so close now

when i got into my car today, which had been parked in the sun, it was hot inside. after five months of cold this is a glorious thing. i know it is mundane to talk about the weather, but minnesotans can’t help it. the weather here is so extreme, it dominates everything: our safety, our mood, our mobility, our psyche, and our conversations. we were settled by scandinavians. we still have a collective mindset. the weather demands it. a minnesotan will always stop to assist a driver that has spun out in a snow storm. it’s what we do. weather can turn from mild to dangerous in minutes. weather is what we talk about first, then we ask how the kids are.

willow buds in march

happy spring equinox!

the sunshine has real warmth now. the snow is melting fast. we are nearing the end of winter and winter stems. only a few years ago did i learn this was bush clover. of course it’s clover. look at it. how did this escape me for so long? i guess i just assumed all clover grew in clumps low to the ground. these are bush clover. bush-clover grows on erect stems up to one meter tall. while i may have been ignorant to it all these years, the natives americans certainly were not. from wiki:

This plant had a number of medicinal uses for Native American groups. It was used as a moxa to treat rheumatism. The Comanche used the leaves for tea. The Meskwaki used the roots to make an antidote for poison. The Pawnee people referred to the plant as rabbit foot (parus-asu) on account of the shape of its fruits and made a tea from the dry stems and leaves when coffee was not available. Among the Omaha and Ponca peoples, it was known as the male buffalo bellow plant.

round-headed bush clover in winter (Lespedeza capitata)

not quite asemics

so expressive. this dried fern frond isn’t quite asemic writing, but it wants to be. it has a lot to tell us.

dried fern frond

ode to joy

i wrap up this foray into asemic writing with my own ode to joy.  “Ode to Joy” was written by german poet/playwright friedrich schiller in the summer of 1785. the ideal he described, of hope and brotherhood triumphing over war and desperation, was exactly what beethoven wanted to convey in his ninth symphony written in 1824. his is about peace. as is mine. nearly 200 years later.

asemic writing, day 5

it looks like writing, but we can’t quite read it. educators talk about children going through distinct stages of “mock letters”, “pseudowriting” and so on, when they’re learning to write. many of us made asemic writing before we were able to write words.