pamelagmusings

Musings

Pam's Musings

My writing nook at my house in Laramie, WY.

My writing nook at my house in Laramie, WY.

A long time ago or once upon a time, stifled by the desire to get everything right on paper, rendered immobile by my inner and nasty critic, I was encouraged to read Bird By Bird, by Anne Lamott.  I have read it numerous times and often wish I could commit it to memory.  Ah, the perfection that comes from the memorized verse.  Lamott strikes out at the need and desire for perfection.  Instead, she pushes me to embrace the messiness of writing, to muse.  She tells me to let go and not worry about destination or the big picture.  She set before me the creed by which my musings are written, by which my inner wild woman craves to live:  “Don’t look at your feet to see if you are doing it right.  Just dance.”  When I muse, and this is a necessary part of my writing process, I don’t look.  I just write.  I hope you enjoy these musings.  I hope you muse as well.  

Neighborly Thoughts, July & August, 2026

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We live on a quiet street, one with little traffic. Our block is a quiet block. You could call its present residents a second generation. The first generation called the street “faculty row.” That was a time when the wives stayed at home, visited over back yard fences as they hung out the laundry, and the scent of home-cooked suppers wafted from open windows in mid-afternoon. That was a time when the faculty, mostly men, rode their bicycles home at noon, ate a sumptuous home-cooked lunch, and then pedaled back to the University of Wyoming campus. On early summer evenings, children, in abundance, screamed with delight as they raced from lawn to lawn, either running toward imaginary horses or running from monsters. The grownups parked their chairs on the edge of their front lawns and tossed gentle conversation across Ord street. That was the 50s.

In the mid-50s, I knew nothing of Ord Street, but I knew the exciting meaning of “neighborhood.” Of single digit age, I spent summers at my grandparents’ home on Circle Drive, in the tiny town of Arbutus, Maryland, just outside Baltimore. Circle Drive followed a hill. At its base was the bus stop where my grandfather and other men alighted after a day of working in the city. As the wives prepared supper, the steps of nearly every back porch filled with muscled men in sleeveless undershirts, drinking National Bohemian beer from glass bottles. There were no high fences, so rugged-topic conversations stretched across the porches. Called to their meals, just as the lightning bugs began rising from the tall grass at the far edges of the lawns, the men shouted final comments and disappeared inside. Curtains were soon drawn.

Our family came to Ord Street during its second generation, which consisted of recent and seasoned retirees, some from the university, some from other professions, some from Laramie, some from Anywhere USA. We are just far enough from the city hub that the outward migration of “student rentals” has touched only a few houses on our block. We are a quiet block. In the summer, children play on their own lawns, and we wave courteously to those we know and the occasional passersby. Names are freely exchanged, and conversations form on a sidewalk. We are pleasant, we are friendly, but there is no hint of “gathering.”

We close our curtains at night, and porch and bistro lights are set to flair, despite the warnings that such illumination confuses the birds that spend the summer days holding rugged-topic conversations from tree perches. Perhaps, as we know what lurks in our world today, we arm ourselves with the heavy draperies and fake illumination. Yet, there has been no crime on Ord Street unless we consider the interlopers: deer, rabbits, a few stray cats, and, on one rare occasion, a bobcat, who did no harm.

What we might call a third generation heralds families with newborns and preschoolers. They drown out the soft greetings of those of us who have been here long. In the recent years, screams and squeals of children delighting in the discoveries of summer play accent the once quiet afternoons and evenings. We elderly keep our lawns mowed and for the most part, our sidewalks free of snow. The gardeners engage in silent competition for most colorful summer flowers. We say hello when passing and wave occasionally from the chairs tucked on our front lawns.

We who remember the block party about twenty years ago talk a bit of having another one, but no one as yet has offered their front lawn.

But I would like to think that imaginary horses and menacing monsters still lurk in the nights’ shadows and that a toddler’s giggle over the tickle of new mown grass on their tiny bare feet will resound well up the street and down.  

And indeed I am assured that, in the trees, in Spring, sparrow adults and their fuzzy babies will twitter and bob endlessly as they search for bugs in our seventy-year-old plumb tree. Robins will zip low at lightning speed under low-hanging branches, crows will caw, doves will coo, hawks will hover in the heavens, and the wind will animate the old towering pines into actually murmuring in the chill wind of winter.

This, a neighborhood of nature’s beauty and old timers’ memories, is the real and thriving neighborhood.