My mama in the pumpkins

I asked her to squat--and she did!
Then she fell onto the pumpkin pile

Yesterday, Day and Carlene and I drove to Clarksville in the rain--to repeat the guacamole Betty and I discovered there and to poke around in little shops and a gallery on the square.  Halfway there, I realized I had left my backpack in Carlene's carport and we had to drive back to get it--since it had my pocket book and camera in it.

But we had a beautiful day together--buying each other presents and meeting people.

This morning, Day drove over to Gainesville to visit her cousin Sam, and when she gets back, we will take her to Marta for her flight back home.  I will be here through Saturday.

The Country Living Crafts Fair

 

Today, we joined thousands of people in Stone Mountain for the annual arts, crafts and antiques fair.

The weather was beautiful and we got to touch all kinds of beautiful things--from quilts to wind chimes, from vintage clothing to candle sticks!

There were so many tents we're going to return on Sunday to see whatever we might have missed...

The Road to Seventy has gotten off to a beautiful start!

Betty and I drove from Franklin to Highlands, North Carolina, for a delicious birthday lunch at The Bistro on Main, then stopped by Dry Falls on the way back.  The roads are tight and curvy--we've driven them countless Octobers--and the vistas are breathtaking!

Yesterday we drove back to Lawrenceville, stopping at a vineyard where I bought apples, local honey and jams.

Our last stop was Frescos,  a restaurant in Clarksville where I had the best guacamole and homemade corn chips ever.

We got to Carlene's a few minutes before Day arrived in her Uber--and enjoyed a fun afternoon together before Betty had to brave the two-hour Atlanta traffic back to Peachtree City.

If I lived here, I'd get in my car every single day this time of year and explore the mountains and rivers and small towns!

Texas has its charms, for sure, but there's no place more beautiful than here in October as far as I know!

Tuesday in Franklin

Betty and I have a saying--one that she coined years ago: "Nothing will deter us from our  mission."

When we start out looking for a place we remember from years ago, we mean nothing! will keep us from finding it.

The search today, however, did not yield results.  I was looking for a gallery I liked two years ago when I was here with Mike. It has disappeared.

We went into another one, but it was the kind of gallery that sells crocheted tissue box covers, paintings of flat pumpkins, jeweled crosses, and wooden spoons.  We made the mistake of asking the proprietor about a good place to eat.

Rolie Polie's was touted as "Southern fusion cuisine."  We ordered a salad that promised cranberries, pecans, and feta cheese--and we asked for strips of roasted chicken on top.

"This is hands down the worst salad I have ever had," I said to the waitress who had suggested it.

Betty looked down at her lap.

"What do you want me to do about it?" the waitress asked.

"I want to not pay for it, for one thing," I said--pointing out, accurately, that there had only been one pecan and three cranberries.  Betty would say later, "There wasn't a single bite of Feta in mine" but she didn't bring up this point to the waitress.

The greenery in said salad came in huge hand-sized hunks and was weighted down with Balsamic dressing. The chicken tasted like boiled chicken from a freezer bag.

As we walked out, having only paid for tea, Betty said, "I can't believe you did that"--to which I responded, "Well, I saved you ten dollars. Sometimes it pays to be a bitch."

Betty has shocked me a few times, but this was--according to Betty--my most shocking behavior in all these decades.  She wonders if I have a brain tumor or something!

After our three bites of salad, we proceeded to a photo op I'd spotted earlier in the day--a cornucopia of pumpkins by the side of the road.

Betty is always reluctant to pull over by the side of the road for my photographic requests, but she did it.  As I climbed up the grassy bank for a close-up, stumbling and slipping, I could feel Betty rolling her eyes and laughing--which made me laugh so hard it was hard to get down off my bank.

Franklin, North Carolina

Betty and I are enjoying a chilly morning in Franklin, North Carolina, this morning--having driven here through a hard rain yesterday.  We're staying in a quaint motel where I've stayed before.

Today we'll poke around, visit galleries and shops and who-knows-what all.

It's one of life's amazing things--to have had a friend like Betty for lo these 64 years of life on Planet Earth!

The Blessing

From the cover of The Blessing, A Memoir
by the poet, Gregory Orr:

"Do I dare say my brother's death was a blessing? Who would recoil first from such a statement?  A reader, unsure of its context, but instinctively uneasy with the sentiment?  Or me, who knows more of the context than I sometimes think I can bear, having spent most of my life struggling with the death because I caused it?"

In a hunting accident, at the age of 12, Gregory killed his brother, Peter.

As in most memoirs, the arc of the plot is not what draws the reader in; it's the voice of the writer, the lyrical and visual language, the invitation into the mind and soul of the writer.  

A great read--one that has kept me awake all night, that and the fear that I might miss my ride to the airport.  I never sleep on the night before air travel.  If I had chosen to drive, I'd be halfway there by now.

Betty will pick me up and we'll be heading off on our mountain adventure by ten.  If all goes as planned, my Uber driver will be here in an hour and maybe I can sleep on the plane.

I Am Not Your Negro

"God forgives murder and God forgives adultery, but He is very angry, and he actually curses those who do integrate."

         a white woman, 1957, when schools were being desegregated in Little Rock
                               from the documentary, I Am Not Your Negro.


Growing up in the segregated South, I was fascinated with "colored people"--as they were called--not that I knew a single one personally.  In Cochran, Georgia, they were The Other--the only racial Other. They lived in unpainted shacks on Sixth Street and they went to separate schools and churches.

If they wanted to see a movie at the Vogue Theater, they "knew their place"--the balcony.  They had no swimming pools and were denied service at soda fountains and in restaurants.

When I heard them talk in stores, I'd stand near them to listen, trying to absorb their accents and their speech patterns.  When I heard gospel and other "Black" music in later years, it felt like I was remembering actually hearing it in those days--though, except for my mother's Mahalia Jackson record, I rarely did.

I had a knack--I'm embarrassed to say--of imitating "colored talk."  I didn't mean it to be disparaging of them, but of course it was.  If the town's Other had been people from any other place, I'd probably have had the same curiosity turned mimicry.  To approximate the accents of other people felt like gaining access into their psyches, though it was only superficial access.

A Tennessee aunt found it funny--my only claim to funniness--and asked me to do it when we got together, and I did.  But I also did it walking to school after piano lessons, alone, with my made up alter-ego named Jessie.

I Am Not Your Negro is a profound, moving, and brilliant film based on the writing of James Baldwin about the murders of his friends,  Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X.  Film clips, music, interviews and photographs are used to tell the story visually while listening to the spoken words of James Baldwin.

Some of what Baldwin writes about could have been written in 2017:

I'm terrified at the cruel moral apathy, the death of the heart, which is happening in my country. These people have deluded themselves for so long that they really don't think I'm human. I base this on their conduct, not on what they say. And this means that they have become, in themselves, moral monsters."

What has resurrected so much hatred directed toward immigrants, Black Americans, and Others?  Maybe it's been there all the time, but the rhetoric of today has brought it to the fore again.  Insults and threats from the Trump-era top has opened the door for hate speech, resurrected the Rebel flag on belt buckles and bumper stickers,  and seen the bizarre reappearance of Nazi symbols and deadly chants like we heard in Charlottesville, Virginia, this year.

All Americans who believe--as one senator recently said--that "America is a beacon of light to the world" should see this powerful film and consider whether, in the light of our history, that's true.

"We cannot fix what we can't face," Baldwin says.  "But we can't fix anything until we can face it."

Jackson's First Homecoming Dance

These four boys have been best friends all their lives.  They started out together in preschool and are now high school sophomores at Falls Church High School.

My first grandchild is now sixteen, driving, 6'2" and--apparently--dating!  When did all this happen?  Why am I humming Fiddler on The Roof's "Sunrise, Sunset" all day, with tears in my eyes? Wasn't his first birthday just a minute ago?

Yesterday was Jackson's first homecoming dance.  All these boys brought their dates to Jackson's house for dinner before the dance.

Day served dinner on Nana's china and with Nana's red glasses:

 Even Little Bro Marcus got in on the party--as little brothers usually do!

(sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset...)
Is this the little girl i carried?
Is this the little boy at play?
I don't remember growing older,
When did they?

When did she get to be a beauty?
When did he grow to be so tall?
Wasn't it yesterday when they were small?

Sunrise sunset, sunrise, sunset,
Swiftly flow the days,
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers,
Blossoming even as they gaze...

#Me Too

Writing group yesterday ended in a discussion of # Me Too--the tag for women on social media who have been sexually harassed, abused by men in power, denied jobs, raped by men.

I was reminded of the 1991 Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings when I first heard the term, sexual harassment. This courageous professor dared to tell the truth about her mistreatment by Clarence Thomas in a public and televised hearing that gave us all a name for things that had happened to us.

At the time of this hearing, I was traveling as a consultant with a government agency, teaching classes on communication.  As the old saying goes, we teach what we need to learn!

The "boss" in this enterprise said very inappropriate things to me on the plane one day flying back to San Antonio.  I felt icky.  I knew that I had to quit.  I couldn't travel with this man again.

Then other memories surfaced.  In my twenties and thirties, I was very naive about sexual harassment, and I thought--as women did back then--I "must have done something to cause it."  Maybe I should have dressed differently, smiled less, been less friendly.  Maybe my friendliness was being confused with flirting!

Anita Hill raised the consciousness of women and thousands of  complaints were filed--not that there were more incidences of sexual harassment than before, but women were no longer thinking: "I must have done something to cause it."

In the documentary, Anita, (on Amazon Prime), we see women and men of all ages gathered to support Anita Hill and to speak out about their own experiences.  Even now, 25 years later, women are talking about their experiences in ways that they were afraid to before Anita Hill called sexual inequality by its real names.

Since the Weinstein revelations, since scores of women came forward to tell their experiences with Bill Cosby, and since Trump's claim that "if you are famous they let you do anything," women are coming out of the shadows again to say # Me Too.

Writing Group Saturday

I'm so lucky! Two days each month, I get to walk right out my back door, into the casita, and write and converse for three or four hours with seven other writers.  These two days, one on a Monday night, the other a Saturday afternoon, are highlights of my month, days I plan around and think about all the other days.  I love the women who are part of this remarkable thing we do!

On meeting days, I get up early and turn on the lights and air, sometimes--but not always--decorating the table with flowers or snacks.  Then I get a book and go back to bed to read, and sometimes--like this morning--have a fun dream.

At four this morning, I placed my a beautiful arrangement of bright yellow sunflowers (a birthday gift from Lorraine that looks as pretty today as the day they were delivered) in the center of the table.  Beside the flowers, I placed a book Day gave me for my birthday:In the Company of Women. Then I stirred up a little lemony dessert and and put it in the fridge to chill.  (I don't always do food, only when I'm inspired to make something.)

I went back to bed, reading Gregory Orr's amazing memoir, The Blessing--recommended to me by Lorraine who was a member of my first writing group. (This is such a powerful book, I'll write more about it later. )

At 2:00, the casita will be filled with the voices of dear lively friends, the sound of rustling papers, and laughter.

An unexpected and delightful synchronicity: JUST as I was writing those words, this email came in from Charlotte J:

Five hours to joyful writing group!!!!

I'll open today's meeting with this short audio-essay by Gregory Orr:

https://thisibelieve.org/essay/21249/

If we have time, I'd also like to play this one--by Isabel Allende:

https://thisibelieve.org/essay/11/

Then we'll do timed writing: I'll give a prompt and everyone will write for seven minutes, then we'll read them.  The subject of today's timed writing and November's Big Prompt is "writing about a place."

After the timed writings, each person reads aloud what she's written for October--a chapter of a memoir, poetry, or fiction.  We divide the remaining two-and-a-half hours by the number of people present and Charlotte-from-Canada is our time-keeper extraordinaire. (Good thing--cause I'd let us keep going until night-time!)

My Tiny Little Cowgirl on a Big Big Horse

Letting Go

I met my friend Chris (years ago) at a Storycircle Conference in San Marcos.  On Tuesday, I drove to Kerrville to meet her and attend her local Storycircle meeting.  Before the meeting, we had a delicious lunch in the old Schreiner's building.  If you're traveling to or through Kerrville, you must try the restaurant located in the building that used to be a bustling department store.

http://www.storycircle.org/index.php

If you don't know about Storycircle, please click on the link above.

The topic on Tuesday was "Letting Go."  The leader, Caroline,  (they alternate leadership) had written an essay about letting go, and she'd made fall-colored paper leaves and hung them on a tree as a centerpiece.

After she read, we each wrote things on a leaf that we wanted to let go of.  I invite you to do this prompt if you like--considering objects in your house or closet, relationships, feelings, beliefs, whatever....

Here are some lines from her essay that provoked lively writing and conversation:

"Autumn shows us the beauty of letting go...What if trees refused to let go of their dying leaves, holding on to them in case they might need them next spring?  Instead, they shed them easily and naturally to make room for new growth.  We, on the other hand, have to make a conscious choice to shed the old, to lighten, to open, to release, to move forward.  So let our stories today be ones of letting go on many levels, from things to feelings to relationships, examine all that you want to, need to, will leave behind."

She offered this quotation as a prompt:

"I became a connoisseur of object surrender when I turned my adult son's room into  guest room.  I surveyed my overcrowded museum of domestic life and realized that deaccessioning required many of the same skills as collecting: knowledge, discernment, selectivity, and diligence."

And this one, from Elena's favorite movie, Frozen: "Let it go, let it go.  That perfect girl is gone."

After the Fall Part 2

The author of this beautiful book doesn't leave Humpty on the ground all cracked up.  He tells a different story, one that inspires me, one I'd read to my students if I were still a teacher:

The King's Men do put him back together again for one thing.

But not everything is fixed with tape and glue.

Humpty stays scared for a long time, unwilling to go back up on his wall where he can watch the birds and be happy.  After falling and crashing, he knows now that "accidents can happen."

I relate.  A year ago today I was black and blue and barely walking.  I had just fallen backwards down a flight of 13 wooden stairs in an old farm house.  For a long time, I looked askance at stairs of any kind, and I held on to railings.  When Jan and I landed in New York in August, I saw that the only way out of our little plane were stairs.  I had three choices:  Stay on the plane.  Ask for a ramp.  Or do the stairs.  I chose option #3.

Humpty  was finally inspired by seeing "an idea float by."  His was a paper plane.  So he sat himself down and started making origami planes. It was harder than he thought--but finally he got it just right.
"I hadn't felt that happy in a long time."

Unfortunately, accidents do happen, more than once, we all know.  His beautiful perfect plane crashed--arghhh!

But Humpty wanted to be back on his wall and see what he could see. So with terror in his little egg heart, he climbed back up.

I didn't look up.
I didn't look down.
I just kept climbing.
One step at a time....
Until I was no longer afraid. 

We see a cracked little egg man back on the wall, covered with leaves, smiling!

Maybe now you won't think of me as that
egg who was famous for falling.

Hopefully, you'll remember me as the egg who got back up.  

Reflections

Charleston, January 2016

Washington, D.C. this past summer

Virginia Christmas 2015

Connecticut, August of this year

Port Aransas, Texas May 2017

Back to blogging

This blogspot has become a comfy old sofa for me, a place to remember stuff, review books and movies, report on fun times with people I love,  and rant. It's been a random four-year scrapbook and it's been a sort of friend---though I sometimes think it's a bit presumptuous to think that even my closest friends are interested in the minutia of my days.  Then I recall Mary Oliver's question:

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do 
with your one wild and precious life?” 

I'm returning to blogging after a two-week hiatus, and I hope this year, on the road to 70, will be both wild and precious.

After physical therapy this morning I came home to find a book in my mail slot I'd ordered for Elena, After the Fall (How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again.--by Dan Santat, a Caldecott Medal Winner.

My name is Humpty Dumpty.  I'm famous for falling off a wall.

(You may have heard about it.)

But that's only half the story...
Because I decided to get back up.
And when I did, something amazing happened....

Walking the Trail Sunday Morning

September 30

The dedication of the Trail

Jocelyn, Savannah, and Bob Harris (left of the frame)
Carlene, Day, Mary Elizabeth and I (right)

Saturday was an extraordinary day for us all!  The tent was full of friends and family including two of my daddy's Tennessee nieces and a nephew and their families, my mother's oldest niece from Athens, four of the six grandchildren (Day, Will, Mary Elizabeth, and Micah) one of the nine great-grandchildren, Savannah, many of Carlene's friends, and my best friend since kindergarten, Betty.   Carlene gave a beautiful, funny, moving talk about my daddy's love of family, nature and conservation.

Bob had done months of research on Lloyd's work with Soil Conservation and RC&D that had created this park around a watershed lake in Gwinnett County.  Even as the current Soil Conservation engineer spoke about the legacy of the park, people and dogs were walking, running, and tossing frisbees on the three-mile Lloyd Harris path. This was exactly the park he had imagined back in the Sixties when we first moved to Gwinnett County.

Betty and Day
I so often call Betty Day and Day Betty--
which I think speaks to the fact that these two reside
in the same spot in my heart! 

Carlene just before her talk.
My kids taped the talk--but I don't know how to post a video.
In a week or so, the professional photographs and videos
will be posted on the Gwinnett County website.

Carlene and Will--
Will whose visit we managed to save for a surprise
until he arrived Friday night 

It was an unforgettable day--that ended with an all-day visit with Carlene, Will, Day and Mary Elizabeth that lasted until late last night.