Today at www.ethicalela.com for the final day of our August Open Write, our host Ashlyn O’Rourke of Oklahoma inspires us to write Self-Perception Concrete Poems to tell the story of a difference in who we know ourselves to be and how someone else perceives us. You can read Ashlyn’s full prompt here.
Strong
I tell the hard truth.
He asked for my opinion
then said I was wrong.
Can an opinion
be all wrong when it’s based on
long-observed patterns?
He thinks I’m too strong ~
but I don’t argue he’s wrong.
My mother raised me.
Today our host for August’s Open Write, Scott McCloskey of Michigan, encouraged us to write poems from the perspective of someone or something in any painting or its artist. You can read his full prompt here. I chose the Woodstock Festival. Since the photos are copyrighted, I can’t share the actual photo I chose, but it’s available at this link: https://artsandculture.google.com/story/AwUBOlaLnlGyLA
Once you get there, scroll down. It’s about the 14th picture in the collection. There is a woman playing a flute and a man playing a drum. There is a yellowish lab-type dog in the background, mixed in with all the people milling about. My poem is from the perspective of the drum player, clearly lost in the music and, if thinking anything, thinking to his own beat.
Ain't Nobody
Ain't nobody gonna steal my joy,
Ain't nobody gonna steal my song,
Ain't nobody gonna steal my beat,
Ain't nobody gonna steal my drum,
Ain't nobody gonna steal my groove,
Ain't nobody gonna steal my love,
Ain't nobody gonna steal my peace,
Ain't nobody gonna steal my shirt,
Ain't nobody gonna steal my dog,
Ain't nobody gonna steal nothin' of mine
'Cause I'm a sharin' man,
Yeah, I'm a sharin', man.
Wendy Everand is our host today for the August Open Write, and she inspires us to write odes to our favorite poets. You can read her full prompt here.
This brought to mind the first poet I ever knew. We lived next door to a retired school teacher in Reynolds, Georgia, and one day I got loose and barged into her house (no one locked their doors in that town back then)…..and the rest is history. After she died, two of her granddaughters compiled a collection of her poems, and I got a copy as a gift. I still believe that she pulled my poetry strings out and brushed them…..maybe even crocheted them.
Ode to Mabel G. Byrd (December 10, 1900-1/20/1987)
Today, our host at http://www.ethicalela.com for Day 1 of the August Open Write inspires us to write poems about hands. Denise Krebs of California is hosting today’s writing. You can read her full prompt here.
Welcoming Magnolia Mae
yesterday, these hands
gripped handlebars, holding on
for the ride with friends
yesterday, these hands
swaddled babies, bandaged knees
as children grew up
yesterday, these hands
stitched a quilt for a grandchild
I will meet today
for today, these hands
will build Legos and fairy
gardens first, and then…..
today, these hands will
swaddle a new granddaughter
in rosettes and sage
so that tomorrow,
these hands will be remembered
this heart full of love
somebody's little ripple is a drama tsunami
because somebody wrote their own life rules
and dictionary about how things are
(here's a hint: we know it's empty)
somebody's "close-knit family" endures Christmas
for a sock swap and all go home disturbed
somebody is rich, too,
richer than you, than I, than all of us,
with money in the bank to do big things
(here's another hint: we know they're undefined)
and somebody has tickets to cruise again soon
and would have gone last week except
somebody's pet squirrel died and
somebody had to bury it and grieve a little
so we might want to tolerate somebody
and act all impressed
because somebody knows how to live
when clearly you don't, I don't, we don't.
(But we know the truth. See, we've done
somebody's laundry
a time or two
so we don't pity that squirrel.)
I may not be sporting a Rockport, Massachusetts t-shirt, but I do have this.
Every time I scrub dishes, I think of that cute little Sail Loft in Bear Skin Neck, and it takes me back to one of the most scenic United States towns I’ve ever visited.
The VRBO unit had one of these dish brushes in the sink, and I fell in love with it right there in the standing-room-only kitchen in that iconic New England coastal town that still plays steeple hymns at 4 pm on the church organ, probably to remind everyone walking around in this much natural beauty that it might be the closest place to heaven on earth.
Even before I left Massachusetts, I went online and ordered one for myself from Amazon. The Lodge. They may specialize in cast iron, but they make a mean dish brush, too.
As I scrubbed the two crock pots from yesterday’s Meal Train Mississippi Pot Roast and our own MPR dinner with cooked-on carrots and potatoes, I thought back to my walks through this quaint little New England town to take photos of the rocky shore, the sunrise seaglass hunt, the angel wings I found on White Wharf beach in one of the least expected places to ever find a pair (an unquestionable hello from my mother in heaven), and the little wooden boats that looked like they were sitting on glass as they were anchored like lone ducks in the water.
Yesterday was the first day of the 2023-2024 school year in my county in rural Georgia, and I left early to avoid the heavy traffic on the one day of the year when it seems every parent drives their kids to school. While my role in the school system has changed from that of a classroom teacher, I still enjoy the energy of the first day of school in any of our school buildings. Backpacks are new, everyone has a pencil, and you can tell by the soles of all the shoes that back-to-school shopping yielded the newest fashionable kicks. Everyone is showered and clean – and mostly well-behaved, since everyone is still outside their comfort zone and a little uncertain of consequence on all the boundaries they haven’t tested just yet. And by everyone, I mean students, parents, teachers, and administrators – all of us!
It’s fascinating to me to read through Gladys Taber’s Stillmeadow Sampler from 1950. Seventy-three years ago in Connecticut, children went back to school after Labor Day and got out at the end of June. Although we return in August in the deep South and get out at the end of May these days, the prevailing school traditions and the perceptions haven’t changed by more than a month in timeline or in thinking in three quarters of a century.
As I begin this day, I’m sharing some of Taber’s timeless insights and sentiments that she describes from her own lifetime of school beginnings. As I read her words, I think of my Great Granny Haynes, who was surely close in age as I do the math of the years and their family structures of that time.
Gladys
School begins and the children waiting for the school bus look like migratory birds themselves in their bright jackets and with that traveling look. They are traveling too on some sort of education, and this is a journey too, a migration from childhood to a larger world. I always feel a nicking ache that I am no longer filling a pencil case and getting schoolbooks for my child.
Kim
I know well this feeling of the nicking ache, from both a parent and teacher perspective. Even though I love what I do as a District Literacy Specialist, I miss being in the classroom – – especially on the first day of school. The bumper crop of a whole new harvest of students comes hesitantly creeping into the classroom, checking out the seating arrangements and all their friends in the class. They still have high hopes that some teacher hasn’t had conversations with the previous teachers enough to know that there are those who shouldn’t be sitting next to their best friends who get them in trouble the same way they get in trouble for laughing in church – hence, they take their assigned seats.
Gladys
Now, as I see a new bevy of school children waiting for the school bus, I wonder what changes the world will bring to them. But I hope for them that they may have a backlog of family love. A child that is confident that he or she is cherished is armed against almost anything life can bring.
Kim
I’ve taught all grades except 4th and 12th throughout my years teaching, and some of the deepest discussions I had with my high school students as we discussed “ancient literature,” are the ways it applies to students today. Whether we were reading Shakespeare or Steinbeck, the universal themes of literature rose to the top like cream rising on a fresh pitcher of milk, standing the test of time and transcending years and geography. I experience the same longings for children today that Taber did in her day – – the hope that there is a backlog of love, and the wonderings about what life will bring – – the universal, lingering hope through the years that children have a strong sense of belonging.
Gladys
Nowadays few mothers have time to read to the children and if they did, someone would have to turn off the television. But there is a special pleasure in being read to or in reading aloud. Long after I could read everything except such words as peripatetic, I pretended I had to be read to every night.
Kim
Still, there is pleasure in 2023 in reading books and living lives vicariously that we could otherwise not live ourselves. Take Taber, for example. I’m basically a fly on her walls, listening to her conversations as I read her words and take in the similarities of our lives and perspectives. In Taber’s day, the television was an enemy of academia; today, it’s technology, cell phones, and social media. And, of course, Netflix. And don’t get me started on AI, because I might warn that we should all be concerned that our grandchildren don’t grow up and marry robots.
Gladys
Judging by what I read and what I hear, the excitement has chiefly gone from education, and this is a pity. My opinion is that we have too many tired teachers. No matter how gifted a man or woman may be, teaching three times as many pupils as is normal and always trying to do extra jobs to supplement the small salary, drains the enthusiasm.
Kim
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Teachers are still tired. Educators are still trying to supplement the small salary. Enthusiasm still wanes in a steady stream from the beginning of the year to the end, and today, unlike in the 1950s, there are even memes with owls that look like wise professors sitting on branches showing a first day teacher and then a last day teacher owl looking like it’s been in a fight with a pack of hungry coyotes and barely made it out alive. That’s how the year goes most often in the grand scheme of a school year.
I read through her calendar year and imagine the timelines of our perceptions, Gladys’s and mine, like those striated layers of earth from different eras, stacked in the mesas of Arizona – – parallel experiences, one then, one now, but the same kind of living with the same concerns and excitement, just new layers of soil to live it all on. And the one piece most interesting? My own parents would have been those young school children in the bright jackets in 1950, migrating on their journey as Taber noted.
And I’m here right now in 2023, on my front porch, looking out over this farm as Gladys did her own in 1950. Me – an egg from the nest of two of those migratory birds who has raised her own fledglings, who are now raising their own fledglings.
A favorite Saturday morning hangout in our corner of the world over here in middle Georgia is 1828 Coffee Company. We go there some Saturday mornings for the best local cup of coffee, cinnamon roll, cheese grits, and breakfast casserole. Even though they don’t open until 9:00 a.m. on weekends (a little different business model for a coffee shop), and even though I will have had at least two cups of coffee by then, and even though I’ll be counting a single Weight Watchers point with Chobani Zero Sugar Yogurt and a fresh diced peach, we will go.
My husband, who loves all things food but is a creature of habit to the degree that if he ever goes missing, I’ll know to start the search party hounds in all the local Chick Fil As, loves this coffee shop on the Zebulon, Georgia square. It’s a restored, quaint place with a 100% Zebulon, Georgia vibe perhaps like no other place in our county.
You can offer him any breakfast nook anywhere, but he’ll pick 1828 over a full breakfast every time just because of the atmosphere. I don’t believe it is the sustenance alone that draws him back again and again. It’s the place, with its ambiance and friendly people. It’s the originality of a place from the past, pulsing with life in the present. It’s “sure ’nuff” Georgia culture, a sense of deep-rooted belonging that anchors a person to a place where they can talk for an hour with most anybody who walks through the door, call them by name, and ask about all their relatives past and present, and conjure memories like a pop-up picture book that only they can see.
If you were here having coffee with us, we’d show you our county. We’d drive you down the dirt roads and stop at the meadow with the holy cows who run toward a cross at feeding time. We’d take you to the Strickland Building where they filmed Cold Sassy Tree in the late 1980s, and show you the exact spot on the courthouse square where a naked James Cromwell appeared in a movie scene for Tank and the same little old ladies who’d called to complain about it and wanted it stopped actually showed up for a front-row spot to watch it being filmed.
Then we’d show you Pike County Schools today and where they were located in the late 1800s and tell you all about one of the four Georgians who was aboard the Titanic when it sunk. Only the woman, Lilly Futrelle, survived. Her husband, Jacques Futrelle, a Georgia writer who was born in Pike County on April 9, 1875, died on the ill-fated Titanic. Futrelle, who had celebrated his 37th birthday the night before he and his wife Lily May Peel Futrelle set sail to return from their tour of Europe, along with two other men from Georgia, perished. Lily told friends that if he’d been a drinker, he might have lived a longer life, because he may have gotten drunk at his party and missed the boat that next morning. Instead, the last she saw of him was from her seat in only a half-filled Lifeboat 16 as he stood next to John Jacob Astor smoking a cigarette on the deck of the sinking ship.
So while we might have taken you to his grave here in Pike County, it’s not here in Pike County. He’s buried in the deep belly of the ocean.
But like all hometown Pike County folks who know everybody and all their family members, we can tell you that Jacques does have a cenotaph at Poplar Springs Methodist Church Cemetery in Adrian, Johnson County, Georgia, on the bottom of the headstone of his mother. His mother’s obituary cites grief over her son’s death as the direct cause of her own death at 66. His father is buried in Atlanta’s historic Oakland Cemetery in the Masonic lot, having died of nephritis. His sister Elberta, buried in North Carolina, lived in nearby Barnesville for a time and was the only female life-long charter member of the Massachusetts State House Press Assocation at the time of her death. His wife, Lily, lived to be 91 and is buried in Massachusetts. Her grave is now marked, but for a long time was not, and the newspapers did not report her death when it occurred. Jacques’ son, who bears his name, lived to be 80 and died on my 13th birthday (July 8) in 1979; he’s buried in Maryland. His daughter Virginia Raymond is buried in Massachusetts, but there are no records of her death.
Since those graves are all a bit of a drive from here, we might take you to A Novel Experience on the Zebulon square to look for one of his books.
Jacques Futrelle – Picture from Encyclopedia Titanica
Futrelle Family – Picture from Encyclopedia Britannica
Finally, we’d bring you to the Johnson Funny Farm and throw the hammock up between your choice of the thousands of Loblolly pines out here and offer you a glass of sweet tea in a Mason jar and invite you to get lost in the pages of your new book as you hear Futrelle’s voice transcend the depths of the ocean and tickle your reading tastebuds right here in the county where he was born.
In Stillmeadow Sampler, Gladys Taber writes through the year in chapters named for seasons. I think what I love best is the way she captures the feelings of each season with such sensory descriptions.
I’m reading the end of the summer chapter, which focuses on August. Here is where Taber gives me the hope to get through the dog days of summer:
“As August draws to a close, evenings are cool. Autumn is already in the air. The signs are small, but a country eye sees them.”
Earlier this week, I found a reddened maple leaf. Today, I squeezed a fig, and it isn’t as firm as it was a week ago. And as I listen and watch the patterns of birds, I sense change in the numbers that are here.
The stores are beginning to put their summer clothes on clearance as the fall fashions arrive, and of course the craft stores are already decked out for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’ve resisted all temptation to break out the pumpkin candles and strike a match.
I’m on the countdown, though.
Just after Labor Day weekend, I’ll bring out the pumpkins and burlap and light a maple bourbon candle. I’ll bring out the socks, sweaters, and scarves, and change out the front door wreath. I’ll book a pedicure and choose one of those shimmery autumn colors that’ll match all the shades of leaves on the deciduous trees. And I’ll make the orange spiced tea that my mother used to make when I was young and raise my cup to the changing season!
Common Threads 