometer reads more than 70,000 miles, (we got the car in November of  2006, so that makes it about 3 1/2 years old, which means we drive at least 20,000 miles a year.
Mostly to places where we then WALK!!  In some ways, that's insane.  I can not pride myself on my eco-ness or my greenology having only one car, because I use that car a lot, for my own amusement, not even to get to work.   So everytime I wonder why we, as a society, can't do more with mass transit and giving up driving, I have no further to look than my own odometer.  Yikes.

www.planetwalker.org/

After a class discussion that included my interest in walking, a student told me about John Francis, a man who ended up spending at least 17 years walking in silence.  I can see the walking part, but I don't think I could ever stay quiet that long.  The link above is to info about him.  There's a book and interviews etc..the silence part ended some time ago. But even so, what a thing to do.  Walking is conducive to listening, lately I've stopped plugging into music, and just trying to hear what's going on, which on walk to work each day is a combo of car engines and bird songs. The other thing Mr. Francis took with him was a banjo. This is not the type of endeavor you undertake lightly, you've really got to mean it. 

 I have walked through the lower part of Central Park in Manhattan many times, and every time I do, it seems I've never done it before. This Sunday we were trying to cut through the park West to East, to cross 5th Ave at 72nd Street, but we couldn't. It was the Puerto Rican Day parade, and the park had become a staging area for the NYPD. There were barriers that paralleled the parade route, and police everywhere. I assume it was a security arrangement, to prevent bad people from sneaking into the parade, but I don't know that for sure. In any case, we ended up following the barriers and then cutting back to the West Side at 86th Street or thereabouts. We saw, among other things, a foot path that followed the shore of one of the lakes where people row, a private children's party being held at a Marionette Theatre, and a beautiful couple in full wedding regalia being photographed in a small gazebo on the lake shore.  The path home also led us through tunnels that must have been blasted out of the bedrock of the island.  Eerie, cool and primitive. It could have been 200 hundred years ago.

Walked through a park that is being built on an abandoned freight elevated railroad, from Gaensvoort St and Ninth Ave, eventually up to 30 something street.  It's called the High Line, and it's really just the width of two tracks, one going one coming. The rail bed has been filled in and paved, and flanking the walking path are flower beds that are loving creations fashioned after the wildflowers that grew there when the tracks were abandoned in the 1980s.  There are benches where the path widens at turns, also scattered around are little patio tables and movable chairs.  One piece of art was a cardboard with  many blank spots were the material had been cut out,, that you had to view through a box. If you lined it up just right the actual buildings filled in the spaces that the artist had made in the board.   It was a muggy, hot day, but plenty of people were strolling, enjoying the views.. from one vantage point you could see the Statue of Liberty.  The sight that made a deep impression on me was how many people were taking pictures of individual flowers, using very serious cameras, like papparazzi. 

One thing I have noticed: IF you stand still in a place where everyone is moving, you also stand out. People will approach you with questions, comments and offers. Example. I was waiting outside the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center right before a performance, and in the space of fifteen minutes five or six people approached me to ask about tickets- did I want to buy any or sell any?  I had no idea there was such a lively commerce in opera tickets.  Earlier this month at a LIRR station (that's Long Island Railroad) I was waiting for my sister to pick me up, and I ended up in a long conversation with a gentleman from Mexico,( I believe  he thought I might be Hispanic, ) who wanted some money, and ended up settling for a discussion about the difficulty of finding work, and what it's like to live in the middle of PA. Does this happen in State College? I don't think so, but maybe I don't stand still that much when I'm home.  

The Megabus is as advertised. You can get to NYC (or Pittsburgh or Philly or Harrisburg) for a ridiculously low price, in clean comfortable, non stop style.  I highly recommend.  I took said bus to NYC this weekend, and will spend time walking around Manhattan, a  inexhaustible fount of  treks.  Many people, particularly the women, stride around wearing impossible footware, but I don't let that keep me from my sensible shoes.  Last night after a dinner in on Thompson Street, near Bleecker . we walked all the way home to Lincoln Center, about 2 1/2  miles.  On a fine night, if you're not in a hurry,  there is nothing better than traversing city streets.

It's raining this morning, and although it's not cold and not raining very hard, I don't feel like going out to walk in it. Now what's that about?  Why shouldn't I go out? I have a nice rain jacket that breathes and I don't really mind getting wet. It's just so grey. And I have not much stretching out ahead of me today- summer teaching won't go into high gear until next week,  so there's no imperative.  Mind over matter. If there were something I really wanted at the end of a walk, I'd be out there walking towards it, instead of writing this.

Serendipity is the act of finding something valuable or delightful when you are not looking for it.

Last night I walked around the neighborhood with Jackson, who is turning four on Wednesday.  It was an epic walk...we turned invisible when we saw monsters, we ran like the wind, we stalked  magical rabbits, we walked over to Jackson Street, marvelled at the way his name was carved into the stone street markers, traversed down that boulevard, ran after the neighborhood cat, who we call Tuxedo, because he's black and white, made sure we looked both ways, finally arriving back at the house, safe.  When kids are that age,  all the grown up has to do is hang on after lift off and watch the terrain fly by.  They will do the steering and the navigation and provide the commentary.  All the child requires is your attention.

Lightning terrifies me.  I have been caught out  many times in storms even so.  The worst was last summer, biking through the gamelands when a classic storm cloud caught up to us, and we were in the midst of a roiling downpour, and bursts of thunder in surround coming instantly after the flash of light.  No need to count Mississippis, we were in it.   However we survived to look up the recommended safety procedure for the situation. Here it is: There are no safe places if you are caught outside.   Running like hell for a cover of shorter trees is probably better than lying in a wet ditch, but essentially what you are counting on is that your work on this earth is yet to be completed.  You think I would have learned from that experience, but later that summer I was caught out twice more- one in the middle of  lake in a canoe, the second above treeline.  I don't mean to do it, I'm really cautious, because I really hate it when it happens, yet I fully expect that this summer, I'll be in the same peril again.  Not sure what lesson to draw from it...still wondering what it all means.