Monthly Archives: November 2010

A What In a Pear Tree?

Posted on November 26, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

In what may have been a kind attempt to bring inspiration to the décor-challenged, one of my friends invited me to go with her to the Festival of Trees last weekend. This is an annual fundraiser for a local organization, where creative people decorate trees and other Christmas decorations to be displayed and then sold. Besides the trees, there are gingerbread houses, seasonal music, and an array of wonderful homemade treats like pumpkin pie and brownies. It was fun.

It was also enlightening. All the lights worked on every single tree. The ornaments were distributed evenly instead of being bunched at the eye level of the youngest decorators. Colors were coordinated. Entire sets of matching ornaments appeared to be intact. I didn't see a single tree with a homemade gingerbread ornament that a small child had taken a bite out of. (Even though crucial dental-matching evidence was lost when the culprit's baby teeth fell out, we still know who did it.)

Several of the trees were decorated around specific themes. One was hung with small toys and game pieces, including Scrabble tiles strung together to form words. It was a cute idea that would certainly fit certain members of my family. Of course, playing Scrabble at the Christmas get-together might be a bit of a challenge if half the tiles were hanging on the tree. Maybe we could just make ornaments out of the Q, the X, and the Z.

The most unique tree in the display was the one with an "outdoor sportsman" theme. I can't remember whether it had camouflage ribbon and shotgun-shell ornaments, though it certainly should have. I rather think not—just ornaments in earthy outdoor colors with subtle accents in blaze orange. Maybe the average fabric store doesn't carry a lot of camouflage ribbon.

Appropriately enough for South Dakota, the tree featured pheasant feathers. Long tail feathers stuck out from the branches at random intervals, with a bunch of them clustered near the top. This may have been intended to look like a star, but to my unsophisticated eye the total effect was more like the way my stepson's hair used to look when he first got out of bed in the morning.

The pheasant theme was carried further with several pheasant-feather mounts that presumably were borrowed from a local taxidermist. It might have worked better had these been full mounted birds. True, a pheasant is rather large to perch in the branches of an artificial spruce tree, but at least there would have been some resemblance to living roosters.

Instead, these were flat—just the pelts, as seen from the top, with the heads sort of squashed into the feathers. Admittedly, it was realistic. A rooster pheasant can end up looking exactly like that if he hangs out in the middle of the highway and dares an oncoming semi to get out of his way.

The flattened pheasants reminded me of another decoration I saw earlier this fall. It was a witch and her broom smashed against a tree trunk, along with a cautionary sign: Don't text and fly. For Halloween, it was funny. For Christmas, you might say it fell a little flat.

But it did give a whole new meaning to the term "flocked" Christmas tree.

Categories: Just For Fun | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

Robert Frost Didn’t Stop By These Woods

Posted on November 19, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

It's amazing what some people do in the woods.

The Black Hills National Forest is a multiple-use area, and on a shirt-sleeve warm Sunday afternoon in November it was certainly being used.

We were out there on serious business having to do with geology. Well, one of us was. The other, while willing to keep an eye out for the occasional outcrop or carry the rock hammer now and then, was just there for the hiking.

Pretty much everybody else was out on ATV's. We saw several family parties—Mom and Dad on the front seat of a four-wheeler, with two or three little kids squeezed into the back. There were a few hunters, in blaze orange caps and vests, with gun cases across their laps. There were a few hot-rodders whose goals seemed to be speeding over the bone-rattling trails as fast as they could go.

With all these vehicles buzzing up and down the narrow gravel road and dirt trails, walking in the woods wasn't exactly a deep wilderness experience. Not surprisingly, perhaps, we didn't see a single deer all day. We did meet one hunter, though, walking alertly through the trees with her rifle at the ready. She was obviously an optimist; in the unlikely event she did see a deer in the crowded woods, we hoped she was also an accurate shot.

Then there were the intrepid hill climbers on mud-spattered ATVs, with winches and ropes and tire repair kits. A group of them came up behind us in a narrow canyon, announcing their presence with a low rumble that increased to an ominous growl as they came closer.

We moved to the side of the trail, which suddenly seemed much too narrow. I alternated between apprehensive glances over my shoulder and checking the sides of the canyon for possible places to climb out.

But they were the ones looking for a place to climb. They stopped at the bottom of a slope that was almost a staircase of rocks. The lead rider, on his ATV painted with skull designs, took off his menacing full-face helmet and turned into a polite young Air Force sergeant. He pointed out to us the exact rock he had landed on when he had tried this climb earlier in the day and flipped his vehicle.

He made it this time, and so did his friends. Each four-wheeler crawled up onto the first ledge at just the right spot to avoid getting hung up on the big rock in the middle, jumped sideways at just the right angle to make it to the second level, then growled on up between rocks that a mountain mule might have balked at. It was impressive. It was amazing to watch. Personally, though, I'd feel safer on a mule.

We went out again the following Sunday, not in shirtsleeves this time but in warm coats, heavy gloves, and long underwear. It was 31 degrees and snowing. Oddly enough, we had the silent, peaceful woods to ourselves.

Categories: Just For Fun, Wild Things | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

When It’s Springtime In Alaska . . .

Posted on November 12, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

. . . they may still be counting votes.

The ballots are still being counted in the Alaska Senate race. I already know, however, who really is winning. Or maybe who really is losing.

English teachers and editors.

After incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski lost the Republican primary to Joe Miller, she close to run in the general election as a write-in candidate. Miller got some 82,000 votes, around 34% of the total. Over 92,000 voters, about 40%, cast write-in votes. Yes, there was a Democrat in the race as well. The one thing that's clear about the election results is that he lost with his 24%.

Presumably, most of the write-in votes are for Murkowski, which could make her the winner. But people could have voted for their ex-spouses, their former mayors, themselves, or their dogs. All 92,000 of the write-in ballots have to be counted, by hand. Observers for both candidates are looking over the counters' shoulders, eager to pounce on the smallest irregularities.

The Miller campaign, of course, has a strong incentive to throw out as many ballots as possible. They're challenging write-in votes on any pretext they can find. For all I know, that includes smudges, fingerprints, coloring outside the lines, or using the wrong writing implement. A permanent marker, maybe, or a "Passionate Petunia" lipstick, rather than a blue pen or that old-fashioned standby of standardized tests, the number 2 pencil.

Most of the challenges, though, are for spelling. Apparently some of them are based on trivial points like an "o" that could be taken for an "a" or the name's first letter in cursive but the rest in block letters. This seems clearly ridiculous.

But what about a scrawled vote for Mercowsky? Or McKovski? Or Morescowky? How close is close enough to be sure that the voter genuinely intended to vote for Murkowski? It's a legitimate if nitpicking question, one sure to keep flocks of lawyers busy for weeks.

In the meantime, three conclusions are obvious:

1. When your English teachers told you over and over again that spelling mattered, they were right.

2. Even in today's high-tech world, there are still times when good handwriting is important.

3. If you ever want to run as a write-in candidate, maybe you should consider changing your name to Smith.

Categories: Words for Nerds | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment

Things That Go Bump in the Dark

Posted on November 5, 2010 by Kathleen Fox

I've written before about the hazards of hiking up our driveway on dark, cold mornings to get the newspaper. The worst of these is the emotionally real if physically imaginary (I hope!) mountain lions that lurk behind every shadowy tree and bush.

It's completely unreasonable as well as embarrassing for a mature adult, who can do public speaking in perfect comfort and is eight and a half times a grandmother, to be scared of the dark. Over the past couple of weeks I've been attempting to confront this fear.

It started one morning when I headed outside at 5:45. The front walk and the driveway were such a brilliant white that I thought it must have snowed. When I stepped out onto the porch, though, I realized the brightness came from the nearly full moon, backed up by a blaze of stars. The front yard was silver in the still predawn air, and the sky was breathtaking.

As I walked up to get the paper, delighting in the beauty of the morning, I kept hearing quotes in my head from Alfred Noyes ("The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor.") and Clement Moore ("The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow gave a luster of midday to objects below.") This kept my mind so busy it almost forgot about the imaginary mountain lions.

Ever since, I've been concentrating on the beauty of the early morning sky in an attempt to trick my brain into becoming more comfortable in the dark. It's been working, too—sort of.

At least until a couple mornings ago, when the moon had shrunk to a narrow fingernail clipping above the trees and the shadows were especially deep and black. I crept warily through the shadow of the my spouse's parked SUV and headed up the driveway, walking as quietly as one can on gravel.

I made it to the top of the hill, grabbed the paper out of the box, and started back down, doing just fine until I heard the noise. A throat-clearing or coughing sort of noise, just the kind of sound my brain imagines a mountain lion might make before it springs. Or (it occurred to me later) just the kind of sound a neighbor's garage door might make.

I walked faster. Quite a bit faster. A biased observer might have even said I broke into a trot—not so easy to do in one's bathrobe and slippers. Nervous but still under control, I crossed the last strip of driveway and reached the shadow of the SUV.

Where an ominous figure loomed. It was so silent and still that I nearly crashed into it before, with a heart-thumping jolt of adrenaline, I realized it was there.

My dear partner, not knowing I had already ventured into the darkness, had started out after the paper. He was standing near the car, wondering whether that creature he heard blundering about in the driveway was a mule deer or a mountain lion.

It's a good thing neither of us was armed. Shooting each other in our own driveway would have made for embarrassing headlines in the next morning's paper. Though no doubt the nearest lurking mountain lion would have appreciated it.

Categories: Wild Things | Tags: , , | 3 Comments

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