Hope Emerald, Etc.

I prized two pendants for sentimental reasons -- one emerald, not a crown jewel, cloudy but green enough to remind me of nature, and one handsome oval smoky quartz, in superstitious terms a highly protective stone, market value five dollars. Wore them joyfully. Last January, hid them and forgot where, so for weeks and months I have torn closets apart, dumped out winter boots, stood on stepstools, searched the garage, and clawed from the cupboard boxes of Jello, thinking: "Maybe I put them here. Or here. Or here. . ." Maybe I hid them in the bottom of a trash can and they got thrown away, or in the folds of an old sweatshirt I bagged and tossed. Could I have done that? The thought gave me a pang. I'd looked everywhere. They were gone. To get a hold of myself, I recalled the Roman poet Catullus, who chided, "Cease this folly, and what you see is lost, set down as lost."

Even so, in the final week of June before leaving for Washington I sheepishly googled "patron saint of lost items," and murmured this "unfailing" prayer to St. Anthony to find the pendants -- sweetening the deal with an offer, if I found them, of a $20 donation to the nearest church:

"Blessed be God in His Angels and in His Saints. O Holy St. Anthony, gentlest of Saints, your love for God and charity for His creatures made you worthy, when on earth, to possess miraculous powers. Encouraged by this thought, I implore you to obtain for me (request). O gentle and loving St. Anthony, whose heart was ever full of human sympathy, whisper my petition into the ears of the sweet Infant Jesus, who loved to be folded in your arms; and the gratitude of my heart will ever be yours, plus $20. Amen."

Son of a. . . In the pantry just a half-hour ago behind a stack of canned tomatoes I found a ziplock bag with the green pendant. I stepped back and felt my heartbeat in my throat and was so grateful I collapsed onto the futon.

I said, thank you, St. Anthony. It is half of what I wanted, so you get $10. Returning to the same pantry and shelf, I moved some cans aside and there was the quartz pendant.

Comet Lovejoy

skyandtelescope.com

 

A friend said "Follow Orion's belt up to the Pleiades" and to their right -- with binoculars or a telescope, because this rare visible-to-the-naked-eye comet is at its brightest right now, today, at magnitude 3.8. That's not very bright; the North Star is much brighter at magnitude 1.97. About 11:15 p.m. last night in the marvelous 99 percent darkness we have here (except for the headlights on passing cars) I searched with my 8x binoculars. Didn't find the comet.

Back in the house I consulted the Google Sky map. It's not on there! Googled it, learning its name -- Comet Lovejoy, how wonderful! -- at skyandtelescope.com, and their map showed the comet's location and trajectory for every day of January--currently to the right of the Pleiades, just as I was told. The page had wonderful astronomers' photos of the comet, which is bright green. Out again but did not find it. Kept looking to the right of the Pleiades. Now I'd been looking for an hour. I knew it was out there. Back indoors, looking at the same map.

The temperature, above freezing, was tolerable, so I went out again because I hate to give up on anything. Carefully, carefully I  swept the sky with its shovelsful of stars. This time I recalled that the sky is a curved shell and "to the right"--as the stars progress westward--will also mean "downward." At last, at last: I found it. A smeary little wad of light, no tail, not visibly green, but rather the color of Vaseline. Beautiful, to me!

The Perception of Doors

Before hardware removal

3 brands of stripper, all caustic as heck

Paint layers were visible

Strip-Eeze at work

On March 17 the handyman took my bathroom door off its hinges, as I had asked, and I hung a curtain made of a basted yellow bedsheet to replace it, and outside in the garage I removed the door's hardware and began stripping its many thick layers of paint, planning to refinish. Four chemical strips on one side and nine (!) on the other, plus scraping and sanding -- but even so, layers of paint, probably oil-based, perhaps containing lead, remained: peach, pink, blue, green, white. Although the door is solid core, the wood is soft pine, not hard like oak, and my putty knife gouged it in places. Manfully I scraped and sanded, all masked with gloves and respirator and eye protection, until soaked with sweat, trying not to breathe chemicals and dust. "Ain't nobody gonna do this for me," I thought. The door is 80 x 30 inches and heavy, so friends helped me flip it over. One day in mid-April I sighed and phoned the handyman saying I gave up, I'd pay for a new bathroom door, as I'd wrecked the original and really needed a bathroom door--until there's a bathroom door, nobody much can visit me. Despairingly I looked up what a door costs. A slab isn't obscenely priced, but it costs to have holes custom cut for the hardware. In any case the handyman never called back.

Painting by lantern light

I figured he thought: Let the dumb bunny stew in her own juice. Too bad I never got the door perfectly clean of paint and varnished as I hoped. People asked why I didn't use an electric sander. Well, the garage has no electricity and is too far from the house for an extension cord. I never like to give up. But--a bright idea!--I could repaint the door myself. Discovered wood filler for the gouges. Sanded and cleaned the whole thing this afternoon and began painting about dusk so it would dry overnight. Worked by lantern light until I was finished with the one side. Tomorrow a guest will help me flip it over. Then I'll finish painting, replace the hardware and phone the handyman. At least the door will look spring-clean now instead of chipped, gray and pawed over. Moral of the story: Sometimes giving up clears room in your mind to come up with something simpler and better. (Just now a tick was crawling on my neck! Took it to the bathroom and exploded it with a match.)