It rained nearly five inches in Ypsilanti this Wednesday. My friend Lee lives there and reports that there was three feet of water in the street in front of her house. How did she know how deep the water was? She and intrepid neighbors were out in it, making sure the drains were clear.
“It came up to here,” she said, putting the side of her hand high up on her leg. “The trouble was, the water was coming so fast that it flowed right past the drains.”
She wasn’t worried about water reaching her house, as she lives on a bit of a hill, but it did come inching up her driveway. It reached the bottom of the doors of a couple cars she could see from her place although, when we spoke, she didn’t yet know if the water reached the interiors.
The water receded the next day, leaving what a neighbor described as tide marks on their lawns. “I have quite a lot of someone’s woodchips in my yard,” he said. “They paid good money for them, and now they’re here. I wonder if they’ll be coming down the road to pick them up.”
Lee had a thrill earlier in the week, she said, when she was out walking Tess. On the far side of a field, Lee could see a heap of dark feathers and hoped it wasn’t a large, dead bird. Whatever it was, though, Tess detected its scent in the air and insisted on going over to investigate. When the two of them were upon it, a mother turkey and two fledglings exploded into the air in front of them.
When we were kids, we lived in rural area and regularly encountered pheasants who did the same thing. They’d hold their spots under cover–which is to say, out of sight—until we were about to step on them. Then they’d explode into flight. Pheasants are known for doing this. It makes a tremendous noise, and your heart pounds.
Turkeys are much bigger birds than pheasants. The adrenaline surge of a three-turkey explosion must have been astounding.
My friend Sue has a daughter who is always doing something interesting. In addition to her main gig as a mathematician, she does glassblowing, stone masonry including carrying and cutting the stones, woodworking, blacksmithing, and all manner of other things. Her most recent endeavor is handling teams of oxen. As Sue was showing me photographs of oxen, to remind me just how huge they are, she mentioned that her daughter doesn’t particularly care for horses. They’re too jumpy.
Oxen, it may be said, are not jumpy. The daughter adores them and has regaled her mother with breakdowns of the personalities of all the oxen it has been her pleasure to work with so far.
While working with the oxen, the daughter was asked if she teaches. She does. So far, she teaches glassblowing and blacksmithing. The ox people asked her to teach woodworking.
“I’m not a woodworker!” she replied, despite having made a windsor chair when she took an intro-to-woodworking class. The rest of the students were probably working on birdhouses. That woman is remarkable.
The sidewalks of our neighborhood, lately, have afforded multiple sightings of new parents walking babies in strollers and buggies, moving along in bubbles of happiness. It always makes me smile and remember that happy time in our lives. Sometimes, you can even catch a glimpse of the baby.
That happened this morning. A woman was pushing a stroller of most unusual design. It was boxy, more than usually upright, and screened in. Not draped with mosquito netting, which I’ve seen before, but screened in. Like a porch. Furthermore, the passenger wasn’t a baby. It was a cat, sitting tall and reviewing its empire. I expected the animal to give us a royal wave, but it chose not to acknowledge us at all and continued its regal tour with no more than a glance at Rascal and me.
Earlier in the week, I saw an older couple out walking a good-sized dog. The woman led the procession, pushing her walker in front of her. Then came the dog. Then came the man, holding the dog’s leash, and moving along in a powered wheelchair.
The threesome looked like they’ve done this before. They were out together getting the job done in the circumstances in which they found themselves. As with the new parents walking their babies, there was no doubt that couple and dog were in a bubble. From a distance, though, I couldn’t tell if it was a bubble of happiness or contentment or love.
1 August 2025