Be Like The Fox

"Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction."  Wendell Berry
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Fourteen mos. in our ca. 1900 American farmhouse, my library is still boxed.  If you know anything about anyone with a library, as a necessity to living/breathing, you know books in my office were packed separately and on their shelves.  Nor have I stopped ordering new books.  Cell phones/computers have changed lives greatly, but nothing has changed the thrill of a new book arrived in the mail, awaiting on the doorstep.  Back to the cell phone, my bad, should be labeled a drug-of-choice when it comes to ordering books.
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Who knew my library made me like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction?



Pic, above, here.
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Lived in my previous garden 30 years, built the house/garden from bare land, it was in magazines, books, and on TV.  Often, gardening there, my mind would wander to time.  Knowing if I lived actively on the same spot, 500 years might get me somewhere with it.  Without ever becoming bored.  Ever.
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Who knew my garden made me like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction?
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Pic, above, here.
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Have made it as far as talking with our carpenter about building library shelves.  Location & dimensions. Life is good.
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"Practice resurrection."  Wendell Berry
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Something Cicero knew about gardens & libraries, each are resurrection factories.

Garden & Be Well,   XO T



Pic, above, here.
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Library bombed by the Luftwaffe during WWII, above.  My tribe.

 
Pic, above, here.
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My mom, above.  Without divulging her story I can mention her tiny wail of defense, It's my only vice.  Go mom!  She pulls sister/me into aiding her, every trip to mom's, the library.  Even Beloved knows deeply my mom & her library.
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Went to mom's library, 1st time, about age 6, it was in a portable building in Clear Lake City, TX,  Freeman Memorial Library, named in honor of a neighbor, Ted Freeman, below, a man my dad was working with, he had recently been assigned to my dad for training to fly new equipment dad's team was designing.  The new equipment had Saturn V booster engines with flight capabilities into space, aka Apollo rocket.  The pair of men who found Mr. Freeman lived in our neighborhood too, and were in Apollo flight training with dad.  Our neighborhood is not far from the crash site at Ellington Field.   Freeman Memorial Library moved across the street from its beginnings, and is now a huge complex, perfect for mom's 'vice'.

Ted Freeman

10/31/64: Crashed his T-38 jet when a goose smashed into the cockpit

By Jeffrey KlugerJan. 31, 2013

NASA

Jim Lovell and Pete Conrad, a pair of young astronauts who had not yet flown, were returning from a day of goose hunting near Ellington Air Force Base in Houston one day in 1964 when they saw a crowd surrounding what appeared to be the wreckage of a T-38 jet. They jumped out of the car, ran through the grass and asked who the pilot had been. Ted Freeman, they were told, a rookie astronaut who had entered the program a year after they did. Something had caused his plane to go into a powerless plunge as he was trying to land; he bailed out, but too late for his chute to open. Lovell, as first on the scene, was assigned to investigate the cause of the crash. With the help of the jet’s surviving instruments, he was able to determine the exact moment it lost power, which led him to almost the exact of area of Texas brush over which it was flying when the fatal breakdown occurred. Scouring the area, he found two things: The shattered windshield of the plane and the bloody remains of a Canada snow goose. The bird, clearly, had collided with the plane, instantly killing itself and, a few seconds later, the human being at the controls. History did not record how many geese Lovell and Conrad bagged that day, but both men likely wished they’d shot one more.

Pic, above, here.