It may have been a while since you read a poem about the loveliness
of trees. We have trees in Oregon, which provide mountain-fresh air
to people east of us. In times past, there were scattered pockets of
resentment caused by all the work we had to do to keep America's air
safe-- cleaning up leaves and putting them in first quality, sanitary
plastic bags--but with the new pollution credits, Oregon in October
is now quite lovely. Intel, Tektronix, Nike, everyone shuts down for
three whole weeks. All we do is gently sweep, and hum.
Performing my patriotic task, I heard a voice. It was my
grandmother, singing one of her favorites, "Count your blessings,
name them one by one." A tad sanctimonious, I thought, but it got me
on to the subject of life's small pleasures. At a function in the
new wing of the art museum last week one of my former students, after
saying how well she remembers stripping off in my class--I remember
this too--took me by the arm and said, "There's someone here you must
meet." I knew who this must be. Professor David Ritchie and I have
circled one another for years. Now here he was, tall, pleasant, a
graduate of Stanford, at PSU, distantly Scottish, from Idaho. We
talked ancestors--about whom neither of us knew much--but the real
fun, of course, was introducing ourselves to others. You must try this.
I'm teaching World War One again, which amounts to raking over
civilization's worst droppings. I visit, but get to come home at
night in a dying car. (All our cars are flawed.) A friend thought
he saw on a local street the whizzy of my dreams,--cheap, old, and
newly for sale; I quickly drove to where he said it was, found only
an Alfa Romeo Mirage. Eventually I tracked the real beast to its
lair. "Very carefully maintained," said the dear old lady, "and you
won't smell a thing because I rarely smoke within." "Ha!" I
thought. Which is way short of ha-Ha!
As in ice skating, Highland Dance people can guess who'll finish
among the medals. Last week the punters got it wrong. There was a
dance-off, foot against foot, in the Earl of Erroll, a very tough
test. Emily gave it plenty of welly, and won.
Uncountable steps from the tree, our apple slowly falls.
David Ritchie Portland, Oregon ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
