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Tuesday, August 28, 2007 12:30 AM CDT
Column: 'There's an urgency about the last of August'
By MARY JANE COARTNEY
After a hot, sultry, in-the-’90s August day, a drive in the cool twilight is a delight. There, hanging above the treetops, is a thin sliver of moon. I looked to see if it was wet or dry.
Great-grandfather said if the point was curved enough for a hunter to hang his powder horn on, it was wet. If the point would not hold the powder horn it meant that the water had already run out and we would not get that much-needed rain.
Seems that in the last half of August there is an urgency. Already we can feel that days are getting shorter. A big yellow school bus already goes by the house. Of course, it has been ages since a bus stopped here.
As I read a lot, I pick up a a lot of trivia. It had never occurred to me that on the equator days and nights are the same length all 365 days of the year.
My brother Bob liked to balance an egg on the countertop on the vernal equinox. Perhaps it is possible on other days if you have enough patience.
So we rode along in the quiet summer evening. The moon hung there in the western sky. Up there thousands of miles away, there is a sky lab with a crew of technicians making all sorts of calculations.
Only a few days ago another crew (by who knows how many calculations) met in mid-sky, knocked on the door, and went calling. Not very close neighbors. Not like going next door to borrow a cup of sugar.
We do not live like that any more. Anyone would drive 10 miles to the nearest shopping center to buy just about anything before we would go borrowing. Times like I grew up in — or my parents and grandparents — are something that kids today can’t imagine.
Little tots do not know how to operate a dial telephone. I am just as lost when my great-grandchildren tell of Palm Pilots and computer jargon.
I watch my family using their cell phones to take pictures. They hand them to me to see what they captured in the little box. A day later they give me a copy of all the pictures.
By the time this is printed the crew that went calling in outer space will be back on earth if that fragile tile holds together.
People in Peru, South America, will still be searching through the rubble of their ruined homes for family and possessions, after a scale 8 earthquake. The media will be giving us a count of battle losses — probably less than those killed on the highways at home while talking on cell phones.
Our state legislators may still be battling over the budget that should have been completed on time — some of them managed to agree on an above-the-cost-of-living pay hike while arguing over necessities.
And, last evening, while a few hundred of us sat in a huge warehouse celebrating a business that has continued for 60 years — way up under the tin roof, a tiny humming bird flitted back and forth for more than an hour. As much of a miracle as the space crew reaching the sky lab.
Fabulous Fall
The first bright splash of color
Scarlet ivies twining there
Though the trees are not yet turning
Season’s signs are everywhere.
The dusty purple ironweed
And the fluffy goldenrod,
Silvery drifting threads of cobwebs
Catch on every milkweed pod.
Noisy flocks of hungry blackbirds
Swirl across the dewy lawn.
Vees of honking geese fly over
Echoing long after they’re gone.
The rarest sight that I have witnessed
One that few folks ever see,
Was thousands of migrating butterflies
Resting briefly on a tree.
Mary Jane Coartney of rural Ashmore is a writer and poet. She has lived in Coles County for 94 years.
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Pilgrim wrote on Aug 28, 2007 5:36 PM: