WALKIN', WRITIN', WIT & WHIMSY

Today I stopped at Memorial Park to pause in the pavilion area to remember the many service personnel who have died defending our country. Even though I am not an American citizen, having lived here for nearly 50 years, I consider myself one of you.  The commemorative flags from last week’s parade were still in place and flapping in the breeze.  It is just a small, but fitting, tribute to those in our City who have died.  Missing, however, was the trio of wreaths which are usually laid at the memorial, each wreath signifying war dead from WW II, Korea and Vietnam.

This holiday, however, I wanted to acknowledge the last two veterans to be memorialized in the park’s pavilion area.

On Veteran’s Day 2013 I wrote about Sergeant Craig S. Frank, who is one of 31 service personnel in Michigan who have been honored with a Fallen Heroes Statue. Sgt. Frank was a member of the Army National Guard and lost his life on July 17, 2004 after a RPG struck him from behind during Operation Iraqi Freedom.   Here is the link to this prior post: https://lindaschaubblog.net/2013/11/11/remembering-and-honoring-our-vets/

You cannot help but notice the addition of Peter J. Buffa’s name to Lincoln Park’s Korean War Memorial. That update sticks out like a sore thumb on the tarnished brass plaque that has been in place for decades.  I’ve pondered over that addition long enough, then curiosity got the better of me, so  I researched and discovered a story from our City’s Historical Society that stated the Lincoln Park’s Korean War Memorial was re-dedicated in May of 2014 when soldier Peter J. Buffa, Jr.’s name was added to the monument.  Private First Class Peter J. Buffa, Jr. was listed as missing in action on July 7, 1953 during intense action on Pork Chop Hill, just days from a formal peace agreement.  The U.S. Army officially declared PFC Buffa dead a year later on July 8, 1954.  His name was not added to the Lincoln Park Korean War Memorial for 60 years thereafter.  He graduated from Lincoln Park High School in 1949 and played football during his tenure there.  He is memorialized at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, ‘The Punchbowl’, at Honolulu.

I leave you with this thought on Memorial Day 2016…

“The debt we owe our fallen heroes is one we can never truly repay.  But our responsibility to remember is something we can live up to every day of the year.”  ~President Obama’s Weekly Address 05/28/16 “Remembering Our Fallen Heroes”

It was another scorcher this morning, even though I left early when it would supposedly be cool outside. I was already sweating not even a block from home, thanks to the 69 degree temperature and high humidity.  I decided to walk down to the river and try to get a few pictures at the marina.

As I stole through the sleepy neighborhoods, it was quiet, save for the occasional breeze which stirred wind chimes and made some melodic music, but, that breeze was not discernible enough to keep Old Glory from hanging limply on holders and flagpoles. Homes boasted their red-white-and-blue swag along fences and facades.

A sure sign that the warmer weather has arrived, is the increased sidewalk art. I studied the many cement panes with drawings and squiggles and decided I liked these “girlfriends” pictured above the best.

The closer I got to the river, the warmer it got, especially those lapses between the welcome shade from the big trees on the Boulevard. Something that was not welcome, however, was the smell of fish, as it wafted from the Detroit River as I wended my way through Wyandotte.  Well PU!  Remember we used that expression back when we were kids, whenever something smelled horrible?  It got worse as I neared the water, so I made an about face and headed for home.

I watched a woman pull into her driveway and she flipped open her car trunk lid and it had a cache of picnic goodies inside. Munchies galore peeked out over Meijer bags, as did bottles of Pepsi, packages of hamburger buns and disposable cups.  A bag of charcoal briquettes was propped up in the corner of the trunk as well.  There will be BBQ doin’s at that house over the weekend.  Maybe today for National Hamburger Day?  For many, it is the first time for grilling this year and it will be a smokin’ hot weekend to do so with friends and family.  I heard a piece on the radio that there is a resurgence in using charcoal briquettes instead of propane gas, as that method of cooking guarantees tastier grilled food.  Growing up we had a kettle grill in the backyard and a Hibachi to use at picnics.  It seemed to take forever for the food to get cooked and we’d nibble on cold salads and munchies until our dinner was ready to eat.  Now you fire up the propane grill in minutes and can even use a smartphone app to ensure grilling perfection.  I wonder who is the official grillmeister in the family these days – the man or the woman? Or do they share responsibilities for the outside cooking?  It used to be the dad’s domain – so you ladies – if you’re the grillmeister of the family, well … you go grill, er … girl.

I was happy to be home to cool off after my four-mile venture, and, yes you can call me a spoil sport, or maybe my moniker should be malcontent, but I am already looking forward to next week’s more moderate temps.

Feelin’ hot hot hot!

Memorial Day weekend is the gateway to Summer, so if you’re a hot-weather fan, today’s weather didn’t disappoint. Yesterday my favorite weatherman, Paul Gross, warned us to “get set to sweat” and Paul was 100% correct, since it feels like Summer has already arrived.

Well, I’m no fan of hot and humid weather and when I stepped out for my walk this morning, the temperature was already 70 degrees and the humidity was sky high. I’ve worn three different sets of clothing this week … cold, warm and hot-weather garb, plus I’ve gone from a jacket, to short-sleeves in just a few days.  That’s Michigan weather for you.  Over the course of the last week, I’ve had the heat on overnight and early morning and the A/C on merely twelve hours later.

There was a bit of a breeze, but it didn’t help much, so I ambled over to Emmons Boulevard to take advantage of the canopy of trees which line the street and provide some shade. It was “raining” those lightweight maple seeds that we used to call “helicopters” or “spinners” when we were kids, and the ever-present elm seed “dots” were still flying about and settling everywhere.

The traffic wasn’t bad at all, so I think a lot of folks played hooky and got an early start up North for their long holiday.

I suppose the Scripps Spelling Bee people would have been more original in their choice of words to describe this very warm morn – they’d have picked some long or complicated multi-syllable words, certainly more eloquent than the words sultry, sweltering, sizzling, stifling, scorching, steamy or sticky. Interestingly all these words begin with the letter “s”.

I’d probably forget the descriptions and just say “the heat is here folks – get used to it!”

Suffice it to say it was hot, hot, hot, but I still got four miles done and have now reached 250 miles walked so far in 2016.

It was another picture-perfect day, so I decided since my boss Robb was out this morning, I’d make it a picture-taking day. It was the first time to actually shed the coat and the last day for perfect weather since rain and storms are predicted off-and-on through Memorial Day.

When I am out and about, without a camera, I usually come upon the best photo ops, and, of course, since I was toting along the camera today, I really saw nothing spectacular. No cute critters, nothing offbeat or unusual … just Murphy’s Law, I guess.

But, I meandered along anyway, first stopping by the footbridge to look for the swallows that go dive bombing from the trees and perch along the footbridge railing all in a row. So, today, as I waited on them, they failed to show up.  Maybe next time they’ll set their alarm clock and I’ll get them to “say cheese” and pose for me.

I saw some Empress Wu Hostas that were already as big as an elephant’s ear – how can that be when he had slow flurries a mere fortnight ago?

I walked along the fringe of Council Point Park but I didn’t venture in as I wanted to go to Memorial Park. Yesterday, when taking the car for a spin, I saw rows of staked flags and I wanted to check them out.

So after trekking around the neighborhood, pausing here and there along the way, I finally made it to Memorial Park, which was still decked out with its parade paraphernalia. There were about fifty flags placed in and around the memorial and pavilion by the Exchange Club of Lincoln Park.  Unlike the “Healing Field” flag extravaganza, there are no service personnel names on the poles, just identical white poles and flags.  The grandstands had not been dismantled yet and the flags were snapping in the breeze, so I clicked away.

It was peaceful in the Park and I took a load off my feet and sat on a park bench awhile before I finally headed home, another four miles added to my total.

Friday was a fantabulous weather day – today, not so much.

I started out my trek this morning, by eyeing the sky and figuring I’d be lucky to get an entire walk in as it looked as if it would pour any minute.

Just like yesterday, I headed over to Memorial Park to see if “The Healing Field” flag display was there, and it was not. The event is usually sponsored by the Exchange Club of Lincoln Park, and is an impressive array of uniform rows of well over a hundred U.S. flags on eight-foot flagpoles; each one honors a fallen service man/woman or first responder. I just looked on the website http://www.healingfield.org/ and discovered Michigan’s tributes are only in Benton Harbor and Coldwater this year.

Our City’s Memorial Day parade is tomorrow, and, at Memorial Park, the grass had been freshly mowed, and all those dandelions lopped off so the grounds now look presentable. In the pavilion, there were two brand-new flags, still with their creases intact, hanging limply on their respective poles by the memorial that honors the City’s war dead since World War I.

I circled around Memorial Park once, then continued on my trek to the tracks. But I never even made it to the footbridge that separates Lincoln Park and Wyandotte before big raindrops splattered down on my coat.  I quickly changed direction and started for home, thinking, that if the rain stopped, I’d just walk in the neighborhood.

There were no walkers, with pooches or otherwise, on my route today – they were either sleeping in, or had eyeballed the sky, and stayed inside.

A few blocks from home I saw a sight that made me smile. Even if I had my camera handy, I would not have been able to capture a photo of the pair as they rolled by too quickly.  It was a woman perched on an oversized motorcycle and that bike was very wide, perhaps twice the size of a normal motorcycle.  Behind her, she had a companion – a friend who was not hanging on for dear life, or complaining about getting “helmet hair”, nor forgetting to lean with the bike at each turn.  Nope, it was a blonde-colored teddy bear that was easily the size of a small child and it was strapped onto the bike, behind the seat.  So, I guess you could say it was riding “bearback”.  Though the biker was dressed for riding, her friend was bear-naked … no leathers, boots or a helmet … not even a do-rag on this cutie pie.

I chuckled over this biker chick and bear, especially since I’ve collected teddy bears for years, so I have a special affinity for these cute and cuddly toys.

Today yielded a measly 2 ½ miles under my belt, before I gave it up and just came home to hibernate the rest of the day.

[Image from Johnny Automatic at openclipart.org]

Unfortunately, errands creep into the morning agenda sometimes, forcing me to stray off the beaten path to take care of business, usually along Fort Street. But, today I decided to sidetrack down a few streets in Southgate just to make it interesting.  I passed at least a half-dozen homes where pooches were positioned at the front window, looking expectantly for their master or mistress … the sad truth was that their pet parent(s) probably just left a few minutes earlier and would not return for many long hours.  You know your precious pets begin whining and pacing the minute you shut the door, and, if they wore watches or could tell time, they’d be getting very anxious as the day wears on.  There is nothing like the love of a pet at the end of the day, or even just a few hours – someone to welcome you back and make you feel special.  I’ve had my own parade of pooches while growing up and since it is “Throwback Thursday”, I’ve included them above.  It doesn’t matter your pet’s breed or even size … if I’m gone from the kitchen more than a few minutes, my canary Buddy will begin to sing, as if to call me to say “hurry back”.

I arrived at the allergist ahead of schedule, hoping to be the first one in, and then out in record time. They are especially busy at this time of the year.  With nothing to do, except stand in place like a statue, I looked across the street to 7-Eleven.  A man came out of the store and retrieved a big white dog from a car.  While keeping him tethered on a long leash, he let that dog run in an empty lot behind the store.  I figure they lived in a place that had no yard, because that dog seized the moment to run and jump in the overgrown grass and dandelions.  Soon he was on his back, wriggling around in the warm weeds and smiling away.  You do know that dogs smile, don’t you?  I got a real kick out of the antics of the dog, who kept looking up at his owner, as if to say “care to join me here?”

It sure looked like a lot of fun, and I could recall many a time as a youngster playing in the meadow with my friends – all of us on our backs, looking up at the sky and deciding what the cloud formations reminded us of … warm Summer days and warmer memories.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re man or beast:

Simple pleasures are life’s treasures. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

… and I was part of the welcoming committee today.

It was a beautiful morning, and, once I saw that sunshine peeking through the blinds, I was eager to get out and enjoy my walk.

It was a bit breezy though, and, while wending my way through Wyandotte, I heard the melodic tinkle of wind chimes as the wind stirred them slightly. The twittering of the song birds as they greeted one another up in the trees, along with those wind chimes, harmonized perfectly to make for a very peaceful walk.

I watched the wind as it chased those pesky, light-as-a-feather elm seeds from the trees, then scattered them en masse on sidewalks and lawns, and … even on me. They sailed through the air and soon my coat jacket was littered with those paper-thin seeds that will mingle with the moist earth or mulch and a lot of sunshine to produce thousands of weeds in a few weeks.

While that wind was just perfect for launching all the elm seeds, and carrying the potpourri of fresh lilac blooms straight to my nostrils, unfortunately, that breeze was just a little too strong for one tiny sparrow to fly. As I walked down the Boulevard, I saw a small brown speck hopping along a cement driveway.  When I got closer, I noticed it was a baby sparrow, just a bit of a bird, a tiny feathery ball of fluff, with a stubby tail, short wings and a beige beak.  He reminded me so much of my canary, though admittedly, he lacked Buddy’s mop top, white stomach and neck.  This baby sparrow was not sickly as it danced down the drive in record time and sure ran like heck as I approached. I talked softly to this scared baby bird, and imagined his tiny heart pumping so fast in its chest, as it was scared of the big human who loomed over it.  I wondered what happened to its mama and why she was not keeping track of her little one.  He tried to “lift off” a couple of times, but the strong breeze made him unsuccessful in his efforts.  I wanted to scoop him up and take him along with me.

I continued on my journey and on my return trip, he was still there, this time with another sparrow close by, presumably giving him TLC or some flying lessons.

I did some flying of my own today – I think the breeze carried me along. I made it back and forth in record time (for me anyway), though I am nowhere near my goal of walking five miles in under an hour by Labor Day 2016.  Maybe we’ll revise that goal to Labor Day 2017 instead!

I leave you with a little Wednesday wisdom:

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. – Bill Shakespeare

[Image from Public Domain Pictures/18043 from Pixabay]

Weather speak … it’s a whole new concept these days, especially after such a rainy, damp and dreary past few weeks . In fact, I think the meteorologists are trying hard not to disappoint us in their weather forecast, even though it is not as if we shoot the messenger.

I’ve been musing over this for a couple of weeks now. For example, instead of just calling for rain, the weathermen might predict a “sprinkle” or a “spritz” or even a “passing shower”.  Perhaps they think the listeners are just so fed up with the wet weather that it is okay to stretch the truth a little.  Why not stop being apologetic and just say “hey folks – it’s gonna rain” and get it over with?  I guess I’d liken this weather speak syndrome to the first snowfall of the year when the meteorologists start slinging around the “s” word in advance of the real event.

This morning, I awoke and heard the early news. It was raining at Metro Airport, but it was supposed to turn into “sprinkles” shortly.

Ever the optimist (as to the walking regimen anyway), I got ready to go, thinking they might be wrong. I stuck my head out the door, eyeballed the sky and next put my hand out and didn’t detect any of those so-called “sprinkles”, so off I went.

Two blocks later, I felt the first drop or rain land on my nose and soon another spattered my eyeglasses. Grrrr.

I vowed not to turn back, but I decided not to stray too far from the ‘hood either.

Well, those pesky droplets continued, with the occasional one choosing to settle smack on my nose and some even splattered onto my coat sleeve.

My mom used to define those hit-or-miss spritzes as “God spitting”, and, for a gentle sprinkly-type rain, she’d declare that “God was watering his flowers up in Heaven”, so, when I was a child, I occasionally wondered why God would spit and where did he buy such a big watering can to sprinkle all his flowers? But, since I was not an impertinent child, I never asked my mom to elaborate.  She wasn’t a blasphemous person in the least and I think she got these expressions from her mother, as I’d often hear my grandmother remark that “God is moving his furniture” when thunder signified a storm was rolling in.  My mom liked that expression as well.  I guess in the Summer months that God re-arranged that furniture along the hardwood floor alot.  My grandmother used to run around the house and sprinkle holy water because her mom had done that when she was growing up.

As I walked along my usual path this morning, while artfully dodging the biggest raindrops, I carefully stepped over the occasional worm and deftly sidestepped the slimy slugs that were creating their own iridescent trails on still-damp concrete. I didn’t get soaked, but my clothes were just dampened a bit.  Overall, my enthusiasm for the walk didn’t dampen and I got three miles in.  All in all, I had to concede it’s a good thing it’s a wash-n-wear world we live in.

It was a beautiful morning, still cold, but the sun made all the difference in the world. I saw no bundled-up bunnies, and, truthfully, I could have left a layer or two off as well, as I was warm by the time I got home.

The old adage of wait a few hours and Michigan’s weather will change sure was true yesterday. In the morning, you might have packed a snowball, whereas a few hours later, you could be pitching a softball.  In that vein, just two weeks from today you might be bobbing around in a pool with a beach ball.  It seems impossible that Memorial Day is just around the corner.

As I walked down Emmons Boulevard, I noticed that people were still treating their posies with TLC and many were hidden out of sight or covered with brown paper bags or newspaper.

It seems the dandelions didn’t give a whit about the cold weather – they are everywhere in the parks that I pass on my walk and perhaps there is even an overabundance of them this year. In Lincoln Park they will mow later in the week, especially in Memorial Park, where the festivities for the parade will take place this Sunday.  So, there are many tall and spindly dandelions that have lost their “bloom”, or, those straggly, bent-over weeds with wispy white fluff that kind of look like old men.  Then, there are the sunny yellow dandelions which look like tow-headed youngsters or mini sunbursts.  As I gazed in those fields covered with these weeds, I was remembering when I was young and we’d make wishes on the spent dandelions and watch them drift slowly into the air.

I walked to the railroad tracks and back, and, while on that trek, I peered into the Ecorse Creek, like I always do when crossing the footbridge. There were no ducks or geese this morning, but I saw some large ripples in the water, and I knew it was more than just the wind.  I saw a huge muskrat padding through the murky water and he made it to the banks of the Creek and quickly disappeared into the reeds and brush there.  I had my camera, but he was way too quick for me … besides, it’s hard to get too enamored about an ol’ muskrat (unless of course you’re the Captain and Tennille).

[Image by Stviod from Pixabay]

… the birds, and the bees, and the flowers and the trees. They were all in Spring mode … until today.  Now they are all in disbelief about this weather, as am I.  I think this wacky weather is the price we pay for that wonderful Winter we so enjoyed.  After a soggy Saturday and damp Sunday morning, I saw the sun and hurried outside hoping to get a walk in.  It was only 36 degrees when I left, clad in a down coat, wool hat, muffler and mitts – mitts seemed very fitting here in the Mitten State.  Not a soul was out as I went on this Sunday stroll.  Gone were the cheerful hanging baskets and colorful porch pots that lined the homes along Emmons Boulevard just a few days ago, having been whisked away to the garage or basement last night.  Some folks had thrown newspapers over their newly planted annuals to preserve them from the cold weather – hopefully they were successful.  The birds weren’t singing as they had sore throats.  The squirrels weren’t scampering because they were tucked up in their nests.  I saw a few bunnies boppin’ along,  well protected by their fur coats, but I bet they wished for warmer duds like these guys are sporting above.   I sure hope it warms up some because the ants have returned – they “get it” … no one is picnicking as it’s much too chilly for potato salad, so might as well head into Linda’s cozy kitchen.  Sigh.

[Image courtesy of FreeVintageillustrations.com]