a cotton tale . . .

When I go to my mother's for Thanksgiving--or any other time, for that matter--I love taking the back roads from busy I-95 to my home (?) town.  I'm not so much from there, I guess . . . but there's something about picking cotton time that strikes a chord with me. Not sure why . . .

. . . but this year's cotton bales, not to be confused with cotton bolls,  certainly got my attention the day before "turkey" day this year.  So much so that I promised myself that I would stop on the trip back to what is now home to take a few pictures to capture this modern version of a back-in-time sort of memory.

For what it's worth, here they are :-)

one perfect morning . . .

This has been so.

65. walking a cool, early morning beach framed in sun glow and sea breeze
66. wearing sandy-hemmed sweats
67. being able to go the extra mile the day after the race
68. having just enough change for the parking fee you didn't expect
69. beginning with Amigos Para Siempre (both versions randomly back-to-back)
70. collecting not just one baby's ear but two :-)
71. remembering "here on the shore, turned into stone, lies a piece of a conch's one-spiral cone"
72. collecting whelk fragments for someday's frame
73. finding both Carolinas' state shells on the same morning

74. ending with Somewhere in Time (Michael Crawford with words :-)
75. eating breakfast both before and after

I would not have imagined that I would have been

. . . absolutely in awe as I drove over the Ravenel bridge for the first time today.

I have gone out of my way to avoid this encounter. They tore my beautiful bridges down, frail sacrifices to this aquatic demon. I wouldn't look in its direction on my few visits to its city. I went around, but never across, until today.

Today, because, in the morning, I will walk with thousands others the breadth of its span and more. Today, because this first encounter needed to be more up close and personal, more private.

Traffic crawled this afternoon, crawled enough for me to savor the marvelous intricacies of this giant Tinkertoy creation. Yes, marveling, wondering, agape with awe. . .

I can see its skyprint from my window tonight. Tomorrow it too will become one of my beautiful bridges, one that I imagine will live on this earth and sea longer than I . . .

more to be happy about . . .

51. coming out on the right half of a 50:50 chance
52. having your adult daughters, in the same week, call you their . . . buddy :-)
53. laughing at what makes you afraid
54. laughing at yourself
55. crying over a good book
56. staying up late and sleeping in later
57. making the most of Daylight Savings Time
58. noticing contrail-crossed autumn-afternoon skies


59. remembering what was once good about October . . .
60. resurrecting the mending pile

simple gifts . . . a song

SIMPLE GIFTS

'Tis a gift to be simple,
'Tis a gift to be free,
'Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
It will be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained,
to bow and to bend, we will not be ashamed
To turn, turn, will be our delight,
'Til by turning, turning, we come round right.

I've always associated the melody with Copland's Appalachian Spring and, in doing so, with concert band, my children, what seems a lifetime ago . . . Never truly heard the words of this traditional ballad until today . . . courtesy of Yo-Yo Ma. The lyrics are, of course, copyright free. The message they convey is . . . simply beyond price.

. . . to be happy about

Lake Erie at Presque Isle: March 29, 2008


Somewhere I have a book with 14,000 reasons. Here are a few (mine and others') from the first ten days of spring
. . .

1. seeing a Great Lake for the very first time
2. finding roses on the doorstep
3. being thrilled to come in ninth
4. negotiating snowdrifts in spring
5. sharing first-week-of-spring birthdays
6. blowing out trick birthday candles
7. circling lighthouses for the best camera angle
8. enjoying rocking chair layovers
9. looking down at cotton candy clouds
10. reading books recommended by grandbabies
11. not being vaporized
12. qualifying for level 10 and regionals
13. surviving hard sudoku challenges
14. earning Webkin points
15. giving and receiving reasons to smile
16. keeping the spirit of break in Spring Break
17. owning a bicycle . . . again
18. planting roses
19. sleeping in late
20. coming home

More to come . . .

of June and fireflies . . .

I've started a second blog--haven't gone public with it yet though--called why i am NOT a writer. . . This has meant going waaaaaaay back in time, high school and college, Grainger and Duke, to discover what I've buried so deep all these years. Not exactly simple, not exactly pleasurable...just necessary in my quest to understand my own writing history so that maybe I can avoid repeating it with others.

But, in the midst of that shattered dream, I rediscovered, yes, simple pleasures. Looking out the stairwell window at dusk today. . .flickers of light in my oh-so-happy azalea thicket by the drive. Fireflies. My favorite Duke memories--ranking right up there with basketball (I'm having serious trouble getting past the first few pages of Last Shot at the moment!) and PP&M and Rubenstein--are fireflies in the magnolias on spring evenings on East Campus. . . Fireflies in my azaleas tonight. . . Yes!

It's been one of those years when the mind desperately needed physical therapy! My much neglected yard (thank you, Michelle and Rick, for the lawnmower resurrection) finally bubbled up to the top of the must-do-now list. I've been stung (three times, different days), poison ivied (probably not for the last time--found more of the demon to exorcise today), surprised by a snake (garter, not much bigger than some of my earthworms), scratched (monster vines with serious thorns and trash-can-lid tubers for roots), ant-bitten, muddied and sweated through and through. I've filled past capacity and hauled to the curb for pickup about 50 39-gallon trashbags of vines, prunings, roots, branches, and trees (the tall skinny types) that I've felled and chopped into sections trash pickup folks will accept. I've used about a pint of gasoline (need to remember to get some for the mower this week). The rest, except maybe the CO2 I exhaled in the process, has been environmentally-friendly me-power and hand tools.

I'm a real person again!

God has smiled on me. Rain, blessed rain. The grass, tentative at first, not knowing what to think about being force-fed after famine, is hopefully, eagerly even, exploring barren ground.

The "park", sloping away from the drive, and the gazebo behind it sold the house to me nine years ago. I began there, reclaiming established beds and the clearings between them. I've spread 50 bales of pinestraw and could easily spread 100 more. . . Maybe next year, after the leaves fall. . . But the woods out back had never, in all this time, reached the top of the list. Maybe one section here, another a year or two later, but clearing out all the undergrowth??? This will be the year. . .

Even being in class (perennial studentitis) last week and this has not diverted my gardener's sense of mission. . .

Oooh, and the 5 pounds I acquired while exercising only the mind last year? Gone, all gone. But enough sag and bulge remaining to amply fuel the mission . . .

Bees and ants making homes in the ground and Japanese beetles ravishing roses in planters out front and those white sucking things on evergreen leaves and stems everywhere. I've been seriously considering a yard-wide insecticide sweep. Until I saw fireflies in my azaleas tonight. . .

Simple pleasures. . .




"After" photos will be posted soon :)

Simple Pleasures? Some Inconvenient Truths...

Sunday, April 22, was Earth Day. RoadRunner, AOL, The State--doomsday reminders everywhere of this specter we call global warming--of the mass extinctions, the wide scale flooding, the increasing frequency of monster storms in our not so distant future.

So many ways to think--or not think--about this issue.

I have reached that age where I can say "not in my lifetime!" with a modicum of certainty. I can assure myself that, through my pursuit of simple neartohome pleasures, I am not the culprit here. Yes, I have not yet exchanged my incandescents for fluorescents. Yes, I have sacrificed two spreading oak trees in their prime, understanding that increased summer cooling expenses may be the flip side of my sunny acorn-free driveway. But I shop online (less driving), regularly maintain my aging automobile, wash laundry in cold water, turn off unused electronics (well, except for the computer), adjust my thermostat (68F degrees in winter; 80F degrees in summer), recycle newsprint and cardboard, pursue simple pleasures...

Simple pleasures, but with some inconvenient truths...

My grandson's swing set, for example. Several weekends ago, my son carefully explained to me why not just any treated lumber would do for this construction project. Some brands exude chemicals harmful to children. Others don't. One producer of ACQ-treated wood (the current industry standard) offers, on its web site, these points for consideration:

• Using treated lumber instead of plastic or steel conserves energy (that used to produce the construction material?) and reduces greenhouse emissions.
• Using treated lumber (as opposed to untreated) saves millions of trees each year because treated lumber lasts much longer.
• Using lumber treated with preservatives that do not contain arsenic (as did the older CCA industry standard) and that form insoluable bonds with the wood is safer for the environment and its inhabitants.

I'll admit this much. I've used, and replaced, untreated wood outdoors. I've purchased swingsets of steel and plastic construction. But what of the trees I've saved by refinishing, instead of discarding, old rocking chairs, another of life's simple pleasures? Polyurethane, much to my surprise and pleasure, is, according to the Center for the Polyurethanes Industry of the American Chemistry Council, an energy-efficient, environmentally friendly, recyclable product.

Energy-efficient, environmentally friendly, recyclable...like a geocache, maybe?

Geocaching, yet another of my family's simple pleasures, is categorized as a sport. Our 21st century's Treasure Island. Coordinates mapped on a handheld GPS. Logged accounts of treasures unearthed, treasures exchanged, treasures left behind for others to discover. These caches are hidden with care to preserve their natural surroundings. Geocachers walk. We hike. We do not disturb. We do not litter. We do not consume fossil fuels, except perhaps in the vehicles that ferry us from one cache's environs to another. We do not exacerbate global warming.

But global warming may one day render the simple pleasure of geocaching obsolete.

Last July we explored an island located in a nearby manmade lake--in search of a traditional geocache (The Fab Five?!). Our greatest challenge was not so much locating the cache as it was avoiding the poison ivy traps above and beside and along our path. According to National Geographic News, global warming will boost the spread of poison ivy. Global warming will also mutate poison ivy into POISON ivy.

There's more. Noticing the intricate patterns of contrail tracings is yet another late-in-life-acquired simple pleasure (Contrails). Did I think to ask what impact, other than beauty, these lacy condensationtrails might bring into being? No... But the answers found me. Contrails become high-altitude cirrus clouds, letting light through but trapping reflected heat, raising the earth's temperature (global warming). As contrails become more prevalent, this increase in cloud cover may render telescopes (on the ground) obsolete and disrupt the very GPS signals on which geocaching relies! The jury is still undecided in the case of contrails versus global warming, according to reports from The Register (UK), National Geographic News, and other sources. But inconvenient truths now complicate this seemingly simple pleasure...

I was aware, at some level, of Al Gore's documentary on global warming released last November. But there were so many ways to think--or not think--about this issue. I had reached that age where I could say "not in my lifetime!" with a modicum of certainty. I could assure myself that, through my pursuit of simple neartohome pleasures, I was not the culprit here.

I have since come to understand that, if I am to pass on future generations my passion for simple pleasures, I must come to terms with the ever-changing realities of each. I must question the impact of contrails, the safety of chemical preservatives, why I cannot let go of incandescent light. I must face some inconvenient truths.

I've ordered the DVD from Amazon.com.

in search of the Lincoln rocker…

Several years ago, I purchased a book. Nothing remarkable about that, bookaholic that I am, nor was the subject of that book, Abraham Lincoln, a newcomer to my personal library. What set that purchase apart was that I acquired all 312 pages (9” X 12”, decidedly fine print!) of Twenty Days: A Narrative in Text and Pictures of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the Twenty Days and Nights that followed—The Nation in Mourning, the Long Trip Home to Springfield so that I might own page 43—a picture whose caption reads “Here is the rocking chair in which Lincoln was slumped and senseless when Dr. Leale reached the box.”

I have loved rocking chairs since before memory began. There have been many in my life, but none so remarkable as the justright mahogany Boston rocker under the tree my second Christmas. Except, perhaps, the one I discovered several years ago in the dusty back room of a wicker boutique that also peddled pasttheirprime furnishings… The one that demanded that I learn how to realize its contemporary potential without sacrificing its story, its place in a time before mine.

From the squared nails, the horsehair stuffing, the original floral brocade upholstery preserved under a not-so-long-ago green velvet attempt to modernize, I came to understand that my chair had rocked through many generations before it found its way to me. I dared to breathe the word antique though I, too, had compromised its circa-mid-19th-century authenticity with my eve-of-the-21st-century floral brocade, staple-gun staples, electric sewing machine seaming, hot-glue-gun gluing, polyurethane glossing. Not to mention padding the padding! My rocking chair lent substance and grace to my eclectic surroundings. That was enough.

Until I came across the picture of a Lincoln rocker being auctioned on Ebay… I don’t remember the sequence of it all, one discovery unearthing another. Perhaps it was the caned child’s rocker I bid on there, one of my first and certainly one of my most difficult-to-negotiate Ebay purchases. Today an all-but-the-crest identical chair is listed as Vintage Child’s Caned Lincoln Rocker (vintage meaning that it dates from 1900-1950), with an opening bid almost five times my purchase price.

The staple online furniture glossary definition for a Lincoln rocker is “an upholstered (so how does a caned seat and back qualify?) high back rocker that has an exposed wood frame and padded armrests (not so the caned versions).” But my first question, upon linking that label to the chair in my living room, was not so much about definition as it was about origin. Certainly, Abraham Lincoln did not choose to be shot, nor even to sit, in a rocking chair bearing his name!

From somewhere in memory I knew that Lincoln had indeed chosen to sit in a rocking chair in his box at Ford’s Theater that April evening in 1865. Various accounts (National Park Service, Henry Ford Museum [where this chair is on display today; Ford’s Theater has to make do with a replica]) tell us that the chair, not part of the everyday furnishings of that box, was brought in perhaps to accommodate the President’s physical needs (to stretch his legs? to support his back?) or perhaps just because it matched the other chairs and the sofa brought in for that occasion. The red velvet fabric just below the carved wood crest is stained, not with the President’s blood but with a greasy substance used to dress men’s hair in those days. Accounts tell us that, for 55 years, this rocker, Lincoln’s rocker, gathered dust in a storage room somewhere in the depths of the Smithsonian. In 1929, after being reclaimed by the widow of its original owner (the Ford of Ford’s Theater), it brought $2,400 at a New York auction. Its new owner was the Ford of automobile fame, Henry.

So, if it wasn’t yet a Lincoln rocker that evening in April of 1865, what was it? I was back in home economics class my senior year in high school, learning about Georgian and French Provincial and French Colonial (one had two balconies and I knew I would live in a house with balconies someday). I wanted to name this rocker in my living room, to name the features that made it what it was before it was Lincoln’s rocker. Which is why I needed the pictures. How were our chairs, Lincoln’s and mine, alike? How were they different? What did these likenesses, these differences, mean?

A third chair—a rocking chair which actually belonged to Abraham Lincoln while he lived in Springfield, Illinois (1844-1861)—helped me make sense of the differences. The Springfield chair (image and description courtesy of the University of Illinois Library Collections) has thirteen buttons: Top to bottom, in rows of 1, then 2, then 3, then 2, then 3, then 2. My chair back features only the first four of these rows. A row of three below them would compromise the lumbar support this skillfully crafted 18th century back provides. Simply stated, my Lincoln’s rocker is a lady’s chair. Lincoln would not have been comfortable seated in one proportioned so. The other difference of note is the carving on the crests of these chairs. I have yet to find any two identical, though elaborate leaf, nut, shell, flower, and/or fruit designs are common elements. A third, and subtle difference, is the degree to which the back of each chair balloons. My chair back varies little in width from top to bottom while both chairs where Lincoln sat widen slightly above the upholstered armrests.

Similarities? Upholstered armrests, back, and seat. Exposed wooden (black walnut, mahogany, rosewood) frame. Runners and legs without decoration (his chairs and mine). Noticable “c” curve in the front legs. And the arms, the gondola arms! Lincoln’s Springfield rocker arms sports lotus flower carvings at the end of each curve. The Ford’s Theater rocker’s elaborately scrolled gondola arms are identical—yes, truly identical—to those on the chair in my living room.

Before Lincoln’s rocker was Lincoln’s rocker, it was Rococo or, perhaps, Rococo Revival. The curves are Rococo. The original pastel brocade upholstery of my rocker (but not of Lincoln’s two) is more reminiscent of this period than of the revival era. But elaborately carved crests are characteristic of the Victorian Era’s Rococo Revival (1850s-1870s). On Ebay today there’s a rocker much like Lincoln’s (Ford’s Theater) and mine being auctioned in Falls Church, Virginia. Its Ebay listing? “Rococo Revival walnut horsehair rocking chair”…

Questions linger.

In those days before brand names, before mass production, did the carvings on a given head crest represent a particular craftsman’s work, a particular family or region ? For years I thought the crest on my chair was acanthus leaves. Those on each side of the center may well be. But the leaf in the middle, braced by a large nut (or small fruit?) on each side? More art than science, perhaps. I cannot seem to name them.

I have always thought my chair mahogany—the color but do I know the grain? What about rosewood? What of black walnut?

I wish I knew its story, the story of all those generations rocked gently there and why it came to be in that dusty back room of a wicker boutique so that I could bring it home. But I would like to think that we have begun to weave new stories, this chair and my family now. I would like to think that my Rococo Revival chair will gently rock many of our generations yet to come.

A kinder, gentler fate than that of Ford’s rocker, forever to be known as Lincoln’s…

LASIK

Subject: One more thing--

Date: 7/24/2003 8:56:24 AM Eastern Daylight Time

--and this may be a major key to why the world looks so different with my new eyes... I went outside to get the paper this morning around 7--my very first trip outdoors (beyond the screen porch) without anything covering my eyes. The first WOW was the grass near the front steps. And something finally clicked! The entire world is closer and larger than it has ever been! I've always known that glasses reduced my world (amazing how much thinner everyone is when I'm wearing my glasses...) but contact lenses must have done that also, if to a lesser degree. Since that view of the world is all that I've known for forty years, I thought that was how the world looked to everyone. Add that to depth perception (just pray that I don't get too carried away with my new-found confidence as a driver) and amazing colors/variations in color...absolutely awesome...

...and overwhelming. I have cried every morning since the surgery--tears of joy and wonder at it all...

Contrails...

I was supposed to be working on a poem for my multigenre project, right? My theme was play, as in a kind of history of my family's (sometimes just my own) pursuit of leisure. Simple pleasures would be the subtitle...

I was writing out of doors, trying out the idea of a six-room poem, seated on a gazebo (or was it a pergola?) floor. A crisp blue February sky and memory of contrail-watching the week before when visiting my mother who was recovering from surgery.

Is contrail-watching a kind of play, a simple pleasure? I'm not sure...yet. I just know that in this last year I've noticed more contrails, discovered more rainbows, than in a very long time...

Sharing this work in progress with Idon'twannabeapoet adolescents the last couple of months has been a pleasure, as have the poems they have crafted in spite of themselves... Is this about play? Playing with words, maybe...

Here goes...