Distinguished Visitor

President Obama visited Baton Rouge this past Thursday for a brief speech and a town-hall type meeting at McKinley High School, the first high school established in East Baton Rouge Parish (in the early 1900s) for African-American students. TV news programs showed videos of people camping out overnight to be first in line to get tickets to the event. I would have loved to have been among them, but not enough to camp out on the street.

Instead, I watched live coverage from home. I was moved by the faces of the people who did get tickets, mostly black people, all of them beaming with joy. Hundreds of people who didn't have tickets showed up and milled around peacefully outside the school, hoping to catch a glimpse of Barack Obama--their president even more than mine. When he spoke to the estimated one thousand people assembled in the auditorium, the folks outside gathered around news vans and listened attentively to his every word.

I don't recall another president in my lifetime who has faced as many obstacles as this one in terms of opposition from the other side of the aisle, yet he has maintained his dignity and even his sense of humor through all of it. He appeared light-hearted and relaxed during his exchanges with the Baton Rouge audience the other day, and I hope that the kind of love exuded by hometown crowds like that one will tide him over when he gets back to business as usual in Washington.

I'll bet he's counting the days until his term is over. You know Michelle is.

For Charleston, Where "Hate Won't Win"

This brand-new song is "All Good People" by Delta Rae.

Thanks to Delta Rae for writing it, recording it, and posting it on YouTube in response to the slayings at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Flower Girl and Ring Bearer

Photo by Michelle Gomez

Last night my great-grandbabies posed for a moment before they walked down the aisle in the wedding of their Uncle Brad and his love, Rachel. Congratulations to the bride and groom and also to these two little ones, who seem to have been pretty proud of themselves.

Houston

Nine years ago today much of the nation was glued to the TV, watching in disbelief as conditions in New Orleans continued to deteriorate following Hurricane Katrina. I was one of those watching, almost unable to comprehend that that kind of horror was happening less than sixty miles from where I sat safely in my house.

Many of the people who evacuated New Orleans ahead of the storm came here to wait it out. A lot of them are still here. Many others, those who had stayed in New Orleans and were trapped there when the waters of Lake Ponchartrain breached the levee, eventually were rescued and boarded buses to whatever towns or cities had indicated a willingness to take them in and help them out. One such place was Houston:

The song is "Houston" by Mary Chapin Carpenter.

Click here to read the lyrics. 

Thanks to paganmaestro for skillfully combining amazing images with this song and posting the video on YouTube.

Hurricanes and Other Foul Winds

It's a good year when Louisianians make it through the week when August ends and September begins without any trauma or turmoil. Usually it's a hurricane or tropical storm that causes the trouble:

• On today's date two years ago, Hurricane Isaac made landfall on the Louisiana coast.
• A year earlier, on September 3, 2011, my sister and I cut our Appalachian vacation short and drove straight home to beat Tropical Storm Lee's arrival here.
• In 2008 Hurricane Gustav arrived here on September 1st, Labor Day. 
• The one everybody remembers, of course, was Hurricane Katrina. Katrina made landfall in Louisiana exactly nine years ago today.

Rain is predicted for every day of the Labor Day weekend, but no damaging winds are expected to accompany it. Thank goodness and knock on wood.

This year a different kind of ill wind has blown into our area and continues to grab the headlines. News broke on Wednesday that Scott Rogers, a prominent local TV personality, had been found shot to death in his upscale home as a result of an apparent murder/attempted suicide. The alleged shooter remains in the hospital in critical condition from a gunshot wound as doctors apparently fight to keep him alive so that he can eventually be indicted for Rogers' murder. Go figure.

Rogers' TV show, Around Town, came on too early in the morning for me to watch on a regular basis, but I've certainly seen him on television often enough through the years to know he was on Baton Rouge's hypothetical "Who's Who?" list. I would have described him as pleasant, mild-mannered and...perky, maybe. I might even have added slightly effeminate, notwithstanding the fact that the average Louisiana good-ole-boy would apply that adjective to every male who has a British accent and isn't James Bond. Comments at the end of early online news articles have given me the impression that Rogers enjoyed an impeccable reputation in Baton Rouge and was highly regarded for his kindness in general and for his efforts in regard to the promotion of non-profit fundraising events.

As if the killing/botched suicide weren't shocking enough, the ongoing news story is being peeled like an onion, and the layers now include allegations of a child molestation trial in Rogers' native England and a long history of molesting other young men over a period of many years, two of whom followed him here from England, one of whom is his alleged murderer, business partner and son-in-law. According to news reports, a 10-year-old adopted son and a 2-year-old foster son were removed from Rogers' custody about two weeks ago.

I'm sensitive enough--human enough--to realize that this story is tragic on many levels, and I do feel sympathy for those whose lives were affected, positively or negatively, by a relationship with Rogers and/or by his death. But I'm also honest enough to admit that the avid crime-novel reader in me finds this whole story fascinating. I doubt that I'm alone in that. This wouldn't be the first time that the concept of a double life--a charismatic character with a dark side--has kept readers turning pages late into the night.

You can read about Scott Rogers here and here. If this story doesn't turn into a book or a made-for-TV movie, I'll eat my hat.

Elementary School: Before We Took the Blinders Off

Yesterday I registered for the September-October session of "Life Writing." It'll be my fifth time taking this class, and I can hardly wait to get started again. It's been difficult coming up with blog post ideas this summer, so I'm hoping that the assignment of specific topics in class will reawaken my writing muse.

In looking through my class notebook, I realized that I haven't shared with you my story on the subject of elementary school. You may recognize one or two incidents from earlier blog posts, but this was the first time I put it all down chronologically, grade by grade.

Depending on your age, parts of my story may closely mirror parts of yours. Please let me know if they do.

**********

The playground at the rear of Phelps Elementary School was five blocks west and one block south of the house my grandparents shared with us in Springfield, Missouri. Sometimes I switched up the route, placing the southward jog earlier in the journey, but I almost never walked the extra distance required to enter the front of the building. I started school there in September of 1948. The youngest student in my class, I wouldn’t turn six until the day after Thanksgiving.

Phelps School.

Photo courtesy of the Springfield-Greene County Library District.

Mother told me years later that she had walked to school with me every day of my first week in first grade, taking the most direct path to help me learn the way. The second week she walked a few steps behind, letting me take the lead. The third week, she said, she walked half a block behind me and carried a switch to keep me from turning around and heading back home. Fortunately, my opinion of school improved; it was soon my favorite place to be.

All the teachers at Phelps were women. So was the principal. The only man in the building was the janitor. All of the staff and all the students were Caucasian, most of us with surnames that originated in the British Isles. Nearly all of us were Protestant, predominantly Baptist. If any of my schoolmates were Catholic or Jewish, I wasn’t aware of it; we hardly ever compared notes about religion. A boy named Tony Robertson and I were the only two students in my class whose parents were divorced.

We started each day at Phelps by placing our right hands over our hearts and reciting “The Pledge of Allegiance,” changing our recitation in fifth grade when the words “under God” were added to it. In an era that was largely peaceful, we filed outdoors two-by-two for fire drills and occasionally practiced ducking under our desks in case the Russians bombed Springfield.

During the Christmas season the entire student body sat around an enormous tree in the main hall and sang Christmas carols. Once a week the music teacher rolled a piano into our classroom and taught us to sing “Oh, Susannah,” “The Erie Canal,” “The Marine’s Hymn,” “America the Beautiful” and other traditional songs. We also sang “Dixie” without giving a single thought to its history or its lyrics.

In art class we dabbled in poster paints, clay, and papier-mâché on brightly patterned oil cloth brought from home to protect our lift-top desks. The distinctive smell of the oil cloth was a favorite scent, as was the minty aroma of the white paste we used for art projects. Each February we decorated shoeboxes and cigar boxes with red and white crepe paper and passed out Valentines, but only to the kids we liked.

We joined after-school organizations that encouraged good citizenship and taught us important life skills, such as how to make Rice Krispie Marshmallow Treats. In second grade I was a Blue Bird. Instead of progressing to become a Campfire Girl, I dropped out and later switched to the Girl Scouts. No matter how many friends I made among the students, it was the teachers who meant the most to me.

Me, wearing brand-new Girl Scout uniform - 5th grade - 1953.

In this photo I was facing our house. The buildings behind me were

part of what was then Southwest Missouri State Teachers College.

My first-grade teacher was Miss Davis. (We called them all “Miss,” though many of them were married.) Miss Davis was a grandmotherly woman with a kind face and fluffy silver hair. Wanting to learn the names of all those children I’d never met, I concentrated each morning as Miss Davis called the roll, beginning with Jimmie Paul Allen, on to me and then Jane Kay Burke in the B’s, and on through the alphabet as far as Edward Lee Wheeler. To this day, if I think of a child who was in my first grade class, I usually remember his or her middle name.

I took learning seriously and was apparently distressed when it didn’t go fast enough to suit me. Miss Davis once reported to Mother that she’d found me crying because I didn’t know how to spell elephant. She showed me how that day. Writing and arithmetic were fun, but it was reading that excited me. We whipped through the books about Dick and Jane and Spot and Puff and I wanted more, more, more. In April of 1949, near the end of first grade, I read for myself the newspaper article about Kathy Fiscus, a three-year-old California girl who fell into a well and died while the nation waited and prayed for her rescue. That’s my first memory of being deeply moved by something I’d read.

Second grade is a bit of a blur. I remember that my teacher was Miss Hutchinson, a perky young woman with a blonde pixie haircut, and I remember having a boyfriend, Bruce Crane (Alan Bruce Crane), a crush that carried over from first grade. Bruce was the son of our postman, and I liked him off and on all through grade school.

Compared to the other grades, third grade was the pits. Miss Butler stood only about half a head higher than her students and was as big around as she was tall. She couldn’t reach her feet to tie her shoes, so she’d show up each day wearing slippers and appoint one of us children to assist her into her work shoes. She was never without her wooden stick--one I now recognize as a conductor’s baton--and didn’t hesitate to use it. Miss Butler rarely smiled. What she did do, for which I’ll forever be grateful, was read to us every afternoon from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series. I wrote a letter to Laura Ingalls Wilder that year and received a handwritten answer from her. I wish I knew what happened to that letter.

Miss McDonald taught fourth grade. She was tall and slim, with collar-length brown hair parted and swept to one side. She liked the theater and directed our class in two plays we presented to the whole school. The first was a Christmas pageant in which I played the non-speaking role of the innkeeper’s wife, and the second was Blue Willow, an adaptation of the Doris Gates book about the daughter of an impoverished migrant worker and the Blue Willow plate that was her prized possession.

By fourth grade I was riding my bike to school. Local ordinances prohibited bicycles on sidewalks, so I rode in the street, near the curb. One day, returning to school after I’d gone home for lunch, I saw a man come out of a house half a block away and get into his car, which was parked in my path. He didn’t start the car immediately, so I continued riding until I was about a car-length behind him, then stopped to wait until he drove away. I expected the man to drive forward, but he didn’t; he suddenly began backing up to turn onto a side street. I jumped off my bike but didn’t have time to pull it out of the way before he ran over it. The man leaped from his car and appeared to be horrified at such a close call. He tried to talk to me, but he was a stranger, so I left the broken bicycle in the street and ran all the way to school.

The lunch hour hadn’t ended yet. I ran past all the children on the playground and up the stairs to Miss McDonald’s empty classroom. She found me there minutes later, scared and shaken. As I tearfully explained to her what had happened, the principal arrived. The man had followed me to school, bicycle in his open trunk, to make sure I wasn’t hurt. I guess the principal had spoken with him and then gone from classroom to classroom in search of a child in distress. After a brief telephone conference with my mother, who was at work, it was decided that the principal would accompany me home to the comforting arms of Mammaw, my grandmother. The stranger who’d run over my bike drove us there.

Miss Challis was my fifth grade teacher. She lived close enough to us that I could ride my new bicycle (a gift from you-know-who) to visit her at home sometimes. The worst day of my elementary school career was the day of our fifth grade Halloween party. I don’t remember what my costume was supposed to be, but I recall teetering across the playground in Mother’s high heels and seeing Jim Burns, a big, strapping sixth-grader, punching on my fifth-grade classmate, Jimmie Allen. Jimmie was the smallest boy in every grade; I was a head taller than he was. I wobbled over to where they were and turned to face big Jim. I must have said some variation of the line about picking on “somebody your own size,” because that’s what he did. He socked me right in the stomach. I remember sitting in the playground dirt next to Jimmie and looking at my outstretched legs, the toes of Mother’s shoes pointing skyward as I sucked in big gulps of air.

By the time I’d recovered and made it upstairs to Miss Challis’s room, the temperature had begun to drop sharply and a light rain was falling. When the last of the jack-o-lantern-shaped cookies had been consumed and the dismissal bell rang, the rain had turned to sleet, and the air was so cold that the sleet was sticking to the ground. I didn’t know that Mammaw had driven to school to pick me up because of the nasty weather. She waited for me to come out the back of the building the way I always did, but I, not wanting to get fresh playground mud on Mother’s shoes, had gone out the front door. Mammaw and I missed each other. I trekked all the way home in those floppy high heels. Every few yards I’d have to stop and balance on the slick sidewalk to hitch up the borrowed nylon stockings that kept slipping out of their loose garters and falling to my ankles. The wet, droopy nylons were sheer misery.

In sixth grade I was in Miss Engleking’s class in the same classroom that Miss Butler had used when I was in third grade. Miss Engleking, tall and stout with tight, iron-gray curls, permitted no nonsense. When a boy named Luther annoyed the boy in front of him, John, by repeatedly thumping him on the head, Miss Engleking allowed John to choose the largest book he could find--an enormous dictionary--and give Luther one good whack over the head with it.

One day well into the school year Miss Engleking confronted me in the lunchroom as I passed the teachers’ table: “Someone told me you were singing a song about me being fat, and I’d like to hear it.” I hemmed and hawed, saying that I didn’t really remember what I’d been singing, that it was just something silly I’d been making up on the spot. “I want you to sing it,” Miss Engleking demanded. “Here. Now. Loud.” I did sing it, my head bowed, voice cracking in shame and embarrassment. When I finished, Miss Engleking surprised me. She laughed, and then she encouraged me. She told me the song was “very clever” and that I should write more to develop my writing skills. Then she added one more bit of advice: “Next time try to write something that will make someone feel good.”

We learned so much in the safe cocoon of elementary school. We had no idea how much more there was that we needed to know--or that we’d spend the rest of our lives trying to learn it.

Hitting Too Close to Home

The Google Map screen capture at left is an aerial view of the area where I live. (Road numbers and names have been obscured to preserve privacy.) The curvy white line running vertically down the center of the map is the road that runs right in front of my house. It was only last Friday that I wrote these words about that same stretch of pavement: "I was not about to stop like a sitting duck on that narrow, two-lane, curvy, high-speed road."

I didn't mention that the road has no shoulders except in a few spots, that in most places along its length the edges drop off into deep ditches. Nor did I mention that most of the land on the western side of the road is swampy and tree covered, that this route is a lovely, scenic drive until peak traffic times turn it into a literal hell on wheels.

Many commuters traveling to and from Baton Rouge avoid the main highways and use this rural road as a shortcut. Bumper to bumper, they exceed the speed limit, which, at 55-miles-per-hour, is already too high. They ignore the no-passing stripes in the center of the road. They're thinking about getting to work or getting home, they're fiddling with their radios, they're using their cell phones ("Do you want me to pick up something for dinner?"), and they're not paying attention. Some of them are drinking. More than once a beer bottle has landed in our front yard, having been tossed out the window of a passing pickup truck.

See the red spot on the green map above? At right is a closer view (obviously taken in winter) of that same spot. The dark slash you see crossing under the road is a bayou. The light tan areas that appear to be wide shoulders alongside the road are actually the deep slopes of embankments.

My daughter got off work early yesterday afternoon, passed this particular spot on her way home, and noticed some children fishing in the bayou at the bottom of the embankment. As soon as she arrived home, she picked me up and drove me to retrieve my car from the tire shop. She came home from there the same way she had come from work a short while earlier. (I came by a different route.) When she approached this bayou overpass again, she found traffic at a standstill. She could see that an SUV had driven off the road and into the bayou, and she saw someone giving CPR to a child. No emergency vehicles had arrived at the scene yet. Because of heavy traffic conditions, it would be a while before they did.

Later, at home, we could hear sirens passing our house for what seemed like an hour. Finally, we read on the internet, state police closed our road in both directions. Still later, on a televised newscast, we learned that the SUV, driven by an apparently unimpaired middle-aged woman, had run off the road and plowed into two children, their father and two of his friends, all of whom had been fishing peacefully a moment earlier. Both children died at the scene of the accident. The three men were transported to the hospital with injuries that turned out not to be severe. The driver, her seatbelt secured, her vehicle stopped by a tree from sinking into the bayou, suffered only minor injuries.

What a tragedy! Our community mourns this morning with the families involved in this terrible, surely preventable occurrence. What are the odds of someone losing control of a vehicle in the one spot on a five-mile stretch of road where people stood unprotected and unaware in her aberrant path? A broad combination of factors contributed to this accident;  a change in any one of them might have prevented it.

Reducing the speed limit on this road would be one good place to start.

Olio

I've never seen or heard the word "olio" used in any context other than a crossword puzzle. Because it's a short word that's rich in vowels, puzzle writers tend to overuse it in the same way they do a few other words having those same characteristics: aloe, alee, alias, etui and that well-known cookie, Oreo. Anyway, I'm glad that crossword clues have taught me that "olio" is a synonym for "mixture" or "jumble" or "hodgepodge," because that's what today's post is.

*****

I never announce that I'm going to take a brief blogging hiatus because I never intend to do so. It would be more accurate to say I just fizzle out now and then and, in that vulnerable state, allow a brief blogging hiatus to overtake me. One day piles on top of another until I know it's been too long since I last posted, but by then I can't think of a single thing to write about. (The strict grammarian in my head keeps nudging me to change the last sentence to read "...a single thing about which to write." Sometimes I hate that prissy old biddy.)

Anyway, I'm back. I think.

*****

Mother's Day was wonderful. We had our traditional celebration with a crawfish boil at my daughter Kelli's house, but with one major difference from past years: a raging thunderstorm that kept everybody under the carport instead of scattered around the swimming pool. We had to speak loudly to hear one another over the rain on the tin roof, but we had some of the best group conversations we've had in a long time, and I loved every minute of it.

*****

On Kelli's refrigerator, held by a magnet, was a letter-sized sheet of white paper on which four-year-old Owen, my great-grandson, had used a blue marker to draw a line that looped and swirled all around the edges and connected to itself in one corner. It was, he had told her, a map of the world.

I was standing near that refrigerator when I spotted an opportunity to compliment Owen on the drawing. "I like your map of the world," I said. Indicating a spot on the paper, I asked, "Where's Louisiana? Here?"

Owen raised his eyes from the hot dog on his plate to glance at me for about two seconds. His mouth said, "It's not a real map." His face said, quite clearly, "How stupid are you?"

*****

There are two dog beds in my bedroom: Levi's on the right side of my bed, Gimpy's on the left side. The dog beds are identical except that Levi's blanket is brown and Gimpy's is tan. This sleeping arrangement seemed to be fine with everybody for months and months until Gimpy decided a few weeks ago that he prefers Levi's bed to his own. He's slept there ever since. So has Levi, who must not have wanted to swap.

I sleep on the right side of the bed, too. This new arrangement makes navigation a little bit tricky when I need to get up in the middle of the night.

Spooners: Gimpy on Levi's bed and Levi with his head under my bed.

*****

Speaking of sleep, the upper respiratory virus I had for so long (still coughing) seems to have put me in the habit of taking a long nap every day--a bad habit I'm only now beginning to break. I love the fact that retirement gives me the freedom to take a 20-minute, pick-me-up nap when I need one, but a long nap in the daytime makes me groggy and keeps me from sleeping well at night. It also eats a big hole in my (semi) productive daytime hours, leaving me depressed about the lack of accomplishment. 

So. Today I've written a blog post. Now I think I'll go unclutter some surfaces. That'll be two accomplishments. That isn't many, I know, but it's an improvement.

Trinkets and Treasures - No. 12

It's been over a year since I posted anything in the Trinkets and Treasures category. I guess that series had slipped my mind until last Friday, my younger daughter's 50th birthday. I wanted to give her something special to mark the occasion, and the item that came immediately to mind was this garnet ring that once belonged to my mother:

Here's a picture of Mother (during her blonde years, about 1954) wearing the ring as she sunbathed beside the swimming pool at Fassnight Park in Springfield, Missouri:

The ring was custom made for Mother, a copy of one that belonged to her grandmother, Dora Hetherington Elliott. For years after Mother's death I wore the ring on special occasions that she might have attended had she still been alive and other times when I simply needed to feel closer to her. Its gold band is so small that I had to wear it on my little finger, but it fits Kelli's ring finger perfectly--just the way it fit Mother's.

Kelli and I both cried when I gave her the ring, the photo of Mother wearing it, and a handwritten note about its history. Through her tears she said, "Did you ever think I'd get old enough to care?"

Yes. I knew she would.

Okay, Where Were We?

Here's what's been going on since my last post:

I've had a birthday. The good news is that both my daughters shared it with me. Their company was delightful and our lunch was delicious. The bad news is that I ate way too much cake. It's also a bit of a bummer that I'll never see seventy again.

*****

I went to the ophthalmologist for an appointment that was two years overdue. He said my vision is better now than it was the last time I was there, then he said I need to get new glasses every year at my age. Like I'm going to go shell out several hundred bucks just because I've turned a few pages of the calendar. I guess not. I'll go get new glasses when the ones I have now don't do the job anymore.

*****

We celebrated Thanksgiving at my younger daughter's house. The food was wonderful, as was the visit with the family, even though some of my favorite people were absent this year. I missed them, but we had fun anyway. Isn't it amazing how much entertainment one two-year-old girl can provide?

*****

As Kim and I prepared to leave Kelli's house on Thanksgiving night, Kelli noticed that one of my tires was low. Turns out all of them were low. I tried to remember when I last checked the tire pressure. Hmm. I bought these tires either right before or right after I retired. That was in the summer of 2009. Is it possible that I haven't...? Nah, surely not. Anyway, Kim aired them up for me, and I bought new valve stem caps to replace the ones that have mysteriously gone missing in the last four years, so I'm good to go again.

***** 

Still on the subject of my car, I've driven it 190 miles since it failed inspection last month. That's 40 miles farther than the inspection mechanic said I'd need to go for the sensors to record all the data necessary to give his equipment an accurate reading. I now know how to test whether or not the sensors are in the "ready" state, and they're not yet. Guess I'll go for another drive tomorrow.

*****

Or maybe I won't. Tomorrow is when a repairman is scheduled to come out and fix my dryer that has suddenly started overheating and turning itself off mid-cycle. There's good airflow through the vent, which eliminates the only potential problem I could have corrected without professional help. The dryer's old, but it looks great and has worked fine up until now. I hope it won't be too expensive to fix. With all the holiday sales right now, I'll kick myself all over the place if the repair cost approaches the sale price of a new one.

*****

In the past week we've had three days when the temperature fell into the mid-20s, followed by three days in which people have been walking around in their shirt sleeves. Frankly, the three days of cold weather were more than enough for me, but the dogs seemed to love it. Click the photos to enlarge them and see how much they enjoyed the frosty mornings:

All of them except Lucy, that is.

"I just looked around and he's gone..."

What I remember most about that day is the overwhelming sense of despair, a heaviness that settled over America's shoulders in the hours after the news broke and may never lift entirely.

JFK was my president. I hadn't voted for him -- wouldn't be old enough to vote until four days after his death -- but I'd stood toe-to-toe with my parents and other potential voters more than once before the 1960 election and argued vigorously on his behalf. He was an inspiration to me and to so many others whose hopefulness and innocence would be shattered by the bullets fired on a November day in Dallas, Texas.

I've been to Dallas, toured the museum at the Texas School Book Depository, and paid my respects to President Kennedy there by writing what he meant to me in a book provided for that purpose. I was there with my younger daughter, Kelli, and her daughter, Kalyn. Because Kelli was the baby I'd carried in my belly on the day the president was shot, it was especially meaningful to be with her at that museum, to give her a sense of the historical events that took place shortly before she was born and to affirm for both of us that life goes on beyond our bleakest days.

We stood outside the Texas School Book Depository on a sunny July day and watched the people come and go. It seemed such an ordinary place, a downtown building typical of its era, a structure incongruous with its tragic history.

Texas School Book Depository - Dallas, Texas - July 1996

We walked on the grassy knoll, a patch of green that wouldn't have drawn a second look until the people who stood on it fifty years ago today witnessed the assassination of a United States president.

Grassy Knoll - Dallas, Texas - July 1996

It's been half a century since those fatal bullets flew. The wounds still feel fresh.

__________

The song is "Abraham, Martin & John" by Dion.
Thanks to Somewheremaybe for posting the video and lyrics on YouTube.

Mothers and Others

Last Sunday was Mother's Day, a holiday that brings out my cynical side because it's always been so heavily promoted by card companies and florists. I'm embarrassed by the idea of Mother's Day. It feels as though the second Sunday in May has been set aside as the day when all the mothers of America line up, united like organized union members, and present our bills for services rendered. No matter how many pretty flowers you stick in it, it feels like extortion.

And yet . . . and yet I love those cards, obviously chosen so carefully, and even more than that I love the words my daughters have written in the cards, cherished messages I keep and reread again and again, reminding me that our bond is as important to them as it is to me. I don't need the cards to know that, but I love the reminders nevertheless.

We spent Sunday afternoon the same way we've traditionally spent Mother's Day in the past few years, with a crawfish boil at my younger daughter's house. I loved being with my two warm, beautiful daughters, my delightful grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and those of their significant others who weren't somewhere else working or spending the day with their own moms. We sat at long tables spread with newspapers, chatting and laughing as we feasted on crawfish, spicy boiled potatoes and corn on the cob, followed later by shamefully full bowls of chilled banana pudding. My son-in-law's music played in the background, music that always surprises me because most of his songs are my songs, too, and I like the fact that we share a cross-generational, mutual fondness for soulful sounds.

We all became lazier after we ate, leaning back in our chairs under the shade, hiding our laughter as 21-month-old Olivia pitched a fit when the limits of her dexterity frustrated her independent spirit. She tried and failed a few times to put a bubble wand into its narrow-mouthed plastic jar of soapy fluid, then threw the wand as far as she could throw it (not very far). She didn't cry, but her anger was apparent in the scowl on her face. She cast a quick, spiteful glare at those who sat near her, then, in case no one had noticed she was angry, marched over to the sudsy wand, picked it up, and threw it again for good measure. All of us thought it was funny, but we were careful not to let her see us laugh. She's a baby and she acted like a baby. In that moment every adult there loved Olivia enough to let her express her feelings. Most of us, I believe, silently cheered her on. Yes, she'll need to learn a better way to handle her disappointments someday, but there's plenty of time for that later on.

The little ones, Olivia and three-year-old Owen, wanted to get in the swimming pool. Though the day was warm, the water was chilly, but there were still a few adults willing to get in to let the floaty-armed babies have some fun. My younger daughter, Kelli, their grandmother, stayed longest in the water, frequently having both babies in tow at once. I watched her holding on to them, keeping them safe, playing with them, instructing them, calm, unruffled, smiling. Owen will remember her that way long after he forgets that the pool got colder as the sun moved and cast it into shadow, that he cried and protested vigorously, repeatedly saying, "I'm not cold!" through blue lips and chattering teeth as his mother and grandmother pulled him flailing out of the pool. He and Olivia will remember the happy times with their grandmother when they're grown, and they'll always think of her as a safe port in a storm, the way I, as old as I am, still think of my mother's mother. Kelli is showing them in every way possible that she loves them unconditionally, and they'll feel that--they'll know that--for the rest of their lives.

The strength of my passion for genealogy and family history sometimes makes me wonder if I'm living too much in the past. On Mother's Day I felt that I was on the opposite end of the spectrum, as if I were living in the future, seeing the three generations after mine coming into their own, glimpsing the kind of good people who will carry on after I'm gone, also watching them fulfill their present roles as if they were born to them, and understanding that, yes, they were. This is exactly who they are and where they're supposed to be at this time in their lives. There really is no past, present or future when it comes to families, only a continuous cycle of life that ties all of us together with those who came before us and those who have yet to arrive. All of us--mothers and others--are eternally linked to the rest of us.

Mother's Day is a good day to remember that. Any day is a good day to remember that. There doesn't need to be a special card for it.

A Half-Fast Blog Post

The lawn maintenance man arrived about seven-thirty this morning, the sound of his mower waking the dogs and me for only a moment before we closed our eyes and went back to sleep. The dogs couldn't go outside until the grass-cutting was finished, and that seemed as good an excuse as any for all of us to stay in bed awhile longer.

I was away from home Sunday afternoon and most of Monday, so I've made it a point today to play ball outside with Levi and Gimpy, downing an extra dose of antihistamine in hopes of warding off the allergy-induced vertigo that usually accompanies my exposure to fresh-cut grass. So far, so good. My head is only slightly "swimmy," though the combination of antihistamine and half an hour in bright sunshine has made me extremely sleepy and sluggish. In fact, I'm finding it difficult to think--let alone write--in coherent sentences at the moment, so I believe I'll take a short nap and try this again in a little while.

********** 

There now, I feel much better.

Several things are on my mind today, subjects too random to be tied together into one post, so I think for now I'll just list them, then use this post as a guide to flesh out each item later in the week:

1) Mother's Day and what was so special about it.

2) Seven hours wasted at a medical clinic.

3) The process of scanning and/or "cleaning up" old photos and newspaper clippings for Audrey's Ambition, the blog dedicated to my paternal grandmother's life and stories.

4) Getting "pretty" with the assistance of two big dogs.

5) A growing--and completely unreasonable--attachment to a tiny green frog. ("Yes," she answers your unspoken question, "I'm gonna write about that @#$% frog again!")

Now that I have a bare-bones post today and a plan for better ones later in the week, I'll spend the rest of the day answering emails. I'm way behind on that, too, to the point that my conscience flashes alarms at me every time I sit down at the computer.

As an attempt to direct your attention away from the feebleness of today's post, I'll end it with a photo of the puddles in my driveway right after our most recent rainstorm. Click on it, if you'd like, to enlarge it. Maybe the reflections will brighten your day the way they did mine.

Heart of a Firefighter, Soul of a Poet

This has been a hell of a week: a bombing at the Boston Marathon, a deadly explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, and an earthquake today in China. If you believe the old wives' tale that bad things happen in threes, then maybe we're due for at least a brief respite from the catastrophes that have been raining down on the world.

But today I want to talk about a firefighter. No, not one of the many firefighters who have proven their mettle and their merit in the past few days, though God knows not enough words of praise can be written about them to thank them as much as they deserve. I'm talking about one specific firefighter, South Carolina's Warren Stone, who has caught my attention and made my old heart and its partially blocked arteries go pitty-pat on this season of The Voice. He's a nice-looking guy and a really good singer, but what grabbed me in his first performance (in the video below) was the passion in his voice and his face. It always moves me when someone sings as if he (or she) believes what they're singing. That soul of a poet is what I like most about this guy. That and his eyes.

Since this week's Saturday Song Selection is as much about the singer as it is about the song, I'm posting the short (audition) version today. If you want more, the full studio version has also been posted on YouTube, and the song is available for download on iTunes. I don't know if Warren will win the competition, but I'm sure I'm only one of many thousands he can count among his new fans. I've been playing--and humming--this song steadily for nearly two weeks now.

The song is "Colder Weather," performed by Warren Stone.
Thanks to NBCTheVoice for posting it on YouTube.
Click here to read the lyrics.

Boston: Hitting Us Where It Hurts

Yesterday, while eating lunch, I finished reading a James Patterson novel. There were three serial killers in that one book, and I asked myself how likely it was that three people with so much evil in their hearts would be active in one community at one time. A few hours later I turned on the television for company while I gave Levi a haircut. Regularly scheduled programming was interrupted by news of the bombings at the Boston marathon. Now I had a new question: how much evil must be in the heart of someone who would do a wretched thing like that?

There were three bombs in Boston, including the one that didn't explode. It's being reported today that the bombs were built in pressure cookers and hidden in backpacks. That leads me to believe that more than one person is responsible. I understand that one backpack wouldn't have stood out among the many that were at the scene of the marathon, but one person with three backpacks might have drawn attention. It would also seem to increase the risk of exposure for one person to navigate the logistics of placing three bomb-laden backpacks in three separate locations--at least riskier than it would be for three separate individuals, each carrying one backpack, to unload their bombs.

So maybe James Patterson had it right. Maybe on any given day, in any given place, there are a number of people who are evil (or crazy) enough to murder remorselessly. Some of them use automatic weapons; some use shrapnel-filled pressure cookers. It's tragic no matter how it happens.

I watched the news for hours yesterday and again for a short while this morning. I won't watch continuous coverage any longer. I want to know about new developments, but I don't want to immerse myself in that overwhelming sense of sadness that was exploded into the atmosphere yesterday. It feels cowardly to admit that, because a part of me feels that if some people are forced to live through such a terrible event, I should at least have the courage to watch the news coverage.

I don't. I won't. I'll watch small snippets or read the latest reports online, and I'll pray for all those affected by this stupid, senseless, evil act of terrorism, but I won't succumb to the fear and hopelessness that the bomber(s) tried to instill in all of us.

I'm safe today. I'm comfortable. I have food, water, and shelter. In those ways I'm like most Americans--not all, but most. Also like most of us, I'm grateful, and I don't take my good fortune for granted.

We all took a hit yesterday, but it'll take more than a few sick f--ks to break our collective spirit.

Best Woman for the Job

Florida isn't the only state where sinkholes have been in the news. Right here in Louisiana, in a parish adjacent to mine, more than three hundred residents of Bayou Corne have been displaced from their homes by a sinkhole that developed last summer and continues to get worse. It's been speculated that this enormous sinkhole was caused by the collapse of an underground salt dome. This video, posted by a Bayou Corne resident, explains it clearly:

In today's Baton Rouge newspaper, The Advocate, it was reported that Erin Brockovich has traveled to this area, has met with the displaced residents, and will assist them in taking their case to court.

Cool!

Sleep, Pretty Darlings

SANDY HOOK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

NEWTOWN, CONNECTICUT - DECEMBER 14, 2012

Once there was a way to get back homeward,

Once there was a way to get back home.

Sleep, pretty darling, do not cry,

And I will sing a lullaby.*

* From the lyrics of "Golden Slumbers" by the Beatles.

Celebrations

The days between this post and the last one have flown by on the wings of everyday errands and mundane activities, but those days also contained a couple of special events:

Revisiting the past:
In the '80s and '90s I worked for 17 years for a company founded by the father of Alison, whose blog, Inspired Work of Self-Indulgence, was the first one I ever read. In fact, I found her blog in a Google search for her father's name in 2005, after a couple of former co-workers had called to let me know of his death. It was Alison's open, honest writing that inspired me to begin writing a blog of my own, although it took me nearly a year to gather the courage to try it.

Alison's father was an inspirational leader, loved and respected by all who knew him. The Louisiana branch of the company he founded is still very active, and once a year, near the founder's birthday, he is honored posthumously by a celebration in memory of the exceptional human being that he was.

This year Alison invited me to go with her. I was hesitant at first, reluctant to crash the party of people I hadn't seen in nearly 14 years, but Alison assured me I'd be welcome.

And, when the hour arrived, I felt welcome. There were still people there who had worked there when I did, and it felt like a homecoming to be in their midst again. There were big smiles, hugs, and plenty of old stories retold to new laughter.

I enjoyed spending time with Alison (who didn't stress out about the dog hair Butch got on her pants), and appreciate her invitation and encouragement to accompany her to this event. It was a special occasion I'll remember for a long time.


Mother's Day:
In what has become a family tradition over the past few years, we celebrated Mother's Day at my daughter Kelli's house, feasting on boiled crawfish and basking in a whole lot of love. I don't know if Kim and Kelli realize that just having them in my life makes me feel special every day and that Mother's Day, for me, is more meaningful only because it makes me stop and reflect on how rich they have made my life.

When our family gathers, when I'm able to sit back and watch the interactions of my children, grandchildren, their assorted spouses, and that one small great-grandson, my heart feels so full that I think it might burst. They're kind to each other. They crack jokes, but not mean ones, and they have each other's backs. They're good people, and I'm so, so proud of them.

The genealogist in me can't resist pointing out that there were four generations of family members at our Mother's Day gathering this year, including three generations of mothers. More than I love delving into the history of our ancestors, and I do love that, I love watching our family expand, watching people I loved in their infancy grow up, create full lives for themselves as adults, and, in some cases, have babies of their own. The sense of continuity thrills me.

One young family member is currently pregnant with her first child. She and her husband have decided they don't want to know the sex of the baby until it's born, and the announcement of that decision prompted me to send her a link to a beautiful song that fits their situation. You can hear it on YouTube here:
Marc Cohn - The Things We've Handed Down.

Or, if you'd rather read the words than listen to them, here are the lyrics:

The Things We've Handed Down
by Marc Cohn

Don't know much about you 
Don't know who you are 
We've been doing fine without you 
But we could only go so far 
Don't know why you chose us 
Were you watching from above 
Is there someone there that knows us 
Said we'd give you all our love 

Will you laugh just like your mother 
Will you sigh like your old man 
Will some things skip a generation 
Like I've heard they often can 
Are you a poet or a dancer 
A devil or a clown 
Or a strange new combination of 
The things we've handed down 

I wonder who you'll look like 
Will your hair fall down and curl 
Will you be a mama's boy 
Or daddy's little girl 
Will you be a sad reminder 
Of what's been lost along the way 
Maybe you can help me find her 
In the things you do and say 

And these things that we have given you 
They are not so easily found 
But you can thank us later 
For the things we've handed down 

You may not always be so grateful 
For the way that you were made 
Some feature of your father's 
That you'd gladly sell or trade 
And one day you may look at us 
And say that you were cursed 
But over time that line has been 
Extremely well rehearsed 
By our fathers and their fathers 
In some old and distant town 
From places no one here remembers 
Come the things we've handed down 
 

Recap and regroup

The last half of April has been a whirlwind of activity. The international news has been all about the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, followed closely by reports of protests and counter-protests in the Middle East. The top news stories related to America have been divided almost equally between the massive destruction caused by tornadoes in Alabama and Mississippi and the fact that Donald Trump bullied President Obama and the State of Hawaii into producing the long form of the president's birth certificate.

Things have been pretty busy in this small patch of Louisiana, too, and in order to regroup, move on, and restore a semi-regular flow of blog posts, I first need to catch up by recapping a few recent blog-worthy events:

The Graduate:
On April 16th Levi completed a six-week course in obedience training. He was a quick learner. He demonstrated a superior ability to understand and follow commands. The last class session was devoted to testing all the commands he had been taught, and he aced the test. The boy was a whiz kid while class was in session.

At home he understands the commands without difficulty, but each time he hears one, he gets a look in his eye as if he's trying to decide whether or not he really has to comply. Let's just say he follows the  commands when he's in the mood. Or unless there's something more interesting going on, such as a squirrel in the neighbor's yard. Or a leaf moving in the driveway. To reach perfection he needs a little more work.  I, on the other hand, need a lot more.

Visitors:
Two weeks ago today I had the pleasure of spending an afternoon with two friends -- an old one and a new one -- from Texas. The "old" friend (who is considerably younger than I am) is Annette, who recently began blogging at Writing My Novel. It's been nearly 14 years since we've seen each other, and it was a joy to be in her warm presence again.

The new friend is Leah, whom I found delightful and hope to see again soon. Leah and Annette were in Baton Rouge to find Leah a place to live. She's accepted a new job at LSU and will be moving here soon.

We had a wonderful visit despite its being dominated by unruly dogs. The ladies had come bearing a non-stuffed fake squirrel that did a fairly good job of distracting Levi, though even a distracted Levi disperses a lot of energy into a room. And Butch, he who regularly sleeps 20 hours a day, appointed himself host of the event. He stayed awake and present in a big way for most of the visit. He seemed to believe Annette and Leah had come specifically to spend time with him, and I'd never in a million years tell him otherwise.

Celebrating Easter:
All my grandchildren are adults now, and two of them are married. Because they've grown up in a "blended" family, they're used to splitting holidays between two sets of parents, and now in-laws have been thrown into the mix. That's why our family Easter celebration was held on Saturday this year.

Kelli and Troy (my younger daughter and her husband) hosted the bunch of us at a poolside barbecue. The weather was perfect: warm enough to swim, cool enough to be comfortable outside in the shade of a large umbrella.

Kelli and Troy are both good cooks, and I, being a non-swimmer but a good eater, parked myself under the above umbrella and over the sausage that was the first thing to come off the grill.

Everything I ate was delicious. I stuffed myself on sausage, brisket, and a little bit of chicken, cheated on my low-carb diet to have some baked beans, and told myself that that little cheat wasn't too bad in light of the fact that I resisted the potato salad and the scrumptious-looking dessert.

I took 294 photos that day -- most of which I won't show you out of respect for all the adults in bathing suits in those photos. My great-grandson, Owen, however, is only 13 months old. Since he doesn't yet understand that he has a right to object, I'll share a few pictures of him. He was the unanimously proclaimed star of the day anyway, so it only seems fitting to focus on him.

Don't worry; that's a swim diaper.

Safe and happy in his daddy's arms.

Angelic...and very, very curious.

In summary:

I realize there's not much in this post that's new to those of you who are Facebook friends,  but it's important to me to record events like these on the blog. It will be here, not Facebook, that I'll come to relive these days when they've long since passed. Facebook feels to me like a quick, public shout-out. This blog feels like home. 

I can't let March slip away...

...without announcing the birth of John Owen Hoover, born on the 16th day of this month to my granddaughter, Kalyn, and her husband, Adam.  I am in love with this tiny, sweet boy.

The photo above was taken by his Aunt Michelle about an hour after his birth.  Now, at two weeks old, Owen is fine and healthy.  So is his mother.  I'm so proud of his mom and dad, the kind of home they've made for their son, and the kind of parents they're already proving to be.

I realize that this event officially makes me a great-grandmother, and as old as that sounds when I say it, I can't think of any new title I'd be happier to hold.

I think my daughter Kelli feels the same way about becoming a grandmother.  If her feet ever touch the ground again, I'll ask her, just to be sure.

(Thanks, Michelle and Kelli, for the use of your photos.)