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.

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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."

Coming Around the Mountain

Last night I had the most delightful thought, or vision, or daydream.

I don't think any of us knows exactly how long the formalities will take, or when we'll be turned loose to just enjoy being in heaven or Jerusalem or wherever we go first. But I was thinking of the folks gathered around waiting for Daddy to come in and take them to a fish fry or something in his brand new 1956 Pontiac. And when he comes in, he says, “Well, y'all can go to a fish fry if you want to. But I just heard that Joanne's coming, and I'm going to meet her!”

And they all start laughing and talking and piling into the car. As Daddy drives them down to the station at 20 miles per hour, Doug's probably singing in his perfected voice, “She'll be coming around the mountain when she comes!” And, “She'll be driving six white horses when she comes!” And maybe I will.

Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction

Baruch Spinoza (1632-77) was a descendant of Spanish Jews. He lived in the Netherlands, and his "philosophy" is about what one would expect of such a one--a "strange dark theism," to quote the author of this book. With the influence, long-lasting and deep, of Judaism and Islam, and his more recent lifestyle of Christianity, it's a wonder the poor fellow knew what to think when the Renaissance more or less freed European man's mind. I find his theses to be more political than philosophical, and maybe self-contradictory, and maybe not. I think I agree with one thing he said (quoting this author):

". . . there is no wrongdoing (peccatum) in a state of nature. Only when there is sovereignty (imperium) is there justice and wrongdoing, both of which are therefore artefacts of man's political condition."

This sort of corresponds to my feeling about Cain (grief). And, for that matter, Adam and Eve (lack of astonishment).

This book is only 118 pages long. It took me a long time to read it, because for me, reading philosophy is like trying to read an insurance policy. Through repeated repetition, they try so constantly to cover what they've already said, that the mind rebels.

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Well, I Never!
I usually sit with my legs crossed. I suppose that's what accounts for the big red spot I discovered on the back of each of my legs, just below the knee.  I guess it doesn't matter.

Fiddler Jones

The earth keeps some vibration going
There in your heart, and that is you;
And if the people find you can fiddle,
Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.
What do you see, a harvest of clover,
Or a meadow to walk through to the river?
The wind's in the corn; you rub your hands
For beeves hereafter ready for market;
Or else you hear the rustle of skirts
Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.
To Cooney Potter, a pillar of dust
Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;
They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy
Stepping it off to "Toor-a-Loor."
How could I till my forty acres,
Not to speak of getting more,
With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos
Stirred in my brain by crows and robins
And the creak of a windmill--only these?
And I never started to plow in my life
That someone did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres.
I ended up with a broken fiddle,
And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
And not a single regret.

--Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology

Willy-Nilly

Today I have to get out of the house, whether I want to or not. My nieces Cait and Kathryn are in town, and the family is getting together for barbecue.

My daddy may have been right, maybe I'm just naturally bone-lazy. But not really; once I get off the spot, I'm happier. When I get into the shower, I don't want to get out. When I meet people, I love them.

Anyway, I'm burning daylight and have to get busy.