Tempting fate and tempests

The snow packed down by snowshoes was the last to melt and fade into the yellow-gray lawn north of the house we rent. Deep pockets of snow are likely yet found 50 miles (80 kilometers) or so northwest, where the National Weather Service station near Gaylord recorded snowfall this year exceeding any other on the books.

The season of renewal is premature at this latitude and everyone is looking around with justified suspicion. Not to say they fail to appreciate a day of sunshine and relative warmth. But there pervades a sense that discussing it too much or directly will jinx it.

Tempting fate I cut my hair close. It is one of several ritual acts to ready myself. Waking slightly earlier; stretching more often; consuming more water and calories. A busy season is approaching but it’s not here yet—perhaps time’s left to prepare. 

A robin has been running around the yard in front of the aforementioned house, having returned from wherever robins winter. The American Robin should remain Michigan’s state bird. We claimed it 12 years before Connecticut and 18 before Wisconsin. Ceding elements of style and identity to copycats would demonstrate weakness.

Running around is on the agenda, having registered for MDNR’s “Run for the Trees” Earth Day/Arbor Day run-anywhere 5k. The event raises funds that raise trees. The U.S. Postal Service expects to deliver a registration packet to the house shortly after St. Patrick’s Day.

Will the parcel arrive before his first proper training run? Stay tuned to find out.

Tickets for ---------- Theatrical Troupe’s “The Little Mermaid” sold out quickly. Disney’s animated 1989 movie and its soundtrack released the same year rocked my childhood and planted an old growth thicket in the forest of my memories.

Where father played a game of classic rock trivia with me any time he was driving (“Who’s this? I’ll give you a hint: it’s the name of a city. That’s right, Boston”), mother would play cassette tapes I’d begun collecting. The soundtrack to “The Little Mermaid” is among tapes noticeably degraded from so many repeated plays.

It’s degrading much more slowly now that a magnetic tape cassette player numbers neither among the possessions we trundle from place to place nor the common household items acquired on settling much of anywhere these days. Tapes lay silent in a drawer and compact discs in books of sleeves, physical units searching for a diminishing field of players.

College radio and other internet streams, with occasional selections from an eclectic mix of vinyl records, are more likely origins of "Echoes" (1971) off our walls these days. 

The times they are a changin’.