April 2020 - Michael N. McGregor

Bees in the City

Two days ago, I was doing a phone consultation with a writer who, among other things, was writing about bees. When I looked up from my notes, what did I see in our yard? A huge swarm of hundreds of…bees. I’ve never seen such a thing. It was strangely beautiful.

As I continued my consultation, the swarm lessened and eventually seemed to be down to a few dozen bees circling like electrons around an overgrown rhododendron. When I got off the phone, I went out to look closer and saw what is in the picture here: an upside down bee cone. It was two feet tall and just as wide at its widest part.

Fortunately, our neighbor used to have beehives and had the right equipment, as well as the desire to have one again. So last night he came and dropped the cone into a garbage bin and took the squirming mass off to put in one of his old bee boxes.

He missed a few, but over the past two days they’ve disappeared, so maybe they’re all together now.

Coincidentally, I’ve been reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in whose works the kind of coincidence in my first paragraph here happens all the time. Maybe more is at work in our world than we know.

Here a picture of the bees’ new home:

“Love in the Time of Cholera,” in the Time of Coronavirus

I started reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera yesterday, as every writer should at some point during a pandemic. It is so beautifully rich in language and poignant and, what I didn’t expect, funny. Here are two lines from early in the book I thought especially evocative:

“In summer an invisible dust as harsh as red-hot chalk was blown into even the best-protected corners of the imagination by mad winds that took the roofs off the houses and carried away children through the air.”

and

“At nightfall, at the oppressive moment of transition, a storm of carnivorous mosquitoes rose out of the swamps, and a tender breath of human shit, warm and sad, stirred the certainty of death in the depths of one’s soul.”

Wow.

To Take What Is, In Both Hands

Sculpture by Gustav Vigeland (1869–1943)
photograph: © Michael N. McGregor

I keep a copy of this poem/reflection by my writing desk. It seems more important now than ever (an English translation follows the German):

Zu Lebzeiten

by Jochen Mariss

Laß uns wieder lernen,
den Augenblick zu genießen,
zu nehmen, was ist,
mit beiden Händen,
hier und jetzt zu leben,
bevor wir das Leben verbracht haben
mit sorgenvollen Blicken in die Zukunft
und den Erinnerungen an die gute alte Zeit.

In Life

by Jochen Mariss

Let us learn again
to enjoy the moment,
to take what is
in both hands,
to live here and now,
before we have spent our life
in anxious glances toward the future
and memories of the good old times.

p.s. The photograph here is from Vigeland Sculpture Park in Oslo, Norway, and dedicated to those who are self-isolating with children. 🙃

Preparing To Be Free

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, Washington, DC
photo © Michael N. McGregor

STUDY that which you would like to see in this world—peace, truth, faithfulness, community, economic fairness, good government—and it will have a better chance of coming to be.

On this day of hope, let us all prepare our minds and hearts to work for a better world when we are free again.

Happy Easter to all!

Wisdom from the First Female Mayor of an American City

Bertha K. Landes, Seattle mayor 1926-1928

In doing research for a new project, I came across this quote from Bertha K. Landes, who was elected mayor of Seattle in 1926, becoming the first female mayor of any major American city:

“I threaten to shoot on sight, without benefit of clergy, anyone calling me the mayoress instead of the mayor. Joking aside, I am fighting for a principle in taking that stand. Let women who go into politics be the real thing or nothing! Let us, while never forgetting our womanhood, drop all emphasis on sex and put it on being public servants.”

Although Landes cleaned up the city and had the support of important elements such as the Seattle Times, she was defeated in her reelection bid. The man who beat her, a political neophyte named Frank E. Edwards, did all he could to make the election about whether the city wanted to be led by a woman or a man. Sadly, his cynical approach worked, even among women.

I’m happy to say Seattle has a strong female mayor again (the first since Bertha)–and I hope that after November, we’ll have many more female public servants across this country. God knows we’ve had enough men who don’t know the meaning of “public” or “servant.”