SUMMER BLOOMS

Queen Anne's Lace in a parched field.

Last week, I attended a wonderful lecture by biologist, David Haskell (The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature), who urged us to study the life in our own backyard and in so doing gain a deeper awareness and appreciation for the natural world around us. Now, I feel a bit cramped to study life in the small area he observed for a year – a square meter plot (10.8 square feet)! I’m more of an “along-the-highway” observer, and the wildflowers growing on roadsides fascinate me.

During this June weather when those of us on the Cumberland Plateau suffer from the effects of a horrific heat wave and are forced to stay indoors too much, I make a few forays outdoors to tend my domestic plants, which gasp for water. I see leaf wilt daily and flowers struggling to survive, despite the fact that I give the plants a drink twice a day. I had finally discovered deer and rabbit proof plants when the unusual heat wave struck and began to destroy my small garden.

So I’m inclined to confine my nature studies to jaunts in an air-conditioned car, viewing plant life in fields and along the road while traveling from Sewanee to Monteagle or from Sewanee to Cowan and Winchester, Tennessee. The sight that lifts the heat for me is that of Queen Anne’s Lace (otherwise known as wild carrot) growing in white patches along roadsides.

The umbrella-like inflorescence resembling lace reminds me of delicate snowflakes and a cooler time. The leaves look like those of carrots and are said to also resemble some poisonous kin – fool’s parsley and poison hemlock.

Once I admire a plant, I look for information about any practical or medicinal properties it has, and I found that the root of Queen Anne’s Lace can be made into teas, which are used as diuretics and as solutions to get rid of bodily parasites. For overindulgent tipplers, the tea can also be used to treat hangovers, and wild edible chefs use the roots of the plant to flavor soups.

Naturally, the plant bears a queen’s name. The legend ascribed to its name is that Queen Anne, queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland during the 18^th century, was fond of doing lace handwork and challenged her ladies-in-waiting to a lace-making contest. However, while working with the lace, she pricked her finger, causing a drop of blood to fall into the snowy lace – thus, the purple floret in the center of the Queen Anne flower inspired the name. An English botanist, Geoffrey Grigson, refuted the legend and related that the name really derives from Saint Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary and patron saint of lace makers. Another story about the flower’s name is more credible – the white clusters simply reminded the British people of the Queen’s headdress.

By the way, the root of the flower is esculent – a new word for me that means edible. However, I prefer looking at the fields of white lace, rather than picking the plants to make soup!

An attempt at a haiku poem about Queen Anne’s Lace:

QUEEN ANNE’S LACE

This bold June sun melts.

Seeing snowflakes on long stems,

it senses winter’s breath!

Photograph by Victoria I. Sullivan

A Citizen of the Year

Johnnie Daniel, Washington Parish, Louisiana,
Citizen of the Year

Years ago, I wrote Their Adventurous Will: Profiles of Memorable Louisiana Women, a book that highlighted the contributions women have made to the culture and society of Louisiana, and a friend told me that I should do a companion piece about memorable Louisiana men. I haven’t followed up on that idea, but in the ensuing years since the remark was made, I've showcased some memorable men in my blogs. Last week, I learned that Johnnie Daniel, my second cousin, who lives in Franklinton, Louisiana, was named “West Washington Parish Citizen of the Year,” and I think that he’s a man who deserves kudos for achieving this honor.

Twenty-nine years ago, Johnnie, an outstanding athlete who excelled in his favorite sport, baseball, slid into first base head first and broke two vertebrae, an accident that left him paralyzed from the chest down. At a rehab center in Jackson, Mississippi, Johnnie was told that his parents, Sara and John L., would never be able to take him home and do the things that were needed for his health and stability. However, his parents wouldn’t accept that verdict. Despite their own health reverses at times, they’ve managed his health care with astonishing results and encouraged him to become a contributing citizen in his home town.

Johnnie has the Greenlaw penchant to write (our maternal ancestors), and for many years he has written articles ranging from human interest stories to reports of Town Council meetings for The Era Leader, his hometown newspaper. He also managed the former family-owned business, Johnnie’s Sport Shop, and pursued his early interest in baseball by sponsoring a youth league baseball team, a softball team, a boys’ all-star team and a girls’ all-star team. Johnnie became a regular at the baseball park where he cheered and supported the teams that he sponsored instead of lamenting about his own inability to play. From the photograph of Johnnie, readers can see that he’s an avid LSU Tiger fan and often attends ballgames in a specially-equipped van driven by his father. Once, when we were exchanging editorial comments about a story, Johnnie had to stop our email exchange in midstream to watch an LSU football game – the writing of his story was important, but his interest in athletics is always paramount.

The natural consequence of Johnnie’s work in the field of recreation was his interest in a 115-acre recreation complex that will provide a facility for young people and adults in Washington Parish, Louisiana. Johnnie became chairman of the Recreation District 1 board, and as Citizen of the Year, he was honored for helping to develop public awareness of a recreational complex that has the possibility of being a major economical boost to the town, as well as a major improvement to the athletic facilities for youth and adults, according to Dennie Fowler, Vice-Chairman of Recreation District l. The first phase of construction of the complex should begin at year’s end or in early 2013. Johnnie has written a series of articles lobbying for this development, has spoken in behalf of the facility, and also uses the Internet to promote the project, typing with a pencil strapped to his wrist.

During the years since Johnnie’s accident, I’ve visited him in the home of his parents and observed firsthand their tenacity as a family determined to move past an unfortunate sports accident. Johnnie’s brother Mike has also been a member of the supporting family team that encourages Johnnie’s vision to help young people – there’re no whiners here, just a tightly-knit unit of forward-looking people!

In addition to Johnnie’s civic activities, he builds websites and spends time with his niece Katelyn and nephew Jon Michael.

Regarding his Citizen of the Year honor, Johnnie says “I was shocked…and I’m very humbled to receive it.” I might add that Johnnie often says he’s blessed, and his wide smile underscores his words!

WRITER’S PILGRIMAGE

Each time we travel to Asheville, North Carolina, where the artistic life abounds, I feel as though I'm  on a writer’s pilgrimage because I inevitably end up visiting the homes of deceased writers. This week, I again stayed at a hotel next door to “The Old Kentucky Home,” the Asheville home in which American author Thomas Wolfe grew up. I toured it for the fourth time! During this tour, I learned more about the 1998 fire that destroyed much of the large yellow frame home that provided the characters and background for Wolfe’s Look Homeward Angel, and I purchased a video that showcased the six-year restoration, which cost $2.4 million dollars. Right now, the home needs a new coat of paint, and I put a small donation in a box reserved for the $35,000 needed to provide several coats of yellow paint.

Thomas Wolfe’s mother, Julia Wolfe, cashed in on the real estate boom of the early 1900’s in the “Land of the Sky,” as Asheville was then called and bought the sprawling yellow house, described as “Queen Anne architecture," in 1906. She left W.O. Wolfe, her husband, in his home on nearby Woodfin Street and took her youngest son, Tom, with her to the Old Kentucky Home on Spruce St. Thomas Wolfe disliked living in the home because Julia made it into a boarding house, eventually expanding it to include 18 sleeping rooms, and Wolfe had to move from room to room almost nightly to accommodate strangers who lodged at The Old Kentucky Home. Wolfe later described himself as a “vagabond since I was seven – with two roofs and no home.” He escaped the boarding house and Asheville to attend the University of North Carolina and under the tutelage of Edwin Greenlaw, an English professor at the university (actually my distant cousin), he began writing apace, later developing a passion for playwriting.

After attending Harvard, Wolfe taught a few years at New York University, then traveled to London where he wrote most of his bulky novel, Look Homeward Angel. After enraging the townspeople of Asheville with his thinly-disguised autobiographical novel that contained more than 200 local characters, he stayed away from Asheville for eight years until the furor died out, quipping that “You can’t go home again but there are other places and you can go there.”

On the same day as the visit to Wolfe’s boyhood home, we traveled south, arriving in Flat Rock, North Carolina to tour “Connemara,” the farm to which Carl Sandburg moved when he was 67. Carl Sandburg, poet, biographer, author of American folk tales, and collector of folk songs, completed more than one-third of his works while living at Connemara atop Glassy Mountain. He had moved there to find the seclusion necessary for writing, as well as to have ample pastureland for Mrs. Sandburg’s goat herd. At this writer’s retreat, Sandburg spent most of the night writing and slept late, but he ate dinner with his large family and recited from his writings at the dinner table, his youngest children restlessly enduring sonorous recitations for sometimes an hour.

Connemara was a large home filled with Sandburg’s library of 14,000 books and old periodicals (he subscribed to over fifty periodicals). The Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site has the distinction of being the first park to honor a poet. Connemara sits at the top of a 0.3 mile trail and climbs 100 feet – the height of a ten-story building – and I was winded when we finally reached the summit. Goats still inhabit the area and are relatives of Lilian Sandburg’s original herd. They are Toggenburgs, Saanens, and Nubians, and children who visit with their parents are allowed to make friends with them. At one time, Lilian Sandburg’s goats numbered over 200, and helpers milked 50-80 does twice a day. Mrs. Sandburg gained fame for her dairy goats and for her work improving the herd’s bloodlines and production of milk. Her goat milk and cheese were sold throughout North Carolina.

I was impressed with the video of an interview between Edward Murrow and Carl Sandburg and came away pondering Sandburg’s answer to the question: “What is the worst word in the English language?” Sandburg promptly replied: “Exclusive.” Sandburg’s answer reflects his life as a lecturer who deplored the exploitation of workers and child labor. He also received honors from the NAACP for coverage of the 1919 Chicago race riots and worked to achieve social justice, and garnered the Pulitzer Prize in History in 1940 and in Poetry in 1951.

The last night in Asheville ended on a real “hoop-la,” an event in a downtown Asheville park where hula hoopers, ages three to sixty, danced to T.O.U.C.H. Samadi, an electronic trance dance experience that is popular with those in a program called “Asheville Hoops.” Hoop dancing is touted as a way to exercise and relax emotionally, and the movement to electronic music supposedly transports the hula hoopers to a fourth level of consciousness. The young man in the foreground of Vickie Sullivan's video seemed to be a good example of one who had reached this level.