EATING A BEST SELLER

I'm on a new diet. It's diet or nearly die. Nearly die means weeks and weeks of honest-to-goodness illness that is Not death-defying, but it feels like it. Part of my new diet is the ugly concoction at left. 

Can you guess what it is? I have it three times a week. Egg whites with either cheese or turkey sausage and  added Spirulina, the green ugly stuff.

Dr. Seuss must have been eating spirulina when he wrote the successful Green Eggs and Ham. Since this has been added to my diet I have discovered that the book is listed as No. 1 on the Book List of Wall St. Journal.  

The above illustrates how the egg begins in the skillet. When it is cooked it looks a bit better:

I must admit I closed my eyes eating this the first time, but as each breakfast arrived, I found myself adjusting to reading the newspaper and looking only occasionally to be sure my fork had a good helping attached.  I couldn't complete the Seuss meal with ham, since that is off my list of OK Foods. And ham has always been my favorite. 

Feeling the need to quote part of Dr. Seuss' famous poem, I have to resist due to restrictions. But for all of you who read it to your child or had it read to you, you know he made the dish sound delish!

Meeting Mr. Smith Part 2

He and I meet the following Saturday. The crowd has thinned a bit; perhaps due to waning days of summer. Mr. Charles Smith is his cheery self, waving to me  across the long expanse of the building. I hesitate to stop and buy a dozen eggs beforehand. I know our business is more important. Today I’ll see the drafts of Mr. Smith’s book he’s aptly named Gems of Love.

We greet each other with a hug this time. We are already friends. First I inquire if he has any new paintings on display and he points to a group to the left of him. Sure enough, examples totally different from the figures and objects I’d seen the week before. This group gives examples not unlike those of Jackson Pollock. The kind everyone thinks s/he can accomplish by throwing paint from a brush and watching it land somewhere on the canvas. A mishmash of colors. Yes, I definitely can identify with the blues and greens I see. Surprisingly, Mr. S shows me the difference between these and the ones a short distance from where we stand. Double paintings. Turn either side and voila! another painting. The one I select as my favorite shows beautiful blues and greens; the other side reds. Again these were in his self-crafted frames.

Sitting down again, he tells me about the latest having been shown at an exhibit a month before at the Architecture School located on Capitol Street in Jackson. He pushes a brochure into my hands. He then begins to explain about other public displays he’s had.

Finally, he settles down to show me his drafts. He pulls out one from a boxy bag sitting beside his chair. He opens a well-worn manila envelope and pulls a thick sheaf of papers. Good, not too much to edit. As I look over the pages, well typed and paginated, another envelope is handed over. And another. And another, until I’m managing six envelopes in my lap. As I open each one I realize two hold examples of poetry written as greeting cards, all folded in shapes he desires. The outside of each has some colorful drawing. I call them greeting cards, and surely the greetings are different, rather passionate, as though one person expresses his fondness for another, a deep longing for the other.   I’m struck by the thoughts, so intimate and meaningful.

I’m overwhelmed at what I’ve been given. “Mr. Smith, I can’t tell you when I can finish these. There is so much here.” I begin to feel I’ll let him down with my braggadocious air of the week before. “You know I’ll be teaching a class once a week for the fall . . .” The feeling of failure begins to overwhelm me.

“I know that. Take it all. I trust you. When you can, look at it and tell me what I need to do.”

With a smile, a load of manila envelopes clutched to my chest, I leave hoping against hope that I can accomplish what I said I would and make Mr. Charles Smith happy.

New Direction

I love to write. Most of my writing is for this blog or essays or short stories. I've even written a novel, 50,000 words! Whew! Took me three months to get to the end. Now it sits tucked away while I tend to the other writings in my flock. After all, I can't give preference to one and ignore the others.

Two weekends ago my sis and I attended a writing morning at University of South Alabam, Mobile. Reason 1: another viewpoint from authors; Reason 2: one author was Carolyn Haines, who writes the Bones series of mystery books. She is writer-in-residence at the college. Alas, she spoke about novel writing, a course which I'd had plenty of instruction. What actually peaked my interest was the poetry author, a Sue Brannon Walker (Poet Laureat of Alabama), an exhuberant lady who made writing poetry sooo easy. We did one exercise I've seen on many blogs: the "Where I'm from..." That was answering a series of questions about one's self and writing it in sentence form. She eliminated the sentences,used phrases and clauses. She reminded us how quickly we can write prose and drop lines and eliminate a lot of punctuation and voila! a poem is born. And sure enough it seems easy.

Sunday morning after returning I awoke with a poem in my head. Unfortunately, it wasn't anything we had been introduced to. A limrick. How that got caught in my brain I'll never know. Read on. . .

There once was a horse named Katrina
Who loved prancing in the arena,
But when a lady got on
with nothing but a thong
Katrina behaved like a hyena!

Isn't that disgraceful after an earlier morning of good poetry writing?
Time now to write a more graceful one. Next, writing a poem with only two words per line:

POWER OF SWEETS
I look
At you
And wonder
If I
Can afford
The pounds
I'll earn
From you
Chocolate, Vanilla
Strawberry, Nuts
Oh, gosh
Those bars
Are much
Too much
I know
It's hopeless
To feed
My tummy
I have
To leave
And find
My mommy.

Ok, I gotcha. Improvement. I will have to study Mrs. Walker's students' poetry. Let's see...what page do I want to start with?

'Grams of Love

Oftentimes we learn more about our parents when it is too late to ask questions. I recall when my mother was alive I quizzed her about her courtship with Daddy: How long did you and Daddy date? Why did you pick out each other? Did you meet his family, vice-versa? And in her 85 years of memory she gave me the answers. However, never understanding why she had such a short courtship I found the answer in a packet of telegrams sent to my mother by an ambitious, overeager, testosterone-driven, and most of all, poetic father.

In 1931 telephones were few, telegrams were many.Daddy was a telegrapher with the Postal Telegraph(later, Western Union) and sent his new girlfriend a telegram, many with the words that came out of a teletype machine on one long strip of paper 3/8” wide. Dad tore off the strips to fit the 8 ½” wide page, wet the pasty side by running the strip across a porcelain roller sitting in water and pressed the strips onto the paper.

At one time Mother worked across the street from Daddy’s office in a discount store. Deliveries of telegrams arrived frequently, and her boss was well-aware of a budding romance. Dad’s very first telegram, which Mother wrote in pencil at the bottom “the first wire I ever got from H. E.” began this courtship. If you notice the date, it is 1931 June 22. On July 12 they were married in the home of a Presbyterian minister. Dad worked fast and furious, didn't he? Mother was 18 years old; Dad 22. But for my dad, winning this pretty young lady was very important.

The first telegram, delivered by a messenger on a bike, reads, “This seems the only available means of communicating with you. Called you but you “were out”(as usual). Will call you tomorrow at seven bells sharp. Be there or there might be another shootin’ in town.” Fresh out of business school Mother had found a room at the local YWCA which housed young women on a month-to-month rental. The Y was located at one end of the main downtown street and Daddy’s office was at the other end. No other young woman ever received a telegram, making Mother a popular topic of conversation when one arrived.


Succeeding posts increased Daddy’s poetic side. Just before their planned wedding he wrote on July 3, 1931, “Your li’l voice sure sounded sweet over the phone this a.m. I couldn’t sleep last night for thinking of you. But I don’t regret the sleep as long as my thoughts are of the sweetest girl in all the world--you. All my love and here’s looking forward to the time when you will be all mine.”
Dad couldn’t voice his words as well as he wrote them, so he sent another telegram-- the words typed directly onto the paper--a special three-page love letter asking Mother to marry him. How could she have refused this love-sick young man?

Daddy's enjoyment for writing telegrams didn't cease when computers and fax machines replaced the old-fashioned teletype machines that spit out the ribbons of type. He switched to handwritten notes that were pinned on her pillow or on the fridge, and even on the living room floor so she'd see them when she arrived home from work. Notes when he didn't buy a gift; notes to remind her of his love; notes to wish her a happy trip or a welcome-home note. Many are lost, some were saved.

But nothing can compare with the telegrams. After her death I found a small number of them in her cedar chest. Glued together from moisture and heat, the messages remind my sister and me of the way our dad showed his creativity and love for his "sweet girl".

Happy Father's Day, Dad.

The Long Days of Summer

What do you do on a rainy night in Rio?
What do you say when the lady says, “Si, Si”
Where do you go when can’t go for a walk—
Do you stay home and talk, or do you sit and sigh
“Ay, Ay.”

This old song from either a Hope/Crosby movie or one of those extravagant musicals of the 1940’s runs through my mind. It’s Latin rhythm keeps me swaying. Here’s my poetic entry:

What do I do in Madison, when the temperature is high?
What can I say when I’m asked why not New York?
Looking outdoors I see the sun and dappled shade
and turn back to my book, and, yes, I sigh
“ Oh my,Oh my!”

That’s the record of my days at home, battling the urge to move around outdoors. No interest in improving my jewelry work, no custom orders, no deadlines. Reading six books a week (Don’t ask me names or authors) has become a nighttime labor of love. So for daytime business—no television for me—I’ve returned to my roots. On I’ve begun to enter into my family tree three years of methodical gathering of letters, public records, and correspondence, as well as notes from hundreds of phone calls scratched on bits and pieces of paper. A lot of updating from the last time I worked. This move came after emphasizing—in the harshest tone of voice-- to my kids not discard a single box of genealogy. Being unable to predict their interest in holding on to thousands of pictures gathered from over 100 sources and those notes no one can interpret, gave me impetus to go online.

Sitting before the computer during the morning, I turn my head occasionally, looking through the window to check the droopiness of the plants on the patio, making the decision to water or not, then gulping a mouth full of cold water before resuming work.

By 2:00 p.m. I take a siesta and dream of what I could be doing at our bit of heaven in the lower Catskills. I like to imagine that the temperature there is similar to Madison this summer. (We still haven’t discovered a battery-operated fan that moves the air satisfactorily for the cabin.) In this state of mind with the air conditioning keeping me cool, I don’t miss lying on a steaming mattress in a stifling cabin on a sun-drenched hillside waiting impatiently for the cool of the evening.

Be satisfied with what you’ve got, I remind myself. And that’s why I’m not pining for the hills and water and woods of New York.