We here at Writers of Puget Sound have spent months now thinking and writing about how COVID19 has been affecting the country as well as us personally. After some of our initial responses, we will continue adding to this particular post with the different prompts we’ve used for initiating conversation, reflection, and creativity!

Hope, George Frederick Watts, 1886, http://totallyhistory.com/george-frederick-watts-paintings/

“Coronawards!”

At the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783 the British army marched out of New York City to the ships that would carry them home accompanied by their bands playing “The World Turned Upside Down!”

Today, almost 250 years later, the Coronavirus pandemic once again has turned the world upside down. It’s been almost fifty years since the end of the Vietnam War, the last real crisis in America that severely impacted life in towns and cities across our country. (The recent recession between 2008 and 2012 was difficult, but except for the real estate industry, life continued on as usual for most people.)

Today, those over 65 years of age were the last to be drafted and the last to march off to war. They will likely tell you that a recession isn’t quite the same as a war. They were also the children of the so-called “Greatest Generation”. Their parents suffered through the depression as children and then flooded recruitment centers the day after Pearl Harbor as teenagers. They were the last generation that had to learn how to make-do with limited resources and appreciate the little things they still had. It’s not surprising that the “over-65” crowd are not the ones hoarding. It’s the “un-tested” millennials and Generations X, Y and Z that have panicked, loading their vans with enough toilet paper to serve their entire neighborhood let alone their own families.

Some good always comes out of a crisis: The United Nations and eventual de-segregation emerged from the lessons we learned in World War II. What will be the “Coronawards”? Here are some possibilities:

• Homeschooling: perhaps a better appreciation of teachers and their exhausting task of molding young minds while keeping 25-30 kids (not just two or three) engaged and interested all day.
• Education: will on-line learning and digital education become more relevant and the old models change as a result of parent involvement in their kids’ learning?
• Family time: hopefully more time together will strengthen bonds and our appreciation for each other in the family.
• Working from home: Is it all it’s cracked up to be now that non-essential workers are required to do it? What are the pros and cons? What industries will change and how will it impact childcare?
• Cleaning up the house: All those chores we never seem to have time to get to-cleaning up basements, closets, attics. What treasures will be uncovered?
• Shopping habits: Will we change our ideas of what we have to have and when we have to have it? Will we shop as often?
• Realizing the importance of socialization: with friends and family members that we can no longer see, hold and hug.
• Finding new books and TV shows and movies: and the time to enjoy them.
• Getting outside to walk and garden.
• Getting off the merry-go-round of our hectic schedules: for both adults and kids. Do we really need to be that busy? Can we prioritize our activities and do more with less?
• Finding ways to help our less fortunate neighbors and giving back to the community
• Appreciation for our medical professionals and the amazing mobilization of our industries to fight the pandemic.
• The ways our state and federal government agencies worked together and helped one another.

Hopefully some of these “Coronawards” will morph into positive changes and in future years we’ll look back on the pandemic as a wake-up call in our lives. We will certainly all have stories to pass down to future generations!

Sue Swanson

Early Voice

[Is this voice God’s whispering

this is what I need of you,

what I need you to be?]

You can choose not to hear,

not to be,

there are plenty of things to do

while denying—

work, serve, run, hide—

and many will be good for the world,

bring you credit, do no harm.

But there comes a time to answer,

when the voice will be stilled no longer

when in the darkness of your own soul

you must stop—

turn, sit, face this call—

say yes I will,

or no, I cannot, will not.

God will love you

no matter your choice,

will hold you in compassion,

understand your fear—

neither shame nor deplore—

will even comfort you

if terror has you in a vice.

God will also stand with you

if you say yes,

go forth with you as you live this voice

which may be God’s spirit—

knit into you from the beginning—

wishing you will bring your self

wholely to the world.

Mary Ann Woodruff

What is Happening?

I was watching an (old) episode of Perry Mason yesterday and there was a brief shot of people surfing. My first thought was: Yay, there’s a woman surfer in the forefront of this scene, a serious surfer with muscles and not a bikini! My second thought was: They’re surfing too close together!

So many of my friends are terrified. They are cancer survivors, they have autoimmune disorders, their families are the same. My friends have been spending their lives keeping their families as whole and healthy as possible, given all their health issues. Their lives were already like Sisyphus’s life; now with Coronavirus, a mild phrasing is that it’s just adding insult to injury. My chosen phrasing is not very mild.

I am not terrified, or scared, or even concerned. Am I a bad person because I’m not worried? Am I lacking some necessary component of humanity? Have I spent this home-time watching too many YouTube documentaries on psychopaths?

But seriously, am I morally objectionable because I’m not afraid? I do the things I’m supposed to do: I stay home as much as possible, I only go to the grocery store during off-hours, I practice social distancing, I work out, I eat my veggies, I stay hydrated. I do not want to get sick; I don’t want to endanger anyone.

Did my early childhood as the spoiled youngest child, where so many of my wishes were instantly gratified, give me a permanent belief that my life will always turn out well? I wouldn’t mind if I have not yet developed some crucial aspect of being a person. I don’t want to be deplorable, but I can’t feel terrified.

Jules Dickinson

Copyright 2020

Searching for your Seeds

1. What was happening then

“Why” reads my 4 year old daughter on the sign by the flamingo exhibit at the zoo. “Did she just read that word?” my friend asks. Before I can answer, my daughter reads more of the sign. “Why are flamingoes pink?”

Now a crowd has gathered around this reading 4 year old. As the crowd waits to hear her read more, my daughter surprises them again. “Oh, I don’t need to read the rest of this one Mama” she says. “I already know why. Flamingoes are pink because they eat so much shrimp. They are born gray and turn pink when they are 2 years old. I’m 4, so if I were a flamingo, I would be really pink by now Mama!”

Her friend, my friend, and the crowd of strangers stare in awe at my daughter.

But I know my daughter.

I watched her seeds grow as we watered them together.

I’m proud of how fast they are growing. I’m also concerned about how this beautiful and radiantly unique flower will adapt to the weather around her and to all the other seedlings that may become envious of her many bright colors.

2. What is happening now

We kiss brother goodnight for what will hopefully be a long nap. We lay him peacefully in the crib and blow him one last sweet kiss as we tiptoe out of his room.

Hand in hand, we begin our journey downstairs to a palace filled with thousands of seeds.

We know each other’s imaginations, but we don’t know which seeds we will be watering today.

I think seeds follow the 4 stages.

Seed, Plant, Flower, Fruit

But this radiant flower often surprises me.

We curl up in our favorite corner on the brown couch. We choose a together blanket to snuggle in, and make sure it’s wrapped well around each one of our toes, so nobody gets cold feet, of course. We bite into one (or two) of our freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.

Now the soil is patted, the seeds planted firmly inside, sunlight glowing from the intentional space we’ve created for each other.

It is time to water them.

I pick a difficult book, with many new words, words longer from the words she read yesterday. As she reads the book, I follow along. I compliment her focus. I encourage her to sound out each word she doesn’t know. I wait patiently when she needs a break, knowing the word will come on her own time. We ask each other questions about the plot. We make observations about the illustrations. Sometimes we imagine our own endings or make predictions about the pictures or words to come.

Watering your seeds brings sunlight into these dark times of isolation.

“Mama” she says. “Did you know that our time together is love?”

“Thank you” I respond. I want to thank her for watering my driest seed. “It’s my favorite love” I tell her, and she smiles at me.

I think again about how seeds follow the 4 stages.

Seed, Plant, Flower, Fruit

And as we open this radiantly unique fruit, we find thousands of more radiantly unique seeds.

Copyright 2020 by Elisha Maidan-Henrique

This time of year we tend to daydream about travel, and for many of us, that also means inspiration. Of course, travel can also be in one’s own mind’s eye, like a dream, catapulting us far away without once changing our geography. What does this theme make YOU think of?

Photo by julie aagaard on Pexels.com

Accidental Perseids

That day I went on a little mind trip

That day, remember that?

Well, it was many days.

But that day, I brought along Back,

J.S., not C.P.E. and Wright. And I thought that should do it,

but they couldn’t quite hold me.

No.

They couldn’t quite hold me.

But then the sun set.

And as if that weren’t enough,

the wind came into play.

Yes, the wind, and not just the wind

but the stars. There were some stars,

SHOOTING ACROSS THE SKY.

I mean, what are you going to do?

You start thinking being alive is really something, you know?

The wind, and the sky, and your own breath.

Emily Dietrich

Travel and Inspiration—and Books

Books inspire me when I travel. I usually take along a novel set in the place to which I am traveling. While in Rome this past February, I read Maria Doria Russell’s A Thread of Grace, about Italy during WWII when peasants to the north sheltered Jews running before the German invaders. Standing on the rooftop of a building called Maria Bambino, across from St. Peter’s square while Mary and two other survivors were interviewed by CBS after the Pope’s address at the end of his summit on clergy sexual abuse, I looked northeast to the snow-capped mountains and imagined those terrified Jewish refugees, protected in one small village after another in coordination with and often at the request of Roman Catholic parish priests. On the same trip I read Beneath the Scarlett Sky, by Mark T. Sullivan, the true story of a man who became a spy for the Allies during WWII. As a teenager he spent time in a monastery in the north of Italy, sent there by parents who wanted to protect him. A Catholic brother sheltered Jewish asylum seekers in the monastery, and that teenager often ventured out in blinding snowstorms to ski them through the Alps to freedom in Switzerland.

What I’ve been pondering, since returning from Rome, is the gulf between the compassion of Catholic priests and brothers when faced with a grand enemy, Hitler, and everything for which he stood and the indifference of perhaps those very same priests and brothers when It comes to owning up to their own participation in the church’s systemic abuse and cover-up of abuse of the most vulnerable within their flocks. That it’s been seventy years since the particulars of these written stories and the one I witnessed this February in Rome is immaterial; clergy sexual abuse of kids was going on even in the 40s, and it continues to this day.

Yes, books inspire me when I travel. Travel inspires me too—in this case, to wonder at both the heroism and also the villainy of the institutional Roman Catholic Church.

Mary Ann Woodruff

The Inspiration and Joy of Travel 

Traveling had never even crossed my mind! As a college sophomore I was focused on classes and studying during the week and weekends partying off campus. But my college roommate, Carolyn, had other ideas, and an inspiration!

“Let’s apply for our Junior Year Abroad at St. Andrews University in Scotland,” she declared in December of that year. They take two Mt. Holyoke students every year. We could both go and, besides, they speak English in Scotland!” And, so, my original inspiration to travel came not from within, but from my best friend. Once we were aboard the student ship, “Arosa Kulm”, the following September, however, I was all in. The travel bug had bitten.

What a time we had! On our way north through England to Scotland we visited Pembroke, Wales, my mother’s birthplace; bicycled around Lake Windermere in the lake District and gorged on blackberries in Wordsworth’s hometown. On our month-long holidays at Christmas and Easter we borrowed backpacks, maps and other essential gear from our British friends and hitchhiked through France, Switzerland, Austria and Italy. Our drivers bought us meals and took us home to meet their families. We saw Rome clinging to handsome Italian university students on the backs of their Vespas, shivered in the catacombs and drank cheap wine and sang along with the comrades at a communist bar.

Later in life my husband, Caddy, and I spent summer vacations camping with our girls. After they married and left home we toured the West Coast in a 24-foot trailer. Every time we pulled our camper out of the driveway and onto the highway, we looked at each other and grinned. Our dog, Buster, sat in the back-seat grinning too, from one floppy ear to the other.

The inspiration to travel and the joy received from our traveling adventures has never gotten old. As the years have gone by our camping is resigned to memory and our traveling reduced to day trips. But we still grin when we leave the driveway and merge onto the interstate.

Sue Swanson

Today we write about whether or not the act of writing is healing, and if it is, how that has worked in each writer’s life. Is it the act itself is healing, or the result of the writing?  Here are some of our writers’ responses:

I do automatic writing in many of my journals. I take something that’s on my mind and I just start writing. I often discover what the REAL issue by writing something out, just slamming it into the computer as fast as my fingers can go, without thinking. When I was a consultant and had a sticky situation I was working with, I’d take my thoughts for a walk then come home and write about them and always, writing resulting in clarity. But in terms of healing, nothing beats this story.

When I was trying to work through the angst of why I couldn’t say YES to Mary, after five years in which Bob and I had divorced and she and I had fallen in love, she told me she needed to let me go. She told me that if I didn’t find myself, I could never find her. I knew she was right. We had come to a place where we weren’t going anywhere, and I couldn’t make myself move. I was stuck in a whirlwind of conflict.

One morning, after a sleepless night, I set up a table on my screen, with two columns, one short, one wider. I wrote “Mary Ann” on the first box, then tabbed to the next box and wrote down all my agonizing questions. “Why, God? How could I?  What do you think?” Then I sat silent in front of my computer holding the questions until another voice, certainly not my own, came through.  I tabbed to the next row. “God” I typed into the first space. Then I tabbed to the wider space and typed what fell out of my fingers. I went on like this for pages, throwing my agony, my grief, my love, onto the pages and waiting for “answers” to flow through my fingers into “God’s” dialog boxes. I wrote and wrote, Days or maybe weeks later, in a new space of calm, I bought a bouquet of yellow roses, took them to Mary’s house and left them on the doorstep with a note that read, “Yes, Mary. Yes, with all my heart.”

Mary Ann Woodruff

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Proof of a Poem

Sometimes a piece I’ve written answers a scared question I ask inside: “Do I exist?” I really didn’t know if I did at certain times of my life. I didn’t. It has been healing for me as a mother/wife/daughter to make that mark of existence that writing can be. When I saw a poem I had written, I knew that I existed. I knew that *I* had written it, proving to me that *I* must still exist. The poem reassured me by its existence. The poem became evidence, concrete evidence, that I still had thoughts. Of my own. About myself.

Writing has been like a Bechdel test for my selfhood. In that test, a movie must have two women in it who talk to each other about something other than a man. When I write in my journal, I become my own friend. I enter into a dialog with an inner friend, and I talk about things other than the needs of my family. My own needs for example.

When the needs of my family have overwhelmed my body and soul, I have written myself back into existence as a being with her own perspective, volition, awareness.

PROOF

what is the

meaning

of

this?

the meaning

of

this

is that

I EXIST.

Emily Dietrich

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The Time Connection

I inherited a mess! Eight huge boxes filled with memorabilia, photographs, scrapbooks and journals that my grandfather had collected. I come from a family that seems compelled to collect and save the flotsam and jetsam of their lives. Some were worse than others, saving every theatre ticket and travel postcard. Others just stashed away souvenirs of joyous occasions: wedding invitations and menus from special anniversary dinners. No one told me I should, but when I got my first brownie camera for my ninth birthday I started filling scrapbooks with photos, blurry at first but then steadily improving as I learned how to look through a lens and hold the camera steady. My first set of photos were of Orton Plantation near Wilmington, North Carolina. We were spending the summer there while my father researched a book on blockade runners of the Civil War. Wilmington had been a port for Southerners desperate for goods denied them by the Yankee blockade just off the shore. The photos aren’t much, but looking at the Spanish moss on the huge oaks which served as the backdrop for my carefully staged photo of my sisters and mother still brings back the scent of the jasmine in the hot humid North Carolina summer air and an ache for my big sister and mother now gone.

My grandfather’s collection was much more sophisticated than mine. When he retired as a Presbyterian minister in the early nineteen thirties he began collecting family history and continued doing so until he died in 1961. He passed the eight boxes down to my father who was an historical novelist. When my father died in 1981, as the only historian in the family, I was the lucky winner of the boxes. No one else cared.

But the people who saved those things cared a lot. They weren’t just saving “things” they were saving memories that brought back emotions. These scrapbooks could create whole evenings of fun when shared with family members in the days before people isolated themselves behind the screens of social media. But what was I going to do with eight boxes of stuff from five different families in a condo with limited storage space?

I decided to take all the memorabilia and write up the stories of the people who had saved their memories. As I painstakingly went through the material these long gone family memories became mine and people began to emerge as personalities. In fact they were quite a cast of characters. I began to see connections with them and my own immediate family. The creative writing streak had probably come down from my maternal great-grandmother who was a poet and earned a living writing for Sunday School publications in the l840s and l850s. My father’s avocation as an historical writer linked back to his fifth great-grandfather who wrote a history of Ireland in 1689. What had begun as a chore suddenly became interesting and fun.

The amazing thing was that as I delved into the dusty archives and perused fading photos my mind slipped back to the times I was reading about. In a strange way I seemed to almost travel back in time and the words poured out of my mind and into my computer as I described long lost family members. For long hours as I wrote the outside world disappeared and I lost myself in their nineteenth and twentieth century lives.

And, as I wrote, as I came to understand them, I understood myself better. I realized that what talents and faults I have aren’t new and mine alone. They have trickled down the branches of a long family tree. That was healing and made me smile.

Sue Swanson

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Healing Through Writing

I have written three poems about my suicide attempt in May 2011.

The first poem was written in the middle of my attempt. I had made many razor cuts along my right forearm, and I noticed the blood was forming interesting patterns on the arm of the chair where I was sitting. The title of a poem came to me, and I had to put the razor blade down and go into my office to write that poem. It was about my feelings at that moment and why I wanted to die. Only after I was fully satisfied with the poem did I return to my task of killing myself, moving from a razor blade to my shotgun.

I started the second poem while I was living in a skilled nursing facility. After I called the paramedics, I lived in the Orthopaedic Trauma Unit at Harborview for almost two months, then in the skilled nursing facility for seven more months. I had mentioned to my therapist in the facility that I wrote poetry but had written very little in the past several  months; she suggested I try writing again.

I didn’t think anything would happen, but the instant I got out my pad of paper and a pen, a poem started zipping out of my brain to my fingers. It tells the story of my life at Harborview and subsequently at the nursing facility. It is a story of hope, of a positive point of view, of gratitude for a chance at recovery. It’s not finished yet. It might never be finished because I will live with the physical effects of my actions for the rest of my life. Some people might think the physical effects are a negative part of my life – sometimes I think that, too – but I discovered many silver linings to the black cloud under which I had lived.

A few years later I was at a science-fiction convention and a friend of mine riffed the words “walk with a cane” to the Four Seasons’ “Walk Like a Man”. I was intrigued and asked my friend if I could his idea for a poem; he graciously consented.

It took a few more years before I started that poem. I wasn’t sure what kind of poem I’d write, what the poem would say, but even so I was surprised and astonished by the  result. It is a story of losing and regaining my power of self, a positive shout that I’m alive, and a celebration of that living.

Truthfully, I think I started healing when I called 911. But my three poems, one written at my darkest time, one at my hopeful time, and one when I yell “I am alive!”, may have helped.

I did not succeed at suicide, and I am joyous that I failed.

Jules Dickinson

 Empty Journal

          When I was 13, well, I was 13. To try to soothe my inner psychosis and innate hostility towards anyone related to me, my mother suggested I start to journal. Mind you, this was nothing new. I had journaled for school, and kept a diary which made proclamations such as, “The fire within me to be a zoological curator at a top metropolitan museum will never be extinguished.” I believe, however, at this tumultuous age, my mother was suggesting that I perhaps turn some of that angst onto a blank page and self-reflect rather than create metaphorical skewers aimed at my parents and brother. And here’s why it didn’t work: with such focus, I immediately understood the power of words in a way I hadn’t before. Words were no longer simply a tool for communication; each word, each combination, created a labyrinth of soulful insight that had incendiary potential. Most importantly, these words could cause or heal pain.

I would be enraged, and, muted by the discipline in my home, I would go to my room and would rage at my journal about the injustice and servitude of my life. This was all such a bunch of bullshit that someday everyone would be sorry that I was this angry. In fact, they should all be begging me to forgive them RIGHT NOW. Predictably, this was pretty much all my mother’s fault.

Each time I did this, the next day I would review what I had written and became intensely ashamed. I would rip out any page that held a criticism of my mother. Within months, I had a very loosely-bound collection of pages that barely held together because of the gaps created by my unleashed anger. I’m glad that’s what happened, because if you can learn by age 13 that words have power, that means that your words can also heal as certainly as they can injure.

Liz Burr-Brandstadt

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This picture (courtesy of Wikipedia) is a painting by Francis Barraud of the dog Nipper entitled “His Master’s Voice,” which later became the logo for RCA.

A writer’s VOICE is not always easy to define, yet it is one of the most important aspects of our work. “Voice” can mean a few different things, but is not the same thing as “point of view.” Think of a book…any book that has a story-line. Who is the narrator? Is the narrator the author, or a different character? Does the story have different points of view throughout? Characters have their own voices; we learn their values, attributes, and peculiarities. Even if, however, the author is not a direct participant in the narrative, by reading the story we also learn about the writer’s voice. The voice of the writer conveys characteristic speech, an approach or mindset, the values and charisma personal to that writer.

Think of it another way: As a writing group, we know each other’s writing well enough, that I bet more often than not we could listen to a piece and make a pretty good guess as to which of us wrote it. Why is that? It’s because we can recognize each other’s voices. Or think of a time when you read something and thought, “Wow, that sounds like Dickens,” or, “This piece is like Stephen King meets Moliere” (I have no idea what that last one would look like). The point is, whatever point of view we write from, our own writer’s voice will come through.

So for this entry, let’s play with “Voice,” whether it be a reflection or an experiment.

“You Do it Too, Writer! Don’t Be Shy!”

Who are you, my reader? I’ve been pouring my soul out to you through my words. I know how I felt when I wrote my innermost thoughts but do you know how I feel? How do any of us truly know another, truly know how they feel? My heart ached so hard when I wrote about my lost love that it felt as if someone had sucked the breath from my body and left a gaping cavern where my heart used to be. Did you feel my pain as deeply as I?  Perhaps! But you read and you feel based on your own experience, the emotions developed and mixed and roiled together over the years of your own life. If you have loved and lost as I have then you will feel my pain as your pain as you read my story. My story will mean more to you than to someone who has never loved and lost.

I write to ease my pain. I write to express my joy. I write to remember and to tell my story and those of my loved ones so that we won’t be forgotten. I write to reach out to you and all readers, to all common humanity.

I write to search for truths, my personal truths and to see if what I perceive as truths rings a bell with others. Are they universal truths? Is there such a thing as a universal truth?

There must be something to universal human feelings since touching on them, writing about them is what created a classic. We read the classics to learn about the common human experience and how to fit it into our own lives. We read the classics to learn how to behave or how we are supposed to behave, how we should respond to the world around us: to learn the universal truths.

Ah, but life has changed all around us and changes faster with every year. The classical Greek myths rang true to the Greeks, less so down the years. Now only a few classical scholars even read them, let alone in the original Greek. Pastors preach sermons from the pulpit interpreting truths from the Bible to congregants who can’t even imagine first century life in Palestine as they sit in their pews 2000 years later. We read Shakespeare and struggle with the language while loving the rhythm and poetry of the words.       My own grandsons cannot understand the language in Kidnapped and Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson’s classics that fascinated and thrilled their grandfather.

And yet, and yet, all of these classics down the years expressed human emotions that still touch us, still ring true. So, dear writer in 2018, you do it too! You write! Don’t be shy! Tell me, grandson, why you love your X-Box games so. What truths do you discover as you play your games with your friends? Although you rarely have face-to-face contact with them, your eyes cast down to your phone, you still have something to say. Don’t be shy because your voice is the voice of the future. Don’t be shy! Write!

Sue Swanson

Addressing the Reader in Fiction:

“–Hypocrite lecteur, –mon semblable, —mon frère!”

In my story, “The Sorry Camp”, written in the second person, You are the readers and every other white person who has lived in the United States of America since the birth of the nation. This You shares the baggage of history with the writer. As in Baudelaire’s lines, this You is a hypocrite, the mirror image of the writer, and her sister.

The reader is not shy, The reader is ignorant. The reader thinks that she understands but she does not. The reader is dangerous; she can hurt by doing and by not doing.

In my story, the protagonist, a naïve young white girl (we assume she may share some background with the reader) endures a summer in hell as a counselor for poor black girls. The children are innocent. The camp itself is hellish; its history includes the displacement of freed slaves from lush land they cared for. This– by now utterly barren camp– purports to bring fresh air into the lives of the children. Within this setting and this particular moment and place (Virginia,1964) terrifying events unfold that the reader, the You, of our particular moment and our particular time , may or may not understand with hindsight. The story asks a question about the possibility of forgiveness for the cruelty of ignorance and complicity.

Mary Dicker

Welcome Summer!

We have a new process for the web page that we’re very excited about. We will have a rotating schedule of writers whose prompts will be more focused on the writing process, although don’t be surprised if you see a creative prompt now and then. We welcome your comments, and hope to inspire and/or prod the writer in you.

This my mantra: Love. Art. Repeat. 

Love and art can take many forms, including taking care of yourself and standing up for what is right over what is comfortable or convenient. It includes seeking and speaking truth: external truth, your truth, even existential Truth. It includes accountability for the consequences of our decisions, for we have a greater impact on each other than we recognize.

It is painting a landscape, sculpting movement in stone, scoring a concerto, yes. But it is also knitting socks, capturing the light, drawing a monster, plaiting ribbons, stringing words like beads or fish, carving a whistle, building a chair, making a puzzle, shaping pottery, sketching the profile of a beloved, cooking an omelet, stitching flowers onto cloth.

It includes every voice, from the barest whisper to the loudest roar. It includes every sense, from what can be seen and touched to what can be felt only with the heart. It includes every defiant act of creativity—and every act of creativity is, indeed, defiant. Perhaps wildly so, perhaps gently, but yes, defiant. Defying even death, with the heartbeat of I am, I am, I am.

Wherever the drive to create comes from, it carries our voices somewhere else: creating within the industrious din of a city or on the mountaintop of intellectuality; creating far out on the ink-black sea of contemplation or from the verdant fields of community; creating within the crushing void of overthinking or from the wide vistas of a spirit at peace. Every creation a lantern lifted high to carry its flame into the darkening sky.

It includes love for our country that calls for deep thought and considered action. It includes love for our fellow human beings who need our protection and support–including future generations whose world we shape with our decisions. It includes love for our remarkable, irreplaceable planet. It includes love for love’s sake and for all of ours. It includes hope and compassion and backbone and fortitude and a fire in our veins.

This we must do—over and over and over—or all else is meaningless.

Love. Art. Repeat. 

Darla Kennerud

Art

In pairs, groups, circles,

We

Sew, sculpt,  bake, build, paint, weave,

Listen—

Making

Trust.

Chalice, membrane, fountain, firework,

Our artifact

Breathes

Over, through, within, under, beyond

Us,

Begetting

Love

In pairs, groups, circles,

We

Sew, sculpt,  bake, build, paint, weave,

Listen—

Making

Trust.

Chalice, membrane, fountain, firework,

Our artifact

Breathes

Over, through, within, under, beyond

Us,

Begetting

Love

Emily Dietrich

Love. Art. Repeat.

I write poetry. I don’t write novels, short stories, essays, or memoirs because (to me) these genres all require plots and plotting. I don’t have a talent for plotting.

For me, a poem is an emotion and writing about emotion. No plotting required! I can write about emotions. And yet this is funny, because for many years, I did not experience emotions.

My mother was… let us just say that my mother should never have had children—or in fact never have been allowed around children. My youngest years were not conducive to being a happy, beloved child nor to producing an adult who could create and maintain normal, healthy relationships with other people.

My father was my source of loving and being loved, of feeling worthy of love. When my parents announced their divorce when I was seven, I was devastated. The one and only person who loved me was going away and I would not see him very often. Starting that evening and for at least the next twenty years, I was the epitome of Star Trek’s emotionless Mr. Spock, even before Star Trek existed.

As I passed through high school and college and went out into the big, wide world, however, I saw other people experience emotions as though those emotions were ordinary, everyday things. Eventually, with much work on my own and with the help of therapy, I decided that feeling emotions (beyond a general irritability for everyone and everything) might be something both safe and worthwhile that I could do.

Today I’m grateful to feel emotions: happy and unhappy, pleasant and unpleasant, mild to very intense. Having lived both with and without emotions, I am definitely in favor of living with them and fully feeling them. I find the intense emotions—whether joy or rage—are very scary, but I would still rather feel scary, intense emotions than feel nothing at all.

I love my emotions. I write poetry. Repeat!

Jules Dickinson ’77

The Mythopoesis of Love

For the past few days, hour after hour, I have been immersed in note-taking on Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan. Now what on God’s green earth would motivate me to do such a thing? Have I developed some kind of program of atonement based on utter boredom? Do I believe that the intricacies of Hobbes’s distinction between contracts and covenants is important to know? (By the way, you can’t have a covenant with a beast. Nope.) None of the above; I am painstakingly doing this because I am taking an online class called Revolutionary Ideas: Utility, Justice, Equality, Freedom.

But why am I doing that? I’m taking the class because I’m giving a presentation in a couple of weeks about the Mythopoesis of Alternative Justice at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association annual conference. Why? Because I’ve read a bunch of books in this past year about different areas of North America (that includes Mexico and Canada, folks!), and the roots of their immigrants, their belief systems, and the stories we all tell (books, movies, TV) that illustrate our anxieties and profound hopes about justice. That doesn’t explain it, really, though, does it?

Why did I pick that topic right now? Because I need to understand, like many, many of my fellow Americans, what is happening in this country. I’m scared, and hurting, so fundamentally confused, and can find no unity nor answers by talking. Even conversations I have with people with whom I agree feel tense and angry. But I don’t think yelling at each other or retreating to preconceived notions about what is important in “your” America is going to work at all. So, I did what I can do very well. I decided to love and write. (And apparently exhaust my brain to the point that reading an article in Popular Science seems frivolous.)

This is at the core of all my creative efforts: I want the fruit of my labors to be reflective of who I am as a person, and not what I believe. To me, if my writing, and my cooking, and all my other quests to create nice things isn’t rooted in this desire to understand and love, then it’s not worth making. I wrote a paper, and made a Power Point presentation, and got some awesome movie and TV clips, and thought of some funny ways to tell people about my paper. I’m not trying to change what anyone thinks, or make some self-important statement about right, wrong, and what people should be thinking about. I am trying to create out of love.

Liz Burr-Brandstadt ’91

Zinaida Serebriakova 1884-1967

Sometimes the simplest things in life can bring us the most inspiration. What better to contemplate those integuments for our feet. What if we didn’t have them? What do they symbolize? Have a good story about shoes?

SHOES

Ah, shoes! My secret passion! (My other passion is hats but they are out of fashion so don’t count.) But I LOVE SHOES. I have no idea why. But I can tell you that the first thing I notice about a person is their footwear. I’ve startled strangers and friends alike by sidling up to them and saying in an emotional, conspiratorial whisper, “I love your shoes!”

Besides a “thank you” I usually also receive a wink and a nod and a “Me too! They’re my favorite.” And we smile the smile of a passion shared. Another shoe lover!

Sue

Florentine

Looming large in our living room in the home where I grew up were two oil portraits from the early 20th century, framed by thick, ornate, and gilded frames. Each pictured a formidable character, and I knew them as “Grossmama” and “Grosspapa.” They were my great, great grandparents who immigrated from Germany. Grosspapa had a handlebar mustache and kind of looked like Edgar Allan Poe, but I was fascinated by Grossmama. I always wanted to hear her story.

“Look at her earrings and her pin,” my mother would tell me, pointing to the very Victorian-looking bunches of grapes dangling from her ears and the high neck of her dress. “That jewelry was made from her baby Florentine’s hair.”

Even though I already knew, I would ask, “And who was Florentine?”

“Florentine was the youngest of Grossmama and Grosspapa’s fourteen children.”

“But only seven of them grew up, right Mommy?”

“Yes, that’s right. And one year, Grossmama lost her three youngest children to tuberculosis: first her six-year-old, then her four-year-old, and then her two-year-old, Florentine.”

“So Grossmama had the jewelry made from her long dark curls, right Mommy?”

“Yes, her long dark curls.”

Then my mother would produce a small pair of tiny black leather boots with buttons up the side. They looked almost new. “These were Florentine’s shoes,” she would continue. “Grossmama would hold them and cry and say, ‘If only I could bear looking at the shoes!'”

How thrillingly morbid! I loved this story. Couldn’t get enough of it. Unsuspecting guests who had never been to our house before would enter our living room for presumed hospitality, only to have me push ahead of them where I shouted out a “highlights-only” version of this story. I had to get there before my brother tried to steal the show and tell the story first. Mind you, my brother couldn’t care less about the story and was probably playing Atari in the other room, but I beat him, nonetheless. I’m sure our guests were very grateful.

Why the shoes? Why couldn’t Elizabeta Von Sturmer Hugo bear to see Florentine’s shoes?

I think it’s because they didn’t have the worn sole and scuffs of a child who played outside, or followed her brothers and sisters on adventures, or walked to market and church. They seemed too small not to be worn. They represented the steps not taken.

About ten years ago, my mother asked me what she should specifically leave me in her will. I couldn’t really think of anything. (For the record, my mother has approximately 438 pairs of shoes. Also for the record, my brother, when posed the same question, immediately asked which of my mother’s belongings cost the most.)

“I think I want the bible Grossmama and Grosspapa brought from Germany,” I said. I love old books, and I remembered the careful list kept on the first page of the bible detailing the births and deaths of their children, and the family to follow.

“And Florentine’s shoes,” I added.

Because every footprint we leave is important to someone.

Liz

Shoes

And my breasts—it’s better not to mention them at all except to say that

they seemed to be in a race to see which could be first to reach my knees.

Maya Angelou, Rainbow in the Cloud

Gravity has had its way on me, as on Sister Maya. And beyond the obvious effect of gravity, age has also affected my shoe size. I always had big feet. As a teen, I had to buy shoes at a tiny Rochester, NY emporium euphemistically called the “Tall Girl Shop.” Now, feet that used to be comfortable in size 11s need 11-1/2 or 12s. I’m lucky to live in Nordstrom land, where through the gift of mostly Munros my feet are comfortably clad.

And at the same time—when I think of my expanding feet, I think of the greater understanding they represent. That too, is a gift of aging.

Mary Ann

For this month, instead of forcing a political discussion, instead of “ELECT’ we’re writing on “SELECT.’ We all make choices every day, and often we’re completely unaware of the far-reaching (or even immediate) consequences.

Simone

11/11/16

When I asked Simone why she had acted to save the children at such great risk to herself, she shrugged in her European manner, and said, “Someone had to do it.”  She appeared fatigued with the question although kind in allowing me an opportunity to ask it. Earlier in the week at dinner, in the elegant dining room of her care facility, she had been chattily introduced to me as a French heroine. Again, kindly, she said to her Christian interlocutors, “These are not matters to discuss over dinner.”

Women of advanced age do not all look the same. Simone herself was quite beautiful. Her skin was pale white, her hair white, her eyes blue. The overall visual impression was of a woman of good health and intellect.

Too polite or too hesitant to delve beneath the answer she had given me and unable to find a ready answer in my cursory research on the Jewish Resistance, I began to ask these questions of my hypothetical 19 year old self.  Am I responsible for the children in my care when I am only a few years older than they? If I am not responsible for them than who is? If the parents of these children cannot bear to be separated from their own flesh and blood but I know the children will surely die, how can I summon the strength to wrench these children from loving parents who cling to them?

Of course I could not answer these questions.

(These children were hidden in the homes of French families, their birth names and parents’ names carefully concealed in the lining of Simone’s coat, so that at the end of the war, hopefully, families could be reunited.)

The concept of choice may not be a suitable framework for understanding why someone brave acts bravely. Most of us would wish we could. In times of peace we assume that we can select our course of action. Perhaps choice is a mystery.

I will never know more than I do now about how a young French girl was able to save so many children.  I am honored to have met Simone. I think of her at times when my hope is shaken.

Mary

A Select Number

Will reap the benefits of this country,

Will represent the interests of all,

Will be disparaged and banished,

Will embrace rampant intolerance,

Or inclusion, and

Will hope.

Liz

SELECT

Select? Choose? How do we make choices? Why do we select what we do? What goes into the selection? What is behind it? My guess is that the answers to those questions change over time as we ourselves move from our teenage years through our time as mature adults and finally into our time as seniors.

The problem is we often have to live with choice we made in our twenties that don’t fit us comfortably in our forties. Selections have consequences.

And so we select or choose again as life’s circumstances shift. Those of us who are able to change our minds as circumstances shift, who are flexible, seem to float more smoothly through life’s challenges. Perhaps these lucky ones have found the secret to happiness.

Sue

Select

When I was at a serious, life-changing choice point in my life, whenever I selected a Tarot

card, I often picked the Two of Swords. In the deck I used, a “blindfolded woman is seated

at the water’s edge, holding two swords in perfect balance. The blindfold indicates that she

cannot see her way through her present situation, so she steadfastly ignores the sea of her

emotions and the jagged rocks of hard facts behind her.”* That was surely the way I felt, so

terrified of whatever decision I might make, I could do nothing at all.

Once I made my choice, I never selected the Two of Swords again for a Tarot spread.

Just sayin’.

* The Complete Book of Tarot, Julie Sharman-Burke

Mary Ann

“A Rose By Any Other Name” by Loretta Fasn

Recently, I read an article in the Washington Post: Another challenge for transgender people: Choosing a new name . It made me think, what would I name myself if I had the choice? Not just, “What does my name mean to me?” but “If I had to choose a name for myself, at this point in my life, what would it be and why?” So that’s our September topic: “My Name”. Because a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Chapter 2:  Lily

I do remember. I really do. Mom and I are traveling together. We meet at the Miami

Airport. The plane is late and we have to run from one end of the airport to the other

and I tell Mom that she can do it because I know that she is strong enough if it is

important and it is important because we are going to visit Papa. He is yours my

mother says. And I know that she means that he is hers.  Barbara will be there too.

Every year it is the same. Mom makes light of it, calls it a reunion, but Barbara

looks older every year. These trips do not help her.

My friends think I am off on holiday. They think I will be lying by the pool,

sneaking drinks at the swim-up bar, fooling everyone about my age, flirting with

guys.  I would but there won’t be any time for that.

I never felt a hundred percent safe. I heard the stories so many times. About how I

was left on the beach. About how my mother couldn’t swim. About the trip on the

river even if I wasn’t there. You hear a story so many times and you think for sure it

happened and you can see it in your mind how the day unfolds.

I do remember riding on my mother’s hip, our cold swimsuits stuck together, how

she trembled when she put the key into the lock.

“ ‘Where is Papa? ’ I asked you over and over again but you didn’t know and you

started to cry. I put you on my hip and I started to search for him.” This is how my

Mom begins the story each time.

Last year when we landed in Montego Bay I was 14.  Like always the Jamaicans

clapped when the plane landed. I don’t know why but that part is always is exciting

to me.  I helped Mom with her bags. She always carries way too much on the plane.

The plane lands right on the tarmac and you have to walk down this metal stairway

they roll to the door. It’s so hot. Steamy hot. Sticky hot. Mom has these big

sunglasses and  she looks like a celebrity. Sometimes I feel so awkward standing

next to her.

“Lily,” Mom says, ”Hurry up!” She loves the sound of my name. So do I.

Mary

Fleur Jersey-Cowgirl

I’ve never had to think much about my name: it works, I like it, and most people can pronounce and remember it. But now that I am halfway (I hope) through my life, if I could pick any name I wanted, I would jump at the chance to change it to something else that reflects my historical, personal, and imaginary identities. Family is important, as is self-identity and one’s own vibrant inner world, after all. Fleur Jersey-Cowgirl, for example. When I was born, my father wanted to name me “Fleur” after a character in The Forsyte Saga, but my mother said that “Fleur Burr” would be her child’s name over her dead body. “Jersey” makes me sound both tough, as in “New Jersey,” and worldly, as in the island in the UK off Normandy that has awesome cows” (Get it? “Cow-girl. And for “Cowgirl”?) I think the fanciful is important.  I was in no way raised a cowgirl. But I have always, at one point in my life or another, wanted to either be riding a horse, own cowboy boots, or be ravaged by a cowboy (later in life, mind you). But you know what? I’m happy with being “Elizabeth,” an East-coast transplant being ravaged by an aerospace engineer (who sometimes goes to Texas), so I’m good. I’ll pass on the name change.

Liz

“Name”

I didn’t grow up hating my name, or even disliking it.  My name just was, like air or my heart beating.  If I stopped to think about it at all, it was to wish that “Julie” didn’t sound so ruffle-y and frou-frou.  I did not want to be associated in any way with frilly, elaborate female clothing.  To me, that kind of clothing was antithetical to how I perceived myself and the type of woman I wanted to be.  Having spent my young childhood years with TV presentations of Wyatt Earp and Roy Rogers, I wanted cowboy boots and pants (and preferably a pair of six-guns).

As I grew older, the desire for six-guns and boots – but not pants – abated.  I would wear dresses if I had to, but I always would have preferred to wear pants.  When my high school finally changed their dress code to allow girls to wear pants, I was an enthusiastic celebrant.

Years later, when I discovered science-fiction conventions and the companies I worked for had Netnews readers, I noticed that many people had made up “fan names” for themselves.  Many people were known primarily by their fannish name, even out in the Real World.  I started thinking about my own name and whether I wanted to create a fannish name for myself.  Again – or still – my sole objection to “Julie” was that, to me, it sounded too frou-frou.

Eventually I recalled an old nickname that had been used amongst the family when I was small – “Jules”.  I considered this name carefully for many months and it met my requirements: It sounded a little mannish and not at all frou-frou, adopting it would tie back to good childhood memories, and it was a widely-accepted diminutive of my real name. So one day as I started a new job with a new company, I started using “Jules” for all except Very Official Purposes.

I am now Jules, but if you’re an old friend you can still call me Julie – as long as you don’t try to make me wear a dress.

Jules

It’s that time of year when day-to-day schedules aren’t always predictable, so we’re going to have choices for June, July, and August. Reflection, however, is always timely. With that in mind, here are the three topics:

1. HEAT….just the word: respond!
2. Final reflections on The Angled Road.
3. Take a gander at this Guiseppe Arcimboldo painting, entitled “Summer”. Respond!

HEAT

She grew up outside of Philadelphia and as May morphed into June and the school year drew to a close Ella welcomed the humid heat of the classroom. Today’s heat and humidity stuck her tee shirt to her back. Wonderful! It meant that summer was right around the corner and she would finally see the end of Miss Jones and the boredom of third grade.

Summer’s heat meant that her mother would drop her off at the pool where she would spend wonderful lazy days with Kathy and Janis playing games in and out of the water to stay cool and watching her blond hair slowly change color until by the time September rolled around it would be a dull chlorine-green. Ella gazed out the schoolroom window imagining herself with Kathy and Janis in the shade under the trees by the shallow baby pool eating their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches made delightfully soggy by the heat. She couldn’t wait.

After lunch as Miss Jones droned on about the times table Ella’s attention was riveted by the sudden change in the sky. Dark, ominous clouds flew across the window and the leaves on the maple tree outside the classroom window shivered as gusts of wind warned of a coming storm.

The nines table was forgotten by the children as a summer tropical storm dashed rain hard against the windows. The maple tree disappeared behind thundering sheets of water cascading down the window panes. And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the storm was over, the maple tree reappeared and a tentative sunbeam peeked from behind a lingering cloud.

But something had changed. The heat was gone with the storm and the crisp cool of a late spring day had returned. “Ella!” said Miss Jones firmly breaking her reverie. What is five times eight?

Delicious summer heat and days at the pool would have to wait. “But at least next year I’ll be in fourth grade,” thought Ella. And there was comfort in that.

Sue

Heat

Chapter I    Watching

It was the hottest she’d ever been. She went into the aquamarine up to her neck, backing

into the water, her heels sinking first into the fine sand as she watched the figures on the

beach grow more and more distant and less and less distinct. Charlie was there on the

beach somewhere. He was watching Lily. Putting sunscreen on her baby skin, great

globs of it—more than she would—making a game of the banana smelling goop.

Except she didn’t see them as exactly as she wished. More like silhouettes on the beach–

dark ones, whitish ones dissolving as the film recedes and the wavy mirage hovers in the

middle distance.

Yesterday was like today. They’d taken the baby to the Falls, a tourist trap. Sunburned

white people hooted and screamed. She’d slipped on the rocks and cut herself. “No

problem,” she said and meant it. Then again at dinner, when there was a mix-up and the

waiter brought shrimp, not what she had ordered, and what would, if she had eaten it,

close off her airway—“No problem,” she’d said.

“I don’t understand you,” Charlie said. Lily was playing with the roly poly pasta and

popping it into her mouth. Because the child was beautiful the other diners looked their

way and smiled with indulgence and forgiveness. Or so it seemed to Renee, Lily’s mother.

In French there is a phrase that conveys that a matter is of no consequence. The matter

is trivial. It is to be forgotten. Expressed as an algebraic formula both sides would be

equal.

“And I don’t understand you,” Renee said.  Her fork skidded alongside the plate and

made a screeching sound.

Lily opened her mouth, scrunched her forehead and raised her spoon in the air. Renee

grabbed the spoon, pretended to be a friendly monster and Lily went back to playing

with the fusilli.

Charlie smiled. “You’re a natural,” he said. And Renee would have to agree because

she does know how to anticipate Lily’s every gradation of baby emotion.

She’s watching the shore again. She’s wet through and through and weighted down with

the heaviness of heat and water. She moves from the dog paddle to walking, raising each

thigh above the level of water. She’s not making enough progress. Her breathing peaks

with anxiety.

She makes the child out on the sand. Lily’s toddler bottom is in the air. She’s an inverted

triangle over her shovel and pail, fascinated, riveted by her own efforts. She’s safe.

But Charlie is gone.

“Lily,” Renee says. “Where is PaPa?”

Mary

How to Walk in Hot Sand

My personal preference: wear socks to and from beach

Downside: looks dorky; sand collects in socks

Tried and rejected by me, but still widely used:

-dip feet thoroughly in water and run all the way up

-thrust feet deep to cool sand with each step

-run or walk until feet are unbearably hot, then stand on towel until they cool down. Repeat.

-get carried

-endure pain until boards and skitter up boards as lightly as possible

-wait until sun goes lower

-shoes (worst! So much sand! So not cool!)

-sandals (2^nd worst—they flip hot sand all around!)

-walk in footsteps of the person ahead of you

Downside: first person screwed. Worth trying alternating, like bikes or geese.

Possible, but untried:

-Use Super Soaker to spray the sand ahead of you as you go

-personal tunnel?

-tow rope/boogie board combo

Emily

 How to Be a Bad-Ass Blogger

I will answer all three questions in three sentences (not counting this one). Guiseppe Arcimboldo was a late-Renaissance artist from the school of Mannerism, which sought to express the connection between humans and nature, and this  self-portrait does; the fresh and ripe fruits and vegetables form the face of the artist and the colors most certainly reflect the hot and sunny summers in Milan, Italy (which averages in the 80°F range). Arcimboldo, however, got quite a bit of heat from other artists at the time, as they feared he was mocking the portraiture style of the Renaissance painters. On another note, last night I finished the final editing notes for our next version of The Angled Road, and I am ready to send them off to our design guy after one more check, so the heat is almost off of me!

Liz

                  Maurice Brazil Prendergast,  1858-1924

“May I?”

Genevieve was enjoying her ninth birthday party immensely! To wake up as nine instead of eight this morning was a tremendous step forward in Genevieve’s mind. She was already deciding what she was newly empowered to do now that she was a whole year older. She had put one of those things into effect five minutes ago when she had announced that before ice cream and cake they would play games, games that she had chosen.
“Alright, everyone,” she said in her new nine-year old voice, sounding uncharacteristically bossy, “Line up behind  this line. We’re going to play “May I?” The children lined up obediently all except Jason which was no surprise. Jason, the class bully who particularly enjoyed tormenting Genevieve every chance he got, was not about to do anything she suggested. Against Genevieve’s protests her mother had insisted that Jason be invited to the party.  Their mothers were best friends. Genevieve had no choice and had reluctantly given in. Now Genevieve gave her mother an imploring look.
“You too, Jason,” her mother said. “Cake and ice cream at the end of the game.” Jason frowned but slowly stepped behind the line.
“Red light, green light rules,” Genevieve announced and the game began. “Green light!” she shouted and the children dashed forward with cries of “May I?”
“Red light!” Genevieve said and the kids slid to a halt. “Jason, go back to the start, you didn’t say, “May I?” Jason looked annoyed but the kids all pointed him back to the starting line and he reluctantly retreated.
“Green light!” commanded Genevieve and the children ran for the finish line. Jason ran his hardest, knocking several kids down in his mad dash for the finish but he was too far behind to catch up to the winner. “Back to the start, Jason!” said Genevieve with relish. “You forgot to say, “May I?” Jason slunk back to the start.
“Nine is going to be a great year,” Genevieve thought with delight. “Ice cream and cake everyone!”

Sue

Flower Moon Day

We went to Volunteer Park on Saturday.

It was Moon Day, the day each month

we give to each other; the May Flower full moon

waited in the wings to rise that evening.

Crossing the lake, curving around 10^th by St. Mark’s,

we turned left at Prospect

then left again by the tower,

and headed for the conservatory,

where flowers can be counted on all year.

A hundred-year-old glasshouse,

the conservatory bristled with life last Saturday—

orchids, maidenhair ferns,

hydrangea displays, artists sketching them;

an ancient Euphoria fanned its succulent frills,

carnivorous pitcher plants dangled sacs

secreting nectar that can attract, kill, and digest

a mouse.

The flowers were dazzling.

Bright red splashes of orchid cactus flowers

coughed thin tendrils and one perfect star

from their throats, Chilean Firebush

outside abuzz with scarlet blaze

and hummingbirds.

But it was the small cacti

that drew me this day,

the ones

you could easily pass amidst

the showier glories of the greenhouse:

Mamillaria Bocasana, fuzzy balls of gauze

and prickles; Mamillaria Parkinsonal,

owl’s eyes with spirals of spikes;

Rebutia Neocrumingii, a croquet ball

dotted with barbs, a miniature mace.

When I stopped and studied them, I gasped.

Many of them were blooming too!

Petite red dots expanded to dainty white blossoms

half the size of my pinkie finger nail,

yellow flowers so tiny I nearly missed them.

Stunned, I moved slowly,

noticing, simply noticing,

paying attention to the miracle

of beauty among the thorns.

I’m not sure if the message here was to stop and look,

to notice beauty wherever it can be seen,

or that just because I haven’t discovered it

doesn’t mean there is no beauty, no life, no creation,

to be seen and celebrated.

I do know my heart was lifted

on Flower Moon Day

in the glasshouse, there among the cacti;

that I left feeling blessed.

© Mary Ann Woodruff

Mary Ann

It’s May, it’s May! The Lusty Month of May!” (you’re welcome, Camelot fans)

Once again, the linguist in me has emerged! Let me tell you a bit about the origins of“may” (as a noun) which I find fascinating and you may find readable. Many thanks primarily to the Oxford English Dictionary, as well as my 4 years of Latin and one course in Old English in college. Oh, and I taught The Canterbury Tales and did some stuff with Chaucer’s original language, so I’m practically an expert. Actually, I’m rusty, and to be honest, I only looked up, like, 5 words. But I did the research!  Please feel free to argue with me in the comments.

At its first appearance (says me) “may” appeared as mæg as a Germanic derivation, and it meant “a male relative”; this is how it’s used in Beowulf. Ic eom Higelaces mæg ond maago ðegn (something like, “I am from Higglesbottom, as I am his kinsman and his soldier”).  Similarly, the word could also be used to mean “parent,” as in Þa bearn arisað ágen hyra magas (Bible quote: “The baby arises from his parents”). I just love Old English, so I was throwing some at you.

Here’s some more…On the Julian/Gregorian calendars, the fifth month is May (Old English calendar jargon for the 15^th of May: on Þære fiftan nihte on Maies monð). By the way, the Julian and Gregorian calendars are both solar calendars, but Julius Caesar said that there are 365.25 days in a year, but in 1582 Pope Gregory said there are 365.2425, which evidently makes a big difference when you’re trying to decide when Easter is.  But I digress. “May” is named for the Greek deity Maia who was a goddess of fertility, which makes sense, because the beginning of summer is when it’s time to reap what has been sown, and you always want that to be a lot. Or, at least, enough. Unless you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, where the equivalent would be November, which means “9”. You’ll have to ask someone Down Under about that symbolism.

May became a month that implied fertility for both agriculture and human beings. A poem from 1568 reads, “In May gois dammosalis and dammis In gardyng is grene,” which clearly means, “In May those damn kids get busy in the green gardens.”  Hooray for Middle English! Those crazy French; they made English more recognizable to those who speak English. So from here on out, “May” tends to be synonymous with optimism, vitality, being in one’s prime, and all that is blossoming and fruitful. Starting in the 13^th century, “may” also meant a maiden, virgin or young woman. It stuck for a while, though, since in 1870 William Morris wrote in “The Earthly Paradise”, “Amid these latter words of his, the may/ From her fair face had drawn her hands away.” Also, in England, some educational establishments refer to the post-Easter exams as “Mays.”

One last thing: ever wonder why June is the month for weddings? Because Ovid wrote, mense malum Maio, nubere volgus, which loosely translates as “Only the vulgar crowd gets married in May.” Considering the colossal effort I put into the research, I end on a sad note of mystification. Seems the perfect month to get married to me. I got married in February. Now, February refers to the Latin word for “purification”…

Liz

 Eager

Jehovah sent two women to our door.

One had a mouth outlined in plum,

her eyelids heavy with lash.

The other woman had brown skin and a kind smile; she lagged behind.

They carried literature, tracts of comic paper.

Six hundred and sixty-one languages contained their message, a number of great pride

meant to impress on me the effort of translating to the World

what only one hundred forty-four thousand could obtain.

(So few of us would meet our neighbors and loved ones in their heaven.)

I hoped I said the right things

about Freedom and Belief– recalling my mother’s attempt to rebuff–

so long ago, calling herself just a poor sinner, only to whet the appetite of eager Witnesses.

I meant to wish them well and see them on their way, my Island neighbors.

I may have done so, if I recall, eager, if not equally, on my part,

not to offend or bruise what I might.

The plum-mouthed lady drooped, I thought,

in the heat, or through some other internal current of emotion or thought.

Mary