The Lights of Life are Shining

On December 1, something very special will happen in Concord, New Hampshire. Every year, Concord Regional Visiting Nurse Association (CRVNA) and Hospice fills our town, and the surrounding towns of Contoocook, Penacook, Pittsfield, Henniker, and Hillsboro, with hundreds of electric window candles. Downtown businesses, shopkeepers, and restaurant owners light these candles in their windows, so that every evening in December, the memory of loved ones who have passed shines for all to see.

Anyone can make a monetary donation or simply add a loved one’s name to the Lights of Life Honor Roll. The list of names will be published in the Concord Monitor at some point during the week of December 5. You can visit http://www.crvna.org/donations/lightsoflife.php for more information.

CRVNA holds a ceremony on December 3 to celebrate life and honor the people we carry in our hearts from year to year. Mom, Scott, and I will be there.

These are the names I added to the list this year:

Larry Cox

Les Cox

Lee Holman

Kenny Cox

Katie Gober

Caralee Ladd

Anne Heine

Frans Amelinckx

Jack Savage

Tom Little

Casey Migacz

Pete Vanderboom

Tip Snyder

Mae Beck

You are among heroes, each of you ~ the most beautiful, most true, most loved, and we remember you fondly.

Celebrate these wonderful people with me, and if you have the chance to drive through Concord, enjoy the beautiful candles and pick one for your special person. Happy Holidays!

~Ally

The old familiar Celtic temperament...

Drench
by Anne Stevenson

You sleep with a dream of summer weather,
wake to the thrum of rain—roped down by rain.
Nothing out there but drop-heavy feathers of grass
and rainy air. The plastic table on the terrace
has shed three legs on its way to the garden fence.
The mountains have had the sense to disappear.
It's the Celtic temperament—wind, then torrents, then remorse.
Glory rising like a curtain over distant water.
Old stonehouse, having steered us through the dark,
docks in a pool of shadow all its own.
That widening crack in the gloom is like good luck.
Luck, which neither you nor tomorrow can depend on.

A little bit of fennel, a lot of love

Dear Sarah Barry,

After just fifteen years, Sarah, [I always was a late bloomer] I finally got my mortar & pestle. I remember watching you grind fennel seeds, releasing that blissful aroma, preparing onions and garlic (for every dish!), practicing the perfect rice, trying Indian recipes, stir fry's, and experimenting with exploding, fantastical rice noodles. Oh. Those were good days and I can still feel the warm glow from your living room, catch the hot and steamy scent of good food cooking in your wok, hand-oiled, in that tiny, run-down kitchen in the back of your mother-in-law's house, or other times, in our shared apartment. You taught me to love cooking food, and to relish health and creative artistry at the same time.

I burst my new mortar & pestle out of its box, without even washing it (and you know how I feel about germs), and threw in some fennel, ground the seeds wide open and tossed them into the tomato, onion and sausage quiche I am preparing for dinner. It's baking now, and I am thinking of you with fond and loving memories.

Thank you for teaching me to love, Sarah, in so many wonderful ways. And thank you for bringing me to a deep love of cooking delicious food.

Love, Ally

photos by Scott Snyder

I love you, my testy pony.

Testy Pony
by Zachary Schomburg

I am given a pony for my birthday, but it is the wrong kind of pony. It is the kind of pony that won’t listen. It is testy. When I ask it to go left, it goes right. When I ask it to run, it sleeps on its side in the tall grass. So when I ask it to jump us over the river into the field I have never before been, I have every reason to believe it will fail, that we will be swept down the river to our deaths. It is a fate for which I am prepared. The blame of our death will rest with the testy pony, and with that, I will be remembered with reverence, and the pony will be remembered with great anger. But with me on its back, the testy pony rears and approaches the river with unfettered bravery. Its leap is glorious. It clears the river with ease, not even getting its pony hooves wet. And then there we are on the other side of the river, the sun going down, the pony circling, looking for something to eat in the dirt. Real trust is to do so in the face of clear doubt, and to trust is to love. This is my failure, and for that I cannot be forgiven.

'Shrooms...mmm

Autumn ode

To Autumn
by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

The art of losing

I heard this poem while rewatching "In Her Shoes" - great movie and even better book by Jennifer Weiner. Beautiful...

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

~Elizabeth Bishop