New Post, New Poem

Carnival Night

"Cross my palm with silver,"
The blind old gypsy said;
Her robe was silver satin,
And the turban she wore was red;
And golden rings swung from her ears,
And her eyes stared without sight,
When I went to have my fortune told
Near the end of carnival night.

I gave her all the coins I had,
Not caring what tale she spun;
For the future I dreamed, she would never guess,
And I'd hear of no other one;
For I dreamed of Robin only,
And Robin I would wed;
But "The bird you love will fly away
And never return," she said.

I felt a chill run up my spine,
And I fled the gypsy's tent,
Telling myself she spoke by chance,
That it couldn't be Robin she meant.
But scarcely a year and a day had passed,
When the golden bird took flight;
And I recalled what the gypsy said
Near the end of carnival night.

By JRC, 9/29/13

*

A lady just called me from Bellevue, Nebraska. She said that Aunt Nell (Cage) Reis was her grandmother, and she wanted information about Nell's generation of Cages, and information about the Cage "plantation" in Mississippi. I don't know anything about the plantation, but I snail-mailed her a list of all of DeWitt Barnett and Mary Hatfield Cage's children that I knew, or knew about.

"Success Is Counted Sweetest..."

After less than an hour this morning, taking the print cartridges out and putting them back again, I finally got the printer to work. It only took parts of three days to accomplish this awesome task.

Reluctantly, I accept responsibility for the difficulty. After all, I take at least fifteen minutes to make a sandwich and ten minutes for a cup of instant coffee. Which I think I'll do right now.

Family Legend and Mystery

Reed Ramey ca. 1890-1966

When I was a little girl, I asked my grandpa (Reed Ramey) what his mother's name was before she married. He said, "Her name was Eliza Miskelley. She was a Indian."

I was a "reader" since before I could remember, and that sounded odd to me. I said something like, "That sounds like an Irish name."

"No," Paw Paw said, "she wasn't Irish. She was a Indian."

When I was in school and the girls (Susan and Patsy) were little, Paw Paw went traveling with a neighbor family, and they went out west. My dad, Gordy Ramey, said that Paw Paw said he was going to see "the Old Man's grave," which Daddy said meant Paw Paw's grandpa. He went to Oklahoma, and brought back a jar full of painted desert sand, which the girls played with.

Geronimo 1829-1909

Both Geronimo and Quanah Parker are buried at Fort Sill Post in Oklahoma. Geronimo was Apache, Quanah was half-Comanche.

When my sister Pat (Ramey) was grown up, she asked Paw Paw's daughter Bobbie Lee who her Indian grandpa was. Bobbie said he was "that old mean Indian that everybody was afraid of," but she said she didn't remember his name. Pat named over several historical Indians, and when she said "Geronimo," Bobbie said that was the one.

Other voices added to the legends: Our cousin Betty Joyce said that her mother, Paw Paw's daughter Beatrice, always said that her grandmother was a Cherokee Indian. Gordy (my dad) said that it sounded like Cherokee, but it was really Chiricahua. Geronimo was born Bedonkohe Apache but later joined and led Chiricahua  Indians.

One of Daddy's cousins, a son of  Uncle Cobb (Paw Paw's brother), said, "We always heard that we were Apache."

A childhood friend of our mother, named Allene H., said that old Mrs. Ramey (Eliza), who was a midwife, just "looked like an old Indian squaw."

There is at least one family picture from the early 1900's showing an unidentified little boy with strings of beads around his neck; some of the beads had Indian designs.

The mystery is that the census records show Eliza Jane Miskelley as a daughter in the household of Lucien Miskelley in South Carolina. Lucien's ancestor was Irish.

The mystery is deepened by the genetic analysis of my son which he received last year, that indicated he was "100% European."

The mystery is further compounded by the fact that our maternal grandfather was part Cherokee or some other eastern American Indian.

So, we have a choice. We can go with the family stories, that my generation is at least one-eighth Apache Indian, with a dab of Cherokee on the other side. Or we can choose to think a slice of us is Irish, which nobody in our family ever suggested, and which was specifically denied by my grandpa Reed.

Personally, I like the Indian blood and hope it flows in me. My blood type, at least, is a positive indication.
*
Another mysterious little bit is that if you Google Eliza Jane Miskelley, you get a whole bunch of different people named Eliza or Jane or Eliza Jane, Miskelley, Miskelly, or Misskelly. So whether Great-Grandma was Lucien's daughter or not is questionable.

Grrrrrr!!!

Yesterday I replaced the black cartridge in my printer, and spent a couple of hours afterward trying to get the printer to work. I tried every trick I've ever thought of, taking the cartridges out and putting them back, pushing the cartridges back and forth, turning the printer off and on, unplugging it and starting over, over and over again. This morning I've spent an hour going through the same efforts, and it still says "clear cartridge jam" and "cartridge missing or not detected."

Yes, I removed the plastic covering the ink in the new cartridge. Yes, I followed the animated instructions of how to clear the cartridge jam, dozens of times.

What it is, I've been trying to print my manuscript, a few pages at a time, so that I can mail it to myself to date the copyright when I register it. Because that's what Leigh Anne at AlphaGraphics said to do, that's why. Also, so that if the $#!!%# computer goes up in smoke, I'll have a hard copy of the manuscript.

Getting the cartridges out and putting them back is so hard to do in the first place, I'm afraid I've damaged the whole mechanism, pushing it so hard.

Busy Month Ahead

October is shaping up to be full of opportunities for getting out of the house, in a good way. My classmate Betty C. just phoned and said those of us still topside will meet October 12th at the Fishmarket for lunch and talking. We haven't had a reunion in a couple of years, and I'm looking forward to seeing old buddies.

Then on Saturday, Oct. 26th, the State Poetry Society will meet in Montevallo. I find that I did enter several poems in the fall competition, so maybe I'll win something.

Meanwhile, the regular September spoiler is coming up the day after tomorrow. Have to go to The D----d Kirklin Clinic for the semi-annual checkup session. I'm already getting nervouser and nervouser.

Not Exactly Yummy

Well, I finally made the corn pudding yesterday. There's about enough of it to feed Cox's army, but it isn't very good. The recipe said cook it at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. I cooked it an hour and fifteen, and it's still pale and soggy. If I ever use this recipe again, I'll preheat the oven to at least 400.

Today I've fed Mo, paid the mowers, talked to the Cook's man, packed a book and fixed a manuscript to mail. Now if I can just clean myself up and go to the post office, I'll call it a pretty good day.

*

My Amazon record shows that I've sold more than 600 books over the years. At a generous average of $5 profit per book, I wonder if it was worth the trouble.

Today, for the first time in months, I picked Mo up and held him close, and the most amazing warmth and peace came over me. Yet it was mixed with the sadness of nostalgia, and a feeling almost like loneliness.

Emotion remembered in tranquility sometimes makes you cry.

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

The Name Of the Rose, by Eco, is one of the best novels I've ever read. I assumed that I would like Foucault's Pendulum, and one year I set about to read it. I read and read, and kept reading, sure that pretty soon I would come to some connected words that I fully understood. I did dimly recognize references to one esoteric topic in which I was not interested enough to explore further. If I remember correctly, it was about halfway through the book that I gave up and quit reading.

*

I sit here wondering what to do about all the stuff in my house. I no longer care about most of it. Aside from the books, almost none of it is dear to my heart. What have quilts ever done for me that an old wool blanket couldn't do? What's Limoges to me, or I to Limoges? After reading Stephen King and other horrorists, I find dolls disturbing, and there are sixty-something of them in my house.

Thoreau said no man is so poor that he must sit on a pumpkin. I say a nice plump pumpkin might be an improvement over some of my antiquated (not "antique") seating.

I guess a yard sale is the logical solution, if I can ever summon the stamina to proceed in that direction.

X-square times 7x plus 23 equals eleven thirds

Well, I guess I've figured out how to convert my manuscript from 8-1/2 by 11 inches to 5.5 x 8.5, and still keep the page numbers consecutive. I've worked all morning on the thing, and still have to do the acknowledgments. And think of something for the cover, front and back.

Jed came over Wednesday and stayed until Friday morning. I forget what we did Wednesday and Thursday, aside from delicious lunches and dinners, but all day Friday was occupied here by the plumber, fixing a few things and installing others.

Wednesday night we watched Julian Fellowes' "Gosford Park" movie. Thursday night we tried to watch the 1996 "Hamlet" with Kenneth Branagh and Kate Winslett, but it was just too hysterical to watch all the way through. It was four hours long, and if Branagh had talked slower, it would probably have stretched to six hours. We watched about two hours of it.

I ought to have spent the weekend doing manual labor around the house, and letting my brain recover, but the manuscript is sort of an obsession. Is it enough to acknowledge prior publications, or do I have to ask permission of some of them?

Ring Lardner was right. "Riting is a nag."
*
I made a meatloaf yesterday, and I'm going to make a corn pudding and a salad, for my late lunch or early dinner today. As soon as I feel like standing up.
***
Lewis Carroll's stanza actually goes like this:

Yet what are all such gaieties to me
  Whose thoughts are full of indices and surds?
x² + 7x + 53
        = 11 / 3.

I'm My Own Grandpa

Paw Paw (Reed Roe Ramey) tolerated animals most of the time, and at other times he came close to abusing them because they wanted to climb on him and lick his face and scratch his arms. There was something about him that made animals think he belonged to them. Maybe it was because he was Native American (or Irish, as the case may be). Maybe it was a scent. Whatever it was, I've got it.

I've got two geriatric animals in the house who only know one thing: That I won't put them out in the rain, and that I will feed them two or three times a day. And a white cat sitting on the porch who knows that I will feed him if he hangs around long enough.

There are so many things I should be doing (that's a line from my poem "Cleopatra"). But by the time I feed all the animals multiple times a day, and worry that the squirrels, chipmunks and birds might not be able to find water, the day is practically over. The quilt is still not hemmed or bound. The kitchen cabinets are still not scrubbed. The basement is still a mess. My bedroom is still dangerously cluttered. When you're 156 years old, going on 158, there are only so many things you can worry about in a day.

Maybe that's why Paw Paw spent so much summer time leaning against the mulberry tree and whittling, and so much winter time sitting in a rocking chair in front of the fireplace. He had a lot of animals to worry about, not to mention kids and things. Worrying takes a lot of time.

Whew!

I don't know how to pronounce that word, but it sure expresses the way I feel. I've put in four hours a day this week, creating a manuscript of my poems for publication. Just now finished it, and my vision is temporarily dimmed by eyestrain. The document consists of ninety-eight poems, and is 105 pages long including acknowledgments, etc. I'll probably publish it under my Rowan Wood Press imprint, and am thinking of AlphaGraphics in Birmingham for a printer.

Sleep really does "knit up the raveled sleeve of care." I just woke up after I-don't-know-how-many hours of sleeping, and I feel like a new woman. Funny, I still look like the old one.

Yesterday we had a great Labor Day gathering here: my two sisters and two of my nieces, and great-nephew Reed. And Gretchen. And me. Good food, good talk. I love my family.

After everyone left, I filled up the dishwasher and slept most of the time since then.

"I Hope I'll Know It When I Get There"

I dreamed I was waiting for the traffic light to change so I could cross 8th Street. Some kids ran across, so I started across but glanced up at the light and it hadn't changed. By that time I was out in the intersection, and as I stepped back on the curb, Paul B. next to me frowned at me. Then the light changed and we all crossed 8th Street.

There, Randall from UAB joined the crowd waiting to cross the Parkway, but Randall went across against the light. I had sense enough to watch and wait for the light to change, then I crossed the Parkway, to the corner where people were waiting to cross 8th Street.

When the light changed, I crossed 8th Street and woke up, as I stood on the corner waiting to cross the Parkway.

***

Yesterday I bought a whole bunch of groceries, as I've invited everybody here for hot dogs and stuff tomorrow (Labor Day). Today I got an email from Jed; he has a bad summer cold, so he probably won't be able to come over tomorrow. I'm pretty sure Susan and Andy are coming, but haven't heard from anybody else. I may be eating hot dogs for the next month or so. Good thing that's my favorite food.