Report From Cane Creek

Learning to Survive

2009-11-08T00:57:00.000-08:00

Of the ten Georgia deaths during the September flood,
most could have been prevented.

People who thought water on the road not too deep
to drive through were swept into a creek or river
where the automobile was quickly submerged. Drivers
did not know to lower the windows before the vehicle
sank and while the engine was still running. Nor did
some know a door can be opened after the auto fills
with water so that the pressure on either side is equal.

And they failed to understand the nature of floods or
they wouldn't have entered the water in the first place.

Surviving drivers usually exclaim something about how
the water didn't look that deep, "It wasn't up to the
guard rail", or, "Just a couple feet, I thought I could
make it." This is not standing water. There are strong
undercurrents.A couple of feet of water moving
across a paved parking lot turned an empty school bus
on its side.

Two boys tried to swim to an partly-submerged car
thinking its occupants in danger. One boy was
rescued by a firefighter, the other was swept away,
his body recovered much later. He was 14. There
was no one in the car.

During the 1990 flood, five years before that boy was
born, a man aged 42 drowned under the same
circumstances: he tried to swim to an automobile that
had been abandoned in the same flooded field near
Trion.

Most of the Georgia deaths occurred in the Atlanta area.
There were reports of a hundred-year flood in parts of the
area, and of a five-hundred-year flood in other parts. There
was also speculation that this flood was so much worse than
previous floods because of the proliferation of new housing
developments and other construction, not only near Atlanta
but throughout the neighboring counties. Where once were
fields of permeable ground there now are seas of roofs and
mile after mile of pavement.

The changing landscape has affected people's lives in many
ways. Perhaps one effect has been to distance us from the
natural world. There is a wealth of information about self
defense against muggers and swindlers and other varieties
of criminals, and perhaps not enough about surviving the
raging elements. Maybe we should be made more aware
of that aspect of nature which is "red in tooth and claw".

Don't Rescue Me

2009-10-29T01:41:00.000-07:00

The creek thundered and crashed along, 8 or 9 feet
deep in places, foamed and spewed into the air as it
slapped against the trees several feet from its banks.
Muddy brown water swirled around my house and
across my yard all the way to the road and over the
road for part of one day, and water covered the pasture
to the side and back of me. Water rushed across the yard
toward the creek.

This was my tenth flood, and the biggest. Once a year,
usually in February. The water would spread over the yard,
two to three feet deep, but stop short of the highest part
near the road where I could park my van and keep it safe.
The flood would last all day, but toward evening the rain
would end and within a surprisingly short time the yard
would be drained, the creek again confined within its banks.
It was as if the plug were pulled, much as one might empty
the bathtub.

One year the creek flooded twice, in the fall when a
hurricane struck the Florida coast, and again in February
as usual. During the two years of drought there was no
flooding.

This September flood surprised me. Frequent and
prolonged rain for the past couple days had swollen the
creek so that it lunged along barely confined. All earth
around it was saturated. And then came the deluge.

I had parked near the road, moved buckets and yard
tools to the highest ground or the porch. During the night
the water reached the road and I went out to move the van,
planning to take it to a nearby house on a hill. I couldn't see
the edges of the culvert so I got back out of the van and
waded back and forth, probing with my stick to find the
drop-off to the ditch.

Walking back through the yard, water poured over the
tops of my calf-high rubber boots that had been adequate
in the previous floods. The boots made heavy with water
may have helped keep me on my feet, for the water was
swift, the current pulling at my legs, tugging my stick away
each time I lifted it.I believe if I had fallen I would have
been swept into the creek.

The rain kept up all night, heavy at times. I kept monitoring
the distance between the water and the porch floors. I didn't
believe it would come in the house, it never had, not even
during the hundred-year flood of 1990 that flooded the
Trion school and the cotton mill.

There was only a slow drizzle by early morning. It was
exciting to sit on the porch as if I were on a ship in the midst
of a rolling sea, watching cars come down the road at their
usual speed, then abruptly slow when they hit the water,
v-shaped plumes of water shooting high on either side.

One woman stopped and made frantic gestures toward me. I
thought she was having car trouble, but she pulled away and
went on. I was told later it was she who called 911. They
sent the Rescue Unit.

A fire truck loaded with men wearing hip boots. There were
300 cots set up in a church for the refugees from the
Frogtown section of Trion which was inundated when the
Chattooga River breached the levee. I thanked them and
they moved on. I could have used a pair of the hip boots.

My middle son called several times that day from the Atlanta
area where water was over the interstate, thousands of
houses flooded, some with the lower storeys filled, bridges
out, pavement ripped up, roads closed. His own home safe
on high ground, he was urging me to get out. I was staying
put. A day off, an exciting view, plenty of food and coffee
in the house.

John Muir once said we must learn the language of nature,
including the language of floods. I've learned the language of
this section of Cane Creek. I've walked its banks when they
were brimming full and listened to the music of the normal
flow, watched it when it was barely a trickle and, during two
summers of drought, walked for miles along its dry bed. I've
traced it on the map, from Tennessee to the Chattooga River
where it added its waters to the flooding of Frogtown.

I read accounts of the 1990 flood which came right after this
house was built, and I interviewed people who witnessed that
flood. The builder told me the water reached the edge of the
front porch. It was about six inches short of the edge this time.

The creek started flooding Sunday night. The rain stopped
during the day on Monday and by Monday evening the
water had drained away and I went to bring my van back
home.

2009-06-14T23:35:00.000-07:00

Buckie with Valerie, my granddaughter

I've learned from past experience not to mention to most
people that my dog has died. Eight out of ten of them
would say, with little feeling, "Oh, that's too bad." And
then, inevitably, "I know where you can get another
dog.." Or, "Have you been to the shelter? They're
advertising all the time..."

And I feel like replying, "Say, that good friend of
yours that died? Not to worry. I'll help you find
another. Let's go to the mall. Lots of people walking
around there. We'll get one of them to be your friend."

Those who have had great relationships with dogs
know better. They know that dogs are not
interchangeable.

A former neighbor used to irritate me by saying she
was a dog lover and so was I.

I don't love all dogs anymore than I love all humans. I
care about their welfare, like being around most of
them, and have dearly loved two in my lifetime.

Yesterday I thought about planting something to cover
the bare ground where I dug Buckie's grave. I'd like a
blanket of roses, but they require sun and the grave is
shaded by trees near the creek where he splashed and
played, and where he went to drink first thing every
morning.

Paging through some catalogues, I found the perfect
plant: a kerria. This shrub, with its small fluffy
yellow blooms, has been around a long time. I've
heard it called a kitchen rose. It was described in
the catalogue as tolerating part sun but preferring shade.
Now I have to see if I can find one locally. The one in
the catalogue has double blooms, but I'd just as soon
have the old fashioned kind.

Not only do I want something to cover the bare ground,
but I keep thinking an attractive bush might ensure that his
grave remains undisturbed. I won't be here so very much
longer myself, and I don't want any subsequent owners
digging in that spot.

Writer's Block Road Block

2009-06-10T22:06:00.000-07:00

The ordinary crises of daily life have kept me from
writing for this blog. And more. Getting a building
erected and moving about 8,000 books and pieces of
ephemera into it, a process still going on, along with
a winnowing of the books and bits because the building
from which they are being moved is about four times the
size of their destination. And more.

Three members of my family have died this year, most
recently the dog that has shared my life for a bit
more than thirteen years. And only those whose lives
have been as interdependent with that of a dog or cat
will understand when I say that my heart was pierced
more severely by his loss than by the loss of either
of my relatives. For I had contact with them only
occasionally, but Buckie was with me every day, greeted
me each morning and evening, rode along in the van with
me most of the time, and slept beside my bed each night.
I've had one other dog and one cat that I dearly loved,
and several that I liked a lot, but Buckie was the most
wonderful dog I have ever known. He leaves a big hole in
my life. All around me now are echoes of his absence.

Closet Southerners Tweeting Away

2009-03-29T23:34:00.000-07:00

I'd barely gotten used to the cellphone tweeters when I
heard about twittering.

Getting used to them doesn't mean I've become more
tolerant, just that I don't look around when a stranger
barks out "Hello!" near me. I still wish I didn't have to
hear all the details of people's lives. Do they have to
talk so loud, are they afraid their phone won't actually
carry their words to the person on the other phone?

"Oh, nothing much.
I'm sitting here in the dentist's office.
What?
Mary's here.
Mary's right here with me.
What have you been doing?"

I knew that many were texting to one another when
they were not communicating verbally, now they can
also report their progress through life to the whole
world by twitting.

"I had dinner at Uncle Fred's then
drove to the park, saw Robert standing in
his yard and waved to him..."

My old dog ties me down, he needs a lot of
attention. I haven't been north in a few years, so I was
thinking that the cellphone talk I hear was particularly
Southern, this compulsion to report with endless
detail, and to inform. That was the atmosphere in
which I grew up. They noticed everything. They knew
where you were and where you had been and many
of the things you did or said while you were there.
There was no privacy.

Then I heard about twittering and looked at it and now
it's clear to me. There's a bunch of closet Southerners
out there typing away on their little keypads.

I bet when I do get to go north again or if I head west
and find myself among people talking on cellphones
that I'll feel right at home.

New Year's Traditions

2009-01-04T23:43:00.000-08:00

I had forgotten about the traditional New Year's dinner
until I saw the grocery ads at the end of December.

My folks never forgot. Every January first there were
bowls of turnip greens and black eyed peas and a
platter of hog jowl on the table.

The greens were supposed to represent bills, the peas
coins, and the meal an assurance of good luck all the
year, as one of the grandmothers would remind us.
If Grandma Brewer was there, she and Daddy kept
urging one another to another helping, joking about
how rich they would become if only they could eat
enough greens and peas. Grandma's chin would be
shiny with grease from the fat meat. Grandma Jones
would even laugh and comment on how much the
others were eating, and she would put a little more
on her own plate than usual.

Nobody paid any attention to me, they knew I would
be picking at the food. The greens weren't bad with a
dash of vinegar from the bottled hot pepper and there
was cornbread with a bit of margarine, but the peas
were cooked until the water they were cooked in was
thick as brown gravy. The little slab of fat meat- they
couldn't afford a large piece- had been cooked in the
peas so it was also as brown as the pea stock and it
quivered when anyone walked across the floor. Even
if I believed that it meant good luck, I couldn't bring
myself to touch it.

And I didn't believe. Every year the same ritual with
the peas, the greens, the jowl, and every year there
were months when the rent wasn't paid, the many
breakfasts that consisted only of biscuits and margarine,
the school lunch times when I would work at my desk
while the other children ate.

I don't think they really believed in the magic of peas
and jowl, either, but my grandmothers had always had
the special New Year's dinner and my parents carried
on the tradition. Traditions are comforting, and who
knows? maybe this year would be better. I think it was
a ritual not of belief, but of hope.

The Blago Book Club

2008-12-11T22:26:00.000-08:00

The Chicago Sun-Times "opinion writers", under the
heading of "Blago Book Club", are having a discussion
with readers of the 78 page indictment of Illinois
Governor Rod Blagojevich. What did you like best
about it? Which part is most interesting?

in a related matter, Barack Obama's senate seat is for
sale on eBay, not by the Illinois Governor, who was
doing his best to auction it off, but by a college student
who will send the winner a before-and-after picture of
the supposed seat and by a pair of young men pictured
holding the "seat" aloft and promising a free domain
name to the winner.

Blagojevich is probably kicking himself for not having
thought of eBay, he must have forgotten Sarah Palin's
example. Too bad there isn't a Nobel Prize for
corruption. Blagojevich would surely win it this year.
He has even shocked the citizens of Chicago, that city
where offices and whole wards have been for sale,
where the dead rise from the graveyards and march
to the polls.

But one Chicago woman, after reading about
Blagojevich said: "We might as well open up the
jail house and turn those people out to run the
government.

Welfare Queens

2008-12-02T23:05:00.000-08:00

The top dogs of the Big Three automakers zoomed
into Washington, tin cups in hand, seeking handouts
of taxpayers' money. They came in their three
separate corporate jets, flights costing thousands of
dollars, couldn't even jet pool.

GM's president didn't like the idea of being asked if
he was willing to give up his $22-million salary.
Ford's Alan Mulally made slightly less last year- only
$21.6-million.

The American Insurance Group (AIG), shortly after
a multi-billion handout financed by taxpayers,
treated four executives and friends to a pheasant
hunt in England. Total cost: $86,000. AIG had, a
month or so before, provided a $500,000 retreat at
a fancy California spa for its top dogs. After sipping
fine wines and shooting pheasants, its hand was out
again for a few more billions.

Remember when Ronald Reagan created the myth of
the Welfare Queen? This was supposedly a brazen
creature who showed up in a Cadillac to collect
welfare checks, several of them. The effort to portray
as rich cheats those forced to subsist on welfare
continued for another decade or so. Too bad Reagan
isn't around to see these real live Welfare Queens.

Hope is Not Enough

2008-11-19T21:48:00.000-08:00

My vote, here in the red belly of Georgia, didn't help
elect him, and I doubt that my urging others to vote
for Barack Obama had much effect. No one
seemed impressed by my Obama/Biden buttons,
nor indeed seemed even to notice that I wore them.
The signs I placed in my yard near the road were
only there for three days before they were stolen.

I didn't get to Chicago for the mass ceremony in
Grant Park where I participated in the protests
against the Vietnam War forty years ago. I have
no television reception, but I did get to watch on
my computer as people came into the park, and
the park filled until faces stretched far into the
distance and still there were people coming down
the sidewalks, then after the speech the great
surging mass moved slowly toward the exits until
little clumps of people could break away and
start walking back along the sidewalks. And I was
deeply moved, especially by all the beautiful young
people, but also by those of all ages who had been
told by the leader they elected that he believed in
them. America can be rebuilt. he told them, repeat-
ing several times the phrase they would echo back:
"Yes we can".

I hope they will still be able to believe in themselves
at the end of the next four years. I hope they aren't
counting on recovering the way of life they once had,
for no leader, no matter how qualified, is going to be
able to more than leverage a few speed bumps into
the downward spiral of a morbid and decaying system.

Never Mind the Polls

2008-11-04T00:36:00.000-08:00

The polls aren't necessarily right, said John the
Candidate, he who likes to campaign with Joe the
Plumber. No matter that even the Fox News poll
shows Obama winning, he says he's going to turn
this race around: "I'm a fighter!"

He's only echoing some of the news stories: It
ain't over til its over, and so forth. Some are
hinting, some simply stating, that many who say
they're voting for Barack Obama will chicken
out once they're in the privacy of the polling
booth. They're afraid they'll be called racist if
they tell the truth: They won't vote for a Black
man.

I'm sure this will be true in some cases. So
many questions about the accuracy of the polls
made me uneasy, too, until I read a comment on
one of the forums: ask the bookies! When it
concerns their pocketbooks, they'll try very hard
to get it right.

Although online gambling is illegal in the U.S., sites
based in other countries offer odds to anyone who
wants to bet, and the odds against a McCain win
are very long- 7 to 1 and up, with the numbers
reversed for Obama. A couple of the sites no longer
offer bets on Obama.

I wish I could be in Grant Park Tuesday night. I
was there 40 years ago when Chicago's finest
clubbed and gassed anti-Vietnam War protesters.
We were trying to get a message to the Democratic
Party hacks secluded further down the shoreline,
blind and deaf, nominating Hubert Humphrey, paving
the way for Nixon to win.

I don't think Obama will always hear us either, or
that he will end the war in Iraq as swiftly as he
indicated when he first began to run. But I voted
for him, and I wish I could be in Grant Park again,
this time with a more valid hope for peace.

Signs of the Times

2008-10-28T23:43:00.000-07:00

I got signs.
Two of them, one on each side of the entrance to
my driveway. I was not only the first kid on my
block, but the first for miles around to display
Obama/Biden signs. On the entire 22 mile
stretch of highway I drive to my book building
and back, I have seen signs for all the candidates,
but nary an Obama sign.

I had made two fruitless trips to the storefront
campaign headquarters of the local Democratic
Party. The first time, about six weeks ago, I was
told they had been ordered, should be in any time.
That prevented me from ordering any from the
Obama website. On my second visit, I got the
impression there wouldn't be any more. But-
lo and behold- they did get a few, two whole
weeks before the election. So here I was in this
deep red state with blue Obama/Biden signs.

And I had them for two whole days before
they were stolen. The sign I've had for a
local candidate, also by the entrance to the
driveway, still stands. Some folks must feel
so threatened by the idea of Obama becoming
president that even the signs need to be kept out
of sight. I don't think my signs would have made a
difference in how people are going to vote. I did
want to show my support for the one I think is the
best candidate. A lot of us have already voted.

One poll, the "Insider Advantage" (never heard of
them before), gives Obama a one point lead in
Georgia, but all the rest have McCain leading by
one to six points, and I think they are probably right.

But there are maps showing Georgia faded
to pink- or is it old rose?- and some
commentators are saying it is now purple.
Maybe the signs really were a threat- but
no, there have been reports of stolen Obama
signs all over the country for weeks now.

Some folks who are losing their one house will
vote for the man who couldn't remember how
many he owns.

Early Voting

2008-10-22T21:36:00.000-07:00

I've voted.
Early voting is great. Go when it's convenient. Get it
over with. The local Democratic Party still hasn't
made much effort on behalf of their national
candidate. Still no yard signs, no buttons available.
The lone staff person told me that Georgia isn't a
battleground state. The attitude is that it's solid
red and pretty apt to stay that way. Yet there are
indications that the red color is bleeding. I think
the red will be on their faces if Obama takes the
state, or even if there's a tie, and it is possible.

Yet another reason why I am not a member of
the Democratic Party. If I were, I would feel
obligated to help elect everyone who ran on
their ticket. But I vote for candidates, not
parties. This time I voted for two Republicans
for local offices.

A relative who voted for Bush in the last two
national elections says he's voting for the
Libertarian candidate. He's thoroughly disgusted
with Bush., but says "I can't see that Obama
would do anything for me."

I don't think he'll do much for me, either. I don't
own stock, and have no children or grandchildren
of military age. I voted to end the war in Iraq and
with the hope of medical care for all those who have
been suffering and dying early without it.

One woman I talked to said she's voting for McCain
because Obama will raise taxes. She lost her job and
has only two more weeks of unemployment insurance
to collect, says she's going to file for an extension of
benefits. The factory where she worked has laid off
more workers recently, and another local factory is
going to close entirely, throwing 400 more workers
onto a shrinking job market. But when I said Obama
would not raise taxes, but would lower them for the
factory workers like her, she brought up the Muslim
angle.

Suddenly I understood McCain's steady barrage of
lies about Obama's person and character. No one
is expected to believe them, but they provide excuses
for what some people plan to do anyway. They are
especially useful for those who cannot bring them-
selves to vote for a Black man.

Missing Signs

2008-09-18T23:22:00.000-07:00

The candidates' signs sprouted and bloomed in
yards, vacant lots, on street corners, beside
public buildings, or any other place where they
can be viewed from the road. They were planted
before the April primary, and some still flourish,
those touting the losers having withered and fallen.

But driving through Chattooga County and on up into
Walker, I've seen no signs for Obama, nor any for
Obama-Biden.

I went by the Chattooga County Democratic Party
headquarters, newly opened in a storefront less than
a month ago in Summerville, the county seat, to get
a sign for my yard.

There were stacks of signs for the party's other
candidates: Coker for state senator, Reece for state
representative, Winters for county commissioner, but
none for their candidate for the country's top office. I
was told they had run out of Obama signs but would
be getting some in shortly, "and some buttons, too."

A couple hours later I was at the gym to work out.
There I talked to a weight lifter who had an "Obama-
'08" bumper sticker on his car. He said he'd been
trying to get the Obama signs, too, said he was at the
Democratic Party office two weeks before and had
been told they had run out of the signs but would be
getting some more "shortly".

"Same thing I was told today," I said.

"I even left my phone number," he said, "asked them
to call when they got the signs in. They never called."

"I haven't seen any signs out," I said.

He said there are some. "Drive down Highland
Avenue, there's plenty through there, and all around
that area."

Yes. Well. That is where Blacks settled when the
city was totally segregated, and the area is still
mostly Black (and the cities are still segregated,
albeit in more subtle ways).

Does the color of the presidential candidate mean
that the signs promoting him are also segregated?

Couple days later an article in the local newspaper
quoted the Democratic Party chairman as saying that
Obama signs are being stolen and McCain signs are
being placed in front of those that are left in place.

But why are there no yard signs along the highways
and the major streets? Surely some of the houses are
occupied by Democratic Party members who could
quickly replace any stolen signs.

The majority of the local Democrats voted for Hilary
Clinton in the primary. And some stated they could
vote for neither Clinton nor Obama. I will not be
surprised if they vote for McCain in Novemember.

I also vote for candidates, not parties. I'm not happy
with the way Obama has waffled and changed
positions, but I will vote for him in November. I
certainly will not vote for a lying warmonger so
intent on seizing power for his cronies that he will
do and say anything in order to get elected. I know
of several who traditionally vote either Democrat or
Republican, but now say they will vote for indepen-
dents or third party candidates.

I would like to join them. I would like to vote for
Cynthia McKinney, the Green Party candidate. But
with the war abroad and the war at home against
working people and families, the situation is too
serious in this tight race to throw a vote away.
Actually, protest votes can only help McCain.

Come to think of it, I haven't seen many McCain/
Palin signs, either.

Playing Hookey

2008-08-21T22:52:00.000-07:00

Kept running up against blank walls. Tried to get
Buckie's hair clipped- too hot for him in this August
heat- the dog groomer had gone out of business.

Went to get me clipped- the hairdresser had just left.
Tried to place a classified ad, but the deadline for
classifieds had been changed and I had just missed it.

So the only sensible thing to do was to say the hell
with it all and go swimming.

I don't like swimming in friends' and relatives' little
pools. The warm water and limited laps make me
think of swimming in a bathtub. My favorite swim-
ming hole is at Little River in Mouth Park. That's
the Canyon Mouth Park. Little River Canyon winds
along Lookout Mountain inside Alabama, the
deepest gorge east of the Mississippi. The turbulent
waters attract whitewater enthusiasts, and its falls
plunge past rocks and fossils that are millions and
millions of years old. But I drive to the park where
the river, having left the mountain, flows gently, with
broad expanses easily accessible to swimmers.

I didn't go all last year because of the drought,
certain that the water would be low and turgid.
But with all the rainfall this past spring and
summer I thought it should be better this year.
And so it was, but still not the pleasant swimming
place I remember.

The water was warm and I could easily have walked
from bank to bank, had to wade out quite a way to
get in water deep enough for swimming. Silt and leaf
debris floated up with my every step, clouding the
water and making it seem unclean.

In other years- and I have been going to this park
for more than 20- the water was pleasantly cold,
the current swift enough to continuously refresh
and cleanse the swimming area, but not so swift as
to threaten a less-than-expert swimmer.

When I first began going there to swim, it was an
Alabama State Park with attendants who patrolled
the area to ensure that everyone obeyed their many
posted do's and dont's. I was delighted when the
Feds took it over about 16 years ago, did away with
the signs and the patrolling, added the Little River
Canyon National Preserve to the National Park
System. I once overheard one of the State Park
workers saying that people liked coming to the park
because Blacks were kept out. I kept watching to
see how this was carried out, and could find no
evidence. The ostracism must have been effected
in subtle ways, which is not unusual for this area of
the South.

There have been Blacks since the park became part
of the national park system, and now it's a favorite of
hispanics who come by the carful with lots of little
children. I don't go on weekends, for I've been told
it's crowded then, the water thick with bodies, the
grills and stone picnic tables all occupied.

I have many times left home at 6 p.m. to arrive in the
park at 6 Alabama time with 2 whole hours left until
the park closed at 8. And I have frequently been the
only evening swimmer, just me gliding through the
water under a blue, blue sky, or floating through
water so clear that I could watch the fish below me.

The official word is that the drought continues despite
all the rain and that it would take three more years of
normal rainfall to recover. The river may not be fully
recovered next year, but surely it will be better-
cleaner, deeper, closer to the swimming place that I
have treasured. I surely hope so. I shall keep looking
toward next summer, and I will go again this year
even if it's not as great as I'd like. It's still better than
swimming in bathtubs or in overcrowded public pools.

Will the Stimulus Stimulate the Economy?

2008-08-01T23:52:00.000-07:00

Did anyone really believe that the "stimulus" check hand-
outs would revive the economy?

Unemployment and food prices still rising, and talk now
of a second "stimulus" package needed, as in "well, we
threw that money down a hole and it disappeared from
sight, so maybe we better fling some more after it."

About half those responding to one poll said they'd pay
on their debts. One report stated that many were spending
at least part of their money on websites offering
pornography. Most of these are located in other countries
so the U.S. won't benefit much but the speculation was
that embattled consumers had an urge to stimulate
themselves.

Spend it on gas was another response. Although it's now
about 30 cents less per gallon, a tank full takes a huge
chunk out of most workers' paychecks.

I'm among those who will be be giving the oil magnates what
will amount to small change for them. My $300 will just about
cover the increase in the price of 300 gallons of propane. I'll
be spending about the same amount of my own money- plus
the "stimulus" check- to keep icicles from forming on my bod
this winter. I don't think either the economy or myself is
going to be stimulated, but I guess it's better than waiting for
the Bush tax cuts to the rich to trickle down. That trickling
petered out long before it reached my level.

Signs of the Times

2008-07-21T00:13:00.000-07:00

My granddaughter's boyfriend was laid off from his job at
a body shop near Atlanta. People are cashing insurance
checks, he said, and not getting their autos repaired.

The same thing is happening in this area. I started
noticing all the crumpled fenders, dented doors,
crooked bumpers. I've seen plastic over broken-out
windows and wired-on tail lights. The driver of that
Neon with the bashed-in side could use the check to
make two mortgage payments, and the car still gets
her there and back. Or maybe she used it to buy gas.
As I write, the best price per gallon here is $3.81, still
hovering around $4.00 at some stations.

Chattooga has the highest unemployment rate of all North
Georgia counties, over 14% as compared to the state's
slightly over 5%. Foreclosures in the legal section of the
local paper are at a record high for the past year.
Factories have closed, the county's largest employer, a
textile mill, laid off 200 last spring.

One bright spot: the United States Department of
Agriculture (USDA), in cooperation with the local
school board, has been providing free meals for
children throughout June and July. Any child 18 or
under can get one free meal a day at various locations
staffed by volunteers. After school starts in August,
children can get free lunches at school.
At least the little children are eating every day.

Another War?

2008-07-06T23:33:00.000-07:00

Shell, BP, Exxon, and Total are signing a no-bid contract,
supposedly for service and technical support in the Iraqi
oil fields. Supposedly for a period of two years.

Sounds like they're getting a toe hold in the country that
threw them out after Saddam Hussein nationalized the oil
36 years ago. The four western oil companies had
combined into the Iraq Petroleum Company to exploit
Iraq's oil for more than fifty years, until the industry was
nationalized in 1972.

Blood on the oil, or no blood for oil, has been the theme of
signs carried in every protest against the war, and, according
to a report in The Independent, UK, many Iraqis "are
convinced that the hidden purpose of the US invasion was to
take over Iraqi oil" but, the report continues, "the Iraqi Oil
Minister, Hussein Shahristani, has said that Iraq will hold on
to its natural resources. 'If Iraq needs help from
international oil companies, they will be invited to
co-operate with the Iraqi National Oil Company [Inoc],
on terms and conditions acceptable to Iraq..."
(The Independent 20 June 2008)

The photo accompanying this news report shows a U.S.
soldier guarding Iraq's oil fields. He seems to cast a
shadow over possibilities of the war's end.
Representatives of the Big Four have expressed
concerns about security and stability, even as they
are eager to return to the oil fields.

Their presence will be the excuse for continuing the
U.S. occupation of Iraq. Senator Obama has wavered in
his commitment to end the war, and completely reversed
his position on wiretapping.

The Bush/Cheyney team of butchers are eager to invade
Iran and Congress seems unprepared to prevent them. It
is up to the people to say No! Not another illegal war!
Emergency actions are planned for New York City and in
cities across the country on August 2nd. Details at
www.stopwaroniran.org

Two Women

2008-06-21T22:27:00.000-07:00

They stood near the cleaning products in the Dollar Store,
the day before Super Tuesday, discussing the candidates.

"Not a woman," the older one was saying, "women don't
belong in a place like that. It ain't right!" She looked to be
about 60, but could have been younger, her face care-worn
beneath dyed black hair. "And that's not just me saying it,
that's what God says," and she rolled out the word "God" in a
loud, commanding voice.

"But the other one.." the younger woman began, lifting her
hands from her shopping cart to spread them in a helpless
gesture. She was about half the other woman's age, short
and overweight, her slacks bunched around her heavy
thighs, but her face attractive under skillfully applied makeup.

The older woman interrupted, her voice trembling with
emotion: "Oh, I pray to God he don't get in!"

Then they were speaking with lowered voices so I
couldn't hear the words, but I guessed they were
discussing the dilemma of race and gender, but possibly
in less kindly terms. Their mission was the same as mine,
to stretch their few dollars by buying some basic supplies
where prices are a bit lower than those in the
supermarkets.

Maybe they voted for Mike Huckaby, he carried our
county and won the state of Georgia. A lot of voters
found him comfortable, non-threatening. But Hilary
Clinton captured the county for the Democrats;
Obama won the state.

A woman and a Black man running for the highest
office in the land, and both getting a large number
of votes. Unthinkable only a few years ago. Obama
rings out the message of a need for change- our world
has already changed and is changing. The winds of
change have been more like a hurricane, blowing those
who refuse to accept change into the corners of life and
eventually into the dustbins of history.

Climate Change?

2008-06-15T22:56:00.000-07:00

Oh, they tell me of a land where no storm clouds rise,
Oh, they tell me of a land far away,
Oh, they tell me of an unclouded day

This song kept running through my mind recently.
Somebody's idea of heaven. Whoever wrote it never
spent much time in North Georgia during the summer.
August heat is blasting us already, even before
summer has officially begun. Atlanta registered a
record-breaking 98 degrees last Monday. Low to mid-
90's here everyday, and I went out and bought a fan.

What a relief when the storm clouds rose. Lots of
lightning slashing the humid air and crashing thunder.
The water in the creek had been receding, evaporated by
the heat, and I had been carrying water to my tomato and
pepper plants every evening, only to see the plants
beginning to wilt the next day, the earth around them
like dust.

The break didn't last long. Next day muddy water filled
the creek, rolling on toward the Chattooga River, but the
sun blazed forth hot as ever. Another forecast rain supposed
to bring the temperature down ten degrees failed to
materialize. We had the lightning and thunder- a sound and
fury that signified nothing- but only a sprinkle here.
Now we're hearing that it will be 105 to 110 when summer
actually arrives.

And only a couple months ago I was growing impatient with
sweaters and jackets and longing for the time when I could
run outside barefoot.

I should have listened to those older and wiser folks who
used to say: "Be careful what you wish for."
Be careful- for it might come true.

Dixie Highway Yard Sale

2008-06-02T10:29:00.000-07:00

The third annual ninety-mile Dixie Highway Yard Sale will
be held June 6-8, it's always the first weekend in June.

Beginning on Highway 41 at Ringgold, Georgia, it
meanders south, ending at Marietta. Some of the
town names south of Ringgold:

Tunnel Hill
Rocky Face
Resaca
Kennesaw

will be familiar to Civil War buffs, they are also the names
of battlefields. Most of the vendors are located along 41,
which used to be the major north-south highway. When I
moved to Chicago in 1963, that was the route I took. It
went through every city and required a sharp eye to keep
up with all the twists and sharp turns.

Those were the days of mom-and-pop motor courts, long,
low buildings of stucco or concrete every few miles. The
rooms were small and spartan, the baths tiny, just
functional. But a room for the night cost only $5 to $15.

41 through Dalton, as we drove through North Georgia,
used to be called bedspread alley. Clothes lines hung with
chenille bedspreads lined both sides of the road. It was also
called candlewick and started there as a cottage industry
with the colored tufting done by hand. The invention of
tufting machines enabled the change to a major town
industry. The bedspreads had colorful patterns, a
favorite was the peacock.

They also had housecoats. I had one once. The cloth was
thin with little warmth between the rows of tufting. It
wasn't very good for getting up on cold winter mornings
to build fires.

I've been told that chenille items bring a good price now
as vintage clothing and spreads.

Someday I'm going to drive 41 north again as far as I can
go. A friend visiting me a few years ago did this. She
got discouraged after being cut off too many times and
went back on the interstate. The interstate was just being
built when we were driving back south during the 1970's.
Much of 41 was two-lane and even the four-lane sections
were slowed by traffic lights, so it was a luxury when we
hit a stretch of completed I-69 or I-24, but it was always
back to 41 again.

The yard sale vendors will be set up along 41 and 293, a
map will be available to show the various turns. The route
will take us through the main streets of the towns, just as
folks used to have to travel. Sounds like only one thing is
lacking: the Burma Shave signs.

More information about the yard sale here.

About Obama's White Grandmother

2008-04-25T22:25:00.000-07:00

It has been called "the greatest speech about race in
America in a generation," described as "Eloquent",
"Historic"; The New York Times compared the speech
by Barack Obama to those of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin
D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy.

Yet, soon after the last words had been uttered, reactionary
critics swarmed upon it like so many vultures picking out bits
of it to toss about. The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the pastor
Obama has refused to sever from his life, has become the
Willie Horton of this presidential campaign.

But the most vicious remarks have been made about Obama's
remarks about his white grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, who
helped raise him. Some have gone so far as to accuse him of
denying his white ancestory, of locking his grandmother away
and forbidding her to participate in his campaign. She is 84,
her back painful from osteoporosis, and has refused to make
any statements when reporters try to contact her by phone.

Others say he insulted her by stating she had been afraid
of Black strangers and had made stereotypical comments.
These critics, hardly any of whom can speak of Obama as
a candidate without refering to his race, cannot acknowledge
how it is almost impossible for a white person who has lived
in the United States for four or five decades to be totally free
of racial prejudice. Those who proclaim themselves without
prejudice are usually unaware of how they give themselves
away in remarks they make.

Their attitude toward the Rev. Wright's anger is similar to
that of a local newspaper which, when referring to an
incident of racial injustice, stated: "but that was before Civil
Rights," as if the valiant struggles for the right to vote, ride
buses, and eat at lunch counters, ended with the slate wiped
clean. It's as if to say, "It's bad, but that was yesterday".

Ah, but we old people grew up during those yesterdays,
daily we saw peoples of color denied good jobs and decent
housing, even if we didn't believe the prevailing myths, that
"they" were living where they wanted to live, with "their own
kind". We were inundated with racist media. Racism and
separatism was as much a part of our lives as the air we
breathed. Many of us were aware of the injustices and
regretted the way things were, but most of us couldn't
spend a great deal of time questioning because of our
own struggles to survive.

The younger folks of all colors are not burdened with the old
baggage their grandparents carried. They see Blacks with
good jobs, Black elected officials, policemen, firemen,
university professors, and so forth. Which is not to say that
prejudice has been wiped out. Far from it: there are still
ghettoes in most cities, there are unwritten laws that
prevent Blacks from choosing just where they wish to live,
and there are young people who have absorbed the
prejudices of their elders.

Just recently I heard of a white high school girl thrown out
of her California home for dating a young Black man. The
difference now is that they will not be ostracized by all of
society- a white classmate's family took her in- and they
can remain friends. Furthermore, that young white woman
who has grown up seeing Black students and teachers at
school, Blacks working at every kind of job, and in elected
positions, will remain more free of prejudice than her parents
and grandparents who have experienced different social
conditions.

But it doesn't matter much whether Obama's critics believe
all this or not. Most were already against him because of his
Black skin. Their outrage over his remarks about his
grandmother and about his pastor's diatribes will simply give
them another reason to cast a vote against him, as they had
already planned to do.

Making Memories

2008-03-19T23:07:00.000-07:00

A study published in the March 7 issue of the Journal of
Alzheimer's Disease found that people with Alzheimer's
showed more signs of cleavage of a molecule called amyloid
precursor protein (APP) than people without the disease.

But the researchers also found that the brains of younger
people without Alzheimer's had about 10 times as much
APP cleavage as Alzheimer's patients.The conclusion was
that younger brains make memories faster than they lose them.

"Young brains operate like Ferraris -- shifting between for-
ward and reverse, making and breaking memories with a
facility that surpasses that of older brains, which are less
plastic," research group leader Dr. Dale Bredesen said in a
prepared statement.

"We believe that in aging brains, AD occurs when the
'molecular shifting switch' gets stuck in the reverse position,
throwing the balance of making and breaking memories
seriously off kilter," Bredesen said.

My conclusion is that, as usual, the medical community,
including doctors and researchers, simply do not know.
Next year they will have a different theory.

I could carry the automobile analogy to the logical
conclusion that our old rusted-out bodies are ready for
the place where cars are crushed into neat little blocks
and sold for scrap, which could be a neat alternative to
so-called "funeral homes". And I could say some take
better care of their automobiles than their own bodies:
they get the oil changed, put in the proper fuel, then
drive through a MacDonald's for their own
fuel, or order a pizza while sitting in front of the TV.

I prefer just now to dwell upon the glaring contradiction
in this study. The brains of people with Alzheimer's showed
more cleavage...than the brains of people without Alzheimer's,
but the brains of younger people without Alzheimer's had
about 10 times as much APP cleavage as did the brains of
Alzheimer's patients.

Oh wait, these were young Ferraris speeding along life's
highway making memories and breaking them. They must
have wrecked on that highway, however, in order to have
their brains dissected by the researchers.

I'm remembering the researchers and doctors who decided
that people with heart disease shouldn't eat egg yolks, just
the whites. Now yolks seem to be back in fashion: so long
to those overpriced artificial substitutes. And most of all I'm
remembering all those women who dutifully kept filling their
prescriptions for hormone replacement therapy until they
were told stop! Those artificial hormones can cause you to
have cancer!

And I think about the diabetics who are given diets that can
be poor in nutrition- the very quality the diabetic needs most-
so long as it includes the prescribed number of "choices" from
the various food groups.

Doctors have told me I do not need to take vitamins, and this
without having any knowledge whatsoever what I eat. At the
other extreme, a worker at the clinic where I went two years
ago for a dexa scan asked if I ate Tums, and, because I
answered "No", wrote that I was taking no calcium
supplements.

I think one way to stay healthy and preserve one's memory
longer is to stay away from doctors as much as possible.
Doctors whip out a prescription pad. They prescribe drugs.
That is how they have been taught to respond to all illness.
Drugs are dangerous. Just say "No".

More Peeping

2008-03-04T22:08:00.000-08:00

I thought the spring peepers had done their thing and gone
back to wherever it is they stay the rest of the year.

After a balmy Super Tuesday, it rained and turned cold again.
For a few days it was very cold for these parts, snow on the
mountain top, up to 4 inches in places. Only light flurries here
in the valley, but there was a lacy edging to my book building
when I went there to pick up books ordered.

Then the weekend before the big March 4th primaries, they
were at it again, both in the spring water deep in the woods
across the road and at the pond in my neighbor's pasture,
Their voices too loud and shrill to call the sound peeping.
It was 70 degrees and sunny as I worked in the yard that
Sunday, listening to the frog choruses to the north and to
the south of me. I won't indulge in anthropomorphism and
say they're timing their concerts as a prelude to the
primaries, but the jubilant abandon with which they sing
out makes an appropriate background to the voting
excitement.

Now I know why I had been under the impression that they
are calling for rain: it is simply because of our normal
weather cycle at this time of year. It will be cold, sometimes
with frozen ground, then gradually warm up and then there
will be one or two shirtsleeve days, and the frogs will come
out and sing. It always rains and turns cold again, and
always then the frogs are silent.

This time their appearance is a prelude to spring, just as the
writers say about the peepers in the northern states. There
are jonquils, and there are a few white blossoms on my
pearl bush, scotch broom has been blooming for about a
month now, And there are both upright and umbrella-type
flowering quince near the library, the branches covered
with red flowers, so bright and pretty I wish I had planted
some here last fall.

But my priority is to get one of my small garden beds sowed
with greens. I've hauled in buckets and cans of cow manure
and got the soil loose and mixed, but it isn't raked and ready
yet. Too wet now from Tuesday's downpour.

Freezing rain washed down on the intrepid Ohio voters.
That would be a state where it would be another week
or so before the peepers appear, according to those
northern writers who state they appear in mid-march.
That is, if Ohio has spring peepers.

Spring Preview

2008-02-24T22:56:00.000-08:00

On the evening of Super Tuesday the spring peepers burst
into sound. Accounts I've read elsewhere state that the
peepers can be heard as early as mid-March, and are a
sign that spring is on the way.

Mid-March indeed. Those were northern writers
accustomed to colder climes. The peeping has
always started here in Northwest Georgia in
February, but even so, the 8th, the Big Tuesday,
was a little early for them.

It had been an unusually warm day, which probably
helped to bring them out, just as it had helped the voter
turn-out, even in the states further north, according to
news accounts. After dark it was much cooler, but yet
not really cold. Clouds covered the moon and hid the
stars, and I knew that the balmy day, rather than
beginning spring, simply presaged the coming rain,
whose heirs, in turn, would be more freezing nights
and mornings.

I was still wearing my "I'm a Georgia voter" sticker
when I slipped into my old coat, strapped on my
headlight, and headed off to the woods across the
road. Buckie trotted ahead of me, stopping to sniff
here and there, but still managing to navigate the thorny
underbrush and pine thickets better than ever I can.

As it seems that the frogs have always been singing on
a day before it rained, I used to think they were singing
for the rain, sort of a vocal rain-dance ceremony.

Now I know their shrill, ear-splitting chorus is only
the background for their annual orgy. Other creatures
engage in group sex, but no others mate amidst such
loud and jubilant rejoicing.What a great way to celebrate
being alive and aware again after the death-like sleep of
hibernation. One account I read stated that most of the
frog's body can be frozen while hibernating and not prevent
its full recovery.

The peepers do not choose the creek, but favor the spill-
over from a spring in the midst of the woods. There was
once a farmhouse, and perhaps some sort of spring house
where the farmer's wife set butter and milk to cool in warm
weather. Both are long gone, but the barn still stands, lights
from cars along the road glinting on its tin roof.

There are deep ruts from the heavy equipment used by
Georgia Power to clear beneath the power lines, and along
these ruts, eroded into ditches, flow small tributaries toward
the creek.

Following the ruts, one skirts a sort of marsh land, then the
small pools here and there, before reaching the larger body of
water that is the spring. As I draw closer, the sound becomes
deafening. What was a pleasant evening sound as I was
leaving my yard becomes cacophony close at hand.

You would think such noise would mask the sound of my
careful footsteps, already muffled by the thick carpet of
wet leaves. Yet, when I get too close to one of the pools
or ditches the sound stops. Or most of it. There are always
two or three laggards peeping on for a second or two, then
cutting off in mid-note, as if suddenly aware of the
strangeness of solo singing.

The coordination of the frog singers seems remarkable:
together they sing from pools scattered across a large
area, together they stop and sit in dead silence, no sound
but the distant rippling of the creek.

No matter how stealthy my approach, I cannot see any
of the tiny frogs at night. The largest would be only about
one-and-a-half inches long, some are under the debris at
the bottoms of the pools laying eggs, others scattered
about the banks, their color blending with the dead leaves
under which they hide.

Not until Buckie and I are back in our yard are they again
giving full voice to the same urgent jubilation. They will sing
like this for about a week, mostly in the evenings, providing
a pleasant background to our lives beside the creek.

Almost two weeks after our walk in the woods, on the
day after the next round in the primary voting contest
this time, I heard spring peepers at the pond in my
neighbor's pasture. Those at the spring were quiet,
they've gone back into the woods, perhaps becoming
inanimate again during the cold nights.

There were far fewer at the pond, no deafening wave of
sound, it was more as if they were singing rounds than
creating a chorus. That they were there at all intrigues me.

The spring peeper is a tree frog. Although, according
to some naturalists, the tiny frogs spend as much time
on the ground as in the trees, their natural habitat is
the woods. They do not live in pastures. To get to the
pond from the closest woods they would have to cross
the creek and a wide stretch of grass, constantly in
danger of being eaten by crows before dark and by owls
at night, then again when they retrace their steps-
or hops- back to the woods, where they will live in
relative silence and obscurity for the rest of the year.

I suppose that just as the birds return to the area where
they once were nestlings to build their own nests, the
frogs spawned and metmorphosed from tadpoles in the
pond remember to return there, and so they do, every
February.

There are even fewer there this evening, no chorus, no
rounds, just solos and an occasional quartet. In another
month it will be spring by the calendar, but I am weary
of cold weather and bare trees and the peepers have
provided a welcome respite.

Pictures and a sound clip of their cries is available on
the National Geographic website.

And by the way, about that Super Tuesday: Hilary Clinton
won my precinct. But Obama won the state, my vote counted.

Washington's Birthday

2008-02-16T22:22:00.000-08:00

One February many years ago, Andy, my youngest child,
walked with me to our rural mailbox. The box was empty.

Oh," I said, "I forgot. There'll be no mail today. It's
Washington's Birthday."

Andy's eyes widened. "If he has a party, can we go?"

"Andy," I said, "Washington is dead. He's been dead for
a long, long time."

"Well why does he keep on having birthdays then!"
Andy started back to the house, disappointed.

Well, he doesn't anymore. Doesn't have his own day in
red on the calendar. Now it's Presidents Day. But there
will be no mail, a sort of holiday for me. I won't have to
get to the post office with my book orders packaged and
ready to mail.

Andy will be working as usual. Just another Monday for
him.

Purveyors of Violence

2008-02-13T22:05:00.000-08:00

Hey, Kids! What time is it?

Never mind. This is much too serious for that. The State of
the Union. President George W. Bush stating to us that the
union might be moribund, but he, George, is going to revive
it with a shot in the arm.

Shoveling money into the pockets of the wealthy didn't do
the job. Didn't trickle down, just a painfully slow ooze. Now
he's going to try the other arm. Trying to stave off the
Recession that's coming at us like a yapping dog about to bite.

A week before his speech, while he was performing a knee-
jerk tribute to Dr. King, he studiously avoided any mention of
war. He and Hilary. Both praised Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr.,
for his courage, for his leadership in the Civil Rights
Movement.

They wouldn't have mentioned his courageous stand against
the Vietnam War, the speech in which he branded the U.S.
Government as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the
world today", for if "Iraq" were substituted for "Vietnam",
the speech would indict Bush, Hilary Clinton, and all those
who instigated and voted for the war in Iraq.

Selma, Lord, Selma

2008-01-16T22:49:00.000-08:00

Shyann Webb was 8 and small for her age, Rachel West
was 9. Two little girls caught up in the marches, mass
meetings, police violence, of the 1965 campaign for
voting rights in Selma, Alabama, where less than 2% of
eligible African Americans were registered to vote.

They tell about it in the book:
Selma, Lord, Selma
by Shyann Webb and Rachel West Nelson
as told to Frank Sikora
1980 University of Alabama Press

There are photos showing these smallest marchers with
Dr. Martin Luther King, who, whenever he saw them
would call out, "What do we want?" and when they
would answer: "Freedom!" would say, "I can't hear
you," and make them say it louder and louder,
"Freedom! Freedom!"

And a photo of the two on a cold day when the
marchers had been halted, Shyann in a dress, her
little legs bare, Rachel's hand-me-down pants too
small, stopping inches above her socks. They
lived near one another in a housing project, their
large families, they said, lived mostly on rice and
coffee. But they marched, and they sang the freedom
songs. Dr. King called them to the front of the church
to lead the singing.

Shyann was at the meetings at Brown Chapel almost
every day, missing so much school she'd have to repeat
the grade the next year. She heard about the arrests, the
clubbings by policemen and sheriff's deputies, and the
death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, shot by a state trooper
in nearby Marion. That march and Jackson's death were
not covered by the media.

About three weeks later the Rev. James Reeb died from
injuries suffered when attacked by three white hoodlums.
Reeb was among the hundreds who poured into Selma
in response to "Bloody Sunday" when the marchers
were brutally attacked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
They had planned to march to Montgomery, the state
capital, to protest Jackson's death.

And there were other martyrs: Viola Liuzzo was shot
and killed in her car, on her way to transport marchers
from Montgomery. Jonathan Daniels, an Episcopalian
Seminary student, one of several supporters who stayed
with Rachel's family during the Selma protests, would be
shot by a sheriff's deputy just after being released from
jail in Lowndes County on August 20th.

The little girls talked about how they might also be killed.
Rachel was on the bridge on "Bloody Sunday" and only
escaped because another marcher picked her up and ran
with her to safety.

One night they looked up at the sky, searching for the
brightest star because they had heard that when
someone dies their soul becomes a star in the heavens.
One of them pointed out an especially bright star and
said that maybe that one was Jimmie Lee Jackson.

Reeb's death was the catalyst that spurred President
Johnson and Congress to push through the Voting Rights
Act. Johnson telephoned his sympathy to Reeb's family,
and he personally announced the arrest of the Klansmen
who shot Liuzzo.There was no sympathy call to Jackson's
family, no attempt to indict the trooper who shot him.
Liuzzo and Reeb were white, Jackson was Black.

Two little Black girls were right to believe that death could
come to them from a policeman's gun or club in the midst
of their songs about Freedom.

Welcome Winter Solstice

2007-12-24T21:55:00.000-08:00

December 22. I look forward to this day every time I come
home from work in the dark at 6 p.m.

From this day forward there will be just a bit more daylight..

Forget about the 25th. Had the old solstice celebrations,
with pigging out and dancing around decorated trees, been
allowed to continue, I would heartily join in. But the church,
unable to wrest this holiday from the people, moved the date
of Jesus's birth, and so we have the hybrid with Santa and
his reindeer and sleigh hovering over the manger. Let us
keep the Holy midnight watch with hymns and chanting
and prayer, then rush over to the 24-hour Walmart to
max out our plastic.

And forget about Daylight Shifting Time. Or savings. If it's
being saved, I'd like to know where so I could withdraw
a few hours.

Supposed to be a mild winter this year. Lowest temperature
so far has been 22. The greens I planted haven't grown very
big, but continue to survive and have provided me with
several meals so far. The seeds cost $3, the cost of the labor
carrying water from the creek to keep them alive not
recorded. But they taste better, and I believe they are more
nutritious, than those available in the grocery stores. With
the prices of food skyrocketing, gardening can become an
economic necessity. Shall we all have victory gardens, as in
victory over hunger?

By prepaying my winter's supply, propane has cost me the
same per gallon as last year, but I have read there will be a
steep price increase next year. I think about using some
electrical heat, but I'm afraid the cost of electricity will also
escalate.

Shorter days and shrinking dollars.

And economists say the housing foreclosure crisis
reverberates, causing a credit card crunch, more defaults and
a higher rate of overdue payments.

But the rich continue to receive tax relief and the Department
of Defense recently signed a contract potentially worth
750 million for an Atlanta advertising agency to create ads
that will entice young men into joining the U.S. Marine Corps.

Trying to be Thankful

2007-11-21T22:58:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving.
It's hard for me to give many thanks this year.

That first feast was later regretted by the Native Americans
who were persecuted and slaughtered by some of those
whom they had befriended; As a symbol of brotherhood,
it failed miserably for the African Americans imported as
slaves to raise, harvest, cook and serve the feasts. (Are
school children still being sent home with glowing tales of
the good pilgrims and the good Indians breaking bread
together? With drawings of fat turkeys and kindly
pilgrims?)

As a time of release from jobs when family and
friends can gather, it has some merit for all of us.
If we must be ruled by the calendar, then we must
seize those designated days and make the most of
them, though it would be better if we could create
our own holidays and celebrations.

And I will be thankful while I am with some of my
family this weekend, unendingly thankful that none
of them is missing from the table.

The world is so beautiful this year. The leaves are
falling, and the trees blaze gold and scarlet against
skies of a cool, autumn blue. The sunlight is mellow
and warm, punctuated by little chill breezes that
spring up now and then. How can it be so lovely just
now, for I am feeling again one of the penalties of living
so long- we outlive so many of those we love.

Two of my best friends, one I've known for 30 years,
the other since 1995, are living their last days.

I remember Charles Kuralt, during his Sumday
morning tv programs, telling us who had died
recently, and then saying:
"Oh, how can we ever do without them?"

And my heart now is echoing him, and he is
also among the missing and missed.

Buster, The Drunkard's Dog

2007-11-07T22:06:00.001-08:00

For three weeks of each month J. and B. were good
neighbors, the kind that are seldom seen or heard. Their
house could only be glimpsed from ours, but our gardens
adjoined, and we called back and forth across the fence
sometimes that summer.

They usually worked in the garden together, the literal
fruits of their labors abundant, the lush plants in neat rows.
Sometimes we traded, maybe peppers for green beans, or
beans for squash, and once B. gave me tomato plants she'd
started from seed. She'd sown them in an old washtub near
the shed where they kept a few tools, and she held out a
handful with bare roots, telling me to just put some dirt over
the roots until I could plant them. They were little spindly
things that didn't look as if they'd live, but we ate tomatoes
from them all summer.

I never saw J. and B. during the first week of the month. I
heard from another neighbor that was when J. got his social
security check, and we quickly learned how the money was
spent, for about mid-week we would hear him banging and
knocking the garden shed, demanding to be let out, his
hoarse calling and the dull thuds as if he were hitting the
walls with a two by four sometimes continuing into the night.

One day B. was in her garden trying to hoe with only one
arm, the other in a cast. She volunteered the cause: she'd
been standing in a chair, she said, trying to change a light
bulb when she fell. Another time a dark bruise spread
across her cheek to just under her eye, and she'd started
telling me about running into the edge of the door when J.
broke in to say that maybe next time she'd have sense
enough to turn on a light instead of wandering around
in the dark.

But I didn't question her then and seldom thought about
either of them when he wasn't yelling and pounding the
shed, for about midsummer we were having a greenhouse
built the length of one side of our house, 35 feet long by
10 feet wide. We would have some solar heat in the
drafty old farmhouse and grow tomatoes all winter, and
I, with four or five summers of gardening behind me, had
dreams of raising house plants and herbs and maybe
selling some as a sideline to the mail order book business
I had started.

Then one day we heard that B. was dead, J. arrested on
suspicion of having murdered her. An autopsy would be
performed and it could be a couple of weeks before the
exact cause of B.'s death could be determined. J. was
quoted as saying he couldn't remember what happened
that night.

He'd been locked up about a week before I connected
his absence with the dog that would lie in our yard every
day watching the men building the greenhouse. I thought
it lived nearby and simply liked being around people
while its owners were away during the day. Len, the
carpenter in charge of building the greenhouse, drew
my attention to it. He said it was a stray, he'd noticed
what I had not, that the dog was getting thinner, its ribs
beginning to show.

"You ought to keep him," he said, "there's nothing
wrong with him, look how clean his mouth is," and he
held the dog's mouth open, showing the pink inside.
"And he ain't blind in that eye," he waggled his fingers
toward the dog's blue eye and the dog blinked. His
other eye was brown. The dog ducked his head. He
liked the attention and was doing his best to appear
pleasing to us.

He was about half-grown, brown and white, a mix of
Australian shepherd and possibly beagle, and who
knew what else. I was touched by the idea of a dog that,
although he must have been slowly starving, had not asked
for anything except a place to be. When I fetched a bowl
of the food we'd bought for Gil's Irish setter, he wolfed it
down. After that, he stayed in our yard at night, too. Gil
asked me to name him and I suggested "Buster". I'd
known several Georgia boys called Buster for a nickname.
It seemed to suit.

He'd become Gil's dog, following him about the yard.
yearning after him for any word or touch, when we
heard that J. was at his sister's in the next town. The
sheriff had called her, told her to bring a little whiskey
when she came to pick him up, for he was in bad shape.

The autopsy showed that B. had also passed out drunk
that night, had vomited and aspirated, drowning in her
own vomit. She was only 47. I had thought she was in
her 60's.

J. finally came back home. When he passed our house
on his way to the store Buster walked with him, but
trotted back up our driveway when they returned,
leaving J. to walk on to his house with his groceries
alone. J. didn't seem to care. The dog had been put
out on the road near his house only a couple of weeks
before B. died, he said. His garden was overgrown
with weeds and he didn't bang the shed door anymore,
nor call to be let out.Before long he had moved away.
He would live only two or three more years before he
was with B. again, lying close beside her in eternal
peace.

Ginger, the Irish setter would be stolen on Lookout
Mountain while a friend and I were walking with her
on the shores of Lake Lahousage. We thought she
had just run ahead of us, but she must have gone
back up to the road and gotten picked up there.
We called and searched for her, and returned
several times to search for her, but we never
saw her again. Several dogs were stolen on the
mountain in the months to come, and only dogs
of recognizable breeds were taken. People were
saying that they were sold to be used in experiments
of various kinds.In spite of advertisements and
offered rewards and posters plastered all over, none
of the dogs was ever recovered.

Buster stayed with us for eight years. J. had said he was
really a smart dog, and so he was. He quickly recognized
that our cats- the four remaining of the eight we brought
from Chicago- belonged to us and were not to be harassed.
The cats came inside whenever they wished- they had their
own door- but Buster preferred to hang around the yard and
sleep in the shed. He never seemed to lose the sense of
wonder at having found a place where he was wanted. One
time when Gil was working in the shed, a mouse scampered
along one of the shelves. He told me that Buster looked at
him with an expression that clearly asked if that mouse was
also something that belonged to Gil.

But when I went walking with the dogs and we passed a
house with cats in the yard, Buster turned and gave me a
hard stare, then bolted into the yard and chased the cats.
The books I've read about the nature of dogs refer to
that type of stare as showing dominance. Buster was
letting me know that he would make a decision about
those cats that he knew were alien to me and to our
yard and home.

He would also chase squirrels, but never once caught one.
I remember Gil cheering on a squirrel the dogs had tried to
corner on the front porch. "Run, baby!" he was calling,
Run, baby, run!"

I was walking with Buster when Grace, the big muscular
dog, possibly part American bulldog with a bit of pitbull,
followed us home. She was about three times his size and
about half as intelligent as he, but they remained good
friends and companions until he developed cancer and had
to be euthanized.

I can still see them in memory, walking with me to the store,
the post office, or to the walking track, Grace's muscles
rippling as she strode along, Buster's white socks
twinkling as he trotted to stay even with her.

And I remember a late night when I was clearing water out
of the old store building where I keep my books after days
of torrential rains. Buster and Grace were on the sidewalk
in front of the building when a sheriff's car pulled up, the
deputies most likely wondering why the door was standing
open around midnight. The dogs sprang at the car,
dancing around it, sounding out their threats and dares,
Grace's deep voice underscoring Buster's barking.

I hurried out, afraid that if the deputies got out the dogs
might attack them, and equally afraid that the deputies
might shoot if they even thought the dogs would attack.

"I'm sorry," I called, "My dogs are only trying to protect me."

They stayed in the patrol car. "I wish," one of them said,
"I had dogs like that."

Be Thou Discontent

2007-10-31T22:44:00.000-07:00

"It distresses me not that the congregations of great
churches have become small, but that people continue
to use the Church as a refuge from the world's problems.
So much of the emphasis today is on escape from stress.
Some American ministers achieve a great hearing by
using self-help slogans to lull people into a dangerous
tranquility. There's too much talk about 'burn-out'.

"I'd rather see a healthy discontent...the American public
needs a lot of disturbing."

-- Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers,
quoted in No Stone Unturned: The Life and Times of Maggie
Kuhn, by Maggie Kuhn with Christina Long and Laura Quinn
New York 1991 Ballantine Books

Ms Kuhn was a life-long Presbyterian. It was after she was
forced to retire from her executive position with the national
headquarters of the Presbyterian Church at the age of 65,
that she founded the Gray Panthers- "Youth and Age in
Action"- and continued to be active with the group
through her 80's, agitating over such issues as housing,
medical care, social security, equal opportunity for women
and for minorities, and demanding that the old be treated
with dignity, and not, as was- and still is- so often the
practice, be patronized as if they were simply old children.

Unfortunately, the Gray Panthers are organized in only a
few states; There is no chapter in Georgia.

Once Upon a Halloween

2007-10-22T21:03:00.000-07:00

One Halloween at the Guild Bookstore in Chicago, we
suddenly realized what day it was and that we had no
treats for the goblins and ghosts who would soon be
coming by.

This was the late 1960's when the bookstore was on
Halsted Street in the Lincoln Park area. The
neighborhood just to the north of us was mostly
hispanic, many families with children.

We sent a member out to buy treats, but he had not
returned when they began coming to our door, the
witches and pirates and cartoon characters,
holding out their bags to be filled.

Although we primarily sold new books, we kept a
couple of shelves of used books to fill up space
until we could completely stock the store. Some
kindly soul had donated some Reader's Digest
Condensed Books, and these had been stacked
on the floor until someone could decide what to
do with them. They don't sell very well. Most
people prefer to read the whole book, and not
what is left after being chopped apart and
reassembled.

I passed by these stacks on my way to the door,
and in desperation I grabbed up an armload of
the Reader's Digest books.

To our great surprise, the children were delighted
with the books. Some asked for two. Some of the
adults herding the children about also held out their
hands. And there were children who came back for
a second book, or to bring a friend who hadn't
received one. And there were those who refused the
candies when they finally arrived, No, they said, they
wanted a book. The word had gotten around.

After all the Reader's Digests were gone, we gave out
books from the ten-cent box that usually sat in a chair
outside the door.

The candies that were left when the rush was over, we
put on our round table where members and customers
sat some evenings drinking pop and coffee and holding
heating discussions.

I sit at that same table now and drink my morning coffee,
and I was thinking about that Halloween 40 years or so ago.

The Last Blast

2007-10-20T22:29:00.000-07:00

Every year I look forward to the barefoot days of summer,
to ripe blackberries, and the odor of tomato vines when I
eat tomatoes beside the garden bed, and to swimming in
Little River and wading in Cane Creek.

And every year as August wanes I grow weary of the
heat, of cutting grass again and again, and of carrying
water to plants that wither and die despite my efforts.

It was especially so this August with days in a row with
temperatures of 100 or more. Records were broken in
Atlanta. The creek dried to isolated puddles, just as it
did last year, but earlier this time. By June the creek bed
was so void of water that the local newspaper reported
that it looked like a runway for four wheelers. The
Beavers abandoned it last year, and apparently so did the
watersnakes.I've seen only three different watersnakes
this year, and only one of the largest ones, and none of the
other kinds that live under and around the house.

A rain about mid-July filled the creek with water, but most
of the water was gone within a couple of weeks, and still
there are only scattered small puddles as October winds
down. A great blue heron is here every morning feasting
on the few small fish remaining in one of the puddles. I
think it is like the proverbial shooting fish in a barrel,
although they can dart to safety under the metal barrier
my sons erected to keep the creek from lapping at the
house foundation. I filled the space between the barrier
and the house with rocks, hauled them there on a
wheelbarrow, so there are places for the fish to hide
where the rocks are uneven.

I watched one puddle near the bridge as it shrank daily. It
was filled with tadpoles that did not have time to mature
before the water was all gone. Many creatures depend on a
supply of frogs for food. I kept thinking of the story by Ray
Bradbury which ended with a drastic change in government
because a man who went back in time had stepped on a
butterfly. The shortage of beavers, fish, and frogs in one
creek will surely not cause such an upheaval, but there will
be an effect.

All outside watering is banned in North Georgia. Atlanta
has three months of water storage. The docks of expensive
homes on the shores of Lake Lanier, source of Atlanta's
water supply are high and dry. The forecast is for a warm,
dry winter.Ordinarily, that would sound good, to be in the
wintertime warm and dry. But I fear that this prolonged
drought will be followed by floods and ice. Political
cartoonists for some of the conservative newspapers
continue to prod Al Gore with inane drawings.They
seem to be among those most inconvenienced by the
truth of global warming.

Marching Again

2007-10-13T20:33:00.001-07:00

The week-long encampment in Washington, September 22-
29, to stop the war at home and abroad, culminated in the
September 29th rally and march in which many community
organizations participated. Signs demanded justice for the
Jena Six and an end to foreclosures and evictions. There
was a FEMA trailer, signifying the continuing plight of the
Katrina refugees, and the Vietnam Veterans Against the
Iraqui War bus.See full coverage of the events here.
along with information about the upcoming October 27th
regional actions to demand an end to the U.S. occupation
of Iraq.

I marched on September 29th, traveled on a bus
chartered by Atlanta IAC (International Answer Center).
The photos above show some of my fellow passengers
waiting for the bus to pick us up for the trip back to
Atlanta.

"It's all about oil," Alan Greenspan said.
He should have said, "It's all about money"
The billions spent on the war are needed here
for adequate health care and low-interest
mortgages so people wouldn't have to lose their
homes, for funding libraries and building bridges
that won't collapse, and on and on and on.

More Wildflowers

2007-07-29T22:29:00.000-07:00

Passion Flowers, Passion Fruit.

We called them maypops when we were children.
The ripe fruit exploded with a sharp pop when crushed
underfoot. We'd eat some and leave the rest mangled
along the roadside, for we usually found them on ditch
banks, and there wasn't a lot inside to eat, just some
gelatinous matter with a lot of seeds.

It wasn't until I was grown that I heard them called
passion fruit, a name evocative of lust in far-off
tropical places.

Perhaps the cultivated ones have more edible material
and fewer seeds, but it would be hard to regard them
as exotic when farmers in the south have cursed them
as weeds between the corn rows. Their passion was
for getting rid of the vines before they wrapped tightly
around the young stalks.

But the passion was that of Christ on the cross, for just
as the cross is seen in dogwood blossoms, complete
with a brown smudge like dried blood at the tip of each
petal, so the inner circle of tiny, upright florets of the
passion flower are said to resemble the crown of thorns.

They are growing at the edge of my yard on the ditch bank
that borders the road. The grass in that area is long and
unkempt, for I won't mow it, the flowers too beautiful
to destroy.

I never realized how beautiful they are when I was a child.
Then they were only a signal to show me where I might
find the little round fruit that I could stomp and shatter
along the roadside.

Under the Spreading Fig Tree

2007-07-24T00:54:00.000-07:00

When we moved to North Georgia we started planning a
vegetable garden, talked about fruit trees, about how we
wanted to be picking our own apples and peaches.

Gil wanted figs. "I've always liked figs," he said, "I'm
getting a fig tree."

"Good," I said, "every man should be safe under his
own fig tree."

He gave me a hard look. "Where did you get that?"

"It's in the Bible," I said, "There's a lot about fig trees
in the Bible" I was stirring the little compost pile we
had started after subscribing to Organic Gardening.
Our food would be organically grown, free of
pesticides and chemicals, bursting with nutrition.

"But I think it's more of a bush," I said, "They're
always saying trees, but I think it's bushes."

My grandmother used to stand on the back porch and
pick figs and eat them at one of the houses we rented
when I was a child. I don't think I ever got a good ripe
one, for she picked them as fast as they turned. The only
flavor I remembered was a clammy sweetness.

"I think it must be an acquired taste," I said. But he was
casting about for the right place to plant and didn't hear me.
He said he'd been talking to a man in Knoxville about fig
trees and was told that sometimes during hard winters the
figs die back to the ground and then don't get enough growth
the next summer to bear figs.

"He said he bends his over and puts old carpets over them
and then they don't die back," Gil said. "They need to be in a
somewhat sheltered place."

"Knoxville gets colder than here," I said, "Our fig bush never
did die back from freezing. But it was sheltered, I guess, right
against the back porch."

For 18 months we were back and forth, 3 or 4 days working
in Chicago, 3 or 4 days building our periodical distribution
route in the three Southern states, interspersed with a day's
drive either way. Each time we headed south we brought a
few more of our possessions, moving even our furniture
down in the old Ford panel truck a piece at a time. When
my sister complained a few years afterward that it took them
three days to move, I couldn't keep from laughing.

When at last we were fully residents of Georgia, we were still
traveling much of the time. Our route was Atlanta to Knoxville
to Nashville to Birmingham with stops at some of the smaller
towns along the way, and we did not always make it back
home in the evening.

Ah, but there were the weekends, and so it was on one
Saturday when Gil was putting away the groceries he'd
bought that he asked, "Do you happen to know where the
shovel is? I've bought a fig tree."

"Bush," I said, "and it's by the shed where you left it."

I walked up behind the house in time to see him tamping
down the dirt around the little tree. It was about two-feet
tall, with narrow, glossy-green leaves.

There was a most satisfied look on his face as he stood back,
shovel in hand. "I'll be eating figs next year," he said.

"Not from that you won't," I said, "that's not a fig tree. Or bush."

"The sign said it was. It said 'Special Today- Fig Trees, $6.95
each.' And I asked the stock boy to be sure. He said it was a
fig tree. He said they'd sold a lot of them. Everybody likes figs."

"You bought it at the grocery store?"

"Yes," he said, "What's wrong with that?" and he turned back
to admire his little plant some more, looking so pleased that I
hadn't the heart to continue arguing with him.

A couple hours later I heard him telling our neighbor about his
new fig tree.

"Fig newtons?" the neighbor said, "I like fig newtons, but I
didn't know you could plant them"

The first hard freeze that winter killed it. The spindly
branches snapped in two when Gil tried to straighten the
little plant."Maybe it will come back out in the spring," he
said, still holding the pieces in his hand.

It didn't. But early in March after a trip to a nursery, I
presented him with a fig bush. We planted it on the south
side of our shed. And I had acquired a book that showed
the different varieties of ficus, which includes the edible fig
as well as the ficus that Gil had bought, a tropical plant used
as a house plant where winters are cold.

It was news to me, I said, I wasn't familiar with house plants,
although I have seen the little trees since then, some five or
six feet tall in pots in hotel lobbies and reception areas.

"Then how did you know it wasn't the kind of fig I wanted?"
he asked.

"Adam and Eve," I said, "Remember those little narrow leaves?
They wouldn't have hidden three or four pubic hairs, let alone
covered their nakedness."

The fig bush flourished, growing as tall as the shed, and it
bore abundantly. The figs were best when they almost fell
into the hand at a touch. Sometimes Gil would bring some to
me in a bowl, but most of the time we stood at the bush
eating them, just as my grandmother did long ago.

Uncovering the Past

2007-06-01T22:49:00.000-07:00

Most historical accounts of the Sequatchie Valley in
Central Tennessee, where Marion County is located,
usually emphasize the first white settlers. Several Native
American Tribes occupied the valley, but by sometime in
the 1700's the Cherokees had gained control of the area.
The Cherokee Nation was driven out, their land seized
and turned over to white men, and there begins the
history of rich, arable land, iron ore and coal.

The National African American Historic Association
(NAAHA) of Marion County tells a different story in a
brochure published this year:

"Since its inception, Marion County history has, in a true
sense of the word, been African American history. When
the Cherokees came to the area in the early 1780's, they
were surprised to find African-owned farms near Battle
Creek" [this was the first name of the town of South
Pittsburg] "that had been set up by people who had
escaped enslavement in the eastern colonies. During the
years before the American Civil War, it was the labor of
enslaved Africans that made the plantations of Marion
County successful."

Mrs. Gladys Streeter Wooten, president of the
NAAHA, which is compiling information on the early
history of African Americans in Marion County, is shown
in the photograph above at the NAAHA booth at South
Pittsburg's annual Cornbread Festival in April.

The brochure, entitled "Marion County Civil War
Heritage Driving Trail Guide", is an illustrated tour guide
to Civil War points of interest with particular attention
to African American involvement. It was produced with
support from the Tennessee Civil War National Heritage
Area and made be obtained from NAAHA, P.O. Box
2525, Jasper TN 37347. A donation is suggested. Or
contact Mrs. Wooten for further information or to share
with her sources of early Black history in Tennessee.

The NAAHA has several projects, including plans for a
small park and monument dedicated to the teachers and
students of McReynolds School, the high school for
African Americans, which was destroyed by arsonists
when the Marion County schools were ordered to
integrate.

Another project, with which I am assisting, involves
compiling information on the life and work of Dr.
W.J. Astrapp, an African American physician. who
administered to the citizens of South Pittsburg,
Tennessee, Black and white, from about 1910 until his
death in 1944. The object is at least a brief biography
of this dedicated doctor and perhaps a marker honoring
him in the city of South Pittsburg.

Those posting to the forum on Afrigeneas, a website for
researchers in African American genealogy, have been
Most helpful, especially Sadonya who has provided
several important source documents.

Anyone who has any information about Dr. Astrapp
in South Pittsburg or in Chattanooga please contact me.
I would be happy to hear from you.

Cornbread and Beans

2007-05-19T22:00:00.000-07:00

Feed me on cornbread and beans,
Oh, feed me on cornbread and beans,
For I ain't gonna be treated thisaway.

The 11th Annual Cornbread Festival at South Pittsburg,
Tennessee, April 28th and 29th.
I went on Sunday, the 29th, and was treated very well.

Cornbread but no beans left at one food booth by late
afternoon when I was finally ready to eat. I should have
bought a hunk. By the time I'd made the rounds of the
other eateries, the first booth had beans again, but had
sold all their cornbread.

I passed by the deep-fried oreos and batter-fried dill pickles,
paused at one of the two vendors of cornbread salad, read
the ingredients: lettuce, beans, onions, a dressing of oil and
vinegar over crumbled cornbread. $3 to $5 per bowl. When
I kept standing there, undecided, I was offered a forkful to
sample. Tasted like cold, soggy cornbread flavored with
vinegar. No thanks. Only one vendor had coffee. With
styrofoam cup in hand, I made a trip down cornbread alley
holding out an plate for which I'd paid $2.00. When I reached
the end, the plate was filled with about a dozen little squares
of cornbread prepared in various ways: as pudding, deepfried
as a hushpuppy, with blueberries, cranberries, turnip greens
or jalapenos mixed in, or with a lot of sugar, supposedly
cornbread cake. They were filling, but I kept wishing I had
just plain cornbread and beans.

But I didn't go because of the cornbread, or the rows of arts
and crafts vendors lining the blocked-off streets, or the
music and singing one could stand in the hot sun and hear.

I went because 74 years ago my mother lived there, pregnant
with me.The cornbread festival provided a good reason to
visit the town again. I took the historic tour, riding on an air-
conditioned school bus to view some of the houses and
churches that my mother and father may have passed when
they walked about the town.

And I toured the Lodge Cast Iron Manufacturing Company
because my father had worked there- on my birth certificate
his occupation is listed as "moulder" - even though I knew the
facilities had been completely rebuilt sometime in the 1970's.

And I went so I could meet Mrs. Gladys Streeter Wooten who
had a display there for the National African American Historic
Association of Marion County. I had been corresponding with
Mrs. Wooten, who is President of the NAAHA, about our
mutual interest in Dr. W.J. Astrapp, the African American
doctor who tended the citizens of South Pittsburg from about
1910 until 1944, and who delivered both of us. She told me
that her father also worked at Lodge, and that at that time
the building was a huge wooden structure with a dirt floor
and there were rows of large windows to let in the light, for
there was no electrical power.

What I didn't see and could only imagine were the little
houses where lived our fathers and all the other workers who
made possible those fine, century-old homes that are shown
with such pride. For as Bertolt Brecht wrote, "Who built the
pyramids?" The Pharoahs get credit for them, but they didn't
push or lift a single one of those huge blocks.

After touring Lodge and admiring the skillets and the
two-story high conveyor that moved all the iron utensils
from the forge to the polishing machines, I asked the genial
official who waited just outside the door, "Do the workers
here have a union?"

"No," he said, and though he kept smiling, he no longer
appeared quite so genial and welcoming.

Tragedy and Hope: Memphis 1968

2007-04-22T12:20:00.000-07:00

The news came over the radio, the words like so many bullets
exploding: Dr. Martin Luther King had been shot. Dr. King was
dead.

Agony erupted on Chicago's west side. More people were
killed, beaten, arrested. Long smoldering anger and frustration
burst into flames, in Chicago and in a dozen or so other cities.

April 4th, 1968. Three days later we were on our way to
Memphis, while national guardsmen patrolled through the
smoking rubble in the ghetto Mayor Richard J. Daley had
denied existed.

Dr. King had been in Memphis to lead a march of striking
sanitation workers when he was assassinated. The workers
were members of AFSCME (the American Federation of
State, County, and Municipal Employees) but their all Black
local 1733 was not recognized by the City of Memphis. They
averaged about $1.70 per hour with no benefits for gathering
the city's garbage, were given the oldest, most dilapidated
trucks to drive, worked under unsafe conditions- two men
had been killed because of faulty equipment in their truck-
and when the men were sent home because of inclement
weather, the white workers had been paid for a full day's
work, the Blacks for only a couple of hours.

The Mayor and City Council had shown some willingness to
negotiate a small pay raise, but Mayor Henry Loeb refused the
demand most important to the workers: recognition of the local
with dues check-off. Dr. King's widow, Coretta Scott King,
along with other SCLC leaders would be in Memphis on April
8th to carry on Dr. King's attempts to break the stalemate.

Our friend Bill, an organizer for AFSCME in Chicago, was
being sent by his union to the Memphis march. He invited Gil
and I and some others along, six of us in Bill's small station
wagon, taking the long, monotonous road the length of Illinois,
past silos and wheat fields and more of the same. We cut
through the corner of Mississippi where we found, after a
long stretch of countryside, a cafe in a little town with the
odd name of Festus, where we were served sandwiches
and canned soup.

It was late evening when we reached Memphis, unable to go
into the city because there was a curfew, the city cordoned
and patrolled by the National Guard. AfSCME was paying
for one motel room. We took the mattresses off the beds,
some of us slept on the box springs, others on the mattresses
on the floor.

The next morning we entered a grim, silent city, the streets
deserted, the shops shuttered, windows boarded over.
Violence had disrupted the first march, windows were broken,
those who advocated nonviolence dispersed. Dr. King had
returned to Memphis determined to lead the strikers in a
peaceful march which had been planned for the day after he
was assassinated. With fires still smoldering in a number of
cities, Memphis leaders apparently feared the worst. The
downtown area was closed down tight.

The only place we found for breakfast was near the bus
station which was still open and functioning. Bill studied
the menu and decided to order the grits. He said he'd
learned to eat grits when he'd been on assignment in the
South, but he could only eat them with sugar.

"If you put sugar on your grits," I told him, "They'll know
right away you're a yankee."

Bill was laughing when the waitress came for our orders.
"Is it true," he asked her, "that you can tell the yankees by
watching to see who puts sugar on the grits?"

"I don't know about that," the waitress said, her face hard,
"But they serve grits every day at the jail. Folks in there get
plenty of grits to eat."

We ate without talking much after that, no lingering over
coffee. The only parking place we could find near where
people were beginning to assemble was behind a Black-
owned funeral home. Some Black people parked near us
and were getting out of their car. An elderly woman
walked over to us.

"I thank y'all for coming," she said.

The gray stillness, with rain forecast, was broken by the
muffled sound of car doors closing as more arrived.

Bill took her hand. "I'm sorry," he said, "I'm so sorry we had
to."

We walked down the crumbling sidewalk to the church where
the march was to start. This was the "Black Section" of town,
the houses small and crowded together.

Some of the men wore or carried signs that stated simply: "I
Am a Man".Although it was Monday, many were dressed as
if for church. Thousands were not going to work that day. A
small percentage was white, most of us from outside Memphis:
union leaders and organizers, civil rights workers and
clergymen, and some local white clergymen.

People filed into place quietly, speaking in subdued voices,
calm in spite of the threats: "The guard has been ordered to
shoot anyone who looks suspicious..." said the voice over a
portable radio.

A young Black woman next to me said nervously, "How do
you keep from looking suspicious? What if I grin..." She
spread her mouth, but her soft eyes were not smiling, "If I go
around grinning all the time, I'll sure enough look suspicious."

Some parade marshals came by with paper bags and asked
that anything resembling a weapon be turned over, "fingernail
files, umbrellas..." We could not give "them" any excuse to
bring charges against us was the message.

"Oh Lord," the young woman said, "I've got a pair of scissors
in my purse. They cost five dollars and I have to keep them."
She was taking a course in Home Economics at the college
and carried the scissors in her purse so she could use them at
home too. She hugged the purse against her breast.

As we waited for the march to begin, she told about the
insults of the white guardsmen when she and a girl friend
had been caught out minutes after the seven p.m. curfew.

A guardsman, rifle held upright, ordered them to halt.
"Where the hell do you gals think you're going?"

They were visiting a friend a block away. The guardsman
called them whores, said he could shoot them or screw them,
whichever he preferred, and ordered them home. They ran,
their hearts pounding, locked and bolted their door and leaned
against it for what seemed a long, long time before they dared
move away from it.

At last we began to move, eight abreast. People who had
been talking quietly hushed, and so we walked in silent
tribute to Dr. King and all he stood for, no sound but the sound
of marching feet. Through the downtown streets, dead and
quiet, the cross streets barred by double rows of national
guardsmen, rifles held out before them, bayonets pointing toward
us. All their faces were white. Young men who looked as if they
should be home tending the fields or punching a timeclock.

Only the sound of thousands of feet against the pavement.
Dr. King- and Medgar Evers, Chaney, Schwartz, Goodman,
Emmet Till, - and thousands of others before him, and after him
how many more? We marched through the area where the riot
was supposed to have occurred after he was gunned down-
half a dozen broken or boarded up windows, the rest blending
into the destruction from urban renewal. Some of the decrepit
houses were coming down- riot or urban renewal?

I have seen photographs of the King Memorial March showing
Coretta Scott King with her three oldest children, the
Reverend Ralph David Abernathy, Harry Belafonte, Andrew
Young, and Rabi Abraham Heschel on the first row, the
required eight abreast, leading the march. I was so far behind
them that some of the speakers had finished speaking when I
and those around me reached the Plaza. Rosa Parks, Dr.
Spock, Ossie Davis, Harry Belafonte, and a few others
addressed the rally. I have forgotten their exact words.

But I shall never forget when Coretta Scott King stood before
us, Her beautiful calm face, her soft voice as she spoke about
how her husband had often sent her to speak in his place when
he had appointments he could not keep.

"And now," she said, I have once again come in his place..."

The next day she would be following her husband's casket as
it was drawn through the streets of Atlanta by mules hitched to
a farm wagon.

Eight days after the march the strike was settled. The
Memphis City Council voted to approve the contract.
It included union recognition and dues check-off, a two-step
15 cents per hour raise, and provision for a grievance committee.

More Free Food

2007-04-09T22:45:00.000-07:00

I had my second mess of poke sallet before the end of March.
There's an old saying that poke sallet saved the south after the
end of the Civil War when farmers were destitute, their crops
burned and their smokehouses emptied by union soldiers, with
marauding bands of rogues taking whatever the soldiers missed.

I let a few stalks go to seed, up to six feet tall with magenta stems
and great clusters of dark purple, almost black, berries, and now
there are little green shoots scattered about the lot where my house
burned last year.

Poke is reportedly toxic, so it must be picked early and prepared
correctly in order to be safely eaten. I pick only the smallest, newest
leaves and then parboil them. Let the pot boil for a few minutes after
all the bright green color is gone from the leaves, then pour into a
colander to drain, rinse thoroughly under running water, then return
to the pot to cook in a little fresh water until tender. I'm not sure
how much nutrition is left in the greens after all this- vitamins are
supposedly dissolved in cooking water- but the taste and texture
have been compared to asparagus, and they're safer to eat than
the spinach that sent all those folks to the hospital and killed a few
of them.

My grandmother cut the stalks into pieces, battered and fried
them, said it tasted a little like rhubarb. Fried rhubarb? The
Southern cook considers anything edible a candidate for
battering and frying. Grandma lived into her late '80's.

The berries are supposed to be especially toxic, yet the birds
eat them. The evidence is everywhere in the fall, purple splotches
on the grass and on any uncovered automobiles. It's actually the
seeds that are toxic and they pass through the bird whole,
punctuating the purple splotches.

The juice from the berries has been used as a substitute for ink.
I tried it once with a pen stock and could write very well with it,
but purple writing didn't appeal to me and there was the constant
dipping with the pen.

In her book A Modern Herbal, first published in 1931 and reprinted
by Dover Publications, Mrs. M. Grieve notes that the use of pokeberry
juice to color port wines in Portugal had to be discontinued because it
spoiled the taste. Poke (Phytolacca americana), she wrote, "is regarded
as one of the most important of indigenous American plants", with the
root used as an ingredient in remedies for rheumatism, headaches and
conjunctvitis, also as a "slow emetic and purgative with narcotic
properties," but she warns against an overdose.

Her herbal lore was undoubtedly garnered from the early American
physicians who acquired some of their medicinal knowledge from
Native American healers; poke was highly regarded by those tribal
medicine men.

I had planned to cook one more batch of poke before the leaves
get too large, but the Easter cold snap has killed it back, as well
as frost-blackening the new fig leaves and the lovely mounds of
lemon balm. I covered the garden bed of spinach, it will soon be
ready to pick, and all it cost was the seed at 10 cents per pack
bought at close-out prices last fall. The chickweed has bloomed,
no longer good and tender for salads until there's some new growth.
(It will die back completely during the summer and return to flourish
in the fall and through much of the winter.) But there are plenty of
dandelions, and I can mix some of the greens and flowers with the
spinach. And this summer there will be lots of fleshy orange daylily
flowers to add flavor and color to salads.

There's wild mustard on the Menlo lot, the smallest leaves good in
salads, the larger ones must be mixed with other greens and cooked.
And I have one more ten-cent pack of lettuce to plant.
I'll keep living off the land.

A Long Cold Winter

2007-04-04T23:27:00.000-07:00

The reddish cast to these leaves causes them to look
more like blooms than new leaves

After the longest cold spell I can remember here, there are at last
signs of spring. Day after day the frozen ground felt like walking on
concrete. Bare earth spewed ice crystals. Ice froze at the edges of
the creek.Every morning the pasture behind this house was frosted
white.

We've had colder winter weather. There was the year the pipes
froze underground and we were without water until it warmed up
enough to thaw them. Only a few years ago the creek froze all the
way across, dispelling my belief that running water would not freeze.
The water still was moving underneath its thick coating of ice.

But those frigid days were interspersed with warmer ones, following
the pattern I'd known in the south since my youth. A few cold days,
then warm up and rain, repeated over and over so that one never
became accustomed to the cold, shivering and huddling in blankets
each time the temperature plunged again. This year it stayed cold.
The only time it warmed up was when the deadly tornadoes struck
to the south of us. We were lucky. We only got the heavy rains.

One morning there was snow. Two whole inches! Schools closed,
workers were told not to report to work. It was the first snow for
my great granddaughter who was almost five. She was awakened
early and sent out to play before it melted.

Two years ago there was an inch or so of snow high on the mountain.
A friend who lives at Cloudland told me people were driving up all
day, parking by the roadside, letting their children out to walk in the
snow.

I know, I know. I read about the ten-foot snows in upstate New York
and I lived through several Chicago winters, including 1967 and 1979
when snow paralyzed that city. But only a few inches of snow create
hazardous driving conditions here, for we have steep hills and a dearth
of equipment to deal with the snow.

It's cold enough here to snow all through the winter, but doesn't
because of the actions of the jet streams, the northern one seldom
dips down this far southward. It has happened. Everyone old enough
remembers the blizzard of '93. Every few years we have snow enough
to close all the roads. And we have ice storms that bring down power
lines and trees. But this past winter there was only the unremitting cold.

One day there was a flock of wild turkeys at the far end of the pasture
behind this house, and on another morning there were a dozen or so in
the front yard. Twice while I was home we were visited by a lovely blue
heron. I could gauge the depth of the creek by watching it stride through
the water with its funny backward kneebends.

Another, darker heron hung around all winter. I frequently saw it
hunched on the creek bank, long legs drawn up beneath it, long neck
tucked down, its dark, almost black feathers riffled by the wind, giving
it a tattered, decrepit appearance. It reminded me of the old men in
ragged overcoats who sat around on park benches in Chicago.
Sometimes it hung around the cows in the pasture, ducking down to
walk beneath them. The heron is a solitary creature, but perhaps this
one preferred companionship sometimes.

The long cold spell has created hardship in this poor county. The
prices of natural gas and propane have kept pace with the price of
gasoline for automobiles. The power companies' rate increases and
provision for "fuel recovery costs" to be passed on to the consumer
have meant spiraling bills for electrical heat. I used 100 gallons
more propane than last year in this small house at a cost of $1.89
per gallon. An office worker told me she and her husband had to
have their tank filled three times for a total cost of $1,500.00.
Chattooga is a poor county, and for the very poorest and for those
on fixed incomes it becomes a matter of Heat or Eat.

But at last, spring is at hand. Jonquils are blooming in almost
every yard and there is blue and white vinca and the little white
Star of Bethlehem. The chickweed blossoms are blue dots
sprinkled over its recumbent foliage and there is rue anemone on the
low wooded banks by the creek. The yard is carpeted with violets,
both purple and white and there are buttercups and dandelions.
It has rained again and turned cool again, but this time it surely will
not last for very long, although a freeze is forecast for the coming
weekend. .

I've planted something called mustard spinach and some regular
spinach in one of the garden beds here- they're almost large
enough to start picking- and a short row of sugar snap peas by
the fence that still stands on the Menlo lot. This year indeed I will
have rows of okra. This year I won't be telling myself how
ridiculous not to have it when with so little effort one can grow
enough to feed an army rather than paying a dollar or so per
pound for it.

Now the stark, bare limbs on the far side of the creek and in
the woods across the road are clothed with a pale lacy green
on their way to becoming the deep green wall that surrounds us
all summer, and today in Walmart a man bought two 25-pound
bags of wild bird seed. "They're coming back," he said, "and I've
got to take care of them."

Shadow of the War Machine

2007-03-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

March 17, March on the Pentagon, 4th anniversary of
the War in Iraq, 40th anniversary of the 1967 March on
the Pentagon an important landmark in the anti-Vietnam
War Movement. I went on one of the two buses from
Atlanta organized by the Atlanta affiliate of the
International Answer Committee (IAC).

It was cold. A knife-edged wind threatened to whip away
signs as we streamed across the Arlington Memorial Bridge,
thousands of us, heading for the Pentagon parking lot where
some of us huddled against parked vans or the concrete wall
that snaked up the hill, seeking to buffer that ceaseless wind.

Jonquils were blooming in Lady Bird Johnson's garden when
we passed, skirting the cheerful yellow patches, hardly a
blossom trampled. Poor Lady Bird, prattling on and on about
making America beautiful while her husband presided over
napalmed flesh and bomb craters, decidedly unbeautiful
images of mayhem and torture in Vietnam.Until our protests
and marches and raised voices saying No! made LBJ decide
to drop out, made him long to go back to Texas where Lady
Bird could plant flowers and talk about beauty.

And so four years ago we started marching again, and again,
and again.

"In the Shadow of the War Machine, " Cindy Sheehan said
from the speaker's platform.

But the shadow is not confined to the parking lot beside the
Pentagon, the shadow is cast all over this land, over the
flag-draped coffins as they are unloaded from ships and
planes, over the hospitals where the mangled bodies and
fragmented minds are patched up and shoved on their way,
over the schools and libraries and roads that are deteriorating
because the funds they need for life have been funneled into
death, and over our children who will be paying for the rest
of their lives, and over all those sick and dying from lack of
health care.

Blood on the oil. Our government is run by those with bloody
hands.No more! Support our troops. Bring them all home.

Black History, Our History

2007-02-23T23:29:00.000-08:00

February Black History Month. The school children have been
learning about educated and talented and brave African Americans
who, despite the barriers of racism and prejudice, shone brightly in
our past. They have been told about W.E.B. DuBois, Harriet Tubman,
Benjamin Banneker, and a host of others.

I wish it had always been so. My memory of the high school history
class is of an endless dull hour when farm boys in overalls stood in the
aisles between the desks, clutching their history books, stumbling
through their assigned reading with long, painful pauses when they
couldn't even guess at the next word.

Columbus discovered America. Washington crossed the Delaware.
Lincoln freed the slaves. White people settled the west, vanquished
the Indians, and made this country great.

Not only Black children, but all children were cheated by not being
taught the complete history of our country and its peoples. Not until I
was in my thirties did I begin to find and read what should have been
made available to me at a much earlier age: the writings of DuBois,
William Still's Underground Railroad, the "colored" troops in the Civil
War, the segregation of troops during WWII, the massacres and
lynchings of Black people.

We were also cheated of the history of workers' struggles for safe
working conditions and a living wage, the successful fight for an eight-
hour day. May Day, the workers' holiday which originated in the U.S.,
not only was not mentioned, but every attempt has been made to
obliterate it.

And, as union was a dirty word in a small Southern town, we were
not only not taught that part of history, we also never learned how,
after they won the right to organize, those who controlled the unions
used them to bar black people from access to jobs in many of the
trades.

However, I was made aware of one African American hero at an early
age. I had heard my mother and my aunt speak of a Dr. Astrapp when
they were reminiscing about the time when my aunt and her children
lived with us in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, during the depression. They
spoke admiringly of the doctor, saying that he was good, meaning by
"good" that he was knowledgeable and competent.

Then, when I was 12 or 13 and my aunt was visiting us in Menlo, she
apparently became angry with my father and, seeking to turn me against
him, drew me aside to tell me that when mother went into labor with me,
my father owed other doctors in the area and they would not come.

"He had to get a colored doctor," she said, "He had to bring in a
colored doctor to deliver you."

That Daddy owed people was old news, never mind the terrible
circumstances of the great depression. He still "drank up" his money
or "lost" it. The depression had never ended for us.

Her efforts to get me to take sides with her backfired. Forever after it
was a part of my own history of myself, the wonder of that doctor who
came when no one else would come, the one whose hands first held me
as I entered the world.

Recently I needed to find my birth certificate, and there was his
signature, Dr. W.J. Astrapp. On an impulse, I decided to search his
name on the internet. One reference, a photo on the South Pittsburg
Historical Society website. Just the photo, scroll down to see it, with
the caption: Doctor W. J. Astrapp worked and treated South
Pittsburg residents and those from outlying communities
for several decades at South Pittsburg, Tennessee. This
well respected African-American doctor .......

What must it have been like for him as a doctor in a small southern
town, population slightly over 4,000 in 1900, but slowly declining since
to 3,295 by the year 2000. Black or white, I'd wager that mine was not
the only family unable to pay. One can be certain he did not become
wealthy from his medical practice. Yet his face shows the character of
one who knows his own self-worth. I learn from the caption under his
photo that he died in 1945, just about the time that my aunt told me
about him.I wrote to the South Pittsburg Historical Society to ask if they
had any other information about him. Carolyn K. Millhiser, Secretary of
the Society, has sent copies of newspaper articles with some information
and referred me to the president of the National African American

Historic Association of Marion County. I will share from these sources
in the future.

Casanova Was a Book Lover

2007-02-11T23:09:00.000-08:00

I've been dabbling in a book I recently found in my own boxes of
stored-away books.

Casanova Was a Book Lover and Other Naked Truths and
Provocative Curiosities About the Writing, Selling, and Reading
of Books by John Maxwell Hamilton published in 2000 by the
Louisiana State University Press

The section on politicians who wrote is preceded by a quote from
Dan Qualye's 1989 Christmas Card:
"May our nation continue to be a beakon [sic] of hope"

And H.L. Mencken commenting that Warren G. Harding wrote
"the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a
string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line;
it reminds me of stale beansoup, of college yells, of dogs barking
idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur
creeps into it."

After referring to all the presidential book authors who didn't actually
write their own books, Hamilton notes: "Jimmy Carter is the lone
modern president who may qualify as a legitimate author..... His
campaign biography, however, has all the style of a high school term
paper; his poetry is not poetic; and memoirs such as Keeping Faith
and Living Faith are cloyingly self-righteous......One exception is his
book on fishing. It is almost lyrical, says Leo Ribuffo, a historian
working on a study of the Carter presidency."

He reminds us that when Ronald Reagan's former press secretary,
Larry Speakes, "revealed that he had manufactured quotes for the
Great Communicator and didn't bother to show them to the president
beforehand........Speakes lost his cushy job at Merrill Lynch Pierce
Fenner and Smith as a result. As for Reagan, he said he hadn't noticed
that Speakes was putting words in his mouth."

"Kennedy's authorship of Profiles in Courage is intensely debated,"
Hamilton writes, "Historian Herbert Parmet has made the strongest
case that blue-ribbon historians gave liberal counsel, the Library of
Congress staff and others did substantial research, and various
people drafted chapters. Nevertheless, Kennedy went on to describe
the book as his own work and accepted the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for
biography the way a full-fledged author would. One of the real
authors, Jules David, a Georgetown University professor, received
seven hundred dollars cash and no royalties."

Two of our worst presidents, Grant and Hoover, were two of the best
writers, and they did write their own books.

About Clinton: "remember that [his] troubles over Monica Lewinsky
began with onetime White House staffer Linda Tripp's book idea..."

Hamilton's book was published before he could evaluate the present
occupant of the White House whose one famous connection with a
book was when he continued reading My Pet Goat to school children
after being informed of the 9/11 attacks. Perhaps he found the story
too engrossing to stop.

Other sections include books published after an author is dead, either
by them or written by others: "W.I.P. Write in Peace". The Ten Most
Stolen Books, with the Bible being Number One, book reviewing,
author tours, book contracts, bestseller lists, and so forth. There is
much interesting and solid information as well as all the trivia, and it is
fun to read.

It was the very book to thumb through and read at random while I sat
in a medication - induced stupor - Got over the cold, I thought, but it
relapsed into bronchitis.

Get a copy of this book for reading when you don't feel like
concentrating too hard, or for when you can only read in snatches.

Historians Against the War

2007-02-04T22:58:00.000-08:00

During their recent convention held in Atlanta, the American History
Association made history. At the annual Business Meeting, a
proceeding usually featuring dry reports by the organization's leaders,
the members approved an anti-war resolution, the first in the AHA's
existence. It was sponsored by Historians Against the War. To read
the full text of the resolution click here.

This was the convention being attended by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto,
British author of 19 books, who was thrown to the sidewalk and arrested
by an Atlanta policeman for jaywalking. At the link above can be heard
an interview with him. He considered it a valuable experience, saying he
had learned more about America from being locked up 8 hours with
criminals than he would have learned at the convention seminars.

A photo on the AHA site shows 6 Atlanta policemen standing by while
the seventh holds the historian down.

One of the first to speak for the anti-war resolution was Staughton Lynd,
author of several books. He had battled unsuccessfully at the 1969 AHA
convention for a resolution against the Vietnam War.

The AHA's concern seems to be more about the restrictions on free speech
and travel than about how wrong or unjustified is the war in Iraq. But even
those who spoke against the resolution made it clear that they oppose the war.

What Do We Want? Peace !

2007-01-31T22:54:00.000-08:00

"A raucous and colorful multitude of protesters, led by some of the aging
activists of the past.." is how the Washington Post described the January
27th rally and march to end the war in Iraq.

The Post went on to quote a number of people who seemed neither
raucous nor very colorful, Vietnam and Iraq War veterans, enlisted
men and women, students, and a soldier's wife who said she was sick
of all the deaths, of attending funerals.

This aging activist, never a leader, was not there. I was recovering from a
severe sinus infection, downcast because I could not go. I was there last time
when about 100,000 of us marched and called out, "No more! Stop Now!
Support our troops- bring them home!" and helped, I believe, influence the
elections that ousted some of the war's supporters.

The Post, the New York Times, and other media played the numbers game.
The phrase most used was "Tens of thousands", march organizers claimed
many more. No matter. Each person there represented many more who did
not get to DC. The tide has turned. The majority are now against the war.
Yet it goes on.

Democrats elected because of the groundswell of opinion against the war
have formulated a timid resolution with no teeth that amounts to a finger
shaking and clucks of "naughty, naughty, mustn't do." They need to be
reminded that they will be up for election again and that voters have a
long memory.

And we may not be "raucous and colorful", but neither will we be silent.
International Answer, one of the organizers of the January 27 march and
rally, responded to President Bush's speech about sending more troops to
Iraq: "Unwilling to accept the failure of his war of aggression in Iraq, his 'war
of choice', Bush announced tonight a plan that will succeed only in sending
thousands of Iraqis and U.S. soldiers to their graves in the next year."
The tower of empty shoes at the January rally was a powerful reminder of
the death and destruction wrought in this senseless war.

There will be a Global Day of Action on March 17th, a March on the
Pentagon, followed by local actions on March 19th and 20th, the fourth
anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

The war in Iraq has now cost almost $363 billion.
See what it has cost you and your community.

Amazing Grace

2007-01-23T22:54:00.000-08:00

It was the old story: she followed us home.
I was walking with Buster, the only dog left after Ginger, the beautiful red
setter, was stolen, when the dog came trotting from a parking lot as if she
had been expecting us.

I started advertising under "Lost and Found", contacted the local veterinarian
to see if she'd been a patient there. I didn't want to keep her. Gil did.

"You need her when you go off walking by yourself," he said, "She would
protect you."

People were afraid of her, all right. The garage worker wouldn't get out
when he returned our car. "I don't go around pit bulls," he said.

Pit bull? When I asked the vet later, she said, "There's a little pit bull in her."

And varying amounts of other breeds: large, muscular, mastiff-type body,
bull dog or bloodhound drooping jowls, flopped-down ears. She was
brown and white. Part of her nose, the insides of her ears, and the pads
on her huge feet were a delicate pink.

She was neither the most beautiful nor the brightest dog in the world. She
had the habit of jumping up on me, feet planted against my chest, jaws
drooling in her joy to see me, while I staggered to keep my balance. She
weighed about 80 pounds. She turned over the garbage can and scattered
the contents and, when I refused to let her in the house, contending it would
be like trying to live with an elephant, she began digging around the
foundation. I believe she thought that if she could dig under it, she would
come up inside the house.

I kept trying to find her owner, advertising, posting signs. I didn't want her,
but she wouldn't leave. I believed someone would eventually claim her, for
she appeared to be healthy and well-fed, not your typical stray. In the
meantime, I needed to call her something besides hey, you, dog!

I had been engaged in conversations with a preacher and his mother who
had started an antique store in Alabama. At one point the preacher told
me that even though I wasn't religious, he said: "I believe you have
grace."

I was pondering this idea when I looked at the dog. "Even though you
are big and ugly and people are afraid of you,' I told her, "Maybe you
have grace," and when she leapt up exuberantly and tried to reach my
shoulders, I said, "And I know you need some grace."

So the name stuck. We called her Grace.

She had been there about a week when Gil and I decided to take the dogs
to Moon Creek, about ten miles away in Alabama. It was a hot afternoon
and they could go in the water, which was always ice cold, and run
around in the woods above the creek.

This was the place where I had seen a whole corridor of trillium blooming
back in the spring, but this was August and hot. We waded a bit and cooled
off, then ambled around looking for cattails and watching the schools of
minnows, startling frogs that plopped and splashed, then dove to the bottom
to bury in the sand. .

When we were ready to go, only Buster followed us to the van. We walked
up the hill to the edge of the woods, whistling and calling. From the hill, we
could see much of the creek and the area around it, but Grace was not there.

I was walking along the edge of the woods calling loudly, "Grace! Grace!"
And I turned to look back down at the creek, still calling: "Grace! Grace!"
just yelling out a final "Grace!" when I saw them. A group of people
clustered at the edge of the creek. Some wore white robes. All the faces
were turned upward toward me. I stood there, feeling my face grow hot.
It seemed like a long time before one of the men detached from the group
and waded out into the creek, fully clothed. He was followed by a woman
wearing a robe.

I hurried back to where Gil was. "We better leave," I told him, "They're
having a baptizing down the creek."

That night I slept out in my van, preferring a cool breeze to air
conditioning. Before I went to sleep, I told myself: "I didn't want
that big ugly dog anyway." But during the night I roused, feeling
anxious, remembering the dog, and knew I would have to go look
for her in the morning.

When the morning sun struck the window at my head, Gil was sitting
beside me. "The dog came back," he said, "She's here."

Ten miles, and surely she had never rode from our house to that
creek before. Grace never left our yard again except to go with me.

Remembering Dr. King

2007-01-15T00:08:00.000-08:00

Chicago, Chicago, that racist town.
Chicago, where some of the whites who seemed horrified when Black
protesters were met with dogs and fire hoses in the South joined
rioting white mobs when Blacks tried to move into their neighborhoods.

Officially, Chicago schools were integrated. Actually, because children
went to neighborhood schools, Black schools were overcrowded, many
operating on double shifts, while hundreds of classrooms in white schools
stood empty. Civil Rights leaders and neighborhood organizers led protests
against the inadequate education of Black children all through the early 1960's,
demanding reform of the school system, the ouster of Chicago School
Superintendent Benjamin Willis and the trailer classrooms he'd ordered used
for the Black schools, calling the trailers "Willis Wagons".

But the schools would not be integrated until the neighborhoods were
integrated. Blacks were penned up in the large ghettos on the south and
west sides, and kept there through the collusion of real estate agents,
landlords, and the Chicago City Government which was run by the
Democratic Machine with Mayor Richard J. Daley at the helm. The slum
housing in the ghettos was profitable. Apartments were carved up and rents
doubled. With building inspectors paid off, buildings need not be maintained,
but could be milked until they collapsed or burned.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., announced the campaign for open housing in
Chicago when he spoke to a crowd of about 50,000 at a 1966 rally at
Soldier's Field, then he led thousands of us to City Hall where he posted
a list of demands to the door, an action reminiscent of that of an earlier
Martin Luther. I remember the little Black school children racing along
the sidewalks and threading through the marchers in the streets, and the
songs we sang as we marched: "Go tell Mayor Daley, we shall not be
moved.."

Dr. King and some of his aides had moved into a slum apartment on the
West Side to call attention to the shameful living conditions of the majority
of Chicago Blacks. Daley continued to proclaim there was no segregation
in Chicago, that the "minorities" lived where they lived because they wanted
to, but building inspectors, who usually winked at violations while accepting
payoffs, cracked down on the owner of the building Dr. King occupied, and
repairs began on that building.

Dick Gregory, who had been involved in some of the protests against Willis
and school segregation, led small daily marches all that summer after the big
rally and march to City Hall. I was working part-time. My children were with
their father. Three or four days a week I would hop on a bus or el after calling
someone to learn where to go that day.

Gregory was performing in San Francisco, flying back home every night to his
family, then out to walk with us every day. While we assembled, waiting a few
minutes for stragglers, he told us jokes. We were getting free what patrons of
the hungry i had to pay to hear. I only remember something about one joke; it
had to do with aliens coming to earth, seeing people putting gas hose nozzles
into their cars and believing that must be the way earthlings had sex.

After the jokes, we would start walking, sometimes 30 or 40 of us, sometimes
as many as 75, always on the sidewalks, for we had no permit for use of the
streets. There were always two or three nuns in their black habits near the
head of the march and some white men from protestant churches, but most of
the marchers on the days I went were Black. One older man carried one child
and led another, grandchildren he watched while his daughter worked. By the
end of the day, several others would have taken turns carrying the small
children. We carried signs and sang freedom songs, threading our way through
all-white northside neighborhoods or walking around in the Loop, stopping
traffic when we streamed across the streets when the light turned green, but
intent on staying together, we continued to walk across after it turned red.

There were always some of "Chicago's finest" along, sometimes accompanying
us on their motorcycles, or keeping pace on the sidewalk across the street from
us. Plainclothesmen, members of Chicago's infamous Red Squad, or Police
Intelligence, shadowed us, parking nearby, then driving past to park just ahead
of us.

One day, when the police were especially harassing, Gregory moved quickly
down the line of marchers handing out quarters. Then he led the way into a
subway station. We rode for a few blocks, then resumed peacefully walking
the sidewalks with no policemen herding us along.

I wasn't along the day they marched through Mayor Daley's neighborhood,
Bridgeport. We never knew to where we would march, only the place we
would meet, so that was not what kept me away. Daley's white neighbors,
many of whom were on the city payroll, threw eggs and stones. Like Daley,
most were Catholic, but that did not keep them from splattering a priest with
eggs and saliva. I was told later about the song Daley's neighbors sang:
Oh, I'd love to be an Alabama trooper,
That is what I'd really like to be,
For if I were an Alabama trooper,
I could shoot a nigger legally.

I had to be told about what happened. Reporters did not report the mob
action, there were no scenes of angry folks in Bridgeport on the evening
news.

There was more violence when Dr. King led us, a much larger group than
had daily followed Dick Gregory, into the all-white working-class community
of Gage Park. Dr. King was hit in the head by a rock. Crowds of jeering
whites called insults and threw more stones and bottles. Policemen held them
back and the marchers stayed together while we walked out.

Later that year I needed to find another apartment, but was having no luck.
I would grab the daily paper and turn to the classifieds, but every place
I called I was told the apartment had been rented.

I was making another futile call from work when my co-worker at the desk
behind me overheard.

"Let me try," she said, holding out her hand for the ad. She was given
an appointment to look at the apartment that I had been told was no longer
available.

"It's your southern accent," she said. "They think you're Black." She was
Jewish.

Shortly after Dr. King was assassinated and the Black riot-rebellions that
followed, Congress passed a watered-down version of an open housing bill
that it had been sitting on for a long time. And the Chicago City Council
voted to name a street Martin Luther King, Jr., Drive.

But the Chicago Democratic Machine and the real estate interests- the two
intertwined and overlapping and sharing power- won on the final count.
Federal money was used for massive "urban renewal" programs that
demolished affordable apartments and gentrified neighborhoods where
only a few Black professionals and no white working-class folks could live.

When I was in Chicago two years ago, Cabrini-Green, that notorious
vertical ghetto, had been reduced to rubble. There had been rumors for
years about how real estate interests coveted the land just west of the
Loop for rich suburbanites who wanted to move back into the city.

There are Plans to tear down all 53 housing projects, displacing some
40,000 people, mostly Black, by 2009. The condominium craze that
began more than 30 years ago resulted in many of the affordable
apartments formerly occupied by working-class families being
converted into expensive housing that was for sale, not for rent.

Townhouses selling for $500,000 to $700,000 have been erected near
Cabrini-Green, with plans to build more. A few units with subsidized rents
(and with formidable requirements and restrictions for [potential renters)
were built, but not enough to house the thousands of displaced families.
Some reports indicate that many have migrated to other segregated areas,
to neighborhoods that are 90 percent or more Black. Nobody seems to
know how or where the rest are going to live.

What Are They Trying to Say?

2007-01-08T22:13:00.000-08:00

I was passing Walmart's Vision Center when I stopped short and
looked again at their sign. And stood there laughing.

Fastened to the top of the sign at the entrance was a smaller,
computer-generated sign that read in large black letters "Outside
Perscriptions Accepted".

A woman at a desk just inside the alcove looked up and said anxiously,
"May I help you?"

"Yes," I called, for I was some distance from her, "you can learn to spell."

She looked taken aback. "Why, what's spelled wrong?"

I should have thought of a snappy reply such as: "Come over here and
give yourself a vision test," but I didn't.

"Prescriptions," I said, still talking loudly so she could hear me,
"Oh, how I wish I had my camera."

By then another woman and a man had come from the back to see what
was going on. I walked away to get the milk for which I'd come, still
laughing. I was imagining a chart for testing vision that read: "How
Minnie Dawgs Can You See," for I knew the issue was not just spelling
but a matter of pronunciation.

For example, the so-called joke that surfaces every Christmas about the
man from the North traveling through a small Southern town. He stops at
a Nativity Scene, complete with mother and child, Joseph, donkeys,
sheep, and, standing off to one side, three men dressed in fire fighters'
uniforms, one holding a fire hose.

"Wait a minute," he says to himself, Mary and Joseph and three firemen?"

Unable to contain his curiosity, he goes into a diner and orders a cup of
coffee so he can query the waitress.

She fixes him with a disapproving gaze. "You Yankees don't never read the
Bible," she snaps.

"Yes," the Northern man says, "Yes, I've read the Bible, but I've never
read anything in it about firemen."

"Well read it again," she says, "The Bible plainly states that those three
men came from afar."

And so it was with the Vision Center personnel. The employee who made
the sign spelled prescription the way she had heard it pronounced, and the
way she undoubtedly pronounced it herself.

It isn't just words, but whole phrases that remind me that southern speech
is a different language, just as the American language is different from
that of the English. In writing, the southerner has to continually translate
in order to communicate.

A woman commenting on an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article wrote: "If
they would of looked after her.."

She has always heard "would've" as "would of", and to take care of someone
is to "look after" the person. Shopping carts are called "buggies", the clerks
behind the cash register will call out to a customer, "I'll gitchee over here!"
Which makes me think of witches and Halloween, but at least they are
cheerful. I still remember the surly, unwilling clerks in New York when I was
there one winter, but in all charity I remind myself that attempting to survive in
that city on the minimum wage would put anyone in a bad temper.

I frequently had to interpret for Gil after we moved to North Georgia. Once
I went with him to get the lawn mower repaired.

"How long did you leave it set up?" the repairman asked him.

Gil just stood there.

"He means," I said, "How long has it been since you used the machine?"

I'm reminded of a German friend who tried to explain to us the difference
between High German, the official language of the country, and Low
German. He tried to get Gil and I to move to Germany.

"But what would I do there," I asked.

"You could teach English," he said, and yes, he was serious.

But the other friends around us weren't. They were laughing.

"I can just see it," one said, "scores of Germans speaking English with a
Southern accent."

The Atlanta Beauty

2007-01-04T23:27:00.000-08:00

The giant panda cub at the Atlanta Zoo was named Mei Lan, which means
Atlanta Beauty. Following Chinese custom, her naming ceremony was held
when she was 100 days old, with representatives from China attending.

The cub weighed only about a pound at birth on September 6th last year,
but was up to 13.9 pounds by December 28th and measured 28.9 inches
from her nose to the tip of her tail. And she looks like a Panda now, in
contrast to her almost hairless, rat-like appearance at birth. Her efforts at
earning to walk and other activities can be watched on the Panda Cam
between 10 a.m. and 5p.m. est.

Mei Lan and her parents, Yang Yang and Lun Lun, are at the zoo on a
$10 million loan agreement with China. The zoo is to pay $1 million per
year for 10 years and is supposed to make a one-time $600,000 payment
for each cub born in their facilities, including Mei Lan, who is to be sent to
China when she is about two years old. Funds from the lease payments by
Atlanta and other zoos are used by China for conservation and educational
programs about the Pandas as an endangered species.

Officials of Zoo Atlanta are reported to have found their expectations of
greatly increased attendance because of the pandas disappointingly
unrealized. It seems likely that more would attend if the Zoo would lower
their admission rate- currently $17.99 for "adults" (those 12 and over),
$13.99 for "seniors", college students, and members of the military, and
$12.99 for children aged 3- 11. In order to do so they might need to not
spend millions renting animals that are adequately protected in their homeland.
Zoos all over the U.S. have been steadily pricing themselves into luxuries over
the years. The Chicago Zoo used to be free. The last time I was there, I had
to pay $12 just to park in their parking lot one afternoon. At least the Atlanta
Zoo has free parking.

The Giant Panda has long been a symbol of peace in China.

Beautiful Fungi

2007-01-02T23:15:00.000-08:00

Three years ago a tree fell across the creek, making a natural
footbridge. The cat that prowls along the banks came across it
sometimes, and the gray crane that visits here perched on it.

For three years it stayed alive, as if it were the most natural
thing in the world for a tree to grow horizontally. Every spring
new leaves covered its branches, and every fall they turned brown
and fell away.

Then, during the drought last summer, it began to die. On the
upper trunk, concealed by the leaves to the right in the first
photo, three large fungi sprang up. One day they were just there.

The largest fungus is about a foot in diameter. It looks like a
serving bowl, perhaps a bowl for fruit.

I will be mourning the death of this tree. There aren't enough years
left for me to grow another that large.

Empty Mailboxes Salute Ford

2006-12-31T18:20:00.000-08:00

All federal facilities, including post offices, will be closed on
Tuesday in honor of former President Gerald R. Ford.

Not getting mail for two days in a row will certainly cause Ford to be
remembered, though not necessarily in a good way. One man suggested a
better way to honor Ford would be to allow everyone to mail letters to their
friends and relatives free on Tuesday. This, he said, would be in line with the
Republicans' concern for "Family Values".

I'm thinking of those, especially some of the older folks, for whom going to
the Menlo post office every morning is a highlight of their day. They may get
only a bill or an advertising circular, or nothing, but that isn't the only reason
they go. They see other people, exchange greetings, stop to chat awhile.
Some will not have heard and will go anyway, stare blankly into their empty
boxes, try the inner door, even though it will be covered by a blind, the lights
off. I saw folks reading the sign on the outer door on Friday, shaking their
heads in dismay.

Most already remember Ford as the Man Who Pardoned Nixon, and many
believe he would never have become president had he not agreed to the
pardon in advance. I'm sure all the young people drifting through the county
jails because of various petty crimes remember that a president who
masterminded breaking-and-entering, burglary, sabotage and worse was
pardoned, while they had to serve time.

For children who have been told that any child can grow up to be elected
president, Ford means that some children can grow up to be president- and
vice president- without being elected.

The business of pushing hero worship is getting harder in this age of
information. People are making their own heroes, as witness the accolades
to James Brown. When the man had been dead three days, he was packing
them in at the Apollo, capacity crowd. And the tears shed for him were real.

I think of those who waited for hours along the route to glimpse the train
carrying FDR's body from Georgia, and can't imagine such a scene for
either father or son Bush, Carter, Clinton, or Ford. The last mass
outpouring of grief over a president's death was when Kennedy was
assassinated. But that was before we knew he'd tried to have Castro killed,
approved the clandestine bombing of North Vietnam, and instigated the
assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. Seymour
Hersh in his book, The Dark Side of Camelot, told how reporters shielded
from public view JFK's sexual escapades that included having law
enforcement officers in various cities bring to Kennedy's hotels high-priced
call girls, two at a time for Kennedy and one apiece for other members of his
entourage, and other such activities that could have made Clinton, with his
blow job in the White House, look like a choirboy.

But the reporters were following tradition. Voters never knew the terrible
extent of Franklin Roosevelt's infirmities. He was never photographed in
the wheelchair to which he was confined, and only those present saw what
an ordeal it was for him to pretend to walk, with his son dragging him along,
what agony to stand while he gave speeches. If the voters had know how
unfit he was to serve, they may not have re-elected him.

Nixon and Watergate punctured the media conspiracy to perfume and
powder our nation's great leaders before allowing the public to view them.
Now a new book which I must read: A Century of Media, A Century of
War, by Robin Andersen. Publicity about the book states that it "traces
media gullibility, official deception and propaganda through the years. It's
a reminder that the media's role in making the case for the Iraq War is part
of a larger story, that of a press corps that regularly cheers on American
military action while shielding readers and viewers from its consequences."

I hope it lives up to its promise. Shine a little more light this way, please.

Peace on Earth?

2006-12-29T22:50:00.000-08:00

Author William Blum writes in the preface to the British edition of his
book Rogue State:

"If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United

States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize -- very publicly

and very sincerely -- to all the widows and the orphans, the impoverished

and the tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American

imperialism.

"I would then announce that America's global interventions -- including

the awful bombings -- have come to an end. And I would inform Israel
that it is no longer the 51st state of the union but -- oddly enough -- a
foreign country. I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90%
and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims and repair the damage
from the many American bombings and invasions. There would be more
than enough money. Do you know what one year of the US military budget

is equal to? One year. It's equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every

hour since Jesus Christ was born.

"That's what I'd do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth

day, I'd be assassinated."

You can read more about Rogue State at William Blum's website.

And the Band Played On

2006-12-28T23:02:00.000-08:00

Lighted Christmas trees can still be glimpsed through windows. Little
bulbs that would be white if lighted drip from eaves, emulating icicles
in temperatures that would melt ice during the day, re-freeze it at night.
Inflated Santas and grazing reindeer are stranded among the string after
string of colored lights that still outline windows, walls, and trees. They
have the lost and forlorn look of waiting, their blaze of glory ended,
time to crawl away unheralded into their almost year-long hibernation.

The poor children who were gifted and feted go quietly about their
business of living in poverty, conveniently forgotten except as adjuncts
to the warm glow still occasionally remembered by those who Helped
Make Christmas For Those Less Fortunate.

Walmart can take down their giant overhead posters showing smiling
people with new cell phones, jewelry, computers, children sitting in a
plastic car, all with the large words: "Be Bright". Took me a few minutes
to connect those words with one of the songs that kept erupting from the
radio if one didn't keep the dial moving. Your days will "Be Merry and
Bright" if you buy all this stuff, particularly if you buy it from Walmart.

Shredded wrapping paper and strands of tinsel lay across the glass
and plastic dead soldiers on the trash heap. The party's over.

There'll be another burst of merriment, real and artificial, as the year
grinds to a halt. Then the cold dawn. Then the credit card bills will roll
in. Bankruptcy courts will be crowded when the Piper cannot be paid,
even though the new laws have made it so much more difficult and
expensive that debtors will have to seek new loans, going even further
in debt, in order to file. The rate of home foreclosures, already the
highest in years, will accelerate.

One of the houses outlined in lights and flanked by several large
Christmassy figures is, according to notices in the newspaper, in
the midst of foreclosure now. And all the lights are lighted. A last
hurrah....

I lit a candle to celebrate the shortest day of the year. Now that
it's gone, each day will be seconds and minutes longer. Available
light, truly a gift.

Expensive Creationist Stickers

2006-12-26T23:26:00.000-08:00

Four years ago, Cobb County Georgia school officials had placed inside

35,000 textbooks stickers that read "Evolution is a theory not a fact".

The lawsuit by opposing parents has finally ended. The judge ordered the

stickers removed last year and school officials had them scraped off, but
appealed. Terms of the recent settlement include no altering of the evolution
material and $166,659.00 payment toward attorneys fees by the school
system.

I cannot help thinking how enriched the school libraries would have been

if the $166,659.00 could have been spent on books. And it's shocking that
books were defaced by those who tell children not to deface books.

Below are the ending paragraphs of the article as printed in the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, or read the whole thing (you may have to sign in).

"They were trying to do the right thing," said Taylor, a parent of three Cobb
students. "It's terrorist organizations like the ACLU that are hijacking our
country's educational system by imposing their own secular agenda on the
rest of us."

Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church
and State in Washington, D.C., hailed the case's conclusion.

"Students should be taught sound science, and the curriculum should not be
altered at the behest of aggressive religious groups," Lynn said. "Cobb County
school officials have taken the right step to ensure that their students receive a
quality education."

Incoming school board member John Crooks, a Baptist minister who opposed
the stickers, said he was pleased the board reached a settlement.

"Moving on to more important educational matters is essential," he said.

Here Comes the Sun

2006-12-18T17:56:00.000-08:00

It was 70 degrees on Saturday and I was working up a sweat, leveling
the ground with a mattock, setting concrete blocks to extend one of the
garden beds. No need to think of ice frozen across the creek only a few
days ago and more bitter cold to come. This may be December, but it
won't officially be winter until the solstice, so it must be autumn still.

I have to dig into the chert below the bare inch or so of soil. It's a slow
job. I have to stop every few minutes to remove the rocks, and I've had
to use a crowbar and hammer to dislodge some of the bigger ones. In a
normal subsoil, the smaller rocks could help promote drainage, but in chert
they serve to bind the clay into something resembling concrete. Occasionally
I expose an earthworm and quickly re-bury it so it can continue to hibernate.
Buckie eats the grubs I uncover. Sometimes he starts trying to dig with me
He seems to think I am trying to dig out some creature, such as a mole,
for that is the reason he would have for digging. But the chert is so hard
packed he loses interest and wanders away.

There's a ridge to the west of here so these short days are even more
quickly truncated as the sun drops low in the sky. Then I have to put
on my coat. It feels like autumn again.

I'm thinking about the last year my maternal grandmother was alive and
we sat outside without sweaters on Christmas Day. Ever after we called
it the shirtsleeve Christmas.

And I'm thinking of how the seasons of the earth have been used as an
analogy for the ages of humans. There's the September Song, for instance:
"and the days grow short when you reach December..."

Mother used to say she was living on borrowed time after she'd passed the
Biblical three score and ten. Falling leaves, bare skeletal trees,
teetering on the edge of winter.

Well, we are all living on death row. The difference between me and that
teen-age boy who was killed in an automobile accident last week is that I
have been fighting gravity for enough years that I'm aware there can't be
too many left. Yet it is still fall for awhile...

Heavy rains have leached the bright colors from the leaves carpeting the
yard and left them a motley brown. So far I've filled seven trash bags and
still have no rake to replace the one destroyed in the house fire, but the
leaves are so deep in some areas it's been easy to gather them. The large
leaves from the sycamore tree quickly fill a bag. I've set the bags up
near the road where the sun will hit them and help turn them to compost
for my garden beds, and where they will help insulate the place where a
water pipe cracked last summer and spouted a geyser that cost me a $60
water bill.

When I was acquiring this place, the seller, who built the house and lived
in it for a few years, told me, "Don't rake the leaves! Let them rot,
they're good for the ground!" And he was to tell me again, and yet again,
as if he had invented the idea of enriching the earth with rotted leaves. Or
did he think I was decrepit and hard of hearing, I was only in my 60's then.

Gil and I, as first time gardeners on the Menlo lot, had subscribed to the
magazine "Organic Gardening", so I knew something about using leaves to
build good earth. So I didn't rake them. And when the creek flooded the
yard in February, as it does almost every year, it pulled into its swirling
waters all the leaf remains along with any topsoil they'd help create when
it receded.

The next year I bagged some of the leaves and set the bags, three or four
of them, beside the house foundation, thinking they could help insulate and
maybe help keep the waterpipes from freezing.

And when the creek rose again the bags were broken open, the leaves
carried off.

I'd like to think of fall as a time of rest after the harvest, of fields lying
fallow. But just like the farmer who didn't actually rest, but turned to different
chores, there's plenty here to do outside, and not just work.

My middle son, who is a forest ranger, bought me an LED light on an elastic
band to wear on my head. He said I could walk along the creek at night and
see any animals more easily in its bright light. It's also good for a night walk
in the woods, it leaves my hands free to push aside branches and briers. By
the time Buckie and I started out on Saturday night it was down to 35 and
the brilliant white light showed my breath as a dense curling fog that obscured
my vision. There was a clamminess to the cold that made it seep into me, so
we didn't go far before we turned back.

Then Sunday it was again up to 70! The crows seemed especially
delighted, flying from tree to tree and calling to one another in their
raucous voices. They seemed to be playing a game. I frequently see
them in the pasture looking big as chickens walking around. One is
crippled, so I know it is the same bunch that has been hanging around
for years.

I worked a little while at the garden bed, then I put the tools aside and
spent the rest of the afternoon just dawdling and poking around. I was
sorry I had taken down the hammock and stored it away.

It is good to have this hiatus, to be able to be outside in the sunshine on
these warm December days. It is good just to be.

Deep Freeze in the Sunny South

2006-12-11T01:38:00.000-08:00

There was frost on my pumpkin Friday morning, or there would have been
if I had a pumpkin.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution predicted the lowest Georgia
temperatures in two years With "Deep Freeze in the South" headlines.
Strange to walk on frozen ground, like walking on concrete, the grass
glinting with ice crystals. Ice on the creek made it resemble a still pond,
but the water was flowing under the ice covering and tumbling over the
rocks just beyond the bridge. Buckie walked across the creek, then tested
the edges with his paw until he could press the ice down and drink the water
that puddled on top. We've had cold nights, plenty of frost and some ice,
but this was our first hard freeze.

After seeing the forecast, I crawled under the floor to check on the water
pipes. It was the first time I had been under since I repaired a bad leak in
mid-summer, and I was dismayed to see several wet spots on the ground,
indicating minor leaks and drips. Maybe those drips would help prevent
freezing, I thought, along with the faucets dripping inside all night. I hope to
be able to wait until spring to start replacing the pipes, for the builder who
sold the building to me wrapped all the pipes in plastic and wound electrical
tape around the plastic.It was harder to cut this material off than it was to
replace the cracked pipe last summer.

When I first acquired the building, there was an outside hydrant flush against
the house, but the water turn-off valve was past it, under the house, and there
was no way to turn off the water to this hydrant except by turning it off at the
meter. Builder had encased the shaft up to the handle and spout in concrete in
an effort to prevent its freezing, but it had apparently frozen anyway, for there
was a constant dribble through a crack in the concrete. Still, it came in handy
as my sole source of water when I had the hot water heater moved from the
pantry, where it crowded the space and was warping the floor, and a washer
connection installed in the utility room I had built on half the back porch. I
still haven't installed another outside hydrant. I made one attempt, but gave
up, there's a rock that will have to be broken up before pipe can be
connected. I've always just carried water from the creek for my plants.

My learning to plumb has been like someone re-inventing the wheel. I had
watched Gil when he laid a pipe from the old house to the garden, and
that was the first plumbing he ever did. Not long afterward, being faced
with being without water while he was away for several days was a great
incentive to my learning to replace a pipe or two. It was a skill that came
in handy during his long illness. It's amazing what one can learn when there's
little money and things have to be done. I also re-wired the telephones after
lightning struck and fried them.

Now I still repair when I can, replacing washers in faucets for instance, for I
can eat for a week for the total of one plumber's bill. My daughter-in-law,
who had to serve as an apprentice plumber for several months as training for
her job as office manager and sales rep for a huge plumbing supply company,
installed my new toilet and will be bringing a new faucet and spray set for my
kitchen sink, but she lives too far away to call on often. I've bought a new
pipe-cutting tool, no more tedious hacksawing and filing off burrs, and I'll be
working on the pipes next spring- if they only hold until then. And if only the
pipes outside under the ground don't freeze, as they did one year at the old
house.

By afternoon it was up to 40, the sun shining, the air still. Buckie and I
walked down the creek bank, breathing in the cold, clear air. The
ground stayed frozen and not much of the ice melted, for the sunshine was
pleasant, but seemed to lack heat. I finally had to come inside, my toes
were numb. Back down in the 'teens on Saturday night. The hard freezes
will kill off a lot of the destructive and annoying insects, unlike last winter
when, although it stayed cold longer than usual- I had to have heat in
early June- there were no really low temperatures. I read there were
problems with huge swarms of yellow jackets in Alabama, and this was
blamed on the lack of a hard winter.

Yes, I know our winters are a joke to those in the north. I lived in
Chicago for 20 years. But the cold here never lasts, it will gradually
warm up until it rains again. Then cold and freezing again. One can
never become used to the cold so that each cold spell is something of
a shock. But then again, after it has been so cold, a day when the
thermometer reaches 50 will feel almost balmy, especially if the sun
is shining and there's no cold wind.

I wish we would have a real snow this year. It's cold enough to snow
throughout the winter, but seldom does. When even a light snow is forecast,
people flock to the stores and buy up all the bread and milk, children are
sent home from school and the mills let the workers out early. We have hills
and no salting or snow removal equipment. A deeper snow can shut
everything down for days. If it warms up enough to partly melt and then
re-freeze at night, the ice can bring down power lines, and what is common
in the North can become a crisis here in the South.

I've filled jugs with water and stocked my pantry, and I still have the
concrete blocks and metal plate I used to heat food and water for coffee
by the gas wall heater the last time the power was out, so I'm ready.
Let it snow!

Living Off the Land

2006-12-07T23:14:00.000-08:00

Not exactly.
I never have.

My mother gardened when I was in my teens and my husband had a garden
some distance from our house. I was never invited to work in them, nor did I
volunteer.

Mother raised tomatoes, green beans, and usually a few stalks of corn. She
canned tomatoes and blackberries, but wouldn't try canning green beans and
corn for she didn't have a pressure cooker. She also made blackberry jam
and jelly and once someone gave her some apples. Our old house had no
closets so she stacked the jars of food against the wall in the middle room,
supposed to be a dining room, but we needed it for a bedroom. After the
apple jelly had cooled and sealed she was putting it away as I passed
through on my way to the kitchen. She was holding a jar to the light,
admiring its amber contents.

"Look," she said, "isn't it pretty!"

I mumbled something, thinking I'd appreciate it more if she'd offer me some
for the biscuit I took from the warming oven. And someone should have
slapped me up side of the head for not appreciating her and the work she'd
done, but my head was full of school and boys and the need to polish my
black-and-white saddle oxfords for the next day.

Then I was grown and I was canning and freezing and preserving food in an
attempt to make a cotton mill worker's wages stretch to cover the needs of
six people. I was also washing, ironing, sewing shirts for the boys and dresses
for the girl, cleaning the house and attending PTA meetings, and I had little
time for gardening. We did, when the children were old enough, go berry
picking, and I made blackberry jelly, and yes, the jelly was pretty in the jars.

When Gil and I moved to North Georgia to a house with a large garden plot,
we gardened with zeal, at first from necessity, later because the food we grew
tasted so much better than any we could buy. The garden grew up in weeds
during his long illness, though we usually could manage three or four tomato
plants.

Now it is necessity again that is making me into an avid gardener. I want to
grow my own spinach and green onions and not risk death or paralysis from
buying them. And the store prices of produce continue to climb commensurate
with the price of fuel for transportation. This past summer I was able to buy
some produce for less at the flea market from local growers, or from some
who haul the produce in to sell with no store overhead, and I shall continue
to buy some there, for I won't be able to grow all I need.

This lot used to be part of the pasture that borders it, and the ground should
have been made rich from horse and cow droppings over time. But the
ground here is low, and the man who built the house didn't want to spend
the money to have good fill dirt hauled, so he filled it in a little with chert,
which is a mixture of red clay and rock, frequently used as a base for roads.
It supports a mix of grass and weeds that pass for a lawn, and that's about
all. In order to garden, I've had to build raised beds, rectangles enclosed
with concrete blocks and filled with some bought dirt and composted cow
manure, sand from the creek for drainage, compost from my two plastic
trash cans, a slow process, and some good earth from the woods when
I can get it, carrying two half-filled buckets at a time.

So far my beds are raised only by about 3 inches. When I get enough dirt in
them, I will start another one. This past summer I had tomatoes, jalapenos,
and zucchini. Squash borers got into the stalks and cut the zucchini harvest
short. But I also had basil, marigolds, and garlic chives, all in the two small
beds. And I planted sage and rosemary in two hollow slices of the tree that
fell and had to be sawed up, and oregano, thyme, pennyroyal and rue in
pots. All but the pennyroyal have been unscathed by the frost.

Coleslaw is a staple for my dinners through the fall and winter, cabbage still
being priced reasonably, certainly so compared to the so-called iceberg
lettuce, which has little taste and little nutrition. Romaine and the other good
greens have become dear. Alas for the spinach. I used to buy some for
salad once in a while, no matter the cost. No store seems to be carrying
any now, probably thinking no one would buy it if they did.

The American Cancer Institute's research showing that consumption of
cabbage as well as other crucifers decreases the risk of some cancers
helped me to resign myself to having coleslaw nightly instead of salad.
For awhile, that is. Then, just as I enjoyed the wildflowers that I didn't
grow, I began to look for food I didn't have to cultivate. There is
chickweed, it grows everywhere, dies back and gets tough in summer
but flourishes in the spring and fall. It is a good source of copper and is
sold in herb stores in mixtures reputed to aid in losing weight. Supposedly
the copper gives one added energy which causes more calories to be
burned. Years ago, my mother told me two of my great-half-aunts had
ordered some chickweed in capsules through a magazine ad. She said
she didn't think they got any slimmer from taking it. They could have
walked out the door and gathered all they wanted free if they had
known what to look for.

So now I gather a handful of the chickweed, a few of the smallest
dandelion leaves, just a bit of the wild onions, a few leaves of wild
clover, and the garlic chives that are still green around one garden bed.
This evening I found two dandelion blossoms, even after these several
frosty nights. The greens chopped into the shredded cabbage and carrots
make a delicious salad-slaw, especially with my good reduced fat dressing.

When some restaurants advertise "creamy coleslaw" it means shreds of
cabbage embedded in a blob of mayonnaise. I use half mayonnaise and half
plain unflavored yogurt, mix thoroughly, then add juice from a jar of dill
pickles (my favorite is Clausen), stir thoroughly and add more pickle juice
if a thinner dressing is desired. A sprinkling of dried Dill will make it even
tastier. I mix the dressing in a margarine cup, making enough for about a
week of coleslaw. An economical, tasty, cancer-fighting dish. What more
could one ask?

A National Day of Mourning

2006-11-27T23:09:00.000-08:00

"The pilgrims had hardly explored the shores of
Cape Cod for four days before they had robbed
the graves of my ancestors and stolen their
corn and beans."
-------Frank James, known in the Wampanoag Tribe as Wampsutta

Not a day to give thanks, but a National Day of Mourning for the
Native Americans.

In 1970, James was invited to speak at the annual Thanksgiving feast by
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. When festival organizers learned
that James's speech was an angry recounting of the treachery of the
pilgrims, an outcry against the genocide of the Wampanoags, they
refused to let him speak. He left the dinner and went to the statue of
Massasoit, Sachem of the Wampanoags, and gave his speech to 7 or 8
Indians and supporters.

Every year since then on Thanksgiving Day, Native Americans and their
supporters gather at the top of Cole's Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock
to observe the National Day of Mourning.

And every year. in schoolhouses all over the country, children enact
a simplistic, distorted pageant of kindly, virtuous pilgrims and
friendly Indians getting together for a meal which set the tradition
for the first Thanksgiving.

According to Indian sources, the meeting was about the Pilgrims
wanting to acquire land, the Wampanoags had the food for their own
traditional fall feast and brought it along.
See the Native Americans' Bureau of White Affairs.

Two hundred years later, there was no pretense of friendly meetings
when the Cherokees were driven out of Georgia. They were living in
houses, schooling their children, had their own printing press, and
were considered no threat to anyone. But those in power coveted
their land.

In 1931, Nancy Callahan Dollar, better known as Granny Dollar, died
on Lookout Mountain at the age of 105. Her father, William Callahan,
a full-blooded Cherokee, was one of several who escaped the infamous
Trail of Tears by hiding out in caves on the mountain.

There were men on the mountains who would not fight for the Confederacy
and slavery, and before that there were mountain people who would not
turn in the escaped Cherokees, but welcomed them as neighbors. And
there were men who stole their lands, forcing those who survived the
terrible march and those who escaped to start all over again.

Thanksgiving- Feast or Fast?

2006-11-24T22:30:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving is not a day of celebration for Native Americans, as Robert Jensen
points out in the article below. Jensen is a journalism professor at the University
of Texas at Austin. The article was posted by The Alternative Press Review on
November 21, 2005.

Give Thanks No More; It’s Time for a National Day of Atonement

By Robert Jensen

One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the
replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting
with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective
collective fasting.

In fact, indigenous people have offered such a model; since 1970 they
have marked the fourth Thursday of November as a Day of Mourning
in a spiritual/political ceremony on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock,
Massachusetts, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the
Americas.

Not only is the thought of such a change in this white-supremacist holiday
impossible to imagine, but the very mention of the idea sends most
Americans into apoplectic fits -- which speaks volumes about our historical
hypocrisy and its relation to the contemporary politics of empire in the United
States.

That the world’s great powers achieved “greatness” through criminal brutality
on a grand scale is not news, of course. That those same societies are reluctant
to highlight this history of barbarism also is predictable.

But in the United States, this reluctance to acknowledge our original sin -- the
genocide of indigenous people -- is of special importance today. It’s now
routine -- even among conservative commentators -- to describe the United
States as an empire, so long as everyone understands we are an inherently
benevolent one. Because all our history contradicts that claim, history must be
twisted and tortured to serve the purposes of the powerful.

One vehicle for taming history is various patriotic holidays, with Thanksgiving
at the heart of U.S. myth-building. From an early age, we Americans hear a
story about the hearty Pilgrims, whose search for freedom took them from
England to Massachusetts. There, aided by the friendly Wampanoag Indians,
they survived in a new and harsh environment, leading to a harvest feast in
1621 following the Pilgrims' first winter.

Some aspects of the conventional story are true

Consider the Lilies

2006-11-23T23:04:00.000-08:00

Every year I think of all the things I want to do when spring comes, hundreds of
projects I can never accomplish. This year I failed miserably, and therefore
lucked out. If I had started the orchard on the Menlo lot, added another garden
bed and three or four more planters here, my efforts would have been wasted
because of the searing heat and drought this past summer.

I carried bucket after bucket of water to the straggly bachelor buttons I had
started from seed and was rewarded with only a bloom now and then, seldom
more than two flowers at the same time. I would have liked a dense bed of
them, for the flowers were blue and there don't seem to be many truly blue
flowers, most are tinged with enough red to make them more lavender than
blue.

But all through the heat and drought the wildflowers bloomed and bloomed
with no one tending them. Their leaves sometimes wilted a bit when the sun
had blazed down all day, but would recover by the next morning.

Consider the lilies of the field....

No lilies, no fields, but thickets of wild touch-me-not grew on the banks of the
dry creek bed, more than any previous year. Their orange flowers shaped like
little cornucopias drew hummingbirds, delightful to observe. Once I watched
from the bank as two of the tiny birds fought over one patch of blossoms.
One hung in the air against his blur of wings, a tiny guard claiming those blooms
as his own, darting forth to attack the other who hovered near and would not
give up.

The common name of this plant is jewel weed, probably because of the
translucent yellow-green and pinkish stems. The juice from the stalk is
considered an antidote for poison oak. It is called wild touch-me-not
because its sickle-shaped seeds burst open at a touch when dry.
Orange is another minority color among the flowers.

There were also lots of wild sunflowers, the flowers much smaller than the
cultivated kind, but tall and cheerful massed along the creek bank, making
my walks along the dry bed most pleasant. Down near the bridge tall stalks
of bright purple ironweed accented the yellow sunflowers.

Joe pye weed with clusters of small pink or white flowers grew along the
pasture fence and on the ditch bank by the road, the little florets at first
distinct, then becoming ragged as the summer wore on, so that from the
distance they appeared to be a fuzzy mass.

It was a delight to come upon an occasional cardinal flower with its
notched crimson petals, usually only one and usually low on the bank,
but occasionally two, side by side. The same with the lobelias, their
hooded blossoms providing another example of really blue flowers.

My mother used to laugh when she saw a flower described in the Field
Guide to Wildflowers as "escaped". She said she had visions of flowers
running down the road with gardeners in hot pursuit.

The Term "escaped" meant the identified wildflowers had also been
cultivated.I wanted to reverse the process and wished I had saved seeds
from the cardinals and lobelias. I had bought a small pot of lobelias, the
kind with prostrate stems that hung over the sides of the pot. It bloomed
continuously all summer, lovely little blue flowers with the distinctive hoods.
The plastic tag identified it as an annual; the tall wild lobelias survive the
winters and bloom again.

But this past summer it was too hot even after the sun went down to do
much work outside, it was all I could do to keep the grass cut. I couldn't
bear to think of building planters or making more flower beds, and the
"escaped" flowers would have to be confined so that I could mow around
them.

A few years ago, there were only a few stalks of jewel weed here and there.
Now there are thickets, and there are small clumps of them all up and down
the creek.I can hope that the cardinals and lobelias will likewise spread.

And next spring I would... But that is the cry of all gardeners who dream
over seed catalogues throughout the fall and winter. Next spring, next year.....

Red and Blue Splotches on a Solid Pink State

2006-11-21T22:47:00.000-08:00

After the recent election, the New York Times showed Georgia as a solid
pink state, meaning it was held by the Republicans, with no gains by either
party. As the Times was only concerned with the major offices, the governors,
senators, and members of congress, this was true from their viewpoint. But as
the people who live in the state find their lives affected by holders of all the
offices, it wasn't exactly true.

Republican Governor Sonny Perdue was re-elected, the voters also elected
the state's first Republican lieutenant governor, and, for the first time, a
Republican received the majority of votes cast in Chattooga County in a
race for state senator, all a cause for rejoicing by the local Republican Party.

There was another race that was very important in this small area of Georgia,
and should be important to the entire country.

About two years ago, just before the last election, the local offices of State
Court Judge and Solicitor General became vacant. The local newspaper
published the names of candidates for the offices, which are non-partisan, but
the two most well-known candidates were both Democrats, and both had a
good chance of winning. Governor Perdue stepped in and, according to a law
which allows him to do so, appointed two Republicans to fill the vacancies,
thereby taking the decision away from the voters.

The Perdue appointees, both decent, competent men, had to run for re-
election this year, and both lost- to two Democrats, including one of those
who had tried to be a candidate two years ago. In the interim he had been
convicted of Driving Under the Influence, and the State Court Judge he
defeated had been instrumental in setting up a drug court, intended to help
first offenders of drug and alcohol abuse get into rehabilitation programs.
Even with this blot on his record, and even though there were more votes
for Republicans than Democrats in most of the other contests, he and the
other Democrat won.

There were constant reminders that elections for these two offices were
non-partisan. But Perdue had made them partisan by appointing Republicans.
Some of the Republicans in the county voted Democrat, and voted in a judge
with a DUI conviction, because that was the only way to show Perdue that it
was wrong to take away the people's right to vote.

The Supreme Court's overturning the Georgia law requiring that voters present
a driver's license in order to vote was also a people's victory. This smacked of
the old poll tax which was intended to keep Blacks from voting, but which also
kept many poor whites away from the polls. Those who make Georgia's laws
did not seem to care that many poor and elderly people do not drive. Now the
some 17 documents that can be presented as proof of a voter's identity include
rent receipts, utility bills, birth certificates. It's a shame that it still takes a fight
through the courts to preserve the right of everyone to vote.

A Fairyland of Lights

2006-11-10T23:27:00.000-08:00

It happens every September.
I will walk down by the creek one night and there are hundreds of tiny
bluish-white lights dotting the banks, the sandbars, and even in the grass
near the water.

The first time I saw them it was one of those late evenings when I was
burning brush and waste paper and at the same time cooking what I call
a trash fire supper. Burning the trash- a necessary task- leaves beneficial
ashes for the garden beds and provides me with a delicious meal, usually
potatoes baked in the embers, they bake to mealy goodness best when those
aluminum nails are run through them, and sometimes thin little steaks rubbed
with butter and garlic, and usually a pig's foot or hunk of backbone for Buckie,
who also gets one of the potatoes.

While waiting for the potatoes to finish cooking, I walked over to the creek
bank. Even on fall nights before it turns too cold there is a chance of seeing
one of the elusive water snakes gliding along. No snakes this night, but I saw
something glittering at the water's edge.At first I thought it must be broken
glass reflecting the fire's light, so I started down the bank, planning to pick it
up. And found myself surrounded by a fairyland of lights. I turned off the
flashlight and just stood there breathing.

Finally, after what seemed long time of stillness, I moved cautiously forward,
not wanting to step on the lights. But they would go out when I walked near
them, no matter how carefully I stepped. Sometimes, as I stood watching,
many of the lights further away from me would disappear, but when I swept
the banks with the flashlight then turned it off, they would come back on,
shining steadily, as if in response to my light.

My quest to learn what they are was hampered for a long time because
I assumed they were some type of crustacean. I had forgotten that
sometimes the way to knowledge is to first discard all preconceived
notions and set forth with an open mind. But when I learned there are
many bioluminescent marine creatures, but rarely any in fresh waters, I
was sure these must be some of the rare ones.

Then my youngest son, Andy, came to see the lights, and stood there,
delighted and awed. "I've been around creeks all my life, " he said,
"And I've never seen anything like this." He had to dig one out to see
what made the lights, and exclaimed, "Why, it's just a bug!"

Then I stopped seeing little crustaceans and began comparing them to
illustrations of bugs. I would never have thought of fireflies, for fireflies
have traffic-light yellow lights that blink off and on, and these were a more
pleasing greenish or bluish white that did not blink. But they are indeed
fireflies (Lampyridae), the lightning bugs of childhood, or rather it is the
firefly larva.

They are about an inch long. look flattened, mud or sand colored. Such
homely creatures to make this fairyland of lights. One theory is that they
burrow in damp earth because that is where their prey is, earthworms or
other small worms.

The light show by the creek usually lasts about two weeks. After the first
heavy rain there is only a scattering of lights. I don't know if the rain washes
most away or if they simply burrow deeper to prepare for the cold soon to
come. As the nights become colder, as usually soon happens following the
hard rain, the lights disappear altogether.

It is usually late May or early June when the mature fireflies rise up from the
grass and turn their yellow lights on and off and on throughout the summer nights.

It was in June when Gil and I brought our eight cats from Chicago about
three months after we started moving to North Georgia. Oscar, one of the
younger cats, was irritable from the long drive and wary of the strange
surroundings. He would stop complaining long enough to rise on his back
feet and bat at the low-flying fireflies.

Then I realized we hadn't had fireflies in Chicago. I was well aware that we
had never been able to see the stars. So on that June night we walked about
the yard with the cats beneath a starry sky with fireflies drifting lazily upward
around us.

That was when we were living in the house that burned last January. Gil, the
cats, and the house are all gone now. But the same sky full of visible stars
stretches overhead here, fireflies rise up from the grass on summer nights,
and every fall I can look forward to the fascinating light display their young
provide.

Columbus, Anyone?

2006-10-30T20:57:00.000-08:00

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue...

Does anyone celebrate Columbus Day other than school children, who must
suffer again through the tale of how the sailors panicked, fearful that
the ship would sail over the edge of the world and drop into a void
during that voyage motivated by greed and the drive to conquer that
brought death and disease to the native peoples.

For me, it means I can spend the whole day at home, post offices closed,
no mailing of book orders. But for most working people it is just another
mark on the calendar, no three-day weekend for them.

Native Americans claim Columbus never "discovered" America, for the country
was never lost. Last year a tale was circulated about how some American
Indians were going to rent three ships and set out to discover England and
Spain. Nothing was said about whether they were to take along strings of
beads and other trinkets.

A Native American member of Biblio, the booksellers forum by listserv,
wrote that only the week before he had discovered New Jersey, but had
decided against making an offer for it, returning instead to the Canadian
province where he preferred to live.

The day after Columbus Day we had to resume mailing out books.

Closed For the Season

2006-10-26T22:48:00.000-07:00

Another summer gone. The leaves are turning. The color gives depth
to the woods around me, no longer a solid wall of green. Individual trees
stand out on the hills and mountains. Through my window every day I
see the bronze of dogwood, the red of maples amidst varying shades of
yellow and brown deep in the remaining green across the creek.

Frost killed the tomato and pepper plants and blackened the tall basil
more than a week ago. Gone are the barefoot mornings, the freedom from
coats and sweaters, and no more sleeping with the doors left open all
night. No more standing by the garden bed and eating tomatoes warm from
the sun.

I used to dream of hot southern summers when I tried to swim in Lake
Michigan too early in the season. Louis Grizzard once wrote that Chicago
has two seasons: winter and the Fourth of July.

But I am glad to be living where there are four distinct seasons. Not for
me the endless summers of those much-advertised old folks' retreats in
Florida, nor Houston, where I spent last New Years weekend when it was
in the mid 80's and the sidewalks reflecting back the heat made walking
around uncomfortable. They may not have cold winters, but neither do they
have real springs.

Now I shall enjoy the crisp, bright days of fall. Highs are usually 50's
to 60's, falling to chilly 30's or low 40's at night. I won't have to travel
far to see a color display. In a couple weeks or so the trees on the ridges
and mountains should be clothed in all their glory.

One year the fallen leaves completely covered the creek. It was a moving,
undulating carpet of patchwork color. No water visible, it looked as if
one might walk across it. Leaves float down it now, but not since that
particular year has the creek been completely covered.
Every year is different.

When I drive to my small building where my books are stored, a drive
between trees turning and changing and color deepening. I think of the
Zen phrase: "Be Here Now."

Now I shall be here. Now I shall exult in being alive on each of these
beautiful fall days.

Red Was the Midnight

2006-10-24T23:15:00.000-07:00

Atlanta, the City That Wasn't Always Too Busy to Hate, has more than one
chapter of shame in its past. The Coalition to Remember the 1906 Atlanta
Race Riot scheduled a series of events in September to mark the hundredth
anniversary of the riot, which wasn't a riot but a four-day rampage and
massacre of African Americans by a mob of about 10,000 whites. They
dragged Black people from their homes and from streetcars, and when their
rampage ended, a hundred or more Blacks and one white person were dead,
an untold number wounded and maimed. Many fled this most segregated
southern city, fearing for their lives. One account states that a white woman
died of a heart attack after seeing a black man hacked to pieces.

Inadequate affordable housing and competition for jobs between poor whites
and the blacks streaming into the city in search of work had caused a volatile
situation. Into this powder keg were dropped sensationalized and mostly untrue
newspaper accounts of whites being attacked by blacks.

Almost immediately when the riots subsided, the same newspapers played
down the violence, stating that all was now calm and peaceful. And so the
coverup continued until recently, with no mention of the events in history
books. But the study of the riots is now part of the new Georgia Program
Standards for 8th grade, and many of the teachers who were supposed to
teach this had never heard about what happened in 1906.

The Coalition to Remember's website has resources for educators and links
to further materials, as well as educational material for the general public. An
ongoing exhibit at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site is
entitled Red Was the Midnight- the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot. There's a
walking tour through the area where the riots occurred on every second
Sunday throughout the rest of this year.

Now Georgia 8th graders will learn about the 1906 riot. Maybe eventually
there will also be an effort to teach them some of the other parts left out of
the history books, such as the brutal treatment of workers of all colors
struggling to gain better wages and safe working conditions. Or will they still
read, as we did in school, mostly about how the kings, presidents, generals,
and other such great leaders accomplished everything.

A Fair and Tender Maiden

2006-10-02T01:00:00.000-07:00

The war goes on. Global warming threatens to wipe us out.There are vexing
family problems, the prices of everything we need keep rising.

Sometimes I turn away from the news, my books, and anything else that might
be thought provoking. Sometimes I want to escape thinking for a little while.
One route I've found is to watch a bad movie. Not mediocre, they're simply
irritating, but those so bad they become hilarious. Something like giant rabbits
taking over the world, when I might cheer the rabbits on, or even Night of the
Living Dead, although for one who has stood on the street corner in any large
city and watched people emerge from the subway or bus at the end of a
workday, that film isn't always far enough removed from reality.

It's even harder to find the truly bad book. Here again, mediocrity rules, and I
lack the patience to read more than a paragraph or so of such drivel. However,
I did stumble across one this week and it's a gem. I read a page here and there,
then went back to read some that I had missed.

Dainty's Cruel Rivals or the Fatal Birthday, by Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller,
copyright 1898, published by The Arthur Westbrook Company, Cleveland.

Shades of Cinderella, although the fairy tale is a great classic compared with this
pot boiler. Not stepsisters, but two cousins are out to get poor Dainty Chase and
prevent her from marrying Lovelace Ellsworth, heir to the fine Ellsworth estate
and tons of money. Judith Ellsworth, currently in possession of the estate, has
invited all three of her nieces to visit the Ellsworth mansion. She schemes to
maneuver her stepson, Lovelace, called "Love" for short, into marrying either
Olive or Ela, thus keeping the mansion and money within the family. Dainty she
had invited as an afterthought, not considering her in the running for Love, who
would only be interested in attractive women, and Dainty's father, Judith's half-
brother, "was a very homely man and I never heard that his wife was a beauty"
so Dainty could not possibly be pretty.

But Olive and Ela, both beautiful women and educated as well (they were
schoolteachers), "feared the rivalry of a girl as fresh and lovely as the morning,
and with the rounded slenderness of eighteen, piquant features, rose-leaf
complexion, delicious dimples, a wealth of curling golden hair, and large, deep,
violet-blue eyes full of soul and tenderness." She was also empty-headed, a trait,
I believe, as undesirable as the maliciousness of the sisters. Nevertheless,
Lovelace takes one look at her and falls head over heels. Olive and Ela had
taken a night train, knowing if they did not wait to go the next day Dainty
would be too cowardly to go by herself. The next day, while she is weeping
and complaining bitterly to her mother about how they have tricked her out
of her holiday, for indeed she is too timid to travel alone, Lovelace happens
by on his way home from his many travels, offers to accompany her to the
mansion, and falls in love with her during the journey. (Dainty likes him too,
but she says she wouldn't be happy away from her mama.)

He is so blinded by love - or lust- that he fails to see the spineless,
tear-sodden creature that we are shown, even as the narrator keeps telling
us what a lovely, pure and sweet creature she is. The sisters are must more
interesting as they and Aunt Judith race about trying to prevent the marriage.
The press of time spurs Lovelace on, for he must marry by his 26th birthday,
about 3 weeks away, or lose his inheritance.

When Olive and Ela tell Dainty there are ghosts at Ellsworth, she goes into
hysterics every night believing that she is seeing and hearing the ghosts, even
though the servant who is forced to sleep in her room never sees nor hears
them. Olive masquerades as a gypsy telling fortunes.Dainty staggers from the
tent, "her face as white as her lilies. and the tears hanging on her lashes like
pearls in the moonlight" She was scarcely able to stand as she was being
urged to relate her fortune from the "gypsy". "..her eyes turned mournfully
to [Love's] while she faltered, fearfully: ".[The 'gypsy' said:]..'You do well
to choose lilies for your adorning, for they are funeral flowers, and you will
soon be the bride of Death!'" And she "dropped like a broken flower and
hung fainting on her lover's arm".

After Lovelace proves that the "gypsy" fortuneteller was actually Olive, the
doctor states that "the dreadful prediction..would have preyed so deeply on
[Dainty's] sensitive mind as to cause her premature death" had the farce not
been exposed.

Ela's boyfriend, Vernon, whom she had jilted when she thought she had a
chance at marrying a rich man, followed her to Ellsworth. Lovelace is told
that it was Dainty who had jilted Vernon, and that she had been meeting him
and exchanging notes on the sly. This gives her another chance to weep
copiously and prove again how pure and virtuous she is.

Later, someone pretending to be the ghost starts carrying her from her room,
drops her when attacked by a servant, and she lies in a coma for a few days.
She gets a lot of mileage out of this while Lovelace hovers over her lamenting
her fate. After she revives, she is kidnapped on the eve of her wedding day.
Lovelace is shot in the temple by Vernon, Ela's old boyfriend, which destroys
his memory. Dainty finds he doesn't know her after her rescue. She is ordered
to leave the Ellsworth mansion, fed some poison, and when she stubbornly
refuses to die, the cabin in which she has sought refuge is set on fire.

While reading this silly tale, I thought of the old movie serial "The Perils of
Pauline". But Pauline's many brushes with death were the result of her active
involvement in one adventure after another while Dainty seems to do little
but stand around waiting for the next attack. And I'm sure Pauline didn't
weep buckets even when she was tied to the railroad track or when the
saw whirred inches from her head.

All works out in the end, of course, Lovelace miraculously recovers. They
had been married secretly days before the planned wedding day, so he
inherited the loot after all, the three who connived to separate them are
exposed, and Dainty's mama comes to live with Lovelace and his bride in
the Ellsworth mansion. And Dainty stops fainting and crying for a page or
so at least. Lovelace orders Aunt Judith, Olive and Ela to leave, and "the
veil of a merciful oblivion fell over their future fate as scheming adventuresses
to the end of their days."

This was no. 88 of The Hart Series, issued weekly, one of 103 titles listed
on the back cover. It could be ordered from the publisher for 20 cents in
coin or postage stamps.

Drought

2006-09-24T22:58:00.000-07:00

48 counties in Alabama and several counties in Georgia were declared natural
disaster areas in June because of the drought. By the end of August, the
Environmental Protection Division had issued a level one drought declaration
for the entire state, and several other southern states were declared in various
stages of drought conditions. Restricted water use, farmers eligible for
emergency loans. Record temperatures and little rain. Farmers and ranchers
in the plains states were talking about the 1930's dust bowl. Now, as then,
stunted corn stalks rattled in the fields, water holes were gone, and large herds
of cattle were sold off to save them from starvation.

Cane Creek is drying up. The music of running water is stilled. Long stretches
of rock and sand with only an occasional pool of water. It was like this four
years ago, but there were more and larger pools of water then. This is the
worst I've ever seen here. There were a few good rains in August; 24 hours
after the rain ended the ground would be dry, and I would be carrying water
to my little garden and small herb patch.

There is still a stretch of shallow water bordering my yard, but it was divided
into two parts in August, and now in September into three, with rocky barriers
between. One day in August as the water receded, I was in the back yard
when I heard a loud slapping sound. A fish had somehow flipped from the
water onto the dividing rocks. I wouldn't have believed that a fish no larger
than my hand could thrash about so vigorously and make so much noise. I
saved it by flipping it back into the water with a stick. But that fish and many
more will die as the drought continues. They are slowly being deprived of
oxygen, and they normally depend on bugs and debris washed in along with
run off from the rain for some of their food.

Four years ago, as the water sank lower and lower, big suckers over a
foot long lay gasping and dying in the shallows. I've seen no suckers that big
since, and now I'm not seeing even hand-size fish. The shallow stretch of
water along my back yard is covered with an ugly scum.
Buckie and I went walking in the dry creek bed, as we did four years ago.
It's the only time we can safely walk long distances through here during the
summer. We can see there are no snakes underfoot on this strange, rough
road.My walking stick was provided by the beavers. There were always
limbs and sticks floating down the creek, each neatly cut at an angle, peeled
clean of bark. I saved those that were straight and sturdy and of a comfortable
length.

The beavers have long been gone. Buckie ran about sniffing their caves.
I wished I'd brought along a flashlight so I could see how far they'd dug into
the creek bank. Only once have I seen the creek ice over, and then the ice
only lasted a couple of days, so they do not need to build winter lodges and
stockpile food as they do in the northern ponds.

Trees at the creek's edge sent their roots down through the water into the
bottom of the creek bed. Now these roots are exposed, gnarled and twisted.
Behind these roots are the beavers' caves. The odd lacework of roots reminds
me of burglar guards across a storefront. They wouldn't provide the beavers as
much protection as a burglar guard against their enemies, dogs and men, but
perhaps they made them feel more secure.

I wonder where the beavers are, and if they've even survived. I'd think they
would have headed for the nearest water, the Chattooga River, about 7 miles
away. It's still running, though very low. Bevers move clumsily on land.
They would have had to cross highways and fields near houses with dogs.
And the Chattooga River is polluted. The textile factory in the next town
has been fined several times by the EPA for releasing dyes and other wastes
into the river.

In one pool we pass, at least a dozen crayfish dart about. I usually only see
crayfish at night when I stand on the back deck and shine a light into the
water, catching them by surprise before they scuttle backward into the sand.
Also concealed in the sandy bottom in normal times are the mussels. I've
yet to see a live one, but I've often seen their shells, left by some creature
that savours their flesh. Now the empty shells are strewn through the rocks,
many so tiny they seem not worth the effort to open for the tiny morsel within.
Mussels don't seem to grow very large in this creek, the largest shell I've
seen is about 2 1/2-inches long. The shell linings that look like mother-of-pearl
are not as thick and lustrous as in the much larger shells I've taken from the
Tennessee River.

The bits of color in the woods to either side were leaves, gold and bronze
and crimson, turned and fallen two months before their time. Trees were
dying. Dead limbs littered the creek bed.

My attention was drawn to a pile of what looked at first to be rat droppings.
Poking them about with a stick, I discovered they were periwinkle shells, dusty
from dried mud, for they, too, spend much of their time buried, trying to stay
safe from predators. But one must have crouched here, sucking out their flesh
and then tossing the shells into this neat pile.

As to what feasted on the mussels and periwinkles, I can only guess.
Raccoons? Opossums? Or do coyotes roam the woods here, about two miles
north of my house. And I once saw a pair of muskrats swimming down the
creek at night. They were terrified of my light and swam quickly away to
hide. They could also have a taste for shellfish.

Walking down this rocky bed, I've never seen any Indian tools or artifacts.
Most of the rocks are dark and dull, indicating some iron content, or they
are sandstone, not the kind of stone for making arrowheads or tools. And
why should the Cherokees have camped long beside this creek, so
insignificant compared to other bodies of water not so far from here, the
Chickamauga Creek, the Tennessee River, and even the Chattooga River
when it ran clean and pure. And they did not always camp beside creeks
and rivers. I know of fields far from large bodies of water where spring
plowing never failed to turn up a few arrowheads and an occasional stone
tool. At least this was true several years ago.

Even though wading the occasional pool alleviated the heat, it was still too
hot for walking before late afternoon in August, so we could only wander
for about three miles or so up the creek before turning back if we were to
get home before dark.

Another afternoon I had planned to clean the kitchen, but the forecast was
for rain the next day. I thought it could be the first rain of many and the creek
would fill up again. It was four years ago when the creek dried up, and would
it be four years again before I could walk that rocky bed? And would I, when
four years older, be able to walk it?

I set the broom aside and pulled on my creek shoes. The rippled soles help me
to navigate the rocks, and the mesh tops drain out the water after I've waded.

This time we went down the creek, ending up within sight of a house, the first
one visible from the creek during our walks. Children were calling to one
another and someone had started a fire, I suppose for a cookout. The house
was some distance from the creek, but I felt like a trespasser, and we had
traveled our three miles or so.

Shortly before the house there is an underground stream that surfaces just
below the creek bank, filling the creek bed with cold, clear water. It was
only a few inches deep, but felt so good to my feet, cooling and refreshing
me. The evening air was thick with humidity from the impending rain.

Then the dry, rocky stretches all the way home. Here, as up the creek,
I was struck by the silent tragedy of countless deaths. All the tadpoles that
would never become frogs to serenade the summer evenings. There was
never a trace of the fish or the smaller water creatures such as the caddisflies.
The birds and the woods creatures must have feasted.

The polar ice cap is melting and polar bears are losing their homes. Here the
water world had vanished, and how would it affect the surrounding area.

Do not ask for whom the bell tolls..

It was getting dark. We had started out later than usual. Only an occasional
faint star shone through the clouds and there was no moon to light our way.
I was glad when the bridge suddenly loomed a few feet ahead, for under the
bridge and we would be beside our front yard and home.

After walking on sand and rocks, my feet felt as if they had been massaged.
I slept deeply that night and dreamed of running water where fish leaped
silvery in bright sunlight. That dream would be shattered many times in
the following days when I walked the dry creek bed again.

I started writing this in August. By the third week of September, although
we had rain and no longer had the blasting heat that dries up the rain soon
after it falls, the pools of water were noticeably smaller. There was no water
under the bridge. The creek bed had been dry at least a month longer than
it was four years ago. Then at last, during the fourth weekend of September
rain poured down and by Sunday afternoon the creek was filled with muddy,
flowing water. There is again the music of water rippling over rocks and
cascading over the edges of one rocky island that remains. We again have a
creek. The water will become clear in a few days and I will be wading again,
especially after a hot afternoon of yard work or grass cutting. There were
beavers in the creek again after the last drought. I wonder if they or some
of their offspring will come back this time.

Tiny But Terrible

2006-09-19T23:31:00.000-07:00

The toilet was running and wouldn't stop. I rushed out to turn the water off,
grabbed the railing as I raced down the front steps. And cried out. Felt like
a red hot needle had been jammed into my hand. I went on to the side of the
house and turned off the water, Then came back to see what had stung me.

After I took its picture, I rubbed meat tenderizer into my reddened and
swelling palm. It took most of the pain away and helped prevent further
swelling and itching. Then I looked through my Field Guide to the Insects
of America North of Mexico, by Donald J. Borror and Richard E. White,
the Peterson Field Guide Series, 1970, Boston.

Saddleback Caterpillar (Sibine stimulea). All the time I have spent outdoors
and gardening and around trees and I had never seen one, never even heard
of them. One-inch long and its sting is worse than that of a wasp or yellow
jacket. I found more information on several gardening forums. People have
been stung from just brushing against them. I got an especially painful sting
I guess because I pressed it as I grabbed the rail. Some of the spines on its
back are filled with a poisonous venom. All one has to do is touch those
spines to be stung.

Here are some better pictures. Some of the gardeners, like me, had never
heard of the saddleback. One said it looked like a scottie dog. I think of the
pictures of thoroughbreds draped with cloth and the saddle on top of the
cloth. The adult is a drab little moth with dark fuzzy wings and body. The
larvae supposedly feed on tree leaves. This one must have dropped onto
the railing.

What a strange and beautiful creature. If I hadn't been stung, I might not
have noticed it, for I was so preoccupied with the water problem.

Them Bones Them Bones

2006-09-15T23:36:00.000-07:00

Them Bones, Them Bones Gonna Rise Again

I just want mine to keep me upright for the remainder of my time above
ground. Judging from the results of recent tests, I think they might. I've just
viewed a chart that shows that bones inevitably "thin" or diminish in density
as one ages. Osteoporosis. Porous bones. Hunched backs and fractured
hips. Caucasian and Asian women are most at risk, as well as men who
have taken steroids.

A Dexa Scan last month shows I've actually increased the Bone Mineral
Density (BMD) in my spine- only by one-tenth-of-one-percent, but I think
any increase is significant.I would have been happy if the numbers had
stayed exactly the same as the first scan showed. But alas, they didn't.
The BMD loss in my left hip increased by -.9. (They didn't have a machine
that scanned both hips in 2004; this time they did.)

Bones change so slowly that Medicare will only pay for a Dexa Scan, also
known as a bone scan, every two years.The two scans I've had show that
I have osteopenia, which means some loss of BMD.

The doctor who ordered the scans prescribed Fosamax, a bisphosphonate,
which has increased bone mass in some people, but not all. After researching
osteopenia, osteoporosis, bisphosphonates, and trying to decipher the Dexa
Scan report, I've decided not to take the medication. I've learned that my
amount of BMD loss increases my risk of fracture by one-percent. Therefore
I don't think the even greater risk of known side-effects of bisphosphonates
is justified.

The University of Washington has an accessible course in bone physiology
which includes a lot of information on understanding the Dexa Scan and
on osteoporosis, including methods of prevention.

Here are my T-scores: Spine: -.9
Left Hip: -1.3
Right Hip: -1.2
My spine is considered "Normal", according to the technician who did the
scan, and according to material available on osteoporosis. T-Scores of +1
to -1 = normal; -1 to -2.5 =osteopenia; -2.5 and higher = osteoporosis.
The yardstick is the BMD of a 30-year-old woman.

So my hips are only -.4 and -.3 points higher in bone loss than my spine,
or those same amounts less than "normal".

Bisphosphonates have been linked to osteonecrosis of the jaw bone,
commonly called "Dead Jaw" and also "Rotting Jaw". A lawsuit was filed
against Merck, maker of Fosamax, in April in Florida. There are other
brand names of biophosphonates: Actonel, Boniva, Zometa, Aredia.
Many of those affected are cancer patients, some having received the
bisphosphonates by IV, and some receiving large doses.

A local pharmacist wrote that "the threat [of 'dead jaw'] is not nearly as
alarming as it might sound. About 94% of the reported cases...occurred
in patients with bone cancer...The incidence is much lower in patients who
take oral bisphosphonates. It's probably less than one case per 100,000
patients per year." And he urges "patients" to continue taking the drug "as
your physician ordered. The benefits probably outweigh the risks."
(Cook's Pharmacy advertisement in The Trion Facts, Wednesday, August
23, 2006)

Unlike Cook's Pharmacy, I find the threat alarming. I would feel more assured
by such a message if it were not from someone who profits from selling the
drug patients are urged to take. And by someone who didn't pepper the
message with the word "probably". I can do my own conjecturing: Probably
Cook's would not so blithely dismiss the risks of osteonecrosis if they or
someone close to them suffered from it.

Attorneys soliciting clients for further lawsuits claim a large percentage of
bisphosphonate-related jaw damage has gone unreported.

I am just as concerned by reports that bisphosphonates can and have caused
visual disturbances, aching joints, and that, if taken for ten years or more, can
actually cause bones to become more brittle and at increased risk of fractures.
But most disturbing of all is that it remains in the body and in the bones for ten
years after one ceases to consume it. Five or six years from now it may be
linked to more, and possibly even worse side effects, and the millions, mostly
women, who will have it in their bodies for years, will be able to do nothing
but wait to see if they will be inflicted with such horrors.

So no thanks, I'm not taking it.
I believe if I work harder at staving off osteoporosis that I can prevent
further BMD loss, or keep it at a very small amount. I believe some of
my BMD loss was caused by my curtailed mobility much of last year
because of sciatica and an injured foot. I stayed active and continued to
work out, but I didn't walk as much and I kept the weights lower on
the leg machines at the gym.

The two main weapons against osteoporosis are taking calcium and weight-
bearing exercise. Walking is a good weight-bearing exercise, but I don't
think it's enough. I'll keep lifting weights at the gym and, thanks to a
chiropractor's help, I'm no longer hampered by sciatica so I have for some
time been using heavier weights on the machines. I don't need to increase my
daily calcium intake, with supplements and dairy products I get enough. I do
need to never get so busy that I forget to take the supplements, so I've made
a note to myself to never skip a day. I also take magnesium. I have read many
articles about how magnesium and calcium need to be in balance, just as do
salt and potassium. Articles on the Magnesium Website show that a high
calcium intake without sufficient magnesium can cause many problems, and
that frequently what appears to be problems caused by a lack of calcium are
actually symptoms of magnesium deficiency.

Another article on the Magnesium Website claims that primitive man, with no
access to dairy products, did not consume a lot of calcium. Our bodies have
changed little since those times, but our diets have changed drastically. The
article implies that it is because of the low-calcium diet in ancient times that
our bodies store calcium. Magnesium, however, was plentiful from whole
grains and green leafy plants. And so, according to the article, primitive man
had a diet much higher in magnesium than in calcium. But we aren't told what
effect this magnesium-calcium balance had on his health, there's just the
implication that this is the natural way to eat. Other good sources of
magnesium are nuts and legumes.

Health care providers routinely tell women to take Tums as a source of
calcium. But reading the fine print on a Tums label shows that 1,000 mg
of calcium carbonate per tablet actually means only about 400 mg of
calcium, and no or very little magnesium.

Some other interesting things I've learned: the diuretic action of coffee
causes some calcium loss from the body. Yet a recent report shows the
value of coffee as an antioxidant and the amount of calcium lost because
of a cup of coffee can be replaced by drinking one-and-a-half tablespoons
of milk. Those who add milk to their coffee are safe.I've always liked mine
black. People who eat a lot of animal protein have denser bones and so do
people who are overweight. Weight loss can cause a loss in bone density.

So one could gobble up the meat, pack on the pounds, and have high
cholesterol and maybe heart disease and strained joints and whatever
other illness baggage that comes with obesity, but have great bones.

I think I'll stick to the plan I've been following, although I will
increase my magnesium intake. It'll be another two years before I have
another bone scan. The results then and any new information I've managed
to gather in the interim may send me back to the drawing board for a
revision.I do know that wellness is not totally a matter of luck: one has to
work at it. We have to learn about our bodies and take charge of our own
health.

At least I have the information that allows me to plan. Thousands of
postmenopausal women in their 40's and 50's without medical insurance or
with inadequate insurance do not. By the time they are able to get the medical
attention they need, many will already have developed osteoporosis and have
no choice but to take the risky bisphosphonates in an attempt to rebuild that
which they have lost. Here in the only industrialized country with no national
health insurance, that hundreds of thousands are broken and debilitated from
untreated illnesses is a national disgrace.

The charge for my last Dexa Scan was $379.00. The imaging facility had to
accept the reduced amount Medicare would pay, but those who do not qualify
for Medicare or who do not have adequate insurance would be responsible for
the full amount, as much as a third or more of the monthly wages of many
women who are already stretching each dollar as far as it will go.

When I went back to the clinic a few days ago for a mammogram I saw a
new sign at the desk. It stated that patients with no insurance must now pay
BEFORE they can see the doctor.

Giant Panda Baby

2006-09-09T13:28:00.000-07:00

Lun Lun, one of the Giant Pandas at the Atlanta Zoo, has a new baby. This
is cause for rejoicing, for Giant Pandas are an endangered species, with only
about 1,600 in the wilds of China, about 200 in captivity worldwide.

The Giant Panda is a symbol of peace in China, and was once used on flags
to signal surrender. It is also the logo of the World Wide Fund for Nature
(also known as the World Wildlife Fund), an organization dedicated to the
conservation and protection of the world's endangered species.

I have mixed feelings about caged animals being displayed, but sometimes
it is necessary for perpetuation of the species. The less than 2,000 in
their native habitat are fragmented, with little communication between those
in separate areas. This means in-breeding and can cause future generations
to be susceptible to physical defects or disease.

The pair at the Atlanta Zoo are on loan-lease from China. Atlanta pays
$1.1 million annually in lease fees, and about another $1.6 million annually
for the maintenance of Lun Lun and her mate, Yang Yang, who were
brought to Atlanta in 1999 on a 10-year loan program.If the cub survives, it
too will belong to China. and will be returned there in 2 to 3 years. If it
survives, it will be only the 5th to be born and raised successfully in
the U.S.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution has provided a video of this unusual
birth. You may have to register to view it, but registration is free and will
enable you to read articles about the pandas. More videos and articles
about cooperation for education and conservation are available on the
Atlanta Zoo website .

Watching this video, one is struck by the wonderful instinct of this animal.
This was her first time to give birth. She was in labor for 35 hours. Lun Lun
weighs 237 pounds, the cub an estimated 4 ounces. (Zoo releases compare
its size to a stick of butter.) It was born September 6, blind and almost
hairless, but immediately after birth it can be heard squealing loudly. Lun Lun
picks it up, holds it gently in her powerful jaws, and retreats to a corner where
she nurses and cuddles it.

She is being watched around the clock by zoo staff who are ready to take the
baby if necessary, but so far Lun Lun has proven to be an excellent mother.
Let us hope the cub continues to thrive.

More Independence

2006-08-28T13:17:00.000-07:00

Because July 4th was on Tuesday this year, our family gathered and feasted
on Saturday. Most had to report for work on Monday and wished to rest at
home the following day.

I've had my own special days of Independence in the past, about which I may
write some day, but my July 4th celebration was contingent on burning the
shoulder-high pile of brush accumulated since spring, along with a big trash
can of waste paper from my office.

The county-wide burn ban in effect from May 1st until November 1st provides
exceptions for recreation or for cooking food, so I roasted a couple of hot dogs
and 2 foil-wrapped potatoes and Buckie and I circled the fire a few times, which
might pass for a sort of recreation. Then we waded in the creek to cool off. And
then we ate.

Independence Day is one of the few holidays I can support whole-heartedly.
Even so, I know it does not have the same meaning for all Americans.

I have a CD of Whitney Houston singing America the Beautiful over and over,
5 or 6 renderings of the same song, each slightly different. Quite a trip to play it.
And I like to play it on trips.

From sea to shining sea.

At one point Ms Houston stops singing and calls out: "America- America,
I love you!"

I saw African Americans buying charcoal and all the parts for a cookout on
Tuesday.Yet the Declaration did not mean Independence for their ancestors.

Thousands of slaves and freedmen fought with the British, for the British had
abolished slavery. (Thousands more fought with the Revolutionaries, mostly
Northern Blacks.) And thousands left on British ships for lands where men
could not be bought and sold like cattle. But many were simply abandoned,
left to face the masters they had deserted, when the defeated British pulled out.
And many died from smallpox.

There had been an epidemic, devastating to the Revolutionary Army, but less so
to the British, for more of them had acquired immunity as children. The slaves,
isolated on plantations, were especially susceptible to the disease. Most of those
infected were simply abandoned by the British, or driven into the woods to die.
But some were used in an early example of Biological Warfare: "On July 13,
1781, [British] General Alexander Leslie outlined his plan in a letter to Cornwallis.
'Above 700 Negroes are come down the river in the Small Pox.' he wrote.
'I shall distribute them about the Rebell Plantations'." (Pox Americana, the Great
Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82, by Elizabeth A. Fenn, New York 2001, p.132
see also p.130)
This seems patterned after the even earlier genocidal plan to give Native
Americans blankets from the deathbeds of smallpox victims.

And purple mountains majesty....

I may not love our history of injustices, but I do love this land. I love the rolling
fields and the deep valleys and even the cities. I love the ridges and hills and
mountains here in North Georgia. My heart lifts up when driving back from the
relatively flat Atlanta area into a higher and higher elevation where the road
begins to wind between wooded hills.
I love this little bit right here beside Cane Creek.

When we first began to march against the war in Vietnam, there were people
on the sidewalks calling out: "Go back to Russia!"

With Paul Robeson I wanted to say: I am an American. I was born here
and here I shall stay.

The biographical book by Robeson, the great African American singer, actor,
former football star, was entitled "Here I Stand.". And so he did. And so shall I.

Independence Day

2006-08-26T01:09:00.000-07:00

Last year July 4th fell on Monday, so when a British customer emailed during
the weekend, urging that the book she was ordering be gotten off first thing
Monday by global priority mail, I wrote her that on Monday the post offices
would be closed and we Americans would gather around charcoal fires in our
yearly ritual of "celebrating our victory over you folks".

"Oh," she wrote, I'd forgotten about your Independence Day," and ended her
message: "But we still love you!"

This year the 4th was on Tuesday. President Bush spoke at Fort Bragg, NC,
home of the 82nd Airborne Division and the XVIII Airborne Corps,
America's only airborne corps and division. "I'm not going to allow the
sacrifice of 2,527 troops who have died in Iraq to be in vain" by pulling out
before the job is done, he said.

According to news reports it was the first time he spoke the actual numbers of
those who have been killed in this futile war. The row upon row of flag-draped
coffins have always been concealed from view. No trumpeting about Gold Star
Mothers.

I think of the young person led to the altar long ago as sacrifice to the tribal god.
If hunger followed, turbulent weather, game scarce, battles lost, did the tribal
members wonder if their offerings were not adequate or not sufficiently
attractive? Did they select two victims for the next sacrifice?

Bush did not speak the numbers of the 10 to 12 thousand wounded, many
maimed for life. He never has.

Does he not believe that their sufferings can be made not in vain by keeping
our troops in Iraq until there are 10 to 12 thousand more mangled bodies
shedding blood upon that ground.

Where have all the flowers gone....

The idea of propitiating the gods does not remain in the distant past. A
chaplain returned from serving in Iraq, in an interview with Terry Gross on
the National Public Radio's Fresh Air program broadcast on July 6th, said he
had counseled a soldier who believed that God was angry with him because he
had not felt remorse over killing an Iraqi and therefore had "visited" his mother
with cancer.

Couple years ago I was in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in the largest anti-war
rally ever held in that city. We, too, wanted to speak to the troops at Fort Bragg,
but that was as close as we could get. We would have told them that we support
them, too. We would support them by not sending them to be wounded and die
in a war that is enriching Halliburton and other big corporations.

Last year I was in D.C. with more than 100,000 marching in the biggest
anti-war action since the end of the Vietnam War. The Bush administration
were not swayed. Polls show that the majority of Americans do not support the
war. Their elected leaders turn a deaf ear, and Bush prattles on about continuing
the bloodshed so that the blood already shed will not have been shed in vain.

I think of the song Pete Seeger wrote and sang during the Vietnam War:

"We're knee deep in the Big Muddy, and the big fool says to push on."

Pets for a City Backyard

2006-08-19T13:25:00.000-07:00

These photos were taken by my daughter four years ago in the Birmingham,
Alabama, back yard of her friends who own these gentle pets.

I was trying to draw its face.

It was easier to take another photo.
That's a bit of dried grass hanging from the side of its mouth.
They go under the house at night and hibernate there during
the cold months.

World's Longest Yard Sale

2006-08-14T23:16:00.000-07:00

From Covington, Kentucky, to Gadsden, Alabama, it's called the
World's Longest Yard Sale. Also known as the Highway 127 Corridor sale,
it's usually held the first weekend in August. This year it was August 3- 6.

And every year I talk about taking some time off and traveling as much of the
450 mile, four-state route as I could cover in 4 days. I never did. And this
year I didn't even talk about it. Not in this heat wave.And not with these gas
prices. I just filled my cooler with bottles of water and set out on my usual
daily forays.

On the first day, Thursday, I sped past the parking lots and yards filled with
vendors and the tables set out in front of stores and headed for a place on
Lookout Mountain where I knew there would be books for sale. There I spent
about three hours. There were boxes and boxes of books, some set out
in the blazing sun. It's usually cooler on the mountain, but not a whole lot.
There is usually a breeze, but the sun feels just as hot at that elevation as it
does in the valley.

The books were cheap, but I must have looked poor in my straw hat, for
one of the women in charge came over to me as I sat on the sidewalk,
taking all the books out of one box and slowly putting them back in.
Lowering her voice so the others couldn't hear, she said: "Did you have a
limit to what you wanted to spend? We've added up the books you've set
aside and they come to almost fifty dollars!"

I know I was sweaty and grubby. Or maybe she had heard that old people
sometimes get confused and act erratically.

After I left that sale, I stopped at Mountain Mamas, a complex of little stone
buildings that many years ago were tourist cabins. Now they are filled with
pottery and craft items made by women and jellies and preserves made by
one of the owners. They offer rental spaces out front for the annual yard sale.

I found there a new aluminum squeegee thing for washing the car that had a
longer than usual handle for $1.50. I was standing at a table in the sun which
reminded me my straw hat was missing. I'd left it at the book sale. That hat
was a favorite, so I drove all the way back to get it. And bought another
book. And decided I'd had enough and headed for home, stopping only
to replace the $25 worth of gas I'd used and to buy a gallon of milk.
The sign on the bank read 100 degrees as I passed by at 7 p.m.
I don't know how hot it was in the afternoon.

Buckie always forgives me for leaving him. He's just glad that I have
come home.

It was 77 inside and felt good, but I turned on the ceiling fan because
Buckie likes to lie under it. I've never had air conditioning in this building,
and have never wanted any except for about two weeks in August,
but this year we were already having August weather early in July. Our cold
weather lasted longer than usual this year. I had to keep the heater on much of
the time through early June. And now, with this heat wave that is killing old
folks like me in California, I'm beginning to think seriously about the global
warming theories.

When I went back out on the front porch, I saw a large snake curled in the
shallow water at the far bank. I believed it was a watersnake, but the water
silvered it so I couldn't tell. I tried to photograph it from several positions along
the bank near the house. Too much light reflecting from the water.Then,
because it still lay unmoving, I decided to try and get closer. I put Buckie in the
van so he wouldn't follow me into the creek. And, because this was atypical
behavior for a watersnake, I took along my pistol.

When I got within about five feet of it and was ready to snap a picture, it
glided away. Wish I had snapped the picture sooner. I had gotten close
enough to know it was indeed a watersnake, the dark, heavy-bodied kind
that so many mistake for the poisonous water moccasin or cotton mouth.
This is why so many watersnakes are needlessly killed.

Slaughter of the innocents.

For the next three days I braved the heat and humidity and returned to the
yard sale vendors on the mountain. I got a couple more books, lots of
clothes, a dark pot that I need for making a solar cooker, and a strange
and inaccurate thermometer with little eliptical glass globes that float up and
down. So what if it doesn't tell me the exact temperature, I still like to look
at it. I got it and an ironing board and a slide viewer which also accepts film
strips- exactly what I needed!- on a return trip to Mountain Mamas.

The Tri-County Rescue Service at the Georgia-Alabama state line had
three funeral home tents hung full of clothes, many of them brand new
and most of them really good. They were selling at $1.00 for a plastic
grocery bag full, and, by careful rolling, a lot of clothes could be packed
into one of those little bags. I had to stop there every day because
shoppers were welcome to use the clean john in the firehall. There was
a fireman's boot outside the door for donations.
On the last two days there were signs under the clothing tents urging
people to "Take as many as you can haul off- all Free".
When I went by for my john stop late Sunday afternoon, the tents still
hung full of clothes.

On Friday I had dropped off Buckie for his second shaving of the summer
before heading for the mountain, and at 3 p.m. when I had picked him up
and was driving home, the bank sign read 104 degrees. I'm glad the yard
sale isn't running for two weekends as it did last year.

Buckie after his second and last shaving of the summer

Now I have a van full of books and clothes and not enough closet space
in this building. All my clothes except what I had packed for the trip
and the things I'd bought while away burned with the house. (I most
fortunately had not unloaded the van.) So I had had enough casual clothes,
but not much for dress. Now I do.

And the books- well, I will always find a place for books.

One of the best parts of the weekend was when it rained on Saturday
night. I went out at 11 p.m. with a bucket of suds and the new squeegee
I'd bought and washed the van by the light of the porch light.The blessed
rain, gentle but steady, washed the suds from my van and the sweaty
weariness from me.

Letter From U.S. to Unknown Iraqui Woman

2006-07-31T23:31:00.000-07:00

Iraqui death toll rises above 100 per day, U.N. says
- headline in the New York Times 7/19/06

The vines turn clockwise here, but then
I know other places they run counter,
Depending on location of one's garden,
Depending on proximity to the pole.

How are your vines growing,
Do they blossom just the same,
Do your children run barefoot down the rows,
Have you had enough rain?

Oh. Do you have a garden,
A safe place for you to be,
Is there still a bit of earth free
of blood and pain...?

I prepare my garden harvest,
Set heaping bowls and platters on the table,
And call to those I love the best,
We eat and laugh and eat again.

Now as the earth turns to you another day,
I see you bring to your table bread for all,
But oh. Are there any left now,
Any left to call...

At Home By Cane Creek

2006-07-22T13:28:00.000-07:00

This is the best time of the Summer day, when the sun has dropped, a
soft cool breeze stirs, and the birds twitter and chatter, and sometimes a fragment
of song, as if bidding one another good night.

The security light has come on. The globe glows, but will not cast forth light
until it is dark. The bats are gliding in, following the line of the creek, sometimes
swooping down to the water and back, their high-pitched cries cutting across
the last bird sounds.

This strange evening light without the sun softens all the colors, a prelude to
the graying into night.

I've searched without sucess for a picture of the white caterpillar that fell from
the sycamore tree today. It was a fuzzy cream color with fierce-looking feelers
like two horns on its head. My books usually help me to identify the creatures
who live with me and around me.

Sometimes I ask. The long brown feather found in my yard is from a wild turkey,
my son said. Looking at its large, hollow shaft I understand how quill pens were
made. Quite a reservoir for ink there.

I've seen flocks of wild turkeys in the pasture behind this house, and one fall
morning there were a dozen or so in the yard not far from the road. But that was
a year or so ago, and none was as large as the turkeys people raise in pens. The
size and color of the feather prevented my connecting it with the turkeys
traveling through.

The swallow nesting near the edge of the porch roof has stolen back to her
nest, deciding that I'll stay in my rocker for awhile. She pays dearly for the
convenience of her shelter by feeling she has to fly to a nearby tree each time I
come out on the porch, day or night. If the baby birds happen to have their
heads above the nest, they freeze stock still while she coaches from the tree,
until I move away.

The security light glows on the side of the house

This was the second hatching from the same nest, so she didn't even have to
build it. I was watching through the window when the first set of four took their
first flight. They lined up outside the nest while their mother chirruped at them
from the tree.

It was as if she were crying, "Fly! Fly!"
And fly they did, or three of them, that is, albeit somewhat clumsily, one seeming
barely able to make it to the tree only about six feet away, where he fluttered
against the trunk for seconds, then upward a few more inches and onto a branch.
One teetered at the edge of the board, or huddled with back against a brace, all
the while his mother's cries growing shriller, more agitated.

I thought of a parachutist instructor barking out: "Jump! Jump!"
But the bird language might translate more like this: "Fly, you fool! Now!"
His entire three weeks of life had been spent in the safety of the nest,
sheltered by the porch roof, warmed at night beneath his mother's wings,
and now he was being forced to become airborne, with none of the human
baby's chance of trial and error, stumbling and falling, and up to try again,
for he must jump and know at once how to use his untried wings, for his
mother cannot save him if he falls to the danger and even death that may
await him on the ground.

Now the nest is crowded again, although there are only three young ones
this time. The profilgacy of nature. Let there be swallows. Seven new ones,
just in this small spot. There must be an abundance of bugs awaiting hungry
swallows, or else the attrition rate is such that more swallows must be brought
forth just to maintain the swallow ratio among the birds.

I know there are hawks around, and they seem more bold. Only yesterday one
perched in a tree across the creek and sat there watching for at least a
quarter-of-an-hour. And only a few days ago I saw through the kitchen window
a hawk struggling to fly. He would rise a few feet, then sink back to the ground.
It looked as if he were trapped in some fabric-like material caught about his legs.
After watching for several minutes, I thought I must somehow go to his aid.
Perhaps I could grab the material and pull it off of him, or could I throw a net
over him and call a wildlife rescue group?

I thought of ducks getting their feet and bills bound by the plastic six-pack
holders that people toss aside. What careless or deliberate human act had
crippled this wild and beautiful bird.

But as soon as the hawk saw me, he dropped the shredded squirrel and
flew away without his meal.

After recovering from surprise at such rejection and negation of my
misguided impulse to help, I began to hope he'd gotten the squirrel that robs
the bird feeder at the back deck. That squirrel doesn't just eat, he curls
himself around the feeder, and throws out and scatters the seeds he doesn't
want as he searches for the few sunflower seeds.

I know there are people with bigger problems with bird feeders than squirrels,
and here is an example:

http://www.geekbase.org/squirrelproblem/

Or maybe the hawk got the squirrel that gnawed wider the gap in the enclosed
part of the eaves behind the security light and built a nest in the wall against my
office. I've seen him scratching himself. I fear that my office may soon be infested
with fleas and mites.

Or it may have been the squirrel that ate most of the hickory nuts while they were
still green. Most of those that fell last year had holes gnawed in one side, the
insides hollowed out.

Years ago there were hunters, my father among them, going after squirrels for
food. But now with the deer plentiful again, and still enough quail and wild turkey,
one seldom hears of hunters hunting squirrels and rabbits, and there is an
abundance of them.

Buckie catches and eats an occasional rabbit.
I feel sure that must have been the way he kept himself alive when he was abandoned.

Buckie at the front door last winter wanting out.

But although Buckie and Grace and Buster chased many squirrels, they never caught
one. I don't think most dogs do. The squirrels are too swift for them,
the trees too handy.

It is dark now, and Buckie has begun his evening back and forth with the other
dogs within his hearing distance. It is a nightly ritual that he seems to enjoy. He
stands in his yard and barks and barks, then stops to hear the answering barking,
from the closest house to the faintest sounds somewhere way down the road,
then he's off again.

It is like the primitive tribal communication by tom-tom.
There is no special quality to this evening barking, no urgency nor sounds of
alarm or warning, no threats, just barking to communicate: Here I am. Here in
my yard. And yes, it's reassuring to know that you are there, and you, and all
where each belongs....

It is time for me to go inside now where I belong.
No longer just a building that houses my office, a recreation spot by the creek, this
has been my home since my house burned, and although the pain of loss recurs, I
am somewhat contented.
I, too, for now at least, am where I belong.

Buckie in the creek late in the evening, shaved for the
summer, his hair growing out in patches.