Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Lakeland view, a photo by eleda 1 on Flickr.

William Wordsworth, 1810, says the Lake District is beautiful this time of year. Sitting in Logan Airport, hoping that’s so ….

Yet, as most travellers are either stinted, or stint themselves, for time, the space between the middle or last week in May, and the middle or last week of June, may be pointed out as affording the best combination of long days, fine weather, and variety of impressions. Few of the native trees are then in full leaf; but, for whatever maybe wanting in depth of shade, more than an equivalent will be found in the diversity of foliage, in the blossoms of the fruit-and-berry-bearing trees which abound in the woods, and in the golden flowers of the broom and other shrubs, with which many of the copses are interveined. In those woods, also, and on those mountain-sides which have a northern aspect, and in the deep dells, many of the spring-flowers still linger; while the open and sunny places are stocked with the flowers of the approaching summer. And, besides, is not an exquisite pleasure still untasted by him who has not heard the choir of linnets and thrushes chaunting their love-songs in the copses, woods, and hedge-rows of a mountainous country; safe from the birds of prey, which build in the inaccessible crags, and are at all hours seen or heard wheeling about in the air? The number of these formidable creatures is probably the cause, why, in the narrow vallies, there are no skylarks; as the destroyer would be enabled to dart upon them from the near and surrounding crags, before they could descend to their ground-nests for protection. It is not often that the nightingale resorts to these vales; but almost all the other tribes of our English warblers are numerous; and their notes, when listened to by the side of broad still waters, or when heard in unison with the murmuring of mountain-brooks, have the compass of their power enlarged accordingly.

There is also an imaginative influence in the voice of the cuckoo, when that voice has taken possession of a deep mountain valley, very different from any thing which can be excited by the same sound in a flat country. Nor must a circumstance be omitted, which here renders the close of spring especially interesting; I mean the practice of bringing down the ewes from the mountains to yean in the vallies and enclosed grounds. The herbage being thus cropped as it springs, that first tender emerald green of the season, which would otherwise have lasted little more than a fortnight, is prolonged in the pastures and meadows for many weeks: while they are farther enlivened by the multitude of lambs bleating and skipping about. These sportive creatures, as they gather strength, are turned out upon the open mountains, and with their slender limbs, their snow-white colour, and their wild and light motions, beautifully accord or contrast with the rocks and lawns, upon which they must now begin to seek their food.

Lighting board, a photo by betsythedevine on Flickr.

After this weekend, it will be curtains for Curtains in Arlington, MA, and I am really going to miss this show. I started working backstage for them in February and soon worked my way up from worst painter to worst lighting tech!

Yes, I have risen so far in the Arlington (MA) Friends of the Drama that now I have to climb two ladders when I go to work, in the tiny lighting booth above the back of the theatre.

Fortunately, I now enjoy climbing ladders. Thank heaven I lost my acrophobia somewhere, most likely in Second Life where avatars easily leap from the tops of tall buildings (the quickest way down), crash to earth, stand right up, and just feel perfectly fine.

The songs by Kander and Ebb (they also did Cabaret and Chicago) are toe-tapping and singable. The singing, dancing, dynamic cast is such fun to watch, and let me tell you I have now watched them quite a few times but I still hate to look down when the light cues require my attention. If you live near Arlington MA, there are still some tickets for sale there for this weekend’s shows. And be sure, if you come, to be amazed by the great lighting.

***
Forgive my long non-blogging, but I have been “making trouble today for a better tomorrow” elsewhere … multiple elsewheres, for too many yesterdays.

Grandpa, please tell me about this…

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

… one day later, the nurse called 911 and an ambulance took him back to the hospital.

Again.

But he was home for Christmas.

And so were we all.

Let there be Mom (note apron)

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

I think I can speak for moms everywhere when I say:

“I speak for moms everywhere.”

Because, don’t we all? And anyway, who’s going to stop us?

We are the wearers of aprons, creators of plenty.

We confront nature’s Second Law of Thermodynamics every single day. On a good day, we send it upstairs to tidy its room. On a better day, it comes back downstairs smiling because it actually found that old photograph album it had not seen in a very long time.

I am in the throes, as you may be, of getting ready for the year’s toughest holiday, held in the darkest and coldest part of each year, girded with great expectations of loving and giving, haunted by fears of failure and isolation. Maybe that’s why I take courage from this summertime picture of a moment I stopped, halfway there, feeling tired but confident.

I am a mom, and I’ll be home for Christmas, in a hotel room somewhere on Long Island. Because wherever I am with my family is home.

Let there be Family.

Political place-holders

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Webster School, in Manchester, NH — I walked the half-mile here from home for 7 years of my childhood. It is, and was, a polling place for Ward 1. I came back yesterday to hold a sign for us Democrats.

Things looked pretty even when I got there. Ward 1 was solidly Republican when I was little — my family used to joke that the Devines were the only Democrats there, us on North River Road, my grandpa and Uncle Shane’s family up on Union St. Demographics have shifted it toward a more even balance, judging by the yard signs I saw nearby.

But I could tell, in the two hours I stood there, the tide was against us. When I got there, the signs were almost even, and good positions at the front had been claimed for our side by a bunch of union guys who were NH electrical workers by trade.

But as time went on, folks from our side drifted away and nobody replaced them. Their signs disappeared because the law says that the only signs allowed must be held up by people. There were a couple of campaign supporters for Carol Shea Porter who stayed the whole time, and there was Betsy Devine, who came just for two hours and then left because I had to drive people to the polls down in Cambridge.

The Republicans who were there when I came were still there when I left, and more had come out to stand with them. They were enthusiastically greeting voters they knew.

The Republicans I met there were pleasant local people, fed up with the bad economy and convinced that free enterprise solutions would make needed changes. They were not ignorant, aggressive, or hostile–people unlike them make all the headlines of course.

I hope the three Republicans now going to Washington from NH reflect the good will and good hopes of the people I met outside Webster School in my old home town.

People voting in Cambridge, MA, November 7, 2006

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

This is what I wanted to have happen to my photos when I put a Creative Commons license on them — a newspaper published this one and put my name on it, so I got to have the fun of seeing it again.

And if you haven’t registered to vote yet, get out and do so now!

Autumn blue day

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

The sky is still blue, lake water still remembers the warmth of August, but every day is a bit shorter than the last.

Here comes the equinox.

Good-bye, dear summer.

L0029145 Detail of foilio showing Capricorn and Aquarius wit

Originally uploaded by medicospace

Substituting a fine Flickr image from the Wellcome Library London for the image I want but probably should not steal (a drawing by Crick of the DNA double helix) I suddenly realized something orthogonal to my original point.

1. Point of Crick’s drawing of double helix, shown in conjunction with a lot of his other lab notes and scribbles of molecular structures, diffraction patterns, etc. — making pictures of things lets us see structure instead of chaos.

2. Orthogonal point made by constellation image: making pictures of things lets us see structure that isn’t there!

One more thing I love about the Wellcome Library besides their wonderful slideshow: they have a copy of my science joke book in their History of Medicine collection.

The unreasonable beauty of August sunset

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

“Nature is profligate,” said Annie Dillard. Thousands of green leaves erupt from seemingly nowhere to cover an urban wasteland gone to seed — hundreds of little frog eggs float out over the spring pond that may add no more than one new grown-up frog this season — millions more blueberries get eaten in NH summers than ever manage to sprout into new bearing bushes.

Nature is profligate not only of mass and energy, but also of entirely senseless beauty. There is so much extra beauty everywhere going to waste if we don’t take just those few minutes away from our busy lives just to stand and take heed of our own part in this world.

"Hairy" nematode (Stilbonematinae), Bocas del Toro, Panama

Originally uploaded by artour_a

Why does peppermint-stick ice cream have to taste so darn good, when everyone knows that calorie restriction is Better? Or at least, calorie restriction makes nematodes live a long time, which surely must mean it could turn every one of us into a sleek superfit suntanned sexy sextillionagenarian.

Now consider this shortcut to glory: a diet of nematodes. Calorie-restricted nematodes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner — with some crunchy nematode cysts for between-meals snacking.

If my nematode diet does not motivate you to eat a lot less than you do, I will be very very very surprised.