Scout Moves

I helped save a sad horse and two adorable dogs. And all I had to do was gripe on Facebook. It’s an amazing world that way. My house sits on the edge of an allotment, and just across the street is a house that sits outside of it. It used to be a farmhouse when this area was an undeveloped farm, although the land was mostly wooded, and some of it was mined back in the day. The allotment has some restrictions, like no outbuildings or clothes lines or crap piled up in the yard, but across the street, it’s anything goes, apparently. The man who has lived in this house for several years is the grandson of the farmer who built it, and it was passed down three generations to the degenerate who has let the thing go to hell. OK, to be fair, his mother wasn’t much better. When she owned the house, she would decorate the lawn for the seasons and then leave everything up all year—Christmas lights, a plywood cutout of Santa riding a rocket, a hay bale with pumpkins in various stages of decay...

My big floppy dog, my big stupid smelly dirty obstinate dog, seems to have developed an aversion to the screen door, the one that is his gateway to his potty area and the fenced in patio. I don’t know why and when that happened, but last night at midnight, he was adamant. I will not come inside through that door, and there is nothing you can do about it, woman. This is what he said to me as I was whispering “Puppy, come!!” I couldn’t actually shout at him because of the late hour, and the neighbor’s bedroom window is very close to my back door. I also couldn’t stomp outside and force him in because he reacts to aggression with aggression—barking and bucking and running crazy laps around the pool and on top of the pool cover, splashing as he goes. So I was left to beg powerlessly, at the mercy of the dog. Let me backtrack a little bit and say that we were outside at midnight because Big Puppy has diarrhea and needed to make an emergency run. Once he did his business, he was in explo...

Lately, the word "check' has become one of the most important words in my personal lexicon. I am task oriented—I can spend time dreaming big or small, and I can think abstractly as long as there aren't too many visual distractions to turn my head, but where I really shine is when I am faced with a list of tasks to complete. I have taken to writing actual lists because I'm afraid the mental lists will be adulterated, what with all the visual distractions and the insidious ravages of aging. And I've been keeping these lists on the Stickies features of my Mactop. The application creates what looks like Post-it Notes, and you can assign different colors and fonts and font sizes to different notes as you organize them by importance. Right now, the sticky note that is front and center is blue, large and filled with big, bold type. These are the things I need to do in the immediate feature, as opposed to the other notes that are just for occasional reference—the cost ...

I like shopping at Ace Hardware. The term "shopping" may not seem to match what goes on in a hardware store—men don't say, "I'm going shopping," when they run out for a box of nails or a light switch. But I go shopping at Ace Hardware. When I walk in to this very male environment, often the only female in the place, some nice older gentleman always greets me at the door and says something like, "Well hello, young lady. What can I help you find today?" And I love him instantly. I always tell him what it is I need, but honestly I'd rather roam the aisles and find it myself. I find a certain sense of accomplishment when I walk around the maze of things I have no name for and manage to find that one bolt that is just the right length or that one paint brush I need for a project. I make my way through the store and proudly think to myself, "I am my father's daughter." And then I think, "Look at all this great stuff, whatever it ...

Eustacia and No. 1 I was wide-awake at 3:00 this morning because that’s just how it goes sometimes. I never get up and snack or watch TV when that happens. I just try to will myself back to sleep. Sometimes it takes an hour or two of conscious willing to get there, but again, that’s just how it goes sometimes. Very early this morning, all my discipline wasn’t working, so I picked up my cell phone and checked Facebook to discover the top two posts on my newsfeed were put there by my daughters. No. 1, a tutor who teaches Arab immigrants, started a blog nearly two years ago but let it go dormant until just recently (check out the Knitosaurus in the sidebar), and she linked to her latest post about dialectics and the usefulness of metaphors. Eustacia, winding down another year of college, complained about a blinking cursor and how she thought it might at least change colors or something. She’s an artist and doesn’t care much for writing papers, and she must have been sitting there ...

Of course you can't review a concert before it's happened, but I feel compelled to write about the concert the orchestra is about to give, instead of reviewing it after the fact as I typically do. This evening, the Tuscarawas Philharmonic will perform Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade and Dvorak's Cello Concerto . If people in the audience pay attention even for a few minutes, they'll ride an emotional coaster of exhilaration and exhaustion, fear and courage, sorrow and happiness. All you have to do is listen to feel the full spectrum of the human condition, and I'm not exaggerating here. Think of the words that represent emotions—beleaguered, rejected, disillusioned, empty, hostile, jubilant, hopeful, quenched, soothed, happy,—at some point this evening, everyone in that concert hall will feel these things. Here, take a look at this, with Yo-Ya Ma performing the first movement of the concerto (if you have time, click through to listen to the whole thing, and ...

Last night, I slept all night long—no waking up at 3:30 and staring out into the dark space, no looking at the clock thinking 30 minutes has gone by since the last time I checked when it’s been only 5, no tossing and turning wishing I had a better pillow (I always wish I had a better pillow). I think my restful night is a result of learning the difference between humility and humiliation. I went to an orchestra rehearsal last night, our first in preparation for performing Scheherazade and Dvorak’s Cello Concerto . The horn is not a big feature in this program. With a few exceptions in the principle part, we aren't the solo instrument in the concerto, and we don’t represent a hostile sultan or a sultry storyteller. But every part has a role to play, and I felt sorely unprepared. Not that I hadn’t practiced or listened to the music beforehand, but I was too easily thrown, and there are some passages I physically cannot play, practice or no. It didn’t help that I had basically e...

Lesson 1—don't set things on fire. I discovered these parchment baking bags at the grocery store not long ago and threw them in the cart right away. I have cooked in paper on occasion and have had to form bags with sheets of parchment paper. Having them ready made is a great idea. What I usually do is lay in an assortment of sliced veggies—mushrooms, onions, celery, red peppers, zucchini...—then lay something like salmon or tilapia on top, toss in some seasoning and a splash of white wine, roll up the bags and bake at 400˚ for 10 minutes or so. Dinner. I did this the other night, and while the bag was roasting, I made a pot of rice and some lemon cream sauce, and I timed it all just right so that everything would be ready at the same time. But when I tore into the bag, I discovered the larger piece of fish needed a few more minutes. I set the rice and sauce on low and popped the baking sheet back into the oven, set the time at three minutes and walked away. Three minutes lat...

Photo by Daniel German. I bought a new book yesterday, a new old book, actually. For all of $1, I picked up Ain't I A Woman; Classic Poetry by Women from Around the World , edited by Illona Linthwaite. I got it because of the title taken from a speech given by Sojourner Truth at the Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851. Sojourner Truth was a force of nature, as natural as they come and as forthright, so how could I pass this up? I am delighted to discover this book is full of poetry from all eras written by many forces of nature, and I intend to read from it every day—or at least regularly, because you know how these things go. You set out to do something every day, and then things come up and you skip a day and then two and then a week; but I've got more than 200 pages of poetry here, and I'll read it all eventually. Today's poem is "Warning," by Jenny Joseph. If you aren't familiar with it based on the title, you know it by its first two l...