Where Is Your Head Today?

Sumac at the height of its glory

“Where’s your head at?” was once a sort of jeer, not a real question, a variation on “What were you thinking?” which, of course, implies that you were not thinking at all. What I intend here is a real question, translatable as: What’s occupying your thoughts? What perhaps are you obsessing over (and wish you weren’t)? Are you focused or feeling dreamy, or is your mind jumping from one thing to another like a grasshopper being chased by summer’s approaching end? Or maybe you’re fortunate enough to be taking in the natural world moment by moment, like a dog miraculously blessed with full color vision. How wonderful that would be, wouldn't it? To have the full range of color added to the marvelous range of olfactory sensations we humans can only dimly imagine!

It’s been a long time since I’ve written a blog post. Well, for this blog, anyway. I’ve done three new posts for my photo blog, “A Shot in the Light,” and one for my catchall blog, “Lacking a Clear Focus.” I’ve also read half a dozen books (see sidebar for titles) and hosted another signing in my bookstore. My sister and her husband visited from Illinois, and our grandson and his best buddy traveled up from Kalamazoo. (Those were good visits.) And I went on active duty for a friend for three weeks while she was in hospital and then rehab, feeding her cats and declumping their litter boxes daily. 

Historian Larry Massie from the Allegan Forest

Larry's appropriately book-themed tie

Grandson Dave! Sarah's human nephew! Sarah loves company!

And all along there has been the glory of fall color, starting with the staghorn sumac (top of post) and now encompassing maples and beeches and popples and even early-turning tamarack. This past Sunday was simply glorious, but it's recorded only in my brain's fallible memory, not on my camera's digital storage card. Camera in action again today, under grey, rainy skies.

On Monday I stirred my stumps (isn't that a hideous expression?) and got busy with long-delayed kitchen and food-related projects -- retrieved rhubarb from the freezer to turn into rhubarb chutney; picked apples from an overloaded tree (only recently I learned that apple trees can be "overpollinated"); defrosted strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries destined for jam before another day escapes. 

Home harvest

Things keep happening, though. The world doesn't hold still for a moment. So I paused to remember Bill Milliken and to say a prayer of thanksgiving and hope for full recovery for Jimmy Carter. I read newspapers, rationing each day's intake (in the interest of sanity) and wondering where the hell we are going as a nation and a world. My head was here, my head was there. Sometimes it just wanted to be under the covers, fast asleep.

Fleeing deer!

Thank heaven for books! Books on geology and history put current events in perspective, and old volumes that have survived from a century or more ago reassure me that bound, printed material has staying power and that what I do for a living is worth doing and may last beyond the current insanity. In more optimistic hours, I like to think so. But then, my head is not staying in one place very long these days.