This week brought excellent news. Daughter Number Four teaches music in a Detroit-area school. At the end of the last school year, all teachers at her school had to pack up everything in their rooms for transport off site, so that work could be done on their school over the summer. When school started again this fall, D#4 discovered that a critical piece of her equipment had not come back: the dolly used to move her digital piano around the room and from that room to their concert venue.
This dolly had been fit specifically to her piano, and cost hundreds of dollars. It was not something trivial that the school had the means to replace.
D#4 glanced up while in her room, not long ago, to see a man and woman walking in and looking quite pleased with themselves. The man had the dolly over his shoulder. It had gone to another school entirely, and determining where it actually belonged had taken time. D#4 was delighted. The visitors said they’d get some facilities folks over to put the console back on the dolly, but our daughter was too excited to wait.
“The piano only weighs about a hundred and fifty pounds,” she said. “Two people can do it easily. I can probably do it myself, if I do one end at a time.” The visitors helped, and the job was done in a jiffy. Daughter Number Four was pleased as could be. She’s missed being able to move the instrument around the room, and concert season is coming fast.
A woman came to the Thrift Shop yesterday with an enormously stuffed blanket on her back. Picture Santa Claus with his pack, and that’s how she looked. But, while she might have been Santa’s age thereabouts, she was much smaller. The pack over her shoulder looked to be about one-third her size. She arrived as part of a multigenerational family group, and when the group came to the counter to check out, we got a peep into blanket. Inside was a newborn baby, heavily insulated against the cold, and sound asleep.
In church last Sunday, I sat behind a husband and wife and their son, a tween or an early teen–still enough that I glanced at his feet before deciding he was a boy. He had a magnificent mop of auburn curls and, during the sermon, he rested his head on his father’s shoulder. The father, being no fool, rested his own head on top of his son’s, and they stayed that way for some time.
“Cherish that sweetness while you can,” I thought to myself. “It won’t be long before he doesn’t do that anymore, and you never know which time will be the last.”
Later in the service, the boy’s younger sister arrived from Sunday school. She pushed her brother out of the spot beside Dad, which the brother took with good grace, and sat herself down. A few minutes later, she nestled her head on Dad’s shoulder, and Dad nestled his head on hers.
“Cherish this time,” I thought again. “It is so dear.”
Meteorologists describe the form of precipitation we got Monday morning as “wintry mix.” It includes such seasonal delights as sleet, freezing rain, and snow, all of which limit visibility. While driving a dirt road in this mess, Monday morning, I thought I saw a bear cub.
We don’t have bears in this part of the state. They’ve been seen in the northern part of the lower peninsula, and in the U.P., of course. But not down here.
What I saw was the size of an enormous dog or small bear, a uniformly dark color, and very furry. It dashed across the road one way, then back again the way it had come. So I consulted my brother-in-law.
“Do we have bears this far south?”
“No,” he answered with conviction. Then he gave corroborating evidence.
“So many people have trail cams on their property, just to see what’s out there, including nocturnal activity. Every time people see a bear where there haven’t been bears before, the DNR is inundated with reports, with photographs and videos to back them up.
“This in no way discounts what you saw,” he added, “but if people were seeing bears in Washtenaw County, believe me, the DNR would know about it. It would be big news.”
His best guess as to what I saw Monday morning? “A Newfie.” That’s an answer that makes sense.
He and my sister, who live in the “Upper Lower,” have had real bears show up in their yard. We haven’t. But a nice Newfie would be just fine.
21 November 2025