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.
I had the October 18th No Kings Rally on my radar and calendar for weeks and planned to attend. I had not shown up at a political rally since January 21st 2017 when my daughter and I attended the Women’s March Against Trump at the Texas State Capitol. At that time I attended a volunteer session put on by the organizers and helped pass out signs (I forget what they said). I carried my own sign which read “To gather strength and give support”). I grew up in Austin and I remember my dad taking me, my brother, my 3 stepsisters, and my stepmother to see the Klan march at the State Capitol in 1965. I was 11. I remember my dad saying that if there was trouble, we should meet back at the car. I also remember being appalled that there were little children in klan garb. Over the years I have attended many rallys and protests at the Capitol, mostly to take photos.
This time I felt compelled to show up because I have been sitting on the sidelines doing nothing as our country needs help. I have sent a few letters to Congresspeople supporting the ones doing the good work, but other than keep track of what is going on, I have done nothing. It was forecast to be very hot that day and I kept going back and forth. Am I going or not? Finally I made my decision and planned to meet up with a friend there. My family members opted out for heat and other reasons. I would represent our family.
Well, folks, it was horribly hot! The temperature was 95 and it was humid and I don’t tolerate heat as well as in my earlier years. But, I brought water and wore a hat. I also wore my bluebonnet t-shirt (our state flower) and my monarch butterfly earrings. My husband and daughter dropped me off on the northwest side of the capitol and I joined others the few blocks to the grounds.
Our bags were checked for weapons before we were allowed on the grounds.
I wandered around looking at all the colorful costumes and signs and listened a bit to the speakers. I mostly gravitated to the shade of the old oaks on the grounds. My friend texted she was running late (we never did meet up). The Austin police were there and I spotted our police chief standing under a tree while one of her fellow officers spoke to a reporter. Our police chief and other officers did join the march.
I walked south hoping to get a shot of the march coming down Congress avenue. I had to dodge people on scooters and bicycles (including some cops riding on the sidewalk) as I waited. Chatted with some friendly folks. The energy was joyful and strong.
The March Begins at 11th st. and Congress Ave.
“Humanity Over Greed”
“World Without Caesars”
Guy In Banana Suit “Bananas For Democracy”
The costumes were fun, but I imagine very hot!
The pink costume is an Axohotl …Sorry the shot is not better…there were more Axohotl costumes there and many dinosaurs and a bee and a chicken…
I heard people singing Bye Bye Mrs. American Pie and drummers and there was a woman leading an aerobics dance group in the middle of the march (her face was very red!). I saw a banner that read “Raging Grannies” and yes, there were frog costumes.
One complaint I have is that there were people with dogs on leashes and one guy had a live chicken in a plastic box…it was way too hot to drag these little critters along.
On a positive note, there were multiple people working the crowd offering water and a woman handing out small American flags (I took one). And the age range covered the old and the young. There were people of all colors, some with rainbow flags, some with American flags, and some with an interesting hybrid Mexican and American flag. I saw people in wheelchairs and blind people with canes.
It was wonderful being there with all these beautiful people standing up for our country!
(full disclosure…it was hot and I only went as far as 5th street where I peeled off and walked west to hitch a ride back home with my husband and daughter)
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.
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
Recently, a friend dropped by. She was having a horrible day, one of those days when nothing goes right. She had failed at making a special cake, one that she had made a thousand times before. Everything she tried that day became a frustration. The biggie was earlier in the day, when she bent down and picked up what she thought was a brown leaf on the floor by her bed. She put it on a counter to toss out later. She was not wearing her glasses at the time. Later, while wearing glasses, she passed by the counter and was appalled to see a dead scorpion on the counter! She had picked up a scorpion with her bare hands! Was this a bad omen? A symbol of the bad stuff to come? I told her that I had done that before…picked up what I thought was a leaf while not wearing my glasses. In my case the object was a large dead roach.
I told her that things would get better, that we all have days like this and it would pass. And she should be happy that the scorpion was dead…maybe that was a good sign. After she left, I googled “what do scorpions symbolize?” thinking that negative things would come up on my screen. But, the websites I checked out had positive things to say about scorpions, such as: “Scorpions can be a symbol of rebirth, power, independence, and passion.” (1)
A few days before that, another friend had texted me a link to a story on what it means when a cardinal appears. I had heard about cardinals being a sign of a passed on loved one visiting from beyond. And some people believe they are a sign of love and hope and loyalty. The 30th of December was when I started writing the draft of this blog. That was my late father’s birthday and I kept looking out the window at my trees and feeders, hoping to see a cardinal.
But, I like to think of myself as above all this superstition…that I am a student of nature, ever in awe of the beauty of all species that inhabit the earth with us…and how special they all are, but in a scientific way. Well, I pretend to think like this, “Look at me! I don’t believe in that magical hooey!” If I am honest with you, I admit to giving special significance to seeing certain critters, especially positive significance. If I see a hawk as I set out on a trip, I consider this a good omen…that the trip will be safe. I never think a particular critter represents badness. That is my personal choice and fits in with trying to “think positive thoughts”, something my mother used to say.
Driving home from a recent luncheon a scissortail flycatcher flew over the road in front of my car! I thought I might have hallucinated it because they are not supposed to be here in the winter. They are an unmistakable bird with their long forked tail. So, I looked them up online…what they might symbolize. The website said “something has ended in my life- an ending that has been necessary for quite sometime.” Okay…not yet sure what this is referring to.
I have many wrens visit my yard. They apparently are associated with the ideas of staying joyful while moving forward in life, and kindness. I like that.(3)
Anyway, these ideas come from our human imaginations and can be a source of amusement and inspiration. I think they can coexist with science…just so we know the difference.
I never did see a real cardinal on my dad’s birthday, but I did see one in my kitchen. I spotted a cardinal magnet on the refrigerator. That will have to do. Am wishing you all a wonderful New Year filled with signs of goodness in many forms!
p.s. Word of advice: Before you pick up something from the floor, please put on your glasses!
Natural Musings 