End of Bug Season-- nearly--well almost but contemplation on Firsts

Gather crashed and took with it‚  the article and the images in progess down. Nothing new under the sun, saith the prophet. Surely he was a prophet in the truest sense of the word.

I've come to dread Gather and it's service. It's reliability for uploading is nerve-wracking and you have to the patience of an elephant to deal with it and all the while‚  the front page is spewing out advertising and propaganda about paying the   people who load the content. It will be a first to load an article and images all at one time without reloadingg or gather crashing and losing everything. A historic first.


I missed the special steam train last weekend because I was afraid of  missing the end of Bug Season at Srbsko. Had I known that this was the area for butterflies, I would have been there earlier in the year instead of traipsing off to  meet the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his lovely wife at Benesov or  exploring other places and castles. Besides, I can't write and such badly written travel articles are not acceptable.

Therefore I resort to bugs.


Perhaps they erpresent the smallness of my brain and life. It's possible, or the critical vision that I have on life. That's possible too. I went to the woods not to live, but to find insects and explore the small world around me.

While i was shoulder high in the loal thistle patch, I heard an older woman complaining about her head, not that I can speak any Czech, but her voice was distinctly strained and feeble. I turned about to see who it was, and as I was struggling through the weeds the woman collapsed into the brush on the side of the road with her husband standing over her. They had apparently stopped in the shade to recover themselves from the long walk down the ridge.

When I reached his side, she was eagle-spread upon the ground. Vomit gurgled out of her mouth. Her husband was the model of cooth. He instinctively serached for her pulse, slapped her face and called her name. There was no response.


Frantically waving your arms is international language, but the nearest house was a few feet away on the edge of the forest.  Her husband could go and call for help or for an ambulance, but he remained steadfast at her side, watching over her with concern. Awkwardly I fished for the napkins and toilet paper at the bottom of my shoulder bag that holds my liter of tea and day's ration of sandwiches. After  several minutes she responded. After a half hour, he helped her to a sitting position and began cleaning her face and clothing. Discomfitted, I didn't kow what rightly to do, but didn't want to leave them either. Elderly, they might need the extra  assistance down the hill or someone to run for help. Anyone would understand such an emergency and a young person with a cell phone could be very useful, but the husband seemed to take things very seriously, methodically and slowly as he nursed her recovery.

She kept repeating, " but I only had one beer, I only had one beer..." Unfortunately, life is like this. It could happen to anyone anytime and maybe it had nothing to do with the beer. It's possible that she had a stroke or a heart attack, or maybe she just suffers from severe low blood pressure. Maybe she has a problem with diabetes or low blood sugar-- the list can go on, but it definitely was not funny.


So I stood around trying to be useful and reassuring, but actually I am not so useful in such a situation. I have an extremely strong gag reflex which is debilitating and could only hand the tissue  to her husband and then step away because I was bent over double. There's nothing I can do about it, either. I got harassed about it when I worked in hospice because I seem to have such a weak stomach, but it's just like that.


We took turns trying to console and reassure her.  It must be terribly frightening, and it was a bad fall. She was standing by a tree when suddenly she let loose and fell backwards.

"I felt like I had two heads, " she said. "It was only one beer..." I looked up at the sky and the deadly sunlight. I can't drink a beer during the day or sit  in the sunlight  with any alcohol in my blood. It knocks me out. I can have the beer after sundown when I stop at the pub  just before I get on the train on the way home. But then, it could be any number of things. Perhaps the dishes weren't clean or had soap on them...


Nearly an hour later after much reassurance and tenderness from her husband, she was able to stand up. We took turns helping her wipe her clothes off and  clean her hair from any vomit. It's bad enough to take a fall, but to appear in public with dirty clothes and flecks of vomit on it is inviting abuse from uncharitable bystanders who have nothing to do but  rag about other people. It could happen to me.


The train station was only a short distance away—perhaps a five minute walk down the foot of the ridge. They could stop at the pub to use the bathroom and wash up. Certainly a glass of mineral water would help her recover and she needed the extra time to rest before getting on a train and returning to Beroun or her village. Obviously they had originally meant to return by foot, but that was now impossible.


Still apologizing for the fall, the woman  said, "I feel so young, but my body is so old..."

"You are a very lucky woman," I replied, "because you have such a good man to look after you. It could happen to me."


And it's true-- I am always alone in the woods and alone wherever I go. I walk miles through countryside without companionship and I have been through debilitating illnesses and crises without anyone to look after me. When I read the moanings and complainings of  many Gather articles, I wonder about the people who write them. How little they appreciate their children and their spice. They never stop to think about what it would be like to be alone.

They never think about  getting picked up and thrown by a car and surviving it alone with broken ribs and perforated lung and contused liver, spleen and other internal organs. They wouldn't be able to go back to work within twenty hours and stand though twelve straight hours of classroom teaching to pay the immediate bills.They wouldn't know what iti's like to struggle with clothing alone with double fractured shoulders, or face a CAT scan alone and then survive three days allergy reaction to the color contrast dye alone in a room without a telephone. And certainly, they would never know what it is like to lie in a white wshed room alone month after month because it was impossible to sit up as a result of the back cracking and leaving the peron doubled over in agony and partially paralyzed.


But they complain about minor things of life: the washing up and garbage, and for them they cannot see how lucky they are to share their life with others.

They can't remember the first time they were able to comb their hair because it was so long ago that they take it for granted, or the first time they were able to button a shirt after months of struggling into loose clothes by pulling them over the top and sleeping in them when they weretoo agonizing painful to take off at night.


And certainly, such epole can't appreciate the first time to take a bath after nine or ten months of towel rub-downs because the shoulders simply couldn't bear any weight or pressure of getting in or out of a tub.


And these are minor, bcause the major things are relearning how to walk and feed myself. I can remember the first time after months and months of intensive neurological therapy that I could lift my foot off the floor and hold it for thirty seconds. When I readched the minute point I was terribly excited and had to show the therapist because it was a BIG ACHIEVEMENT.


I can remember the neurologist sitting down  and telling me to sit down too, because the news was terribly hard and painful for her to give to me-- She had very little hope that I would ever regain ambulation as a normal person. I needed surgery because I had lost the use of muscles and ligaments around my coccyx and they did not respond to stimulus. I could not squeeze or flex my butt muscles. I needed surgery for a colostomy bag. Her last hope was for special intensive therapy. A long shot, but maybe if I could endure it, maybe by massaging the inner wall of my rectum and intestine, the nerves could recover; but it would be unpleasant and probably painful, but the only hope she had.It was a long-shot.

I went to therapy every day and the inner walls of my rectum and intestine were massaged three times a week, an ordeal that at best was unpleasant, but the only hope for recovering the critical nerves in the coccyx. And sitting, standing, dping anything was agony because the pelvis was so radically inflamed by some illnes that I ws doubled over into fetal position most of the time. My back lost four centimeters. When I entered  the Czech Republic, I was 170, but now I am 165 or less. My bottom rib rests on my hip nearly and sitting is often uncomfortable at best.


I can walk. People presume that it's natural. They get out of bed, go to the kitchen and complain about taking the public transport to work or get in their cars and drive there. Even if it is only a half mile away, they take a ride rather than use their feet.


I walk because if I don't walk, I will lose the gift of walking. It's like that. Each step guarantees me the next, but it never guarantees me that it will be easy or pain free or that tomorrow I could double over like this wom and spend the next year or years of my life relearning very basic things all over again. An x-ray technologist told me that it was technically impossible for me to walk, but I hate the idea of having wheels for feet. It's not easy. Anyone who reads my emails sees the muddled fingers, but once upon a time it was never like that. I was a fast typist. Now my hands are spastic and there's little I can do about it. it comes from long term illness and too many head injuries and twice round of being hit by cars and left to struggle off on my own.


So what firsts I have in  my adult life are important to me--

The first time I got the food in my mouth without dumping it all over my clothes.

One night Itried to touch my nose with my finger 150 times in a row with my eyes closed. I got nearly every other part of my head, but not my nose and struck air over  fifty-percent of the time. It was a serious exercise in coordination.

It was  nearly nine months after fracturing my shoulder at Terzin that I was able to lift a cup of tea with my right hand and drink from it. For all those months I struggled with my disabled left side and typed with one hand all the submissions of 2002-2003. It took longer before I could slide it into a jacket pocket. It was nearly two years before I could reach to my backand nearly a year before I cuold raise my arm to comb my hair. So it's really no wonder that I could take interest in small things like bugs and butterflies because they represent the small achievements of my world and the freedom to escape from the pain and hardship I've nearly always faced throughout life alone.


And really, that woman could be anyone. It could be one of those people who complain in every article about theirspice or children's behavoir-- I doubt if the husband or children would be as tender and compassionate as that man because he truly loved his wife as the companion of his life and knew her value.

When I returned to my bugs,I was reminded that I am always alone-- If I fall, I will be alone. When the shoulder refractures, I will learn to struggle with my shirt again and relearn to tie my shoes with one hand again, although now I wear only slip-ons for that reason. I joke about wearing circus tents, but nearly all the clothes I sewed have large buttons up the front. I can't understand why.



Eachà small thing will be yet again a new achievement and a new first regardless of how inor it might seem to others.


I can walk-- and so I do; but I know the struggle of walking and dressing and standing, and the crippling pain I faced most of my life as I fought to stand and sit and use the toilet or lie down and sit up--


The agony, I will never forget, but it could happen all over again tomorrow.


Today I can walk so I must remember to do it.

small fritillary?  intriguing curiosity and very small, almost microscopic





a blue-- granted it looks brown, but  it is a blue





silver-washed fritillary. okay maybe I might think it is a green, but in the next picture you'll see the bars that signify it as a silver-washed fritillary
 Fritillaries are as confusing as blues, so I am a novice at trying to distinguish one from the other.





now you can see the bars across the back. It gets to the  point where I think that people in the know actually count the dots.






yup, it's a fritillary. Already in five minutes you;ve gained the extent of my knowledge. I think it's a Queen of Spain Fritillar because of the white spots on the underwing, but I might get corrected.

Here's another shot:





The underwings are distinctly different from the first frit  listed, but their backs look similar. It's extremely confusing science for the trained eye of a lepidopterist.




 psychedelic spider that has obviously had too much acid or possibly a mutant leftover of Chernobyl fallout?





another blue-- note the yellow checkers on wing edge-- sorry don't know which and this is why I wrote to people who know such things. I can tell a frit from a blue, but not the blues apart from each other. This gets into counting dots and checks.




the back of the same blue






aha, look-- the yellow ring is only on the lowe wing-- does that mean it is a different species of blue? could be. search me if I can tell you.





and guess what this is?a frit. You're learning quickly-- I think it might be a Titania because it has marbled underwings, but then there are spots of white which might indicate something slightly different.





After many shots of blurred images with the defective camera, I wanted to see the wings, so I brushed the edgees and it kindly spread them just long enough for me to take this one photo. Most of the time, butterflies get perturbed and take off.

Note that there are no bars and plenty of spots so soon enough you go dotty.





another blue-- I don't want to call it an adonis because of the large white streak on the wing and the underwing has orange checks. So instead, I'll tell you it's another blue. You know as much as I do.




Perhaps this is a chalk hill blue, but I think it's something like a silver studded blue or it could be a silvery blue argus, only a lepidopterist knows for sure. It's very small whatever it is, about the size of my ring fingernail.






Obviously this is not the same blue as above because it's on another plant an at the bottom of the ridge-- but again there's that troublesome white patch and yellow checkers on the bottom wing.

 

The white patch looks familiar, but the antennae ae black, not orange tipped and those checkers are a distinctly different color. So what is it?
Only a lepidopterist knows for sure.





But now we can safely say that this is a stripy snail all curled up and off to a good night's sleep in a leaf.

And now there's just enough time to walk down the road and catch the train home without stopping for a beer.



why is it that a person hs to spend 30 minutes cleaning out the  Gathercrap out of an article a month after it's been loaded?