2,996 - Ronald Orsini - victim of 9/11 Attacks

As my eyes fell on the hand placed tenderly on Ronald Orsini's arm and looked into the smiling, happy eyes of his wife, Arlene, my heart broke with the implication of loss - of the hole in her life and her daughter's. Arlene wears a holiday sweater, festooned with snowflakes and a winter scene. Perhaps this picture was taken during the Christmas holiday. I see an aluminum foil covered casserole on her stove and tupper ware containers behind Ron. They were obviously happy and looking forward to the joys of the holiday and as I read below, toward a future that held the promise of grandchilden. On this anniversary of the tragedy of September 11, 2001, I send a ripple through cybersapce that says his name, that says that he was, and that he was loved and will be forever remembered among the victims of that day of unthinkable pain. His grandson Zachary was born Sept.26, 2001. Zachary will never know the reassruing presence of his grandfather or learn how to swing a golf club at his side.

Ronald Orsini
Man misses grandson's birth

Nov. 28, 2001

Ron Orsini groused about the upcoming birth of his first grandchild. Don't expect him to cancel his golf outings to babysit, he kept telling his wife Arlene.But neither his wife nor his only daughter paid much attention to Orsini's bluster.The man who vowed never to babysit had already bought a crib and video monitoring equipment for when his grandson stayed at his Hillsdale, N.J., home. Zachary Matthew Ronald Pandolfi was born on Sept. 26.Zachary's maternal grandfather died Sept. 11 when a hijacked airliner crashed into the World Trade Center. Orsini, 59, worked as a broker for Cantor Fitzgerald on the 105th floor of the north tower.Arlene, Orsini's wife for 34 years, says her athletic husband would have made a great grandfather."We joked that he would probably have little golf clubs made," she said, "when the baby was born."

--Fred Carroll (Daily Press)

Many people knew that he loved to dance, but not many were aware that he had won many dancing competitions as a boy, or that he had studied ballet.
It's no surprise that the dancing was a surprise to many of his friends. Arlene Orsini, his wife of nearly 30 years, describes him as being "kind of klutzy" when not dancing. "I used to say to him, what would you be like if you hadn't danced ballet."
Ronald Orsini's greatest talent, in his wife's eyes, was his unrelenting optimism. "I'm such a pessimist," she said, "and he would always turn to me and say: `Stop worrying about it. It's not that important.' He just amazed me."

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on Sunday, April 7, 2002.

Ghost Smiles

The photograph of my father is almost fifteen years old. It was only this week that I was finally able to display it on the shelf in the bay window. He was six months from death and had come to stroll with Mom and me through the spring gardens in Toledo. A gentler, wiser man never lived. He died within nine months of his diagnosis of Lou Gehrig's disease (amytrophic lateral sclerosis).

As I photographed the photograph - I noticed the Muse of the Dance smiling above him and then discovered the ghost smiling rapturously back from the holly bush outside the window. (No. I don't believe in ghosts, but couldn't resist that gauzy reflection's implication)

Just Ducky

This summer produced a few poems - nothing too eloquent, but I like this one. Have you noticed the way ducks seem perpetually pleased? The expression on their faces is one of the sweetest smiles on earth. Yes, yes, just one of many. You probably have your favorites. Hmmm? :0)

Smiling

The duck cradles water
on her breast.
Watch the way she smiles
as the crystal crest
lays its cheek against warm down
and lifts the lake,
without a sound,
then sparkles into Cupid's dart
beneath her little
bobbing heart.

___________________________________________

I'm Baaack :0)

Wow. This is so interesting - having access to my blog again. Hmmm . . . the care and feeding of a blog . . . Hmmm. In a small way, its absence felt a bit like no longer having pets to fuss over. This is interesting. But, I'll treat it like the stray that shows up at my back door. I'll dig out the old dog dishes and start over. This picture is one of my summer favorites, taken at Gray's Beach, Cape Cod. I don't know this little boy, but I understand his longing.

Howard Nemerov (1920-1991)

I've subscribed to 'Poem of the Week' and they just sent this truly beautiful poem. It reminded me of the photo that I took last November. We'd had our first 'hard water' day and the sparrows looked so disconsolate. When I encounter a poem that so perfectly captures the sense of something I wonder how I ever find the nerve to pick up my pen (er, laptop) again.


'Because You Asked About the Line
Between Prose and Poetry'


Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned into pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn't tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell

. . . . . .
(Rather lovely, eh?)

Bun Fuzz

Fungus parasitizing fungus. It's all part of the rotten world around us without which we'd be buried in plant and animal material. If you thought that mushrooms were fusty and dull click Here for some wonderful photos. Take a look at a few of mycology's subjects and I'm certain you'll be as hooked as I. Someday I'm going to post my time lapse of omphalotus illudens (olearius) It glowed!

Indian Pipes - Henry's Tobacco Pipes

A century and a half later this relative of the blueberry is just as interesting as it is illusive in the efforts to identify and name it.
This from Greg's 'The Blog of Henry David Thoreau':

Thoreau's Journal: 30-Jul-1853
The tobacco-pipe has also pushed up there amid the dry leaves in the shade. It is abundant now, and here. Both stem and flowers and scales are a pure and delicate crystalline white. What to name it? Sheathed with delicate white scales.

Ocean Effects

Nothing profound. I just wanted to post some of my favorite summer pictures before the autumnal equinox eclipses the memories of tidal flats, stranded shells and my kid-sister's pretty nail polish. That margin between vast water and solid land is fascintaing.

'Now' Reflected & Refracted

When you face this moment of life with full consciousness, the miracle happens. The mind stops and suddenly you are aware, silent and at peace. You enter the fire of Now.
Put aside your ideas about the ultimate truth and experience reality directly.
These photos record photons of the reflected visible light of the electromagnetic spectrum. (Plato's cave shadows?) They in turn have bounced from clouds and trees and air molecules to ultimately collect on my retina. The rest is pure mystery. Yes, even more so, the pleasure it all provides. To watch water magic go to Bonita's 'Flitzy Phoebie Blog and watch her canoe videos. Entrancing.

Nibbled and Frayed

Annie Dillard, in her 1975 Pulitzer Prize winning book Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, wrote:"I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them..." The butterflies I've been watching are looking a little weary - still, they delight.

Bugs and Those Who Love Them

This regarding the poetic effect of a bug voice on Henry David Thoreau. His Aug. 4, 1851 entry from Greg's 'The Blog of Henry David Thoreau':

"As my eye rested on the blossom of the meadow-sweet in a hedge, I heard the note of an autumnal cricket, and was penetrated with the sense of autumn. Was it sound? or was it form? or was it scent? or was it flavor? It is now the royal month of August. When I hear this sound, I am dry as the rye which is everywhere cut and housed, though I am drunk with the season'’s wine."

You've felt yourself respond emotionally to this chorus. I wonder why responses like these have been selected for - what possible adaptive value in this?

August is all about insect noise: Tree cicada,cricket, katydid. All that chirping, buzzing protein draws its corollary in the consumer aisle - I didn't manage a picture of cicada killers. They're fast, scary and ugly.

A Little Coincidence

In Thursday's Queen Anne's Lace post I noticed the suggestion of a shed in the background. Sorting through this year's Cape Cod pictures I found this picture of the Umbrella Walker. It's the same shed, but taken ten years apart. The Queen Anne's Lace was taken with my 35mm camera,this one with my Canon digital. Both were taken at the Fort Hill promontory on Cape Cod, probably the prettiest view on the Cape as at sunset you're high above Nauset Marsh and the town of Orleans. The marsh glows as you look toward the ocean beyond. I was facing inland for these photos. There's the loveliest homestead there and the Captain Penniman House that was built by its namesake, the captain of a whaler.

Queen Anne's Lace

Katherine Hepburn loved to bring arm-fulls of Queen Anne's Lace into her home. It occurs to me that that I've never collected it for indoors and I don't know why. I've always loved it, fiddled with it on my walks - even photographed it as you see above. Hmmmm. But why not bring it indoors? I think I know. It's been such a long time since I'd tried to gather it that I'd forgotten. It doesn't want to leave the beauty at the meadow's edge, the light brush of the shy doe as she pauses to check the field for safe passage. Try to pluck the wild carrot and find a stalk so tough and fibrous that your hands lose heart in the task. Try! (Take some tough old shears if you're determined to have it snowing on your mantel in August:0)

Whoooeeee!

I love the physical expression of the kid on the Cape Cod shoreline. It just shouts 'Whoa!' I wonder if he thought the parasailor was going to make unintentional landfall at his feet. The heat index here is in the 100's today. That rooster tail of 65' ocean spray looks so refreshingly cool.

Snow . . . . ?

Remember the white crystalline stuff that you thought would never ever yield to Spring? Today, it almost looks good. This little wren I photographed in February commiserated through the patio doors. This week, those same doors have been foggy with condensation because we've got the air-conditioner battling the sweltering air on the other side. I'd hate to have to choose between these two temperature extremes. I wonder, a lifetime of 12' above or 90' and high humidity?

Galaxy and Black Hole

In a near heat-stroke delirium, I snapped this picture of a spider web and its owner. I couldn't shake the sense of the metaphor that the spider is a black hole sitting at the center of a galaxy, its concealed mass drawing other inhabitants inexorably into its heart. Sorry for the tone, here. Actually, I think spiders are cool and I don't scream for help when I see one - hmmmm . . . except for the 4-incher on the inside of the shower curtain in the cabin in Arizona. I screamed. Thank God for men who still come running.

A Reduced Vista

Adjusting to a diminished palette has taken a few days. The sweeping vistas of sparkling ocean horizon and beach dunes disappearing beyond an encroaching fog bank, are memory. My eyes have modified their expectations and focus again on the loveliness, amusement and mystery at hand.
Watching clouds from my parked car, I noticed the TBG's rose garden writ small, but gem-like, within the watery confines of my dashboard vase of daylilies. (I, of course, have inverted this image in ACDSee)

Beauty

Casey posits questions on his blog that only the foolish or erudite dare respond to. Yours truly is the poster child for the first category. In a recent post he touched on the concept of 'beauty' and Kant's position in approaching aesthetics that "either there is beauty, and it must be a universal/ideal concept, or there is no beauty." He then wades into the question of the universality of ethics and morality. (I hope I've approximated within some degree of accuracy the sense of this)

It's dazzling to follow along as he and his readers weigh in on these serious issues. I am as a little gnat bouncing off the windowpane as this feast of intellectual sparring unfolds within his blog's book-strewn shelves. But, even the gnat is drawn by that which education and culture did not implant in its tiny brain.
Beauty is. I know it when I see it. I live because it 'is'.

The photo was taken at sunsent on the elbow of Cape Cod. Beautiful?

Home From The Sea

It's so nice not to be in motion. Soloing Interstate 90 for two days (some in rain) challenges this Nervous Nelly. It's so tough not to indulge the longing and the regret that sea breeze and beach roses are a fading memory and that a great chunk of this continent now lies between us and our son. I remind myself that air travel has vastly reduced those distances. I really do try to be a glass-half-full gal, but it seems sometimes beyond my capacity. Now there's the laundry, the month's worth of vacation detritus spilling from the van and jeep and the need to resist the couch-potato position now that the paths and beauty of Cape Cod are once again, next summer's dream.

Cape Cod Montage

Fog and early sunrises. Chatham is on the eastern edge of the time zone. Birdsong at 4:30 am. Land, water and life that exists because of the marriage of the two.