Antique Lights, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 2008, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
I can’t believe it’s Christmas Eve. Our cat Chaco, who we discovered last week is chronically ill, is resting comfortably in the bedroom. He spent Winter Solstice in the emergency hospital. We brought him home from the vet yesterday along with three prescription medications and a bag of fluids we’ll be administering subcutaneously over the next few days. Dr. Blackburn says he’s a fighter; he’s walking better, eating more regularly, and his little Spirit has more life than it did last week.
We’ll take him back on Saturday to see how his vitals look. In the meantime, we are learning to care for a chronically ill cat. It goes without saying, Liz and I haven’t been getting much sleep. So the energy for posting has flagged. But then I ran across this inspirational poem by Russell Libby.
Described by kindle, site of the Northern New England Bioneers, as “a farmer, a selectman, an economist, a poet, and a visionary builder of local, organic food systems in Maine and beyond,” he seems like a man close to the Earth. Since 1983 he and his family have grown organic food for friends and family at Three Sisters Farm in Mount Vernon, and his Maine roots date back to 1635, when his forebears settled in the colony.
His poem reminded me of all the trees that lose their lives this time of year (31 million Christmas trees last year in the U.S. alone). Many Christmas trees come from tree farms these days (500 Minnesota tree farmers expect to harvest 500,000 trees this year), though I have been known to go out and cut my own from the forest of a friend’s ancestral lands. Fresh pine is the smell of Christmas for me. And I love sitting in the dark and staring at the lights on the tree.
Since we haven’t had time to put a tree up this year, I thought I’d post these photographs of the antique Christmas lights mentioned in The Poet’s Letter — Robert Bly. It was at Poetry Group that night that our friend Teri shared a story about how her family discovered the lights hidden on top of a rainwater cistern in the basement of a Minnesota farmhouse that has been in her family for generations.
Trees provide balance and structure for the thousands of lights that burn brightly this time of year. I am grateful for the untouched land, places preserved for old growth forests, trees with skins that will never be touched by an ax or saw.
Here’s one last quote for the trees I found in an Alice Walker book, Anything We Love Can Be Saved — A Writer’s Activism. It’s printed below a black and white photograph of a man with his arms stretched wide around a tree. It’s a good time of year to remember what is worth putting our arms around.
This photograph of an Indian man hugging a tree has been attached to my typing stand for years. Each day it reminds me that people everywhere know how to love. It gives me hope that when the time comes, each of us will know just exactly what is worth putting our arms around.
-Robert A. Hutchison
Holding The Light, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 2008, all photos © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
American Life in Poetry: Column 194
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Father and child doing a little math homework together; it’s an everyday occurrence, but here, Russell Libby, a poet who writes from Three Sisters Farm in central Maine, presents it in a way that makes it feel deep and magical.
Applied Geometry
Applied geometry,
measuring the height
of a pine from
like triangles,
Rosa’s shadow stretches
seven paces in
low-slanting light of
late Christmas afternoon.
One hundred thirty nine steps
up the hill until the sun is
finally caught at the top of the tree,
let’s see,
twenty to one,
one hundred feet plus a few to adjust
for climbing uphill,
and her hands barely reach mine
as we encircle the trunk,
almost eleven feet around.
Back to the lumber tables.
That one tree might make
three thousand feet of boards
if our hearts could stand
the sound of its fall.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2007 by Russell Libby, whose most recent book is “Balance: A Late Pastoral,” Blackberry Press, 2007.
Reprinted from “HeartLodge,” Vol. III, Summer 2007, by permission of Russell Libby. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.
-posted on red Ravine, Christmas Eve, Wednesday, December 24th, 2008
I love the pictures of the lights. They remind me of the annual trials we encounter for as long as I could remember of untangling the lights, checking for bulbs that won’t make it to the tree this year and the dance we do with the tree to try and embellish the already beautify tree that will protect our Christmas gifts and memories.
The older bulbs remind me of my childhood and the tree we decorated every year. Of the icicle advice Mom would dispense as we tried to toss them high on the tree, “put them on one at a time so they catch the light.”
This year I didn’t put up a tree. The lights will stay packed in their box with the carefully wrapped balls, hangers and other decorations. We will be celebrating Christmas morning at the kid’s mother’s house but next year we will reawaken the lights, hang the balls and tuck the presents under the tree for safekeeping.
Thanks for striking these memories with your beautiful post. I will be thinking of you tonight and tomorrow. Happy holidays to you and yours.
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R3, Merry Christmas to you and all of the family. I’ll be making my calls in the morning. Ah, yeah, and checking all those bulbs to make sure the whole string will burn. I kind of missed that this year.
I remember Mom telling us to spread all the tinsel out, too, so each one would sparkle with the light. Ah, memories of Christmases gone by.
Have a good time with the kids in the morning. Will be thinking of all of you. Lots of love!
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The picture of the lights reminds me of my childhood. Somewhere in our attic we have lights like that. (2009 will be the year of cleaning out our attic.)
I’m so sorry to hear that Chaco is ill. Sending warm and healing wishes your way for Chaco.
I love sitting in the dark and staring at the lights, too. I used to do that as far back as I can remember. I’d sneak down at night when everyone else was in bed just to have a few moments alone with the tree and the lights. Childhood Christmas trees were always heavily covered in tinsel. My brothers (I have 3, all younger than me) would throw it on by the handful. Still, the lights would shine through and provide color to the tinsel and the tree.
Merry Christmas, QM, to you and yours.
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Robin, I can sure relate to the cleaning of the attic. 8) We’ve got quite a bit stored up there. Chaco is showing improvement, little by little. He does have something going on with his kidneys, but also another kind of infection that is showing improvement with antibiotics. Today we had more hope. And we just did his first Sub-Q with the needle and saline solution and it went well. We’re thrilled because we weren’t sure how he’d respond. The greatest gift is having him through Christmas. We’re taking it a day at a time. Thanks for the kind words.
I miss having the lights up this year. I kept trying to get to it but just ran out of steam. I watch the neighbor’s glisten in the snow though. It cheers me up. We also have a skating rink pond just across the way with big lights. It’s very snowy outside. Merry Christmas to you, too. And may we all move into a New Year full of hope.
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Oh yes, those photos bring back so many memories!! Really fun.
Merry Christmas to the keepers for the Red Ravine. I have enjoyed my time here this year immensely.
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QM, so glad to hear that Chaco is improving. I have been thinking about him, you, & Liz for days now. Sending heartfelt energy your way.
I love the lights! In fact, just this week A came over & took our huge artificial, though truly real looking, tree to his house. That & many old glass ornaments & tinsel that was still the box. I stopped using tinsel years ago, when one of our cats ate some. It is very dangerous to pets. As we were going through all of my Christmas ornaments we came upon a string of the same lights that are in your photo. I kept those. Great memories that I could not part with.
Last year I purchased a smaller artificial tree that is pre-lit. I love it! We haven’t gotten a real tree since the boys were younger.
Happy holidays to you, Liz, yb, & her family, & to all of the red Ravine community. (I didn’t get cards out this year)
The poem is perfect! Love to all! D
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Bless little Chaco.
Mery Christmas QM, Merry Christmas Liz
And to you and your family yb, Merry Christmas as well
Ho Ho Ho (can you still say that?)
😉 H
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I just stopped by to wish you and Ybonesy a Merry Christmas. I’m sorry to hear about Chaco, but glad to know that he’s improving.
Hang in there, QM!
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Hey, QM, I wanted to wish you a special Christmas greeting. I hope Chaco has improved over the past 24 hours and that you and Liz were able to get some rest and peace.
Teri’s family’s old lights are so great—the photos are gorgeous. Like others here, we had these same types of lights, and we used them both indoors for the tree and outdoors mainly around the eave of the roof.
It’s hard to imagine such big lights on trees indoors, but that’s all we had, wasn’t it. And they really put off a lot of light, very different from the small lights we have on our tree right now, for example. I miss those old lights. I noticed today that Jim’s parents had these old-style lights on their tree.
Also, I loved the poem. It did make something quite ordinary feel extraordinary.
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goddess, thank you. Hope your Holidays are full of joy.
diddy, thanks for the good energy for Chaco. It’s working! And I’m glad you kept the giant string of lights. Yeah, the older bigger tungsten bulbs burn more brightly to me. It’s one area where I don’t mind that they take more energy.
When Liz and I were driving around looking at lights this year, we noticed that the LED lights are a lot duller. People say they are brighter but it’s a colder, duller color to me. I much prefer tungsten lighting and I probably always will.
We do use energy saving bulbs in our house though. And we looked at buying solar LED lights for the deck and outside tree this year. They even went on sale for 30% off a few days before Christmas. But we decided against it this year. We think they might improve the solar lights as years go on. I guess time will tell!
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heather and sam and ybonesy and diddy, thanks for your well-wishes for Chaco. And Merry Christmas to you all. Chaco has steadily improved on the antibiotics. And our greatest Christmas gift yesterday was that he finally purred again after a week of hearing nothing. He’s loud, a black Siamese, who purrs often, kind of like a motorboat. So it was so great to see him jump up on the couch yesterday, sit in Liz’s arms and purr.
He’s made a lot of progress, slowly getting his energy back. Though whatever’s going on with his kidneys may continue, we are fighting some kind of infection, too. The fight is going well.
Liz has learned to give Sub-Q fluids, too, and is getting better at it each day (I do the holding and soothing; I kind of cringe to think about poking a needle into him). Chaco will go back to the vet in the morning for more blood work and to see how he’s doing with all the different tests they do. We can’t really believe how much better he is than a week ago. Thanks to all who have sent their prayers!
Liz had to work today and I’m home with Chaco, resting. I’d like to read and do some writing. Hopefully, get a little catnap in. Last night was the first night we got a half-decent sleep, knowing that Chaco wasn’t going to fall over somewhere like the litter box and be stuck there. That actually happened the first few days we brought him home. He’s much stronger now.
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