In the dark of the night

 

I had forgotten how black dark can be until we lost power about eleven o’clock last night. All evening I heard reports of rain nearby, some of it heavy, but our immediate area seemed dry and clear. Until about ten o’clock when I heard that first clap of thunder and, suddenly, Sophie was under my desk at my feet.

The wind rose, thunder rolled occasionally, and then we got one of those amazing light shows—spectacular to watch. But then one big strike, a loud noise, and the world went black. I was already securely locked in for the night, sitting at my desk with my “go to sleep” glass of wine, my hand on my phone. When I looked straight ahead, I could see a little out the windows, but behind me, deep in the cottage, it was all black, impenetrable.

Pretty soon Christian came out to check on me, so without a light I made it to the patio door and let him in. He put away the meat that was defrosting, fetched my flashlight from the bedroom, and settled on the floor to comfort Sophie who was not as all right as I was. I lit my electric candles, and we had a nice visit, talking mostly about politics. After a while Jordan called to say their beloved Cricket was freaking out and sleeping in her arms. She wanted Christian back in the house.

Sophie and I went to bed, though I slept fitfully. If I didn’t’ mind the dark so much, I minded the heat a lot. It hadn’t occurred to me until Christian and I were talking that the a/c would be off too. I shed blankets and layers, but I was still uncomfortable.

And then suddenly, about three o’clock, power returned and the cottage was ablaze with lights. I turned off the computer and lights, filled Sophie’s water dish, and went gratefully back to bed. At five-thirty, Sophie wanted to go out. At six-thirty, she thought it was time for breakfast. I told her firmly it was too early. At seven-thirty, she insisted, so I gave her first breakfast, let her out, and once more went back to bed with that feeling that I hadn’t had my full sleep. Praise be, we slept until nine o’clock.

But the dark blackness of the night stayed on my mind because I’d been thinking how little most Texans understand about what is going on in our world. They are in the dark.  Start with the Paxton impeachment proceedings: his lawyers keep protesting that he is the people’s choice, they elected him knowing all the accusations against him. Truth is, he won by a slim majority, not the major turnout you would expect for an established Republican officeholder in Texas. And polls have shown most Texans had no idea that he has been under indictment for fraud for seven years, that his own office staff reported him to the FBI for bribery and other irregularities, that he had a notorious extramarital affair. The information has always been public—but apparently Texans didn’t read, didn’t care. Maybe now they do.

In Fort Worth, some millions of federal funding for pandemic recovery has gone unused, so the county commissioners have decided to transfer the funds from encouragement of low income housing and other services to the underserved to boost law enforcement, including increased use of a private prison over a hundred miles away. Among many things wrong with that plan, like the wrongness of private prisons to begin with, is that many families, counselors, and lawyers will find it difficult to travel that far to visit and serve inmates. As for low-income housing, one commissioner brushed it off with slight regret and, “It is what it is.” Doesn’t sound pro-active to me, especially since homelessness is on the rise. But most Texans don’t know this.

And then there’s Clearfork—the upscale shopping/residential/office area on the city’s southwest side. And I do mean upscale. Neiman Marcus, Burberry, Gucci, Johnny Was, Louis Vitton, Tiffany—you get the idea. Restaurants match the shops, and who knows how much those upstairs housing units cost. The City of Fort Worth is getting ready to sink millions into an expansion of Clearfork, including an upscale automobile dealer. Without a nod to the need for low-income housing. But most Fort Worthians, let alone most Texans, don’t realize this.

I have a feeling I’m preaching to the choir here, but I don’t know how much or what else I can do to get Texans to wake up and realize the importance of knowing what’s going on, in depth, in our city, our state, our country. We hear repeatedly that the atmosphere in this country resembles the thirties in Nazi Germany, and I think it terms of public apathy, ignorance, call it what you will, it’s an apt comparison.

Folks, the power’s not going to come on magically. We have already seen drastic controls on voting, on women’s rights over their own bodies, on freedom to love who we want, on what books our children read, what version of history they are taught.

Oops sorry. I got preachy. But I am so appalled by the darkness. The literal darkness didn’t scare me; the metaphorical darkness scares the heebie-jeebies out of me. Please help me spread the word that we must all pay close attention—and not stay silent.

Enjoy this cooler weather. Only in Texas is it cooler in the upper eighties. I love living in free Texas. I hope you do too.

The power of women—and a note on influencers

 

I am so excited that Christian put up my yard sign for Mothers Against Greg Abbott. After it arrived in the mail, I asked him if he would put up my MAGA sign, and he was horrified. “Juju, MAGA?” I laughed and told him, “No, not that one.” So he was glad to put this up, saying, “I’m no fan of Greg Abbott.” Now I’ve seen another yard sign I want, though I’m not sure how Christian would feel about putting this one up: “I am WOMAN. Hear me ROAR! Watch me VOTE!”

A friend who was here to talk about writing this morning lived in Mexico for quite a few  years and keeps up with what’s happening in that country. When I mentioned that Mexico’s Supreme Court just decriminalized abortion throughout the country, he said that things get done in Mexico because the women know how to do things, The men strut, the women act. And, according to him, it looks as though Mexico may soon get a woman as president.

And that led into talk about women. He reminisced about women he’s known, reflecting that he can think of several women, most of them elderly when he encountered them, who had a profound influence on his life. Try as he might, he could not think of that many men. First and foremost was his grandmother, Ethel Yeager, whose writings he collected and published as A Soul Housed Up, available on Amazon. He began to reminisce about women who had influenced him at various times in his life and career both as a scholar and an Episcopalian priest.

And I got to thinking about women today. We’re always hearing that women are in the ascendancy, the power that Gloria Steinem and Angela Davis worked for is coming to fruition in our day and age. Today there are twelve women governors, twenty-five women senators, 135 women in the House of Representatives, and 424 who are mayors of cities with a population of over 30,000. But more than that, women’s movements are active on the progressive scene: Mothers Against Greg Abbott, Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, Red, Wine, & Blue powered by women, just to name a few. At the other extreme is Moms for Liberary, a far-right extremist group. Women are influencers, though they often aren’t named as such.

And that thought, plus an article I read, made me think about what today we call influencers. I”ve never been sure about that term—how does one get to be an influencer? Is it a job you apply for? Who hires you. I know TikTok has a lot to do with it, but I am not a TikTok user. Today an article in Texas Monthly answered those questions.

Writer Russell Gold saw an ad for tweets in support of Kenneth Paxton, our “Impressively corrupt” AG. Curious, Gold filled out a Google form, and posted two “middle-of-the-road” tweets—one a link to an article about key people in the impeachment proceedings and the other a speculation of whether or not Paxton would be acquitted. This week, he received a check for $100, even though the tweets did not directly support Paxton.

It seems that stirring up noise about the case is enough to make Texas big money happy. The check came from Influenceable LLC and the payer was the wife of Brad Parscale, former head of digital operations for trump. The money apparently came from a wealthy Texan named Dunn whose monehy is behind the campaign to exonerate Paxton. The thing that amazed me is that there is thia enormous dark network or organization working to spew out buzz or spin or whatever on behalf of Paxton. Gold, unwittingly, found himself a paid propagandist for Kenneth Paxton, a position he did not want. To his credit, he donated the $100 to a charity and wrote the article to alert others to what’s going on. Read it here: My Brief Career as a Paid Pro-Paxton Propagandist (texasmonthly.com) Not a Texas Monthly subscriber? You can log in as a guest.

So now I have a new goal: I want to be an influencer for the election of Joe Biden. Unfortunately, I don’t know anyone who is paying for such work. Then again maybe I’m already doing it pro bono. Problem is I don’t know if I have any influence. How will I know when I can call myself an influencer?

 

Just to be alive is a grand thing

 

I guess Agatha Christie has been on my mind since I’ve just read a cozy mystery, Fatal Fascinators by Jenn McKinley, set in a British castle on the weekend of a lavish wedding—and a double murder. That was one of Christie’s signature plots—a variation on the closed room mystery, where all the possible suspects are gathered in one spot so the detective’s job is made a bit easier by the smaller numbers. With Christie it was often someone's country estate. As a side note, McKinley’s latest in her Hat Shoppe Mysteries combined the best of an American cozy and an Agatha Christie weekend in the country.

Christie has long been a puzzle for me. Of course, I’ve read several of her mysteries, but I never could finish Murder on the Orient Express (a shameful confession from one who aspires to write mysteries), and I’m simply not a Christie scholar. I have read and enjoyed some of the books about Christie’s life and particularly the two weeks when she disappeared from sight. Much of what I’ve read about her convinces me she was not always a happy person, didn’t have that happy a life, let alone a happy childhood.

Yet here she is, proclaiming how much she loves life. There’s an obvious lesson there about enjoying life as it is handed to you, making the best of what you have—and whatever other platitudes you can bring forth. But I think for those of us who are aging, there’s a deeper message. At the age of eighty-five, I am very much aware of Andrew Marvell’s 17^th century poem to “To His Coy Mistress”: “But at my back, I always hear/Time’s Winged Chariot Hurrying Near.”

You don’t have to be a coy mistress to get the meaning: death is always just around the corner, and you never know when its chariot is going to catch you. I think Marvell, centuries ago, and Christie, fifty years go or more, have the same message for us: enjoy life while you can and don’t anticipate death. It will come when it comes. I fully understand Christie’s sentiment about having been miserable—haven’t we all been there one time or another, when we’ve lost a loved one, faced a disappointment in love, lost a job or a career—and yet the trick is to admit that you love life overall. That may be the whole energy behind suicide hot lines.

My life right now is not exciting, but it is comfortable, and I am enjoying it. Until I am forced to, I am not going to dwell on thoughts of illness and death. Jordan suggested tonight that I talk about illness a lot—the illnesses of those around me that I care about. And probably I do—my brother has been ill for a long time though he’s doing better, a friend’s brother is battling cancer, another friend is having memory problems, and yet another had an unexplained blackout which is worrying both her and her doctors. I suppose it’s inevitable that when you reach my age, you are surrounded by illness—and by the death of contemporaries. But I refuse to dwell on it.

What Christie is telling us is to move on, leave that behind, and treasure your life. I had a friend once who said she couldn’t bear that this table, that chair, and that painting would still be here when she was gone. I find just the opposite—it reassures me that life will go on. And I think that’s basically because as Christie suggests, I love life.

And on to the mundane—so far, it’s been a busy week, with happy hour company every night. That, too, is part of what I love about my life. And of course, the cooking—Monday night we had hot dogs. It was, after all, Labor Day. So what if everyone went out last night, and I ate a leftover hot dog at home alone. Tonight we had Greek hamburgers with marinated tomatoes and cucumbers. Pretty good stuff.

And so what if the days are a bit long right now, because I’m not sure what I’m working on. That will resolve itself. Meantime, I can read emails and recipes online and keep up with national politics and this week, the hullabaloo of the Austin impeachment trial of Kenneth Paxton.

Yep, Agatha, just to be alive is certainly a grand thing.

The drama of a dropped phone, becoming a writing counselor, and a banned books club

 

And now he's thinking ahead to college?
I can't believe it.

This morning, after I fed Sophie her second breakfast—don’t ask!—I wasn’t ready to get up, so I crawled back in bed for a few minutes. But first I emailed Christian to say Sophie had her food and would be ready for a shot within an hour. When I got up for the third time, I dropped my phone, and it slid under the bed. No big deal! I could see it from my walker, so I got the broom. But each swipe with the broom only moved the thing farther from me. Put the broom up and got my grabber. That also just pushed it farther beyond my reach. I considered moving the bedside stand to see if I could sit at the very top if the mattress and reach it—decided that was not wise. To my credit, I never seriously considered getting down on the floor, crawling under the bedside stand, and grabbing it. Not only would I not be able to get up, I would earn the everlasting wrath of my daughter.

But there I was—no phone, no texting, no way to communicate except email, and I doubted anyone would read their email at 9:30 on Labor Day. Plus the window between Sophie’s breakfast and the time for her shot was running out. And I could not even make it to the house from my cottage alone—three steps up to the deck mean I need help. Although I felt isolated and alone, I told myself I was okay and I could simply give Sophie a snack whenever someone came out.

Fortunately, Christian came just before Sophie’s window closed, gave her a shot, and retrieved my phone. But it’s a lesson learned. The incident made me realize how important my phone is to my independence. Six years ago, post-surgery, a physical therapist warned me to always take my phone with me wherever I went in my cottage. I have pretty much taken those words to heart, especially on middle of the night bathroom trips, but now I am aware to be ever so much more careful of the phone itself.

I have a new calling of sorts—writing counselor. A friend, a highly educated, much published man, has asked me to help him consider what he should do with his rather large body of work, some published, some unpublished, So I’ve been playing pick and hunt, and I’ve come up with some ideas for him. I have no idea if they are workable or what he wants. To me, it’s a heavy responsibility to ask someone, “What do you want from these works,” and have them say, “I don’t know. I want you to tell me.” It’s also a heady feeling to think I have some knowledge that might be useful to someone whose intellect, I suspect, far outweighs mine.

And in that vein, maybe at the other end of the scale, I was talking with seventeen-year-old Jacob today about this personal essay for his college application. We discarded something about the two significant deaths in the family in the last six months—his other grandmother and a family dog—because it might look like an excuse. So we settled on something to do with his devotion to golf and achievements on the varsity team. It was fun to prod and poke and see him come to grips with the subject. When I asked how golf made him a better person, he hemmed, hawed, grinned, and said he didn’t really think it did. But when I pushed a bit, he said yes, golf had taught him focus and discipline. After we talked, I texted him with a couple of other things for him to think about, and I’m waiting to see what he comes up with. I will be happy if I can prod him into a bit of deeper thinking, not an easy thing for a seventeen-year-old. And a bonus: this is the child that spent almost half his young life with me. These days, with school, golf, a girlfriend, and a part-time job, he’s too busy and I almost never see him. I relished these few minutes when I had his full attention (I think).

Finally, a wild idea I had today. I was reading a friend’s post about book banning, and she mentioned that she belonged to a Controversial Book Club. Why, I thought, not organize a Banned Books Club. There are a lot of books on the various banned books lists that I have heard of but not read and others that I simply should read before I rush into battle. I have no idea of the mechanics of such a venture, but I envision something online and maybe just a book a month. But it occurs to me we are better prepared to battle the ignorance and narrow minds behind censored books if we have some knowledge of the books. A lot of us have read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or To Kill a Mockingbird, but how many of us have read Gender Queer, one of the most frequently banned books and yet one that could help teens with gender uncertainty. Just a thought, but I’ll be interested in opinions.

And now, holiday weekend over, it’s back to work tomorrow. As someone said, Labor Day brings with it a sense of settling back into the year and getting to work. Happy days, all!

 

A photograph, a short story, a novel, and the truth

 

In 1936, documentary photographer Dorothea Lange took a picture that has become the symbol of the Depression. The photograph, taken in Nipomo, California, shows a woman sitting in the back of a beat-up truck, holding an infant, with two other children huddled close to her but turned from the camera, as though blocking it out. The woman stares into the distance, her face lined with fatigue, hunger, and anxiety. She and the children are dirty, their clothes obviously worn for days. It is a picture of abject poverty and hopelessness. Lange worked for the Farm Security Administration and did not own rights to the photos she took; she was paid a salary and never profited directly from the immense popularity of this image. Nor did she get the subject’s name or permission. A few days later, the photograph was published in the San Francisco News. The subject of the photo remained anonymous.

In 1978, a woman named Florence Owens Thompson wrote to the Modesto Bee identifying herself as the woman in the portrait. She and her family felt used by the photographer, disputed some of the facts that had grown up around the picture, and resented being symbols of the Depression. Thompson, who was full Cherokee from Oklahoma, eventually had several husbands and partners and as many as nine children (the record is a bit unclear). In 1983, her health failed, and her children asked for donations to cover her medical care, collecting several thousand dollars. She died a few months later at the age of eighty.

Knowing none of the story, I first saw the picture years ago and was struck by the anguish on Thompson’s face. What I wondered would bring some joy and hope into that life. I wrote a short story, “Sue Ellen Learns to Dance,” in which I plucked her out of the Dustbowl and gave her a new life. The story won a Wrangler (Western Heritage) Award from the National Cowboy Museum and a Spur from Western Writers of America.

This past week I read a novel, Mary Coin by Marisa Silver, also based on the life of Florence Thomson. Silver uses three voices to tell the story---that of Mary herself (Thompson), photographer Virginia Dare (Lange), and a college history professor named Walker Dodge who appears to be the only purely fictional addition to the story. Silver lays out a plausible life for Mary Coin—more marriages, more children—that ends with her living alone in a trailer, despite nicer accommodations arranged by her protective children. The three voices speak interchangeably, and I was uncertain early on where the novel was headed, though I had a suspicion. The characters are portrayed sympathetically, and the entire work is a graphic account of the hardships of the lives of migrant farm workers in the 1930s. There is also a lot of angst and much introspective wandering in the minds of these three characters, but eventually it ends with a climactic plot twist that takes real liberties with truth and possibility.

A friend and fellow novelist asked me what I thought about the differences between my story and Silver’s novel, and at first, I dismissed it as the romanticist (me, with a happy ending) against the realist (with a heart-wrenching though contrived ending). But the more I thought on the question, the more I realized that Silver took a specific woman and created a plausible, probable if grim life story for her. That is or should be historical fiction.

I saw the beleaguered woman as symbolic of the many migrant mothers and imagined a future rather than trying to stick to reality. There were other threads in my story—a hint of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying (a dying grandmother is central to the resolution) and woven in is the theme often found in western stories about the good woman who cherishes memories of an outlaw lover or a wild escapade in her past. Though it takes place in the past, I see it as fiction without the historical qualifier.

I wonder if readers would see the same difference I do. Anyway, I find it fascinating that almost ninety years later, that iconic photograph is still inspiring writers.

Sue Ellen Learns to Dance and Other Stories - Kindle edition by Alter, Judy. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

What do you do on weekends?

 

I know a lot who read this blog are, like me, retired, so I think a question is relevant that came up in a small online group I belong to: how is the weekend any different. I mean, if you can set your own schedule all week long, what if anything sets Saturday or Sunday apart?

I particularly thought about it today because it was a long, lazy day. The guests I expected tonight came last night accidentally, so I had nothing to do to prepare. Sophie somehow senses weekends—she still gets me up at 7:00 promptly for what we are calling her first breakfast. Actually she tried for it at 6:30, but I gave her a piece of cheese and told her to hang on for half an hour. She did. But then, after she had eaten and gone outside briefly, she let me sleep until nine. This is a boon because the shot-givers in the house don’t like to get up early on Saturday, but Sophie has to have her shot within an hour of her second breakfast. All worked out fine.

Jordan was in and out of the cottage all morning, mostly raiding my fridge. She had five sleeping teenage boys and a party mess in the house, but they cleaned it up promptly once they were awake. She armed herself with leftover lunch meat, chip and dip makings, and the like, but I don’t think they ever came back after the TCU game. This evening when I wanted to fix my supper, I had to ask for several pans. But I was glad for her occasional company. She and Christian apparently watched the TCU game—I checked the score occasionally—and then tonight, with guests, the Baylor game. They are a house of divided loyalties, as is Megan’s house in Austin.

Meanwhile, I read emails, checked on the daily news—there was a lot that upset me today, mostly about ways Republicans were scheming to take away more freedoms and benefits. In Texas somehow in connection with the anti-abortion law they are targeting highways. Not sure how that works but soon if we’re not diligent it will be illegal to drive a car with a pregnant woman in it. Some days I read the news from various sources and don’t share much; other days I share every third thing I read. Today was one of the latter.

I was almost through a novel which had an interesting concept, though it too often wandered into introspection. Anyway, I was determined to finish it today so I could write a brief report for a writers' group that had expressed interest. The novel was inspired by the iconic Dorothea Lange Depression photograph, “Migrant Mother,” as was my award-winning short story, “Sue Ellen Learns to Dance,” and so I was comparing the handling of the core material in the two pieces. Glad to get it done.

Saturdays are often cooking days for me, and today was no exception. But I ran into a couple of roadblocks. I always have packages of frozen petite peas on hand, so I put one out to thaw for pea salad. Only after about an hour I discovered what I thought was peas was lima beans. I think I must have bought them by mistake, because I don’t particularly care for them. Fortunately, I had an almost full package of peas. Often if I’m eating alone on a grocery delivery day, I order one serving of fresh fish, so today I ordered a quarter lb. of Dover sole—and got a whole pound. After some deliberation I cooked the whole thing, figuring leftovers will make lunch. It’s such a delicate fish—in taste and texture—that every time I sauté it, I end with fish hash. Tonight, I baked it, and it was delicious and held together better, though I still didn't get a perfect filet.

So here I am, on a Saturday night, me and my computer. It’s been a good day, not a lot different from many of my days, and yet I had the sense all day long that it was Saturday, a day set apart. One thing jolted me tonight: at 5:30 I turned the TV on to see what Channel 5 reported on the day’s news—and got a football game. Suddenly I realized it’s that season again—football will pre-empt the news programs I look forward to. That does not brighten my Saturdays, though I know at least half the rest of the world is delighted.

What about you? Are Saturdays different?

Bad start to a dog day, a happy hour mix-up, and cheers to some determined ladies

 

Sophie and I started the day off on the wrong dog foot. I forgot yesterday that I was out of canned dog food, didn’t remember until midnight which was too late to ask Jordan for a can. So first thing this morning, I fed Sophie dry kibble. No kidding! She gave me a long look, like, “This is it? I ordered eggs Benedict and you’re giving me porridge?” By time for her second breakfast (don’t ask!), I had gotten a can of meat, which she thought was much better.

And another mix-up. Jean was coming for supper, and I had the parts all ready and in the fridge. So I was a bit surprised when Subie and Phil appeared at five o’clock—I had them on my calendar for tomorrow night. Luckily, part of supper for Jean was a cucumber dip, so we all enjoyed that and a visit, Subie and Phil left, and Jean and I had supper and a visit. Supper was smoked salmon, potato salad, and cucumber dip. Needs work. But the conversation was good. Nice that I’m flexible, but now I have no company Saturday or Sunday. Guess I’ll order myself some fresh Dover sole for Saturday.

The real thing I wanted to blog about tonight, instead of my forgetful memory and disorganized friends, is a group of volunteer moms I read about this week. In 2022’s Bruen decision, the Supreme Court struck down bans on concealed carry and expanded upon the previous standard for determining the constitutionality of gun regulations, declaring that authorities had to find analogous gun laws that existed prior to 1900. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the court, found that before that date, concealed carry bans were not part of America’s history and traditions, and they were thus unconstitutional.

About 20 volunteers with Moms Demand Action, part of the gun safety group Everytown, are scouring archives across the United States for historical firearm regulations. The project is far from academic. In Bruen, the Supreme Court demanded proof that a firearm regulation is rooted in “longstanding” tradition in the form of “historical analogues”—old gun laws that show how Americans “understood” the Second Amendment in the past. The historical record of firearm regulations, however, is far from complete. So motivated volunteers are stepping in to fill the gaps. What they’ve found directly contradicts the Supreme Court’s conclusions.

While the academic research already relied upon by Thomas and other judges to strike down gun laws has been shaky at best, the stakes of attempting to satisfy the test he laid out could not be higher. For just one example, see next term’s big gun case, which asks whether the Second Amendment prevents the government from disarming people who are under a restraining order for domestic violence.

These women volunteers are going beyond giving voice to their cause, and I admire that. Let’s hope they come up with strong gun control laws to convince our extremist judges. What I don’t understand is judicial precedent for saying a law had to exist before 1900. Did Justice Thomas make that up out of his own imagination?

That these women are working so hard is, however, part of a new trend to me, and we are seeing it in Texas. It’s a trend to fight Republican authoritarianism and tricks. In Texas, judges have recently ruled that the ban on gender-affirming care for teenagers is unconstitutional, and so is the book banning law which requires vendors to label sexual content in books and ultimately categorize a backlog of books sold, a task that would consume untold work hours and expense. The AG’s office has appealed the gender care bill, which somehow means the bill will go into effect until the Texas Supreme Court rules—and I believe they have greenlighted the bill. But the book law is held in abeyance pending the outcome of the appeal. In Houston, teachers are speaking out against the state (read Republican) takeover of the education system with ridiculous requirements. What these cases say to me is that people are fighting back rather than abjectly accepting these ridiculous rulings from on high. (Eat your heart out, Greg Abbott)

When I see one of the frequent comparisons of what is happening to our country to what happened in 1930s Germany, I immediately think of Martin Niemöller’s poem about not speaking out. The big difference to me is that Americans are speaking out. It doesn’t always work, but resistance is showing some slow progress. I don’t have statistics at hand, but the number of Americans who support abortion care, gender-affirming care, freedom to read, freedom in the classroom, and—a biggie—gun control is astounding, mostly in the 80% range. We will not lose our freedoms if we continue to speak out, especially at the ballot box.

Feminist Gloria Steinem proclaims that if one person speaks out, they make it easier for the next person to speak out. And that very hopeful sign is what I see in America. We will not give up democracy easily, and no, we don’t need violence in the streets.

Watch for a Mothers Against Greg Abbott sign to go up in our front yard this weekend.

Have you found your voice yet to speak out for whatever you consider right and proper?

 

 

 

What’s on your bucket list?

The view from Stirling Castle in the Scottish Highlands,
with the Wallace memorial seen in the middle

Before I get to bucket lists, I want to say that National Dog Day will certainly tell you who your friends are, although I’m not sure whether it is Sophie or me that has so many friends. But in haste I threw up a handy picture of me holding Sophie—it’s really not a flattering picture of either of us. Sophie was recovering coat after being shaved at the vet, and one skinny leg, all bone, is sticking up with a tuff of fur at the end like a booty. Otherwise, her coat looks like it never met a brush or comb. Sideways from the left is definitely not my best look—so much jowl I look worse than my dear dad. But 124 of you have liked it—and still counting. Sophie and I are both flattered and grateful.

Now about the bucket list. I saw a suggestion that we replace a bucket list with a “cut it” list, so I got to thinking about my list. It’s short. I think of bucket lists as mainly listing travel destinations, and at my age and given the fact that I’m not an easy traveler—don’t like to fly although I will—and I’m now mobility challenged, I have already put several things on a cut-it list. Still on my bucket list: a return to Scotland, where I left my heart in the Highlands, and a return to Chicago, my hometown. It’s no coincidence that I want to go to places I love and find comfortable. I missed the gene that wants to explore every exotic location on the globe. Machu Picchu is simply not for me.

I suppose a few things besides travel destinations go on a bucket list, so there are a couple of new restaurants in Fort Worth I want to go to—Le Margot (French) and Walloon’s (southern seafood). But I really don’t need them on a list.  I’ll get there sooner or later.

That made me think about what I’d do if “The Millionaire” arrived at my front door. My first instinct was that I would donate the money, probably to my church. But then I thought about the various projects we’d like to do around the house. Christian wants to create a master suite in the attic and an ensuite bedroom for me downstairs (no, I’m not ready to leave the cottage). And I am itching to do extensive landscaping, turning our lawn into one big bed of wildflowers. I realize the end of the hottest, driest summer in years is not the time to think about that. Besdies, back in the day when “The Millionaire” was popular, a million would go pretty far. I’m not so sure about today.

So much for dreaming about a bucket list and sudden wealth. What have I already put on my cut-it list? A cruise through the inner passage in Alaska—sure, I’d like to visit Denali and I think Ketchikan would be fun, but Anchorage, Juneau, and Fairbanks aren’t calling my name. I get pretty good salmon at home. I’d also probably like a trip to New England to see the fall foliage and eat fresh lobster. I know the lobster we get in Texas pales before what I’d eat at the shore, but I’ll settle for it. A cruise that we reluctantly cancelled a few years ago should still be on my bucket list—the Great Lakes from Chicago to Toronto. I’m fascinated by the Great Lakes, probably due to my Chicago upbringing. In Oakville, a suburb of Toronto, my grandmother’s house was a block from Lake Ontario. So both ends of the trip appealed, but the summer we were to go I was seriously ill and lost any enthusiasm for travel. I got my health back, but not the travel enthusiasm.

I suppose all our bucket lists reflect who we are, but I find mine shows that I like the familiar and the comfortable. I am not all that interested in exploring new places. Even Paris, London, and Rome don’t call to me. I am most happy in my cottage and at my desk. But my limited list, even my cut-it list, reflects my interest in food. Maybe bucket lists—and cut-it lists—are the new personality indicators.

What’s on your bucket list? Your cut-it list?

What books did you read as a child?

 

Author Susan Witting Albert, writing on her post, “Place & Thyme” in Substack, recalled how she got to be Carolyn Keene, author the Nancy Drew books, for a while. Carolyn Keene was a house name—an imaginary author created by a publisher who then hired various authors to write books anonymously. For Susan, being Carolyn Keene was a dream come true. She recalled a childhood devoted to reading which prepared her for that opportunity, and 143 readers in turn commented on their memories of the books they read as children. Nancy Drew was the clear winner as to be expected.

For me, talking about a reading childhood was a real trip back in time. The summer when I was—oh, probably ten or eleven, around there—I would ride my bike every morning to the Blackstone branch of the Chicago Pubic Library and come home with a stack of six or eight books. It was probably a bike ride of about six blocks, and when I think of it now, I am amazed my parents let me go alone. But that was then, a totally different time.

Once home with my books, I spent the day on the screened-in front porch reading, ignoring the cries of neighbor children who wanted me to come out and play. I was too busy in my fantasy worlds. It was about then that I wrote my first short story, but that’s a tale to be told another day.

But I remember books long before I was able to ride to the library, a few even before I could read. I know my mom read The Wind in the Willows to me, and I remember the Lil Colonel Stories by Annie Fellows Johnson, written around the turn of the century (not this one, the last one). And then there were the tales of Uncle Remus, African American folk tales written by Joel Chandler Harris during Reconstruction. And, of course, there were the Bobbsey Twins, a series of seventy-two books published from 1904 through 1979. These, like the Nancy Drew books, were published by the Stratemeyer syndicate under the house name of Laura Lee Hope.

Another book I loved was Little Black Sambo, also written at the turn of the century, this by a Scottish woman. Sambo was an Indian boy living in the jungle, and the story revolves around his encounter with tigers in the jungle. At first, author Helen Bannerman was hailed for presenting the first black hero, but by the 1950s the books was considered racist. Poet Langston Hughes judged that the illustrations were offensive, done in a “pickaninny style.” Today, many versions of the book, all sanitized I’m sure, are available. Little Black Sambo was so popular at my house that my mom hooked a rug with a tiger on it for one of my children.

My reading tastes moved on, of course, to the Nancy Drew books, although unlike many of Nancy’s fans, I never was equally interested in the Hardy Boys books. But I devoured the tales of Cherry Ames, nurse, and Sue Barton, another nurse. Trixie Belden wasn’t nearly as fascinating as Nancy Drew, but I still read her adventures. And I have fond memories of Alfred Payson Terhune’s books about collies—I desperately wanted a collie, and somewhere in my high school years my parents got me a collie puppy. They did not, however, get me a horse despite my equal fascination with Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty books.

The last series I remember from my school years were the New Orleans novels of Frances Parkinson Keyes. After that, there is a great gap in my memory, due no doubt to years of undergraduate and college work with heavy required reading lists. The wonders of literature that I discovered during those years are too numerous to mention, except I can’t omit Emily Dickinson who was the subject of my master’s thesis. By the time I wrote a dissertation, I was hooked on literature of the American West—the writers and the artists. Those loves have stayed with me through a long lifetime of writing, often about the American West. But I do remember that when I first felt the urge to write a mystery, I sketched out one so baldly derived from Nancy Drew that it was an embarrassment. And it’s no accident that today I write, or have most recently written, cozy mysteries.

As I look back at my reading history, I realize what a rich heritage is available to our children, and then I am angry, sad, you name it, that petty minds are keeping so many American classics from the school and libraries. Classics like To Kill a Mockingbird or The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White, Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, Catcher in the Rye by Salinger, Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, and so many more. If children are kept from these books through twelfth grade, they will never again pick them up, and they will miss the wonderful world that waits for them in those pages. They are not likely to be truly educated adults with good reasoning skills, and they surely will miss a lot of cultural references. In some cocktail conversations, they’ll be hopelessly lost.

What is being done to reading curricula is a travesty, and to make it worse, it is done by a few determined, bigoted, narrow-minded people. If they censor their own children, that’s sad but their privilege. But nobody, from the extreme evangelist next door to Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, has the right to tell me what my grands can read.

So what books shaped your childhood?

For a list of banned classics, go here: What American classic books have been banned fromschools - Search (bing.com)

 

The uncertainties of friendship

 

Is the garden of your friendships this colorful and varied?

Last night I had supper with a woman I knew fifty years ago when I was a young mother and she was a babysitting teenager. We’d touched base over the years a bit, but last night was our first time to visit and reminisce and laugh and trade stories. And it made me grateful for renewed friendships.

Facebook played a part in bringing us back together, and Facebook is at least partly responsible for other renewed friendships and some that are new in recent years. I am still in close touch with my best friend from high school, mostly through Facebook but occasionally through more personal emails. We know all about each other’s families—she has five children and umpteen greats to my four children and seven grands. We trade recipes and stories of aging—we are right now in that two-month period when I am a year older, and she delights in rubbing it in. It is a treasured relationship.

Similarly I remain close to a couple I knew in the early sixties in graduate school. We have never again lived in the same city, but we have visited over the years, both in Santa Fe and Fort Worth. We can go weeks without talking and then pick up right where we left off. It is a reassuring friendship to me.

But over the years I’ve also lost friends as they seem to drop by the wayside. One friend in the East is always a frequent correspondent, with long emails, just after she’s visited and we’ve had a good catching up on everything from dogs and recipes to our shared political views. But then it drops off gradually, and now I don’t think I’ve heard in a year. I should write—and I will soon.

Recently, talking to Megan, I heard her use the term “ghosted”—her physical therapist had ghosted her and did not return phone calls or emails. It occurred to me that I have been ghosted by some, and a couple of them bother me, because they are like unsolved mysteries. One is a woman I traveled the state of Texas with as we went from writers conference to workshop to lectures. We even performed our “dog and pony show” where she talked of being a fifth generation Texan and I countered with tales of a newcomer. Somehow in recent years I felt a growing distance and had the sense that I had angered or hurt her. I should have asked, but I lacked the nerve. I emailed and she’d answer, but now there’s no word. I understand she is beset by health problems and the like. And I can understand that. Sort of.

Another that bothers me is a man I used to lunch with frequently. We were good friends who shared lots of laughs, family events, etc. His wife used to laugh about “the other woman.” Last time I saw him he joked that retirement meant he’d have to take me to lunch more often. Then I called him one day for a referral, and there was a new distance in his voice, a coldness. And one day at church when his wife said, “Look who’s here!” he said, “Yeah,” and kept walking. Brainwashed female that I am, I assume I did something, but I have no idea what. It’s been at least three years now, and it still bothers me.

Author Ann Lamott, whose wisdom blows me away, says that when someone drops out of your life, it means that their part in your story is over. I can understand that, I guess, but I’d like more graceful exits.

I’m not blameless either. I have let some friendships go, mostly when it became burdensome to maintain them, once over not exactly politics but the moral stance involved. But there again, typical female, I feel guilty. Sometimes though I want to point out that friendship is a two-way street.

Meantime I treasure the many friendships I am blessed with, like a couple of good women I’ve know for forty years. But there are also people who I consider close friends who have newly come into my life. Friendship is an ever-changing thing. My working philosophy is that friendship is like a garden—you have to tend to it, nurture it, show it affection. And it’s always a work in progress.