forest fires – Daily Joy with Honey Girl

Bob Marley to the rescue, again

The smoky air out here is thick, smelly, and shows no sign of going away. It poses yet another obstacle to our desire for human companionship and makes everybody sad and anxious. We worry now about the fires devastating our neighbors to the south and east, and we all wish mightily for rain. Not only does the COVID-19 pandemic keep us from each other, we are now obliged to stay in with all the windows shut, lest we make ourselves sick by merely breathing the sooty air. Sigh.

But we survive nonetheless; my way is to create, always to create. Sewing these bright and colorful Respect Quilts brings loving thoughts to mind and helps keep things in perspective. This will pass. Clear skies will return some day and new growth will recommence in those scorched forests. We just have to abide the present, while waiting for better times to come.

In honor of Bob Marley, whose music does so much to help us get by, each Respect Quilt will feature three squares with little birds on them. As the lyrics to Marley’s song, “Three Little Birds” go:

Rise up this mornin’

Smiled with the risin’ sun

Three little birds

Pitch by my doorstep

Singin’ sweet songs

Of melodies pure and true

Sayin’, (“This is my message to you-ou-ou:”)

Singin’: “Don’t worry ’bout a thing

‘Cause every little thing gonna be all right.”

Singin’: “Don’t worry (don’t worry) ’bout a thing

‘Cause every little thing gonna be all right!”

Music heals. Put the music on, and forget your troubles for a while!

Image of Bob Marley album cover by Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15336841

strange smoky weather brings back childhood memories

We rejoiced over our arrival here in Seattle in early July, when we discovered our amazing view of downtown across Elliott Bay. But look at it now.

The weather report is weird: “77 degrees, Smoke.”

Honey Girl and I went for our walk as usual this evening and my eyes have been burning ever since. It is a very strange sensation to live in smoke. The neighbors I talked to on my walk all seemed kind of rattled by this too. “Where there’s smoke there’s fire,” we think anxiously, but it does not make any sense. We’re surrounded by water on three sides!

(map of West Seattle)

One of my favorite children’s books has a harrowing forest fire scene that I’ve never forgotten. It’s not Bambi, it’s Smokey the Bear.

I so love this book. As you see, when the fire engulfs the little bear cub, separating him from his mother, Smokey follows his mom’s advice: “When danger threatens, climb a tree.”

But still, it is a traumatic experience! The text reads: “So up a pine tree Bear Cub went. Around him the forest fire roared and crackled. Flames licked at Bear Cub’s shaggy fur and singed his tender paws. But he closed his eyes and just hung on. When he opened his eyes again after a while, he could scarcely believe what he saw. Instead of the cool, green, shady woods, all around him stood hundreds of ugly blackened sticks with trails of smoke still curling from them.”

The scene where the forest ranger’s daughter gets to play with Smokey was always my favorite. What a dream come true to play with a living Teddy bear!

However, the shrewd critic might point out a few flaws in this tragi-comedy. Where is Smokey’s mother, for example? And what about Bambi and Dumbo? Why do writers of children’s literature dispense with mothers so often?

Maybe because the kids secretly wish for that…

Then there’s the little problem of watching Smokey grow into a grown-up man-cub. Like the female creature dreamed up, then destroyed, in Shelley’s Frankenstein, the grown-up Smokey of reality might not be quite so nice…

Wish it would rain.