It is early morning and I watch the sun rise over the lake from a sagging settee on the sleeping porch.  Our Boston Terrier, Jake
peacefully naps  at my feet.  As I sip my morning coffee, I watch his rhythmic breathing  punctuated now and then by a twitch of his ears, a muffled yip or a brief pummeling of his legs. Maybe he dreams of chasing  a squirrel or a cat.  Maybe he doesn’t dream at all. I wish I knew. I wish he could tell me.
Our house is on a cove. which  this morning I share only with  nature’s creatures, or more accurately, they share with me.   A great white heron perches on a rock, his large round 
body impossibly balanced on  one long thin leg. A school of ducks fat from the bread we feed them  paddle languidly by and assorted songbirds compete for air space. An occasional bird of prey soars overhead in search of food. Today there are only buzzards and hawks but on rare occasions, we see golden eagles. I wonder why we revere hawks and eagles, and find their buzzard relatives disgusting. I wonder if buzzards know this.  I wonder if Eagles do.
The loblolly pines on the distant banks are a blue-green blur in the morning light. One by one, lights appear in houses along the shore as daybreak approaches. A lone fishing boat advances slowly from the far side of the lake, the sounds of its outboard motor growing louder as it nears. I watch it come closer, its metal hull slapping on the waves, a flag  of Louisiana fluttering from a standard.  It is a bass boat, rigged out for serious fisherman.  Its occupants are visible now, two young men in camouflage hats and gear. Seeing me, they wave, and I wave back as they veer into the main channel of the lake, headed for the fishing grounds.
The statue-still heron on the rock  cocks his head sidewise, and although I cannot see it, I know that  his steely, menacing eye is intently following the movement of an unsuspecting fish below the water’s surface. He holds his preposterous pose perfectly still, patiently waiting for the right time to strike. Suddenly, and with lightning speed, his long pointed beak jabs into the water.  His ambush is successful; he  emerges with his prey in his beak,  lifts into the sky and soars above the lake, his long neck curved backwards towards his body, legs straight behind.  I watch his great wings
 gracefully folding and unfolding, embracing the morning air as he glides away.
It is perfectly still in the aftermath of the kill.  The only sounds are the waves lapping at the wooden bulkheads below and the chirping of a small martin warily eyeing the bird feeder in our crepe myrtle tree.  The rising sun glittering on the undulating waves creates the illusion of tinsel blanketing the lake. Only the slowly escalating motion of the waves foreshadow  a storm brewing in the south.
A squirrel hops effortlessly between the limbs of the sugar maples bordering the lake and disappears into the high branches of a nearby elm tree. The creatures, sensing Mother Nature’s mood about to change, disappear into their nests or hiding places. Blue-grey clouds slide in front of the sun and jagged lines of lightning, white against the darkening clouds light up the sky,  followed by thunder claps, getting louder as the storm nears.  Jake is suddenly on his feet and into my lap, ears back, trembling, his nap destroyed.  His big brown sad eyes seem to plead with me to make it go away. I wonder why he is so afraid, and I wish I could make him understand that he’s safe.
Curtains of rain advance across the lake minutes later as the storm gathers force.  The first raindrops hit the tin roof of the sleeping porch in single sharp pings. Slowly they  intensify into a steady rumble. The wind 
has picked up now, and the lake is choppy.  The rain slices at the side of the house and the wind drives it into the porch. I watch the rain pounding on the lake and wonder about the young men and their ill-fated fishing trip.
I revel in Mother Nature’s operatic performance and  am loathe to give up my front row seat. I hold Jake tightly to calm him but the thunder is getting louder and he is increasingly more anxious.  I cannot stay.  But for this moment, I am at peace with myself, the lake and its creatures.
I grew up knowing the story of  Bonnie and Clyde as well as I knew the fairy tales my mother read to me.  In fact,  in family stories, one of our  distant (always emphasized in the telling)  cousins was rumored to have sheltered them from time to time.  And  if you dug long enough, you were sure to find a common ancestor. My family, however, did not see them as the glamorous  bank robbers  portrayed in the film.  We knew the Barrows gang as reckless killers who robbed and killed anyone who got in their way.  In their brief run they are said to have killed 13 people, as many as 9 of which were law men.  But contrary to the myth that they only targeted banks, they usually robbed  small stores or rural gas stations since  it was easier to escape detection.  Their take was usually small and they were constantly on the run.
wrote a collection of 10 poems  called “Poetry from Life’s Other Side,† One of these, “The Story of Suicide Sal,†about an innocent country girl lured by her boyfriend into a life of crime, was left
poignant love story shines through. For Bonnie and Clyde  it was love at first sight and their  love endured overwhelming hardship.  Bonnie was still married to her first husband, shocking behavior in those days.  Clyde was a hardened criminal constantly on the run.  But Bonnie remained a loyal companion to Clyde, although she believed their violent deaths inevitable. Their daily lives were difficult as they struggled to evade discovery, resorting to campfire cooking and bathing in cold streams.  In 1933, Bonnie was injured in a car crash and badly burned.  She never regained full use of her leg and  often had to be carried by Clyde.
by the son of one of the arresting law men but is now under new ownership.  The new owner says he may move the museum to nearby Arcadia if he can’t fix the roof.  
Writers need each other.  We need critiques, writing buddies,  encouragement.  We all have other friends, but only another writer knows  the highs and lows of the writing life.  Below is a reblog supported by MakeItUltra. If you’re a blogger, take advantage of this great opportunity to meet other writers and increase your readership.  And visit some of the other great blogs. Enjoy!
$20 bill. She will also be the first woman to appear on U.S. currency.  Ironically, $20 is the exact amount of her Civil War monthly pension.  To add to the irony, the slaveholding president, Andrew Jackson remains on the bill.  We might have chosen a more friendly partner, but at least he has been demoted from its face to the rear.
Around 1844, Harriett married John Tubman, a free man, a rare occurrence at the time. Â Five years later, fearing she was about to be sold, she and two brothers escaped. By this time she had changed her name to Harriett. Her brothers turned back, but she continued alone and finally escaped to freedom. Her husband decided not to join her and instead married another woman with whom he had four children. Harriett was heartbroken, but refused to sacrifice her 
freedom and instead committed to bringing other slaves to freedom. From 1850 to 1860, by her own account Tubman returned to Maryland 13 times and rescued 70 family and friends. Harriet was a no-nonsense leader who carried a rifle on these trips to discourage slaves she was trying to help from trying to turn back. If necessary, she bribed people.
Harriett Tubman was one of the most prolific Underground Railroad conductors of all time. During the Civil War, she served as nurse, scout, cook and spy in the Union Army and became the first American woman to lead an armed raid into enemy territory. Harriet returned to Auburn, New York after the war and began another career as a community activist, humanitarian, and suffragist. The capstone of her humanitarian work was the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, located near her home in Auburn. Harriett continued to be active in the suffrage movement and appeared at suffrage conventions until the early 1900s. She died at her home in Auburn, NY in 1912, at the age of ninety. Harriet Tubman attributed her ability to risk everything for the cause of freedom to her deep spiritual faith.
So I “unplugged.† I took naps and long walks  with Jake, my Boston Terrier. I journaled, listened to music, and visited friends. And I read books. Biographies, historical fiction, literary classics, modern novels, mystery, fantasy, non-fiction, books by great writers and poor writers. The Kindle store loves me. And gradually my voice returned, physically and figuratively.
Another friend died this week. We all die. But we don’t want to face it until we have to. We don’t like to think about the “D†word.