Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Wheelbarrow
A simple drawing of your basic wheelbarrow, which at the risk of etymological folly, I’ll go ahead and say, “Sure! Barrel with a wheel underneath and a couple of handles.”
Which kinesiologically-speaking, we humans should be at least two appendages short for the design.
The carrying part would better be described as tray, with two handles extending out to the back. The single wheel is underneath the center front of this tray, and, since clearly this essential tool was originally designed by a child with more whimsey than engineering skills, two triangular legs under the tray at the back. (Elbows for the the tired wheel barrow to rest on).
Somehow, it works.

This is the Ten Things of Thankful bloghop. Hosted by Kristi. Attended by a refreshing variety of writers, bloggers, observers of the world, recordists of life and chroniclers of the vagaries of fate and life and such.

You are invited to join in as a Reader or Participant. Rules, lol*, are simple: share, express, remember, relate imaginings of those people, places and things that have evinced feelings of gratitude; in the previous seven days, hours, years or decades. Ten such Items is a nice decahedronistic sized list.

1) Phyllis bought the family unit a new rake.

Phyllis bringing in a new rake*
Phyllis is standing next to the lamppost in our driveway. She is wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt acknowledging the superior qualities of our canine friends.
To her right the lamppost is looking like a victorian stick-figure. The lamp is a half-a-foot taller than she is and has multiple glass faces around the source of illumination and is capped by something that surely has an excellent Latin-sounding name, like Conicular Top-hatrium.
The grass rakes are leaning against the two cross-bars on the lamppost (surely meant for tying one’s horse to when visiting late at night).
On the left the old rake on the the right the new. They are both bamboo grass rakes and have a triangular fan of teeth that extend a third of the length of the handle, far enough to reach the ground. There is a metal spacer halfway along their length and it has a please curvature.
The old rake is a bleached-beige colour and there are a number of missing or been tines (or teeth). The new rake is new and totally unused.
Maybe I should be concerned…lol
*no! everything is alright, I’m not going anywhere!

2) Una  waiting patiently for Phyllis to grab the backpack on the end of the couch and take her for a walk at Arcadia State Forest.

Dog and Still life.
(Horizontal orientation.)
The far left quarter of the photo is Una in three-quarters silhouette (which, of course, means mostly black with a section of silver black on the back of her head (a window out of frame) and a dog-conical nose and the hint of eyelashes.)
Most of the photo is of a brown leather couch on the lower half and a yellow wall on the upper. At the far end of the couch is a backpack.
Extreme right is a hint of blue. Thats Phyllis in the kitchen preparing a water bottle for the upcoming hike.
Although waiting patiently, Una does not let Phyllis or the backpack out of her sight.

3) Springtime and the Zen of Wheelbarrows. How perfect an exercise/meditation is the proper use of a wheelbarrow? This afternoon, as I was moving leaves from Point A to Point B I got to thinking about tai chi, Carlos Castaneda, how out of shape I’ve gotten and writing this post. It dawned on me that the use of a wheelbarrow offers a very simple set of cues for proper motion and exercise. Standing between the handles, the equal weight in each hand encourages one to keep the back and spine straight. Relaxing the shoulders and neck, lifting with the legs, everything is in line. Staying in the middle of the two handles forces shorter, more thoughtful walking. The forward momentum of the moving weight (the wheelbarrow) demands one maintain a relaxed but deliberate upright posture. Good for the body and surely good for the mind. There is, when all is in balance, an opportunity to clear the mind, the natural motion of the body sweeping out the clutter of oft non-productive thoughts.

(If the above makes any sense, our friend Cynthia’s site, Intuitive and Spiritual is a must visit. With her natural gift for teaching, she makes the business of meditating and mediation most accessible, and therefore, useable and useful.)

Anyway, it was fun exercise and provided me it a Grat Item. Win, win, yo.

4) the Wakefield Doctrine

5) work for the variety of stress-inducers. (not really up to hypo-grat levels, simply an occupational hazard.)

6) Almira excerpt. (Backstory: Almira and Sterling Gulch travel to Kansas)

Almira sat up as the car coasted to a stop.

“Where are we, Sterling?”

Her voice was quiet and, somehow, confident.

“We seem to have come to a fork in the road.”

As forks in the road go, this was a wide fork. It was more like the joining of two separate paths than the splitting of one. Opposite us was a rail fence that ran to the right and the left. There was still enough light to see that behind the fence was the winter remains of a cornfield.

“What the hell is that!”

Almira sat forward in her seat and pointed. A hundred feet or so, back from the road as it disappeared to the right, was what looked like a man wearing a straw hat, standing among the stubble of the previous season’s harvest.

After a second Almira laughed. “A scarecrow! Finally, something that reminds me of home, out here in this endless outdoors!”

Her voice softened, her caution dissipating as the potential threat was better understood.

“Outside of town, back home, there was a small farm that ran along the edge of the Merrimack that we used to walk out to see, on summer days. It had a small herd of cows, three horses and cornfields. But they were normal sized fields, the kind you could run through with your friends on a summer day, not like these monstrosities out here. You could get lost and die before finding your way out of one of these fields.”

I looked at her as she stared, her eyes peaceful, “Then it’s to the right we go?”

Her smile broadened, “Well, it seems like the best choice, does it not, husband of mine?”

“Indeed it does, wife of mine.”

We drove up the road. The light of the sun was beginning to bleed redly into the horizon. Clouds, emboldened by the sun’s decline, gathered like wolves surrounding the dying glow.

I saw lights in the distance, on the left side of the road and pressed on the accelerator.

“So, we might have gotten a bit off the track. If I learned anything fighting in the war, it was: when it starts to get dark, find a place where you can watch all approaches and have something solid at your back.”

I turned in through a pair of rough-hewn wooden gates, both pulled back to the sides in the open position. On the road, just before the gate, was a sign, artfully painted that read: ‘Baumeister Welcome to All’

I parked in front of the two-story farmhouse. It had a covered porch running across the front and lights glowed behind the curtains at each of the four windows. As I closed Almira’s door, I saw a larger building a hundred yards of so away and to the right of the farmhouse. Next to that, a small grove of trees.

I knocked on the door, Almira stood to my right. While I knew better than to ask that she stay in the car, I insisted that she stand slightly behind me, at least until we knew who we were dealing with in this large and well-kept farmhouse.

I could hear a woman’s voice, increasing in volume as she moved about the interior. Distant as if she were in a room to the back of the house, then nearer, but almost immediately sounding distant again. “Teddy!! Are you down there?”

“Mein lieber abwesend gemachter Ehemann!”

“Oh all right. No! Stay in your workshop, I’ll see who it is.” (Her voice grew louder)  “Coming! I will be there in a…”

Frowning, I looked at Almira standing next to me, her car blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She was smiling.

“Such a night this is….”

I heard a latch being thrown and a chain rattling, heavy links giving off a dull clinking sound as she withdrew whatever lock there was on the inside.

The door did not so much open as the light grew from within, broadening into a doorway-shaped illumination. As dark as it now was behind us, we could almost feel the warmth of the light bathe us as we stood on the porch.

“Come in, please! Come in,”

The first thing I saw was a woman’s face, surrounded by light. As she stepped back and my eyes adjusted, the light resolved itself into the interior of the farmhouse. But not all the light. A surprising amount of it stayed in place, surrounding the woman in the open doorway. I then saw her hair, it was the lightest shades of blond possible, without being white. She was nearly as tall as I was and her eyes were of a shade of blue that demanded a thesaurus. The description ‘willowy’ shouldered all other adjectives from my mind.

She looked to my right where Almira stood, the blanket like a cowl over her head, held in a folded bunch at her throat, spilling open down her front, bulging belly and down to just brushing the tops of her shoes.

I glanced down at Almira. I looked back at our host, thinking to introduce ourselves and was startled that, somehow, she was now standing in the middle of the room, still looking at Almira. Granted it had been a long day on the road, but I would swear that this woman essayed the slightest of curtseys, a barely noticeable downward nod of her head. It was enough that her long blonde hair flowed forward around her face, in the briefest of waves.

Almira pulled the blanket from her head and stepped forward.

The blonde woman smiled and said, “Welcome.”

7) something something

8) Sunday Supplement

9) THIS SPACE AVAILABLE. (for anyone on the fence about participating in our little bloghop, send in a grat and attribution and I’ll be happy to post it here. Think of it as a temporary refrigerator with virtual magnets).

10) Secret Rule 1.3 (from the Book of Secret Rules (aka the Secret Book of Rules)

*’cause SBoR/BoSR!