In the Groove

I don't know much of anything to write about today.
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I signed up for Susan's Hallowe'en swap project, have received the name and address of the person my project will go to, and have selected a whole pile of fabrics to work with for the main gift. The whole pile won't be used, just the ones that fit my design.
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The picture has nothing to do with anything, except that it's one of the most attractive things in the house. It makes me want to write a poem. It makes me want to paint a picture. I may try to paint something like it, once I get into the groove. The standing Indian reminds me of Daddy, and the kneeling one of Henry Whitner.
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I wish I had a recording of that old Tommy or Jimmy Dorsey tune (In the Groove). Can probably find it online.

Grass shack, my eye! We want it all!

Awoke this morning to an Amazon sale of an old bound pamphlet that we bought at a Bham Library sale, 20 or 30 years ago, The Rulers of Hawaii. When I read last week that descendants of the Hawaiian royal family are reclaiming their titles and suing for their land (or payment for it), I immediately doubled the price of this book and tagged it with every relevant word I could think of. A publishing company in Honolulu bought it; maybe they're going to reissue it. It was published in the 1920s, so is probably out of copyright. I should have doubled the price several times. But I may have paid 50 cents for it, so $16 was a pretty good deal.

It's really interesting, illustrated with photographs way back into the 19th century, including photo of a painting of King Kamehameha I in his feather cloak. I used to have a color photo of that cloak that I clipped out of a magazine, that I'll include with the book if I can find it.



Later: This is probably the cloak I was thinking of. It was made for King K. IV, was restored in recent years and is in a Hawaii museum.

Painting the roses yellow...

Not just the roses, everything around here has a thick coat of pollen. And my sinuses feel like I've been breathing mud instead of air, not to mention the drip, drip, drip. And not to mention the temperature going up to 80 today and adding to the discomfort.

I'm reading a book called American Indian Mythology. Just finished Twisted Hair, a Cherokee story--I read it quickly today, because I got an order for it and hadn't read it yet. It's amazing how the different tribes had (or have) different myths, but they all seem to have a Grandmother Spider. Maybe it was the displacement of so many tribes by the palefaces that mixed them all up, plus the mixing in of Christianity. Twisted Hair was a wandering stranger whose long hair was twisted into ropes and bound with buckskin; he traveled the Southeast warning the people that the end of the world, i.e., the coming of the white man, was imminent. This book didn't offer any references, so it may just be something the author made up. It's OK with me, because I sold it for thirty-something dollars.

This afternoon, Mo and Wilder were under the deck howling like banshees at a pretty blue-gray short-haired cat, who finally walked calmly out to the back of the lot, sat down under a tree and refused to budge. My neighbor Rev. Mark was picking up dead limbs and twigs under my west-side trees, I don't know why. Anyway, we remarked on all the stray cats in this neighborhood, and he mentioned the orange cat that I called Conrack and Mark's wife called Cosmo, who disappeared I think it was two years ago. It's nice to know someone else who likes cats well enough to remember the name of a stray for two years after it moves on.

The story of the Rainbow Bridge comes to mind. How sweet it would be someday, to see Monty, the black mama cat, Carly, Chink, Bob, Bear Bryant, Socks, Mus, Misty, Griffin, Conrack, and little Darcy come running to meet me. Bob would lag behind, trying to pretend it wasn't a big deal to him. (I would probably be carrying Mo.)

Think about Doug, if Tony met him.