So Far We've Come, So Far to Go

Having reached the six month milestone

A year ago, I pondered what life would be like after we’d had six months to adjust to our new life setting in Missouri. Now I know, with some goals and expectations realized, and many more for which we’ll just have to wait and see.

So nothing here is really all that newsworthy, but I am in a decades-long habit of acting like a reader or two might care. Maybe you’re one of them, so here you go:

FreeHand sketch on paper, then imported into Procreate on the iPad to add crude details and color. The Apple pencil is quite the tool.

🍀 I now realize that I rushed to participate in several things when I should have waited for calmer seas that may ultimately come. One of those premature commitments was singing in the chapel choir. Our life after dark is not conducive to my being gone for practice, and I had to rescind my offer to make a joyful noise.

Another “fools rush in” activity was taking one of only seven spaces in the weekly art class. I absolutely don’t know what I’m doing but maybe charcoal sketching to pen and ink to watercolor tinting of landscapes based on my photographs—like the image above. The iPad and ProCreate app together are quick, clean and satisfying. We’ll see.

🍀 Columbia MO set a new heat record for March 14 with 83 degrees. This is not right. But I do benefit from seeing color in the world again. And I’m waiting to hear the first spring peepers soon. It will be like hearing from old friends— the distant relatives of our peepers back on Goose Creek.

And by the way, Columbia was spared the weekend tornado outbreak— a near miss this time, but the season is young. We left Tornado Alley in 1974 (Al to VA) and jumped back in in 2025 (VA to MO.)

🍀 Here’s a way in which I am not a happy camper: It is never quiet and never dark here. I did not even bother to try to see the lunar eclipse this week, where a year ago, I’d have spent the night in the zero-gravity chair next to my telescope. There is just not enough darkness so close to a Roanoke-sized city. Meh.

But it is the noise that distresses me most, and the fact that much of that clatter comes from the paving-over of twenty acres adjacent to the diminished woods of Lenoir Woods Community where we live.

For a year or more to come, the combined strip mall construction and highway intersection rerouting will impact the lives of the several hundred folks who live here.

And the resulting noise, which others say they are used to, adds to my short list of stressors. It is just such a contrast to FloydCo where we would run to the window when we’d hear a car would go past, an hour or more since the last one. If you have quiet, do not take it for granted.

The woods just 200 yards from our apartment were already kind of sad, with many large ash trees felled due to Emerald Ash Borer. Now the land beyond is leveled and prepared for PROGRESS.

🍀 At least with all that is going on in and around the retirement campus, I am in the loop to keep up with the changes. I was asked to be on the grounds committee and also to participate in a capital expansion focus group concerning future plans to add to and modify the campus. There are a lot of moving parts.

And also: The parent organization, previously Lenoir Senior Services (with facilities in MO, PA and IL) has recently been rebranded to EverTrue. Meh.

Surveys and focus groups with current and prospective residents, staff, donors, vendors, corporate partners and others helped inform the organization’s rebranding effort. According to (a spokesperson) the organization’s previous name had led to some confusion in the past regarding whether one had to belong to the Lutheran faith to work or live there. Link

🍀 I have dusted off my digital SLR (Panasonic Lumix FZ200) for a specific photographic goal: to get a full frame shot of a red-headed woodpecker. This is a bird I did not see for 50 years, but is not uncommon here—although there has been a 70% reduction since the 1960s. The camera’s 600mm optical zoom should be adequate under good conditions. I let you know if I have any luck.

🍀 Long-time readers know that most of my rambles over the past five years were written during two very early morning hours—Fred Time, I call it—a personal space where focus and vague clarity are sometimes possible and the world seems to be calm and at peace. But lately, less so.

Ann is now often also awake, but for no purpose but “why should I not get to be up if you are” she asks, not really awake? So keeping a very long sleepy story short, I covet my thinking space and we are looking for non-pharmaceutical encouragements for her to stay asleep and not be bored by 7 a.m.

I have just received a dropper bottle of essential lavender oil and tried it twice myself. Acknowledging the power of self-suggestion, I did experience an odd calm with more vivid-than-ordinary dreams. Tonight is Ann’s turn.

🍀 Finally, a bit of good news to offset my whining about the noise and congestion: a bit of writing of mine will be published in the next issue of the print and digital publication of Conservation Federation of Missouri.

And the history of the founding of that organization is something I will write about separately to tell you what I have learned to explain Missouri’s exemplary record on land conservation and education.

On rare occasions, a spirit will escape containment and cavort. I was fortunate to document this rare occurrence. As I understand it, the fairy sprite did ultimately return to its bottle indoors. It was a good day.