Feet Touching The Ground

 A column from yesteryear

When I was still teaching, we interviewed a young man from Florida for a position in our department. We talked to him in January when we had a couple feet of snow on the ground, and after spending a day with him, I asked him if would like to come work for us in Wisconsin. I’d noticed he seemed uncomfortable all the time he was here, and I couldn’t put my finger on his concern.

His answer told all. He said, “I don’t think I could work in a place where my feet wouldn’t touch the ground for three months of the year.” He was referring to our snow-covered landscape.

My feet touched the ground this week as our snow has mostly disappeared. Can there be a surer sign of spring? Several readers responded to my request for signs of spring. Here are a couple of them.

“We saw our first robin last week and our tulips and daffodils on the south side of the house are about three inches up. Always love your observations about nature and the seasons. I can tell that like me, you are longing for spring. I look forward to hearing the birds start singing at four in the morning, from the comfort of my bed of course.” Sharon of Plymouth

“A recent morning as I was getting into my car, a cardinal was carrying on nearby with such jubilation I had to smile! In spite of the chilly wind, his frisky notes held such positive hope of the nearly spring. I couldn't help but grin to myself. We in the Midwest don't appreciate the cardinals’ cheery songs. I've heard people in Texas express such joy when they've seen or heard a rare cardinal!” Kay Moore

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: The coming of spring, so much like all of life, is two steps forward and one step back.

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MARCH SNOW MELT

On the home farm, when the snows began melting in March, a little stream of melt water trickled from behind the corn crib, continued on between the house and the barn, and finally curled under the barnyard gate to disperse in the barnyard.

One year Pa suggested we make a little waterwheel and place it in the melt water river. He made the waterwheel from a cedar wood shingle. He cut two pieces, each about three inches long and a half inch wide. He notched the two pieces and pushed them together making a waterwheel with four little paddles. With two other pieces of shingle wood he made a little frame that held the waterwheel in place while the running melt water turned it.

In early morning, when the temperature had fallen below freezing, the little waterwheel hung motionless in its frame, but usually by mid-day, with climbing temperatures and more snow melting, the waterwheel turned furiously, making a “flip ,flip” sound. The waterwheel turned for more than a week; Pa, my brothers and I would stop, watch and listen to it as we went about doing our various spring chores.

One warm, late afternoon day, we noticed the melt water river had stopped running and the water wheel no longer turned. On that day we knew that spring arrived.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Oft times the little things in life can provide the most pleasure.

 

A blog I wrote in November, 2015

 

The Demise of the School of the Arts

 

An old friend left us this past week.  The more than 50-year old School of the Arts held each year in Rhinelander, WI and sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is no more.  Robert E. Gard was largely responsible for starting the school.  Bob’s philosophy was—the arts are for everyone.  No matter what your income level, where you lived, or how much formal education you had.

 

 I attended classes there in the 1960s when I had the opportunity to learn from Bob Gard. I participated in a fiction writing workshop with August Derleth, and learned basic skills about writing a novel that have proved invaluable.  And much more.

 

Then in 1971, Bob Gard asked me to teach at the School of the Arts.  I did this for 32 years. It was there that I met such national writing figures as Archibald McLeash (three Pulitzer prizes), Dale Wasserman, Henry Mark Petrakis, Studs Terkel, Robert Bly and Jesse Stuart, all writers of considerable note. All of whom taught workshops.  

 

But now the School of the Arts is dead.  Many of us are mourning. 

 

Mark Lefebvre, longtime friend of Robert Gard, said this about the school’s passing:

 

Learning about the demise of the School of the Arts is hard.  I broke down and cried.  I thought of the many summers I spent with Bob at the School of the Arts.  I think of all the people whose lives were awakened. 

 

I think of the extraordinary faculty who in that very special place made real magic happen.  Bob taught me so much, most of all, how the unexpected can happen through simple belief.  I am so disappointed these days with the University of Wisconsin.  Belief is no longer part of its vocabulary.  No greater writer than Archibald MacLeish came to Rhinelander one summer.  A sophisticated guy.  He could not believe the world he had entered.  Imagine these "students" being exposed to this man who could not thank Robert E. Gard enough for putting him so close to the creative process. 

 

 Long may the banner of The School of the Arts  wave over the battlefields of ignorance!  

 

THE OLD TIMER SAYS:     The arts make a life worth living.

 

 

The Many Faces Of Snow.

 

A column from yesteryear.

 

 

Snow, for all of its inconveniences—driving challenges, shoveling, and slippery walking—also has a lot going for it.  The obvious of course is the beauty of a snowfall and the wonders of the countryside transformed from the drabness of late fall’s browns and grays to a world of white. Snow also provides an opportunity to ski and snowshoe and go sledding.  And a chance to build a snowman or a snow fort or maybe even experience a friendly snowball fight.

I did a little digging, no pun intended, into the characteristics of snow, and came up with some interesting information, at least interesting to me.

 

Snow is not always white.  It may also appear blue especially on a cold winter night when the moon is out.

 

Most of us have experienced how sound changes after a fresh snowfall.  Sound is absorbed by snow, muffling it.  But when the snow becomes hard and crusty, the opposite happens. Sound bounces off the snow’s surface and travels farther.  Of course we all know the sound packed snow makes when we walk on it, especially on cold days when it creaks and crunches, and sounds like it is protesting our presence.

 

Snow is also a great insulator.  Fresh snow is made up of from ninety to ninety-five percent air.  Many animals know about snow’s insulating qualities as they burrow into snow to keep warm.  Farmers know this as a good snow cover protects crops such as alfalfa from “winter kill.”  A good snow cover also keeps my septic system from freezing—not a good thing as it happened a few years ago when we had a stretch of below zero weather and no snow.

 

Snow also stores water.  Ten-inches of snow may equal one-inch of water.  Or ten inches of snow could contain as little as one-tenth inch of water.  It depends on whether a snowfall is enhanced by moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, or comes from the dry plains of Canada.

 

This is probably more than you wanted to know about snow, but I find it all interesting as we plow on into the new year with many more snowfalls to come.

 

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Let it snow, let it snow. Nothing much we can about it anyway.

 

A Column from Yesteryear Horseshoes and Good Luck

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On the home farm, it was not difficult to find a horseshoe. After all, we farmed with horses until our first tractor arrived in 1945. Horseshoes are important for protecting horses’ feet, especially when they regularly walk on hard surfaces. But horseshoes had power beyond the practical application. Pa, along with everyone else, believed that a horseshoe meant good luck. Sort of in the same category as finding a four-leaf clover.

The horseshoe as a good luck piece goes back several hundreds of years. Some early Europeans believed that iron had magical powers and had the ability to drive away evil. And many people had great reverence for the blacksmith, who was believed to have a lucky trade because he worked with both iron and fire.

Pa did not hang a horseshoe over the doorway into our farmhouse. He didn’t go that far in his belief about this bent piece of iron as a good luck charm. But many people did, and still do. There was some argument as to whether the horseshoe should be hung with the heels up, forming a “U.” Others argued that to be effective, the heels should hang heels down.

When hung with the heels up, all of your luck is kept from running out of the shoe. But if you hung it heels down, good luck would flow to everyone who walked under it. Seems to me, if you want to cover your good luck bases, you would have two horseshoes, one pointed up and the other pointed down.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Much good luck in 2023

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