All posts by Jim

Easter

A Pocket of Resistance

i have written of Easter before. Several times. It is a hallowed, sacred day.

In the span of my life, it has been much celebrated in many ways.

Today, it has been quiet.

No sunrise service. i did walk to the top of my hill around that time of the morning and watched the white heat orb burning through the mist of the marine layer hanging over Mount Miguel. i had my moment, prayer i guess you could call it. Thankful, sober prayer.

i came down to another Maureen egg special with toast, fruit, and Tennessee Pride country sausage. We sat at our usual places at my great aunt’s oak table, looking out the window at the green lawn as the sun burned through. We read the newspaper with several cups of coffee.

i remembered previous Easters. A not too big Easter egg hunt at home upon awakening and scurrying down the stairs. Those egg hunts remain dim memories except i know i never fared well at the community ones. Perhaps i was too impatient. Sunrise service outside of MacFadden Auditorium in the cool but sunny mornings. Dressing up in our finest, newly purchased spring ensembles to spend most of the day at church. Big, big ham dinner (that’s the midday meal where i come from) in the dining room reserved for only the big family celebrations. For some reasons, the dinner rolls stick out in my mind.

i don’t remember Easter at sea except for my last ship. The chaplain made it a big deal, or at least as big a deal as he could with sailors who preferred to sleep in on the one day of the week they could do so. i do remember a number of Easters at sea when we raised the church pennant above the U.S. Ensign on Easter. It was the only pennant or flag we ever flew above the ensign.

Most of all, i remember Easter Egg hunts with my two daughters. The ones with Blythe were sadly few in the first years of her life. It was such a beautiful sight to see her dressed up in a pinafore dress with her beautiful blonde hair and carrying a real basket. She would laugh excitedly every time she spied another real colored egg hidden somewhere by her clever mother.

The hunts with Sarah were outside at first, usually confined to the courtyard. She behaved just like her sister when finding an egg. i guess that is pretty much a universal response for children on Easter egg hunts. The hunts here in the Southwest corner quickly moved indoors. Sarah’s mother delighted in her own cleverness in hiding the foil covered chocolate eggs. The Easter Bunny, or as he signed his nickname “E.B.,” began to leave a note each year, usually extolling Sarah’s behavior and telling her of how the others who left her notes on big days, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, shared his fondness for her.

Maureen is off to yoga. i have cleaned the grill. We had steak last night with a superb California Red wine from Shebang “without too much pretension” as the label describes it. I like pretty much any wine without too much pretension. Unlike my old grill, i am taking good care of this relatively new “egg” knockoff.

We are going to friends for dinner tonight.

That’s it.

i sit in my office with many tasks and other writing projects piled around me. The sun slinking low to the south is now in its glory. The mist and the clouds have burned off. The bougainvillea outside my office window is the healthiest it has been in years after the rain of previous months and somehow reminds me it’s Easter.

Sitting in my desk chair, i meditate, something i have found greatly calming, refreshing, and empowering in just the last six months or so. Again i had my moment we might call prayer. i think of my two daughters, son-in-law, and grandson. i know Sam had yet another successful Easter egg hunt in Austin. i suspect Sarah either participated with Blythe and her family or with one or other of the children she tends. i am happy for them.

The Easter Bunny didn’t leave any eggs for us here in the Southwest corner. He didn’t leave a note either. i checked.

He did leave something better.

Hope.

You Don’t Want to Know What’s Out There

A Pocket of Resistance

 

Lady Snooks of Joy, aka Snooks, 127 Castle Heights Avenue, 1971. We were visiting my parents for the first time with Snooks, named after my wonderful uncle Snooks Hall. She was a wedding present we gave to each other. My wife trained her. i enjoyed her. When everything finally fell apart, i ended up with Snooks, or Snookers as i often called her. My wife on her way to divorce me couldn’t bear of thinking Snooks and i should be separated.

Snooks was mine. First dog, really.

My sister won the golden cocker spaniel we appropriately named Lucky in a Halloween drawing in the school festival in Mrs. Vasti Prichard’s fourth grade class. Puppy Lucky lived in the den and the basement at night — our parents grew up in a farm world where animals were for helping with work or providing something to sell like eggs, milk, beef, or chicken breasts, not as house pets — through the winter only to escape one spring afternoon and run into the street and into a car. Just over six months.

Then, we had Trixie, an obnoxious little ankle biter the three children loved but who disappeared mysteriously after about a year.

Finally, Martha brought home Cotton, a bundle of male energy and close to a Eskimo Spitz, but there was something else in there too. He was allowed in the den but stayed outside at night unless brutal cold caused my father to let him in for the night. Cotton became the family dog. Cotton also, long before we even knew what lease laws were, ruled the world, wandered afar, and had a good and healthy life. Even the averse parents became fond of him, and he really ended up being our father’s dog.

But Snooks was mine. My ex-to-be understood that.

She, Snooks that is, presented a problem. She was my solace and no real problem at Texas A&M while i was the senior Naval officer at the NROTC Unit. One of our secretaries lived on a farm with her husband. She would keep Snooks when i went on summer duty to Little Creek, Virginia. But i was in the Navy. Navy officers, especially those that shunned the idea of heroically flying, sinking below the surface, or doing superhuman things like SEALS, to go to sea. i went back to sea.

So the secretary agreed to keep Snooks when i left to join the amphibious staff in Hobart, Tasmania and remain in the western Pacific for five months. On the way back, i was trying to figure out how to make having Snooks with me work in San Diego. I wanted her badly, but it was a sticky wicket: finding an apartment that would allow big pets, finding a keeper when i went to sea, giving her exercise, what to do with long work days. Problems. But i was working on it until i got the letter in the mail call when we reached Pearl Harbor on the way home.

The secretary sent the letter. It told how her husband was taking Snooks and another of their dogs to the vet in the back of their pickup. How Snooks leaped out of the truck bed while the truck was going pretty fast. She died instantly.

When i read the letter in my stateroom, i cried for about an hour. She was a lovely dog.  My dog: slept with me in the bed on the porch of that farmhouse north of Paris, Texas when we came back from Korea; jumped into Spring Creek while i was water skiing because she wanted to me with me. Worst fault: she didn’t like Blythe getting close to her food dish. She was my dog. i cried some more.

Lady Snooks of Joy. We named her that because she was AKC registered and her mom was a champion with Joy in her name. Fitting.

And, i now think when looking at this photo, she really didn’t want to know what was out that window. i’m not sure i did either.

It Is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free

A Pocket of Resistance, Jewell in the Rough

i was a good ole boy, a young good ole boy to be sure, but essentially a Southern small town boy still unaware of what lay out there in the magical world of the written word. The now sadly defunct Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon, Tennessee gave me a look see into literature courtesy of  Majors Harris, Donnell, and Wooten.

i was titillated by the joy of fiction by Vanderbilt’s Dr. Sullivan in the course we called “Novels.” — i was not really supposed to be there, but it was my last shot to bring my civil engineering major grades up to a C average. Prior, the engineers and the Navy would not allow me to wander from the rigors of math and science to pursue my whims, but that summer of 1963 gave me liberty to choose my courses. So i had to retake “Statics,” the one course i flunked in four semesters of 19, 21, 20, and 18 hours of courses which that civil (oh, what a terrible description of my course load) engineering department and the Navy ROTC scholarship minions demanded while i was dumb enough to think i was smart enough to attend all sports events, party damn near every night, gambol at every chance, and play cards and drink beer until the early mornings, stopping only on the day before exams to cram one night on coffee and “No Doz” to make passing grades even though each ensuing semester signaled a continuing slide down the academic flunk out tunnel until i finally came to within one course of flunking out without failing a course. Fourteen D’s in four semesters (in addition to that one F, taken over that fateful summer and raised to a C). But that wondrous summer i took Drama 101, Philosophy 101, the dreaded Statics (2 something), and Sullivan’s Modern British and American Fiction (4 something: it was a senior and graduate course).

i didn’t make it but the beauty of Carson McCullers, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and of course, my hero and Vanderbilt’s own Robert Penn Warren took me away to another planet. i was then undeniably, officially in love with writing, albeit a rather naive love of the monster i adored.

But nine months under one Mister Fred Russell, erstwhile and nationally known sports editor of The Nashville Banner, whetted my appetite for writing, especially sports writing. Feeling my oats once again, i entered Middle Tennessee, the “rather parochial” (as described by Dean Richard Peck) bastion of teaching education, and more stubbornly pursuing a BA even after the Dean of Arts and Science, my academic counselor, stunned, questioned my sanity with “Are you sure? You know you must take a foreign language (Spanish: that didn’t take either). You know you would be one of the first ever to major in English as a BA, not BS?” and “hmm,” i thought, “How strange?” and “BS just doesn’t sound right or literary enough to me.” And so i took to my pursuit of writing, sports writing to be exact.

i wandered through a rather bizarre world. i moved back home. i continued writing for the Banner, now as a county and sports correspondent. i began my brief but very enjoyable career as a radio man, deejay at WCOR AM/FM. i commuted to Murfreesboro with my buddy Jimmy Hatcher, Ken Berry, Clifton Tribble, and other friends in the early morning, traversing back and forth on Murfreesboro Road, more formally known as U.S. 231 and more informally as road kill trek, getting home in time to have dinner (that’s the noon meal from where i come) with my father, usually a baloney and American cheese slice sandwich with iced tea before laying down on the two couches in the den for a joint midday nap. i took required classes like physical science because the chemistry and physics D’s didn’t transfer, and later trigonometry, which i had taken under Colonel Brown in CHMA’s advanced math program. And i passed both with A’s without ever opening a book, and becoming the lab assistant for the physical science professor, which let me flirt with a lot of pretty coeds. AND i took wonderful literature courses where i was challenged and others like English Literature where the old lady professor, Dr. Emily Calcott read Percy Bysshe Shelly’s nine cantos Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem; With Notes verbatim in class. All of it. Seems like that summer course took about two dozen years.

And then i took Dr. Peck’s Shakespeare class, and i began to see the world, or at least my small literary part of it, differently.

And finally, i met Dr. Bill Holland. Bam! We became friends. He took me under his wing and revealed a whole new world. He was from Mississippi, been a surveyor for the Army Corps of Engineers. Got his Romantic Literature doctorate from the University of Edinburgh. Yeh, that one in Scotland. Wrote his dissertation on the common thread in literature from Chaucer through Shakespeare through the Romantics, especially one Mr. William Wordsworth. i was told he received a “first class” doctorate, one of ten awarded in the history of that university. Yeh, that University of Edinburgh.

So we talked about Mr. Wordsworth, and i compared “time” of WW and RPW (Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798” and Warren’s “The Ballad of Billie Potts”). And he liked it. And we talked some more. And i cut other classes to discuss deep things in his office like the symbolism in Bob Lind’s Top 40 hit, “Elusive Butterfly (of Love),” and what was it Billy Joe McAllister and that strange woman threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge in Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billy Joe,” and did Plato err when he got the decimals from Egypt wrong and Atlantis consequently was really in the Adriatic, not the Atlantic, and more and more and more.

But before Holland, i was not into Romantics. i mean why would a good ole boy be concerned about some Englishman who wrote about daffodils? Now, i like daffodils and even more to the point, i think writing about daffodils and butterflies can be manly. Caring but manly. i like that.

Two days ago, i learned it was William Wordsworth’s birthday from “The Writer’s Almanac.” i had known that but forgot. To honor him, the writers and editors of the “Almanac” included a Wordsworth poem.

i read. i’m so glad Dr. William Holland, my friend, introduced me to that guy who wrote about daffodils.

It Is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free
by William Wordsworth

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquility;
The gentleness of heaven broods o’er the sea:
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder—everlastingly.
Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,
If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year,
And worship’st at the Temple’s inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not.

Cass Done Gone

A Pocket of Resistance

Sean Dietrich wrote a post this morning on his blog “Sean of the South” (http://seandietrich.com/).  Sean writes a post every morning. Judy Lewis Gray, as mentioned before put me onto Sean’s posts. i thank her again. Sean sends me his post each morning in an email to which i subscribe. i don’t know how he comes up with the stuff he comes up with every morning. i read them. Nearly all of them tug at my heart strings. The resulting music is enjoyable, soothing for the soul.

Sean’s post this morning was entitled “Dear Sean,” a letter from a fifteen-year old sad boy about his dog dying. Sean wrote of his own loss of a best friend. It made me recall my sad moment. When i went to find an old post with a poem about my friend Cass, a wonderful Labrador, golden in color, who was more part of me than just a friend, i discovered that old post had also vanished in the great website provider disaster several years ago.

So for “fifteen and sad,” Sean, and everyone else who has had to put their dog down, here again are my thoughts on Cass leaving me:

Cass Done Gone

a part of my soul left today.
the stubborn, ole cuss of a lab was more me than him
i worshiped the way he defied the world
until it no longer mattered.
some people told me
i would know when it was time.
i did not believe until
that silly old dog told me two nights ago and
told me last night it was okay.
he has been my mirror, my dreams, my soul
fifteen years.
i could tell him me like i can tell no other.
i am not ashamed of crying, feeling lost.
my granddaddy would scoff:
it isn’t the way it was back then.
there is an emptiness in my soul.
i am really not sure i’ll recover.
yeh, the pain will go in time;
the emptiness will be covered by events passing by,
but the hole will never be filled,
he was one of a kind to me.
he was me
he is gone.
i will bury his ashes at the top of the hill behind the house.
you can see the beach where he body surfed;
you can see the trails where he ran with abandon,
scaring hell out of coyote, rabbit, possum and birds alike;
if you turn around you can see the home he ruled
welcoming unknown people as if they were long lost friends;
taking on all dogs who foolishly entered his territory:
the doberman, the big shepherd, and all other intruders
stood clear after one encounter .

my feet feel cool now.
for most of his life, he would lie under my desk,
while i read, contemplated or typed with
his head resting on my feet.
the silence is awkward:
even in his sleep, he would grunt, wheeze,
kick the walls, chasing something in his dreams,
my dreams.
run sweet dog again;
pant with delicious tiredness after chasing the blues away;
scan the field with those keen sparkling eyes that
always read joy to me;
catch the next wave to bound into the bubbling surf
shake the misery with the salt wetness
from your coat of gold;
lick the face of someone
to give them unmitigated joy.

goodbye, sweet Cass.
goodbye, you joyful part of my soul.

gossamer

A Pocket of Resistance

gossamer in the micro-world we miss

 

she saw the photo,

laughed,
thought it inane;

in the morning when i saw the gossamer
in the dawn mist of the front lawn
i thought
beautiful, mysterious, another minuscular world;
for there in the waking hours
when we arise into our daily hurdles
of a complex world of humanity
with as many claims to living right
as there are humans,
out there in that yard
is a micro biosphere, if you will,
that shouldn’t be in the desert
except we have added water
from the Colorado and the Sierras snowbank
to allow another world
where gossamer beauty
in such an illogical place
has the purpose
to snare and kill game:
the ultimate and sole mission
of the minute spider
that wove this gossamer
on grass in deep in the high desert
off the coast of Baja;

i discarded her sarcasm
because
i thought the spider’s purpose
along with the gossamer
to meet its purpose
beautiful.