WILLAMEENA MOONBEAM…

"I was the night sky."

I once had a friend from Yugoslavia who had been through the strife of WWII and who often talked about the poverty she endured during her childhood. “I never had beautiful children’s books like the ones your mother bought you,” she said. “We were glad to get good bread and soup and have a warm stone at our feet when we went to bed.” At the time, I felt dismayed when she talked about her impoverished childhood, and I appreciated even more the books that my mother bought for us at Claitor’s Bookstore in Baton Rouge, Louisiana back in the 40’s. A passage in the introduction to my book entitled Their Adventurous Will: Profiles of Memorable Louisiana Women refers to Mother’s love of books and the trips to Claitor’s: “Every month for years, Mother would take one of the three children in our family to Claitor’s Bookstore to choose two books for our nightly reading session. She was the first family member to open the books, touching the pictures with credulous delight. My mother began to fly in the heavens long before Mary Poppins opened her first umbrella to make her wonderful flights…” I was privileged to grow up with beautiful books, and my appreciation for children’s books probably equals my mother’s enthusiasm for them. I’m sorry that every child doesn’t have the opportunity to grow up with access to good books.

Yesterday, I received two copies of a children’s book entitled Willameena Moonbeam, written and illustrated by Ben Blanchard, a young friend of mine who has done paintings for two of my books and who illustrated a long poem that became a small book for my grandson Joel. When I opened Willameena Moonbeam, I thought immediately of the words that I penned about my mother touching books “with credulous delight.” That’s how I felt when I touched the illustrations in Ben’s book.

Ben illustrated Willameena Moonbeam using collage and watercolor techniques and printed, by hand, the text of his long poem. The theme of the poem concerns Willameena and her young friends wishing for and actually lengthening a day to one of constant sunlight, a day when the sun “grew weary …weary of waiting for moon…” Children playing in the fields longed for more sun, danced and pretended that the day would lengthen…The day did lengthen, but the youngsters became hungry, and one of them cried out, “Surely we’ll grow thinner/if we keep on playing/without any dinner.” Unfortunately, the parents of Willameena and her friends decided they couldn’t call their offspring indoors while it was still light, and the children became aware that they had achieved more than they had bargained for.

One of the beautifully-illustrated scenes in Willameena Moonbeam shows the children trying to capture darkness by getting under umbrellas, but even then, the sun doesn’t vanish, and they’re forced to solicit the help of their grandparents to bring on the night. According to “The Elders,” the solution involves the use of a patchwork quilt dress that Willameena must wear and dance in so that she becomes part of the night sky. “I was twirled by my music and from afar/my long dress made a canopy of quilted stars,” Willameena explains. “Like a thousand pearls…all strewn/were actual stars in procession with moon…” Willameena dances the day into night, the moon finally rises, and all is well in the skies above. Ben brings his poem to a close as Willameena bows her head and finally accepts the fact that “it’s time for bed.”

Ben Blanchard is originally from Lafayette, Louisiana and currently lives in Austin, Texas. His multimedia projects include works in music, film, and collage. Willameena Moonbeam is the first book he has written and illustrated. Ben graduated from the Raw Food Preparation and Organic Gardening School sponsored by the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Arizona and practiced as a raw foodist for a few years in Sedona, Arizona and Lafayette, Louisiana. One of his delicious raw food specialties that I’ve sampled is “Third Eyes Cream,” a dessert made with frozen bananas, raw chocolate, and Goji berries. Ben’s original drawings also appear in a book we published together entitled The Beast Beelzebufo. We share a mutual interest in the comic strip “Peanuts,” and have shared ideas in artistic sessions held at tables in Starbucks.

Willameena Moonbeam is an artistic achievement that will engage the interest of any child…as well as grown children like me and my fantasy-loving mother (deceased).

You can order Willameena Moonbeam from Ben Blanchard, 1200 Elm Street, #114, Austin, Texas 78703.

HIGHLANDER FOLK SCHOOL

Last week, we hosted dinner for Henry and Kathy Hamman, owners of Plateau Press here on the Mountain in honor of a visit from Dr. Mary Ann Wilson, professor of English, University of Louisiana at Lafayette. After dinner, we enjoyed a lively discussion about a school on the Cumberland Plateau that I had never heard mentioned during the five years I’ve spent at Sewanee. The Highlander Folk School, once located between Monteagle and Tracy City, Tennessee, not more then ten miles away, no longer functions but it has evolved into the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee.

Henry informed us that we could still see the old Highlander Folk School structure in Grundy County, so the next day we went on a field trip to search for one of our regional historic sites. We located the plaque commemorating the school but never found the old structure. However, some time in the near future the Hammans have promised to take us to the location of the school that was established to “provide training for rural and industrial leaders and for the conservation and enrichment of the indigenous cultural values of the mountains.”

The Highlander Folk School was an amazing venture established in 1932 by Myles Horton, an activist; Don West, an educator; and James A. Dombrowski, a Methodist minister. During the 1930’s and 1940’s, the school focused on labor education and the training of labor organizers, but the staff later developed a literacy program for Blacks who couldn’t vote because they were illiterate. This program at Highlander Folk School later transferred to the Southern Christian School because the State of Tennessee threatened to close the Highlander’s doors.

The school played an important role in the Civil Rights Movement and such notable leaders as Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and Septima Clark, visited the school and were involved in its trainings. During the 1950’s, southern newspapers attacked the Highlander Folk School, accusing its staff of causing racial strife. The State of Tennessee forced the school to close its doors in 1961 after moonshine mysteriously appeared on its property, and the staff was falsely accused of being a communist training center.

An interesting account about the attacks on the Highlander Folk School by white supremacists appeared in 2003 in a senior thesis by Laura Grantmyre. It detailed white supremacist responses to anti-racist activities. The thesis reveals how white supremacy is interwoven with systems of gender and is embedded in certain cultures. “Charges of communism, atheism, and interracial immorality were used by white political elite of the South in their attacks,” Grantmyre wrote.

The Highlander Folk School closed its doors and moved to New Market following the adverse reaction to its mission, and during the 1960’s and 1970’s, it focused on worker health and safety in the coalfields of Appalachia and helped initiate the Southern Appalachian Leadership Training Program.

Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the notables who visited the school in its infancy, became interested in the Highlander Folk School’s objectives related to economic justice and equality. We look forward to the search for the site of a school that addressed issues of national and international importance – once located approximately eight miles away in a small rural community near Sewanee, Tennessee. 

PET PEEVES

Painting by Paul Schexnayder' for cover
of Sophie's Sojourn in Persia

Last week, I published a satirical piece about the use of the common fork (and knife) that was a revision of one of my old newspaper columns entitled “Cherchez la femme.” I received such favorable responses to the blog that I’ve been inspired to revise and publish another of the columns in “A Words Worth.” When this publication appears, I hope I’m not accused of allowing my children, when they were young and foolish, to abuse animals. Any perceived bad treatment of their pets was purely accidental and isn’t something I sanctioned. I don’t want the SPCA on my doorstep!

When my daughters were in their pre-teens, we “went through” several pets in our household. Our cat, Roya, had the distinction of being the longest-lived, and she was four years old when she disappeared –probably with a Cajun alley cat.

However, our first household pet was a hamster. The haggard white rat ran up and down in a cage in a corner of my daughter’s bedroom and finally learned to unlock the gates of his prison. He would then roam freely throughout the house at night. The bedroom in this particular house boasted wallpaper with clusters of flowers embossed on it, and our pet hamster’s appetite for the flowers on the wallpaper was insatiable. Whose bedroom adjoined chewing territory? You guessed it – mama’s and papa’s room. One night the hamster made a foray into the bathroom and, somehow, became entangled in the drier. No, we didn’t turn on the drier without loading, and the next day my daughters found him in the works before we roasted a white rat. However, we think this nameless creature died of pneumonia. Elizabeth, my youngest, was four years old during his residency, and she decided to bathe him back to white rat status – in the toilet. Even after we dried him carefully in a towel and gave him extra portions of hamster food, the nameless creature died a few days later. The white rat was followed by a newly-married gerbil couple who, because of their prolonged honeymoon, became exhausted and, mercifully, crossed the “Great Divide” within a few weeks. Yes, they died dirty. Elizabeth had learned her lesson.

Along came a small black dog, again nameless, who ran up to our back door one day, then ran away from our back door the following day with a female companion, barking Mehitabel the alley cat’s theme song: “Toujours gais, buddy, toujours gais” all the way down the block.

In previous blogs, you’ve read about Pet #4, Roya, the Persian cat who traveled from Iran to the U.S. housed in a crudely-built crate in the cargo area of a jet. She believed she was the Farah Diba reincarnated and draped herself on tabletops with the air of an exotic queen. Roya thought that the oriental carpets we had transported from Iran were made primarily for cat snoozes. She gave us quite a shock after we left Iran because when she got to America, she ran around all night, perhaps because she wasn’t allowed outdoors in Iran. She shed all her former repressions and became a real lady of the night, finally disappearing into the darkness with a Tom that had howled at our window long enough to entice her away forever.

The last additions to our pet population during my daughters’ pre-teen years were two goldfish – again, no names. One afternoon I was lying on Elizabeth’s bed, nursing a headache, when I heard this slight nibble, nibble noise. I thought the hamster had resurrected. The nibbling persisted for perhaps a half hour before I gave up the headache and asked Elizabeth if she had mice in her room. “No,” she explained. “It’s my goldfish breathing.” She was right. I’ve since read that many fish produce noises with their air bladders or teeth. I didn’t examine these little swimmers for teeth evidence, but the way they carried on, I’d say they either possessed expanded air bladders or well-developed chompers. I’m sorry to report that those innocent creatures may have gone down the drain during one of Elizabeth’s “Mama, I’m changing the water” episodes. I’ve read that some goldfish live to be 50 years old. Others live to be 15 years old, while most goldfish that reside in a bowl indoors survive for five years. I should have known that they were destined for a short life span when I bought them for my enthusiastic pet lovers (?).

I really like dogs, cats, hamsters, birds, goldfish, even some insects; e.g., cicadas. And I have a pet theory that people who dislike little creatures have a mean streak. However, when we were raising and disposing of pets, I often thought that perhaps my offspring could have practiced caring for all creatures great and small on an animal as noiseless and aesthetic as a butterfly flying with abandonment – beyond our boundaries!