silent sunday
Category: Tim
damp, dark and dreary
What a strange month August has been so far. After July ended with the distinction of being the hottest month ever recorded in North Carolina history, in stark contrast, the first 17 days of August never reached the average high temperature of 90. But the dew point has remained very high, giving me a new appreciation for the term warm and muggy. We’ve had a lot of rain and every day feels damp, dark and dreary.
On August 6 we spent two and a half hours seeing a pulmonologist and received an alarming diagnosis for Tim, interstitial lung disease. This finally explains his increasing shortness of breath and the cough, in spite of having all his heart disease issues addressed. We’re still trying to come to terms with all this new information and future uncertainties. It didn’t help having the washing machine and the air conditioning break down in the middle of things.
I’m more and more impatient for some better weather in the autumn so we can get outside again. In the meantime, as far as blogging goes, I distract myself with searching for and then pairing quotes and paintings, and have scheduled quite a few of them to be published many months from now. I’m making good progress with my resistance training, treadmill walking, and tai chi, but it’s not the same as walking among the trees. Work on my family history boxes has stalled.
Returning home from the laundromat early one morning I discovered these ghostly white things sticking up out of the moss in our front yard. My first thought was ghost plants but these are much smaller and don’t have a flower on top. I learned they are a fungus called clavaria. There may be 1200 species in the genus and I don’t know which species these are. They do seem to love my very damp moss garden, though.
ancient and contemporary art
Friday we took Kat and her friend with us to the Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill and saw the special Radical Clay: Contemporary Women Artists from Japan exhibit. We made good use of Tim’s new disability parking tag — a game changer. Once inside I quickly realized I forgot to leave my handbag in the car and was relieved when Kat offered to carry it for me.
enameled and glazed porcelain
In Her Shoes, 2007
“This comically large foot, complete with long, painted toenails and a banana shaped heel, alludes to the fetishization of dainty feet.”
It was interesting seeing what interested the girls — they lingered and had lengthy discussions at a lot of the sculptures but zipped past all the paintings. It was nice listening to Tim asking them the kinds of teaching questions he’s so good at with kids. When he got tired there was a couch in the lobby where he rested.
I was distracted by the history of the museum itself, founded through the bequest of William Hayes Ackland, a Tennessee native. On the museum’s website, the Biography of William Hayes Ackland notes:
“The Ackland is in the process of reckoning with its history and rethinking how we tell the story of William Hayes Ackland. Stay tuned for changes to these pages.”
Ackland’s body lies in a stone coffin in a little room off of the museum’s lobby. The exhibit label traces where his inherited money came from. He not only wanted the people of his native south to know and love the fine arts, but it seems to me he also wanted to make sure they remembered him!
I can’t help wondering if the enlightening exhibit label will be changed if the current administration finds it out of alignment with its agenda. It will be nice when autumn comes and this cursed heat and humidity disappear. Getting back outside and enjoying the natural world; escaping from the reminders of tyranny that seem to be around every corner.
10 inches of rain!
Monday morning Tim was impressed to find 10 inches of rain in his gauge, from Tropical Storm Chantal. It was only a tropical depression when it got here Sunday afternoon, and there were no areal or flash flood warnings until after the storm was underway. Only then did the warnings start coming in. I lost count of how many times the warning alarms on my cell phone went off. Because we’re at a higher elevation and not in a flood zone we had no idea about what was unfolding in other parts of Carrboro and Orange County. But we knew it was raining hard here for a very long time.
Around noon we decided to drive up to Hillsborough to see what the Eno River looked like. The Riverwalk was closed because the river had flooded at least 19 feet above flood level and had damaged the wooden walkway. In these pictures it had receded some, but parts of the walkway were still under water. We met a public works employee who said they couldn’t open until the water receded, the damage was assessed, and repairs were made. She expects it to be closed for several weeks.
Then we drove down to Chapel Hill to check out Bolin Creek. Not sure how high the creek had gotten but after we left and drove alongside it I saw a picnic table slammed into the bank of the creek. And a plastic chair caught on a tree a little farther along.
Several people we talked to were comparing this storm damage to what Hurricane Fran left behind in September 1996, but we weren’t here for that, so I couldn’t say. We didn’t go into the part of Chapel Hill that flooded and apparently made the national news, but I do wonder about our grocery store down there. We’ll see on Thursday, senior discount day, and therefore our food shopping day. 😉
Today we’re under a heat advisory with heat index values ranging from 105°F to 109°F expected. We never lost power during the storm and I am so grateful to have air conditioning! We’re fine. But my heart goes out to those outside trying to clean up and repair damage after this storm.
blood type and cancer risk
‘peve minaret’ bald cypress
I can’t stop thinking about something a naturopathic oncologist told my sister, who was recently diagnosed with endometrial cancer, the same kind of cancer I had. Apparently having blood group A is associated with an increased risk of cancer, and blood group O is associated with a decreased risk of cancer. Both my sister and I have type A blood.
Coincidentally, a few days after learning this, while going through another one of my family history boxes — I’m now on box #6 of the 14 — I found my mother’s blood type A identification card from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where she was receiving treatment for metastasized breast cancer in 1990. She died when she was 59, in spite of four years of surgery, radiation and multiple chemotherapies.
As I was pondering the significance of now knowing her blood type, it hit me that her father, my grandfather, had prostate cancer. (I have no way of discovering what his blood type was.) With some aggressive treatments he survived his cancer and lived to the age of 95.
And then I started wondering about my grandfather’s parents. Locating his father’s death certificate I discovered that he died at age 75 of adenocarcinoma of the transverse colon, metastasis to liver. He had surgery in August of 1948 and died in July of 1949.
Finding these connections for four generations in a row is unsettling, as looking closely at genograms can often be. If I could trace it I wonder how far back the cancer line would go. All my children have type O blood so likely they will be spared from this specific cancer risk factor.
The gene for type A blood is dominant, and the gene for type O is recessive. Which means I have a recessive O gene that I passed on to my children. (They got their other O gene from Tim. One needs two O genes to have type O blood. Tim also has type O blood so that’s the only kind of gene he could give them.) It surprises me that none of them got the dominant A gene from me because the law of averages suggests that half of my children could have received it and had type A blood!
Until my sister consulted one, I never knew that naturopathic oncologists existed. After witnessing the nightmare I’m living through due to radiotherapy aftereffects she is not interested in submitting to the same recommended treatment for her cancer. We both are of the mind that sometimes, for some people, quality of life is more valuable than a prolonged quantity of life. It will be interesting to see what things we will learn about other treatments from this alternative, integrative physician.
Meanwhile, the current administration continues its efforts to cut funding for health care and cancer research. And now this:
If you’re under 65 and don’t have a chronic condition, there’s a very real chance you won’t have access to a Covid-19 vaccine this fall. Much depends on what happens next month. ACIP could defy the FDA and recommend vaccines for broader use, but that would be risky. We’ve never been in this situation before. ….. This isn’t about whether everyone needs a yearly Covid-19 vaccine—that’s a legitimate, ongoing scientific debate, and one ACIP was already tackling in June. This is about how decisions are made—and who gets to make them. FDA political appointees are sidelining expert panels, bypassing transparency, and turning public health into a performance. That might fly in other arenas, but shouldn’t when it comes to people’s health and daily lives. ….. Vaccine decisions must be rooted in evidence, debate, and transparency. ….. If this is the new model, we should all be alarmed.
~ Katelyn Jetelina
(Your Local Epidemiologist, May 21, 2025)
Closer to home, last summer I endured three episodes of seed tick bites on my legs following walks in the botanical garden. I thought I had solved the problem by using recommended permethrin as a repellent but when I took a walk there on Tuesday I was attacked again and now have 9 bites. I’m done! The pictures in this post are not worth the price I’m paying to have gotten them!
an everywhere of silver
It looked like I might not get to see the ocean before we left Carolina Beach. (The kids got to go while I was sick.) Sunday morning was our last chance and we had quite a downpour as we were packing to go, with wind so strong it created waves on the lake. But after we checked out of the vacation rental the rain had calmed down to a drizzle so Larisa took Tim & me to the beach for a quick visit before lunch and heading home.
An Everywhere of Silver
With Ropes of Sand
To keep it from effacing
The Track called Land —
~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #931)
In a way it was nice to be on the beach in moody weather because we had the place to ourselves. Larisa took some pictures of us to mark the occasion.
On the way back to the car I spotted this little round leaf in the dune, standing vertically as if it was a little traffic sign. For some reason I was captivated. I took lots of pictures and even found a flower on one nearby.
Turns out largeleaf pennywort is a common native perennial that loves growing on the sandy dunes of the southeastern states. It was fun to learn about another plant found in this part of the world.
I had so much to think about on our way home. What a wonderful experience our anniversary was, and nothing at all like we might have imagined it was going to be 50 long years ago! 💙
the adventure continues
Our vacation rental overlooked Carolina Beach Lake, once listed in Guinness World Records as the freshwater lake closest to salt water. It’s an 11-acre lake surrounded by a walking path, located only two blocks from the ocean. There is a great playground for the kids at one end of it. And plenty of ducks and geese to see, plus a couple of shorebirds for me. In spite of the gray skies, a few showers, and a huge downpour on Sunday morning, many walks were taken around this beautiful lake.
great blue heron
While stuck inside we talked and played board games. I got a chance to do some quiet reading with Kat, and read part of one of her graphic novels. Recently I had taught her how to play mancala and so we played again and then taught it to Finn, and then to Nate & Shea, and then to Larisa. It’s very addictive!
Canada geese after a windy downpour
Dima went out to a fish market and picked up some fresh flounder for our anniversary dinner. He’s a great cook and I so appreciated the delicious fish, and not having to go out to a restaurant where it would have been terribly awkward for me, needing to bring my own special food. Larisa & Dima put together a delicious meal for everyone! I’m grateful for all the hard work they did making it a special day for us and am also grateful to Nate & Shea for making the long trip up to spend some precious quality time with us. 💙
50 years!
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
~ William Shakespeare
(Sonnet 116)
For many of the early years of our marriage we had this sonnet taped to our bedroom door, and over the years I’ve never found a better estimation of true love. It was printed with an old-fashioned font on paper that looked like parchment. At some point when we moved from one home to another it got lost, but I’ve never forgotten Shakespeare’s insights.
When we were young and wide-eyed, we used to wonder what it would be like to grow old together. Decades later, after heart disease and cancer entered our lives, we started wondering if we would grow old together. But somehow we made it, and now we know. ♡
(image credit: sipa at pixabay)
strawberries and two more trolls
(inside the giant troll’s mouth)
A month after we went tulip picking at this farm we came back with our grandchildren and their parents for some strawberry picking. This was their first visit, in spite of having lived in the area for many years. Of course, Kat and Finn noticed the half-buried giant troll right off the bat and wasted no time running up the hill and climbing up and down his legs and getting into his head.
(good thing the troll didn’t sneeze)
While the kids played Dima waited in a very long line to get a bucket for strawberry picking. Then he led the gang way out into the field, at the direction of a staffer, who assigned them a row, and gave them detailed instructions. We came along with Larisa at a much slower pace and finally spotted them when Kat waved to us, and I got this picture with a zoom lens. This was larger than any strawberry field I’d ever been to in Connecticut!
(strawberry rhubarb pie?)
I still can’t get over how early strawberry picking season comes here! On our way back to the store to pay for our haul we passed by some blueberry bushes. Maybe we’ll be back some day to pick blueberries — I wonder what month that will be in…
The plan was to play on the troll again while Dima waited in line again to pay for the full bucket. As Kat and I went on ahead of the others, and she a bit ahead of me, she circled back to me and exclaimed, “Grammy, there’s another troll in the woods!” So I followed her as quickly as I could. Up another path we found two more giant trolls, not quite as big as the half-buried one, but these were completely above ground.
Our best guess is that the troll catches children in the cage and then keeps them in the “guest” house he stands guard over.
Eventually the others caught up and Kat was very proud to show them what she had discovered. I never would have noticed these extra trolls.
The line for ice cream was too long to wait in so we decided to go into Hillsborough and find a small ice cream shop. Good choice! Had to get those strawberries home sooner than later. 😉