RiverSing is accompanied by large butterflies and other imaginative creations from Moonship Productions and the Puppeteers Cooperative. Here’s one by daylight.And if you’ve ever wanted to converse with a butterfly, here’s your chance.Once the sun goes down, the butterflies take on a new look as they swirl at the margin of the audience.
Best known for its 16 packed shows in Harvard’s Sanders Theatre each Christmas, Boston’s Revels organization also presents many other activities of community-enhancing music, theater, dance, and storytelling for family audiences through the year.
Each autumn, for instance, it welcomes the equinox with a free Sunday evening concert along the Charles River in Cambridge, which takes place tonight with activities beginning at 5 p.m. in Winthrop Park at Harvard Square. A police-escorted street procession leads down to the riverside, where thousands settle in for a two-hour high-energy performance.
The marvelous Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band plays a lively set in Winthrop Park before it escorts a large procession to the Charles River. I’ll refrain from telling stories about the trombonist on the right, whom I’ve known long before he even knew about trombones.
Last year’s concert featured Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul, and Mary fame, and I was part of the chorus of 120 behind him. It was a blast.
Here we are, with Noel Paul Stookey beside conductor, arranger, and master of ceremonies George Emlen in the white tie-and-tails.After the show, this puppet quickly filled with children.
The stage also provided some great views of the sunset and audience, which was ringed by glowing butterflies. It was a magical experience.
My wife took these photos with her phone. For some showing my face in the choir, though, go to the Revels site.
If you’re in New England, consider showing up tonight. The more, in this case, the merrier.
While the flowers demand attention from a block down our street, we’ve found an even better reason to have them: the hummingbirds have a special fondness for bright zinnias in addition to the sunflower trail behind them.
Some varieties of sunflowers have dramatic dark reddish petals instead of the usual yellow. This one is all the more stunning with the sunlight illuminating it from the back.
It’s been a long time since we planted morning glories, but they just keep coming back. Here’s one vine that just decided to follow an old telephone line up the side of the barn.
The amount of wildlife in our yard continually impresses me, especially compared to my childhood home. The abundance of squirrels, of course, and (yuck!) the winter rats we occasionally see but also skunks, opossums, the groundhog (woodchuck) can be added in, plus garden snakes and a rainbow of insects. We must be doing something right, or just be in the right location. (Once, a fox trotted atop my ladder stored over snow, right here in the city.)
A first: amid a throng of blue jays chasing a crow, a mockingbird: was its nest raided or threatened?
But remember, never mock a mockingbird. Like the one singing lustily from our neighbors’ when I’d drive in from work at midnight. They’re quite remarkable musicians.
~*~
The influence of the animal kingdom shapes my newest collection of poems, In a Heartbeat, on tap at Barometric Pressures.
According to folklore, when intruders disturb a rattlesnake, the first passerby merely irritates the viper. The second passerby becomes truly annoying. The third in rapid succession, though, becomes just too much. And that’s the one the snake strikes.
I think many of us humans have days like that. When we erupt – or someone blows up at us – it’s often far out of proportion to the provocation. What you see merely reflects the third offense or offender – the one that triggers defensive action.
The diamond hitch is a top-of-the-line knot, especially useful in cowboy, mining, or logging country – or, as I apply it, the desert foothills of Washington state found east of the Cascade mountains. Forefront in my related set of poems is the unspoken recognition of diamond hitch as marriage, with its implied images of diamond ring and getting hitched. In the background, also unvoiced, is the diamond symbol of the clear and enduring heart – further extended to intense spiritual quest, as The Diamond Sutra (Vajrachchedika in Sanskrit) demonstrates, found also in the Buddhist linkage of diamond to Dharma. In addition to serving as an emblem for the open range of the American Far West, sagebrush, moreover, suggests wisdom, spice, even the Burning Bush of Moses – the profound influence desert has upheld for prophets and mystics over the millennia.
The groundhog story continues. Not to be content with the early raids on our garden, the attacks on our beds resumed. Lush Brussels sprouts plants that had been three feet tall were now mere spikes, and in the latest round we lost some kale and squash plants. Neighbors are relating their own losses, including peppers.
I did notice a small entryway had been dug out under our firewood stacks and eventually saw a pointy nose and beady eyes regard me. Not once or even twice but enough to make me suspect the worst. So I moved the trap from the garden and placed it near the entrance.
To my relief, I did find that the trap my wife bought at a yard sale a few years ago does indeed work, and that cubes of cantaloupe prove irresistible to the critters, but even that is taking its own turns. The first time the device was triggered, a bit of Brussels sprouts stem included as bait kept the shutter from locking … allowing an escape. Would the villain learn to avoid my means of entrapment?
I reset the trap and by lunchtime returned to check it out. Although both shutters had been triggered, a ‘chuck was propped up OUTSIDE, one foot on the top as it peered in, likely wondering how to get back to the bait, as if adding insult to my intentions. It seemed I’d been conned again. But, just in case, I circled around and closer examination revealed another was couched inside. One down, at least one more to go.
The short version of what followed includes a trip to Maine, just over the river. Released from confinement, that one bolted through the forest … straight toward New Hampshire.
For my part, back home, hoping they’re slow learners driven more by their guts than their brains, I reset the trap in pursuit of the other. Two hours later, I was back in Maine and evicted that critter, which dashed straight into the river and started swimming toward New Hampshire before rounding back to shore. I was grateful it was still high tide but dismayed to see what confident swimmers they can be. So much for that barrier.
Back home again, seeing new diggings around the firewood, we face the reality of having at least one more living under that neatly stacked firewood. If this keeps up, I’ll have to buy another melon today. At least I’m grateful we didn’t try growing our own; they would have cleaned ’em out, meaning I’d still have to buy one to use as bait.
All that’s left of the once thriving Brussels sprouts.
Jnana's Red Barn 