A little French ditty

Wandering around outside one day, Ned notices someone working in what might once have been a garden--and might someday be such again.

Walking closer, he can hear the man singing a little song with French words, the tune of which Ned dimly recognizes as "Sur le pont d'Avignon."

Glancing up toward Ned, the gardener sings the verse again, this time louder and very slowly, as if the words are important.

"Depechez-vous! Depechez-vous!

Sauvegardez! Sauvegardez!

Depechez-vous! Depechez-vous!

Sauvegardez Saint-Pierre!"

Amused, Ned calls back, "Save him yourself!"

Walking on, he wonders where Brother Alexis found these apparently French servants. Maybe they are some Granny Gray holdovers, and considering Alexis' usually strapped financial condition, maybe they really ought not to be here. He decides that, first chance he gets, he'll discuss the matter with Billy Bones.

A Visitor

On his first night at Graymont, after sitting up late giving Alexis a long account of his recent adventures, Ned has just entered his pleasant room. Beauty, Lucinda and Billy Bones have scurried around all afternoon and into the evening, hanging curtains, making the bed, arranging Ned's books in the bookcase and stowing his other baggage in the big old wardrobe.

Feeling almost too tired to start unpacking, he lights a candle and is about to sink into a chair, when the door to his room gives a soft squeak and opens a crack.

“Yes?” he says, turning toward the door.

An attractive young woman in a long white gown comes a little way into the room. Ned has not seen this person before. As she stands quietly looking at him, he realizes that his mouth is slightly open.

“May I help you?” he says, finally speaking in spite of his amazement.

“Mon nom est Corday,” says the apparition. “Je suis la gouvernante.”

“Oh! Oh, I see,” Ned says, not “seeing” at all, but understanding that she says she is the governess. “I b-b-believe the children's rooms are two flights up.”

“Oui. Deux vols jusqu'a.” She continues to stand in the doorway, gazing at him.

“Then shall we say g-good night? Bonsoir!” Ned says, a sense of panic creeping over him.

After pausing for a moment, she says, “Bonne nuit, Monsieur Edouard.” She backs out of the room and pulls the door closed after her.

Ordinarily, Ned is never flustered by an encounter with a beautiful woman. Puzzled, perhaps, but not to the point of a stammer and nervous perspiration. But this was a stranger in his brother's house, when he thought he had met all the staff. No one had told him there was a governess. And what the devil was she doing there, wandering around downstairs barefoot, and opening doors in the middle of the night?

He will certainly speak to Miranda about this.

No, cooling down, he thinks it might be unfair to the governess to mention the event. After all, the girl was probably just curious to see the new resident of Graymont.

What I mean is, . . .

"I'm liberal. You, you aristocrat,
won't know exactly what I mean by that.
I mean, so altruistically moral,
I never take my own side in a quarrel."

Frost was probably half-joking, but I think that's about the size of it. I seem to feel a bit of a sense of guilt that goes along with it: Half-suspecting that the conservatives are almost as correct on a few points as they think they are, and feeling guilty for disagreeing with them. Maybe guilt because I used to call myself conservative back when conservative (so I thought) meant supporting the U.S. Constitution.

"Home from the sea...."

"Well, Brother Ned, I was expecting to see you in a sailor suit, with an eye patch and one trouser leg pinned up. Instead you look like Percy Bysshe Shelley."

Alexis (Daddy Doll) had hair like Ned's, before he dyed it black.

"The newest thing in wooden legs, and I hardly even need a cane. Keep leaving the d---d things on trolley cars. Listen, Lexi, I've started writing a book about my travels. I wondered, now that you have Granny Gray's idyllic country estate, would you accommodate me with an attic hideaway and a crust of bread now and then? Just somewhere I can sit and think, and maybe write a word or two."

"We can do you a bit better than that," Daddy says. "We had the devil of a time tunneling through Granny's hoard of trash and treasures, but across the passageway from our kitchen, there's a room we've just finished raking out. I'll show it to you later, and until we find you a bed and a chair, you can sleep in my study. Here's Beauty with a snack and a drink for us. Welcome home, old salt!"

Migraines and Dead Heroes

Reed looking nice

My son Jack asked me if he could be Oliver Reed, and if not, why not? I gave him my permission to be Oliver Reed, or Robert Shaw, or any star he pleased. Recommended he check out Bobby Darin before he transmogrified.



Shaw looking sexy - He needed to sweep his hair to the left, to balance the slant of his nose.

 I slept ten hours last night, and now I've got the migraine messing with my vision. I wonder if this is how cataracts affect the vision--sometimes you can see things, and sometimes you can't, or they have holes in them.

Ramey and India brought me a pot of vegetable soup yesterday. And I made cornbread and a crock-pot full of beef stew. Gonna go heat up something.

Grrrr!!!

I knew that when I ever got my printer to work again, the solution would be something simple that made me feel about as stupid as a clod of dirt. Sure enough, I got so frustrated about a week ago, I turned the printer off. Today I turned it on again. Still wouldn't work. After going through troubleshooting and all that jazz again, it still wouldn't work. I decided to throw it through the window or stomp on it or something, so I unplugged it from the wall socket. Then I regained my composure and plugged it back in, and it works fine.

Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart

People with children are supposed to train at least one of them to do everything around the house, and to stay at home to help out in their parents' old age. Take care of their parents. Clean the cat's litter box. Tote groceries up the stairs from the basement. Et cetera, et cetera.

We three Ramey sisters were thought to be pretty smart. At least, we thought we were. Yet, all of us having had multiple children and step-children, only one of us has proved smart enough to keep a child at home to take care of her in her old age. And Ramey doesn't even have a basement.

*

On Seeing a Cloud With Three "Heads"

I seem to hear a heavenly host,
The Trio that I love the most:
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Though They have not been heard to sing,
They manufactured every thing
That ever went a-caroling--

Alto and bass, the high, the low,
Allegro and fortissimo;
We sing because They made us so.

Thanks, High and Heavenly Mystery,
One Deity shown forth in Three,
For sky, clouds, life, breath, song, and Thee!

By JRC 6/21/12

New Poem

The Lightness Of the Dark

Atop a mimosa tree that never bloomed
in all my tenure here, a dozen vines
around its slender trunk leafed out so thick,
they brought it crashing down. One of the vines,
the wild grape muscadine with heavy leaves,
likewise had never bloomed and never borne.

I almost see them, had they bloomed and borne,
a torch of blossoms lighting up the sky,
festooned with chandeliers of musky fruit.
It is my heart that sees them, not my eyes,
and wishes that the eyes could be so blessed.
The heart has vision that defeats the dark
of nothingness, and puts nonbeing to flight.
The dark is but a shadow of the light.

By JRC 6/20/12

Who Killed Vera Bates?

The case against O'Brien:

Motive: Her guilt over causing Cora's miscarriage makes her determined to protect Cora against further threats. Vera is a threat to the Grantham family, thus to "my lady." For some reason, O'Brien is fond and protective of Thomas. Bates is a threat to Thomas's ambitions. If Vera is murdered and Bates is hanged for it, that gets rid of both threats.

Clues: (1.) She tells Thomas twice that she won't stand by while Vera hurts "my lady."

(2.) We see her wandering around the village, so it wasn't impossible for her to get away from Downton if she wanted to go to London, or to get away from the family when they're in London.

(3.) She borrows baking soda from Mrs. Patmore. This is seemingly innocent, but in her twisted mind it might possibly have some connection to disguising the poison.

(4.) The family goes to London to visit Rosamond. Presumably, O'Brien goes along because she is Cora's maid. This is O'Brien's chance to find out about Vera, maybe to visit her and get acquainted, to find out about her household arrangements and any convenient means of getting rid of her. An opportunity to tell Vera stories about Bates and Anna.

(5.) In an online blurb, it is announced that some "difficult person" will die in Series 3. This could be a clue that O'Brien is convicted and hanged for Vera's murder.

Others:

John Bates: Bates would have had to do it in a fit of rage. He would have broken her neck or strangled her. Poison would never have occurred to him, unless Vera had it on the table. Bates didn't do it.

Richard Carlisle: I don't think there's any case against him, as far as murder is concerned. He had other means of retribution.

Vera's paramour: We don't know enough to speculate.

Vera herself: If she killed herself, it was probably accidental. Such as, on John's last visit, she brewed tea and put poison in his share, then somehow the cups got switched. But she seems too clever for this.

I vote for O'Brien.

Downstairs is really Upstairs

The rooms in Graymont's south wing are comfortable enough for a nice relaxed summer, while work goes forward on the family home. Daddy is off somewhere with the dogs, probably reclining under a tree. While he's out, Lucinda has arranged the study to suit herself. If Daddy doesn't hurry back, she'll probably set vases of wildflowers all over the room.

Billy Bones is helping Mrs. Gudenov arrange the washtubs at the Temple Spring, in the woods halfway between her home and Graymont, and they're having trouble stringing a clothesline between some columns--more about that later.
*
I started out with the living room and kitchen on the top shelf and was too lazy to shift them to the bottom. So the upstairs rooms ended up on the lower shelves. Click on the picture for a slightly better view.

Sister Susan is making a dollhouse quilt. I'm looking forward to seeing the individual blocks (rooms) as they emerge.
*
My blog is five years old this month.

The Magazine That Never Dies

On June 5, 2012, one of my favorite writers of fantasy and science fiction was translated to the next world, a little more than two months short of completing his ninety-second year on this planet. Ray Bradbury was a constant and a shining light in his literary genre, and his passing made me resolve to read my long-held Weird Tales anthology, published by Marvin Kaye in 1988.

Weird Tales was subtitled "The Magazine That Never Dies," probably because it failed, went out of business and was resurrected again so many times, from the 1920s to the (I think) 1980s. Mr. Kaye recalls that it was published under the aegis of Ms. Dorothy McIlraith from 1940 to 1954. This incarnation of the magazine was one of my earliest reading experiences. My grandmother, Sarah Dova Mullins Satterfield, subscribed to Weird Tales during my childhood years, probably until its 1954 demise. I read anything that anyone left lying around, anywhere I happened to be, so of course I consumed many of Granny's WT issues.

Last night, after sleeping four to six hours, I woke up. As I wandered around the house and fed Mo, my glance fell on the WT anthology that I had unshelved and left on top of my defunct printer. I picked it up and read Marvin Kaye's introduction and the first reprinted story in the collection, which was a very brief tale, almost a vignette, written by a very young Ray Bradbury.

Leafing through the book, I read titles of stories which, if I ever read them before, I have surely forgotten. Stories by the old guys and girls from Sir Thomas More to Edgar Allan Poe, from Charles Dickens to H.P. Lovecraft and Fritz Leiber ("der lieber Fritz!") and them. They made me realize, once again, how much has been written that I haven't read or don't remember, and that the recent hiatus in my reading is inexcusable.

So let the Weird Tales anthology, a two-inch-thick tome of pulpy pages with tiny print, restart my reading motor. Given a few more years, I may even finish reading The Great Books of the Western World.
*
Before I read any more fantasy-sf stories, here are some that so impressed me that I haven't forgotten them:

Xong of Xuxan, by Ray Russell
The Last of the Spode, by Evelyn Smith
The Quest For Saint Aquin, by Anthony Boucher
The Ugly Little Boy, by Isaac Asimov
Now Inhale, by Eric Frank Russell
The Mezzotint, by Montague Rhodes James
The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James
Four Ghosts in Hamlet, by Fritz Leiber
The Willows, by Algernon Blackwood
The Cask of Amontillado, by Edgar Allan Poe ("Montresor! Montresor!")
Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury (which contained a germ that seems to have infected Stephen King.)
The Portable Phonograph, by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
The Silly Season, by Robert A. Heinlein
Leg. forst., by Clifford D. Simak

Pretty Stuff and a Dictionary Word

Over the weekend, I went with Pat and Susan to the thrift store, and found a pair of Johnson Bros. salad plates to add to my blue-and-white dishes,

 and this great old ten-inch Taylor, Smith & Taylor vegetable bowl:

Susan had brought along her "Mama in the Mirror" quilt to show me. It is gorgeous, and truly an amazing work of art, fully illustrated today on her blog "Blackberry Creek" (link in my left column). This quilt won all kinds of prizes in her quilt guild show on Monday.

The big square doily in my photos was made by our Mama, and the pink candlesticks glimpsed in the top photo were given to me by my sister Susan.

Monday evening, we had a lollapalooza of a wind storm, constant lightning, electricity off and on for hours.

Wondering if I had spelled "lollapalooza" right, I looked in the dictionary. Not only did I spell it right, it's really a dictionary word. Amazing.

Commentary

The world is too much with us. Late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away-- a sordid boon!
This sea that bares its bosom to the moon,
These winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers--
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

By William Wordsworth

*

". . .The angels keep their ancient places--
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendored thing.

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry--and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry--clinging Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!"

From "In No Strange Land," by Francis Thompson

Little Two-Eyes

I dreamed I was leaving some kind of performance at "The Center," when the left side of my face felt numb and I couldn't open that eye. The numbness seemed to be creeping across my face, and the right eye would only open spasmodically. Panicked, I rushed out and left my blue coat and purse in the seat. In the lobby, I realized I had left my things, so I started back, just in time because a guy was locking the door. He let me in, and I grabbed what I thought was my blue coat and left the room again. Outside, I realized I had left my purse, and the blue thing I had was somebody's shirt.

All this time, my left eye was shut and I could only see occasionally with the right eye. I realized I was standing near a policewoman or guard, and I asked her if anyone else in the building had a key to the theater besides that man who had just left. She said no, but he would probably be back in a couple of hours to check the building before he went home.

I told her my eyes weren't working right and I had left my things in the theater. She said what was wrong with my eyes was a nervous spasm, and if I'd sit down and get calm, it would probably pass. So I sat down on a bench and tried to relax, and tried to hold my right eye open with my fingers. After a while I noticed sunlight coming in through a window, so I must have been there all night.

Then I woke up, and my face was buried in my pillow. When I turned over, my eyes opened OK.

Emails

"MCB:

I’ve entered my novel, Big Baby, in one competition. They were very complimentary, but did not choose it for publication.

This is the book of which you read the first chapter. It’s 80,000+ words long. I wondered if you might have time (in your spare time!) to read it and tell me what you think.

Don’t think for a moment that I will be offended or miffed in any way, if you decline. I’ll just send it somewhere else.

This book may not be your cup of tea at all. It’s about an Alabama mountain family in the early 1940’s, trying to get their heads above water after the Great Depression. Specifically, it’s about one of the daughters, her education, love life (such as it is), and care for her family. It touches racism rather lightly, sex even more lightly, and homophobia not at all, so it’s not up-to-the-minute on popular causes.

Speaking of homophobia, I’m now writing a book (probably novella) about a couple of gay boys in the 1950’s, before gay was cool.

Love, JR"

*

"Hello, Joanne!

I'll be glad to read it. Send away.

MCB"

*

So now I've got to go through the ms. and do something about the little boy's speech defect, which bothered MC when she read the first part.
**
Dinner, with the sisters at Susan's yesterday evening, was scrumptious. Now that I've got the fleas on the run, I aim to start inviting everyone to my house on a regular basis. Maybe we could watch "Downton Abbey" some more, or maybe "Balzac" or "Lonesome Dove."

Problems

The ceiling in the study is definitely coming down, its fall accelerated by the movers.

Billy and Beauty were left in part-time supervision of the house. Billy is interviewing Mrs. Gudenov, the Dolls' washerwoman, trying to persuade her to go out to Graymont once a week to do the laundry. She actually lives near the edge of the Hag Woods, but protests she would have to walk two miles to and from Graymont. Billy assures her that Mr. Doll will drive her both ways in his automobile, but then worries because he wasn't authorized to make this promise.
*
My poem "Southern Snow Dance" won honorable mention in the Ala. Writer's Conclave contest.