Awe and Ordinary

Author: Kathleen

  • The Thing About Blackbirds

      July snuck up on me when I wasn’t paying attention.  Summer is only a few weeks old, but changes will soon be here.  Many people think of spring when they see that robins have arrived back from their winter climes, but to me, it is always when the blackbirds (red wings, grackles, and starlings) arrive.   Amazingly consistent in timing, despite the weather, it is always mid-March.  Whether sunny or buried in snow (and in Minnesota it can be either one), I will be slogging through late winter when I hear the familiar “Conk-la-ree” call . They are the outriders of spring, those glossy black grackles and male red wings with their brightly colored epaulets.  Small flocks of males arrive first, staking out their territory and waiting for the females to arrive.  Throughout June I have cherished watching them.  The fledglings, wings flapping and beaks open wide, follow their parents to where I have laid out an abundance of mealworms.  Others, with chicks still in the nest, hop about, collecting as many mealworms as possible in their beaks, to sustain the perpetually hungry babies.  I’m frequently heading to the farm supply store for more; more mealworms (my word, they can go through those quickly), more cracked corn, more sunflower seeds.  In the mornings they, along with the robins, are perched on my deck rail and in the maple tree, chattering and awaiting the bounty.   Now that it is July, there will soon be a day when they cease appearing in the backyard.   Long before the September migration, they will begin congregating in fields and marshlands, forming into large flocks and putting on fat stores for the journey south.  With their departure, the yard will grow quieter, and I will ponder the shifting seasons and time slipping softly away.

  • Reminisce

    Does anyone ever think about what a small miracle photography is?  Especially now, with our phones loaded with hundreds (ok thousands, mine has over 14,000) of photos, it’s so commonplace, and yet can be such a source of joy, sorrow, wonder.

    Being an older person, I have photos from well before the arrival of digital cameras and cell phones.  Taking the film canisters to the store to be developed, impatiently waiting for them to be ready, and then clutching the precious envelope with the pictures, hoping there would be some good ones; ones that weren’t blurry or double exposed, ones that didn’t emphasize the prominence of one’s nose, or one’s RBF face, or one’s thickening waistline.
    Diving into a box of old photos brings a rush of emotion.  Pictures of forgotten friends, old loves, beloved pets, landscapes that you can’t quite identify but vaguely remember.  Many smiles, some wistful memories, a few tears, as you shuffle through them, simultaneously astonished at how YOUNG you looked then and feeling an onslaught of memories.  That’s really what it’s for, right? To capture those moments, those people, those places; because years later, the pictures instantly transport you back to that time and those feelings.

    This picture is from London in the fall of 1979.  I was finishing my senior year of college and was at my university’s London campus for my final term.  Near the campus, at Maria Assumpta in Kensington, was an old fashioned hardware store that had never given any thought to attractive displays or marketing.  The store cat sat in the window most days and we would walk by and see him.   I never went inside the store, petted him, or knew his name, but he was a part of my days. Simply uncovering this picture brings it all back, the excitement of being in another country for the first time, my parents’ worry (which I could not understand then), my exhilaration, the many new experiences, the beginning of a love for travel.   I periodically am back in London and I always make my way to my old school on Kensington Square, and then down the street to where the hardware store was located. It is an estate agent’s shop now, tidied and brightened and with photos of properties I could never afford to buy or lease.  But the spirit of the cat in the window lives in me and brightens my days with memories.   

  • Hello

    Welcome to Awe and Ordinary, my personal blog. My blog will celebrate the wonder of both the awesome and the ordinary. I will be writing about things that I love; including travel, nature, animals, food, books, and of course, Halloween! I hope you will join me on this journey.