Monday Music: Rocky Mountain High (John Denver)

Fifty years ago yesterday (October 30, 1972) John Denver's Rocky Mountain High was released.

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Saturday Haiku: Acorns Emerging

 

acorns emerging
foretell days of abundance
when shadows lengthen

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Photo by Charles Kinnaird

Note: Some haiku come quickly, and some come after rewrites. This week's haiku came after four previous attempts (and you can see from the picture, I started thinking about this one when the acorns were green). Here are the ones that came before. You can judge whether I settled on the right one:

acorns on the branch
foretell days of abundance
as sunlight recedes
 
green branch with acorns
foretells days of abundance
when leaves are falling
 
green branch with acorns
foreshadowing abundance
in days when leaves fall
  
acorns emerging
foretell days of abundance
as sunlight recedes

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Monday Music: The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress (Pat Metheny and Charlie Haden)

"The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress," by Jimmy Webb has been recorded by Glen Cambell, Joe Cocker, Linda Ronstadt, and other artists. On the jazz end of the musical spectrum, Pat Metheny and Charlie Haden offer their instrumental version. (from the album, Beyond The Missouri Sky)

 

 

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Saturday Haiku: Morning Rain

 

morning rain
telling the village
“Let’s just wait”

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Last Blooms: A Backyard Garden Stroll

Last Blooms

 

October came on a dry wind,

the ground hard and dry.

Summer was slowly yielding

to cooler nights.

Ragged leaves of okra,

tomato, and zinnia

rustle in the midday breeze.

 

Marigolds have gone to seed,

other blooms are hanging on.

Zinnias are faded

with spotted leaves;

an ashen grey creeps

across once vibrant blossoms.

A single yellow flower

stands proudly, seemingly untouched

by autumn wind

and the lone red flag of a geranium

nurtures its proclamation.

 

One last okra pod stands

with the withered blossom

on its tip.

Pepper plants and tomato vines

have exhausted their efforts.

 

A bumble bee dances

on a single Mexican Aster flower

as if tomorrow

will rise with the morning.

 

10/22                              ~ CK

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Photos by Charles Kinnaird

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Monday Music: She Loves You (The Chad Mitchell Trio)

Before he was John Denver the singer/songwriter sensation of the seventies, he was getting his start in folk music with the Chad Mitchell Trio (he replaced Chad Mitchell but the group kept the name). I happened upon the Trio's rendition of "She Loves You," by The Beatles. I must say, I gained a new appreciation for the song when I heard this folk version. Denver does guitar and vocal on this live version.

 

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Saturday Haiku: Stardust

 

planetary stuff

‘round a dying sun-like star –

unending cycle

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Photo: The Helix Nebula (NASA photo) 

From How It Works Daily:

The nearest planetary nebula to Earth is the Helix Nebula, which began expanding around 12,000 years ago. It’s roughly 700 light years from our world…When a Sun-like star is dying, it doesn’t have the mass to go supernova and so it throws off layers in huge coronal mass ejections (CMEs) until it becomes a bright shell of expanding gas known as a white dwarf. The shapes that the 1,000 or so cataloged nebulas form as the star ejects its outer shell are as varied as snowflakes – a fact that NASA is struggling to explain.

Friday Funnies: Another Edward Hopper

 

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Cartoon by Michael Crawford, The New Yorker

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A Haiku Breakthrough?

Earlier this year I read Clark Strand's beautiful book on writing haiku, Seeds from a Birch Tree. In one chapter he talks about how he kept a haiku diary. After 14 years of this practice, he came home from his nature walk just having written his "first haiku." With that experience, he destroyed all his previous work. I was taken aback by that, but earlier this month, I had something of a similar experience.

On my blog, I have been writing a haiku every week since April 2013. Each Saturday with the “Saturday Haiku” feature, a new haiku goes up. Haiku typically stand alone with no title. When I post my haiku on my blog, because blog posts need a title, I will give the post a title. I will also have a picture to accompany the haiku because of the nature of the blogosphere and blog posts.

When my blog post, “Sparrow’s Feather” went up on October 1,  I realized that the picture did not enhance the post, perhaps distracted from it. On Twitter, I posted just the words and I was amazed at the number of retweets and comments. I then turned around and posed just the words on Facebook and got a similar reaction.

Here are some of the responses to the haiku:

I held my breath as I read this.

Exquisite.

Beautiful!

I can feel the stillness!

So lovely.

This may be my first haiku after nine years of attempts. I’m not saying I'll destroy my previous work, but I will return to this one to try to see what made it work.

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Monday Music: Ancient Mesoamerican Music

In honor of Indigenous Peoples Day, I wanted to hear what music in the Americas may have sounded like before Columbus sailed the Atlantic; before the Doctrine of Discovery led to the calamitous onslaught of European invasion. I was able to find this, among other things in my search on YouTube. Here are two short videos telling something about the music of some of the first Americans.

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Saturday Haiku: Harvest

 sometimes the harvest
reminds us of how to live
in shared abundance

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Image: "Picking Apples: (2021)

Artist: Oleg Shupliak, Ukrainian artist, b. 1967. 

           Check out his website at https://shupliak.art/

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St. Francis of Assisi: A Photo Essay

 Here is a re-post from 2016 on this celebrated Feast Day for St. Francis of Assisi. This photo essay continues to be a popular post. - CK

“God’s Fool,” by Frank C Gaylord, of Barrem VT.SS Peter and Paul Cemetery
in Naperville, Illinois (Photo by Rapie Poolsawasdi)

October 4 is the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi. Of all the saints, Francis is the most universally known and loved. He has creds that reach way beyond the Catholic Church. He is perhaps the only Roman Catholic saint who is also well known in Protestant circles and even among the unchurched. I have written previously about my visit to Assisi and have posted poems (here and here) about the saint. Today we take a look at a sampling of statues of St. Francis of Assisi that will perhaps shed some light upon how the saint is seen by different people in different cultural settings. 

             

St. Francis of Assisi is the patron saint of Santa Fe New Mexico:

Dancing St Francis in Santa Fe, NM
(photo by Miles Gray)

This statue of St. Francis of Assisi is called St. Francis Dancing on Water, by artist Monika Kaden, and is found in front of the old Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi (apparently the fountain was empty when this photo was taken)

Photo by Karen Rivera

St. Francis de Assisi

The Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi

Santa Fe, New Mexico

“This detailed bronze statue of St. Francis with a wolf stands guard in front of The Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi doors. Why is he shown with a wolf rather than the more traditional birds and small animals?  Legend has St. Francis negotiating a deal with the predator that was devastating the countryside in rural Umbria: if the people fed the wolf, the wolf would leave their flocks and their children alone. This was seen as another example of St. Francis’s power over wild creatures.” (From New Mexico Photography, A Wolf at the Door)

St. Francis of Assisi is also the patron saint of Italy (along with Catherine of Sienna):

St. Francis of Assisi
Founder Statue by Carlo Monaldi, 1727
St Peter's Basilica in Rome

Photo by Christin Lore Weber

Near San Damiano, a bronze statue of Francis contemplating the valley where the lepers once were confined and where he went often with his brothers to nurse and care for their wounds and other needs. San Damiano was where Francis heard the words, "Repair my church, you see it is in ruins" and took those words literally at first, to rebuild the tumbled-down structure he saw there. Instead, Francis would be a catalyst to rebuild and renew the whole church.

A statue of St Francis of Assisi in Orta San Giulio, Italy, on the way up the Sacro Monte. 

(Photo by Viv from her website at http://vivh.com/index.html )

Photo by Annie Cox

A modern sculpture of Il Poverello (St Francis of Assisi) in front of the Papal Basilica in Assisi, perhaps representing Francis’ early foray as a knight in Assisi’s battle with Perugia. CHANGEMAKRS has a photo of this sculpture on their website with the quote: "He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands, his head and his heart is an artist."

                                                                                               ~ Saint Francis of Assisi

St. Francis in New York 

St. Francis of Assisi Church,West Nyack, NY        Kneeling St. Francis at St. Francis Church,                (from Portfolio of Liturgical Sculpture )              Manhatten (Photo taken by Norm of Awestruck,                                                                                      found on Pinterest)

St. Francis in California

Photo from SFGATE

In San Francisco, just last year, “The 27-foot-tall statue of St. Francis, which has stood outside Candlestick Park since 1973, is being evicted to make way for a new shopping center and hotel. It was created by artist Ruth Wakefield Cravath.” (from SFGATE ) (The statue is currently in storage in Oakland)

Photo by Wally Goebetz

    The St. Francis of Assisi statue, on loan to the Robert Mondavi Winery (Oakville, CA) by the Bufano Society of Arts, was designed by sculptor Beniamino Bufano in 1939. 

(From Wally Goebetz's site at Flickr)

St Francis at Fisherman's Warf

"The figure was carved in Paris, where it stayed in a warehouse for 27 years. Friends of the sculptor transported it to San Francisco in 1955, where it was placed at the Church of St. Francis in North Beach, San Francisco. It was moved to Oakland six years later after much controversy about its placement at the church. It was moved to its present location in 1962 when the San Francisco Bay Area Longshoremen's Memorial Association proposed a permanent location with a park and fountain to surround it on the grounds close to its building near Fisherman's Wharf." (From Waymarks )

St. Francis in Southern Gardens

Aldridge Gardens, Hoover, Ala.
(Photo by Charles Kinnaird)

Zilker Botanical Garden, Austin, TX
(Photo by Katina)

             

St. Francis in the Heartland 

Francis at the Foot of the Cross

At St. Francis of Assisi Church in Allentown, PA

From the church’s website:

From that moment at St. Damien’s church when our Lord spoke to Francis, the Crucifix was a focus of St. Francis’ spiritual life. So much so that Francis wrote a prayer called the “Prayer Before the Crucifix.” It reads like this:

Most high, glorious God,

enlighten the darkness

of my heart and give me Lord,

a correct faith, a certain hope,

a perfect charity, sense and knowledge,

so that I may carry out

Your holy and true command.

Amen.

Photo by Sam Lucero

A statue of St. Francis of Assisi, raising his hands heavenward. The statue is located at St. Lawrence High School Seminary in Mount Calvary, Wisconsin.

“A nice public witness seen in Grand Marais, Minnesota” From OrbisCatholicus Travel Blog

Photo from Roadtrippers

Here is another view of the "God's Fool" at the cemetery at Saints Peter and Paul parish in Naperville, Illinois. Part of their mission statement reads, “By following the call of the Holy Spirit, by imitating Jesus Christ and seeking to do the Father’s will, we share the truth of the Gospel with others by our testimony and example. Through acts of charity and social justice we seek to build a culture of life in the world today as we long for the Kingdom of God in the world to come.”

I hope you have enjoyed these many and varied and marvelous expressions of the beloved saint from Assisi. There are even more than I have pictured here, but I have tried to find representative images of the ways that St. Francis of Assisi still speaks to people today.

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Monday Music: Percy's Song

Fairport Convention was a British folk/rock group that earned a reputation for recording unreleased Dylan songs. "Percy's Song is a fine example of their (and Dylan's) work. It follows a folk formula of using a beautiful melody to tell a tragic story. Dylan did not release the song himself until his 1985 Biograph. Here is Fairport Convention's beautiful version.

 

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Saturday Haiku: Sparrow's Feather

the still morning air

suspends a downy feather

as sparrows take flight

 

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Photo by Charles Kinnaird