It is kind of a cliche that this time of year can be hard on people…the trying to find the right gift (or hurry to make the right gift) …the shorter daylight hours…missing those who are no longer in our lives…those both living and passed. I was doing fine until the morning of the 24th of December. I was stressed with the cleaning I wanted to have done before company came on the 25th. I took it out on my husband and daughter and one of them then said something that triggered my meltdown. Lots of crying and isolating for an hour or two. I think I needed the cathartic release of the crying…getting rid of some pent up feelings. Then a few good hugs and kind words pulled me back into being present in the moment. The house got cleaned with help from family and I got to watch my favorite holiday movie: Dolly Parton’s Coat Of Many Colors
It also has been a time for calmness and quiet and pretty lights.
A time for Nature’s colors…
The subtle change in color of native poinsettias…
And A Red Bud Leaf’s Boldness
A time for bareness…
And a time for fullness…
Our yard full of Red Oak leaves from neighbor’s tree
A time to light up the darkness…from the neighbor’s lighted blue and white inflatable Llama for Hanukkah to…
“Illuminations” at The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
Tis the season for expressions of love and peace like the one I saw on a child’s sweatshirt at the Wildflower Center. It read: “Make smores, not wars”
And the Monks Walking for Peace …
This is a screen shot from You Tube…
As I write this on December 30th, the monks are on Day 66 of their Walk For Peace. They set out from Ft. Worth, Texas and are heading through the southern U. S. towards Washington, D. C. Their saffron robes walking down rural highways have created quite a following. People are following their progress on Facebook and Instagram. Even Aloka, the little dog traveling with them, now has his own Facebook page.
In towns large and small, people greet them and feed them and put them up for the night. And the crowds of the curious and hopeful are growing. The monks try to walk about 25 miles a day, even in the cold and wet.
I have been following them via You Tube videos since they were in East Texas. I am in awe of them and of the people turning out to greet them. They have helped me come back to center in my own life in many ways:
Tis the season to be grateful for life, family and friends and
to carry forgiveness into the new year ahead.
Tis the season to keep moving on towards peace and love.
“Love and accept each other, and always be kind”-quote from another holiday movie: Dolly Parton’s Circle of Love
Yesterday’s Wordle word was “gruff” and I started thinking about the first time I remember the word “gruff.” It was being read the story “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” by my mother when I was very young.
We always had books in the house. I remember many trips to the library in Shreveport and in Austin. Books were often given as gifts in my family, and still are. There are bookshelves in every room of the house except the bathrooms. I often purge books…some go to friends…some to the Goodwill…because more books always come into the house.
And like many of you readers, I have a stack of books in progress. I usually only have one fiction going at a time, but read bits of several non-fiction books at the same time. Here is the current bedside stack:
When I got my hair cut yesterday afternoon, I expected to talk to my hairdresser about what we did for Thanksgiving, the weather, etc. We ended up talking about books. I had my eyes closed most of the time as clippers neared my face and bits of my hair floated down around my shoulders. She talked about Jane Austen’s books and her current interest in Roman history, sparked by a book a client and professor gave her.
Driving home, the radio featured an interview with a British author (I didn’t catch his name) who said that he recently read that the number of people reading for pleasure is down 40%.
I remember a drive home from the library when I was in my teens. I had a brief bout of depression as I came to the realization that I would never be able to read all the books in the world.
I do admit to lots of screen use these days, but always find time to sit and read a book, even if it is only for 20 minutes…sometimes in a chair and sometimes in the tub.
Here is a photo of one of the bibliophiles in my family:
This is my late father. Note the pen in his right hand. He was always marking books with comments in the margins and underlines and exclamation points…as if he were still a young man in college. He always had a book with him. I know he had at least one book in his pack going into combat in Korea. He took books with him on canoe trips and into hospital waiting rooms. On road trips my mother drove while he read.
There is another photo that only exists in my mind’s eye. It was taken many years before his portrait. It shows the front of a ranch style house. On one side of the house is a driveway leading to a carport. In the carport a station wagon is parked. The back of the station wagon is open. There are two human figures in this shot. One is me at 9 years old. I have straight blonde hair to my shoulders and am wearing shorts and have an arm full of books that I am putting into the back of the station wagon. The other figure is my 8 year old brother. He is shorter and rounder than me and has a short crewcut. He also has an armload of books he is placing in the back of the station wagon. We are loading my father’s books into the station wagon for him to take to his new rental house. My parents were separating after 10 years of marriage and my father was giving us the privilege of loading up his books. Many, many books will be left behind with my brother and I and my mother.
We are a book family and always will be a book family.
It is a fairly cool September morning. I am sitting on the back porch drinking coffee. My husband is doing the same. The lizard couple is emerging from their porch umbrella bed.
It is 8:23 a.m. and I am observing the stone chicken on the porch nearby.
She sits near our “Philosopher’s Rock”…so named because of the human and gargoyle statues that sit on that rock while pondering great thoughts.
The stone chicken is actually made of cement and is about a foot tall and heavy. Most of the paint that decorated her is long gone, weathered away by whatever elements she has been exposed to over the years. There is a hint of green at her base that is meant to represent grass, and a hint of yellow on one leg. Her beak is a bit chipped.
She was in our yard in Shreveport when I was a child, so she is at least 65 years old! We moved to Austin and for some reason my parent’s hauled her with us. After a year, they bought a house and she resided there for the next 49 years, until my mother died. Then her heaviness became part of our yard statue collection.
“Chicken” is often used to call out someone’s fear. This morning I am contemplating my own fears…some quite heavy. Fears that I have carried with me all these years…some acquired in Shreveport and some gathered here.
In the past few years I have been planning on painting the stone chicken’s bare skin. I might use bright paint in multiple colors. I might paint each feather a different color. This is only a plan. I do have the paint, but whether I ever paint the thing is to be determined.
It occurs to me, as I compare the stone chicken to my own fears…have I painted over and prettied up my own fears? In layers of…searching for words here…the word for pushing your feelings down…the words for pretending all was just fine…the words for pushing them, the fears and anger, away…I am in awe that I have carried these old feelings with me these many, many years. I know they have weighted down my spirit. Does knowing this allow me to release these old feelings? Well, that is a work in progress.
Maybe someday I will feel lighter, like this little wren perched on the stone chicken’s head.
Last week I followed in my husband’s footsteps and came down with Covid. I thought it was a sinus infection or the flu since my first two tests read negative. Spent two days in bed and this past Friday had a surge of energy, but my test said Positive. Today, Sunday, my test says Positive.
The 2 days of almost no energy were the worst…worse than the cough and congestion. But, the good part is that I have been forced to rest, relax, and get out of my usual busy-ness. Here is a visual representation of how I felt on the worst days:
I was weakened, devitalized, reduced…lacking vigor, vim, verve, fire, starch…I had lost my snap, my bang, my punch, my git up and go, my ginger, kick, zip, zing, zizz…
I am sorry that I had to miss a couple of lunches and a party. A family member was set to spend two nights with us and that had to be canceled.
I am thankful that I am recovering bit by bit and thankful for all of you checking in on me and for my husband who is doing his best to social distance while still waiting on me a bit. And I am thankful for my handy copy of Roget’s International Thesaurus (third edition) for some of the words I used to describe the condition my condition was in.
I am also thankful that the squirrel was not dead or paralyzed, which is what I thought when I first saw it outside my kitchen window. That first glance told me it was dead…had somehow ended up there and slowly died in that position. I went outside to get a better look and a photo and low and behold, an eye opened and then closed again. I thought “Oh No! It is paralyzed!” seeing the back legs hanging and not moving. So, I went inside and got a cardboard box and my “grabber” (device for picking up things from 3 feet away). I was already planning on taking it to the local Wildlife Rescue place. As I approached, the squirrel moved it’s head and I backed up and went back in the house and watched as it scampered up a tree seemingly uninjured.
The first time my husband proposed to me I was stopped at a red light while driving him to the airport to fly off to a work conference. I said “Yes!” and managed to drive the rest of the way to the airport (we were only about a mile away when he proposed) and drop him off.
The second time my husband proposed a bit differently. We were out on a drive through the Hill Country outside of Austin. He was doing the driving this time and after we had been driving for awhile, he pulled over at a State Historical marker near Pack Saddle Mountain. The marker says that at said mountain in 1873, the last “Indian battle in this region” was fought when a group of 8 white men (I am assuming they were white) “routed a band of Indians thrice their number.”
I had been here before with my brother and Dad on one of my Dad’s long Hill Country drives, where he would point out various Texas landmarks and tell about the history.
Here is the historical marker:
Here is Pack Saddle Mountain:
On this occasion, my husband got out of the car, walked around and opened the passenger door, rummaged around in a brown paper bag, got on one knee, and asked me to marry him while holding out a toy ring. At least this is how we have remembered it all these years later. I again said “Yes” and we did eventually get married after I got a proper engagement ring.
Recently, on our way to San Angelo, we again stopped at this marker and took a few photos and reminisced.
Here are some flowers near the marker:
I wrote about our trip in my May and June blog posts, but didn’t tell about something that happened on this trip. On the way back to Austin, we stopped again at the pullout for this roadside marker and view of the mountain. We stretched our legs and I got back in the car. My husband comes up to my window and presents me with a pretty little flower! How sweet.
Here is the flower:
I thanked him and we did a little kiss. Then, while I was proceeding to put the flower in the center console area to take back home, I noticed some webbing. And then a little spider was dropping down out of the flower on it’s spinneret thread. I didn’t want a spider in the car with us and I didn’t want to hurt the spider. So, I scooped the spider up in the flower and put the flower at the base of a nearby tree to protect it and the spider from the wind.
Below is a photo of the replaced flower (circled in blue):
Talking about this recently…about the second proposal…he mentioned that it seemed like “good ground” when describing the place by the mountain. He said that was an old army term when they were looking at topographical maps. It meant a good place to be in terms of a being able to have the advantage in a battle. I don’t know who had the advantage in the 1873 battle…maybe the white guys since they won. The marker was defaced a few years back with grafitti reading “White history celebrates genocide.” It did get cleaned up and no trace of those words remain as of the last time I saw it this spring.
My husband and I will celebrate our 28th anniversary next month. Our marriage is on good ground and we have both worked at defending it over the years. Many small battles after which we both emerge with a stronger marriage bond. Happy Anniversary Honey!
Photos by B. McCreary
Check out a web page about the marker at The Historical Marker Database:
As March progressed, I anticipated and looked for signs of Spring. I saw many and knew more would be coming…more flowers blooming…birds singing and nesting. But, there was also a gnawing at my soul in the background of the beauty. My mother’s death date approached, March 25th. It has been 15 years since her death and the pain of grief has lessened. But, I want to hug her and share my life with her and I want her to see the physical beauty she left the world. The tears are coming as I write this even though I have been thinking about writing about it for quite a while.
On the other hand, I am glad my mother is not here to see the destruction of our country. She who supported civil rights with her body and soul…she who always rooted for the underdog. She was a proud American and she voted. I’m sure that if she saw the video of the woman being taken away by unidentified men to be locked up and silenced, she would have felt that woman’s fear in empathy.
A couple of days ago, March 29th, I attended a Birthday party for my friend Joan who was turning 80 that very day. This was also my Mother’s birthday. As we sang Happy Birthday to Joan, I was also singing to my mother. My mother’s death was just 4 days before her birthday and as she lay comatose on life support, we had sung Happy Birthday to her.
Okay! Enough grief for now! Here comes the Joy. In my blog posts of April 2019 and March 2021 I shared photos and a few words on one of my mother’s legacies, the lovely purple spiderworts she transplanted from her yard to mine over 20 years ago. From a literal handful of plants to the current abundance of them is one of nature’s miracles. What started as one purple clump in the backyard has now spread all over the yard and into the front yard. And both my brother and my friend Laura have transplanted some from my yard into their yards, where they are now flourishing.
As you look at these photos, remember that a small, positive action can take hold and grow. This is something to remember as we navigate our way through the coming months.
Beauty Among The Rocks
At The Trunk Of The Bur Oak
Near The Rotting Hackberry Stump
Near Philosopher’s Rock
Growing Low To The Ground
Pink Colored With Bee Gathering Pollen
With A Tiny Bee
With A Big Bee
So Pretty!
And there are many more photos of the flowers that I will not publish here…the flowers next to yellow dandelions …some next to orange crossvine blooms…the ones I can see in the front yard outside my office window…the view of them through my kitchen window…
May the natural world give you peace and strength each day. And remember that each positive act you take may grow and spread
I wrestle with what to write about. So many ideas. Do I post more pictures of critters from my yard? Do I write about more important to the world sorts of things, like the dismantling of our government? Ideas come and go and I jot down notes on a variety of topics. I write 3 legal pages of notes about my family’s relationship to music, from me to ancestors I’ve never met. I have been hearing more bird song lately and think maybe I should write about that. Or, I should finally write up my words about Harriet Tubman that I have been meaning to write up for about a year. It is Black History month. My mind keeps churning out subjects.
Serendipity strikes. Many things have entered my life in the past few months that seem connected.
Have you ever heard of the Rosenwald Colored schools? Neither had I until the past year. I had first run across them in a legal document among some old family papers.
The document reads in part:
“Be it known and remembered, that on this the 10th day of March A. D. 1926, I, Mrs. Ellen J. Buie, widow of H. H. Buie, deceased, have granted, bragined and donated, and by these presents, grant, bargain, donate, set over and deliver unto the Franklin Parish School Board, of Franklin Parish, La. herein represented by H. W. Gilbert, President, accepting this donation in all its parts and clauses, the following described property, towit:” A description of the property’s boundaries follows, and then this:
“To Have And To Hold the said property unto the said Franklin Parish School Board for the use and benefit only of the Rosenwald Colored School.”
My great grandmother was born in 1856 into a family that owned slaves. In the 1860 U. S. Slave Census her father owned 32 slaves aged 50 years old down to 6 months old. 66 years later she gave something back to the descendants of the people her family had enslaved. 2 acres for a school. When she was 14 she had been sent away to a convent school in St. James Parish. Maybe it was this experience that made her value education? And her daughter, my grandmother Mary, became a school teacher.
Here is a photo of my great grandmother Ellen Julia Copeland Buie (1856-1935):
But, the name Rosenwald meant nothing to me at the time I first looked at the document. Some months later, I happened to read a genealogy blog post about the Rosenwald schools. (there is a link to the blog at the end of this post). Then I happened to be showing the family document to my brother and I realized the importance of the name Rosenwald Colored School.
And then…I saw an advertisement for a special exhibit at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum that was about the Rosenwald schools in Texas. And they would be showing a film about Rosenwald on February 8th, with a panel discussion afterwards. I felt compelled to go. The film, by Aiva Kempner, was about 90 minutes long and told the story of Julius Rosenwald who was a rich philanthropist. Descended from Jewish immigrants who instilled quite the work ethic in him, he eventually bought Sears and Roebuck. He believed in giving back to the community. One of his projects was building schools for colored children in the southern states. He partnered with Booker T. Washington to do this. He built these schools during the Jim Crow era. “Separate but equal” was not equal at all. His generosity led to the building of thousands of schools to educate black children. He had three parts to these projects. One, he put up some money. Two, the community also raised funds, and Three, the community did the labor to build the schools.
This exhibit at the Bob Bullock museum only runs through February 23rd, so I urge all my Austin friends to go before it ends. There is also a former Rosenwald school near Bastrop that has been renovated. The panel discussion after the film talked about this. It is called the Hopewell school and we plan to visit it soon. (American Youthwork’s Youth Build Program put in some labor on this renovation).
Here is where the serendipity keeps on giving…
The film has interviews and photos of many African American celebrities from politicians to those in the arts…actors, singers, poets, composers, business people…people who either went to Rosenwald schools or benefited from Rosenwald’s other philanthropic projects: Rita Dove (poet), Maya Angelou (author, poet), Gordon Parks (photographer, filmmaker), John Lewis (politician, activist), Marian Anderson (singer)……
On the way home from the museum we stopped to pick up our mail. There was only one piece. The envelope’s stamp was a picture of John Lewis!
At Christmas I was gifted a book that I had never heard of and now am currently about 3/4 of the way through this novel. It is based on the friendship between Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune. It follows their friendship and how they worked together to advance the rights of black people in this country. Two women with different skin colors working together. The authors of the book are two women, one white and one black. One episode in the book is about securing a public appearance for the singer Marian Anderson when the DAR refuses to let her sing in Constitution Hall in Washington, D. C. She ends up singing for a huge crowd at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The book is entitled The First Ladies and the authors are Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray.
Flipping through t.v. channels earlier this month I came across a film on PBS about the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. I had heard the name but was not familiar with his work. I learned that Maya Angelou’s title “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” is based on a line from one of Mr. Dunbar’s poems (“Sympathy”).
See what I mean? ….birds,singers, arts, education, history of our country and the struggles of blacks in this country…
There is a threat to dismantle and destroy the U. S. Department of Education right now…and any kind of diversity initiatives. What can we do? We can all take positive actions to lift up our values, be it contacting our representatives, to showing up in solidarity, to giving money to those organizations that lift up our sisters and brothers, neighbors and friends. No matter your political sympathies, the current destruction of our government will affect us all.
Take action with Love in your heart and as John Lewis is quoted:
“Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the Soul of America.”
*”Lift Every Voice and Sing” is the title of what is called The Black National Anthem and was written by James Weldon Johnson.
*I don’t know whether or not a Rosenwald School ever got built in Franklin Parish, Louisiana on the land my great grandmother donated.
Links:
donorschoose.org Donate directly to individual teacher’s projects
(original photo by Jerry Larson and used with permission of Jerry Larson and the Waco Tribune-Herald)
Who is this sun glassed adventurer?
He is my baby brother, Robert Richard Downes, kayaking on the Brazos River. The photo also adorns the cover of one of Robert’s books entitled Hello to a River, which chronicles his canoe and kayaking trips.
Texas is home to some wonderful rivers that have inspired many adventurers. My brother is one of those. He drew inspiration from several generations of outdoorsmen and women in our family. I remember canoe trips we took in my father’s canoe starting when I was 5 and my brother was 4. That canoe was inherited from my dad’s grandfather and currently sits on saw horses in my back yard. Robert tells of his journeys on Texas waterways (and a few others). His book includes the writings of our father, John Richard Downes, who kept notes about the canoe trips he took on the Texas Colorado river. I contributed one short piece about me meeting my father at the end of his last canoe trip to bring him and canoe home.
Each trip down a river will be different. The traveler might encounter sudden storms, miserable heat, mosquitos and unexpected currents. But, along with the unpleasant, there is the pleasant: the helpful people met along the way; the sightings of birds and other creatures; the time spent with one’s own thoughts. The lone traveler becomes the philosopher.
This book is a fun and readable true story that will fit nicely on the bookshelf next to Robert Graves classic Goodbye To A River. And this is a good gift for lovers of Texas rivers and nature.
Here are Robert’s Other Books:
A collection of essays about the author’s adventures in Texas, Mexico and other Latin American countries. Gift this to anyone with an interest in foreign travel and Texas.
This is a true crime mystery about a case my brother worked on when he was employed by the U. S. State Department in Mexico. It is about the disappearance of American professor Nicholas Schrock while he was traveling to a summer teaching job in Guadalajara. Great details about the investigation and a good look inside of the everyday work of our government employees.
This latest book is a departure from Robert’s past work and is a fictional spy tale. Here is the opening line: “It all started innocently enough, at least to an outside observer, but appearances can be deceiving.”
These books are available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. (search for his full name “Robert Richard Downes” because there is another author with a similar name)
Here is the “About The Author” bio at the back of his latest book:
Robert Richard Downes is a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer with over 37 years of federal service, the majority served overseas with the U. S. State Department. He lived and worked in Australia, Germany, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Thailand, and Venezuela as well as studying in Austria, Germany, and Hungary. After leaving the State Department, he returned to his native Texas where he fills his time reading, writing, kayaking, and volunteering for local charities and international organizations.
We just came out of an insane election time and I hope this did not put a damper on your sharing a Thanksgiving table with family and/or friends. And if you were alone, I hope you treated yourself well and found some things to smile about.
My husband and I listened to the music from Hamilton while we prepared our big meal. Just us this year, but we made our homemade mashed potatoes and I made my special spicy cranberry sauce. While I am nostalgic for the Thanksgivings of years past at my grandma’s table and later my mother’s table, those days can not be recreated. Our holiday celebrations morph a bit each year. I am thankful for getting to spend the holiday with my husband. I am also thankful for calls and texts from family and friends we could not be with.
As I get older I am working on a daily gratitude practice, which simply calls me to find small joys each day and share them with others. This practice has really helped me get past the anger and sadness I felt at the election.
And I am so thankful for the big trip to Massachusetts that we took in July to visit our family members there.
Because of a resurgence of Covid, we tried to find things we could all do together outdoors. The whole group of 7 of us met at the New England Botanical Gardens at Tower Hill, west of Boston, at Boylston, Mass. We ate lunch at the little cafe there. It has an outdoor seating option. Then we hiked around the grounds. It was hot and humid trekking, but was fun being together and sharing the joys of this beautiful outdoor space. First we walked down a hill to a pond. There was a pavilion for sitting and looking for birds and pond critters. Then we continued on through tall trees until we came to several interesting structures and statues. Here is one of them:
Temple In The Woods
Then we headed up hill to the more landscaped part of the gardens.
Saw some plants I was familiar with like this milkweed:
Monarch On Milkweed
And some others that were new to me:
Anyone Know What These Are?
There were a couple more ponds:
Frog On Lily Pad
And some interesting landscape choices:
Plants Planted In A Pattern On A Vertical Wall
The next day we headed to another outdoor spot, minus one of our party. Mirror Lake is on the old grounds of Ft. Devens, north west of Boston. Ft. Devens was an old army base from 1917-1996. Part of it now serves as a training center for the Army reserve and National Guard. A small township has evolved there.
Mirror Lake
We parked and walked down a hill to the entrance station and paid our fee. After staking out a spot for our chairs, we all went swimming. The water was perfect for a hot day. My husband was experiencing a bit of nostalgia at being here. When he was in the Army, he did his Individual Advanced Training (AIT) at Ft. Devens. The 4 months he spent here training was in the winter and so he had not been swimming here before. This is a family friendly area with life guards and boat rentals. One of our group was a regular there this summer, getting his exercise after work. We splashed around and laughed and looked at fish in the clear water.
And then this happened:
On Our Youngest Member’s Finger
A little dragonfly took turns perching on our fingers. Dragonflies can be symbols of change and transformation. I think our family bonds changed a bit and got stronger on this trip. I am thankful for that.
I hope you enjoyed this little personal trip report and maybe will visit some of the places I did. And I hope you find some small joys each day.
Natural Musings 