PARABLES AND PIGS

Dog damage to garage

Sunday, I preached on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and as an aftereffect of the delivery, at lunch with the Sisters of St. Mary, Sewanee, the conversation centered around the profligate son finally getting a job feeding pods to pigs. I don’t know whether the phrase “pods for pigs” was some kind of biblical alliteration created by an early translator of The Word, but the botanist in our crowd, Vickie Sullivan, and others around the table Googled and found that the pods were actually a chocolaty bean from the carob tree that pigs must have relished. 

The conversation caused me to wonder if perhaps a pig had been the culprit that damaged the siding on a corner of the garage door while we were sojourning in Louisiana. A photograph of the damage is shown above. I mean, if boa constrictors can proliferate, move around, and damage properties in Florida and nutria migrated and proliferated in Louisiana, could pigs do the same in Tennessee?! 

According to the manual, Wildflowers in the Smokies (lead author, Peter White), during the late 1940s European wild hogs escaped from a game farm in North Carolina and entered the Great Smoky Mountain Park of Tennessee and North Carolina, and attempts to remove them have failed. Now, these are no ordinary pigs; they’re large babies that root up wildflowers and create wallows in lower elevations in beech gaps, damaging trout lilies and other spring wildflowers, decimate forests by rooting for bulbs and tubers, leaving the beech gaps looking as if they’ve been plowed up. Park officials are worried about long-term effects of these hogs that they actually call wild boars. 

Since the late 1980s, large populations of the boars have been trapped or shot by park crews, but officials claim that total elimination of the hogs is almost impossible. Coyotes like to eat wild hog piglets and red wolves also like to take on full-grown boars, but I’m wondering if there are some park runaways who have managed to migrate to The Mountain here at Sewanee, and are foraging for food near residences.

A repairman who arrived to give an estimate for repairs to the damaged siding told us that there are toothmarks on the siding, and he thinks a large dog (whose owner cleaned up the siding and took it away) chased a chipmunk that crawled inside the corner siding, and tried to make a meal of the little critter. Since part of the siding had been taken away, we surmised that it was a dog whose owner decided repairs might be costly (estimate of $275), so he/she didn’t leave a note. No chipmunk skeletons or missing siding have been found in the woods either.

Unlike some cultures, I don’t have an appetite for roast dog, but I do like cochon de lait —roast pig — Cajun cooking at its best — but there are no carob pods around, and I guess we’ll have to stick to the story of disrepair by a dog who was supposed to be on a leash but got out of control when a chipmunk crossed its path. Sigh. 

We always come home to some kind of damage to the property when we leave Sewanee for the winter, and we once thought the Sewanee campus a safe place to live, but we’ve been taking a ride every day lately… looking for country acreage where we might keep a pen of pigs?… 

THE CHATTANOOGA TRAIN TERMINAL

I’ve been working on a book of poetry about trains and have decided to stop where I am and publish it as is, thinking it’ll probably be the caboose of my poetry. However, that decision included one last tour of a historic train site — the Chattanooga Choo-Choo Train Terminal in downtown Chattanooga, which we visited last Friday. This visit remains the highlight of the series of tours we’ve enjoyed during our half-year stay at Sewanee, Tennessee. Vickie Sullivan’s photo of the interior of the terminal will probably become the cover illustration for my “caboose book.”

The Chattanooga terminal was designed by the architect Don Barber and was built in 1906 for 1.5 million dollars. In 1909, the first trains served as many as 50 passengers per day on the old Southern Railway, but by the 1960’s, railways had declined, and the “Birmingham Special” of The Southern made its last run in 1970. The terminal was set for demolition when investors stepped in and poured four million dollars into its restoration in 1973. Today, the old terminal has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a 24-acre complex that includes a museum of train models, a hotel, a rose garden, shops, and sleeper cars that attract train enthusiasts. The poem that I came away with says more about the Chattanooga Choo Choo song that Glenn Miller and his orchestra made famous than it does about the structure of the old terminal, but my memories of the visit to this beautifully-restored terminal have been in my thoughts for several days.

We ate lunch at Stirs Restaurant, just two doors from the main terminal entrance, where oysters from New Brunswick were offered at a peak price of $3 per oyster. My friend Vickie ordered two as an appetizer and decided that the food in this restaurant matched the elegance of the terminal. She also ordered crab bisque while I munched on a ciabatta sandwich because I’m allergic to shellfish. Oysters from Louisiana were also featured on the menu, and the manager told us that all oysters are guaranteed to be fresh as they are flown in daily. 

The hotel within the terminal offers rooms, starting at $180 a night, or we would’ve spent the night to further inspire atmosphere for the “caboose book” of poetry; however, my budget doesn’t include that kind of luxury. And I enjoyed free visual inspiration sans an overnight stay.

My Tourist Trains Guidebook contains 450 train rides and dinner trains, museums, trolleys, and depots, and if I’d continued to write about this favored subject, I’d still be riding when the Great Train pulled into my terminal to take me beyond… but I've traveled over some historic tracks and depot sites while pursuing material for Destinations, the title of this latest book of poetry. However, Whoo, whoo… Chattanooga Choo-Choo Train Terminal is the top attraction on my list of sites!

Photographs by Victoria Sullivan

THE SEASON OF LITTLEST FLOWERS

Rain fell on The Mountain last night and showered the redbud, forsythia, dogwood, and other large blooming flowers in our yard. More noticeable on this overcast day are what I call the “littlest flowers” in various hues of lavender, yellow, and deep purple. They will soon take their leave, and I asked resident botanist, Vickie Sullivan, to photograph them so I can enjoy looking at them during days of summer drought. As I am an amateur plant lover and regard botany as Goethe described it — as an “amiable science” — my observations of the plant world in our yard are usually surface descriptions of leaves, flowers, and fruits that often inspire poetry —the language of flowers fascinates me.

The rich flora here reveal delicate blooms of a variety of wildflowers, especially during April and May, and the mosaic below shows a few species, which possibly could be classified as weeds that have adapted to the site our home occupies. Vibrant tones of color and delicate designs attracted me as I walked around in the yard, stumbling on mole holes and branches that had fallen during the winter. We live on a property that fronts a small wood, and a deer observed me as I walked through the front yard. I might add that deer are regarded as nuisances in these parts and are culled annually. I don’t know if they lunch on the littlest flowers, but I doubt that they have an appetite for these blooms as the flowers seem undisturbed by animal life.

Here are photographs of a few of the littlest flowers that attract me each year when I return to Sewanee: bugleweeds, bluets, spring beauties, mock strawberries, and violets. Also included are the large blooms of the narcissus that proliferate on The Mountain and greet us as we view the woods for the first time each spring:

Photographs were taken by Victoria Sullivan.

TUNING INTO NATURE DEFICIENCY SYNDROME

A few evenings ago, Brenda Lowry and Joshua (Bubba) Murrell from New Iberia, Louisiana, stopped by en route to the 2017 Summer NAMM in Nashville, Tennessee, an event featuring all aspects of music. The two talented musicians and songwriters brought us a bag of fresh vegetables, rather than the guitars they usually transport on their travels.

“Those vegetables are from Bubba’s garden,” Brenda explained. “Gardening has been his project this summer.”

Bubba, a Grammy award winner, has a gracious plenty of interests — music, electronics, skills as a computer technician and game creator, writing, guitar making…The fact that he is now a successful gardener is not surprising. I noticed him stopping at our back door to inspect the overgrown herb garden we had planted near the entry to the kitchen. Before coming into the house, he showcased his knowledge of taxonomy.

“What kinds of mint did you plant?” he asked.

I looked around for my resident botanist, Dr. Sullivan. “I know we planted chocolate mint,” she answered, and Bubba then named another variety. He identified every herb we had planted, except for the weeds we had allowed to grow. I was impressed.

Bubba is probably up to date on the news about Americans suffering from Nature Deficiency Syndrome and the evidence that we spend 80-99 percent of our lives indoors, which has resulted in a lifestyle that affects our psychological and physical health. According to one of the many articles published about therapy for treating this syndrome, gardening is among the cures — an activity that helps humans recharge and elevate their bad moods. In fact, Craig Chaiquistone, a psychologist at the California Institute of Integral Studies, reports that we have all the antidepressants we need “in the ground.” Therapies for nature deficiency disorders range from green therapy to earth-centered therapy and can result in decreased anxiety and depression, as well as improved self-esteem.

As I live in a small wooded area on campus here at the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, I surmised that I could probably benefit from the Japanese method of “forest bathing” that is part of their national health program. So after Brenda and Bubba left, the following afternoon I went out on the porch to be with nature. When I stepped outside and sat down to be with the wildness of my overgrown garden, I felt at home with ideas I had read about this therapeutic discovery regarding the nature deficiency syndrome.

For thirty minutes I enjoyed the scents of rosemary, dill, mint, and other herbs and watched skipper butterflies and bees dipping into the blooms of Dianthus, breathing in the fresh air that is reputed to cure our nature deficiencies. While I didn’t scoop dirt from the garden and hold it in my hands for twenty minutes (part of a process called “earthing”), I did “clean my mental windshield” as touted by David Strayer, another cognitive psychologist. And the sounds of insects thrumming their mantras helped me switch off after a morning of research and writing.

My garden still needs weeding, but I felt in step with Henry David Thoreau’s sage words: “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” I suggest that you turn off your smart phones and need for instant gratification and step outside to get in touch with the pulse of nature. An article I read about nature deficiency suggests that observing nature can lead to an increased tolerance for slower paces or the development of patience. For more skeptical readers, scientists now report that they have been able to see biomarkers of the changes in people affected by immersion in nature. For more verification, read the works of Transcendentalists Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Photography by Victoria I. Sullivan

ESPRIT DE FEMME

This morning, the fog on The Mountain blanketed trees, homes, and roads with an impenetrable curtain that could have caused feelings of morning gloom at Sewanee, Tennessee. However, when I went into the dining room for breakfast, I looked up at the windows facing our backyard and saw the latest glasswork of Karen Bourque that I brought back with me last week. A piece of purple colored glass with a hawk winging its way in the background cut through the somber world outside, and I decided to unveil this piece before it appears on the cover of my latest book, Above the Prairie, forthcoming through Border Press in June. There's no other word for Karen's new work — it's stunning!

Karen and I've been working together on covers for my books of poetry during the last decade, and have the kind of synchronicity that births an almost instant process: Border Press publisher, Vickie Sullivan, and I meet for lunch with Karen and her husband, Darrell Bourque, former Louisiana poet laureate, and before we fill our plates, I perceive an idea for a book of poetry, along with the title — presto. I tell Karen about the idea, sometimes sending her a photograph or the first poem, and before I can produce a dozen poems, she has begun work on one of her beautiful pieces. In today's slang about synchronicity, she "gets it."

In another life, Karen was a lab technologist, a working mother, and wife, but when she retired, she began to dedicate her talents to glasswork, and her pieces have appeared in churches, spiritual centers, the Ernest Gaines Center at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette, at the Louisiana Book Festival, and other cultural institutions and homes throughout Acadiana. She never advertises her work because the word is out about her brilliant talent. As soon as she completes a commission, and even before she completes a glass piece, someone else is at the door to her studio, seeking her artwork.

I know that my book isn't published yet, but this morning when I looked up at the soaring hawk above the Louisiana prairie in prisms of glass, my spirit lifted, and I was compelled to share this stunning glass piece with readers. I'm always as excited about my book covers as I am about the poetry within and hope you'll look for what's coming next...

P.S. At the risk of sounding like a Grandmother braggart: After Karen produces a photo of the glass piece, it is sent to Martin Romero, my grandson in Louisiana, who makes a handsome design around the glass piece for the cover.

MY KIND OF MARDI GRAS

Karen & Darrell's house

It's that time of year again — Mardi Gras in French Louisiana. If readers want the full Monty about this celebration, a foray into Lyle Saxon's Old Louisiana provides an extensive account of this season preceding Lent. Saxon, one of the brightest raconteurs of his day, lived most of his life in New Orleans and devoted the first six chapters of Old Louisiana to Mardi Gras, explaining that the very name New Orleans "brings to mind a Mardi Gras pageant moving through the streets at night: crowds of masqueraders, rearing horses, great decorated floats glowing with color and glittering gold-leaf. Aboard the swaying cars are centaurs, mermaids, satyrs, gods and men, illuminated by flaring torches carried by strutting negroes robed in red..." Saxon sat on a balcony in front of the St. Charles Hotel during Mardi Gras, 1946, and described the first Mardi Gras to occur after WWII over a national radio broadcasting chain. Readers could say that he was talking about Mardi Gras while dying; a few days after his broadcast, he was hospitalized with cancer and died.

Darrell, Diane, Karen

For the tourist, New Orleans is the place to be during Mardi Gras activities, but, of course, Cajun Country has its own Carnival balls, parades, and private celebrations. At my age, I prefer the latter, especially when it takes place in the home of the Bourques in Church Point, Louisiana. Like Saxon, Darrell Bourque, the former poet laureate of Louisiana and his wife Karen, a glass artist, have an abiding interest in "living well." When we get together with them, the atmosphere is charged with the energy of two accomplished artists — books are stacked on desks, in bookcases everywhere; regional art fills every room in their home and studio. The studio is an old shotgun style house the Bourques renovated to resemble a Creole cottage, complete with heavily-battened blue shutters, facing the cobbled New Orleans style courtyard. A new addition is a wrought iron fence enclosing the cottage that adds to the Creole ambience.  Each time we visit the studio, I discover glass pieces I've viewed before, but see them as new, in every corner. I find different displays of their grandson William's paintings, perhaps a new poem lying on the tall table where the two artists create both glass work and poems — everything is viewed as new. I tease my friends about my becoming a permanent guest holed up in their studio to write.

Thursday, a Mardi Gras centerpiece decorated the dining table where we dined and talked for two hours. The food! Darrell cooks a magnifique pork roast with homemade sauce of roasted peppers and onions; Karen, a sweet potato casserole, fresh asparagus salad with homemade dressing, and Darrell always insists that we have nahn, which he knows I learned to love while living in Iran. "This is our Mardi Gras," Darrell said, and we toasted our long friendship as a way to celebrate that which is fun-filled and gracious in our lives. No loud fanfare, parades, costumed folks, no dancing in the hall — just lots of talk and doubling-over laughter.

Vickie @ Mardi Gras table

We got up from the festive table and went outdoors, where I usually insist on taking photographs so we can reminisce when we return to Sewanee for the spring/summer season. Four or five shots of us are required for me to look decent, linked with these two handsome artists, and Thursday we posed in front of one of Darrell's prize camellia bushes. Darrell, a consummate gardener, also raises grapefruit, lemons, and oranges and usually has a bumper crop of ginger but the last freeze destroyed these beautiful plants. His white camellias would rival the prize camellias in the gardens of Jefferson and Avery Islands, Louisiana.

No Hail Rex and his royal court, no bursts of music, little parades of glittering floats, or the unrealness of a Mardi Gras scene... but the realness of a good time enjoyed by all. We came away feeling well-cared for following our celebration in the prairie country of St. Landry parish, a region of Louisiana I've learned to love after viewing it through the eyes of these elegant south Louisiana artists.

FLORIDA FISHING

Grandson Martin, Jacob,
and Vickie (l. to r.)

While visiting in the home of Vickie Sullivan's 97-year old mother in central Florida recently, Vickie's sister came over with two old photographs of me and my grandson Martin in hand. The photos probably dated back to 33 years ago, and one photo showed me holding a large bass I had caught; the other photograph showed my grandson Martin, Mary Ruth's oldest son Jacob, and Vickie holding a nice string of fish they had caught in canals on the Latt Maxcy Corporation Ranch. I couldn't believe that the large bass I held was my catch of the day, but there I was, wearing large-frame glasses popular back in the day, smiling over the fish that was stretched to full length in a snapshot that Mary Ruth had discovered among her memorabilia.

Fishing was once among my favorite recreations, and I felt a jolt about my aging process when I looked at the photo. My blissful expression and that of my grandson in the photographs also jolted me into a consciousness of how recent photos of me show a lot of white hair and a certain worried look on my face. I was in my forties when we made this fishing jaunt, and I was enchanted with the landscape of central Florida — the grassy pastureland savannas with scattered clumps of saw palmetto, hammocks of live oaks trailing moss, and orange groves scattered among many glistening lakes. My nostalgia and memories of the past make it a happy time among hospitable people.

Me with bass

At the time of the photo-taking, an abundance of bass, bream, and catfish filled the canals on the ranch with overflowing high water from the nearby Kissimmee River. Every cast that day had brought in a fish; however, I never returned to this bountiful fishing spot and later confined my fishing to casts from a pier that Vickie's mother built on the beach of her lakefront home. For a long spell, she fed the fish in Silver Lake daily, and on one occasion, I caught 23 bream, ceasing my fishing only when dusk came... and I began to think about having to clean the catch!

In my forthcoming book of poetry, Sifting Red Dirt (see cover below), I included a prose poem about fishing expeditions entitled Big Creek:

They called it “floating the river,” one paddling, the other casting his way into eddies all day, pulling close to shadowy pools, perch beds where blue gills and sun perch darted for multi-colored flies thrown into their hunger. One summer, they allowed me along, and I was given a fly rod and shown how to crack the whip, two flies attached. When I felt the hard pull of two blue gills, plump, dark blue bodies tugging at the lures and breaking the surface of the water I knew why they went out on the river. Most days the sun was so hot they had to come to a hiatus under overhanging oaks every few hours to open a can of beer and say a few words to each other, but the less words, the better, the overwhelming silence a relief from talk required for the unending necessity of hands at work, making a living. The Bogue Chitto, Choctaw for “Big Creek,” was then clear water, and when we stopped under the bridge by The Tavern to replenish the beer, I could see the gravel bottom of the river, breathe in the desultory air, feel a part of that silence that had been broken only by the whiz of the line and a small snap as the line hit the water. They were both on their way to becoming alcoholics, and floating the river soon became something less spiritual, less recreation, and more drinking in the shade of the watchful oaks. I knew the only peace either of them felt was on that river, and I did not go with them often but when I did, I wasn’t afraid, even in sudden summer thunderstorms when we had to pull up on the banks and sit until the white flashes and rumbling stopped. I was only afraid of water moccasins dropping into the boat, preferring to be at the outer edges of the perch pools. Sometimes when the sun became unbearable, the paddler would start the motor of an old outboard and stir the heavy air, riding the current for a few minutes, the breeze pushing us on to another pool. Years later, I would understand the meditative quality of those trips, no thoughts persisting, just concentration on the line flying into the dark pools searching for hungry perch, a hypnotic gesture, not caring what anyone thought, not wanting to hear anyone else’s problems, not moaning about life not being intact, but feeling the soul’s bliss, heart contracting with joy in the simple goodness of floating the river.