…now I’ve got you, my pretty.

Sunday 25 July 2010 - Filed under Featured Articles

I loathe dirt under my nails, despise bending for hours in the heat, and can no longer kneel [titanium knee hurts like Hell.] Nonetheless, I’m swept away by gardens. Lawns stretching to the treeline, banks of blooming Azalea, gently running water — Heaven on Earth.

I do garden a wee bit, though, on the patio. In pots. Twice this summer, I’ve emerged from my air-conditioned cocoon to find my pot-full of split-leaf Parsley reduced to a few hundred bare, green stems.  WTF?

  Stealth and luck solved the mystery this morning: Ah-Ha (see picture). One fat & happy cutworm wriggling around the pot’s rim, his friend heading for the exit.  A close-up through my Leica lens, however, had me firmly in a delimna: these are Childrens’ Storybook Worms, pretty and green, funny, loveable. We snuggled at bedtimes to read Eric Carle’s The Hungry Caterpillar, and, a few years later, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, illustrated with lovely, color drawings featuring these wiggley, giggley, adorable CUTWORMS!!

If an All Points Bulletin goes out to law enforcement of the dual-murder of both Hungry and Very Hungry by person or persons unknown, I’m hoping they won’t look for a cute grandmother with a flyswatter.

 ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-07-25  ::  Kate

WAG #31: Laugh Til You Cry

Friday 23 July 2010 - Filed under WAG

             Once in a rare while, in my childhood, a bustling broke out: wiping, sorting, dusting; someone oiled a hinge; granddad tidied his workbench; Junior or Jimmie Dale mowed what lawns we had as well as the wide, grassy alley behind our fence, and coiled the long snake of green garden hose stretched to the spigot out back. Unmistakably, company was coming. It might be a great-aunt or –uncle—I’d speculate—from Missouri or Kansas, or by car all the way from California. They’d stay too short a time; tell kitchen-table stories I couldn’t grasp concerning people whose names I’d only heard. And laugh, how they did laugh. Early morning to well past the time that, under protest, we children were trundled off to our beds; I remember the laughter.

             I’d hear the murmurs rise and fall. The mixed cadence of voices around the kitchen table—our favored gathering place. A woman’s low alto would begin. A quiet baritone might interrupt; provide the year or the name. On it would go. Until I lost my way and slept.

              Soon, though, the leaving day came. Grownups hugging—that odd sight I never grasped—hugging and crying. Uncles, unnerved by tears, would quickly remind “the girls” of last night’s laugh-till-you-cry-and-begged-him-to-stop story and again laughter. Moist-eyed laughter. Long back-patting embraces. More tears.

               Today I understand. We must love until it hurts. We must laugh over shared stories until we cry, watch them on our inner movie-screens; be good brothers and sisters and, interrupting, correct the name or place or year or occasion. We must ache over the good-byes to have done our jobs well as human beings.

              I am old, now, the child I once was alive and well. At last, I understand my grandmother’s weeping for days afterward, washing dishes, laughing then crying, hands slipping deftly over each plate, rinsing beneath the scalding cascade that matched her, tear for tear. Granddad tightening the vise bolted to his workbench, blinks back tears and blows his nose. It’s the love, the laughter, the known sweet agony of hello and goodbye.

                We know we are eternal, or believe it’s so. Until we love enough to laugh until we cry, cling to one another and pat backs one-two-three—seven times—reluctant to turn loose, only then are we fit to leave life.

4 comments  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-07-23  ::  Kate

WAG #30: Paybacks are Hell

Wednesday 14 July 2010 - Filed under WAG

      I last saw Daddy when I was eight. He said he was “getting married”; he said he wouldn’t be seeing me again, but–dammit–I was eight. Glad for him, I guess I wondered if I’d be going to visit him, now that he’d have a house. What I didn’t get was he was walking away to a new life, minus me.

     Years passed. When I visited his mother, she talked about him, told me when they’d had a baby, but he never came. After a while, I morphed  (more…)

5 comments  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-07-14  ::  Kate

8th Grade Competencies Test

Monday 12 July 2010 - Filed under Featured Articles

Remember when grandparents or great-grandparents said somewhat apologetically they only had an 8th grade education?  Well, could any of us products of ‘modern’ educational institutions have passed this 8th grade test from 1895?

The following 1895 eighth-grade final exam was taken from the original document on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, Kansas and reprinted by The Salina Journal.

Grammar (Time: one hour)
1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters.
2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define verse, stanza and paragraph
4. What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts of ‘lie,”play,’ and ‘run’. (more…)

3 comments  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-07-12  ::  Kate

WAG #29: … got a light?

Thursday 1 July 2010 - Filed under WAG

The old woman seemed fancy to me, not that I knew what fancy was. She must have been a hundred, wore long dresses like ladies in the picture show — wore them around the house. Imagine! How she came to be in this little town, out here on the prarie, was a point of speculation among my cousins and me. Her husband, long dead, owned the town’s only furniture store where, on the mezzanine he also sold large, dark caskets. My big brother said he was also an undertaker down in the basement, so I’d better not go near the steps or he might get me.

Here she was, this fancy hundred-year-old lady spending her days in long silky dresses swishing around her, living alone in a big movie-star-sized house. I’d drop in to visit–uninvited, of course–and Mrs. Burford would invite me right in, set me down on the good furniture and offer me a glass of iced tea. Aside from being the nosiest kid on the planet, she fascinated me. She wore pink rouge high up on her sharp cheek-bones, lipstick (although she wasn’t expecting anyone. Ever.) And she smoked! I didn’t know women smoked except in Hollywood.

While I talked and she listened, she’d put her fragile elbow point-down on the small table beside her chair, sip iced tea and smoke a filter-tip Herbert Tareyton. Couldn’t take my eyes off her.  She drew in a double lungful of smoke, but the last little bit, she nearly closed her lips, inhaled through her nostrils, pulling a silky cloud of smoke out of her mouth in through her nose.

When granddad learned I had been calling on Mrs. Burford, that I’d asked grandma why she never wore rouge and had she ever smoked, he forbade me from “bothering” her again.

I became a young woman eventually, sought sophistication above all else, so, naturally, I taught myself to French Inhale.

WAG Topic #29: “Habits”. This week let’s write about habits: yours, a characters, or someone you observe (we’re all such stalkers). It can be anything from the unconscious way someone touches their face when they talk, or a deep-in-their-bones addiction. Your piece can be as long or short as you want, using any form you like.  No Rules! Now Write! (You may add links to this list between now and 6 JULY 2010.)

5 comments  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-07-01  ::  Kate

WAG #27: … pants on fire

Tuesday 22 June 2010 - Filed under WAG

Great-Uncle Ural was a fine storyteller. His too infrequent visits, living in California and all, left us wanting more.  Crowded around the big round kitchen table after supper, someone always asked for the story about the poorly cow.  He’d grin, glance  out of the corner of his gray-blue eyes toward the one asking, and reply, “Aw, that wasn’t anything but a big lie–you don’t want to hear a lie, do ya?” We kids all laughed; grownups exchanged head-shaking looks.

Bear in mind that Granddad got religion in ‘42 — when his Momma died — and this was a religion with a trainload of rules: quite a long train. “Top of the list,” he’d warn, “don’t you never, ever tell a lie. God is watching you…He don’t miss a thang.”  No matter the lecture, he’d start with, “Top of the list” every time.  Tonight he relaxed.  Maybe this God was just watching kids, I’d think. Sure felt like it.

“All right, then,” Uncle Ural continued after some begging, “It was during the Great Depression and (more…)

4 comments  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-06-22  ::  Kate

WAG #26: Casting Call

Tuesday 15 June 2010 - Filed under WAG

Maggie, the Cat and Big Daddy are onstage, the director *blocks* out the scene with them, “When Big Daddy turns, Maggie moves to the bar and removes the stopper … .” Each script gets quick marginal notes, and they step and block through the next set of lines.

The theater is dark and empty, but for a 20-ish guy two-thirds of the way up in E section, nearest the main entry. He’s careful not to make a sound, half holds his breath, hangs on the instructions, watches every movement, notes their responses. His eyes are bright and move from one to the other.

“Toilet break,” the Director says, “Back in ten” moving toward section E a bit. The two actors out of sight, he lifts his eyes to the onlooker.  “Can I help you with something?”

The young man, surely thought he’d be meeting people, even talking with them,  but his voice broke, “Naw — no — thanks.” Sweat beaded under his hairline. As the director strode toward backstage, he picked up his backpack, rose and made his way down the stairs and out into the night. Next time, maybe.

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WAG Topic #26: “Fish out of Water”. Sometimes it’s easy to tell when someone is out of their element. It can be their clothing, their manner, what they’re carrying with them… so many things give them away.

6 comments  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-06-15  ::  Kate

Wag #25: Misdemeanour, mostly

Sunday 6 June 2010 - Filed under WAG

His khakis hung on him from a cinched belt; shirt was tucked in – neat as he could get – but too large. Maybe it fit when he got it. His dirty shoes were last year’s knockoff Air Jordans. He made his way around the islands of fresh produce without attracting attention, a little on the small side so the cantaloupes display eclipsed him. I examined the gills on Portobellos, selected three large ones and tucked them next to the bread to protect them.

He held a plastic produce bag, weighted by a couple of large Sunkist. He obviously wasn’t shopping. Even this Wal-Mart–serving the wealthy (more…)

4 comments  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-06-06  ::  Kate

Web spells doom for publishing industry

Sunday 30 May 2010 - Filed under Man, Am I Pissed

In a Baltimore Sun column this past week, our favorite small-town guy Garrison Keillor suggested “When Everyone’s a Writer no one is.” He posits an argument whose logic doesn’t stand scrutiny–his thesis was, as far as I could tell, that self-publishing, ebooks, and the web are taking the field of writing to-Hell-in-a-handbasket–as he oooh’s & ahhh’s over all the BIG NAMES of authors and publishing, in general.  You can see how I couldn’t pass on this one. (more…)

3 comments  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-05-30  ::  Kate

WAG #24: Unexpected

Saturday 29 May 2010 - Filed under Featured Articles + WAG

The mayor’s part-time clerk and full-time daughter, Marge, did a favor for me once. Since then, she’s asked several in return; recently, I’ve tracked prisoners’ graves/headstones, long dead and forgotten in the North Cemetery, which section soon will be moved.  A developer bought the parcel south of the cemetery stretching to the River; soon plenty of concrete and landscaped mini-mansions in the so-called Dallas Style will occupy the hillsides and most of the land.

To tell you the truth, I don’t mind.  (more…)

5 comments  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-05-29  ::  Kate