Barbara Rodgers

house centipede

There may be people who like centipedes…
~ William S. Burroughs
(The Western Lands)

Bugs!! Shudder!!! Yesterday I was sitting on the couch for a few minutes taking a break when one of these creatures, which I think must be a house centipede, ran across the living room, lickety-split, and disappeared under the couch. Needless to say I have not sat in the living room since! And reading up on them has not made me feel any better. Much as I avoid chemicals, I think I’m in the mood to buy some “bug” spray!

I had never seen one of these things until the 1990s when I was coming out of the laundry room in the basement and one confronted me in the hallway. It was a good two inches long and an inch wide! I grabbed what was handy, a can of hair spray (good a getting ink stains out of clothing), and started doing battle with the alien. It actually charged at me after I zapped it once. It finally died after tons of spray and I left the scene, shaken. When the family came home and I told my tale and went to show them the remains of the bug, it had dried and shriveled up to almost nothing, and they seemed a little skeptical of my accounting of the enemy’s size and speed and aggressiveness.

Am I losing my mind?

Sometime during the 2000s I was walking on the treadmill, also in the basement, when one of these monsters raced out from under the treadmill and made a beeline for a big pile of storage boxes. I tried to pretend I had not seen what I had just seen, and to get on with my life.

And now yesterday, my third sighting. Why me??? Why do they not come out to terrorize the rest of the family? First two times in the basement, then this time of the first floor. I’ll be hysterical if I ever see one up here on the second floor!

I have learned that house centipedes are not native here, but have arrived somehow from the Mediterranean region. That would be why I had never encountered one before. The only positive spin I can put on this situation is that apparently they eat spiders and ants and can eat a few of them at a time. Still I don’t like the idea of something so big and so fast lurking around my home. I startle way too easily… I had a LOT of trouble falling asleep last night.

Has anyone else ever dealt with house centipedes???

connected to our ancestors

It’s one of nature’s ways that we often feel closer to distant generations than to the generation immediately preceding us.
~ Igor Stravinsky
(Father Knows Best: Words That Celebrate the World’s Most Wonderful Dads)

When we know about our ancestors, when we sense them as living and as supporting us, then we feel connected to the genetic life-stream, and we draw strength and nourishment from this.
~ Philip Carr-Gomm
(Druid Mysteries: Ancient Wisdom for the 21st Century)

my spirit’s shaken flame

My forefathers gave me
My spirit’s shaken flame,
The shape of hands, the beat of heart,
The letters of my name.
~ Sara Teasdale
(Driftwood)

on the move

Sponge Brittle Stars off Curaçao by Laszlo Ilyes

It’s hard to keep up with our kids these days, who have always lived within 50 miles of us since they flew off from our nest over a decade ago! Big changes are afoot!

Larisa passed a licensure exam, granting her permission to practice social work in New York City, where she is planning to move to in July, fulfilling a childhood dream. Her boyfriend Dima already has an apartment lined up for them in the city. At the moment, however, the world adventurers are in Curaçao scuba diving. I wonder if Larisa & Dima will see creatures like the one pictured above as they dive into the sea.

Nate & Shea have worked from home for a while, which means their home could be anywhere. And the adventure bug has now bitten them, too – they’re planning to move to St. Marys, Georgia this summer. This news really came out of the blue and I’m still trying to absorb it! Before they go, however, they will be taking a Disney cruise in June and I get to feed their fish and their cat, Sassy, while they are sailing around the Caribbean.

So happy for all of them, even if we will miss having them so close. St. Marys is next to Cumberland Island National Seashore so once they get settled I’ll be chafing at the bit to visit them in their new home by the sea.

a meaning for me

When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.
~ W. Somerset Maugham
(Of Human Bondage)

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book!
~ Henry David Thoreau
(Walden)

unity in diversity

"John Burroughs" by Edward B. Greene — “John Burroughs” by Edward B. Greene

Science tends more and more to reveal to us the unity that underlies the diversity of nature. We must have diversity in our practical lives; we must seize Nature by many handles. But our intellectual lives demand unity, demand simplicity amid all this complexity. Our religious lives demand the same. Amid all the diversity of creeds and sects we are coming more and more to see that religion is one, that verbal differences and ceremonies are unimportant, and that the fundamental agreements are alone significant. Religion as a key or passport to some other world has had its day; as a mere set of statements or dogmas about the Infinite mystery it has had its day. Science makes us more and more at home in this world, and is coming more and more, to the intuitional mind, to have a religious value. Science kills credulity and superstition but to the well-balanced mind it enhances the feeling of wonder, of veneration, and of kinship which we feel in the presence of the marvelous universe. It quiets our fears and apprehensions, it pours oil upon the troubled waters of our lives, and reconciles us to the world as it is.
~ John Burroughs
(Accepting the Universe)

think and read

Gain knowledge, brothers! Think and read,
And to your neighbors’ gifts pay heed,
Yet do not thus neglect your own.

Sadly I weep when I recall
The unforgotten deeds of all
Our ancestors: their toilsome deeds!
Could I forget their pangs and needs,
I, as my price, would then suppress
Half of my own life’s happiness…

~ Taras Shevchenko
(My Friendly Epistle)

trapped in error

"Johann Wolfgang von Goethe" by Joseph Karl Stieler — “Johann Wolfgang von Goethe” by Joseph Karl Stieler

Quite often, as life goes on, when we feel completely secure as we go on our way, we suddenly notice that we are trapped in error, that we have allowed ourselves to be taken in by individuals, by objects, have dreamt up an affinity with them which immediately vanishes before our waking eye; and yet we cannot tear ourselves away, held fast by some power that seems incomprehensible to us. Sometimes, however, we become fully aware and realize that error as well as truth can move and spur us on to action.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(Maxims & Reflections)

cat cataracts

Tim took a picture of my new tulips (above) yesterday. I suppose I might have planted them a little closer together…

This sweet little cat is Meems. She used to be named Tibby, but after she gave birth to Tibette her family started calling her Mommy. (And Tibette became known as Baby.) But Mommy’s favorite human, our niece Erica, calls her Meems. She is a Munchkin (breed) who was born in Italy about fifteen years ago, if memory serves. She was a stray who adopted the family we just went to visit, and she was pregnant with Baby when the family moved from Italy back home to Virginia. Baby is not a Munchkin, however, and is larger than her mother!

So Meems is still sweet and petite but is now elderly and suffering with cataracts, it would seem. She dislikes cameras so the only way I could get her to hold her head up was to scratch her chin with one hand and hold the camera with the other. 🙂 She keeps pretty much to herself, so I was startled to find her eye looking like this because my sister Beverly’s cat, Bernie, has the same problem. And it is supposedly rare. But Meems’s vet thinks hers was caused by an injury, and Bernie’s vet thinks his are caused by a virus.

Bernie ~ 7.29.10 ~ Storrs, Connecticut — Bernie
7.29.10 ~ Storrs, Connecticut

Cataracts are not as common in cats as they are in dogs; in fact, they are very rare. Most cataracts in the cat develop secondary to inflammation within the eye, from trauma, or some other eye problem. Rarely, cataracts in the cat may be inherited, may arise with abnormal development of the lens, or may occur in association with nutritional abnormalities in the young cat.
~ PetDoc

It seems to me cats, like people, are living longer than they did when I was a child. Long enough to be plagued with more of the infirmities of old age.