The trek across the driveway to the house after picking up items from the mailbox invariably includes sorting as to his and hers. Universal junk mail goes with Gwen’s arrivals. Catalogues are always hers. Her pre-Christmas record for a single day’s delivery of merchandise catalogues stands at 21, if memory serves.
Another big December mail item involves envelopes with surprise prizes, like the near worthless tiny toy in the bottom of a box of Cracker Jack. Each precious Cracker Jack toy became a treasure in childhood years, a toy singularly owned, bearing no need to share with our many siblings.
Angelkeep utilized frequent online shopping even prior to Covid-19. The practice increased with the routinely published death count. Angelkeep learned long ago that magazines, merchandisers, and non-profits traded, shared, or sold addresses. Non-profit organizations may include a valuable and useful “free” enticement item. Angelkeep infrequently tucked a check into a prepaid return envelope. A week or two later a new wave and variety of charitable begging mailings appeared.
Among the more frequent enticement gifts, meant to inflict guilt on any recipient who utilizes the free item without sending the “suggested” financial remuneration, is the highly approved calendar.
Angelkeep hangs a “freebie” calendar over the monitor at the upstairs computer where each week’s Angelkeep Journals is birthed. Of calendars received each year, the one with the most special day notations becomes the upstairs calendar. A downstairs calendar arrives via Gwen’s online purchase. It lays open, a two-page wide calendar with enough day box room to write in medical appointments and such. Without medical visits, we’d have no social life.
This year’s upstairs winning calendar, now in its final month of use, arrived free of charge, sans guilt, from the National Wildlife Federation. Three beautiful wildlife photos adorned every month, printed on recycled paper, proved perfect for Angelkeep Journals’ computer armoire.
December’s large photo of an Arctic gray wolf seemed to look below on the smaller photo of a black-capped chickadee on a snowy pine branch, a frequently seen image in reality at Angelkeep. December’s quote of the month: “Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more,” was attributed to Vincent Van Gogh.
Vinny is one of Angelkeep’s favorite master painters. Angelkeep learned from December that Chanukah begins on the 18th at sundown, ending the 26th, with no definition, begging the question, “What’s a Chanukah?” December noted the 14th a “nwf.org donate for wildlife day.”
As a writer, but educated for visual arts, Angelkeep appreciated August’s quote from architect Frank Lloyd Wright, “Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.” Wright designed five Indiana residences, the Haynes House a Fort Wayne abode since 1952.
February’s photo of an American bison, serenely comfortable sitting in and covered with snow, reminded Angelkeep of the unique opportunity to see this amazing animal in real life just a few miles away in Ouabache State Park. It’s the only Indiana state park preserving this animal that at one time nearly became extinct. It remains a truly magnificent beast which truly enjoys its large habitat at Ouabache. Recalling back on 2022, Ouabache had a new female born, and she thrives, promising to add quantity to the Ouabache herd.
Edward O. Wilson died December 2021, probably the month Angelkeep’s 2022 calendar arrived with his February quote, “Each species is a masterpiece, a creation assembled with extreme care and genius.” E. O. was such an outdoors nature lover that at age seven he hooked his right eye while fishing, blinded it, but said nothing, suffering through the accident for hours because of his extreme desire to remain outdoors. His life’s work evolved around butterflies and ants. Of the later he was quoted, “Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species.” Ants consider the colony needs far higher than their own personal needs. Oh, if only Santa Claus could deliver that gift of community to the world. The world could be a better place if everyone behaved like ants. Nobody junk mails “peace” or “grace.”
Boy’s Town jumped the gun in mailing out 2023 calendars amid financial appeals. Its watercolor paintings of birds were all visitors at Angelkeep. “Provisionally” it’s retained as next year’s computer desk calendar. However, there arrives yet a lot of December junk mail to sort.
Mr. Daugherty is a Wells County resident who, along with his wife Gwen, enjoy their backyard and have named it “Angelkeep.”
