More Critters
A very pleasant thing about writing a weekly blog is receiving comments from readers. Here are some responding to my post last week about critters seen while jogging before sunup on Dallas’s Katy Trail:
One wrote about a delightful Louisianan that we had both known in New York, who as a girl down there had pet raccoon named Rascal. Her dad “found the kit abandoned and brought it back, and it moved into the house. It loved to surprise visitors by crawling along the top of the draperies and jumping down on them.” This New Yorker herself saw an instance of devoted mother love in a female raccoon near the tennis courts in Riverside Park. “Every spring a raccoon would have a litter on the downhill river side of the courts. Then she would carry each kit to a hillside spot on the east side of the court. This entailed climbing a tall fence with the baby, waddling across Courts 9 and 10, and climbing the tall fence again. This was repeated for each kit, usually three.”
A couple of feeders of feral cats spoke up in their favor. One has a cat-allergic husband who has fallen in love with a cat he has named Pierette. The affection is reportedly mutual and, on the human side, self-sacrificial.
Speaking of cat lovers, Cat Stevens was praised for having made “Morning Has Broken” famous. The hymn itself was commissioned by Percy Dearmer, an influential priest of the Church of England who wanted a hymn to praise God for every morning. He also wanted it to the tune “Bunessan” which, as we know from the song, has a very unusual pattern: 3 short notes followed by 2 long notes—repeated three times; then 3 short notes followed by one long note; then the whole thing repeated. There was no other hymn with that pattern. Dearmer commissioned Eleanor Farjeon, the poet, to write the words.
One reader responded to this by describing how he begins his day: “I try to be aware of the first second that I gained consciousness from sleep, and having gained consciousness I focus directly on my heartbeat and my breathing and then on my sight as I open my eyes, and then on the feel of the blankets and of the smell of cool very early morning air coming in through the window, and of the taste of my tongue on my lips, and of the sounds I hear, and then to focus on the gift I have again received of my own consciousness, and to give thanks. . . .”
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Out & About. This Sun., Feb. 1, the Good Books & Good Talk seminar will meet to discuss The Girls of Slender Means, a short novel by the Scottish writer Muriel Spark. Anyone who has read the novel is welcome to join the conversation (others may come and listen). We meet in Garrett Hall at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, Dallas, on the 2nd floor, from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Parking is in the Cathedral Arts apartment building directly south of the cathedral. When you walk out, the cathedral will be to your left and Garrett Hall to your right. From about 4:45 p.m. someone will be at the glass entrance to Garrett Hall to let you in.
I am to preach and then speak at St. Phillip’s Church in Sulphur Springs, Tex., on Feb. 15.
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On the Web. A piece of mine on “Babies in Public” begins with the elimination of open seating on my favorite airline. From there I go to church. You can read it here: https://humanlifereview.com/celebrating-babies-in-public-spaces/