you can be gone and still be here... sure you can... some would say that i've been a real gone guy for quite a few years now, yet here i am... but there are ways to be gone that make a person or a thing utterly absent... still, people may be gone, we say... but never forgotten... though, of course, we do forget sometimes... at least, i do...

sad news came yesterday that an old colleague from jca has died suddenly. dale krizek was an artist and a serious, caring teacher of art... one of those people who raise the general tone of any place they happen to be working... professional, sure... but profoundly human, too. dale was a potter.

when i left jca four years ago, she gave me a perfect little mug she'd made. i don't think i ever told her that i already had a piece of her work, bought on the sly from a local shop... a small pot... raku...

you might know that i never buy just any old pot... it's got to sing... and this one does... to me...

i was going to say that i haven't had any connection with dale over the past four years... but of course that's not quite true... i've looked at her mug... and this pot... every day... some part of her spirit has been hanging around... and will continue to hang around in this small, significant way... what we make, what we do, how we live... matters. in our time here we cherish, nurture and add a bit to the beauty of the world... or we don't... that's our best nature... and dale did her part... day in, day out reminding hordes of students that art matters deeply...

back here in lake county, in my own neighborhood, things are changing quickly... yesterday they came to take some trees away...

back behind the school... between the school grounds and the regular residential neighborhood... there's a wooded area - maybe sixty or seventy feet wide (i don't have a very good measurer's eye). it's a buffer, a border, home to bugs, birds and an interesting variety of furry varmints... some of the larger trees are clearly as old as the forty-year old school to their east... or were...

perhaps to make room for the construction of our new science wing, these woods have been severely thinned.. the new building will not extend into this space... the builders probably need some maneuvering room for the big machines... so the trees must go...

yesterday and this evening after dinner i walked over to take a look... and it's a pretty sad sight.. some fine trees which i thought had been marked for saving are sawdust tonight... among them a classically shaped maple, a huge old spruce, two beautiful hawthornes along the sidewalk, a handful of honey locusts and at least two black locusts in flower (the scent... we hardly knew ye)...

the view from my window

so much for the deer problem...

a tree... no more

progress...

i suppose this had to happen for the new building to happen... but the destruction of trees hurts on some deep irrational level... sometimes when a thing is gone it's just gone

on the brighter side... we've got roses... next...

They are all gone into the world of light,
And I alone sit lingering here.

Henry Vaughan

 

 

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