Butt in Chair...

Sunday 10:55 a.m.  I need a blog post for tomorrow, and I’ve got nothing, a position I find myself in a lot lately.  But I know this.  If I start writing, it will come.  That’s why I don’t believe, really, in writer’s block.  Sure, life gets in the way of writing sometimes, well, lots of times, but when I force myself to sit down, something ALWAYS ends up on the page, although, as I type this, I have no idea what.  

I could talk to you about how, in a sort-of back up to corned-beef and cabbage (I like it, my husband doesn’t), about the shepherd’s pie I plan on making after conjuring up this post. (Happy St. Patrick's Day, folks.)  But I’m pretty sure that highlights the paucity of my subject matter.

I could write about the pond down the street, and how the ice is still thick enough for men to stand on.  A group of them gazed down at their fishing holes as we drove by on our way to church early this morning. I don't remember the ice ever being strong enough in mid-March to risk it.   But these days, everyone’s complaining about the cold and I don’t feel like adding to the chorus. More power to the fishermen for their long season.  In a few weeks fissures will spider across the ice, then chunks of it will bob on the breeze.  Not long after, the sun will drop one day and we'll register the music of peepers.  There's no surer sound of spring. (Just cheated there and gave myself a peeper-preview on YouTube, oh, such a hopeful sound.)

I could stick a picture or two in here, and perhaps I will. 

During the the last mild weekend, my husband and I beat it out of the house to walk around the harbor.  I convinced him to trespass a few hundred yards up to the Jesuit retreat and we found the best seat outside of the house.

Later, we climbed Beacon Rock, a mountain of stone at the water’s edge.  I think I remember it is called Beacon Rock because back in the day, folks climbed it to signal to the light keepers stationed a mile out at Minot Light.

The shallow steps chiseled out of rock, and rusted spikes that look like they may have held a safety chain once, offer testimony to that.

That gets me on a train of thought about those light keepers. Imagine being trapped inside a column of stone in the middle of a raging ocean until the cresting seas subside?  I've mentioned in earlier posts, before they built the current tower mid-nineteenth century, two light keepers lost their lives when an earlier version tipped over in a storm.  It would have taken a pretty self-reliant customer to choose that job.  I’m guessing back then, those intrepid keepers felt as far away from earth as astronauts do today, an unfathomable world apart...

Which triggers one last thought...

That movie Gravity may have won a lot of awards, but the idea of watching it scares me to death.