George M. Withee

The earth is a little less bright this week. A great and gracious man, who treasured his privacy almost as much as anything else in his life, has been lost to us. George McClellan Withee passed away at the age of 91, peacefully in his sleep. He and his wife Esther were a second set of parents to my wife and her four siblings growing up in Pacific Grove, California. I only met them after Diane and I became involved but quickly became enamored of them both. To say that George valued his privacy above almost everything else is not to forget that his greatest treasure always was his wife, and his family. In writing my blogs I always sent a copy to George and he always sent me back a response, often a cartoon or a smile or a picture or a thought relating to a specific line in the text of what I wrote. It was always positive and encouraging. When Di had her car accident last December and I went through a period of anxiety that I could have lost her, George was always there for me, reminding me of the treasure I have in my wife. He lost Esther several years ago. In one note I said how grateful I was that I could tell my bride how much I love her; George quietly responded, he wished he could, every day. George was a member of the Greatest Generation, the men and women who endured the terrible war that still defines the humanity as a being, and from which, despite all their sacrifice, we still have not evolved. He was pilot of a bomber in the Pacific. His crew’s motto was, “Ragged but Right.” Like most of his fellows, he never talked about it. Yet he did write about it, at least once, in one of several selections collected for an anthology called “In Their Own Words.” I invite you to go to the web page, http://www.315bw.org/anthologies.html, and find his contribution, a poem called “The Ghost of Five Nine-Three. No wonder I liked him so much. And thank, you, George, for everything.

Confession: I am a Poet

I've been thinking. I know that is a dangerous thing to do, but I can't seem to stop myself. The brain just kinda goes that way. I have never been busier than now, since I retired from my day job and moved to Montana to be closer to our grandson. And yet, poetry flows from me like never before. I have been thinking a great deal about this passion within me, and wrote the following lines of prose. I am a poet. I have chosen a means of expression that makes no money and has few admirers yet many, many contributors. Thousands write; hundreds read. It may be the closest a writer can come to painting: each sketch, each oil, each verse is a private showing. A book takes forever to write. I know: I have two published, many others collecting dust waiting for me to get back to them. A poem is more like a snapshot, quickly taken, then selected and edited and offered. More precisely, poems are journal entries written both for ourselves and for sharing – our experiences, our observations, our thoughts, our feelings – our souls laid bare for the love of words. Why do we do it? We are curators who hang words on gallery walls in limpid museums in our minds, doors open to invite anyone inside who happens to be passing by, but no advertising budget to let them know we are here. At least we are not closed Mondays.

Special Day, Wildfires and Travel Plans

Today is special. Each day is special, of course, without saying so. But today is August 22, and for the fifth time this year Helium has put one of my poems on the front page of their website. This one is a Tanka – a Japanese structure something like an extended haiku with a rhythm scheme of 5/7/5/7/7 beats. This one is on coffee. Please go to helium, Where Knowledge Rules, and flip through the featured articles and you will find me. Today is also a day of relief: in a season of forest fires one broke out about two miles away from our home in a not-so-remote spot even closer to our friends and out-laws. That fire was met quickly with an aerial assault combined with careful ground efforts, and has been contained at a relatively small 105 acres and no structures damaged. My heart goes out to anyone on the fire line, and for the National Forest Service scrambling to find enough money to finance all their efforts. The fires so far have cost nearly one billion dollars to fight. In relative terms, that’s about a week in Iraq or Afghanistan. It is also a day for planning. Our nephew Erik had open heart surgery last month, which forced the cancellation of their vacation plans for August. So they decided that they would use that money to buy tickets for Diane and me to go to Holland to spend time with them. It was an offer we could not refuse. We are leaving in one month exactly, on September 22, and staying with them for three weeks. Much to do, much to do! So it has been a long while since I have blogged. I guess I had to have a good reason to dust off the cobwebs. Thanks for listening!

Back Blogging w/2 poems

July 11, 2013 Hello, dear friends. It has been too long since I have written to you, and I apologize. Life is good, and busy, and active. Summer in Lakeside means taking grandson Xander down to the lake as often as possible and playing in the water, while fitting writing poetry into the schedule as best I can. I have been focused on the poetry heavily of late, with a new challenge on Helium for July plus other submissions. It has been very gratifying. I seem to be building a small but very loyal following among fellow poets on the site, and one of my poems has been featured on Helium’s Featured Stories link on their front page for the fourth time in less than two months. This one is called “Sadness.” Check it out on the Helium website, www.helium.com or search Helium – where knowledge rules. It feels so good when the writing is going well, and the irony is that I don’t have enough time to write about it! I am also trying to settle in on which project I want to tackle next in the long term. There are several candidates to choose from that already are in some degree of development, but none has grabbed me by the throat and demanded “WRITE ME NOW!” That may be why the poetry has absorbed me so greatly at the moment – poems are short and do not take a great deal of time to write, although to be good at it one still must exercise all the constraint and imagination (an interesting combination – worthy of a poem) required by a longer, book-length project. It’s all good. Let me share a couple of poems today that went on the Helium Coffee House blog: //Student// /I’m still learning. /Similes and metaphors /Play inside my brain /Like matchbox men /Engaged in war games /Oblivious to time constraints /Of ignoble history, /Guns drawn on cavemen, /Knights and cowboys /Side by side, /Pterodactyls on the wing /Soaring dragons, fire ready, /Words cleft from their creator, /Student conduit busy /Regurgitating. //Tusk// /You want me just to go away, /To wander into the woods, /Curl up, wait, and die. /I did my bit, /A career as a delivery boy /Buying more than he could afford /On credit, /Mortgaged to the hilt /Before the bubble burst /And desperation served notice, /Evicting the American Dream. /I grew old /And had the nerve to escape /Your demographics, /And you’d just as soon /I took my trunks lightly packed /And wandered off /To the land of the dead, /Burial ground, /Leaving my tusks behind.

Egg Timers and Surveillance

The other day, Xander discovered for the very first time our egg timer. It’s very old style, a three minute hourglass style timer. Flip it over and watch your eggs. You have to watch closely, of course, because there are no bells and whistles that go off when the very last grain of sand falls through the narrow passage. Xander was fascinated. We decided to test the timer and see just how long it took for three minutes to pass. We combined this ancient technology with the microwave timer and discovered it took two minutes and forty-seven seconds for the sand to run out. We ran this experiment several times – a delightful and easy way to entertain an energetic and wildly curious five year old for more than half an hour toward the end of our day together. It was a multi-tasking little egg timer, well surveyed! Speaking of surveillance, I have to digress for a moment regarding the NSA leak. The big question, to me, is: ARE WE SURPRISED? REALLY?!! The fact is that our government has had citizens under surveillance. That the numbers have increased exponentially only means that the technology to watch us has increased likewise. Our online activities are being monitored constantly, as conscientious citizens scour material for buzz words and phrases that raise a red flag. This very blog may cause a red flag to be raised simply if I mention the word anarchy, or terrorist, or Snowden, or any other of a vast number of possibilities. Yet I do so openly because I have nothing to hide from anyone. I am not afraid of surveillance, but I object to it. I object more, though, to our government – and our President – lying to us about what they are doing. Face it, whether you like it or not, those people who run the country – who have the power – feel somehow obliged to make sure they stay in power. They might tell you and me that they are simply trying to protect us, but the fact is that we are their subjects, not their partners, and they will treat us as such. Any one of us who threatens or appears to threaten THEM might find themselves being watched more closely than Xander watches an hourglass. It’s the hypocrisy that bothers me most. We spy. We have spied on others since we have been a nation. All nations do it as much as their technology and funding allow. Americans willingly give up their privacy – as I am doing right now – on social media or walking down camera-embedded streets. The fact that we spy on ourselves doesn’t mean much, except that it shakes our trust and confidence in our own government. What little remains. It’s like a three minute egg timing hourglass that takes 2 minutes, 47 seconds to run out.

Twins, Bees, Surveillance: What’s the Buzz?

My first blog in weeks, and second in two months, and I have so much to say that I can think of very little to say. I apologize up front. So much is happening in the world today, or not happening, depending on one’s point of view, that there are literally hundreds of topics not to write about and yet remain cheerful. With the sun shining and the temperatures indicating summer is here, I find it had to avoid commenting on the NSA and the shocking leak and issues like that. Shocking? I am shocked that we are shocked to think our government is spying on us. I mean, when you have power you will do anything possible to keep it. And we’re surprised? Our allies are surprised? They do it themselves. Are you shocked? Again, apologies – I did not really want to write about any of that. I want instead to talk about the things I have been surveying of late around my house. The white tailed deer have been few and far between while the birthing season has gone on. One of our deer – I talk like they’re our pets – is an older doe who has lost sight in one eye, and we figured she must be past birthing. She always had twins, year after year. Last Friday evening on our way home, we saw her guiding her brand new twins along the road. The fawns were so new they still didn’t have their sea legs, stumbling along while she watched us closely. Xander was with us and was very excited to see them. The next day I saw something I had not seen in a while: a honey bee buzzing amid the flowers in my back yard. With the plight of bees in America, I was happy to see this one, like a new hope dawning. And finally, we have a guest family nesting in the corner of our house. I don’t mean wasps and yellow jackets, who keep trying to take up residence against our wishes. I mean two robins, who built their nest atop our motion sensitive outside floodlight (that needs replacing) just under the eve at the north corner. We have been watching the mother robin sit on her eggs, and waiting anxiously for new life. Such things are much more exciting and fun to watch for and write about than the idiocies of our rulers. I just wish the robins ate wasps.

It's About The Cat

Before we begin, I just wanted to let you all know that I am in e-print again. My story about finding the wedding ring was printed on Clever Magazine. Check it out online! Just heyword Clever Magazine. You'll find me. And thank you, Dianne! Today's blog: Saturday morning, when I came in from work, Kevin did not greet me at the door. This was odd. Kevin is my cat, and he always seems to be hungry, either for attention or for food. He always greets me at the door carrying a sign that says, “Feed me! NOW!” He backs that up with a soulful if decidedly sour verbal accompaniment. I was worried. I found him asleep on the living room couch. He barely moved to acknowledge my presence. This is my cat – if he hasn’t seen me for half an hour he greets me as if I just returned from six months at sea. He never stays by himself if a lap is present. I fixed his breakfast and he didn’t move; I put it under his nose and he sniffed twice before turning away. Something was wrong. Cats can go sour at the blink of an eye. In fact, cats are so good at hiding it when they’re sick that by the time you see the symptoms, they’re really ill. Add to that Kevin’s advanced age, thirteen human years, there was reason for concern. Of course, kids, pets and water heaters always get sick on the weekend. It’s the law. We decided to watch him closely and hope he started to feel better, but were ready to deal with a worse outcome and began calculating how to finance a visit to the Vet. Who was closed on the weekend, of course. Fortunately, by about four p.m. he began to act more normally, and by six he began to shout for dinner. The crisis had passed. It turns out -- we’re pretty sure -- that Kevin hopped up on the kitchen counter the night before (which is strictly against the law in our house, but cats don’t care about laws) and helped himself to a drink of soapy dishwater from the tub where we were soaking a casserole dish lined with fishy goodness, and made himself nauseated. I love my four-legged son. But I recognize the desperate truth: Kevin is a cat of little brain. He’s looking at me as I write these words, but all he wants to say is, “Get that damned computer off your lap, please.”