Yesterday when we set out for a visit to Grace Episcopal Church in Chattanooga, clouds of mist drifted slowly down the Mountain like smoke signals sent up to lead us eastward to the church. The mist didn’t dissipate until we reached Kimball, TN at 8 a.m. Friends we had met during the Silent Retreat at St. Mary’s – Dr. Gerry and Joy Jones; Dick and Alice Ramsey – invited us to hear a book review about Gen-X, presented by a Divinity student from Vanderbilt and to attend services afterward.
The review focused on a subject not confined to Gen-X – man’s search for meaning and his doubts about religious dogma. The Divinity student reviewed VIRTUAL FAITH, THE IRREVERENT SPIRITUAL QUEST OF GENERATION X, focusing on the premise that Gen.-X’s faith is placed not in traditional religious institutionalism but in the simulated life contained in video games and MTV videos of popular culture. After the review, I remarked to my friends that although the author Tom Beaudoin argued that Gen-Xers differ from other generations in their hunger for a spiritual place in a world of consumerism, I thought that this hunger was familiar to all generations of our culture and not just to this demographic group.
There are so many Episcopal churches in this area of TN, all of them architectural gems, and the distinguishing characteristic of Grace Episcopal Church is the side chapel within the huge church. During the Eucharist, a small service takes place at this side altar where Joy Jones, our friend, stood with a companion to offer spiritual and physical healing. Healing is a special emphasis in Grace’s mission statement, along with “the nurturing and challenging character of the Holy Spirit, open to and respecting all who would come.”
During lunch at a Thai Restaurant, our friends began to question me about the books I write, and I found myself stumbling over the list, neglecting to mention one of my latest, GRANDMA’S GOOD WAR. How did I overlook the only book of rhyming poetry I’ve written in 73 years? I’ve received many comments about the book, most of which focus on the nostalgia engendered by reading it. GRANDMA’S GOOD WAR seems to provide a point of identification with a period of our history that has become an important part of modern literature and movies. One reader wrote “wherever we lived in this time, our lives seemed to be almost identical, even to the knitting for war victims.” Another reader wrote that she read it aloud to her son, 16, and he enjoyed her own reminiscences of her childhood, between Baby Boomers and Gen-X. Many readers were fascinated with the 4th grade report card pictured on the back cover of GRANDMA’S GOOD WAR and asked why I made an A- in Conduct and the only B on the card was in Arithmetic. Give me a break!!
Here’s the end poem in GRANDMA’S GOOD WAR entitled “The Good Ole Days.” You can order your own copy of this verse retrospective of the forties from www.theborderpress.net.
THE GOOD OLE DAYS
And from the rubble of the past,
Godfather announced a baleful forecast,
the world ended in the 1950’s exaltation,
we had best be sensible in expectation
of a peace that will never prevail,
too many wars have caused us to fail.
As for my favored 1940’s decade,
this appraisal is tentatively made:
in the 40’s, the unity, patriotism, hope for peace
belied a nation’s determination for wars to cease.
Now, the battle guns centuries old
foretell war after war, out of control,
the planet’s warriors excel in rabid hate,
marching toward Godfather’s predicted fate,
we keep trying to own vast cultures and fields,
no one in the universe willing to yield,
negotiate, withdraw, turn the other cheek,
desperately climbing this self-absorbed peak.
Yet, none of us know for certain if conditions are really worse
than those recorded in this small collection of nostalgic verse.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Saturday, June 28, 2008
AND CATS DESERVE EQUAL TIME
Yesterday’s blog about dogs engendered some protest in the hearts of cat lovers who believe that the “felis domestica” also deserve to be touted on a blog. My daughter Stephanie, who owns the eight cats I mentioned yesterday, would have been the first to become enraged about all this attentiveness to dogs. Readers need to know that I immortalized a former Persian cat in my book, SOPHIE’S SOJOURN IN PERSIA, and also in a column I once wrote for the “Daily Iberian” in New Iberia, Louisiana. You will remember I mentioned that excerpts from “Cherchez la femme” would appear in this blog from time to time. For all you cat lovers, here’s equal space for a column about our house pet, Roya the Persian cat, that appeared in “Cherchez.”
“I’ve been thinking about all the traumas that Roya, our Persian immigrant cat, went through after we purchased her for 2400 rials (about $35 at the time we lived in Iran) from a peddler reeking of wine on a crowded backstreet in Abadan, Iran. Most people surmise that an oriental cat is a cherished house pet… indeed, Mohammed cut off the sleeve of his robe rather than disturb his favorite cat, Muessa. But when I lived in Persia, Iranians weren’t so fond of poor “khanoum” cat. Animals were threats to survival.
Our Roya was not a pure-bred Persian, but she did have queenly bearing and refined taste in food. In fact, we thought that, like Don Marquis’ Mehitabel (the alley cat who thought she was Cleopatra reincarnated), Roya felt she was born to grace an Oriental carpet, and we suspected that she fancied herself to be a former Empress of Iran. Like Mehitabel, Roya felt she had a rough time becoming a liberated female, particularly when she lived in a country where someone was more likely to kick a cat wandering on the street than to stroke her into a purr.
Mehitabel once sang: “The life of a female artist is continually hampered. What in h---have I done to deserve all these kittens? I look back on my life and it seems to me to be just one darn kitten after another. Am I never to be allowed to live my own life?” Roya must have felt keenly the last two lines of Mehitabel’s verses when she resided in Iran. We kept her behind locked doors and would’ve veiled her if we had thought it would keep her from pining for the skinny toms who scratched at her window when she looked out at the monotonous tan desert.
In the region of Iran in which we lived, veterinarians who operated on small animals were scarce, so Roya never got “fixed” while we resided in Ahwaz. Also, we refused to bring home to America an entire brood of Persian cats, so Roya was kept imprisoned in our Melli Rah home for almost two years, except for short walks in my daughter’s arms in the threatening outdoors. She screamed, wailed, clawed, and sang choruses from Mehitabel under her breath: “It isn’t fair, arch…it isn’t fair…these darn tom cats have all…the fun and freedom.”
A beautiful orange, black, and white female, Roya would have been a sensation in the city of Paris, which we visited en route home…if we had let her out of our room at the Intercontinental Hotel and onto the Left Bank, or if we had allowed her to walk down the street to the Tuilleries Gardens. But she lolled in a corner of the room, peered at the Francoise Villons of the Paris streets and waited…
Roya traveled to America in a small, rickety crate constructed by Irani craftsmen and labeled “Persian Express.” She arrived at Miami International Airport in a state of wild terror. After unloading eleven pieces of luggage, unaided, and throwing them in line at Customs, I asked for my terrified cat. A laconic animal inspector brought her out, waved aside her papers and said: “I don’t need no papers. Has she had a shot?” I nodded. “One cat passed,’ he wrote on a slip of paper. And Roya became an American citizen. Ah, liberated at last, she must have purred. When we arrived in New Orleans, the cargo loaders told us that she had broken out of her crate and roamed up and down in the luggage section all the way from Miami to New Orleans.
Roya never knew the joy of Mehitabel’s motherhood (“what if providence in her wisdom removed my kittens; they are living just now in an abandoned garbage can just behind a made-over stable in Greenwich village, and if it rains into the can before I can get back and resume them I am afraid the little dears might drown,” sang sardonic Mehitabel).
As soon as Roya arrived in Teche country, she was bustled off to the vet, underwent an operation, and was granted freedom to roam the Acadian woodlands. It was a joy to watch this liberated woman. We thought she sincerely believed she had ascended to cat heaven. She cavorted with butterflies, chased birds, sniffed flowers, and rolled in the long green grass daily. Many nights she took moonlight walks all night, and a stringy gray tom next door wailed a Romeo aria to her each morning. Some mornings when I let Roya out to pasture in the backyard after she spent an “off nights” indoors, she made a leap into the air, and I just know she was shrieking Mehitabel’s boast: “There’s a dance in the old dame yet.”
Two years after we returned to New Iberia, Roya disappeared when we went away for a week-end at Grand Isle, Louisiana. I just know she eloped with a Francoise Villon of the lower Teche region. In our family, no one can resist a good line of poetry…”
“I’ve been thinking about all the traumas that Roya, our Persian immigrant cat, went through after we purchased her for 2400 rials (about $35 at the time we lived in Iran) from a peddler reeking of wine on a crowded backstreet in Abadan, Iran. Most people surmise that an oriental cat is a cherished house pet… indeed, Mohammed cut off the sleeve of his robe rather than disturb his favorite cat, Muessa. But when I lived in Persia, Iranians weren’t so fond of poor “khanoum” cat. Animals were threats to survival.
Our Roya was not a pure-bred Persian, but she did have queenly bearing and refined taste in food. In fact, we thought that, like Don Marquis’ Mehitabel (the alley cat who thought she was Cleopatra reincarnated), Roya felt she was born to grace an Oriental carpet, and we suspected that she fancied herself to be a former Empress of Iran. Like Mehitabel, Roya felt she had a rough time becoming a liberated female, particularly when she lived in a country where someone was more likely to kick a cat wandering on the street than to stroke her into a purr.
Mehitabel once sang: “The life of a female artist is continually hampered. What in h---have I done to deserve all these kittens? I look back on my life and it seems to me to be just one darn kitten after another. Am I never to be allowed to live my own life?” Roya must have felt keenly the last two lines of Mehitabel’s verses when she resided in Iran. We kept her behind locked doors and would’ve veiled her if we had thought it would keep her from pining for the skinny toms who scratched at her window when she looked out at the monotonous tan desert.
In the region of Iran in which we lived, veterinarians who operated on small animals were scarce, so Roya never got “fixed” while we resided in Ahwaz. Also, we refused to bring home to America an entire brood of Persian cats, so Roya was kept imprisoned in our Melli Rah home for almost two years, except for short walks in my daughter’s arms in the threatening outdoors. She screamed, wailed, clawed, and sang choruses from Mehitabel under her breath: “It isn’t fair, arch…it isn’t fair…these darn tom cats have all…the fun and freedom.”
A beautiful orange, black, and white female, Roya would have been a sensation in the city of Paris, which we visited en route home…if we had let her out of our room at the Intercontinental Hotel and onto the Left Bank, or if we had allowed her to walk down the street to the Tuilleries Gardens. But she lolled in a corner of the room, peered at the Francoise Villons of the Paris streets and waited…
Roya traveled to America in a small, rickety crate constructed by Irani craftsmen and labeled “Persian Express.” She arrived at Miami International Airport in a state of wild terror. After unloading eleven pieces of luggage, unaided, and throwing them in line at Customs, I asked for my terrified cat. A laconic animal inspector brought her out, waved aside her papers and said: “I don’t need no papers. Has she had a shot?” I nodded. “One cat passed,’ he wrote on a slip of paper. And Roya became an American citizen. Ah, liberated at last, she must have purred. When we arrived in New Orleans, the cargo loaders told us that she had broken out of her crate and roamed up and down in the luggage section all the way from Miami to New Orleans.
Roya never knew the joy of Mehitabel’s motherhood (“what if providence in her wisdom removed my kittens; they are living just now in an abandoned garbage can just behind a made-over stable in Greenwich village, and if it rains into the can before I can get back and resume them I am afraid the little dears might drown,” sang sardonic Mehitabel).
As soon as Roya arrived in Teche country, she was bustled off to the vet, underwent an operation, and was granted freedom to roam the Acadian woodlands. It was a joy to watch this liberated woman. We thought she sincerely believed she had ascended to cat heaven. She cavorted with butterflies, chased birds, sniffed flowers, and rolled in the long green grass daily. Many nights she took moonlight walks all night, and a stringy gray tom next door wailed a Romeo aria to her each morning. Some mornings when I let Roya out to pasture in the backyard after she spent an “off nights” indoors, she made a leap into the air, and I just know she was shrieking Mehitabel’s boast: “There’s a dance in the old dame yet.”
Two years after we returned to New Iberia, Roya disappeared when we went away for a week-end at Grand Isle, Louisiana. I just know she eloped with a Francoise Villon of the lower Teche region. In our family, no one can resist a good line of poetry…”
Friday, June 27, 2008
DOGOLOGY
No, I didn’t mistakenly spell “Doxology” – this is a brief commentary about dogs, inspired by a notice in “The Sewanee Messenger,” published here on The Mountain. The article touted a July 4th Mutt Show to be held on campus, and many show categories are advertised, the most interesting one being “owner/dog look alike” category, which is rivaled by “best dressed dog.” I’ve heard of the theory proposing that people who live together a long time begin to look alike but didn’t know this phenomenon extended to canines. What about whitening hair? And the need for glasses? I guess I’d have to attend the dog show to find out how dogs and their masters/mistresses begin to look alike. As for dressing dogs in human costume, to me that would border on cruelty – what better dress than the luxuriant hair of a freshly-washed black Lab?
My ancestors and immediate family were dogologists, and I grew up with canines, only to develop an allergy to animal dander in my forties. My daughter Stephanie in New Iberia, LA has eight cats that dangle from table tops, drape chairs and sofas and give me hospital-bound allergic reactions, and my daughter Elizabeth in CA owns a miniature Doberman named Darla that tries to catch birds in flight, but, alas, I’m denied the privilege of owning a pet of any kind, save an imaginary one, which I do have. Before you accuse me of “going off,” let me list the advantages of owning an imaginary dog – in my case, a black Labrador retriever that I’ve instructed to start chasing off the deer eating up my rock roses and Mexican heather that line the back walk. The advantages include a house devoid of stiff, long hair, doggy scent vaguely reminiscent of spoiled mushrooms, and water/food puddles on the kitchen floor…not to mention the inevitable fleas that defy even Petmed products. Then, there’s the avoidance of “have to walk no matter what” at least once in the morning, most of the time before the sun has risen in the pink sky…and what about the cruel leash with which one must temper the extrovert dog that wants to leap upon and lick other walkers? Think of how many times you have to bellow “sit, sit, sit,” infinitely before your canine learns to be obedient… and, contrary to his nature, introverted. And wouldn’t you rather avoid the barking that sometimes goes on all night because of twig snaps, blowing wind, car headlights, and night marauding animals like the moles that tunnel in our yard? And what if you should decide to go on vacation without this loyal animal so attuned to your every move it cannot bear the world without you, even if you’re only spending a few days at the Outer Banks? Last year, a good friend in San Antonio, Texas, who traveled to Italy on vacation, was forced to fly home mid-sojourn because his “sausage dog” named Clementine was actually dying from separation pangs.
Of course, all of the above is just “sour grapes” because I’d love to own a black Lab and can’t, so I’ll just have to survive with the imaginary creature named “Black Dog” (after Churchill’s title for days of depression – “black dog days"). If you’re a dogologist and would like a little history on my family’s love of dogs, there’s a long rhyming poem in GRANDMA’S GOOD WAR” entitled “In Defense of Doggerel,” and you might be interested in ordering the book from Border Press. The poem expands on the theme of my Great Uncle Ed’s favorite quote: “The more I see of man, the more I love my dog.”
And here’s another snippet about dogs from my unpublished manuscript RESURRECTION OF THE WORD:
THE BLACK DOG
came running around the fence,
leaping a coulee stitched with fern,
without collar, vagabond Lab
broke loose in happiness
in contradiction, danced
against Churchill’s label of depression:
“black dog days.”
Something in his insouciant sass
brought me a peak moment,
seeing in his black fur
a sheen of freedom
that sent my own happiness
bounding with him,
this intelligent, abashed creature,
loyal to man (who does no deeds for him),
rushing by and unleashing in me
the same wag of spirit.
My ancestors and immediate family were dogologists, and I grew up with canines, only to develop an allergy to animal dander in my forties. My daughter Stephanie in New Iberia, LA has eight cats that dangle from table tops, drape chairs and sofas and give me hospital-bound allergic reactions, and my daughter Elizabeth in CA owns a miniature Doberman named Darla that tries to catch birds in flight, but, alas, I’m denied the privilege of owning a pet of any kind, save an imaginary one, which I do have. Before you accuse me of “going off,” let me list the advantages of owning an imaginary dog – in my case, a black Labrador retriever that I’ve instructed to start chasing off the deer eating up my rock roses and Mexican heather that line the back walk. The advantages include a house devoid of stiff, long hair, doggy scent vaguely reminiscent of spoiled mushrooms, and water/food puddles on the kitchen floor…not to mention the inevitable fleas that defy even Petmed products. Then, there’s the avoidance of “have to walk no matter what” at least once in the morning, most of the time before the sun has risen in the pink sky…and what about the cruel leash with which one must temper the extrovert dog that wants to leap upon and lick other walkers? Think of how many times you have to bellow “sit, sit, sit,” infinitely before your canine learns to be obedient… and, contrary to his nature, introverted. And wouldn’t you rather avoid the barking that sometimes goes on all night because of twig snaps, blowing wind, car headlights, and night marauding animals like the moles that tunnel in our yard? And what if you should decide to go on vacation without this loyal animal so attuned to your every move it cannot bear the world without you, even if you’re only spending a few days at the Outer Banks? Last year, a good friend in San Antonio, Texas, who traveled to Italy on vacation, was forced to fly home mid-sojourn because his “sausage dog” named Clementine was actually dying from separation pangs.
Of course, all of the above is just “sour grapes” because I’d love to own a black Lab and can’t, so I’ll just have to survive with the imaginary creature named “Black Dog” (after Churchill’s title for days of depression – “black dog days"). If you’re a dogologist and would like a little history on my family’s love of dogs, there’s a long rhyming poem in GRANDMA’S GOOD WAR” entitled “In Defense of Doggerel,” and you might be interested in ordering the book from Border Press. The poem expands on the theme of my Great Uncle Ed’s favorite quote: “The more I see of man, the more I love my dog.”
And here’s another snippet about dogs from my unpublished manuscript RESURRECTION OF THE WORD:
THE BLACK DOG
came running around the fence,
leaping a coulee stitched with fern,
without collar, vagabond Lab
broke loose in happiness
in contradiction, danced
against Churchill’s label of depression:
“black dog days.”
Something in his insouciant sass
brought me a peak moment,
seeing in his black fur
a sheen of freedom
that sent my own happiness
bounding with him,
this intelligent, abashed creature,
loyal to man (who does no deeds for him),
rushing by and unleashing in me
the same wag of spirit.
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