Peg Duthie's Blog, page 65

umbrellas roosting outside the Hen House

The summer day
smudged with humidity --
eyeshadow-colored ciphers
crowding the page in my sketchbook.

(The Hen House is a pottery and condiment shop in Highlands, NC.)

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a fun Friday the 13th

Working over 80 hours within 8 days has me a bit blurry and bleary, but I'm on holiday now, with two of my favorite eighty-three-year-old women. They're both sharp as the proverbial tacks and Jane likes to drive, so I got to curl up on the back seat of her car and sleepily listen to them discuss everything from Nashville-based characters in Ann Patchett books to meetings of the Native Plant Society.

During lunch (at the Ocoee Dam Deli & Diner), the recurring conversational threads about nature and hiking led Nancy into reminiscing about being a young wife in Poughkeepsie, and how she spent many afternoons with another faculty wife who was an artist and writer named Jean. Jean's brothers were prominent naturalists and she was married to a zoologist; Nancy did not grow up as an outdoors person, but she ended up learning a lot about plants and animals in the course of walks with Jean, who was in the process of teaching her toddler about such things. By the time Nancy mentioned about the owl in the living room, I'd realized she was talking about Jean Craighead George.

We reached Highlands in time for a terrific chamber music concert, followed by dinner at Wolfgang's with Nancy's children Kate and William (longtime performers at the festival). The conversation ranged from heirloom boxwood cuttings to seashell lamps and senior party girls. And orchids: I learned that for an orchid to be considered for the Bascom Flower Show, it must have been in the gardener's possession for at least five years. (One of Kate's friends has two orchids on display in the show; I'm hoping to see them for myself later today...)

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more from Cheryl Clarke

About a "brainy, brawny, brash" black nun.

When she wasn't teaching science

she coached basketball.

(Easier since shedding the habit.

Never regained her peripheral vision,

though. But compensation is a nun's way.)

- "Frances Michael," in Humid Pitch (Firebrand, 1989)

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from Cheryl Clarke's "Epic of Song"

From a diva to her young, loud protege:

"...in Chicago, you got to tone it down.

Stop usin all them notes. Start tuckin

em in, drippin em out, moistenin th'air.

Not always pourin down rain."

- Cheryl Clarke, in Humid Pitch



Also recent reading: geri_chan 's post on (among other things) playing Spot the Asian when she watches tv.

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two quotes from Adrienne Martini's SWEATER QUEST

In chapter 7, Martini meets up with Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, the Yarn Harlot, a popular blogger who compares coping with hundreds of comments to coping with family:

"You say to your mother, 'Here're my new pants.' And she says, 'They're a little bit short.' And you're like, 'Did I ask you if my pants were too short? Did I ask for a judgment from you? I've already bought the pants. I'm wearing the pants.' ...

"The Internet is like that," she continues. "There is this huge community whether you want it or not. If you want the pleasure of being able to say, 'Where do you think I should put this button? then you also have to put up with the fact that once you've decided, hundreds of people are still going to tell you your button is wrong. You have to learn how to take that the same way you learn how to take your mother's pants advice."

Stephanie has handled the pants advice with aplomb. Her mantra appears to be that you get more of what you pay attention to. Rather than focus on the irritating comments, she pays more attention to the mighty power of knitters.

"You can get them fired up about something and they will en masse go to the rescue of anyone who needs them. They form -- I hate to say it because of the sheep connotation -- but they form large and effective, fast-moving herds that get a great deal done quickly. Knitters are by nature efficient, productive people or they wouldn't be knitters. You get a lot of people who are very good at getting things done, give them a mission, and it is game over. When I said I think we should raise money for Doctors Without Borders, game over. How much would you like? Would you like that by five o'clock? No problem. You need more? I can get it for ya." [Knitters Without Borders raised over $600K for DWB within two years.]

Earlier in the book, Martini writes about meeting with Ann Shayne, a Nashville knitter:

For Ann, those moments when you get lost in the pattern are "like weeding. There is that meditative thing. It's quiet. It's pretty cause and effect. And your garden will be the better for it," she says, reaching for a pile of yarn ends on her desk, which are all the bits she snipped out while finishing Keava [a sweater designed by Alice Starmore].

"I have a bag of those too," I said.

"What do you do with them? My friend Sheila puts them in the bushes for the birds. They make nests out of them," she says. I'm charmed by the idea of all Nashville's birds sitting in Easter-egg-colored nests.

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ghazal, beaded with sweat

(A very rough, of-the-moment draft [as is the case with most of the poems posted directly to this journal] -- inspired largely by Luisa A. Ingloria's Ghazal, Beaded with Rain; most of the link-phrases in stanzas 8-10 come from elisem's current jewelry sale)

Spending Shabbat with thoughts of Ali, from whom I learned the shape of these lines:
a teacher I never met, whose lessons I keep revisiting.

Ali died too young -- as does everyone, no? Although we haven't met,
the reaper is a teacher whose lessons I keep revisiting.

109 degrees today: a record in my city.
And yet I've felt such heat before, in memories worth revisiting.

The blues and greens of your lizard: see-through, yet so solid,
yet shining -- so cool to the lens, yet warm with the sun's visiting.

Rolling scraps of rejection slips into paper beads:
a lesson from my parents. In crafts, the past comes visiting.

The lizard sleeps on top of a shoe, her dreams laced with the soothing
burble of green-scented rain -- a crown of clouds a-visiting.

The taste of too-old ice cubes spoiling a glass of tea,
darkening the summer's day: All things are merely visiting.

Dawn scene with thunder lizards: a slice of a favorite morning
cool on the palm you hold to my cheek -- a variant in your visiting.

Feeling under my fingers the shine of the the painter's comforts:
aging threads momentarily silver -- the moon's light come visiting.

I am the summer's keeper, and you are a dreamer of dreams --
o, do not forsake the world on my watch. Just tell yourself you're visiting.

The heat will leave you moved and shaken, even as it turns you into stone
and then back into water, and from water into breath. To leave, you must keep visiting.

Breathing. Melting. Burning. Keeping.
Scorched pegs fall out of holes -- a lesson I'm revisiting.

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finalists!

Joanne's poem "Auto Biographies" is a a finalist in this month's Goodreads contest (winner selected by group vote).

My poem "The Season So Long" is a finalist in unFold's Garden Show.

Shabbat shalom!

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over at Poetree

some notes on Mary Oliver

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Escape Into Life feature

Produced by Kathleen Kirk: five of my poems -- "Sweet Honesty," "At a Sushi Bar on Mt. Carmel" (sonnet), "Every Angel Is Terrifying," "Neither Fire Nor Water," and "Compact" -- with nifty photos by Karin Miller.

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my church is for choice

The annual national convention of the Unitarian Universalist Association was this past weekend.

The business included choosing the denomination's Study/Action issue for 2012-2016. To give you some context, the one for 2008-2012 was Ethical Eating, the one in progress is Immigration as a Moral Issue. These are not the only issues UUs are studying or acting on, of course, but the issues selected for Study/Action receive additional attention and resources -- ministers are encouraged to preach about them, educators are encouraged to offer classes and lead discussions, study guides are created, and so on.

The news from Phoenix is that Reproductive Justice will be the next Study/Action issue. The proposal submitted by the sponsoring congregations is here.

...I happened to spend a sizable chunk of yesterday evening copyediting a study of so-called pro-life judicial activism. And my state legislature continues to embarrass the saner people in Tennessee with its relentless cultivation of ignorance. And the reports from Michigan and elsewhere have me feeling more angry and more weary. So I'm taking comfort in this news of my denomination renewing and expanding its efforts to support "the right of all women to have children, not to have children, and to raise their children in safe and healthy environments."

http://www.uua.org/reproductive/index.shtml
http://www.uua.org/reproductive/action/index.shtml (includes click-to-send-letters links)
https://www.uua.org/reproductive/action/200096.shtml (congregational resources, multiple levels + ages)

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