Endeavor To Persevere

Well, my favorite month draws to a close. I think I'll change my favorite month to May. Or October. Or February. This December for me was notable for a couple of fights with UAB Hospital. I'm a very bad patient. But now I'm okay, God willing.

Because of this hiatus in my holidays, we (family) decided to celebrate my 80th birthday on January 3 instead of Dec. 27. I was in favor of January 8th, but I can celebrate E.P.'s birthday by myself.

I've got a lot of cards and other communications to answer/acknowledge this week. Also bills to pay.

This morning on Netflix I watched the first episode in a history of the English kings, to the point where Alfred has established England as a nation.

During December I read Commander by Stephen Taylor, about Edward Pellew, Lord Exmouth, who was probably the model on which Patrick O'Brien built Jack Aubrey. Good book.

I quit smoking for three weeks, proving to myself that I can, and illustrating what a miserable process it is. Today I've fallen off the wagon, but hope to hop back upon it tomorrow. Endeavor to persevere.

Happy Holidays!

 

 

Santa already left me one stocking-stuffer:

Little cheater bottle, probably 8 oz.

Friday night I went to the ER with my bronchitis. They put me in the UAB hospital until Sunday and made it a lot better. They did a pretty thorough workup on my old bones, and said aside from minor problems, I seemed to be okay. I thought, if I'm in such good shape, why the ____ do I feel so lousy.  One of the best things to come out of the episode, was that they prescribed me some nicotine patches, and I haven't smoked any since Friday. No major craving, just a sort of lonesome feeling. Awkward. Don't know what to do with my hands.

One of the doctors remarked upon my scoliosis. No one else has seemed to notice it since my college PE instructor noticed it, and a doctor in Huntsville diagnosed it. My right-side bones are bigger than the left side, which makes me walk crooked. When I walk. But you don't have to call me Richard.

Jed came over Saturday and stayed until yesterday. If he hadn't, I might not have made it through. He brought me a stack of the best Nero Wolfe books, and I'm reading the very best one, The Black Mountain.

I'm OK. Are you OK?

Something I posted in December 2012: "The news says that Voyager I, which left earth in 1977, is now 11 billion miles from the sun. I'll bet that's where Elvis went, and when he gets back, he'll still be middle-aged, and the rest of us will be dust."

That Voyager is now many more miles away. I guess Elvis isn't coming back. Who can blame him?

I've got my semiannual bout of bronchitis. But it's better than having it in the summertime. Am on a Z-pack and feeling pretty good.

Today I'm going to clean and decorate the living room. I am, I am!

Art Work

. . . while watching Jeopardy:

A story that probaby shouldn't be told.

Yesterday evening, Ramey and I went toward a poetry group meeting in Sylacauga, Alabama.

*

Sometimes I wish I could put together a book of the movie and/or book reviews that I have posted on this blog. Then, at other times, I cringe with embarrassment to read over some of them. I guess that's what distinguishes a good writer from a bad one. But whichaway?

 

Die Fledermaus

Johann Strauss II was, in my opinion, the all-time best composer of light music. At least of all the music I've heard. Specifically, his operetta Die Fledermaus can make me fall flat on the floor in a "swound." Although I know the story, fortunately I've never heard the composition in English language. Words are irrelevant to such music.

The Nazis tried to keep his Jewish heritage a secret. I didn't even know he had one until I read it in Wikipedia.

Fisticuffs

Daddy and I used to listen to the "fights" on the radio, but after they started being televised, I couldn't take any more.

The Brown Bomber (Joe Louis), the Manassa Mauler (Jack Dempsey), Cinderella Man (Jimmy Braddock). Rocky Marciano, "Smokin' Joe" Frazier, Muhammad Ali. I remember them all, though I never heard a Jack Dempsey fight.

Max Baer (Sr.) said the only way he could have beaten Joe Louis was with a baseball bat. Max's brother Buddy also boxed, and played the giant in the film "Quo Vadis."

Max Schmeling was denounced by the Nazis after he lost the championship to an American. After WWII, a story was revealed in which he risked his life to save Jewish children from the Nazis.

A recent online "health" article stated that violent sports, especially football and boxing, are connected to Alzheimer's disease, dementia and early death. But some who survived the ring lived on and on. Jack Dempsey died age 87, and Max Schmeling lived to be 99.

Firpo knoxking Jack Dempsey out of the ring - Painting by George Bellows

*

I also remember smaller champs: Bobo Olson, Sugar Ray Robinson. And a little flyweight fellow whose name I forget.

Now I Roku.

Jed added one to my TV. I don't know what it is, but I know what it does.

Wreath on the door, Father C. in the foyer. This is probably the last go-around for the little tree. I've just been putting out items that I want to use to decorate, before I start cleaning and arranging stuff. But at least the wreath is hung.

A Happy Thanksgiving

Jed returned to Atlanta yesterday, after a delightful Thanksgiving holiday. Ramey and India invited us to their house for dinner on Thursday, and I must say, I've never enjoyed a meal more. I could have kept on eating dressing, gravy and cranberry sauce all day. Buffy, Reed and Philip's older daughter came, too. Then on Friday, we returned to Hawk Hill for leftovers. Yum. Jed and I had a delicious lunch at Logan's on Saturday. Or maybe that was Friday.

Some time ago, Ramey had given Jed a copy of Firmin by Sam Savage, and he brought it out Thursday morning. I finished reading it before dinnertime. Last week I read The Martian, which is our book club selection for this week's meeting. Two very good books.

*

The last day of November, 2014. Gad! Makes me feel even older than I am, and that's a lot.

"In Xanadu did Kublai Khan / A stately pleasure dome decree. . ."

 

I just spent about 15 minutes reading titles in my bookcases. Started out looking for The Travels of Marco Polo, and finally decided I must have sold it. I'm not particularly wishing for it, but it would be wonderful if there were enough time left to read them all again. Except the Britannica; I wouldn't tackle that again, although I've only read the eleven blue volumes.

Need more coffee.

Another Fifteen Minutes of Fame

Last night, Ramey and I attended a meeting sponsored by ASPS, at the Andrea Lucas Studios in Irondale, and each read a couple of poems to the group. Neither of us fell on her face.

 

From now on I'm going to carry my camera everywhere I go. Jerri H. shot these with her phone.

*

Prof. Alan Perliss of UAB attended the meeting, and I slyly reminded him that many years ago, he critiqued two poems of mine, saying that one wasn't worth anything, and the other had possibilities. I regret that I didn't tell him he was right about the second one; it has won several prizes and has been published at least twice.

*

The main reason I wanted my camera at the meeting was Andrea's dog. This isn't him, but very much like him.

I said he was a Great Pyrenese, but I could have been mistaken. Andrea's dog wasn't this furry, and his head was shaped more like a German Shepherd. Maybe he was a little mixed, but he was such a bee-yutiful dog! I almost cried. I had a mental flash of several ways to take him home with me--make him like me so much they'd have to give him to me, offer them a large purchase price, or just outright come back and steal him. It was hard to remember "Thou shalt not covet."

 

 

From "Millennial Critic"

". . . When Mom herself was teased among her peers
for speaking nineteen-seventies graffiti,
she said it was irony, and that she knew the difference
between outdated slang and literature.

"With time, she talked less and less, trashed the TV,
and swapped her iMac for a rocking chair;
she says she moons the world (in the new sense),
and reads dead poets in English, a dead language."

By JRC, June 25, 2000

White Birds

Today I saw a small flock of white birds flying (south), pretty low over Montevallo Road, maybe a couple of dozen of them. They didn't look big enough to be geese, and anyway, I didn't think wild geese were white. I thought they might be pigeons, but I've never seen a pure white pigeon, just those pretty brown-and-white ones on the Southside. It was a lovely sight.

Magic Cauldron, Boil and Bubble!

The cooler weather caused me to make the Good Soup again yesterday. I thought I brewed enough to freeze for the future, but there's just enough left for lunch today. Just threw a bunch of veggies in the pot and let them cook a while, this time with some little red potatoes. Then added a can of cream of chicken and a can of cream of celery, and some water and spices and stuff, et voila! Too bad I didn't have an eye of newt or 2 cuppa white wine. Today I think I'll stir in a dollop of Daisy. And make some buttered biscuits to spoon it over.

*

Last night I dreamed about Granny Satterfield looking confused while Mitch Miller sang to her.

*

It's now very late, but I was thinking about Uncle Sherman Isbell, and sat up to write my memories of him, which I'm copying below.

The most fascinating Isbell I ever knew was a son of Marion Isbell and a brother to Missouri Ella Isbell. He was older than Ella, he was very old when I was a little kid. Someone said he had joined the Confederate army when he was just a boy. We called him Uncle Sherman, and he was very tall and had a lot of wavy white hair. In the face he looked like pictures I've seen of Hugh Marion Isbell, only handsomer. I think he lived somewhere else, not in Shelby or Jefferson County, so he's probably not buried around here. I remember three incidents about Uncle Sherman.

One Christmas my aunts and uncles got together and bought Sherman a leather jacket. He stayed with my grandparents that Christmas, and he put on that leather jacket and zipped up the front of it. When bedtime came, he couldn't get the jacket unzipped. Everybody tried but failed, my grandpa even got the pliers and pulled on it, but it wouldn't come unzipped. Sherman slept that night with the jacket on. I don't know when or how they got the jacket off of him. I wasn't around at that time, just heard the old folks tell the story and laugh like crazy.

When I was shedding my baby teeth, one Christmas I was running around the house with a long string tied around a loose tooth and the string hanging out of my mouth. I wouldn't let anyone pull the tooth. I passed a little too close to Uncle Sherman, and he grabbed the string and jerked it, and my tooth flew across the room. (Lots of the relatives gathered at our house every Christmas when I was little.)

The best memory I have of Uncle Sherman is of him singing the old English song “Barbara Allen.” Only he called it Barb'ry Ellen. He and Granny Ella still used some of the old English expressions with a southern twist.

“. . . He turned his face unto the wall

While death was o'er him swellin'.
'Adieu, adieu, to my kind friends all—
Farewell to Barb'ry Ellen!'

“. . . 'Oh, father, father, dig my grave,
Go dig it deep and nah-row!
My true love died for me today—
I'll die for him tomorrow!'

“. . . They laid her in the old churchyard,
They laid her true love nigh her.
Upon his grave grew a red, red rose—
On hers there grew a bry-yer!”

It still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, when I remember him singing that song.

“Reed,” he used to say to my paw paw, “these younguns will grow up knowin' more than you and me have ever dreamed of.”

Anticipation

Mentally checking over some of the good things that could happen today:

The mail person could deliver the fuzzy stuffed toy dog that was promised when I made a donation to some charity. Last month.

I might receive the prize certificate and check that I won in the poetry contest last month, although that was nearly three weeks ago, and the email I sent requesting information has not been answered.

It's within the realm of possibility that I'll get a phone call saying The Kirklin Clinic has closed down,  and my appointment for next Wednesday is canceled.

Fun Facts

The book club meeting on Thursday was fantastic. We discussed Dale Short's fantasy-science fiction novel The Shining Shining Path, about a group of Tibetan monks and a cool American (Alabama) guy they chose to save the world. We decided that the size of our group is just about right.

 

 

 

*

Bama 20- LSU 13

The Crimson Tide doesn't have to prove itself to me every season. I've always known they're the best. I remember in 1993, I overheard some friends discussing Alabama's chances against Miami, and I blurted out, “Why, Alabama will cream Miami!” This didn't show any predictive power on my part. It just showed how I've always felt about Alabama.

*

I went to the kitchen for coffee, and there was a wasp on the inside of my east-facing window. I said, "Hey, Ms. Wasp. How did you get into my house? I would open the window and let you out, but you'll have to get on the bottom part. If I raised it up, it would trap you between the panes, and you'd be in worse shape than you are." The wasp then trotted up to the top of the window, under the valance, out of sight.

Anyone who lives by himself will appreciate the opportunity to talk to a wasp. Or anything else.

Trouble-shooting--Hit and Miss

Yesterday the service man came to convert my phone to Charter. After he left, I couldn't get on the internet, so I spent the rest of the day restarting, un- and re-plugging, etc. Then I bothered Jed by phone with it--when my phone would work--for a couple of hours last night. This morning I phoned Charter, which is what I should have done to start with, and now I'm back on the internet.

Also yesterday, I watched the President's press conference until I started crying. The poor man, and the poor country, have at least two more years of torture ahead, and nothing can be done about it.

And if Hillary Clinton should run in 2016, I suggest it should be the other way. If by some fluke she got elected, think what "they" would do to her.

Through the Wringer

I feel like I'd been run through one of these, several times. From about 2 o'clock until 6 this morning, I was really most sincerely sick, probably from eating too much yesterday. I'd tell you what I made in the crockpot, and about the other irresistible dishes, but I can't stand to think of food.

In spite of my lingering indisposition, I plan to call on my reserves of grit sometime today, and go vote.

*

That Pesky Doorbell!

I think I may have a nervous breakdown today. My doorbell rang around 4:00 a.m. I lay there wide awake until I got ahold of myself, then got up in the dark, turned on the porch light, made coffee, paced around the house for a while peeping out the windows, and now I'm sleepy.

I think what I'll do today is call the police dept. and ask if anyone else reports their doorbells ringing in the middle of the night. If they ask me if I'm crazy, I'll try to think of a good lie to tell. That is, if I don't have the nervous breakdown first.

Posted on the ASPS site:

Under winners of the Fall 2014 Contests, #3 "The Yellow Brick Road Award," 1st prize $50.00:

1st Place "The Wiz: Back in Kansas" by Joanne Ramey Cage of Leeds, Alabama

Christmas in October

Santa brought me a new TV!

Brick Road Poetry Book Contest

This morning I took time out from coffee and peanut butter crème cookies, and from reading this amazing book by Dale Short. I sent my manuscript, "Grandmother Goose: Grown-Up Nursery Rhymes," to a competition sponsored by Brick Road Poetry Press of Columbus, Georgia. Then I read the ms. again, and it made me laugh and cry, etc.

I don't know the words to thank my son J.D. Cage enough for his technical help in getting the book ready to submit.

Shakespeare's Dad

Thomas Seymour, 2nd Earl Arundel

When Henry VIII died in January 1547, he left a widow who still had her head. Her name was Katherine Parr.

Henry's favorite wife had been Jane Seymour, who had died after bearing the future King Edward VI.

Two of Jane's brothers, Edward and Thomas, survived Henry. Near his deathbed, Henry appointed Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset/Earl of Hertford , as Protector of the young prince.

Soon after Henry VIII died, his widow Katherine married Thomas Seymour, Duke of Something/second Earl Arundel, and Henry's young daughter Elizabeth was sent to live with them, at which time Elizabeth, born in September 1533, was 13 years old.

After a couple of years, Elizabeth was sent to live in the country (Hatfield), ostensibly sick, but according to rumor pregnant by Thomas.

The rumors circulating around London prompted the Protector to send letters repeatedly to Elizabeth questioning the matter. Finally, Elizabeth wrote back entreating him to let her come to London to show folks that she wasn't pregnant.

While Elizabeth was in the country, Thomas had tried to abduct her, was arrested and eventually beheaded.

Down to here is documented history. The rest is conjecture by Charlton Ogburn and other historians, and me.

The sum of the conjecture/assumptions is that at age 16 or 17, Elizabeth wasn't pregnant any more because the child had been born. She took him to a kinsman, the old Earl of Oxford at his castle Hedingham in Essex, who raised him as his own son. They named him Edward after his uncle Seymour and after Elizabeth's brother Edward, the young Prince.

At that time the Earl of Oxford's wife had in fact died. Sometime around 1548 to 1550, he in fact married a young widow, Margery Golding, sister of the scholar/author/translator Arthur Golding. Margery was reputed to be the mother of the child, who over the years was in fact educated by Arthur Golding and other tutors, and at Oxford and Cambridge. When he was 12 years old, his "father," the 16th Earl of Oxford, died, and young Edward was sent to London, where Elizabeth made him the ward of her secretary, William Cecil, whom she appointed Baron Burleigh. Through the sixteenth earl, Edward was hereditarily 17th Earl of Oxford and several other titles, as well as Lord Great Chamberlain of England. Over the remaining lifetime of Lord Burleigh, almost all of Edward's numerous estates, forests, castles and property were in fact transferred to, or sold by, Lord Burleigh. After Burleigh died, Elizabeth granted Edward 1,000 pounds a year to live on.

Many years later, Edward's second wife, Elizabeth Trentham, bought back his "ancestral" castle Hedingham in Essex before Edward died (fact).

What all of this has to do with "Shakespeare" has been researched and written about for more than a hundred years by the Ogburns, members of the American Bar Association, and many other scholars.

"You don't have to be a rabbi to be a Jew."

"The heads of strong old age are beautiful,
beyond all grace of youth..." - Robinson Jeffers

On December 9th, Koik will be 98 years old.

Orionid shower

I counted seven meteors, but it was just after midnight Monday. I guess that was Tuesday.

***

K-12

Children, study small things, the ordinary common things
but elusive, as stars peripherally visible
to eyes focused upon Orion's silver belt

regular but startling, as the receding tide at Portsmouth
and muddy water paddled by orange legs of the swans

plain but exquisite, as a rock wall looped with oolitic limestone
tan and gray, somewhere near Tuscaloosa

small and familiar, as brown spots on old hands or
white cataractic rings around old irises

breath-taking—green-gold of new leaves—
pink toes and fingers of a new-born—

Children, small things are where to look for God.

 

By JRC, 10/22/14 (A poem in progress)

 

Two Steps Forward

Yesterday I did a lot of useful stuff, so of course today I feel totally worthless. Except I woke up thinking of how to change that first novel I wrote and maybe make it worth reading. Now, if I can just find it.

Anyway, the bills are paid, the trash is collected, and I have plenty of dishwasher detergent.

A post on Facebook reminded me of Mentone, Alabama. Maybe Jed and I can go up there, either this weekend or sometime soon. The town has probably changed a lot since Miriam and I were there. It was the drive and the countryside, more than the town, that fascinated me. I remember remarking more than once, "Look at those rocks!"

*

Also, the ASPS fall awards luncheon at Montevallo is Saturday, Oct. 25. If I thought my wizard poem had won anything, I would think about going down there. Jodi or someone usually emails me if one of my poems has won a prize, and I haven't heard anything this time. Besides, going to Mentone is a pleasanter prospect than stumbling over the cobbles at the U. of M.

Lancelot, by Walker Percy

Some of the best fiction-writing I have ever read. And one of the sleaziest, most harrowing tales. I need to read something else. Not "Southern." Civilized. Maybe slow, English, and sort of boring.

*

Lunch, plus some cheesy mashed potatoes.

Criminal Minds

The new episode tonight was very good. But Spencer, J.J., and the Ghost Whisperer woman had sort of Halloween hairdos. Even Joe Mantegna's head looked slightly rumpled. Thomas Gibson and Shemar Moore were their usual neat selves.

The Celebrated Jumping Dog of Jefferson County

She wore herself out jumping for treats (a chopped-up hot dog). After a little more lunch, and a walk outside, she lay down for a nap.

 

*

 

Yesterday I got a bright idea of how to fix the TV. I unplugged it from the wall, waited a minute, then plugged it in. And the sound came on. They don't call me Miz Fixit for nothing.

"They stayed away in droves." - Dorothy Parker

Ramey and I went to the play. I wish I could say it was excellent. For amateurs, I guess it was good. They shouted to an almost empty house. But then, it was a matinee. The furniture onstage was beautiful. Victorian, complete with price tag and bar code on one piece. I've never seen a play I didn't like, and this one was no exception. But maybe for different reasons.

One of my favorite movies is "Beaches," Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey. I watched it on TV sometime over the weekend. That girl who played 12-year-old C.C. Bloom was so good! The ending makes it a tear-jerker.

I also recently watched Tom Stoppard's play, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," on TV.

*

Speaking of TV, the sound has gone out on my set. I can get pictures, but no sound. Can't watch Jeopardy. Well, I can watch it but can't hear it. It went out suddenly yesterday, and I thought for a minute I had lost my hearing, but the tinnitus corrected that impression.

*

4:28 p.m. - I hear the storm a-coming.

Book Club, etc.

We had a mighty good meeting at Ramey's on Thursday, discussing the book The Bartender's Tale by Ivan Doig. That is, we discussed it after the scrumptious meal in Ramey's beautiful dining room. During the luncheon, I told secrets, such as that I wrote love poems in high school, when I was in love at three or four different boys at once. Sometimes I wish someone would just tell me to shut up.

I think Ramey and I are going to see the stage play, And Then There Were None, at the Arts Center. Tomorrow afternoon.

Dreaming about my departed loved ones keeps me from grieving about them too much. One time I dreamed that I had dyed my hair brown, and I asked Mama what she thought of it. Her reply was typical: "It looks better than it did."

Visit By a Friend

Yesterday evening, Joan D. stopped by the house to pick up a book for the book club tomorrow. She was on her way to a church meeting. I was so happy to see her, and in about ten minutes we talked about at least that many topics. We can talk fast when we need to. She liked the dollhouse and the quilt wall-hanging.

This week I started a fall cleaning project, and of course it bogged down before it's well started. But I did sort of run out of steam Monday and didn't feel like going to the poetry reading. And I hope to have the house in better shape by Christmas. Everything takes so much longer to do than planned--I've said that before, but it continues to amaze me.

One night I dreamed, seemed like all night, of hunting my wallet. During the search I found a kitten that I wanted, and then I lost the kitten. I finally found the kitten, but the purse was still missing.

*

The new "Castle" season promises to be rather weak. I remember getting good and fed-up with JAG, because the romance never got anywhere. But by this fifth or sixth or seventh series, "Castle" seems to have degenerated into two old quasi-married people trying to have adventures. Maybe they'll get back to the dead bodies. Or maybe Castle will figure out space- or time-travel.

I think that's probably the best thing about "Firefly." It's just a single gem of a series, standing alone. And you can imagine the future to suit yourself, like Malcolm and Zoe getting together instead of him fooling around with that companion.

*

Saw a cloud that looked like a two-hump camel, but it broke up before I could get a photo.

Dromedary

Oh, the one-hump camel is Arabian,
and the two-hump camel is a Bactrian;
and I would bet my tooth enamel,
there isn't any three-hump camel.

By JRC, 2002

The Last Plantagenet King

Last night I watched PBS's Secrets of the Dead program about the exhumation of Richard III's skeleton. The curvature (scoliosis) of his spine is almost exactly duplicated in the body of a modern young Englishman named Dominic who participates in reenactments of the battle of Bosworth Field.

Shakespeare's and others' portrayal of Richard as a hunchbacked, murdering monster was almost certainly born of propaganda by the Tudors, 15th-century usurpers of the British throne. Contemporary accounts of Richard's reign show him as a good king and brave soldier. This PBS program is worth watching, if they show it again.

I had two questions: 1) How did they know it was Richard? and 2) Where exactly is Bosworth? Contemporary accounts said that he was buried at a certain friary, and that's where the bones were found. And I found Bosworth on a Google map.

Josephine Tey's historic novel, Daughter of Time, debunks the Richard-as-monster myth, and is a very good read.

*

The LAC poetry group meets tomorrow night, and I'll probably read my Wizard poem.

Soup du Jour

 

What it is, is dinner.

Favorite Sites/Sights

These are some things around my house that make me feel good.

Cats and Birds



The Dollhouse

The Dining Room



Outside

Kitchen Curtains



The Chinese screen

The Front Door

And the videos: "The Education of Little Tree;" "Searching for Bobby Fischer;" and "Charlotte's Web." Not to mention all the books, including my two poetry volumes and the other publications with samples of my writing.

I was just thinking how much alike we three sisters turned out to be. Eccentric, each in her own way. Our houses are full of things we made, wrote, painted, inherited, collected--we could almost be called hoarders. Even our joys and sorrows are similar.

I hope that we draw even closer.

OCD Is Me

And it takes up a lot of my time. When I make a list, it's always in alphabetical order, or the way the store is stocked. When I put a bookmark in a book, it's amazing how much time it takes to get all the edges lined up equally. When I heat water in the microwave, I have to stop it when the numbers reach 1, 10, 19, 28, 37, 46, etc.--each number is 1 or adds up to 1.

Wish I could transfer all that attention to my appearance, or to my housekeeping. Just saying. No reason. Short people have no reason.

Roosevelts, Kipling, War and Peace

I read Quartered Safe Out Here, by George MacDonald Fraser, a few days ago. And tonight PBS will show the final (I think) episode in the Roosevelt series. The style of the Fraser book is very reminiscent of Kipling; it's about the battles in Burma at the end of the second world war, in which Fraser was a 19-year-old private. Mainly, what fascinated me about it was the cast of characters with their various British accents and colloquialisms.

The Roosevelt series is fascinating, too. Makes me admire Eleanor even more than I already did.

This morning I wrote a poem for one of the ASPS contests, took it to the P.O. and mailed it:

The Wiz: Back in Kansas

A long and weary flight in the makeshift
balloon, through storm and doldrums, rain and snow,
brought me at last wrecked in a stubbly field,
wishing I'd never left the Emerald City.
The post of Wizard was ideal for me,
and much more fun than selling patent brews
or prestidigitating in side-shows.
I most regret leaving the child behind--
precocious angel that she proved to be,
she with her delightful little dog--
Toto, she called him, and he knew his name.
And their refrain of, “There's no place like home,”
sings in my heart each time I think of Oz.
I miss the soldier with the green mustache,
the different-colored horses, and the road
of yellow brick, that ended in a wood
some leagues past Munchkin-land. And, truth to tell,
sometimes I even miss the wicked witches--
although a lady here might be their triplet!
I'd been in Oz so long, it felt like home,
and now I roam this flat and windy land,
wondering if child and canine made it back.
At every farm I pass, I stop and ask
after a little girl who owns a dog
named Toto. In the meantime, I've a plan
to build a different kind of flying craft,
filled with the noble gas named helium;
and if I find her, I'll ask if she'd like
to take a ride back to the land of Oz.

A-7713

"For me, the Jew that I am, Jerusalem is above politics. It is mentioned more than six hundred times in Scripture — and not a single time in the Koran.... It belongs to the Jewish people and is much more than a city; it is what binds one Jew to another in a way that remains hard to explain. When a Jew visits Jerusalem for the first time, it is not the first time; it is a homecoming. The first song I heard was my mother's lullaby about and for Jerusalem. Its sadness and its joy are part of our collective memory." - Elie Wiesel (1928-)

When he was a young boy, Wiesel, his parents and three sisters, were imprisoned at Auschwitz where A-7713 was tattooed on his left arm. His mother and youngest sister were executed almost immediately. He and his father were later transferred to the concentration camp at Buchenwald, where he survived until the camp was liberated in 1945 by the U.S. Third Army. Our uncle Alfred Satterfield served in this liberation action.

"Men to the left! Women to the right!
Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight short, simple words. ... For a part of a second I glimpsed my mother and my sisters moving away to the right. Tzipora held Mother's hand. I saw them disappear into the distance; my mother was stroking my sister's fair hair ... and I did not know that in that place, at that moment, I was parting from my mother and Tzipora forever." - Night

How can the world forget? - JRC

Probably the Two Greatest Poets of the Twentieth Century

I often think of W.H. Auden

and Ezra Pound.

About Pound, 'Hemingway wrote of him in 1925: "He defends [his friends] when they are attacked, he gets them into magazines and out of jail. ... He introduces them to wealthy women. He gets publishers to take their books. He sits up all night with them when they claim to be dying ... he advances them hospital expenses and dissuades them from suicide."^'

He mentored, nurtured and influenced other writers until WWII when, like a lot of other folks, he went sort of around-the-bend crazy. I believe he wound up on the right side of the ticket, ruined nonetheless. But his poems are probably immortal.

Of Auden, what can anyone say? "Musee des Beaux Arts." "September 1, 1939." "Time Will Say Nothing But I Told You So." "Herman Melville."