Tanya Writes About Earth Day

Ditsy Tanya's Almanac #11

After reading Thoreau, I felt how much I have lost by leaving Nature out of my life. --F. Scott Fitzgerald to his daughter, March 11, 1939



The earth is our mother. The native Americans called it so, and for the Greeks, it was Father Time (Kronus) and Mother Earth (Rhea) who started it all. In myth, Antaeus came back to Mother Earth the way real-life Henry David Thoreau kept coming back to Concord. How could he not? Look at that picture of Waldon Pond in early fall!

So why are we so mean to our mother? Grrrrrrrrrrr. I'm a mom myself, and I wouldn't like it.

Well, today we celebrate her. Earth Day is actually two separate holidays observed each year, during spring here in the Northern Hemisphere and during the fall in the Southern Hemisphere.

Earth Day observances are meant to inspire appreciation of our environment and earth's resources. The United Nations celebrates Earth Day each year on the March Equinox. The celebration originated with John McConnell in 1969.

The world-wide observance was originated by Gaylord Nelson in 1970 and is celebrated in many countries, including the United States, on this date, April 22.

It was at an Earth Day rally some years ago that our daughter got the idea for her Science Project on polluted water. Pollution by Dilution. She understood from a display how just a small amount of pollutant can harm a water supply. To demonstrate, she took a cup of food-colored blue water, then slowly diluted it in six more cups until the water was clear.

Well, it looked clear. But if the blue food color had been a poison, the water would still have been harmful to people, plants, and animals.

Hopefully you respect and honor our mother, Nature, each day of the year through recycling, bicycling, taking along reusable shopping bags, walking more and driving less, rescuing abandoned or abused creatures.

I try to do all of the above. Happy Earth Day, Mom.

Tanya Writes About Concord Where She Lived and Died

Louisa May Alcott.

The Christmas I was eight years old, I received a life-changing book. No, not some Dummy how-to or Chicken Soup. Little Women.

Thank God there were two sequels so I didn't have to say good-bye. Little Men and Joy's Boys. And she penned other favorites like Jack and Jill, Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom.

When Ned died in Jack and Jill, I sobbed my brains out. Still tightens my chest when I recall that scene.

But it was meeting Jo that let me know I wanted to be a writer. Amy burning Jo's handwritten manuscript in a fit of rage was a true tragedy. Especially in those days with no hard drive, flash drive, e-mail storage or writable CD's.

(Okay, Tanya. It was just a story. But it was based on real events of Louisa's life.)



So visiting Orchard House in Concord and Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and (wait for it) Walden Pond were so on our list of things to do a year ago. Louisa was a teen when Henry David spend his landmark 22 months at the pond. They all hung out with Emerson and Hawthorne. Gosh, I'd have loved to have been a fly on a wall of the old Manse.

Or better yet, a real life person hanging out with that group.

So Louisa inspired me, still does. Thoreau taught me not to get to the end of my life and not have lived. Emerson reminded me to be selfish when the muse hits. (Although my sweet hero doesn't get that LOL.) Hawthorne, dang, he was nothing but a 19th century X-File writer.

And it was memories of that perfect autumn day at Henry David's leftover homestead that brought me through that darkest hour during my hero's ordeal. When the chemo almost killed him and he lay in an ER bed, gray and drawn and I thought he had died.

Concord rocks for another grand reason. On the rude bridge that arched the flood...was fired the shot heard 'round the world. Thank you, Ralph Waldo.


I got to say my own good-bye to all of them at Authors Ridge.

I've got some books to re-read. (Yes, I did buy another copy if Little Women at the Orchard House bookstore...as well as a LMA pen and ruler! It was a gift set.)

What a time it was. A time blazed in my memory. My heart.

Hopefully, my words.

Tanya Writes About Walden Pond

Last night I went to Walden Pond.

I couldn't think of any other place I wanted to be. To get the screams out of my head and have prayers inside instead. For to me, Walden is a cathedral. Like Yosemite Valley.

Like Alder Creek where the Donners spent that awful winter.

But there wasn't any gentle autumn drizzle landing on my cheeks this visit, for my body was in an ER room at my hero's side. We'd gone to hospital for the CT scans and while taking a stroll down the hall to ease that sore hip, he fainted.

And I wasn't even with him! He doesn't like me to hover, so I stayed in the waiting room until I heard a lady call out, somebody fell.

At the doorway, the first thing I saw was his hand, the hand whose wrist wears the yellow Livestrong bracelet. My heart broke one more time.

The doc figured it was because chemo weakens even a hale man. Indeed, after hydration and potassium and iron --and about a gallon of my tears-- he got to go home.

I hated to weep in front of him, but seeing him lying there...I just had no choice.

So while the IV's dripped and he napped, I went to Walden inside my head to quiet things down. Just like last October, my hero was with me, walking down the asphalt path through the trees. The anticipation was like, walking up the aisle or something. And there it was, Walden wearing a necklace of trees just starting to turn.

Oh, it was lovely, so lovely. I've wanted to visit Walden for so, so long. We walked the pathway Henry David once trod, to his homestead where I built a rock sculpture. I can still feel the rocks in my hand.

My hero found a tiny pinecone under a tree and handed it to me. My best souvenir ever.

And he took my picture at the sign bearing my most favorite HDT quote, about not getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived. Only my hero cut off my head.

Hmmmmmmm.

And while there, I thanked God. If my hero had to faint, at least it was in a hospital with smart, caring professionals. Instead of on the staircase at home or something with only his wuss of a wife around.

But it was still another uneasy night because of this ugly thing that has come to life with us.

Kyrie eleison.