Gardener

A characteristic of American spoken English from time to time is the emergence of a fad in which one particular word is repeated at the beginning of a sentence or phrase.   For a number of years in the 1980’s the word was “Hey.”   At the beginning of a sentence—especially a sentence that was a response in a conversation—a speaker would say something like, “Hey, I know what you mean” or “Hey, that’s a good idea” or “Hey, you gotta stop thinking that way.”   Almost any opening remark in a conversation could be answered with a “Hey” sentence:   “The preacher had a good sermon this morning.”   “Hey, he hit the nail on the head, didn’t he?”   “Our dog threw up this morning.”   “Hey, that happens.” It became so annoying that a writer for the now defunct Saturday Review of Literature wrote a column titled “Hey Fever” that deplored the overuse of “Hey.” So these days we are afflicted with sentences that begin with “So.”   I think these “so” sentences were begun by academi

A Blessing Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies Darken with kindness. They have come gladly out of the willows To welcome my friend and me. We step over the barbed wire into the pasture Where they have been grazing all day, alone. They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness That we have come. They bow shyly as wet swans.   They love each other. There is no loneliness like theirs. At home once more, They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness. I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms, For she has walked over to me And nuzzled my left hand. She is black and white, Her mane falls wild on her forehead, And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist. Suddenly I realize That if I stepped out of my body I would break Into blossom. This is surely one of

Today is Earth Day.   What should we do to celebrate?   I would suggest we do nothing.   Stay at home as you have been doing for more than a month now.   Unless you have a local prairie—as I do; then take a walk in the prairie.    Or take a bike ride on the empty streets or a local bike path.   Don’t go to the store.   Maybe if it’s hot where you live, turn the air down, or if it’s cold, turn the furnace off. Like me you have probably been struck by the fact that one of the unexpected and mostly unacknowledged consequences of corona virus sequestration is the huge drop in the amount of carbon dioxide we are sending into the atmosphere.   Marvelous!   The L. A. freeways, I have read, are virtually empty as are streets in city and town and country all over the United States.   Many factories have stopped production altogether and others have cut way back.   Just yesterday I heard this amazing bit of news: oil on Monday of this week in the U. S. was being sold for a negative 8 dol

Angling in the English Stream Some of you may remember that for about three years back around the turn of the century (isn’t that an impressive phrase!) I had a five-minute radio spot on KDCR Dordt College radio called “What’s the Good Word.”   On it I would take ordinary words, talk about their etymology and history and show how their meanings had changed over time.    In 2003 I published a collection of these words, Angling in the English Stream.   In my blog I plan to publish one of these short word history/meditations each week.   About a week ago, it was the word resurrection.   I have chosen today’s word, alas , because like resurrection, I discuss it in the context of Holy Week.   Alas One of my favorite hymns is the Lenten hymn written by Johann Heerman and translated by the English poet Robert Bridges: "Ah! Dearest Jesus" (now titled "Ah! Holy Jesus” in CRC hymnbooks).   The second stanza of this song is for me the single most emotionally powerful

Teaching Thoreau to High School Kids “Your dad says you really like Thoreau,” I said to the young man standing the necessary six feet away from me in the Fruited Plain where neither of us really should have been. “Yeah,” he said smiling. I asked him what, in particular he liked about Walden, and he mentioned he liked the way Thoreau lived so simply when he went to live in the small shed he had built in the woods.   He liked it that Thoreau was not interested in accumulating stuff.   He liked the depictions of the natural world.     Perhaps at the heart of his pleasure in reading Thoreau—though he didn’t say it--was the question that Thoreau states as his purpose for going into the woods and then spends the rest of the book answering:   “I wished . . . to learn what it [life] had to teach, and not when I die, discover that I had not lived.   I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear . . . .” I told him that for 23 years I had taught Thoreau and Walden to h

How to Fill Your Day during the COVID19 Quarantine You might dig out some old jigsaw puzzles.   As a boy I frequently put together puzzles during long winter Saturdays and Sundays, and still today, during the Christmas holidays we often work? assemble? make? a puzzle.   This Christmas our oldest grand-daughter chose a 1000 piece reproduction of   a painting by Edwin Hopper from the 8 or 10 puzzle boxes in the basement cupboard--and took over the breakfast nook with it. Now, in this virus season, Jeri and I have made all of our puzzles except “Vermont Farm Scene with Holstein Cows,” so it’s time to organize a Puzzle Exchange.   (Of course we would have to wait four days before starting in on the puzzles we exchange.) As a longtime puzzle maker, I have developed a number of puzzle making rules or advisements: 1.        Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are not permissible snacks while making puzzle; popcorn is only permitted if it is unbuttered. 2.        Singing while makin

How to Read a Poem I became acquainted with the poems of Billy Collins during the last decade that I taught.   I wish it had been sooner.   I’m sure we all know a poem so complex, so loaded with symbols and allusions and extended metaphors that the only way to understand it is, as Billy Collins says, to “tie it to a chair and torture a confession out of it.”   But read how Billy Collins advises us to read (and teach!) a poem: Introduction to Poetry I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem’s room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to water-ski across the surface of a poem waving at the author’s name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it reall

Resurrection                  What wonderful pictures words sometimes carry in their histories; yet often we do not know the stories and therefore cannot see the pictures.   Take the word resurrection .   At the root of the word is the Latin word surgere meaning “lead up from below.”   It actually came from two Latin roots, sub meaning “below” and regere meaning “lead.”   The common English word that we have from that root is, of course, the word surge .             Think of the word surge for a moment.   A surge is a sudden burst.   A great wave surges against the rock.   We feel a surge of emotion as we see a loved one we have been separated from for a time.   We speak of power surges, occurrences when a sudden burst of electricity comes with such power that it blows out the lights or the computer.   That surging, that bursting forth that cannot be contained, that’s the picture that is the heart of the word resurrection.   The second syllable of resurrection is the word s