Seasons Change

Dale Pond’s Institute has indeed been hopping in recent weeks, as he reports this week.
If you have an important skill to contribute or would like to donate a tidy sum of money to help the cause, hint, hint, you might consider a visit to La Junta, Colorado to meet Dale if you have not already. Dale already has an extensive and varied list of friends from all over the world. And when winter began to wane and spring arrived I began to see more and more how he is linked to the world from this out of the way town along the Santa Fe Trail.
When I was in elementary and middle school, I visited a relative’s large sheep and cattle ranch on the Montana plains for three summers. Looking back, what struck me was how people found their way to the ranch each summer from nearby Utah as well as far off New York, Canada and of course, the Old World. The Murnion clan was anything but isolated from the world.
And Dale is the same way. Every day his mind is in contact with people globally. Sometimes to transact a sale, other times to share or give knowledge or information. I often hear his busy cell phone ringing away.
Arriving Friday to do my humble cataloging, I was diverted outdoors to do a modest amount of brush trimming along the street, where Robert Otey could not reach due to extension cord limitations. So I got out my hedge clippers and chain saw and cord from my car trunk and cut back the branches that extended into the street. I was making a weak effort to make up for not showing up Tuesday, as expected.
I put in half an hour and had to marvel at the extensive brush and tree cutting Robert had already accomplished the previous few days in heat that got into triple digits on Tuesday. Otey was a hands-on volunteer who got a needed job done. The result was impressive, I could actually now see through the trees and shrubs. Trimmings remained piled everywhere along the curbside for eventual removal.
After my chain got stuck and fell off and I had essentially completed a measly 40 feet or so of brush, I considered that Divine Will and retreated indoors to my comfort zone of book cataloging in the library.
Maybe two hours later when I was expecting to close down and go off to lunch, Ja’na dropped by to say that lunch would be late. Another free meal? Ja’na has truly been a blessing to the institute. While Dale is a good host and chef himself, Ja’na has assumed much of the mid-day cooking, which has freed Dale to contemplate and work on his higher calling.
And that is another parallel to the Montana ranch, by the way. My Aunt Rose Ellen never knew if there would be four or fourteen for lunch any given day. Some days I saw people just suddenly appear around lunch time, I never knew who they all were, but some were county workers and others were neighbors or buyers. They would show up, expecting to be fed. My Aunt would simply send me out to the root cellar to grab another bottle or two of home-canned beef and more potatoes would be peeled to stretch the meal.
Ja’na can cook for a few or a crowd too. It does not phase her. And her cooking I have to say is much more flavorful than our basic Irish meat and potatoes fare. But she makes it look as easy as Aunt Rose Ellen did. (So did my late Uncle Dick, who was a Navy chef on an aircraft carrier before he retired and ended up making those food displays you used to see on the original Love Boat. In fact, one episode of that series was dedicated to Dick Reilly in his memory.)
So there is no more pleasant sound than that of a Buddhist type bell ringing through the institute, calling one and all to dinner.
The quiet somewhat empty institute when I first started dropping by has now shaken off the rest of winter and is now filled with activity and motion and contemplation and spirited conversation and happy bantering.
What I perceived as a quiet spell has come to an end and the Institute is now building energy for the tasks and goals that are before Dale now and to come in the future.
While the setting is not the same as that in the Guess Who Classic “No Time“, some of the words are appropriate.
“Seasons change and so did I …. You need not wonder why.”