Saturday, December 23, 2023

THOUGHTS FOR THE NEW YEAR -- AND BEYOND

 

     
    My name is Simplicity,
guide, guardian, angelic
companion, lost in a shop
of cast-off tools, linens, photos
and cut glass knobs, where I languished
beneath crocheted doilies,
choking on dust and mouse.
 
Not a simple nor straightforward end
for me, the Angel of Simple Things.
For I am a sign of truth and clarity,
 nurturing joy in the good
and the basic. No frills.  No excess.
I harvest the wheat and banish
the chaff to the winds.
 
She found me there on the floor.
A kindred spirit in search of what
I could teach -- sharing wisdom,
 echoing the past, telling stories 
and dreams. I sit on her desk,
 aside books and cats and
whisper that simple truth.
 
Find your true self.
Be that true self.
Let the confusion go.


 

Friday, October 13, 2023

END OF SUMMER... AND INTO FALL

Newfound Lake ~ where we walk from early spring until snowfall.  
This is the last boat at its mooring off the beach 
on a chilly and damp October day.


Sunday, August 06, 2023

Phenix Morris Team Revival

    

THE CANTERBURY FAIR  2023

Never let it be said the spirit and the love of a thing can be lost to age!

We danced in the 1970's when we were young and twenty...

Now we dance again in the 2020's when we are aged and seventy.

Hey, ho and "I like to rise when the sun she rises,

Early in the morning..."

Saturday, June 24, 2023

THE MOOSE ARE BACK!

EAST INLET during the SUMMER SOLSTICE

 





These are the first hale and hearty bull moose we have seen in many years.  The tick infestations due to recent warm winter temperatures killed off so many of this iconic breed. 

These two males may be the start of tick-resistant genes.  So:  STOP THE ANNUAL MOOSE HUNT and allow them to flourish once again. 


Saturday, June 10, 2023

FRIENDS


There are those friends with whom all is said 

in quiet phrases, moments of silence,

years shared through work,

family,  joys and trials.

And as we age, we discover 

a common puzzlement

in life.

 ~

 

Wednesday, May 31, 2023

OUR FATHERS WERE SOLDIERS

Simon E. Draper, Jr.  Southern France
Signal Corps US Army about 1944


Donald S. Dorrington
Veterans' Day - Westfield, Massachusetts
 US Marines Fifth Division  1943 -1946

MEMORIAL DAY THOUGHTS  2023

Growing up in the 1950’s, many fathers I knew had been soldiers. It was the same for uncles, brothers, grandfathers and women who served in the military.

My grandfather fought in the trenches of France during World War I.  He never spoke of it until he was a very old man.  He’d rather share stories of his father’s farm, where he had driven horse teams for logging and rolling snow.

His references to war were short and grim.  He remembered the waste of farms and fields. After the war, he loved the Maine woods and his camp.  It was isolated— just Gramp and his oldest buddies, those same men who later buried his ashes there.

My father and my father-in-law were young men during World War II.

My father joined the Marines days after graduating from high school.  He turned eighteen on the island of Iwo Jima, one of the worst battles of the Pacific.  He didn’t speak about it until much later in life.  He was of two minds — proud to be a Marine and proud of the men and women of his generation for stepping up to the call for service.

But he also carried the silent grief war leaves — like the men he fought with who didn’t return home.  The desolation he witnessed at Nagasaki.  His uneasy return to civilian life.

Later in life my father spoke with students during Memorial Day ceremonies. He didn’t glamorize war, rather he told them about the need for diplomacy and other ways to manage disputes.  He gave them a glimpse into his life during WWII.  He was rewarded by letters he received from those students and he saved every one.

Finally, my father-in-law was a few years older when he joined the US Army during WWII.  He served in the Signal Corps in southern France.  Although there was danger, he never saw active combat.  His was background work keeping communications open and safe.

When he came home, he started a career with the telephone company.  He shared his photographs of France, yet never really gave details of his wartime life.  He was the kind of man who could find the good in most situations, even war, and move on.

So, I listen to the stories and watch how the storytellers live. They offer me insights and ways to cope no matter what may come my way -- good, tragic and ugly.


 


Thursday, May 18, 2023

WHO WERE OUR MOTHERS?

Who were our mothers before they were mothers? 

 
Do you know if your mother worked before she had children?  Was she a teacher, a nurse, a secretary.  Did she clerk in a store or style hair in a beauty shop?

Did she do a job considered “men’s work” back in the day when things like that were thought important.  Maybe she farmed and did chores.  Maybe she milked cows or organized and fed farm workers during harvest.

She could have been a cook or worked in local schools.  She may have been a lawyer or doctor and continued a profession throughout her life.

Women have held jobs in factories, mills, insurance offices and banks. They could be police or EMTs.  They’ve driven trucks and big machinery and owned their own businesses.  They cleaned others’ houses, ironed and laundered clothes and became caregivers throughout time.

Our mothers were also artists and quilters, writers and musicians, potters and weavers.  Women have always been artisans, stitching, knitting, dreaming and creating.

So much has depended on when our mothers were born and what kind of work was available.  What were her choices?  And, who encouraged her.

What else did our mothers do before they became mothers?

Did they love to dance?  Play sports.  Paint or write poems.  Did they hike and swim.  Who had horses and special pets?  Who were friends?  Who was family — and what was the good as well as the sadness in their lives.

Shirley J. Alger - Springfield Hospital School of Nursing Class of 1946
 

Before my mother Shirley became my mother, she was a nursing student.  Her high school class of 1943 graduated into the thick of World War II.  She joined the Cadet Nursing Corps and graduated as a registered nurse just as the war ended.

Before that she worked at an airport canteen where men flew to the war in Europe.  Her dream job was to be an airline stewardess after the war.  Never happened.

Her mother Lina was born in 1901 and adopted into a prosperous farm family.  She grew up with horses and dogs, books and music, two years of college and a job as a Kindergarten teacher.  She played piano.  But Lina never made peace with her adoption and it was the shadow of her life — before and after she became a mother herself.

Lina K. Belden - Circa 1920

Everyone has a story to tell, full of riches and surprises.  Be sure to ask, then listen carefully.                       

Tuesday, April 18, 2023

TIMELINES

 How We Become Activists

 
There is a big interest in genealogy and writing life stories these days.  After all, we know things no one else knows.  We have memories of families, traditions and places.  We’ve lived through good times and bad.  We’ve been alive during historical events and hold our own thoughts on what happened and how we felt.

Our stories get set down in scrapbooks and journals.  We share photographs. We visit cemeteries or take road trips to places we once loved well. In the telling, our reminiscences are a moment in Time.  Someone asks, “When did it happen?  What time of year? Who was there?”

Recently Barry and I talked about life events with high school students. We hoped to show that what happens in life can change us in unexpected ways.  To do this, we created panels in a Timeline.  Each panel represented one decade and important things about that particular time.

We started with the 1950’s when we were both three years old.  We lived in a small town during the post-World War II days.  We linked facts and questions about world events, personal events, politics, news and everyday happenings to our memories.

In the 1950’s, it was the Cold War.  As second graders we hid under our desks during air raid drills.  Polio was an epidemic in the US.  “No swimming and no parties.”   Life Magazine showed rows of children and adults in machines called Iron Lungs that kept them breathing.  Then Jonas Salk developed a vaccine for polio and we lined up at school for our shots.  Everyone received the vaccinations.

October 1957 the Russians launched Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite.  It shocked the world and especially because the Russians were first in the big race to space.  We students started studying more math and science and got something new in our lives — homework.

The 1950’s timeline covered Civil Rights, Elvis Presley and our individual passions:  rivers, streams, snakes and critters (Barry) and books, libraries, stories and the outside (Gretchen).  

And so the Timeline continued, decade by decade. The high school students identified problems we still puzzle over, still worry about today.  Clean air and water.  Education.  How to solve conflicts.  Bullies and cheats.  What is good for all people?

It’s time to listen even more carefully to our stories and memories and decide which ones are best to live by.


Saturday, January 14, 2023

~ NEVER TOO OLD ~

 



Saturday, December 31, 2022

A Memory of Music (in Motion)

When I was young, 
  the dancing was done
in halls with wooden floors.
In lines and squares, circles
and pairs, the caller was king,
the fiddles could sing and joy
drove the miseries away.
 
~ MAY YOU FIND JOY AND DANCE IN THIS NEW YEAR TO COME ~
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!  
 
 

 

 
   

Sunday, July 03, 2022

SUMMER 2022: War and Women

 REMEMBER HER FACE

            What do you see in her gaze? 
Apprehension.  Fear.  Vigilance. 
A woman watching the sky.  Watchful for
planes, great streams of fire,
gathering storm clouds of war.

  

This is how it feels to be a woman in 2022.  We are alone and betrayed by our cultures and societies.  What once was legal -- the right to decide on healthcare and pregnancy -- is now kicked down to the states where abortion may be gleefully outlawed.  Women and medical personnel can be considered criminals for claiming basic healthcare, well-being and respectful decisions about our own bodies. 

It's political.  It's damning.  It's a way to take away women's power.  In this country where we have No universal healthcare, No universal childcare, No guaranteed right of maternal leave after delivery, limiting abortion is basically cruel and stupid -- and deliberately designed to hamstring the freedoms and personal progress of women as equal citizens.  Equal in the "eyes of the law".                                          
 
What's next?  Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is on a vendetta to make contraception illegal. Same-sex marriage illegal.   And who knows what else.             
 
I was a young adult woman before Roe vs. Wade was accepted as law.  Women's choices and sexual behaviors were met with shame, scorn and contempt.  Young women could be disowned by their families.  Some kept their pregnancies secret and gave up their child to adoption.  Some married, successfully or not.  Some sought out illegal abortions.  Some were treated by a "family friendly" physician in a private hospital, a practice I would expect will continue on for those men with power and money.
                   
And the men -- what about the men who are the other half of this equation.  What will you do now?  What did you do then, before?   Did you use contraception?  Did you disappear?  Say:  "Not mine".                                          
 
What is lost in our culture is simple care.  Every decision taken by a woman to carry a pregnancy is complex, laden with emotion and carries consequences -- welcomed or not --for life.   
 
It is not up to Congress or the deliberately skewed Supreme Court to take away liberties already granted.  We, the majority of people in this country who support choice, must stand up to those self-righteous bullies and remove them from office and power now, not in ten or twenty years.
                     
Sometime, someone you know may need a choice.  Where will you stand?
 
~

Note:  The statue used in this entry is in the Zahm Courtyard at Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH.  The artist is English sculptor Thomas Bayliss Huxtable-Jones.  It was a gift of the Class of 1943 in memory of their classmates who died in World War II.                 


 

Sunday, March 20, 2022

ACT THREE

It's the first day of Spring and I welcome the promise of change in the air.  Our New Hampshire landscape is fresh, running with the water of melting snow and ice.  I walked our road in an early morning chill with mist still covering the beaver pond and the patches of lingering snow at the end of the field. 

What a long and complicated journey since my last blog entry in 2019.  I am not the same woman I was back then.  In fact, there are times when I don't recognize myself now -- older, grey-haired, solemn, curt.  I have no patience with cruelty, deliberate ignorance and division simply out of spite.

This, after three years of man-made horrors and the constant attacks on freedom, compassion and respect for diversity across the world -- and then, the scars of Covid-19, a pandemic turned to political theater, panic and grief.  And now, we face Russia's attack on Ukraine. 

Change and transition. Fear and despair.  The seasons shift and here we are in Spring, a time of hope and wonder, yet we hold our collective breath.  World War III?

Change and transitions and loss.  As I said, it's a long and complicated road we travel moving through light and dark and back to the light, shadows to our right, flames to our left.

Here's a poem I wrote in early 2020.  My mother had just moved to a nursing-rehabilitation facility, her "new home".  But Covid-19 was on the move, too.  March 12, 2020, the center closed to in-person visits.  My mother died a year later. 

 
In March, I last kissed your soft cheek
squeezed your hand,
tucked the quilt about your frail body.
 
Yet all the while, the chill winds blew
fever and fear under the doors
and into the cracks of our lives.
 
Thick glass walls rose up between us.
I watched your eyes meet mine,
steady with grit and shared courage.
 
I smiled and waved,
then looked back --
one last time. 
 
_________ 

 

                                 

Tuesday, October 08, 2019

THE CORPSE

The Corpse

In our lower field,
within a ring of hair and
trampled earth, lies the body
of a fully-grown, female
moose.

Cause of death?  Brain worm,
the Warden says, that parasite
carried by white-tailed deer and spread
by snails on water grasses.
Pity.

Will you take her away?
Record her death, place and time?
A shake of his head.  No.
No more state biologists here
for moose.

The dead moose still lies
in our field, ignored by bureaucrats.
But what do they know?
Better to heed vultures,
ravens and jays. 

Hear the coyotes who come at dark
to crush her ribs and pull her limbs.
They bay at the moon and stars,
praise and proclaim reverence for
the Goddess.

...as she slowly becomes Earth...

Thursday, March 22, 2018

A SLIP OF THE SOUL

   

 Maybe it was because I sat two rows from the front of the church, no one between me and the minister, me and the pulpit, me and the choir in its stall above the congregation.

Or maybe it was because the interior of this building has changed so little from 1860 when it was built and from 1960 when I was girl beginning my journey into church membership.

It may have come through collective family memories deep in my bones.  My grandparents worshiped here from time to time.  My mother and father married in this sanctuary in September 1946.  I married before this same altar in September 1969.

Perhaps my New England roots travel back to 1671 when the Reverend Edward Taylor, a minister-poet, gathered his flock and composed a congregation that bears witness even to this Sunday  two weeks before Easter 2018.

Whatever was stirred within my heart, I slipped in time.  The sun shone through the translucent windows, no grand colors for stern Congregationalists, and lent glory to the white interior.

A patch of deep maroon of the pew to my left glowed.  As the hour passed, those rays moved from cushion to floor covering to blue hymnals to the wooden rails.  Above me I remembered the quiet independence of the balcony, aloof and closer to what -- God?

But mostly I thought how old and anonymous I have become in this space once the stage for my life's great dramas.  Marriage.  Faith.  Illusion and loss.

Here I am being invited to search my soul and join with these others in celebration.  Yet I still sit with strangers and still feel the ousider, even as I marvel at the fire in those memories and mysteries from so long ago.

Saturday, July 29, 2017

UPON WRITING WITH YOUNG PEOPLE TODAY


WHAT I LEARN WHEN I WRITE WITH YOUNG PEOPLE

From your shared introductions, I learn Vulnerability.
On your list of Causes, I read Fairness, Equality and Freedom.
When you write, I hear Violence and Fear.
When you leave, I wonder about Gender, Ferocity and the Tribe.

Monday, January 09, 2017

ALONG THE ROAD POEMS...

Cemetery on Sam Hill in Worthington, Massachusetts
For many years, I have written "Along the Road..." poems.  They fit my belief of life being a journey and how we make our own paths by walking, traveling, moving along roads, unexpected or well-worn, throughout our earthly days. 

This past year I lost my way.  For many reasons the road disappeared.  I wandered, wondered and only now edge back to the page to find the words that ground me. 

Along the road in twenty-sixteen,
I somehow lost my way.
Lost my writing, lost my time,
lost my lovely wayward moments.

I wandered through snowy mountains,
 mud and soft Caribbean sands.
Snapped and trapped in the corporate gulag,
one cold Hell and back again.

Write that I lost my father,
thin like leather, gasping for breath
in the downstairs room on Trouble Street
 where breezes carried him birdsong
and the sent of early summer flowers.


In that dry year of twenty-something,
all the bad times re-exploded.
Tell how I lost my temper, flawed
goodwill and old illusions.

Say I still taste the sorrow, 
droning on harsh winter winds.
The soldier sheltering his trauma,
the girl on-guard, alert to fear.

One war ends in wounded peace,
where the grass is ever-greener, 
along the writing road, 
lost in dreams and should-have-beens, 
thick with gifts and demons.




Sunday, August 21, 2016

BLESSED BE THE PEACE MAKERS

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
Click on the Picture to See...
"THE BELOVED COMMUNITY IS THE FRAMEWORK FOR THE FUTURE."

Saturday, October 31, 2015

Looking for Root Causes


Spring Valley High School
           October 2015
Unsafe in my school
Unsafe at home.  Rage dogs me,
drags me by the hair
targets me, the throw-away kid.
Someone.  Somewhere.  Hear my story.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

NEW HAMPSHIRE IN OCTOBER

IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS

White pine in granite
anchored by tenacious roots
straight trunk, weathered bark
limbs outstretched in feathered green
surveys the cascades below.

Monday, October 12, 2015

LUNAR ECLIPSE: SEPTEMBER 27, 2015


MIDNIGHT MOON

Adrift on the third 
rock from the sun, we watch
light play the russet
marble suspended in black,
blessed with one luminous edge.


Friday, May 22, 2015

AFTER NEPAL, NOTHING IN LIFE IS THE SAME


The Himalayas from Nagarkot
In March 2015, we traveled with our friends and students from the University of Rhode Island to take part in the Kingian Nonviolence and Conflict Reconciliation Orientation and Core Training in Nagarkot, Nepal.  

We were introduced to the nonviolence philosophy and education of Martin Luther King, Jr. with students, lawyers, educators, social workers, NGO staff, and military officers from Nepal and other countries in Southasia.

After the training, we joined the URI students on a cultural tour of Nepal and then spent time on our own, exploring Kathmandu and the countryside.

As we learned, nothing in life is the same after Nepal. 
Boudhnath Stupa - Kathmandu
On the way to Bhaktapur
The Peacock Paper Factory - Bhaktapur
Namo Buddha - Edge of the Kathmandu Valley

Boys of the LRI School sing "Imagine" by John Lennon.
Chitwan -- On the Border with India
Guardians of the Road
Thamel
Three weeks after we returned home, on Saturday April 25, Nepal was hit with a 7.8 earthquake.  The country has been devastated with loss of life, loss of entire villages, homes and workplaces destroyed, cultural and historical sites gone.
 Swayambhunath is now rubble.
Bhaktapur -- a medieval city is a pile of bricks

People we met now live in tents -- no jobs and no homes going into the monsoon season. 

On the way to Paulines Guesthouse -- all buildings destroyed
Paulines Guesthouse has collapsed.
I find myself caught between tragedy and sorrow, and the utter grace of our trip and its timing.   

It's my koan, a paradox for meditation.  Abandon logical reasoning, the Zen master might say to me.  What happens, then?

A NEPAL COMPASS ROSE


Chhetrapati Chowk

Five dirt roads converge
like five spokes of a great wheel
steer me to Thamel,
Mithro, the booksellers street,
Swayambhnath and Home.





Friday, April 17, 2015

WHAT THE BUDDHISTS TEACH


Cupped hands hold water
a small bowl of memories
cool splash on my face
prayer flags snap and eagles cry
while dreams slip through my cradled fingers.



Wednesday, March 25, 2015

NAGARKOT


The old Newari man
taps gently at our door
he pours steaming water
from his iron-colored pail
warms the cold night with his smile.

Tuesday, March 03, 2015

THE TIME TO DIE

...When he was young and handsome...

We buried Stella in the field today, under a foot of soil and two feet of snow.  True to our New Hampshire farm, we hit a sizable rock while digging which became his headstone.  He's nestled into a spot near a small grove of trees, where the grass grows tall in summer. Jessup is buried nearby.

Stella the Fella was 15 years old and failing.  We had dragged our feet but finally made an appointment with the vet to put him down. Tuesday morning. We worried about the car trip.  He hated to ride.  We knew the strange place and smells would terrorize him.  We didn't want his life to end that way.

He must have sensed something.  Stella liked his house, his wood stove, his food dish, and his perch on the top of the couch.  He purred like a lion and threw himself on the floor when he was happy to see you.  Hence, he earned the knickname, "Thud".

In his glory days, he retrieved pipe cleaners and burrowed under the scatter rugs.  He chased his sister and got into all kinds of cat trouble.  When our friend took care of him, Stella left her gifts at the door -- a mouse or its parts.  A sponge to clean up water.  Toys.  Balls.  It was uncanny.

Sunday night, four of us went to bed.  Stella was first.  He chose his usual cozy "hole" in the comforter. Throughout the night, I could feel him stretched out at my feet.

On Monday morning, three of us awoke.  Stella had died during the night, quietly and peacefully, near those who loved him.  He had been warm and snuggled into the quilt.  No mess.  No fuss.  Just a simple passing when it was time for him to go.

We cancelled the vet's appointment.  We washed his dishes and blankets.  We sat and reminisced, laughed and sighed.  We miss him --- this old cat who had the grace and good sense to die at home.