Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens,
Brown paper packages tied up with strings,
These are a few of my favorite things.
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles,
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings,
These are a few of my favorite things.
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes,
Silver white winters that melt into springs,
These are a few of my favorite things.
When I'm feeling sad,
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don't feel so bad.
I watched The Sound of Music last week, which happens to be one of my favorite movies. I’ve seen it more times than I can count and who knows how many more times I will watch it. And as the temperature dropped and the snow piled up, and January dragged on, and high-winter malaise gripped me, I started thinking about my favorite things as a way, as Julie Andrews advises, of not feeling so bad. The list of favorite things in the song doesn’t closely reflect my personal tastes, although I do love crisp apple strudels, schnitzel with noodles, and when winter melts into spring.
I’ve seen those quizzes from time to time on social media that promise to reveal my True Personality based on answering a series of questions about my favorite things – favorite food, favorite color, favorite pet, etc. I never answer them. I know what they are actually designed to do – reveal personal information to online data collectors. But this week, while contemplating what to write about in this Journal, I decided to reflect on a few of my favorite things. I do it at the risk of boring you. I know, as E. B. White once wrote, that “the essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest. …Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays.” So here I am, writing my roughly one thousand one hundred and forty-fourth essay – I’ve written one almost every week since the beginning of January 2000. How’s that for effrontery and stamina?
Declaring my favorite food is easier if I can name my favorite kind of food rather than a specific one. Even then, it isn’t so easy. Italian or Mexican? It would be a toss up. But then, on second thought, I’ll just say ice cream – as long as I’m allowed to vary the flavors. My love of ice cream goes back to my earliest childhood memories. Over the years I’ve had favorite brands and favorite flavors, they come and go, but a good and simple vanilla is truly my favorite, followed by black raspberry.
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| Vanilla, the King of Ice Cream Flavors. |
My favorite color has always been green. I like to think it is also God’s favorite color since He designed chlorophyll to be green, thus making this, a world dominated by plant life, very green. And when John the Revelator describes the throne of God that he saw in vision, he says it was “to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.” That’s a lot of heavenly green. My favorite season is summer, the greenest season.
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| Chlorophyll. |
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| An interesting depiction of the throne of God from Revelation. |
Other favorites are nearly impossible for me to name – favorite author, favorite book, favorite flower. My preferences change all the time depending on my mood. And as for my favorite child, how can there be such a thing? But if there was, I would hope that they each think in their hearts that they are my favorite.
Naming my favorite music is difficult. I like so many kinds, but prefer classical above all others. And if you were to demand a definite answer as to my favorite composer, I would say without hesitation Johann Sebastian Bach, but again, there are others I prefer at other times depending on my mood – Mozart, Vaughan Williams, Chopin, Brahms. The same goes for art. Sometimes I favor High Renaissance, other times Impressionist, other times . . . it varies. With music and art, it’s easier to say what kinds I don’t like.
The weather last week was not my favorite sort of weather. We began the week with a snow storm. Monday morning we awoke to nine inches of new snow – not as much as predicted, but more than enough for me. There wasn’t any school that day because it was MLK Day. Stacey and Hannah had work, but they left late after the plows had been through a few times. I had to admit, begrudgingly, that the snow was pretty, but it got less and less pretty as I shoveled out the driveway. Later, when the sun came out for a few moments, I took a walk with my camera to “enjoy” the beauty of the snow. But what I really enjoyed most was coming back in after my walk to sit by the warm wood stove.
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| After shoveling. |
We were supposed to be back in school on Tuesday, but it was canceled because more snow was falling and some of the back roads were still not cleared. That meant I had a day to do as I pleased, so I spent the morning listening to Bach while working on family history, one of my favorite pastimes. I had to stop for a while to go out and carry more wood from the big woodpile outside onto the back porch. I say big woodpile, but it is quickly dwindling and we haven’t yet had a chance to go and get more.
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| Pretty, but I'm tired of it. |
A few weeks ago, one of my water heaters down in the barn quit working. I have two, one for the chickens and one for the peacocks. It was the peacocks’ heater that stopped working and that was bad because it’s so cold that their water freezes solid in an hour or two. So I’ve been rotating waterers, taking the frozen one out of the peacock pen and setting it on the chickens’ heater and putting fresh water in its place. It wasn’t the best situation. I ordered a new heater and it arrived on Thursday. We’ve reached that point in these winter doldrums where things like the delivery of a new heater is an Exciting Event. I set it up right away and things are as they should be down in the barn again.
That is, except for the starlings that are still finding some way to get into the barn. I’ve looked over every inch of the facade for the gap that lets them in and I haven’t found it. And their numbers have increased. One day last week when I opened the door to gather the eggs, I counted 28 starlings, and there were probably more because they were flying around and hard to count. They are devouring the chickens’ feed and they foul their waterers with their droppings. And, as if those depredations weren’t bad enough, I believe they are now pecking eggs open and eating the insides. I’m at my wits end trying to figure out how to keep them out. I hate to wage war against them, but they are a problem and a threat to the health of my flock.
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| European starling (not my photo). |
Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) are a European species that were purposely introduced to North America in 1890 by a well-meaning but misguided man named Eugene Schiefflin (1827-1906) who wanted to establish populations in America of every bird mentioned in the works of Shakespeare. The list included around 600 types of birds, including skylarks, nightingales, song thrushes, and European starlings. For all the trouble the starlings have caused, Shakespeare only referred to them in a single line from Henry IV, Act 1, Scene 3, when Hotspur says: “Nay, I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak; Nothing but ‘Mortimer,’ and give it him to keep his anger still in motion.”
No one knows exactly how many species of birds Schieffelin released, but most of them failed to adapt to their new environment and died a quick death. Schieffelin released 60 European starlings in Central Park in 1890 and 40 more a year later. But even the hardy starlings had a tough time surviving and 68 of the original 100 birds died after their release. But it turned out that starlings were the most well-adapted of the Shakespearean species and the remaining population of 32 survived and prospered. They multiplied and the starling population exploded as they spread rapidly throughout the entire United States. Their present population in the US is estimated to be around 47,000,000.
Starlings are considered an invasive species and are disliked by ecologists and birders because they compete with, displace, and kill many native birds. They also have been found to carry five bacterial diseases, two fungal diseases, four protozoan diseases, and six viral diseases that can infect the livestock and humans they like to be around. However, despite their bad reputation, they do have some positive attributes. They eat tons of gypsy moths and caterpillars, flies and fly larvae, and many other insect pests. They are talented mimics – they can copy the sounds of humans, other birds, and inanimate objects. They are known for their amazing synchronized aerial murmuration flights. They are not my favorite birds (which are, oddly, crows and ravens), but they are pretty with their iridescent feathers covered with starry dots and I do like to hear them singing with their strange sometimes melodic, sometimes metallic, buzzing, whistling, gurgling song. I just wish they would stay out of my barn!
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| A murmuration of starlings (not my photo). |
On Friday when I got up, it was 17° below zero. I wasn’t in school that day. I stayed home because our neighbor, Ray, was coming over to fix our furnace and clogged drains. The furnace had been acting up, not coming on unless you stomped on the grate. It’s happened before. Some little switch gets messed up. But with this extra cold weather, we couldn’t let it do that. Ray fixed it in a few minutes. He also had to open a clogged drain down in the cellar. It’s nice having a good neighbor who is a plumber and heating repairman.
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| Friday morning. |
Yesterday morning it was even colder – we hit 24° below zero, the coldest it has been so far this winter. It was a terribly cold, but beautiful morning and I couldn’t resist it – I had to take my camera and go for a walk to watch the sunrise. It took me a while to bundle up. I had thermal underwear under my denims, woolen socks, a thermal shirt, my fleece-lined hoodie, my warmest coat, boots, hat, and gloves. When I stepped out the door, the cold slammed into me. When I inhaled, the inside of my nose froze. And when I exhaled, my breath froze on my beard. My eyes teared up and my nose began to run, but exerting much willpower, off I went. I followed our road down to the highway and walked along the beaver pond, taking pictures along the way. I almost made it to Burrell’s, my favorite spot to watch the sun come up over the hill, when my camera battery died. Without the ability to take any more photos, braving the cold suddenly seemed less attractive. I jogged home as fast as I could, removed all the extra layers, and sat myself down by a heater to thaw. And I plugged in my camera battery to recharge.
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| On my walk yesterday morning. |
When I woke up this morning and looked at the thermometer, I thought “Good, it’s warmer this morning, 16°,” then realized how sad it is that I would consider that a warm morning. We’ve been to church and back again and soon it will be time for lunch. The last week of January lies ahead and it looks typical – snow off and on all week starting tonight, temperatures hovering around zero. It could seem dismal except it is the LAST week of January. I’m ready to move on into February, which I know won’t be any better, but I’ll be glad to get it over with.
