BUTTERWEEDS

 

Although butterweeds, or yellow tops, are reputed to show up in early spring, here in Louisiana during these last days of January, they’ve scheduled a brilliant yellow gold performance and have been showcasing their beauty for several weeks now.

 

Butterweeds are members of the aster family and strain to grow as tall as three feet. Although they’re show girls, they can be toxic if admirers are moved to pick and make a meal of them so it’s best that flower lovers just look at them growing on the flooded roadsides. Those who like to propagate flowers won’t find them at nurseries either, but serious flower growers can propagate them from seed, ripen, and sow immediately.

Butterweeds attract lots of pollinators, and one spring many years ago, my botanist friend Vickie Sullivan was inspired to write and publish a short poem about them in the Connecticut Fireside poetry journal. I can never view the sites of these flowers without thinking of the imagery Vickie created in this brief verse:

Butterweeds decorate ditches

in the springtime;

yellow dresses wave

in warm April sun

coyly hiding

sweet fragrant nectar,

anxious to give

some bee a tumble.

 

Photograph by Victoria Sullivan

 

 

THE MONSTER WITH RED WINGS

The alebrijes monster stares at me from its place on a chest of drawers beside my computer. It was given to me by friends during a visit to Oaxaca City, Mexico -- friends who said it was to serve as impetus for me to write every day or else…Or else the monster carving would consume my creativity. At the time I was gifted with this art piece, these two friends and I were walking through the zocalo in Oaxaca City where hundreds of wood carvings were on display.

The colorful wood carvings exemplify the folk art of Mexico now sought by contemporary art collectors. These alebrijes were created by artists in the Zapotec culture who descended from the pre-Columbian period of Mexico’s history. Their popularity burgeoned during the 1980s when collectors discovered the work of a wood carver, Manuel Jimenez, who lived in the village of Arrazola.

We loved the colorful, imaginative carvings we saw daily during our three-week visit to Oaxaca City. They were pieces of art created by over 200 families from the Oaxaca Valley. The artistic wood sculptures, carved from branches of copadillo trees, grow on hills near Oaxaca. Woodcarvers cut the branches with machetes, then create the details (wings, tails, mouths with fiery tongues) with pocketknives. We learned that entire families work on these pieces of folk art — children sand them while wives paint in the intricate details. The aspect of this art that particularly interested me was that of artists receiving their inspiration for the alebrijes creations through dreams and superstitions. The pieces also include bright colors found in fiesta costumes as well as in brilliant desert wildflowers of Mexico.

The color red dominates the wings of my alebrijes monster, and I submit to flight with poems created this past week in a work in progress entitled In the Margins. However, designs in a PDF of my newest book of poetry, Ridges, being published by Susan Entsminger of Pinyon Publishing in Montrose, Colorado, just arrived for a sneak preview. As I view Susan’s beautiful design work on Don Thornton’s paintings and my poetry, I feel sudden ascent without any assist from the alebrijes monster overlooking my desk. If you google Pinyon Publishing, examples of Susan’s art abound and will fascinate those who admire excellence in artistic work.

Photograph by Victoria I. Sullivan

A RAINY DAY RIDE

A rainy Louisiana day seems to be the ideal time to write about trips most of us can't take because we can't be exposed to people who may have the dreaded coronavirus. However, I pulled out a small stack of old Ford Times (a now-defunct publication) I'd ordered a few months ago and engaged in a pretend trip via "A Slow Train in Tennessee" that made a round trip to Harriman, Tennessee on the Tennessee Central Railway, circa 1956.


The trip was a full-day, round trip train ride that began on First Avenue in Nashville, Tennessee, cost the traveler $6, chugged through the Cumberland Plateau, slowly, ever so slowly, and stopped only for food since the train had no diner. The painting* that accompanied the Ford Times article reminded me of a train ride I once made from Ahwaz, Iran, in the southern desert province of Khuzestan to Tehran, Iran. I spent an entire night looking down at deep valleys and wondering if I'd come to a plunging end on the narrow track that snaked through the Elburz Mountains.


I enjoyed the Ford Times issue that included an article about the Tennessee Central Railway and a sudden stop a TC train made in Baxter, Tennessee back in the mid-1950s. As it chugged into the station at Baxter, an aged Model T pulled up to the station on three screeching tires, and an old-timer climbed out, explaining that he'd had a puncture of a tire that he'd "only used five years," and three tires would do for a while. He ran over to the train and handed a smoked ham to the conductor, who promptly handed the breathless old-timer a sack of plug tobacco in exchange. The train pulled out, resumed its slow speed, and chugged down the mountain on the Cumberland Plateau. I assume the old-timer made his three-tire journey home, probably grumbling about the puncture of a five year old tire but enjoying a good "chaw" along the way.


Although this article refers to the Tennessee Central, I thought about another slow ride I'd made from Atlanta, Georgia to Lynchburg, Virginia on a train that inspired the question, "Have you ever 'rid' the old Southern?" That ride included a group of young adults from Emory University in Atlanta who sang oldies like "Dinah won't you blow" ALL night to entertain my restless daughter who traveled with me.


A slow train ride during a gentle rain would be a prized experience for me right now, and I'm wondering if the old Southern is still operating? Probably not. The latter incident took place when Stephanie, my oldest daughter, was three years old. She's now sixty.


*Painting by Corydon Bell in Ford Times, April 1956