Posey Magazine January–March 2014 by J. Bruce Baumann

January/March 2014

A magazine for and about

Posey County, Indiana

January/March 2014

“You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.” — Kahlil Gibran “Life is an adventure in forgiveness.” — Norman Cousins

Cover Story

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” — Leo Buscaglia “You must speak straight so that your words may go as sunlight to our hearts.”

When the rain came at the end of the year, followed by ice, followed by snow, followed by the Polar Vortex, it was quickly followed by a serious case of cabin fever. — Coshise All of that was disrupted when a lone coyote strolled across my frozen pond. The magic of survival instincts were contagious. Instead of hunkering down, this single image was the beginning of exploring what had been freely offered, and cabin fever “The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all turned into a beautiful gift. So when time slows down and the air becomes still, it darkness.” clears the mind and opens the imagination to what is waiting to be discovered. — Nikos Kazantzakis — J. Bruce Baumann Special thanks to the following for their help Joseph Poccia, Linda Neil Reising

AND NOT BE AFRAID J

anus was the Roman god of gates and doors, of beginnings and endings, transitions and time. He is usually depicted as having two faces because he looks to the future and to the past, and for that reason the Romans named the month of January in his honor. At a recent family gathering, I became very aware of the need to look in both directions. It is a family to which I am attached at the heart, and I have known and loved three generations. This was the first holiday season without the gentle soul who was the family’s matriarch. In 2013 at the age of 92, she slipped away, leaving her children and their children with a legacy of love that will never be exhausted. It could have been a bittersweet, if not sad, occasion remembering all of the good times spent together. In the future there will always be an empty chair at the table. But instead it was a time filled with joy and laughter, largely because her grandson is soon to become a father and his mother and sister hosted a holiday shower for his oh-so pregnant wife. His aunt spent much of the time over a long weekend with crochet needles in her capable hands, crafting a sweater and cap for the baby-to-be. She spoke with tenderness of how her grandmother had taught her the skill so many years ago. The conversation turned to the dress her mother had smocked for a granddaughter, a dress that she lived to see her

great-granddaughter wearing at a family wedding. Now that I think about it, maybe the Romans had it wrong with their idea of Janus and beginnings and endings. Maybe it’s all one chain, an endless skein of love that only appears from time to time to be broken, but in fact stretches into endless tomorrows. That same sweet lady was the reason for another gathering some years ago when she and her husband celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Her children and grandchildren created a patchwork quilt with each square marking special occasions through their married life. The final square was a quote from a poem, “Rabbi Ben Ezra,” by Robert Browning. Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first is made. Our times are in His hand Who saith “A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God; see all, nor be afraid.” My hope for the new year and beyond is that I remember to embrace every day for the chances it provides to live, love, laugh and be happy. And not be afraid. —Charlene Tolbert Contributing Editor Posey Magazine She can be contacted at: poseymagazine@aol.com

POSEY POSTCARD

“Beauty is certainly a soft, smooth, slippery thing, and therefore of a nature which easily slips in and permeates our souls.” — Plato

ÂŠ Photograph by J. Bruce Baumann

Time slows down and the air becomes still

As I sat quietly looking for the wonders brought by a new blanket of snow, I saw a lone coyote moving with a mission

through the woods. What that mission was, I couldn’t say, but clearly he was doing what coyotes do. That, I thought, was what I was doing. I, too, was on a mission, clearly doing what photographers do. Surprises are gifts and should be treated with love. Of course, moving around in a heavy blanket of freshly fallen flakes is not easy. Sinclair Lewis wrote, “Winter is not a season, it’s an occupation.” He should have tried navigating the backroads of Posey County with a camera. Now, that can become an occupation in the best of times. I love changes in the weather, but I particularly love snow. It hides a multitude of sins, mostly man-made sins. The geometry of shapes, married to the light, presents images not found in the steamy heat of summer. These are gifts that I readily accept, and freely share. My mission. And, yes, the secret is in the light. Always in the light. Sometimes you find the light dancing off of moonbeams reflected off the lake. Or, the magic of slowing the light down to see how snow paints an old boat and shore weeds. Maybe, just maybe, when the light starts to duck into darkness, you might catch a glimpse of a winter deer. The Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote, “The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” Could those words have come during a cold winter morning? Just another coyote morning on a mission.

Photographs and Text By J. Bruce Baumann

“Coyote is always out there waiting, and Coyote is always hungry.” – Navajo Proverb

“We live only to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting.” — Kahlil Gibran

“The dry grasses are not dead for me. A beautiful form has as much life at one season as another.” — Henry David Thoreau

“There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow- storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Snow and adolescence are the only problems that disappear if you ignore them long enough.” — Earl Wilson

“O, wind, if Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” — Percy Bysshe Shelley

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness.” — John Keats

“Hold on to the magic of the moments, for they will make up the sum of your life.” — J. Bruce Baumann

“Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farmhouse at the garden’s end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed in a tumultuous privacy of storm.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Where does the white go when the snow melts?” — Author Unknown

“At this season I seldom had a visitor. When the snow lay deepest no wanderer ventured near my house for a week or fortnight at a time, but there I lived as snug as a meadow mouse. Never are voices so beautiful as on a winter’s evening, when dusk almost hides the body, and they seem to issue from nothingness with a note of intimacy seldom heard by day.” —Virginia Woolf

“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says ‘Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.’ ” —Lewis Carroll

“The frolic architecture of the snow.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Snow falling soundlessly in the middle of the night will always fill my heart with sweet clarity” — Novala Takemoto

Poetry

Keeping (For Alison Baumann)

I’m keeping a list of birds you’ve missed since you’ve been gone.

First, a community of crows, dressed in black cassocks, congregated in the pecan grove, chanting for hours, intoning thanks for their harvest. Then there was the daytime owl, rising in a ruffle of feathers from the ditch beside the road. He rose in a flustered flap of wings, perched on the deserted railroad bed, turning his head—Lazarus-like in unfamiliar light, blinking, slow in disbelief, discovery. One morning, a nearby fallow field became an ocean with gulls riding the plowed furrows, looking like sailboats, skimming the crests of waves, racing toward warmer shores. And finally, after the snow, a single male cardinal, perched on the hawthorn’s cradling spikes, an early valentine— one red heart against lace.

— Linda Neil Reising

Posey Portrait

Wendy Huck, postal clerk, USPS Mount Vernon, Indiana

ÂŠ Photograph by J. Bruce Baumann

Posey Portrait will feature a random photograph of a friend or neighbor â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in a place we call home

Feathers/By Sharon Sorenson

Scarlet Tanager, male, Posey County

bluebirds, can switch to berries and ome of Posey County’s favorite stay the winter here. But given the birds are gone now in January limited and short life of berries, and February, having departed for most bug eaters head south, some of warmer climes. It’s not that they them way south. can’t stay warm here in our icy, Take tanagers, for instance. snowy winters. Instead, it’s that they Two that nest in Posey County, can’t find enough of their preferred scarlet tanager and summer tanager, food to give them the energy to stay fly to South America for wintertime warm. Think bugs. bugs. Scarlet tanagers migrate into Certain bug eaters, like eastern western South America, as far south

Summer Tanager, female, Posey County

as Bolivia. Summer tanagers winter in Central and South America, down to Peru. But let’s be honest. They really aren’t “our” birds that leave for the winter. Instead, they’re really tropical birds that come north only to nest. And why would they do that? Again, think bugs. Along the equator, yearround, days and nights are of equal length. In our summer, however, birds nesting in Posey County and parts north can enjoy upwards of 16 hours of daylight—all the more time to gather bugs to feed healthy, happy babies. So these two tanager species, along with other tropical migrants, fly roughly 3,800 miles to nest—and then return home. What makes this scenario truly quirky, however, is the 240 or so tanager species that don’t migrate. Of course, not every bird we call “tanager” is actually a close relative or our scarlet and summer tanagers. And some birds with other names are, in fact, tanagers. So it’s a bit complicated. But for the sake of this discussion, let’s just go with those birds we call tanagers. As an extended family, they’re stunningly gorgeous birds. The hepatic tanager, for instance, is almost as beautifully all-over red as our lovely summer tanager. Others, though, wear blue, orange, gold, green, black, brown, silver, and startlingly gorgeous combinations of these colors. Like “our” two, most tanagers prefer life in South America, about 60 percent of them, in fact. And about 30 percent of those gravitate to the Andes Mountains. Likely, they’ve chosen their respective habitats because that’s where they find the most bugs with the least competition from other bug lovers. Come breeding season, though, even

Palm Tanager, Costa Rica

Blue-Gray Tanager, Amazon Basin

Golden-naped Tanager in Ecuador

3,800 miles away, reduced competition for food is the trade-off for the migration effort. “Our” tanagers can raise larger broods more successfully here than if they stayed in South America and struggled during only 12 hours of daylight to garner enough food for themselves and their babies. From a human perspective, there’s nothing like traveling to Central or South America to see “our” tanagers foraging with other birds that make the thousands-of-miles journey to join us for Posey County summers. Think buntings, most thrushes, all the warblers except yellow-rumped, several of our raptors including osprey and broad-winged hawks, hummingbirds, even swallows, swifts, and martins and others. But for me, the major fun was meeting the tanagers’ kin folks: blue-gray tanagers in the Amazon Basin; blue-winged mountain tanager in the Ecuadorian Andes; crimsonbacked, silver-throated, and golden-hooded tanagers in Panama; flame-faced tanager in Peru; golden tanager in the montane forests of Ecuador; palm and gray-headed tanagers in the lowlands of Costa Rica. The names alone conjure up lovely images, all equal to the real thing. Thinking about the arduous 3,800-mile journey, however, flapping along hour after hour, facing storms, high-rise walls of glass, habitat destruction, wind turbines, absence of shelter and reliable food sources—thinking about that journey makes me hurt a bit, wondering how the birds can survive the obstacle course we’ve set up for them. And when I see them each spring, I’m awed by their persistence, their instinctual drive, their presence, their very existence — “our” birds here to nest. Sharon and Charles Sorenson settled in St. Philip in 1966 and continue to improve their certified backyard wildlife habitat that to date has hosted 161 bird species and 53 butterfly species. Send your bird questions and comments to them or contact them for publicvenue programs, conferences, or seminars at: forthebirdscolumn@yahoo.com.

Golden-Hooded Tanager, Panama

Out of the frame/J. Bruce Baumann

Out of the frame focuses on moments found without a story or context. We all pass something that catches our eye and tweaks our curiosity during the course of everyday living. Sometimes it makes us smile or even chuckle. You might say it tickles the mind. Other times it makes us think about life in a serious way. Regardless of how we react, in that instant the image touches a part of our brain or heart and becomes part of who we are. For the moment it takes us out of the frame.

ÂŠPhotograph by J. Bruce Baumann

Rags, my barn cat searching for the morning light.

ÂŠPhotograph by J. Bruce Baumann

Out In The Back Of Beyond/Editor’s Notebook OUR THOUGHTS

hen the groundhog sees its shadow, we’re promised six more weeks of winter. But what does it mean for those of us in our 70s? No promises are made or expected. Time is the great unknown. While doing some chores in my barn, during the frigid Polar Vortex, I looked up to find one of my barn cats, Rags, searching for the light that might bring some kind of promise for the end of winter. Next to this sweet creature I saw a stranger’s shadow, dark and silhouetted on boards, faded with time. A friend says I have a propensity to worry about everything, so proving

her right, what did the shadow message mean? Worry is the enemy of happiness. A problem if you’re always searching for the promise of a more perfect world. More perfect people. A more perfect time. A dear friend, Mary Alice Bernardin, wrote a book in search of her own happiness. She titled it, “Surviving My Mind.” It’s available on Amazon.com, and it’s a lot cheaper than an hour of couch time. One of the things she wrote that struck me as the 11th Commandment for living a good life was, “One of the most important things I’ve learned in my life is that my

thoughts don’t think me, I choose my thoughts.” I suspect there are a lot of folks in their 70s — and more — who think about the light at the end of the tunnel. Always searching for a better world, a happier world, before their life is only a shadow in the memories of friends and family. None of us can predict our future, any more than that goofy groundhog can predict the end of winter. But we do have control over our thoughts. Abraham Lincoln put it as simply as this: “People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

J. Bruce Baumann Editor Posey Magazine poseymagazine@aol.com

“Everyday is a Gift, that’s why they call it the Present.” Author: Unknown

www.poseymagazine.com

TELL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT POSEY MAGAZINE