Cattle with Earrings

Cattle raised without antibiotics or hormones have always been a goal of mine--to eat them, not raise them--and last year I split a quarter with my neighbor Terri, her son, and another friend, resulting in about 27 pounds of roasts, steaks, and ground beef for each of us, locally-raised, reasonably priced, and flavorful--grocery-store beef pales, and even tastes pale, by comparison. Having heard via newsletter that Crooked Creek Farms (it has two sites, handed down in the family since 1891) was selling 10-pound lots of naturally raised ground beef--we love it--for $65, we reserved our lots and today drove about seven miles over the hills to pick it up and pay. It was a beautiful December day--not an oxymoron, because the sunlight was blond and platinum, and the temperature around 50 degrees, as good as December in Missouri gets. There really is a crooked creek there.

On our way out we stopped to visit with cows with earrings. I don't know the breed (why didn't I ask?!); I know only that back in Wisconsin there were mostly Holsteins, good milk producers, and these aren't those; they seem to have Hereford heritage. Say hello to the two black cattle who were eyeing us, #314 and #379; on the far right, a red one has earrings marked 345. They all have such earrings. Terri and I discussed whether we would rather make friends with them or eat them. Split decision.

Beauty and Surprise

Underside

Top side

Beauty is why I live here; I can't thrive without it. While living in a basement, with a job in a basement, and getting back and forth on the subway, I subsisted on books and pictures, and in other unpromising circumstances clung to the glitter of junk jewelry or a worn-out cassette tape in my Sony Walkman playing and replaying The Mamas and the Papas, or Mozart as performed by St.-Martin-in-the-Fields. I lived in and left cities with little to no beauty, or none I could see; I didn't live in the areas with views, vistas, or charm. Over a long period of time this taught me to look for beauty in the smallest things and unlikely places.

I didn't know it, but I was starved for surprises and gifts as well as beauty. I went to work, paid rent. My weekly budget left me $6 in disposable income. Walking neighborhood streets for exercise, I did not look at people, or houses, or to the right or left; these were cities in which if you did that they called the police, believing you were casing their houses.

For the past seven days here the sun did not show. Still, the weather was reasonably mild and I shuffled through the gray woods, with no birds in them, my eye catching on nothing but boring beige-ish inedible parasitic-on-deadwood fungi that all looked alike until I turned them over and saw they had wonderful petticoats.

Santa's Throne

Eureka--I found it--in Eureka, in the old community center next to the ballparks: Santa's throne room. I have always hoped to find it, beginning back when my family--like every family on our block--had a silver artificial Christmas tree with a motorized lamp turning it four different colors, the outer limit of awesome in 1966.

I'll return daily until I find Santa Claus on duty, and if he allows it and there's room between those armrests I will sit on his lap and tell him I've been sickeningly good and nice this year, and for Christmas I want--

--everything to stay the way it is, except I want a bit more energy and bone mass. Other than that I can't imagine a better life or home than mine.

The Dismal Science

"Hi, Galaxy," I said to my phone. "Call The Medicine Shoppe." A Walgreens recording answered. Figuring that Galaxy messed up, I myself dialed the Old Towne pharmacy I'd used for 14 years. Chillingly, the Walgreens tape answered again.

It was surreal. I'd picked up a refill three days before from the familiar pharmacists and techs in the drab little Shoppe that kept only one of each item on its shelves, and had a rack of greeting cards that I alone (I think) bought from.

I drove there. Medicine Shoppe #1390 has closed. All prescriptions were transferred to the Walgreens a quarter-mile away, the sign said. No chance to ask questions or say goodbye before the staff--a motley, earnest, totally sterling team of women whom I trusted with my life--dispersed--to where?

Walgreens welcomes "Customers of Medicine Shoppe #1390"

I'd shunned the Walgreens because The Medicine Shoppe ladies saw my husband through his two and a half years of fatal illness; they'd rented me crutches; they'd witnessed my weepings and ailments, phoned and argued with doctors and insurers, knew all my secrets, and had never, not once in 14 years, given me the wrong medicine. I saw them save their meds from floodwaters. My insurer tried to force me to fill prescriptions by mail and I refused. My loyalty is non-negotiable.

Closed now. Maybe bankrupt. Or not profitable.Could have been franchisee's retirement, corporate downsizing, or higher rent. Maybe unable to compete with the Walgreens, grocery-store, and Walmart pharmacies within a two-mile radius. Possibly new rules for Medicare prescription payments. But no goodbyes. The weirdest sort of shock and heartache. And they're all out of work. They call economics "the dismal science" for a reason.

Walgreens had a sign outside to welcome me. Things could be much worse. But I wanted to cry.

Using Apps for Better Sleep and Waking

Two free Android apps for healthy sleep are "Twilight" and "Light Alarm Clock" and I'm loving both so far. "Twilight" reduces the brighter-than-daylight display from your screen (any screen) in the evenings, in harmony with actual nightfall, so you're more likely to fall asleep naturally when you should. I was staying up with business, games, and Facebook on my phone until 1:00 and 1:30 a.m. "Twilight" allows me to go to sleep at least an hour earlier.

Waking in winter--at any hour--is a chore. The sun rises late, and window insulation further darkens my house, disrupting circadian rhythm so I was a zombie in the mornings and and ready to work starting at about 6:00 p.m. -- unsustainable, even with coffee. "Light Alarm Clock" gradually emits mock daylight for up to 30 minutes before waking me with my selection of gentle music and the sound of twittering birds. I set it for 6:45 a.m., actually got up at that time instead of my usual day-wasting 8:30, and witnessed a red dawn: very pretty, but an old sign for rough weather ahead. Here's that dawn, and late morning, the same view the same day.

New Loop Trail at Glassberg Conservation Area

As I geared up in the Glassberg Conservation Area parking lot for my traditional Thanksgiving hike, a hiker returning to his car cleaned mud from his hiking poles. I said, "Is the trail muddy?" He said, "There's a new trail," more than once because I didn't understand. But I found out.

Glassberg's former Trail "A," a quarter-mile which ended disappointingly in an open field, and Trail "C," terminating at the Meramec River overlook, are now joined in a loop measuring about 2.25 miles, marked simply "Trail." It rates moderate ups and downs, and at its highest elevations, at the forest's edge, yesterday's snow had left the trail slick and muddy. Having no idea of the trail's length or where it ended up (I hadn't asked whether it was a loop) I pressed onward, hoping to be the first to report this new trail to you and map it. The pamphlets and map at the site don't as yet show this loop. The trail itself was well marked. I enjoyed the hike but because pie was waiting at home, my favorite trail marker today was "Parking Lot" with an arrow pointing the way.

Trail marker and downed trees

You'll find the Department of Conservation has done extensive cutting, mostly of cedars, in a bid to restore native Missouri oak and hickory forest to this former private property of 429 acres.

Happy Thanksgiving!

My Kind of Turkey

It's no secret that my Seasonal Affective Disorder prods me to "Sleep." "Be apathetic." "Don't do anything." All activities are too far, too expensive, too crowded, too tiring. The world is colorless. Furthermore, it rained all day yesterday. I went out into the woods this morning only to get some daylight for Vitamin D.

Wood ears

I saw a deer, who made that squeeze-toy wheeze, and a wild turkey, who flapped away ("Run, turkeys, run!" I said), and, although it's too late in the year for them, mushrooms, including a cache of edible oyster mushrooms and wood ears such as you get in Chinese food (pictured above). Most abundant, however, were the fungi called Turkey Tail and False Turkey Tail. They look alike, but the real Turkey Tail has pores on the underside, and the other is smooth. What you see here gilding a fallen log is False Turkey Tail. Its sunny colors on greenish lichen served their purpose until the sun itself came out. Only 30 days until the Solstice when the daylight begins to lengthen.