Almost Springtime Holey-ness in Tallahassee

A paper wasp's nest lies still on the ground

Magnolia tree hole swallows the sound




 Of footsteps approaching Trillium treasure

Twisted tree roots, untwisted, what would they measure?

 A woodpecker's flute flung to the floor

Leaf veins laid bare for lacy decor

A stream carves a bit deeper its bedrock of limestone

One violet we see, for now all alone

"We share a walk, a life, a love, a moment,"

SAM and I say--

Thirty-one years together,

Forever,

Today

La Mere OIE, Another Goose That Gathers Golden Eggs

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,
She had so many children, she didn't know what to do.
She gave them some broth, without any bread,
Then whipped them all soundly and sent them to bed.

--a Mother Goose (La Mere Oie) nursery rhyme--

Watching a professional at work can really help an amateur like me understand that photography is really not my thing. A week ago Saturday we drove over to Bayview Park in Pensacola, and the wife of one our son's co-workers took some holiday family photos of all of us. It was a pleasure to watch her work with that camera and a keen eye for detail. The experience wins hands-down over the usual uncomfortable poses, fake sets, and hot lights in someone's studio. Besides, Hubby and I got to take some pictures of everyone too, even the photographer.


Now that Micah is able to sit still for about thirty seconds and listen to someone read, the best choice for story material (at least in my opinion) usually ends up as a selection from a book of nursery rhymes and bedtime stories. Even my son remembers this book, and I found his name scribbled in the pages today. I guess he was practicing penmanship at the time and could not find any paper handy. Once I started reading these time-tested verses again, I began to wonder if people still find them fascinating now that we are firmly embraced by the electronic age.

My various queries at one point turned up over two million entries on the subjects of nursery rhymes and Mother Goose! Not many of them were kind to the old bird, and in fact many of them pointed out that her verses for children are politically incorrect today. Whipping children soundly after half-starving them doesn't sound very kind or correct in any age. One entry I read maintains that most, if not all, nursery rhymes were not originally composed for children's benefit but rather as political jabs at the powers-that-be. Aha! Now I don't feel so bad for possibly scaring the wits out of my children or damaging their psyches when I read those scary stories and verses to them years ago. I was merely preparing them for the big, bad world out there and helping them begin to navigate those shark-infested waters known as p-o-l-i-t-i-c-s and e-c-o-n-o-m-y.

Did I just say big, bad world? I forget sometimes. Our economy is global now, and I have helped create it. My vote counted for the powers-that-be.

Naked Ladies in the Park

"I imagine we are in accord about the use of certain words and I never use a word without first considering if it is replaceable....The whole thing is, it seems, that one should never use words which shock altogether out of their own value or connotation--such a word as for instance fart would stand out on a page, unless the whole matter were entirely rabelaisian, in such a manner that it would be entirely exaggerated and false and overdone in emphasis. Granted that it is a very old and classic English word for a breaking of wind. But you cannot use it. Although I can think of a case where it might be used, under sufficiently tragic circumstances, as to be entirely acceptable."

--Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, 1926, from Selected Letters, p. 211--

These ladies I spotted in the park recently are variously known as Naked Ladies, Surprise Lilies, Mystery Lilies, Resurrection Lilies, or Lycoris squamigera. They speak to me on several different levels, which is not surprising considering their origin, bloom habit, as well as common and scientific names.

Thought to originate either in China or Japan, Naked Ladies--or Surprise Lilies if you prefer--exhibit growth and bloom characteristics that harken back to a more inscrutable world than my (maybe your) Western one. The lilies grow from bulbs and produce first only leaves in the spring which wither and disappear beneath the soil until mid to late summer. Then the bulbs resting underground seem to almost magically sprout stalks topped with buds opening up in just four to five days to reveal fragrant, delicately pink flowers. After a brief but glorious time of bloom, the bulbs retreat from view once again, living a secret life in the dark until the next growth season, silently reproducing themselves and creating ever larger colonies. In similar fashion, Oriental women were once--but not that long ago--expected to remain hidden from public view for the most part and to keep themselves beautiful but silent before their husbands. I remember as a teenager reading Pearl Buck's masterpiece The Good Earth with disbelief and chagrin that men could treat women like so much property and with so little humanity and respect. Even more troubling, I noted that the women were complicit in those social transactions, submitting themselves to a fate over which they had no control. Even so, as I recall, family ties were depicted as being undeniably strong, and there was a fabric of life covering, connecting, and sheltering individual family members and entire communities. Women kept that fabric mended and renewed, despite suffering what Westerners would consider humiliating treatment. They considered it their destiny and privilege because it meant contributing to the continuation of a cycle, not unlike that of the Naked Ladies.

Those seductive ladies I captured in the park, wearing nothing but their fragrance and pretty pink hats, intrigue me with not only their growth pattern and Oriental heritage but also the etymological side of their story. What possessed someone to call them Ladies? Why not Naked Men? If Eleanor Perenyi, the author of Green Thoughts (copyright 1981) is correct in her general assumptions about a woman's place in the garden, the common name of this specific flower may have come about because of men's historically "superstitious fear that women were in league with nature in some way that men were not." Perhaps men have assigned female traits and monikers to flowers because, according to Perenyi, "flowers are of all plants the least menacing and the most useless. Their sole purpose is to be beautiful and to give pleasure" (261). On one website I encountered, the author invited comments pertaining to the name and culture of the lily. One comment was particularly noteworthy. Its author remembered a grandfather calling the lily a Naked Lady only to be reminded by his wife that its "correct" name was the Mystery Lily. The elderly gentleman retorted (I'm sure with a twinkle in his eye) that a naked lady is no mystery.

The Naked Lady's scientific name certainly contains some mystery that warrants investigation. Lycoris means "twilight," perhaps referring to its late-summer bloom time or maybe to its evanescent appearance above ground. Its species' name squamigera means "bearing scales." I take that descriptive term two ways: it either has a scaly appearance (maybe the bulb?) or, like the blind lady of justice, it--as any other living thing--weighs our faults against our merits while the fate of our planet hangs in the balance and depends on the decisions of the men in control.

Too Dark to Be Green--Blame It on Global Warming

"Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience."

--Henry David Thoreau--


Apparently, I upset the apple cart and made some people close to me worried with my last too-dark post, so I will vindicate myself by jumping on the "green" bandwagon and blame it all on the oil business and global warming.



I am not necessarily looking down my nose at the notion of "going green." Well....yes, I am, in a manner of speaking. I took this picture looking down from the walking path at the local park. It represents an unused piece of land of at least an acre that is mowed and kept neat looking, but for what purpose? Sometimes I feel like the befuddled Lily Briscoe from Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. I have to keep asking "What does it mean?"



I guess I could blame my ignorance on waiting until my mid 40s to finish up my undergraduate English degree, which I did last December. You see, I had some trouble being explicit enough to please my professors at UWF (University of West Florida). I got in the habit there and then of asking myself the "so what" question, but I still find it difficult here and now to be not so implicit. I might as well blame that bad habit on learning from a generation intent on hiding its true feelings--of horror and shame--about what has taken place in this world since the War to End All Wars behind a Janus-mask of discontent and self-improvement.

For some strange reason, I could no longer stand the heat in the kitchen, and I jumped at every chance I had to get out and take classes. I became what you might call a dilettante. Improve thyself became my mantra, but I was too afraid to trust my kids to the care of strangers. Blame that fear on the plethora of news stories in the 80s and 90s about sexual predators lurking everywhere and especially masquerading as loving childcare workers and teachers. What could I do? I did not like putting them in daycare when they were little, nor did I like making them ride a bus full of foul-mouthed and unruly kids home to an empty house. So I waited. I even homeschooled for a while. As Thoreau implied, I did not strike while the iron was hot. Ideas cooled in my hot little brain like cookies on a rack and maybe got a little stale too.


Wait. I need to slow down a bit. The speed bumps in life are there for a reason. They keep you from veering off the road into the ditch and make you appreciate the beauty you see and have.


Where am I going with these thoughts? To an empty baseball field at the local park, of course. It is the end of the season here for baseball. Football practice has already started, and school begins in a few weeks. All of the vans and SUVs which used to crowd the lots here at the park are resting silently in garages or driveways. The park is quiet now except for a few self-deprecating, middle-aged people who like to walk in the early morning and evening and talk about how things used to be, how bad they are now, and how good they could be again. Okay, I will be fair and limit the self-deprecating part of that description to just me. I will blame that bad habit on living too long in the Bible Belt, not taking the Gospel to heart, and learning to be cynical.


That last post of mine may have sounded a little negative. I will grant that supposition. It was meant to ring with irony. I felt tired of sounding sappy and wanted to try a different design for my "garden." Blame it on global warming. I am trying to cook up ideas that have cooled for too long, and the extra heat is taking its toll on my brain. I hope no one is keeping score.

"What was it then? What did it mean? Could things thrust their hands up and grip one; could the blade cut; the fist grasp? Was there no safety? No learning by heart of the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from the pinnacle of a tower into the air? Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life?--startling, unexpected, unknown?"

--Lily Briscoe in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse--

No Nimbys Here!

A walk in the community park yesterday offered a feast for the eyes and food for thought. A relic from the past offers a reminder that the beauty we treasure now in the park was once funded by a thriving fossil-fuel industry in this area. Coal and oil at one time provided high-paying jobs and a healthy tax base that now must be collected as exorbitant property and fuel taxes from already financially strapped citizens. Rising global consumption and an alarming lack of any energy policy in this country have presented all of us with a dilemma that can no longer be ignored. We cannot expect to continue enjoying our activities of daily life--gardening, traveling, playing baseball, whatever--without interruption unless something is done soon to create a reasonable policy, one that does not penalize the oil, gas, and coal industries. Rather, they should be encouraged to explore for and refine fossil fuels in the short term as well as research and develop renewable energy sources for the long term. Wishing for things to get better does not make it happen. We can all garden and live more conservatively, but we can also demand that our leaders (local, state, national) pay more than just lip service to mapping out and implementing an energy plan.