Vol. 92, March 19th, 2024 Published a Day Early Online
It’s Official
Springtime Begins at 11:06 PM Tuesday
Happy Equinox! The Sun rises due east, sets due west, crosses the celestial equator, and in other words, Happy Spring. Winter and Summer Solstice are the marks of the farthest and closest “lean” of the Earth as we orbit the Sun, while the Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes are the midpoints–the equals. If our planet were a marshmallow on a tilted stick, today is when the northern and southern halves are toasted equally. (How’s that for science?)
Down here on the ground, big things are happening in a myriad of little, quiet ways, arranged by a “perhaps hand” as E. E. Cummings puts it. The Shepherds Purse is blooming in tiny white stars, and the forager bees return to the hive laden with yellow satchels of pollen on their legs.
Even up on the stern heights of the Blue Ridge, spicebush hangs out lemon-lime buds in the stillness broken only by the croaking ravens and the wind in the white pine.
Ten thousand daffodils bloomed wayside yesterday as I flew by at seventy miles an hour.
Life may be fast, but I’m trying not to miss these little things.
A Saturday Memory
Spring hasn’t arrived in the mountains yet, but the classic cars have! This 1931 Ford rolled by an overlook on Skyline Drive on the last Saturday of winter, March 2024.
Happy Birthday, Wyatt Earp (1848)
The famous (and sometimes infamous) lawman was the last surviving party of the OK Corral shootout, lived till 80, and consulted on early Western movies.
(Earp shown at roughly my age…)
Carol’s Appalachian Word of the Week
Today’s word is Haint:
1. Ghost/witchy looking woman.
2. Pejorative–Don’t be scared, she’s just an old haint!
Haiku of the Week
A driving spring rain
gliding, wending through the trees
speaks in little drops
–Basho
Poems of the Week
For further spring poetry, dig Sonnet 98, E .E. Cummings’
Spring is Like a Perhaps Hand, and The
Enkindled Spring by D. H. Lawrence.
(Full length poems omitted in the print version of The Nighthawk, included below)
Sonnet 98: From you have I been absent in the spring
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer’s story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight
Drawn after you, – you pattern of all those.
Yet seem’d it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.
Spring is Like a Perhaps Hand
E. E. Cummings
Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window, into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and
changing everything carefully
spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things, while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and
without breaking anything.
The Enkindled Spring
This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.
I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,
Faces of people streaming across my gaze.
And I, what fountain of fire am I among
This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed
About like a shadow buffeted in the throng
Of flames, a shadow that's gone astray, and is lost.
Write to Us!
The Nighthawk is a new old-fashioned way to connect, published weekly. You’re invited to write back, or just enjoy reading. Let’s have some fun! It’s a social paper! Send stories, etc to: PO Box 783, Rustburg, VA 24588 or Joshurban@protonmail.com
Letters from Josh
(A weekly update from Josh Urban’s adventures on the farm and in the city. #177)
Appearing in the Altavista Journal, etc.
Late Night Radio–With Josh Urban
Jam Sessions
Howdy, folks, and welcome back to the show. You should have been at that Artificial Intelligence (AI) talk the other week. The discussion time was almost as long as the presentation, and that's the way it should be. We all wondered aloud: What does AI mean for how we live?
The best part: people started to say what they actually thought. There was an air of bravery about it, which is strange. Is thinking out loud forbidden? What can we do about it?
I started working life as an electric guitarist. Talking reminds me of jam sessions or rehearsals, and how learning music is a lot like trying out new ideas.
You'd learn a song, or a cool new blues lick that “sounds just like Hendrix.” (It didn't, unless you squinted with your ears, but still...) Polishing it up at home, it would sound pretty good. Then you take it to band practice. The drummer and bass player would thunder out the perfect groove, but man, your new Hendrix line fell apart when tested against the real world. The weakness showed when other people pushed back in a friendly manner.
It would be back to the “woodshed” to work the bugs out. The next time everyone jammed, well, it sounded groovy. After a few more rehearsals, the Hendrix lick would rock the house on Saturday night at the biker bar and grille.
This strikes me at how ideas work. They'll sound fine in my head, but when I open my mouth–oh boy. I got into it with a lady at the farmer's market last week. (You can't take me anywhere.)
Halfway through our verbal boxing about politics, I complimented her. “See, this is why talking is important. You're pushing back, and not letting me get away with being sloppy.” She laughed in agreement, and our boxing turned into a conversation. We both left the better for it.
I heard we think by speaking, which seems true. This “jam session with words” is how I learn, and test ideas. Sometimes they work, and line up with the rest of the band, a ripping line that tells 'em how it is. Sometimes they don't. The drummer might stop cold, muffle the cymbals, lean over, raise an eyebrow, and say “what?” I've been fired like that from bands, and it's only a matter of time that I'm punched for an idea. But I won't stop thinking–or speaking.
Are we making these idea jam sessions unfashionable, raising the stakes too high? “You'd better speak right, pal, and play your idea good enough for the big stage, or we'll have your head, and your reputation while we're at it.” (Cancel culture.)
I've had boring jams where everyone in the band knew the song and we didn't have to try. It was safe, garbage, an echo chamber. Nobody learned, nobody grew. My favorite ones were with musicians who all pushed each other, made me play at the edge of my ability, were patient with the occasional fumble, as long as I was trying, and brought me up to their level. One day I got in way over my head at a band practice with a blind lady who sang like Patsy Cline and a bassist who'd sat in with Miles Davis. We ate pizza and laughed together after the rehearsal finished. I left humbled, and inspired to practice more. Being worthy is a good goal.
The AI talk at the Timbrook Library felt like that to me. It was good to jam with everyone. It was good to talk, to say what we thought, as carefully as we could, and to grow. Let's do more of that.
Catch you on the flip side,
Josh
Send big ideas and extra guitar picks to P.O. Box 783, Rustburg, VA 24588, or on X @RealJosh Urban