One of those days

There's one thing I must do today--take stuff back to the library. But it's so hard to get started. I think I'll try to form the habit of doing things that must be done, first thing every day. That habit ought to be valuable to me in the years ahead. Think where I might be today if I had practiced it all along. I shudder to think.

@Julian Fellowes: Please don't write any more British soap operas or add any more to D.A. I've got other things to do, probably.
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Maybe dangling a Sonics burger in front of my third eye would get me started.

Lord, I'm Old!

I'm one day older than Maggie Smith, but my neck is not as long. Nice to know she doesn't look like a young chick, either.

Dame Maggie plays Violet Crawley, my favorite character in "Downton Abbey."

Road Map

On Viewing My Hand Through a Jeweler's Loupe

Not my fortune, but a road map,
these twisted lines like broken trails,
like rutted roads and pavement cracks,
and super-highways, with detours
and bridges out where rivers roared--
these are my past ways etched in my hand;
and jagged lightning-streaks also,
dense clouds and many-pointed stars
that hid or lit my stumbling gait.
The road ahead's not shown, unless
that great rift 'round the mount of the moon
may or may not signify
the end of all roads. If it may,
God grant not tomorrow or today.

by Joanne Cage, March 6, 2012

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This is the poem I wrote at Joan and Beverly's Private Eye presentation on March 6. I read it tonight at the AC poetry meeting.

Easter Bonnets

Mama and Grandma have some shopping to do.

Good eats, and Dealing with the pollen and cat hair

Yesterday evening Sister Susan treated Pat, India and me to supper at her house. She served a wonderful chicken salad that she made from scratch, and lots of other good things.

This morning, after a practically sleepless (coughing/sneezing/ gasping/wheezing) night, I went to the CVS and conferred with the pharmacist for some allergy tablets, and they really work! So far. He told me three times to take only one a day. I wondered what would happen if I took two, but was too scared to ask.

When I got home, I turned on the TV and watched a film of Niecy Nash's 2011 wedding to Jay Tucker. That Niecy has got to be one of the sweetest people in this world. I know, she makes a lot of noise and threats and protests, but she is deep down sweet to the bone. She had her wedding dress all picked out, and then let her mama talk her into changing to the one her mama wanted, that didn't fit so well. In the same mood of being afraid her mama's feelings would be hurt, she let Mama sing at the reception. Margaret is at about at the same talent level as me, as a singer. It was a beautiful wedding, in spite of the wedding planner's running 12,000 bucks over budget before buying chairs and flowers. And in spite of a wind storm that tore up the (outdoor) reception area before the guests were seated, and a crew had to halfway put things back together. And in spite of Niecy's teen-aged daughter being sort of balky and cross.

Gosh, it feels good to breathe all the way down, for the first time in several days.

A Worried Man

"I almost wish you wouldn't bring that child here," says Daddy, when little Maybelle is out of hearing distance.

"Why are you in such a peckish mood?" Grandma protests. "May is our dear B.-O.'s grandchild, and she has a right to visit our old home."

"Well, I'm just worried about Miranda."

"You should have married a stout Irish or American girl."

"She fainted this morning before breakfast."

"Uh oh," says Grandma. "We know what that means."

"What am I going to do, Mother? I'm always afraid the next one will be twins, and the house isn't big enough to hold them."

"You'll have to convert the attic to a big nursery and children's rooms. You've put off that job for seven years, now, but it must be done."

"But where is the money to be found?" Daddy worries. "Hardly enough comes in now to pay the staff, and Miranda declares that if there's another baby, she will hire a nanny before it's born."

"Call in some favors from your friends," Grandma advises. "You threw money all over the place when B.-O. died. Every family who wanted a new carriage, or a loan to cover their holiday trip, would gather around to see if you had spent all your inheritance yet."

"Tom Bose is a pretty good carpenter," Daddy reckons, "and I guess you could say he owes me a couple of thousands from the year their barns burned, though I hate to remind him of that misfortune."

"If you would remind everyone who owes you money, with any successful return," says Grandma, "you could hire a nurse for the children and a housekeeper to run this place--which someone sorely needs to do."

"What do you mean by that remark?"

And so forth.

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Maybelle's surname is Buff-Orpington. A very old breed of barnyard fowl is called Orpington. Camilla calls Maybelle "Chicken," sometimes to her face.

Out of Africa

Daddy Doll has this twin brother, Mycroft Edward Dahl, known to the children as Uncle Ned. He was born half an hour before Daddy, so when Grandpa Dahl died, Ned inherited all the money there was, which was a whole lot. It was kept in trust for him, but all was okay as far as Grandma and Alexis were concerned, because Sir Barry B.-O. was waiting to marry Grandma and take them into his big house, and he had plenty of money, though not an excess.

When Ned came of age and got his rich inheritance, he took off for parts unknown and wound up in Africa.

Daddy Doll talks a lot of travel and adventure, but in practice he is a home body who prefers his books, dogs and pipes to any kind of movement. The "hunting dogs" are mostly for show, because Alexis doesn't even own a gun. He was horrified when Ned sent him the two baby giraffes from Africa--Daddy thought they came from the taxidermist, but they turned out to be wood carvings by a native artist. So he installed them in the study and hung a map of Africa above the old wall-mounted telephone, which is swiftly becoming an antique.

"Ver aspergit terram floribus. . ."

The flurry of activity around the Dolls' house is a sure sign that spring has come. Billy has brought in a tub full of flowers, and Beauty is waiting to arrange them after Lucinda gets through mopping the kitchen floor. But little Beau is taking his first steps, and nobody wants to disturb him.

There's a lot of redecorating going on, as well as spring cleaning. The girls' room has got new curtains, but the beds are still being stripped and measured for new mattresses.

Mama Doll is proud of the new chair seats and the little matching settee she had made to go by the front door. It can be shifted over to seat two more at the dining table when needed.

New curtains in the bedroom--and they're hard to see, but the bathroom window has green-and-blue wooden blinds. Mama herself is sporting a new spring outfit. Peter is still cuddled under his faux leopard blankie, but someone will take him out in the garden later in the morning, when he is washed and dressed.

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 If this uncertain age in which we dwell

Were really as dark as I hear sages tell,

And I convinced that they were really sages,

I should not curse myself with it to hell,

But leaving not the chair I long have sat in,

I should betake me back ten thousand pages

To the world's undebatably dark ages,

And getting up my medieval Latin, . . .

I'd say, "O master of the Palace school,

You were not Charles' nor anybody's fool:

Tell me, as pedagogue to pedagogue,

You did not know that since King Charles did rule,

You had no chance but to be minor, did you?

Your light was spent perhaps as in a fog,

That at once kept you burning low and hid you;. . .

"Yet, singing but Dione in the wood,

Or Ver aspergit terram floribus,

[You] slowly led old Latin verse to rhyme

And to forget the ancient lengths of time,

And so began the modern world for us."

From "The Lesson For Today," by Robert Lee Frost

Never Again

will I wait till the last day to get contest entries in the mail. I have struggled all day to get my NFSPS poems ready, and have managed to misprint an ink cartridge and half a package of paper, and probably broke my printer before I finished. Had to hand-print my entry card, and they may not accept it.

So now I have to make it to the P.O. before five o'clock, and can't leave the house without a shower. I'm about tired of hurrying, which messes everything up anyway.
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5:20 p.m. Well, I made it.

Said my grocery clerk, "Seegrits is got so haaa!" In a place that has had public schools for at least a hundred years, there is totally no excuse. Except that some of the schoolteachers talk the same way. Sometimes I wish I lived in Canada, but seegrits is probably haaa there, too.

Had to find out for myself

that the Fred Bonnie prize for best first novel has apparently been awarded to a lady in West Virginia. From the synopsis on her website, it sounds like a good book, somewhat like my Big Baby but coming down harder on racism, homophobia and other current issues in the news. River City Publishing is releasing her book in August 2012. The judge who selected the winner was a male author.

I think for the $40 entry fee, they could have afforded to notify the losers when the winner was chosen.

It's okay, I guess, from my point of view. I've been itching to rewrite Big Baby. I'm debating whether to ask River City if the competition is officially over, so I can submit the book somewhere else. The sites I found didn't actually say Ms. Manilla won the contest I entered in 2011.

http://www.mariemanilla.com/

5:45 p.m. I'm having a migraine aura. It looks like a spot on a peacock feather, magenta and silver, with all the edges sparkly.

Down To the N.-G.

Lately, I'm thinking I'd like to pare my "library" down to just a few books--not more than a hundred--that I can't do without. Looking back, it seems I have lived in these books. I think they've taught me how to think and what to look for. Or maybe most of them just reflect what I've thought all along. So, BOOKS TO KEEP:

The Bible, of course, but which one(s)?

And Shakespeare. If I kept all the Bibles and all the books by and about Shakespeare--

Oscar Williams's "A Little Treasury of American Poetry." This was the first book I bought when I went to work and earned my own money.

Of course, the Britannica, and the Great Books of the Western World, have become just so much lumber, because it's all online, or will be soon. I guess you could say that about most of the books in the world, but it isn't quite true. "To our daughter Sara Joanne Ramey, 1944" isn't on the internet. And so forth.

I'm tired already.

New Stuff and Old Bones

In a burst of ebullience, the handyman Billy Bones converted the Dolls' woodshed into a playhouse. This removed some of the clutter of toys from the nursery and girls' rooms.

In 1910, a census taker asked Billy for his full name and his age or birth date. Billy said he was born in Ireland, and that on Christmas Day in 1798, he was christened William Praise God Bare Bones Bonney.

Mama said, "Nonsense! Nobody gets christened on Christmas Day!"

Daddy said, "Oh, that's just Billy! I think he was born at Fairhope in 1876, just like me!"

The census taker wrote down "Wm. Bonnet, age 112."

Mama has had the dining room chairs reupholstered, but she saved the old needlepoint covers. They're signed MC, and Grandma said they were made by a young girl named Melissa.

Additional Tips For Disaster Preparedness

These ideas may come in handy AFTER you've completely filled all your rooms, garage and basement with  survival essentials such as dried beans, toilet paper, bottled water, matches, dog/cat food, camo clothing, guns, chain saws, cell phones, boat motors, and radio batteries. But you need to provide for them BEFORE the big one hits.

1. Marry a general practitioner/surgeon, or at least a paramedic, even if you have to support him/her.

2. Learn to sleep in the daytime, so you can stay up at night and watch for invaders.

3. Don't let your unprepared relatives know you're stockpiling. Better still, move to Boston or some place where you don't know anybody.

4. Collect recipes for dog, cat, squirrel, chipmunk, frog, lizard, crow, jaybird, etc. Raise mushrooms in the crawl space for side dishes.

5. Practice smoking indoors, so your neighbors won't see you smoking outside and know that you're holding tobacco or something.

6. Don't stress out by wondering what you'll do when you finally run out of everything. This is a real downer and takes the fun out of the whole disaster schtick.

Test Tube Babies: Mystery

I came across an on-line obituary for Gage Bush Englund, Birmingham native and famous ballerina and ballet mistress, who died in 2009. I remembered Gage Bush, who was a couple of years older than me. She had polio as a child and avoided being handicapped through ballet training, and I remember someone saying she was a "test tube baby," i.e., conceived by in vitro fertilization. Then I Googled "test tube baby," and found that a woman in England was the first one, born in 1978. If the story about Gage was just a rumor, at least the term was well-known before 1978, because it was probably before 1950 that I heard about it.

Maybe all scientific breakthroughs or "firsts" have to occur in either England or Russia. Certainly not in Birmingham, Alabama.

I have to get cracking, to get to a writing workshop at the Presbyterian church at ten a.m.

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1:45 p.m.
The workshop was conducted by Joan Dawson and Beverly Radford of UAB, and it was really interesting. The lunch was delicious. Lots of cool folks were there: Mable, Sherry, Grady Sue, Spurgeon M., DeWitt S., Mary Anne, Doris, Frank--and many that I didn't know before but do now. At the end of the meeting, they gave us these certificates.

"Camille Saint-Saens was racked with pains. . .

When people addressed him as 'Saint-Saines;'
He held the human race to blame/ Because it could not pronounce his name."

I sort of felt that way, too, for a large part of my life, when people addressed me as Rahmay, Rainey, Ramsey, Cade, Cagle, Case, Cates, Caine, Chee, Gage, or Page. I don't mind about the thousands--well, maybe dozens--of nicknames based on my first names. But the surnames I have borne (I use that word deliberately) have taken up many moments of my life spent in spellings, corrections and explanations. But now it's all right. Frankly, Scarlett, you can call me anything you like. But you don't have to call me Jackson.

Dickens, Daddy and Others

I'm reading Claire Tomalin's biography of Dickens, taking my time and trying to avoid eye strain. I would recommend this book to Jed, or anyone else wanting to read about Dickens, instead of my favorite, the voluminous biography by Peter Ackroyd. Tomalin's book seems so far to have all the facts and much of the art, without the creepy feeling you're left with after reading Ackroyd.

I have lost or misplaced two things and more completely wrecked my house looking for them. One is a china doll's head, male and miniature, broken off from the shoulder plate, that looked slightly like Charles Dickens. I want to use it for the new Daddy that I aim to make for the dollhouse. The other is a miniature jade Foo dog with a mahogany stand.

The load of vegetables that I bought the other day to grill, roast or stir-fry has provided me with four or five meals, and I'm almost tired of squash, mushrooms, et al. But not of onions. The onions and green peppers were the best of all. I mostly roasted them with salt, lemon pepper, black pepper, and a dash of Italian dressing.

The title of this blog post is after George Orwell's book Dickens, Dali and Others. I don't remember Orwell saying very much about Dickens. I mostly remember that in Kipling and other artists and authors, he thought he found traces of Naziism.

Engraving from a painting by artist Maclise of Dickens at about age 27.