Curtis Sees Dead People

I strive, and have striven, to keep this blog running since 2005, and, in a twin effort, to keep it from becoming All About the Dog. Having weathered a near total takeover of content by one Napoleonic little Boston terrier, I struggle not to let Curtis barge in the same door. I'm fighting not him, but myself; my belief that he is the Most Special Dog Ever. I fight my own besotment.  Well, who could not be taken over by a dog so smart, so sweet, so alive, so tiger-striped?

Plus, get this. He loves to be hugged. Presses in for more. Most dogs don't like it; Curtis craves it. In addition, he smells like fallen sycamore leaves, not a hint of ook. The perfect companion for a lonely anthropoid craving ventral-ventral contact in a pandemic, saith the Science Chimp. 

So I figure it's time for an All Curtis photo post. 

On a recent Thursday, we saddled up for a ride to the sweet little town of Nelsonville, Ohio. Our destination? Stuart's Opera House, its crown jewel. I had to do a tech run-through of my first virtual presentation of Saving Jemima, the book talk that COVID-19 canceled. (Yes! you can watch it! And yes! details below!)

I figured the 2 PM run-through would take about a half-hour, and we'd be on our way, maybe hiking one of the state parks along the Appalachian highway for the afternoon. Well, things didn't quite work out that way.

Curtis always starts our car rides in the front seat, looking forward, as if he's got co-pilot status and has to make sure I pull all the right levers. Traffic stops get boring, though. 

I have anticipated this, so I've brought a pillow for this cur who needs a pillow, at all times. 

Still, it's not very comfortable. 

He could go to the back seat, but that would mean giving up co-pilot status. 

So he opts for the tired airplane passenger sleeping sitting up move. I particularly love his badonkadonk in this shot. Chet had a badinkadink. This dog has baDONK.

Eventually we got to the Opera House, and it became clear that I was in the hands of artists, who are intent on making a show of this event, which is not only my first streamed lecture, but Stuart's Opera House's first streamed event! It will be available on Zoom, but it won't be a simple screen share--you'll be able to see an inset of me speaking, as well as a wide shot of the stage. It will feel a lot more like attending a live lecture. I am excited about this--it counteracts the dreary thought I had of having to give a slide lecture from my studio, all by myself. 

But back to Curtis. He entered the Opera House with pricked ears and waving tail, surging ahead to investigate each room we entered. We had no sooner got on stage and I had taken my place, though, when Curtis began to agitate. He was off his lead with people to kibbitz with, so it wasn't that he was bored at being confined. 

No, he was Zombie Whining me. A Zombie Whine is a very high-pitched screech that starts with a long, soundless exhalation and ends with a sound like a car pulling away on a wet street. He gives it when he very much wants me to be doing Something Other than What I am Doing. 

He kept gazing off into the darkened theater, ears pricked, wagging his tail, then turning back to me. 

"Honestly," I said to my hosts, "it's like he's seeing a ghost, and he wants me out of here, pronto!" This statement unleashed a highly enjoyable barrage of ghost stories from my hosts,  Stuart's Opera House's Executive Director, Melissa Wales, and T-Bone, the house sound artist who is coordinating the show.

It seems there are two ghosts, seen by multiple people, who haunt the Opera House. One is George, thought to be the builder of the place. He walks up and down the empty halls, whistling. Whistling. Melissa has heard him--and she'll know that the door she just heard open is locked up tight, and the lights are off, and there cannot be anyone there, but...footsteps and whistling. Yeeeesh!

Also present and much more mischievious is a ghost the living denizens of Stuart's call Victoria. She's seen more often than George, who is usually heard. She messes with electricity. T-Bone told of one night when, in the  middle of a performance, the house lights started rapidly strobing. Everyone looked at one another, asking what could be going on. T-Bone rushed to cut power to the house lights, flipped the breaker...and the lights stayed lit. Dimly, but they stayed lit. Ohhh-kay. 

At this point I was getting chills, my mouth hanging open. And then they told me about the child visitor who kept asking about "the lady in the balcony."

Victoria is usually spotted in the balcony.

I seen her. I seen Victoria out there.

You can't see her, but I can. Dogs can. Well, I can. We need to go.

We need to get out of here, Mama (blep) I'm begging you.

Sadly, Curtis did not get his urgent wish. In the end, I was there for more than two hours, working out all the kinks and folds of streaming a live lecture to an unseen audience. I enjoyed every minute, even if Curtis didn't. I'm so excited about this! It's happening Thursday, October 8, at 7 pm.

Here's the event on Stuart's Opera House's website:

https://tinyurl.com/zickatstuarts

If you've always wanted to attend a Zickefoose talk, but haven't had a chance, well, here you go. Much as I miss touring, I'm truly excited about the chance to open this out to a wider and more far-flung audience, and to give people a chance to hear the Saving Jemima book talk, no matter where they might reside.

Are you done yet? I'm keeping an eye on you. See that hole in the wall behind me? Ghosts come through that. 

Come ON Mama let's GO! I have to get you out of here!

All right, Mr. Supernatural, we can go home now. 

See you Thursday October 8 at 7 pm! And since you're gonna ask, Curtis done blown his chance to be there. I'll have enough to do without placating an antsy beggartick cur-dog who has to report loudly on what he's seeing up in the balcony. I'll just have to take my chances with George and Victoria sans bodyguard. 

https://tinyurl.com/zickatstuarts

Thanks to Stuart's Opera House, Athens Area Birders, Scioto Valley Bird and Nature Club, my favorite ever general store White's Mill, the Ohio Ornithological Society, and Bob Scott Placier for sponsoring my appearance. I don't know who's sponsoring George and Victoria's appearances. 

 

Museum of Diversity: Ohio Wildflowers

I hadn’t seen a woodland full of bluebells since 1991. I remember the year because Bill and I were courting, and he took me to a place in northern Virginia that was knee-high in them. The sun was piercing and warm; the flowers were dazzling, and I had trouble walking in line, as I was so busy kneeling and oohing and aahing. I was taken away by the splendor of it all. I’ve always wanted to see bluebells like that again.

So when I got a line from my friend The Buckeye Botanist on a big bunch of bluebells along the Athens-Nelsonville rail-to-trail bikepath, I decided to chase it down. I shouldn’t have been surprised that Dan, the proprietor of Fullbrooks Café on the square in Nelsonville, Ohio, was the source of exact information on how to find them. I walked into the little café, hungry; Dan took note of my camera and binoculars and we struck up a conversation. I told him what I was looking for, and he told me where to go to find it. Then he made me a fantastic, fresh and delicious sandwich. I shall return!!

The bluebell preserve would be about a mile and a half’s walk from the parking area, but it was like walking through a fabulous movie about richness and diversity.

The first thing I saw was Trillium grandiflorum. This is a plant that grows bigger and more magnificent the more nutrients it gets, and these slopes are rich. Enormous white blossoms fluttered in the breeze, as far as my eye could follow up the slope and forward down the bike path. Where they are, they are, and where they aren’t, they aren’t. And they mostly aren’t any more, because people are so greedy for timber, and won’t leave the forests undisturbed. You can’t take bulldozers to a woodland, fell trees and drag logs, and expect these lovely things to survive it.

When the white trillium finally thinned out, the spotted wakerobin Trillium maculatum started. There’s something so pleasing about trilliums, how everything is in threes—leaves, petals, even stamens. Sometimes even the plants themselves. 

Some spotted wakerobin aren't spotted.

Some are, sorta. 

And some knock your socks off with pure leopard power. If you haven't picked up on it, part of the joy of spring ephemerals, at least for me, is seeking out their vast and surprising genetic variation, weaving between the differing leaf and blossom colors, leaf forms, sizes and growing conditions to recognize the common thread that identifies each one. 

It’s hard to believe, only two weeks later, that these flowers are all but done, but that is the life of a spring ephemeral wildflower. On this day, April 10, I felt I was hitting it just right, there for the show at its peak. Hepatica and trout lilies were still out even as the trillium burst into snow-white splendor.  

Hepatica acutiloba, in shimmering pink.

And the same beauty,  but here in breathtaking blue.

How to tell what they are? Just look at the old winter leaves. Sharp point on the tip? Acutiloba.

I was alone, but I felt my father there, looking at it all with me. He was in the trout lilies and the wind that moved them. And oh, there were so many trout lilies! I'd never seen so many in bloom. Rich, rich soil here.

 I have to think that this is one of the most spectacular wildflower blooms ever. The weather’s been kind; there have been no hard freezes since things got going. There’s been enough rain, and it has been warm, but not unnaturally pumped up into the 90’s like 2016’s crazy April. The nights have been cool, and everything’s perked along a bit ahead of schedule, without perturbations.

Who has seen blue rue anemone Anemone thallictroides? I have. (It's almost always white.)

Core’s chickweed put on a spectacular show with Dutchman’s breeches.

When he bade me good-bye, Dan from Fullbrooks, who has also worked as  a woodland guide, told me he’d see me along the trail. And he came biking along a few hours later! I was so happy to see my new friend here amidst the wildflowers he loves so much. Biking to work every day has its perks; Dan has his finger on the pulse of spring and floral diversity.

It was that kind of day. The world opened its arms to me, people were kind to me and I was happy for a time, knowing that my father was with me and, despite all the sadness and anger and hideous things happening in the world, that here on this striped and dappled path the flowers were safe, still opening and blooming so beautifully, keeping pace with a schedule all their own.

Wild ginger Asarum canadense

Buckeye, opening

Cardamine diphyllum, two-leaved toothwort

Blue cohosh, Caulophyllum thalictroides

Cut-leaved toothwort Cardamine concatenata

A trillium/shelf-fungal tableau

Wildflowers, marching down the slope, pooling at the rich bottom

More sharp-lobed hepatica

Large-flowered bellwort Uvularia grandiflora

And I hadn't even reached the bluebells yet! Enjoying the journey, as ever. 

The journey = the destination