Urban Bear

In Juneau - even in town - it's not unusual to hear a noise in the middle of the night, and look outside to see a black bear getting into some mischief. Bears that persist in pestering a neighborhood, especially bears that have lost their fear of being around people, are often tranquilized and relocated, compliments of the Forest Service.

One morning my friend, Cyndy, with whom I worked, came to the office telling about her encounter, the night before, with a bear in her back yard. I wrote this poem for her.

Urban Bear

Rattle of cans, clatter of bottles!
Lifting a corner of the pull-shade
she takes in tonight’s good-natured bay
and the moon-washed, spruce-bough canopy.
“Not the wind,” she mutters.

Door ajar, she peers into the night.
He stands erect, nose testing the air,
paws draped across the garbage-shed roof.
Moonlight polishes his glossy fur,
and frames his upright ears.

A hot cloud of breath is suspended
in the frosty air. Glittery eyes
assess her with a slight hint of fear
and a measure of self-righteousness.
He considers the risk.

She smiles at the sweet intimacy
of the moment. Bruin and human
sharing the shadows. She speaks softly,
“You’d better get out of there, my friend,
or you’ll be in big trouble.”

He drops heavily onto all fours,
responding with a deep breathy “woof”
and lopes off into the underbrush
of Juneau’s thick coastal rain forest,
abandoning the trash.

-- October 2002

Micro Waves Good-bye

I had several errands to run after work yesterday, so it was about 2:45 by the time I got home. I hadn't eaten any lunch yet, so popped something into the microwave, pushed the buttons, and the oven began humming away. When it beeped, I opened the door, reached in, eager to eat my long over-due lunch. But it was still as cold as it was when I took it out of the refrigerator! Hmmm, I must have pushed the wrong buttons. Try again. Same result.

Shortly thereafter I began to smell a strange odor. I assumed it was something to do with the failure of the microwave - perhaps an overheated wire or part, I didn't know. Well, Dan would figure it all out when he got home.

About 4:15 Dan came in the back door, and before I could tell him about the microwave, I heard him saying, "I smell gas in here!" I hadn't thought about that odor being gas! Sure enough, apparently when I was messing with the microwave, I accidentally bumped one of the stovetop burner buttons, turning it on without it lighting. The gas was escaping into the house. (Linda received a lecture about never ignoring that type of odor again. I won't. He only lectured because he loves me.)

But I digress . . . back to the microwave story. After Dan tried several times, without success, to get some water to heat, we called the GE help-line. The lady we spoke with told us to unplug the oven for 30 to 60 seconds and then plug it in again. If that didn't work, she said, we needed to call for a service representative. The unplugging and replugging trick didn't work

Since our microwave is about 12 years old, and since a repair would probably cost almost as much as a new one, we decided we might as well replace it. So, on our way home from Bible study last night, we stopped at Lowe's and got a new one. As we were paying for it, the cashier said, cheerfully, "You know, those were on sale for $98 the day after Thanksgiving." That was just what we needed to hear.

Like our old one, this is a microwave/hood combination. So you can guess what Dan will be doing this weekend.

Our First Christmas Tree

We were married in the summer of 1969, right after Dan's graduation from college, and then we returned to Abilene so that I could finish up my degree in elementary education. You might remember, from my post about my dear friend Chris, that we were living in the rear part of a house that had been divided into two apartments. We rented that apartment, furnished, from old Mr. Riggs, for $65 a month. From that you might assume, correctly, that we were living quite frugally in those days.

So, as Christmas approached, we decided not to travel, but to stay home and celebrate the holidays together as a newlywed couple. We waited until just a couple days before Christmas to get our tree. We went to a Christmas tree lot, off of South First Street in Abilene, that was advertising trees for 50 cents/foot. The trees were seriously picked over, but we found one that seemed just right for us; the tag tied to the top of the tree said 5-feet.

Dan carried our tree over to the fellow who was keeping the cash box. He looked tired, grumpy and cold - it was almost closing time, and he was probably wishing he were home with his own family on this windy December night. He took a look at the tree's tag, and said, "That'll be $2.00." Now I wasn't a math major, but even I knew that a 5-foot tree at 50 cents a foot came to $2.50, not $2.00. So I said, trying to be an honest customer, "I thought it was 50 cents a foot."

The man screwed up his face, threw his hands in the air, as if he'd had all he could take of last-minute tree shoppers trying to get bargain prices on a Christmas tree, and said, "Okay. Okay. $1.50!"

As I recall, Dan paid the $1.50 and left a dollar tip. I remember hoping that the tip might help restore this man's faith in mankind - or at least brighten up his evening a little.

Mockingbird - A Book Report

I just finished reading Mockingbird, A Portrait of Harper Lee, by Charles J. Shields. If you take a look at my "Favorite Books" list, at the left side-bar of my blog, you will see that one of them is To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. I'm far from alone in my love of the book, since it was a Pulitzer Prize winner, has sold more than thirty million copies, and, even now, 47 years after it's first publication, continues to sell a million new copies a year. But, until the publication of the book I am reviewing, little could be found about the author, Nelle Harper Lee (pen name, Harper Lee). She wrote this one outstanding novel, lived in the limelight for awhile, never wrote another novel, and seemingly slipped into anonymity. I've always wondered about Lee, so eagerly read this book, hoping to learn more about her.

It is common knowledge that the Finch family, portrayed in To Kill a Mockingbird, was modeled after Lee's own family, and that the little tomboy, known as Scout, in the book, was based upon Nelle Harper Lee, herself. The drama that unfolds, namely the trial of a black man who was accused of raping a white woman, was also based, loosely, upon one or more events from her childhood.

Shields, in writing Mockingbird, interviewed 600 people to learn the real story of Nelle Harper Lee. Lee was born (1926) and raised in Monroeville, Alabama, where she still lives with her older sister, Alice. Her childhood friend and neighbor was Truman Capote. The child character, Dill, in To Kill a Mockingbird, is based on Capote.

Mockingbird, the biography, gives insight into Lee's early years, when she lived with a father she adored and a mother who was, most likely, mentally ill. She later went to college, where she was a maverick, and made few friends; and then to law school. She did not complete law school, disappointing her father, who wanted her to follow in his, and her sister's, footsteps by becoming an attorney. But by this time in life, Lee knew she wanted to write. She moved to New York City, where she began writing what would be her only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. A large section of the biography details Lee's friendship and collaboration with Truman Capote, particularly her role in doing research for his book, In Cold Blood.

There was, for me, a personal sense of disappointment that developed as I read Lee's biography. Based upon her novel, I naively dove into this book, certain that I would be reading about a kindred spirit (so to speak) - someone I would have befriended, had the opportunity arisen. But the farther I read, the clearer it became that I would have found it difficult to have been friends with Nelle Harper Lee. Her relationships were complicated and limited, and, to many, she was seen as reclusive.

Learning about Lee has renewed my interest in To Kill a Mockingbird, and in no way diminished my respect for her talents, nor my love of her novel. I intend to re-read it soon, and to watch, again, the movie that was based on the book.