Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles

If you will look below at Friday’s post, you will see the photo of a master potter’s hand-thrown, kiln dried and glazed vase, with lid, given to us by Kay Nguyen, a member of our extended family.  I asked you each to try to guess what the motif is that she carved around the jar.

I only had two (com’n guys, what’s up?) “official” responses.  Greg guessed that it is a locust in the “vertical” (inside joke, there – you’ll have read his blog post of last week “The Fence” – it’s hilarious) position, while Cecil guessed it is a scorpion.  They were both terrific guesses.  (Anyone want to chime in now with a guess in comment below before reading any further? Com’n!  Be brave!)

My sweet friend Michelle clicked on the image to enlarge it to see it better and saw my description of it, so emailed me to decline guessing, since she read what it was.  I commend her for doing so.  She thought that some of you (are you reading, Greg?) might also enlarge it to see it better and then send in the “correct” guess without telling me you already knew what it was.    Nah, I thought to myself.  None of MY friends would do such a thing.

Anyway . . . here is the rest of the story.  Kay’s story.  She lives in Houston, a sultry – okay, extremely hot and humid – place with lots of water around.  She was trying to work with her clay, but pesky mosquitoes kept buzzing around pestering her.

If any of you are from the south, have ever lived in the south, or have ever even visited the south – in the summer – after it’s rained – and every container around, including old tires strewn about the more lovely southern home yards filled with brackish water – you will experience the “joy” of swarms of mosquitoes buzzing and biting you.  Sometimes, even in the mountains (further north than here in south Mississippi, for sure) and woods (we have lots of those) they are killers.

Out of aggravation, and inspiration, Kay decided to make a “Mosquito Vase” with lid.  Whether out of revenge or respect, I do not know.  I do know that ours sits on top of our fridge in our air conditioned home, where it’s cool in the summer and warm in the winter.  And dry.  With screens on all of the windows, and screens all around our large back porch.

We learned from our house before over in Louisiana that you cannot go out to sit or enjoy in any way an open back porch/patio when it is not screened in to keep the myriad of mosquitoes at bay.  When we had the chance, we screened ours in.  We loved it.  We had music out there.  We had a double  hammock out there where we would fall asleep many evenings on a quilt, with the porch open to our den.

Thus, when we were able to build a small home here two years ago, having a big screened in back porch was a top priority.  Tom wired in music in it and we have old white wicker furniture out there where we will sit until deep dusk some evenings, as we did one night last week.

We watch the beautiful cardinals and tufted titmice eat at the bird feeder hanging on the edge of our deck and watch for hummingbirds at their own feeder.  Mosquitoes aren’t too bad here, really, because we are high on the hill above the creek.  Except on occasion.  But even one biting us is too much, we think.

They carry deadly diseases that have killed dozens of people in our state, and many more across the south.

We think of those millions of poor people in other countries who have no such protection and pray for them (and help where we can) because so many of them die every day from mosquito borne disease.

So, our mosquito vase has a couple of stories.  Ours and Kay’s.

May we each think of others today and deeply appreciate the blessings God has blessed us with in this country.  May we do all we can for those who are so much less fortunate, by chance and circumstance.

God speed, my dear friends.  God speed today.  Dee