Lunacy: Fact or Fiction? A Dog and His Boy and the Science Fair

The other day my friend, Charli, who used to live in Memphis but moved to the Seattle area over ten years ago, sent me an email with some great news about her thirteen-year-old son, Patrick. He placed first in his age group in the science fair and even made the local news. His project, "Lunacy: Fact or Fiction" was about whether or not the phases of the moon affect human behavior. Patrick obtained a breakdown of disciplinary actions in his school district and matched up the results with the phases of the moon.

It turns out he was right. Students got into more fights and mouthed off more during the full moon. How many more fights or bad-mouths? Patrick said the chance that the correlation was mere coincidence was 2 in 10,000. So, if you're having an unusually rough day with your kids, you might want to check to see if there's a full moon!

So, why is this blogworthy? Two reasons:

First, Patrick is my Godson. I was there with him when he was baptized in October of 1995. But we go back further than that. I was his mother’s labor and delivery coach, and Patrick’s was the first and only birth I have ever witnessed—I even cut the umbilical cord. We were bonded from the beginning. And then a couple of years later his mother remarried and they moved all the way across the country to Seattle. We miss him dearly, but Charli does a great job of keeping us in the loop on his progress. Which brings me to the second reason this story is blogworthy.



Patrick isn’t just any bright kid who won a science fair award. He’s a bright kid with multiple neurological disorders, including Asperger’s Syndrome, who has overcome many obstacles to achieve all that he has.
When he visited Memphis last summer, his service dog, Kudzu, came with him, and enlightened and entertained all of us at St. John, and later at Game Stop and out at lunch at Zinnie’s.

Congratulations to you, Patrick!

We love you and we’re so proud of you!

(oh, and please give Kudzu a hug for us!)

Happy 30th to Square Books & Granta: Oxford Conference for the Book

Yesterday I drove down to Oxford for the final afternoon of the Oxford Conference for the Book . I was concerned that I might miss part of it as I headed out of Memphis on I-240 and came upon a traffic jam just before hitting I-55 South. As I inched forward, along with dozens of other motorists merging into a single lane, I finally saw the cause—this wreck. One car had landed on top of another! Two fire trucks, two ambulances and several police cars were on the scene, and several people were sitting in the grass beside the underpass. No one seemed to be hurt, unless I had already missed another ambulance transferring folks to the hospital. Fortunately the traffic jam only lasted ten minutes, and I was safely back on my way to Oxford. (okay, my inner blog critic is saying this is boring and has nothing to do with this post, that it would be more appropriate for Twitter, and maybe so, but it's here now so if you're bored with it, hopefully you just skipped down to the good stuff.)

Although there was an amazing group of speakers and panelists scheduled for the conference, I was only able to make it for Saturday afternoon’s events:

2:00 p.m. “Reviewing Books in Cyberspace”: J. Peder Zane, moderator; John Freeman, Haven Kimmel, Lydia Millet

3:00 p.m. Readings and Remarks: Lyn Roberts, moderator; Jack Pendarvis, John Pritchard, Steve Yarbrough

4:00 p.m. “News, Novels, and the Sport of Books”: Richard Howorth, moderator; Leonard Downie, John Freeman, and Terry McDonell

6:00 p.m. Marathon Book Signing and Party Celebrating Granta & Square Books: 30 Years of American Literature at Off Square Books

The 2 p.m. panel included John Freeman, former president of the National Book Critics Circle and new American editor of the British literary journal, Granta. (John’s first book, The Tyranny of E-mail, will be released by Simon & Schuster on October 13.) It was great to meet John and talk with him about the kind of writing he’s looking to publish in future issues of Granta.

But I was sad to find out when I got there that Haven Kimmel had to cancel at the last minute (as did Lydia Millet) for personal reasons. I’m a huge fan of Kimmel, having read both of her memoirs (more than once) and all of her novels. And I was also looking forward to meeting Lydia Millet. Since Millet couldn’t come, I read her interview on Bookslut when I got home, much to John Freeman’s probable chagrin. I say that because during the 2 pm panel on “Reviewing Books in Cyberspace,” Freeman expressed concerns about random bloggers reviewing books vs. legitimate literary critics’ reviews. He even mentioned Bookslut. Both Freeman and Peder Zane, book review editor and books columnist for the News and Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, and editor of The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books, raised the question, “Who do we trust?” in this new age where anyone with a blog can review a book. While critics were once an elite group, in a time when there was an overarching critic dialogue going on, the new voices of critics are often boring, but many are taking a less elitist tact—speaking directly to readers.

(Ouch. I’m one of those random bloggers who likes to review books on my blog. I’ve even been asked to review a few books, by a small press in Tennessee, and I enjoy the occasional review and Q&A with authors, like this one with Haven Kimmel, and this one with John Floyd, whose works I want to promote. I know I only get about 200 hits a day, but hey, John, I try not to be boring.)

Panelist Lyn Roberts, manager of Square Books in Oxford, says that booksellers act as a filter, making personal recommendations based on the customer’s interests. She compared the relationship of booksellers and their customers to our democratic republic type government—we choose people in the know to represent us. That’s what knowledgeable booksellers can also do for readers. Her comments reminded me of an experience I had at another independent bookstore, Burke’s Books in Memphis, this past December. I went in to buy some books as Christmas gifts, but I was stumped on what to get for one of my sons. “Who are some of his favorite authors?” one of the store’s employees asked me. I mentioned a few and we discussed his tastes and interests, and she made a recommendation. That’s a helpful filter.

The 3 p.m. panel, “Readings and Remarks,” included readings by three authors with Mississippi connections. I especially enjoyed Steve Yarbrough’s reading, from Visible Spirits, which he wrote while serving as Grisham writer in residence in 1999-2000.

And I was also encouraged by John Pritchard (who lives in Memphis) who has wanted to write “a big beautiful book about the South” since he was 57. Now he’s 71 and published his first book at 68—I’m “only” 58, but sometimes I feel old as I continue working on the three or four books I’d like to publish. Here’s an interview Pritchard gave for Mississippi Public Broadcasting about his character, Junior Ray Loveblood, and his books, Junior Ray and Yazoo Blues (which isn't about music.)

Jack Pendavris was entertaining, as always.

The 4 p.m. panel was chaired by Square Books owner, Richard Howorth. Panelists were Leonard Downie, who retired as executive editor at the Washington Post last year and has written a novel, The Rules of the Game; Terry McDonell, editor of the Sports Illustrated Group (he has also written for one of my favorite TV shows, “China Beach”), and John Freeman (from the 2 p.m. panel.) Each gave upbeat, optimistic takes on the industry, and Downie closed out the day with a reading from his new novel.

It was fun to meet Downie and his lovely wife later at the 30th Birthday Party celebration for Square Books and Granta. Mrs. Downie works with the Head Start program in the DC area, where they live.

Richard and Lyn hosted the party...

... complete with cake, champagne, appetizers and an open bar.

It was fun to visit with old friends, like Jere Hoar, who graciously hosted my delightful birthday coffee at his home on March 8.and Neil White, whom I met a year ago when he helped organize the Creative Nonfiction Conference in Oxford. (Neil has been generous with his time and talent, aiding me in putting together the book proposal for my memoir-in-progress.) Neil’s first book, The Outcasts, will launch in June—watch for an advanced review and schedule of his signing on my blog the first of June! (Yes, John, another amateur book review will be featured here.)

And to meet new folks, like Duvall, (I don’t know if I spelled her name correctly) a darling young Ole Miss grad student at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, who was a Tri-Delt at Rhodes College…. We discovered both connections (Memphis and Tri-Delt) while she was assisting with my purchase at the cash register, and of course we had to commemorate the bond with another Kodak moment.

Back in Memphis, I opened the New York Times this morning and with much joy read that fellow Jackson author, Kathryn Stockett’s, novel The Help, is #16 on the NYT Book Review today! It was reviewed by the Times on February 18. And I had the pleasure of meeting Kathryn and hearing her read, with actress Octavia Spencer, at Lemuria Books in Jackson last month. Kudos, Kathryn!

While downloading my photos for this post, I couldn’t help but share this one, unrelated to the book conference, but just a parting shot—it’s my mother bird who is nesting three feet from the front door of our house.

She built her nest on top of this column last week. I can’t wait to hear her babies chirping as I gently slip out the door to get the mail and the newspapers each day. (We use our back door to access our cars.) Sometimes she flies to the safety of the nearby tulep tree when we come out the door. But sometimes she just watches us and sits still, guarding her eggs. New life. Hope springs eternal, for mother birds in spring, and for this budding author and lover of beautiful writing. I’ve got a couple of exciting projects in the works, so stay tuned. And I have another essay being published online this week, so watch for the link soon. Oh, and if you happen to be a peacock lover, like me, check this out.

Borrowing Tongues: The Perils of Writing Regional Dialect

Recently a group of eight writers from one of my writing critique groups did a writing exercise together. I call it “progressive flash fiction.” I started the story with a short paragraph, and then each writer added a paragraph or two and it continued for 2-3 rounds through all eight writers. (I say 2-3 rounds because a couple of people were too busy to contribute all three times, so we skipped them.) We just kept adding to the email thread and hitting “reply all” so we could all follow the story line as it developed. It was lots of fun, but at the end, when I asked how everyone would feel about me publishing it on my blog, several people were hesitant. Turns out they had concerns that some of the dialect might be offensive to our black readers and friends. Of course none of us intended that, and I certainly respect my fellow writers’ opinions, so I didn’t publish the story. But I’ve been thinking about it a lot this week.

The story was set, by the second writer in the first round, in New Orleans. So, several of the writers used dialect we thought to be appropriate to the region. But it was “flash fiction,” so we didn’t spend a lot of time on it, and the finished product, which was indeed a rough first draft, could certainly use lots of editing. And the dialect could be brought down a notch. But we were writing from our gut instincts as Southerners who have grown up and lived in Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Tennessee. And we certainly meant no disrespect.

So, I decided to take a look at how several Southern writers have handled dialect in their work, starting with the most contemporary example I could think of.
Fellow Jackson, Mississippi, native, Kathryn Stockett, and African American actress, Octavia Spencer, did a dramatic reading from Stockett’s new novel, The Help, at Lemuria Bookstore in Jackson recently. I brought my signed copy of the book home and devoured it immediately, savoring her colorful descriptions of time, place and people during the turbulent racial unrest of the 1960s South.

I went back through Stockett’s book to see how she handled the dialect, between the white women and their black maids, and between the black maids themselves. Here’s an example of a conversation between Aibileen, one of the maids, and a black man doing work on her employee’s property. The chapter is written in Aibileen’s voice, so even the narrative is written in dialect:

… they’s a knock at the back door. I open it to see one a the workmen standing there. He real old. Got coveralls on over a white collar shirt.

"Hidee, ma’am. Trouble you for some water?" he ask….

"Sho nuff,’ I say…. ‘How ya’ll coming along?" I ask.

"It’s work,” he say. Still ain’t no water to it. Reckon we run a pipe out yonder form the road."

"Other fella need a drink?" I ask.

"Be mighty nice." ….

"Beg a pardon," he say, "but where…" He stand there a minute, look down at his feet.
"Where might I go to make water?"

This is just a short sample, but there’s dialect all through the book, and I can’t help but believe that successful black actress, Octavia Spencer, who has over 100 television and movie credits to her name, must not have been offended by it, since she has chosen to join Stockett on her book tour and read the parts of the “colored help” while Stockett reads the white women’s parts.

A much older example is Their Eyes Were Watching God, the 1937 novel and the best-known work by African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston.

Here’s a sample, from the article, “Use of the Southern Black Vernacular in Their Eyes Were Watching God” :

"The monstropolous beast had left his bed. The two hundred miles an hour wind had loosed his chains. He seized hold of his dikes and ran forward until he met the quarters; uprooted them like grass and rushed on after his supposed-to-be conquerors, rolling the dikes, rolling the houses, rolling the people in the houses along with other timbers. The sea was walking the earth with a heavy heel.

De’ lake is comin’!’ Tea Cake gasped."

This excerpt from Zora Neale Hurston’s book, Their Eyes Were watching God, is an example of her amazing writing. She makes us feel as if we are actually in her book, through her use of the Southern Black vernacular and admirable description. Her characters are realistic and she places special, well thought out sentences to keep us interested. Zora Neale Hurston’s art enables her to write this engaging story about a Southern black woman’s life. Mrs. Hurston uses Southern Black dialect through out the book. This is appropriate because all of the dialog is between Blacks who grew up in the deep South. Some authors that write in a dialect totally confuse their readers. However, Mrs. Hurston’s writing does not confuse us at all. One particular example of this is on page 102. Tea Cake starts off saying, "‘Hello, Mis’ Janie, Ah hope Ah woke you up.’ ‘Yo sho did, Tea Cake. Come in and rest yo’ hat. Whut you doin’ out so soon dis mornin’?’" Janie replied. This dialog is easily to understand. The reader really gets the feeling of the speech because reading it is just like listening to it.

But Hurston was criticized for her use of dialect, and she was writing about her own people. The following comments, from an analysis in an article in Wikipedia address the issue of whether or not writing in this dialect is disrespectful or condescending to a race or group of people:

The book, written in black southern vernacular, has attracted criticism also by those[who?] who claim it portrays African Americans as ignorant (though Hurston herself is African American). Similar criticisms have been leveled at Twain's Huckleberry Finn. But while Twain transforms the minstrel into a three-dimensional character, viewed through Huck's revelations, Hurston uses black southern dialect to show that complex social relationships and common feats of metaphoric language are possible in something considered "substandard" to English.

The phonetically-written speech of the African Americans in the novel not only gives context but also helps round out the aesthetic of the novel. While Hurston has been criticized for being condescending to her own people, a more critical analysis of the novel and the author reveals an earnest attempt at authenticity. Rather than appearing patronizing, the frequent dialogue is indeed the most oft-quoted and engrossing-- often, as well, the most telling and philosophical.

To get a bit more technical about the dialect itself, I went to Dr. Goodword’s “Glossary of Quaint Southernisms.” In the introduction Dr. Goodword says:

We all speak with the accent of the region we are raised in during the critical language learning period from 2 to 6 years of age. Your accent has nothing at all to do with intelligence or knowledge of the rules of grammar. It is simply a regional dialect and dialects are equally grammatical; they are simply slight variations in the grammar of a given language that characterize the various regions where that language is spoken.
(To read his glossary, click on this link.)

Lastly, here’s a lengthy excerpt from “Linguistics 201: The Dialects of American English.” that addresses Black English, pidgin, creole, Cajun French, and Gulluh: (It's a long excerpt, so if this is too much information for you, just scroll down to my closing paragraph.)

Black English developed in the Southern states when speakers of dozens of West African languages were abruptly forced to abandon their native tongues and learn English. Slaves from different tribes couldn't communicate with one another--in fact, masters deliberately tried to separate slaves who could speak the same language. Since the Africans had to communicate with one another, as well as with the whites, a kind of compromise language evolved on the basis of English and a mixture of the original West African languages. Such a makeshift, compromise language, used as a second language by adults, is known as a pidgin. When a pidgin becomes the native language of the next generation, it becomes a creole--a full-fledged language. The African-English creole in the American colonies evolved into today's Black English.
Black English was most influenced by the speech of the southern whites.

Features carried over from early Southern English into Black English:
--loss of final consonants, especially sonorants: po(or), sto(re) like aristocratic southern English.
-- use of double negatives, ain't, as in early English.
--loss of ng: somethin', nothin', etc.

Black English, in turn, gradually influenced the speech of southern whites--especially the children of the aristocratic slave owners. Given the social prejudices of the Old South, this seems paradoxical. However, remember that throughout all the slave owning areas, black nannies helped raise white children, and the children of blacks and whites played freely together before the Civil War. Since language features acquired in early childhood tend to be kept throughout life, Southern English naturally became mixed with Black English.

Let's look more closely at how Black English developed on the basis of West African Dialects. Whenever a group of adults is forced to learn a second language, the language learned retains many features of the original native language. Thus, the English of black slaves retained many features that were African and not present in English at all. The children of the slaves learned this form of English as their native language. Thus, on the basis of language mixing, a new dialect, called a creole, was born. This process--at least in some small degree-- characterizes the English of all Americans whose parents spoke English as a second language. But in the case of African Americans, due to the social separation they lived under from the very start, the differences were stronger and more lasting.

Main features carried over from West African languages.
--No use of the linking verb 'to be' or generalization of one form for it.
--emphasis on aspect rather than tense: He workin' (right now) vs. He be workin'. This is found in many West African languages.
--I done gone (from Wolof doon , the completive verb aspect particle + English 'done').
--Regularization of present tense verb conjugation: He don't, he know it.
--voiced th in initial position becomes d: dis, dey; in medial position it becomes v: brother > brovva. final voiceless th = f with =wif

A large number of West African words came into Standard American through the medium of Black English: bug (bugu = annoy), dig (degu/ understand), tote bag (tota = carry in Kikonga), hip (Wolof hepicat one who has his eyes wide open), voodoo (obosum, guardian spirit) mumbo jumbo (from name of a West African god), jazz (? Bantu from Arabic jazib one who allures), banjo (mbanza?), chigger (jigger/ bloodsucking mite), goober (nguba /Bantu), okra (nkruman/ Bantu), yam (njami/ Senegal), banana (Wolof). Also, the phrases: sweet talking, every which way; to bad-mouth, high-five are from Black English--seem to be either American innovations or loan translations from West African languages.

The speech of African Americans gradually became more like the speech of their southern white neighbors--a process called decreolization. (And the speech of the whites became slightly more like that of the blacks). However, in a few areas, the original African English creole was preserved more fully. There is one dialect of Black English still spoken on the Georgia coast, called Gullah, which is still spoken there by about 20,000 people; it is thought to represents the closest thing to the original creole.

After the Civil War, Black English continued to evolve and change, especially in the creation of new vocabulary. After the 1920's millions of blacks migrated to northern cities, where various varieties of Black English continue to develop.

There is one other notable southern English dialect. The Cajun French in Louisiana also adopted English with noticeable traces of their former language.

Next weekend I’m attending the Arts and Education Council’s Conference on Southern Literature in Chattanooga with keynote speakers Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle. Lots of great Southern writers will be there, including Wendell Berry, Bobby Ann Mason, Roy Bount, Jr., Clyde Edgerton, and many others. (I’m especially looking forward to seeing playwright Beth Henley, whom I went to high school with in the 1960s in Jackson, and haven’t seen since!) Anyway, I noticed on the program that one of the panels will be addressing this very issue that I’m blogging about today: “Borrowing Tongues: Writing To and From Another Race.” The panel will be led by Madison Smartt Bell, Allan Gurganus, Josephine Humphreys and Randall Kenan. I’ll be all ears. Check back after April 4 to see what I learned.

Until then, it’s back to work on an essay I’ve been asked to contribute to a second anthology on Southern women and spirituality. Not a lot of dialect in it, but I’ll be paying closer attention to every syllable uttered!

Fw: Random Acts of Spamness

If you’re like me, you receive tons of junk mail in your (snail) mail box every day. I know I bring some of this on myself, because I’m a catalogue shopper. And it really doesn’t bother me too much, since it only takes a minute or two to toss it in the trash, after weeding out the goodies, like Bed Bath & Beyond’s 20% off coupon.

And now that I’ve got Gmail, I get very little junk mail, compared with the amount I got when using Yahoo. Most of it lands in my Spam box anyway. But here’s what’s bothering me. It’s the random acts of Spamness that arrive in my inbox, often from friends, so I know I might be stepping on some toes here.

Several times a day I see these two dreaded letters in the subject box, “Fw:” You know the "Fw:"s I'm talking about:
Sometimes it’s 500 pictures of precious baby animals.
Or a sentimental poem about best friends or mothers and children.
Or maybe a warning about a catastrophic internet virus that turns out to be an urban legend.

The point is, it arrives uninvited into my personal inbox, where it takes up my time because I have to do something about it. I can delete it without opening it, but then I take the chance that it might actually be something personal and valid. So I usually open it, see that it’s not something worth my time, and delete it. Without a pang of guilt as I ignore the final sentence, which often reads something like this, “Please send this to everyone you know immediately.” Not going to happen. Ever. Even if it tells me that baby animals will die if I don't do it. I don't like threats.

I’m a writer and I work out of my home. Even so, I receive close to 50 emails some days. My husband, who is a physician, gets several times more emails a day than that. I can imagine the crowded email boxes of lots of folks who are in business, marketing, and other arenas which thrive on use of the social media.

So, I’m asking: How do you deal with these random acts of Spamness? Do you censor the people who send you this stuff on a regular basis? Do you mark them as Spam? If you do, does that block those people from sending actual real, personal emails? How is this different than looking at your Caller ID before answering your phone, and deciding whether or not to answer it? Please leave a comment--I'd love to know your thoughts. I promise I won't consider them to be Spam!

The Beginning of Our Salvation: Embrace Your Grace

This morning at St. John Orthodox Church here in Memphis, we celebrated the Feast of the Annunciation. As this beautiful hymn declares:

Today is the beginning of our salvation,

The revelation of the eternal mystery!

The Son of God becomes the Son of the Virgin

As Gabriel announces the coming of Grace.

Together with him let us cry to the Theotokos:

Rejoice, O Full of Grace,

The Lord is with You!

In his homily this morning, Father John Troy commented on this hymn, saying that this feast is, in many ways, more significant (my word—I can’t remember his) even than Pascha, which is “the feast of feasts” in the Orthodox Church. He went on to say that at Pascha we celebrate victory over death, which is something he can wrap his mind around better than what happened at the Annunciation, when God entered Mary’s womb, which was truly the beginning of our salvation. It is, indeed, a great mystery.

The most mysterious woman of all time, the Holy Virgin Mary, answered God’s unthinkable request—to offer her womb for the conception of His Son—with these words, “Be it done to me according to Thy will.”

Most of us don’t always respond to God’s love the way Mary did. Take my favorite television character, Grace Hanadarko on Saving Grace. In the opening to each show, Grace says:

I wanna bust the world wide open

The way that you do when you’re filled with youth

I wanna engage with people..and lovers..family..fellow cops..and enemies

I wanna be physical and I also want to ask the big questions

I wanna taste the taste… and fix the problems.

I wanna run headlong into chaos..and bad guys..and darkness..and pranks..and fun..and laugh laugh laugh.

I wanna be the best friend.. and I wanna be the greatest aunt and the most complicated daughter

I wanna be the mystery in the room…

and I wanna be known.

Embrace your Grace.

I think I love this character because she is so alive. And so honest and real. She goes after life with everything she’s got. And she’s got plenty of wounds—she was sexually abused by a Catholic priest as a child, and her sister was killed by Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Powerful backstory—kudos to series writer, Nancy Miller. Watch an interview with her here, where she talks about the mystery of God and His love for us, how life is messy, and the importance of writing the truth.

Earl—the angel assigned to save Grace—tells her in one episode, “I love how you love, Grace. It’s a white hot, mighty love.”

In Monday night’s episode she tells Earl why she loves sex. (I won’t quote her here. I think you get the point without the graphic details.)

Not an exchange you’d expect between a woman and her angel. Not at all like the exchange between the Virgin Mary and the Archangel Gabriel.

But one I can identify with. I can also identify with Grace’s anger towards Earl at times, although I don’t have a gun and wouldn’t know where to aim it if I did, since I’ve never actually seen my guardian angel, or any angel. (I know people who have.)

Last year on this day I was preparing to teach an iconography class. And yes, I still need to finish the two icons that Kerry and I have been working on for the nave for about two years now. We’ve scheduled days to work on them together twice during Lent this year, but we’ve each had to cancel once. I’m so into my writing projects that I’m having trouble pulling away from them and getting back to painting icons. Maybe painting icons is an important way for me to embrace my grace. But not today. Maybe soon.

Gifts of the Magi, sort of

I received three wonderful gifts the past two days, and I’d like to share a bit of the wealth. The title of this post isn’t intended to be disrespectful, just a play on words. Because the “gifts” I received weren’t free—I paid a small price for each of them—but they did come to me from “wise men.”

First, the Sunday New York Times had a wonderful article by Robert Leleux, author of The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy, called “A Memory Magically Interrupted.” It’s about his grandmother’s experience with Alzheimer’s. Actually, it’s about the upside of Alzheimer’s, something you don’t see in print very often. Although I’ve mentioned the way that the disease has actually changed my mother’s personality into one that is, well, less judgmental. And like Leleux says of his grandmother, Mom actually seems happier at times. None of this is to take away from the awfulness of the disease, but perhaps just to find something upbeat to say about it. Great article—if you are caring for, or close to someone with Alzheimer’s, you should read it.

My second gift came in the mail yesterday. It’s one of the books that Jere Hoar recommended to me on my visit to his house in Oxford a few weeks ago: Growing Up by Russell Baker. Jere recommended the book because he knows I’m writing a memoir. What he might not have known, unless he’s been reading my blog, is that my mother has Alzheimer’s. Baker’s memoir is literary prose of a high caliber, and I know I’m going to savor every page. But for now, I’m going to share some excerpts from the first chapter, because that’s where he hooked me, where he shined his light into experiences that are perhaps familiar to many of us who love someone with Alzheimer’s:

“At the age of eighty my mother had her last bad fall, and after that her mind wandered free through time. Some days she went to weddings and funerals that had taken place half a century earlier. On others she presided over family dinners cooked on Sunday afternoons for children who were now gray with age. Through all this she lay in bed but moved across time, traveling among the dead decades with a speed and ease beyond the gift of physical science….

….For ten years or more the ferocity with which she had once attacked life had been turning to a rage against the weakness, the boredom, and the absence of love that too much age had brought her. Now, after the last bad fall, she seemed to have broken chains that imprisoned her in a life she had come to hate and to return to a time inhabited by people who loved her, a time in which she was needed. Gradually I understood. It was the first time in hears I had seen her happy.”

The third gift also came from my friend Jere Hoar. Knowing that I’m a student of the written word, he emailed me yesterday, recommending these DVDs from The Teaching Company, “Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer’s Craft.” The set includes 8 DVDs with lectures by Brooks Landon at the University of Iowa. Regularly priced at $254.95, the set is on sale now for $69.95. I ordered them this morning and can’t wait for this next step in my “continuing education.” Thanks for the tip, Jere!

Wish I could spend the day reading Russell Baker’s memoir. Or working on mine. But today’s not a writing day. It’s a day to pay my mother’s bills, since her memory has been magically interrupted, and to take care of some of life’s less exciting activities, like grocery shopping and exercising. Hey—maybe I can read while I’m on the elliptical machine. Whatever the day may bring, I’m thankful for these gifts.

The Gate of Mysteries

Today is the Third Sunday of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church, known as the Adoration of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross. I didn’t take pictures at St. John this morning because I had to hurry home at the end of the Liturgy to fix lunch for my husband, who had a plane to catch. Had I stayed, I would have seen the procession with the cross, adorned with dozens of bright red carnations. The tradition varies a bit from church to church, but in general, the priest raises the cross up and we all bow down and sing:

Before Thy cross we bow down in worship, O Master,
And Thy holy resurrection we glorify!

After my husband left for the airport I sat down to write this blog post, and I checked to see what I wrote about this Sunday a year ago, here. It’s interesting to note that I was having the same struggles I’m having now. It reminds me of the story:

A parishioner went to Confession and said, “Father, I’m embarrassed because every time I come to Confession it seems like I’ve got the same sins as last time.”

The priest looked at him and said, “What? You want new sins?”

So, our spiritual struggles sometimes involve dealing with the same weaknesses all our lives, whether that be a temper we can’t control, or struggles with drugs, alcohol, or gluttony. For some it might be discontent or resentment about our circumstances, which seem overly burdensome to us. All these things are part of what some people call “Carrying your cross.”

Yesterday I visited with a man who has a very heavy cross, but one who bears it well. On the way home to Memphis from the beach, I stopped in Jackson and met my niece, Aubrey, at the nursing home to visit with Mom. (Here we are—three generations.)

We sat outside in the courtyard for a while, because the weather was gorgeous, and Mom loves the birds and trees and flowers. But her mind has slipped even more since my last visit a few weeks ago. She’s had two falls, and they’ve had to put a lap guard on her wheel chair because she can’t remember not to get up and try to walk by herself. As we talked, I saw the wheels turning behind her glazy eyes, but she struggled to find the words to describe what she was thinking. At one point, she said, “You know, it’s kind of two, three, four,” and she made a motion with her hand as if she was placing items in a row on a table. “And then six, seven, eight,” the movement continued. At another point she said, “I work all day on Mondays, just going zoom-zoom here and zoom-zoom there,” and she made a motion as though turning the steering wheel of a car. “But then I can rest the other days of the week.” And then she smiled. Who knows what she’s remembering, possibly something from her very active life many years ago, when she was taking care of my brother and me, or teaching school, or helping my father run the business they owned and operated from 1982 until 1994—Bill Johnson’s Phidippides Sports.

After a while, Charles wheeled his electric scooter chair over to join us for a visit. Charles is 55. I wrote a post about him in January, here. At the time, I thought Charles’ disability had been caused by a stroke he had suffered as an adult. It was just a guess. But yesterday I learned the truth. When Charles was about 8 years old, he got sick with St. Louis Encephalitis, a virus that invades the central nervous system, including the spinal cord and brain. As Charles struggled to form intelligible words to describe his story, I watched Mother, who picked at the crumbs from the cookie I had brought her earlier, which were now stuck to the plastic wrap in a wad on her lap guard. I didn’t know if she could understand Charles’ words or not, so every few sentences, I would “interpret” them for her, to include her in the conversation.

Charles’ mind is sharp. He and Aubrey carried on a conversation about politics and the folks who run Jackson, “America’s City of Grace and Benevolence,” and their hopes for a better mayor in the upcoming election. Aubrey is a lawyer and works for the Attorney General’s Office.

At one point in Charles’ story, he told us that he almost died when he first got sick with encephalitis, and that some people might think that would have been a blessing. After all, he’s lived his entire life as an invalid, and now he’s stuck in a nursing home where most of the residents are twenty-five to forty years older than him, and only a few are capable of stimulating conversation. But he said, “Jesus saved me from death, and I thank Him every day for my life, although it’s a hard life.”

Watching him talk about his life, I notice how beautiful his eyes are—deep blue, with a twinkle. And what a handsome face he has, with nice bone structure and pretty hair. You have to look past the drooling, and his inability to make his mouth and facial muscles work the way he wants them to. His right foot had slipped off the platform at the base of his scooter, and it’s paralyzed, so he asked me to put it back up for him.

I knelt beside him and lifted his completely limp, but very large and heavy, leg, taking several tries to get it where he wanted it, next to his other foot. I thought about how humbling it was for him to have to ask me to do that, and how the nurses and aids have to take care of all of his physical needs on a daily basis. He just smiled and said, “thank you.”

So, this morning I thought about Charles’ cross, and suddenly mine didn’t seem as heavy. Half-way through Great Lent, and I have not really yet begun to repent. But maybe this past week at the beach, and my visit with Charles at the nursing home, reminded me to be thankful, and thankfulness can certainly lead to repentance.

Returning to Memphis after being gone for almost a week, I couldn’t help but notice that Spring arrived while I was away. Check out these costumed figures parading on stilts as part of the Polish celebration of the vernal equinox.

And near 'Aqrah, Iraq, on March 20, 2007--Torch-bearing Kurds gathered in the countryside to celebrate Nowruz in Iraq, where the Persian vernal equinox celebration is marked by fire, dancing, music—and journeys into the wilderness.

But here in Memphis, at least in our yard, spring was welcomed in a less dramatic way:

Our first tulip bloomed…

And is being watched over by this little squirrel.

The squirrel is also very interested in this bird’s nest that's just been built on the top of this column on our porch, just a few feet from our front door. The bird flies away when I go out to take a picture, but then I can watch from the window as she comes back in to finish up with construction and rest for a spell in her new digs. Maybe I can sneak a photo when the babies are born.

And so I welcome Spring, and the second half of Great Lent, with a heart full of thankfulness. With God’s help, I will try to take up my cross with less grumbling. And I’ll try to seek humility, so the devil won’t have as easy access. In his wonderful homily at St. John this morning, our Assistant Pastor, Father Nicholas, talked about how people who walk around with their heads lifted arrogantly are easy prey for the devil, because the devil reaches up to snare us. He said the devil can’t reach down, so when we humble ourselves (at that point Father Nicholas made a gesture of bowing) the devil can’t get us.

His words reminded me of something Jere Hoar told me when I was visiting on his front porch in Oxford on my birthday. It was about Daisy, his Llewellin English Setter. He told us that she had been attacked by several dogs because she carried her head in the air, acting like she was better than the others. She seems to have settled down now. Maybe she’s learned some humility. Like Charles Wilkins Walker in the nursing home. I bet the devil wouldn’t dare reach down and bother Charles.

But I’m sure he’ll be after me. So, I’ll try not to have my head in the air while carrying my cross this fourth week of Great Lent. And I'll try a little harder each day to take my sorrow straight. I’ll leave you with these words of inspiration from one of my favorite saints, Isaac the Syrian:

If you would be victorious, taste the suffering of Christ in your person, that you may be chosen to taste of His glory. For if we suffer with Him, we shall also be glorified with Him. Behold, for years and generations the way of God has been made smooth through the Cross and by death. The way of God is a daily Cross. The Cross is the gate of mysteries.

Sand Castles

Thoreau said, "Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."






I took these pictures of sand castles this afternoon... my personal favorite is the mermaid, but it's hard to see from the side. I posed beside the pyramid because of the Memphis connection. corny, huh? And the boys from the University of Alabama were so proud of their Beer Pong table they posed behind it and asked for a link to my blog. Hi, boys! Now, on with philosophizing about castles in the air.

Writing can be like that. First you dream. You imagine that short story, that poem, that novel. Or you envision that essay or that memoir. You might do a half dozen outlines and a couple of really bad first drafts (okay, I guess there's no such thing as more than one first draft) and finally you get down to the hard work of building a foundation under that initial dream.

That's what this writing retreat has been about for me. I've been dancing around those castles that I built in the air for a few years. First I wrote a novel but the characters were strapped with the impossible task of disguising truths that begged to be told. Not that fiction isn't about truth. The best fiction reveals the truth more vividly that lots of nonfiction. But the genre wasn't working for me. So, I published a few essays, and then got to work outliing a memoir. I got just over halfway through drafting it when I got stuck. Because I needed some space so I could create art, and not just record events. A memoir is not an autobiography. It's a reflection on certain aspects of a life or events or people. I just made that definition up. Hope that's right, 'cause that's what I'm writing.

As Tolsoy said: "Art is a microscope which the artist fixes on the secrets of his soul, and shows to people these secrets which are common to all.... it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced."

Now. I didn't make that up.

So, I made lots of progress this week, and tonight I said goodbye to the beach... caught this guy boogie boarding just before sunset.

And finally I pulled up my umbrella and chair and put them in the trunk of my car for my departure early tomorrow morning. I'll stop in Jackson to visit my mom. The nursing home called this morning to say they finally had to put a lap guard on her wheelchair to keep her from getting up and falling again. It's a last resort--this morning they found her sitting on the floor by her bed, unhurt, but confused. She just can't remember that she can't walk on her hip because it never healed properly. What else can they do?

I'll pick up some soft cookies from McAllister's Deli, Mom's favorites, and hopefully bring some sunshine from the beach into her life tomorrow. I'm sad to leave the beach, but I'll be happy to be home with hubby and Oreo tomorrow night. G'nite all.

Cuss Time

Today was the next-to-last day of my beach writing retreat, and I did lots of writing, so... I won't spend much time on this post. Instead, I'll give you a link to a really good essay, "Cuss Time," by Jill McCorkle. It was selected for Best American Essays for 2009. Several things struck me about the essay... not only the author's honest and innovative parenting approach, but also her freedom cry:

"By limiting freedom of expression, we take away thoughts and ideas before they have the opportunity to hatch."

McCorkle is a proponent of writing that gives "a realistic portrait of human nature" and the freedom to use words that are needed to paint that portrait. Enjoy the essay. Click here.

For those who read yesterday's post, here's an update on my mom: I talked with the nurse on her wing at the nursing home today, and she said Mom "took her morning meds without being combative" and doesn't seem to be in any pain from her fall yesterday. And ... she doesn't remember what happened. No memory of the 6 hours she spent in the emergency room either.

The mixed blessings of dementia.

Early this evening I drove down to Orange Beach (10 minutes from Gulf Shores) for some fresh crabmeat and shrimp at Louisiana Lagniappe, and enjoyed sunset on the docks of the San Roc Cay Marina.

This is my favorite photo at the bay.

I'm headed to bed early... tomorrow is my last day here at the beach and I want to get an early start writing...

... here!

Unforseen Events

Remember the words from my Morning Prayer that I shared on Tuesday?

“Teach me to treat all that comes to me throughout the day with peace of soul, and with firm conviction that Thy will governs all.”

So, how come my first response when I got the call this afternoon from Jackson that my mother had fallen in the dining room at her nursing home (300 miles away) and was in the emergency room at the hospital wasn’t peaceful? How come my first thoughts weren’t, “Thy will governs all”?

It was such dejavú—from the last time I was at the beach, in October. I had driven to Seagrove with my husband for his recovery from surgery when I got the call that Mom had fallen the first time, which resulted in 2 surgeries, rehab and finally a permanent move to the nursing home.

The call came after a morning of writing today before heading down to the beach to relax for a while. I had just gone for a walk and had settled down to work on editing my morning’s work when my cell phone rang.

So, I spent the next 6 hours communicating (or waiting for a call to be returned) with the people at the emergency room and the nursing home, angsting over whether or not I needed to hop in the car and drive to Jackson. To make a long story (that doesn’t cast the emergency room folks in a good light) short, the good news is Mom didn’t re-break her hip, and she’s back at the nursing home with only a small cut on her head. I’ll see her Saturday on my way back to Memphis, but it’s hard not to feel like a bad daughter for not being with her at the emergency room today. I’m thankful for a good friend who told me I’m a Good Daughter. If you’re new to my blog, you can catch up on my long-distance care-giving episodes here.

Meanwhile back at the beach, I enjoyed meeting Phil and Karla Hardin from Jackson (Mississippi) yesterday, and today Phil and I had a great visit about writing and other stuff. Phil moved to Clinton, Mississippi, from Pennsyvania to attend Reformed Theoogical Seminary. He and Karla still live in Clinton, where they have a counseling business, Passionate Living Counseling.

Turns out their daughter, Abigail, a student at Alabama, has a children’s book coming out, Look At Me, I Am Just Like You, which she is signing next Friday, March 27, at Lemuria Books in Jackson. Small world, the beach. And Mississippi.

A couple of parting shots… caught this surfer just before he wiped out a few minutes before sunset...

… which was beautiful.

Almost as beautiful as this one, last night on the canal by Lulu’s, where I went to take in some local music.

I’m staying in tonight. Recovering from an afternoon of trying not to worry about Mom… and thinking about another part of my Morning Prayer:

“In unforeseen events, let me not forget that all are sent by Thee.”

Maybe tomorrow I’ll do a better job of remembering.

Saint Patrick, Morning Prayers and Writing at the Beach

Woke at 7:30 this morning to the sound of the waves hitting the beach… the sun had only barely begun to burn away yesterday’s cloud and rain, so I made a pot of coffee, said my Morning Prayers. and got to work, here, in my little beach condo writing space.

My Morning Prayer is a historic Orthodox Prayer, attributed to Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow. I printed off a copy and placed it beside a copy of a detail of the icon, “Extreme Humility,” in my makeshift icon corner.

O Lord,grant that I may meet the coming day in peace.

Help me in all thingsto rely upon Thy Holy Will.

In every hour of the day,reveal Thy will to me.

Bless my dealings with all who surround me.

Teach me to treat all that comes to methroughout the day with peace of soul,and with the firm conviction that Thy will governs all.

In all my deeds and words,guide my thoughts and feelings.In unforeseen events, let me not forgetthat all are sent by Thee.

Teach me to act firmly and wisely,without embittering and embarrassing others.

Give me the strength to bear the fatigueof the coming day with all that it shall bring.

Direct my will. Teach me to pray.

Pray Thou Thyself in me. Amen.

I didn’t immediately think about it being Saint Patrick’s Day. Somehow the beach with its own subculture (especially during Spring Break week) feels far removed from the calendar of the Church. But it’s not. Because the Kingdom of Heaven is within. We take it with us wherever we go.
So now, having written seven pages in four hours (writing can often be slow and laborious, other times swift and easy) I’m going to take a break and head down to the beach to walk, read, and edit.

This photo from my balcony shows that I won't be alone… people, gulls, kites, boats, umbrellas, sand castles…. bring it on! I’ll be back tomorrow.

By the way, I found the pictures I thought I had lost when posting yesterday, so I added them to Monday’s blog post, below. Check them out!

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

Pee in the Wind

I drove to Jackson yesterday to visit my mother, and also my niece, Aubrey and her husband, Tommy. Last night the three of us went to Mint Restaurant in Ridgeland, Mississippi. I’d been there once before, for lunch, with my dear friend, Sissy, whose daughter, Wisdom, works there. It all sounds so Southern doesn’t it? And it is, with a twist. Read a review here, and see pictures of owners Patrick and Mary Kellly, and chef David Ferris. It’s an amazing place. (They also own Juleps, another of my favorite places in Jackson, Mississippi.)

When you walk in, you feel like you’ve been transported to a brothel in the French Quarter, with the red velvet brocade wallpaper and chandelier and all. And then there’s this amazing picture of Mary (yes, the proprietor) just above the booth in the bar, where we ate. She's dressed in period clothing. Then the picture is printed on canvas and texture is added. Well done.

I had the “two for one special”—two blood orange martinis for the price of one. Yummy! And She Crab soup and a salad.

I’m so excited because Aubrey is going to participate in the Yoknapatawpha Writers Workshop with me in June (at Ole Miss.) She’s a lawyer, and teaches (legal) writing and has plenty of experience writing legal stuff. But this will be her foray into creative writing.

I spent the night with Aubrey and Tommy in Jackson last night, and this morning I found the craziest coffee mug in their pantry. Of course I had to have my morning coffee in it. Here it is. Don’t you love the inscription? It reminds me of my current mission—continuing to draft my memoir, which sometimes feels like staring down the barrel of a gun… or peeing in the wind.

Go for it! So… here I am (again) at the beach… this time in Gulf Shores, Alabama. For five days of solitude so I can write. The condo where I’m staying (3rd time, so it feels like home) is next to land that belongs to a state park, so it’s kind of isolated, which is nice.

When I arrived this afternoon around 4:30 or so, it was raining. But by 6 pm the rain had stopped, so I ventured out for a walk. Sunset was kind of subdued. The rest of the week is supposed to be sunny, so stay tuned for better pictures in a couple of days. But not a lot of text. I’m going to concentrate my efforts on the memoir and a couple of essays with April deadlines. A writer’s retreat. It’s close to midnight, and I can hear the waves lapping the beach outside my condo balcony, and I can also see tons of stars, which aren’t so visible from midtown Memphis. I am blessed. Good night, moon. (More pictures of Gulf Shores, from my last visit in May, 2008 are here.)

Twitterers are NOT Twits!

A writing buddy of mine recently sent me this email teasing me about being on Twitter:

“Su, is it true only twits use Twitter?”

So, my dear anonymous (because I love you) friend, let me introduce you to a few of my followers (and I’m following them) on Twitter—most of them are published writers. One is a leading publisher. Some of them are spiritual. All of them are creative. I’ve only been Twittering since March 21—you can read my post about why I chose Twitter over Facebook here.
I’ve got quite a few more Twitter friends, but here are some of my favorites, in alphabetical order, so as not to show preference. Click on their names to go to their blogs or websites. I don't think you'll find a twit in the group. Not. One.

Kathleen Foucart

Connie May Fowler oh, and there's a great article about Connie here:.

Gail Hyatt

Michael Hyatt

Johnny Ray

River Jordan

Trish Lawrence

Gary Nelson

Deborah Oakland

Lisa Romeo

Daniel Root (come on, Daniel, don't you have a better photo than that, you being a photographer and artist and all? WARNING: Daniel's blog is high-tech-ish!)

Shellie Tomlinson

Another way I’ve met some great folks is by clicking on their links when they comment on the same blogs where I leave comments. Two recent ones of note:

Tim Elhajj and I both left comments on the Creative Nonfiction blog and we started emailing after that.

Kim Richardson and I found each other when we both posted comments recently on Michael Hyatt’s blog. We’ve been emailing since then, and I’m anxiously awaiting her first book, The Unbreakable Child, which is coming out in April. (I’ve pre-ordered it from my local independent bookseller, Burke’s Books, here in Memphis.)

So… Twittering and commenting on blogs is a great way to network with quality folks, like these new friends, who are most definitely not twits! Curious? Come follow me on Twitter!

Prayer for the Unity of the Church

Great Lent is a time of repentance and spiritual struggle. Usually that struggle, for me, comes mainly from my own sinful fleshly passions, and I’ve got plenty to contend with. Saint Ephraim the Syrian nails a few of them, and teaches us to ask God to “take from me the spirit of sloth, meddling, lust for power and idle talk.” As we said this prayer and did prostrations with it during the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts at Saint John last night, I found myself strengthened, but my mind also wandered to troubling thoughts.

This Lent brings additional difficulties, not only from my own sinfulness, but from some recent struggles within my Church—not my local parish, but the Antiochian Archdiocese at large. A heavy sadness fell over me when our pastor recently read this letter from Metropolitan PHLIIP concerning the decisions made by the Holy Synod of Antioch on February 24.

The Prayer of Saint Ephraim of Syria also says, “Lord, grant me to see my own sins and not to judge my brother.” This post is not written in a spirit of judgment, but as a call to prayer, especially to my fellow Orthodox Christians. I feel helpless in light of these struggles on the archdiocese level, but I have found comfort in the following prayer, which Father Nicholas, our Assistant Pastor, shared with us a few weeks ago during one of his Wednesday night teachings. I’ve been trying to include the prayer in my daily morning or evening prayers. Please join me, and forgive me, a sinner.

(Click on the prayer to see an enlarged image, or to download it to save or print for your own use.)

40 Years Ago Today

I just found a letter I wrote to my grandmother in Meridian, Mississippi, on March 11, 1969--forty years ago today. I have a box full of letters I wrote to Mamaw, from the time I was about five years old until years into my marriage, actually. She was a "safe place" to go with my stuff, so I told her about my first kiss and other such intimate things, but also about the fights going on in our home and how I wished my brother would change and my mother would quit yelling at him and most of all that my father would step up and take care of it all. She was such a dear woman. She made most of my clothes until I was in high school. Here's the outside of the letter--can you believe it only cost 6 cents to mail a letter in 1969?

I had just turned 18. It was my senior year in high school, and I was headed up to Ole Miss during spring break, to visit my boyfriend, to whom I am now married. I love this part of the letter:

"Wednesday night is our Twirp dance, but I'm staying home to type my term paper (English) so I can go up to see Bill the next day."

Preview of coming attractions?

Speaking of 40 years ago, I got a birthday card from a friend I haven't seen in almost 40 years... she was matron of honor in my wedding in June of 1970! Kathy and I graduated from Murrah High School together in 1969, and a year later, she beat me to the altar by one week. We were in eachother's weddings in June of 1969.

Here she is, helping me with the garter that Bill would throw to the groomsmen.

And here she is, in the photo she sent with my birthday card this week, with her husband and their six grandchildren!

Can't wait to see Kathy at our 40th high school reunion in Jackson this summer. Actually, I have a feeling I'll see her before then....

A Glimmer of Hope

Like thousands of other Americans, our son Jason is out of work right now. Well, he’s actually working part time at a fast-foods place and going on job interviews. I’m so proud of him for stepping up and doing everything he can for his new family. His wife, See, is pregnant, due in July. This is See and Jason just outside Denver last May, when I flew out to meet her just before they were married.

So last week Jason wrote a poem and posted it on his blog, Spattered Words and Forgotten Meanings. I’d like to share it with my readers today, and ask your prayers for his continued job search. I’ve got two close friends who have been without work for a while and recently got new jobs, but there are countless others still looking. So, this is for you:

A Glimmer of Hope
By Jason Cushman

A cacophony of thoughts cascading into a mural of shimmering imagery.

Brings a sudden tear within a tear, gushing forth the life water of the human soul.

A trumpet plays, carrying the idea of hope amongst its angelic tone.

The gleeful shouts of children dancing in the midst of the happiness of Hope.

He looks down from above. A wave of his hand dispels the clouds of worry and vanishes the dust of anger.

A boy glances up in awe. He sees the heavens part and knows that he is seeing the coming of truth.

Darkness comes, from the earth, the sea, and the sky it carries the chill of death and despair.

The boy vanishes with the winds of time and time’s gentle sand becomes as hard as a rock.

An eagle soars with courage and strength. His wings pierce the tornado of hate before him.

The Evil one glares. He stretches forth his hand and lightning shoots with a bang.

And as the eagle falls lifeless from the sky, the clouds close from view the heavens once more.

The trumpets turn to drums, and they beat a muffled somber sound.

People roam the street aimlessly searching for the Why and the How.

Above the Man's attention is elsewhere, but still he hums idly to himself as life goes on.

Orthodox Christians sometimes pray to Saint Xenia for help getting employment. Her story is pretty amazing. You can read it here I've got her icon (similar to this one) in my prayer corner, and I've been praying to her with my morning prayers lately:

Holy Saint Xenia, please intercede with Christ, Our Lord, and bless my son, Jason, and others searching for jobs today.

Here’s the Troparion to St. Xenia:

Having renounced the vanity of the earthly world,

Thou didst take up the cross of a homeless life of wandering;

Thou didst not fear grief, privation, nor the mockery of men,

And didst know the love of Christ.

Now taking sweet delight of this love in heaven,

O Xenia, the blessed and divinely wise,

Pray for the salvation of our souls.

Big Bad Birthday

Today’s my birthday, and my sweet husband and I just got home from a delightful birthday trip. My best friend, Daphne, came over from Little Rock early Saturday morning, and the three of us drove down to Oxford (Mississippi) for a fun-filled 24-hour celebration. (Well, 19 hours of fun, 5 hours of sleep.) First we unloaded the car at the condo we had rented for the night (a lovely place five minutes from the square, with great interior design, including original paintings by local artists) and then we headed down to the square to begin the birthday marathon. We started at Square Books (where Daphne stealthily bought my birthday gift, which she saved for a surprise at lunch today—Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor—a new biography by Brad Gooch which was reviewed in the New York Times last Sunday, and at Salon.com today. Can’t wait to get started on it! Don’t you love the jacket design?

After cappuccinos on the balcony at Square Books, we said goodbye to hubby for the rest of the afternoon. (He headed back to the condo to go for a five-mile run through the campus, shower and join us later for supper and the rest of the festivities.) Daphne and I shopped at some of the cute little boutiques around the square for a while . . .

. . . and then headed up to the balcony at City Grocery, where we met up with the other birthday girl, Michelle (journalism student at Ole Miss and member of Yoknapatawpha Writers Group) and another writing group buddy, Doug.

Hubby caught up with us at Ajax for supper around 7 p.m. Here we are waiting for our table… that's our new friend, Katie, on the far left. She's also a journalism student at Ole Miss.

Here's our table, (minus hubby, the picture-taker) waiting for our suppers… veggie plates, oyster poboys, and catfish. Yum! I didn’t take pictures at Proud Larrys’, where we headed next. The opening band was really really bad. I could say more, but bless their hearts, I guess they were trying. So finally the “real band” came on, and well, we gave them until after 11 p.m. to get better, since we had paid a cover to get in. Finally we walked around to the other side of the square and discovered some better music at Taylor Pub, but only caught the last 30 minute of the show. Katie Dintelman was really good, and we wished we had been there earlier. Just as we were leaving, we noticed a ruckus outside, and met up with another birthday girl. She was turning 21. I have to say I'm fine that my friends didn't make a birthday sign for me to wear around town last night. Just saying.

So here are the 3 birthday girls, at ages 21, 28 and 58. I'll just leave it at that.

Back at our condo, Daphne, hubby and I stayed up until 3:30 a.m… enjoying more music, laughter, conversation and a good bottle of wine (Kim Crawford Savignon Blanc) that was another birthday gift.




Birthday morning brought another special treat—coffee and mimosas on the porch at the home of writer Jere Hoar. Daphne and I had lunch with Jere about a month ago at the Downtown Grill and when he heard we were coming to town for my birthday, he was so gracious to invite us for coffee on his porch this morning. (We met Jere the first time in June of 2008, at the 2008 Yoknapatawpha Writers Workshop, where he was on faculty.)

We were greeted at the gate by Daisy, a Llewellin English setter who was gentle and friendly. Here she is later, relaxing amongst the daffodils.

And here’s Brutus, Jere’s pit bull, who was tied up when we arrived, but once he got used to us, Jere untied him and let him roam free while we visited on the porch.

The breeze and sunshine (a perfect 75 degrees) were perfect compliments to our mimosas and conversation on the porch. It was really fun for me to have my husband enter into my writing world a little more, as we talked shop with Jere.

I’m taking notes here, writing down the titles of books of essays and letters by authors he recommended I read to inform my own essay writing:

Growing Up by Russell Baker
Essays of E.B. White
A New Generation of Essays by James M. Salem
Heart’s Desire by Edward Hoagland
The Old Man and Lesser Mortals by Larry L. King
Southern Legacy by Hodding Carter (that’s the one I want to get first, since it talks about some of the issues I’m addressing in the essay I’m currently working on to submit to the 2009 Southern Women Writers Conference. (The theme is “Many Souths: Remembering, Sustaining, Creating.”)

It was hard to say goodbye to Jere, who is the very definition of a Southern gentleman and also a brilliant writer. He’s so generous with his time and words of encouragement and instruction to fledgling writers like me. What a treat! I enjoyed sketching and painting this entry for my watercolor journal, which is a feeble attempt at capturing the magic of our morning with Jere, but still a treasured image.

Our final leg of the celebration was a late breakfast at Big Bad Breakfast, where I’ve eaten a couple of times before with writing group buddies. Back home in Memphis I find more birthday surprises waiting for me on my own front porch, and I assemble my goodies into an artful arrangement and just look at them and bask in the love that’s behind each of them, the way I used to do with my Christmas gifts when I was growing up. Golden roses, a good book, a gift certificate to a bookstore, a bookmark, a bottle of wine, a cheerful cup and saucer from an antique store, an artsy candlestick and candle, and cards that bring joy to my heart. I am blessed. And now for a quiet evening at home, reading. Life is good.

Baby Grace!

My daughter-in-law, See, called yesterday afternoon with the news: she and Jason had just left the doctor’s office, where the sonogram technician told them there’s “an 85% chance it’s a girl.” There will be one more sonogram in a few weeks and maybe a final confirmation then, but you can’t always be sure. But for now, we’re excited about our first grandchild, Grace Cushman! (They’re still working on the middle name, so I’ll hold off until it’s settled.)

I love these amazing pictures of Grace in the womb. She looks like she’s sucking her thumb in a couple of them. They’re so far away—in Denver—and I’m so anxious to hold her, to tell her how much she’s loved!

She’s due on July 16, my grandmother’s birthday. (“Mamaw,” my mother’s mother, the one who sewed all my clothes when I was growing up.)

On a different, and much less exciting note, Maryanne Macdonald’s column in today’s Commercial Appeal is about organizing laundry rooms. Seeing her column reminded me that I have let yet anther week go by without doing anything organizational in my house. But I haven’t abandoned Operation Order Out of Chaos. I’ve just gotten a little out of balance (imagine that) by focusing more on my writing (messy, creative stuff) and exercising (three times at the gym) this week.

And this is Clean Week! I’m afraid that the state of my laundry room is a reflection of the state of my soul. Each night that I’ve attended the Lenten services at St. John this week, and actually mustered up the courage to slow down and look inside, well, let me just say that it wasn’t pretty, what I saw there. But like that messy room or closet or drawer or shelf, sometimes we have to make a mess—wade through the surface clutter—in order to get to what lies beneath. And why go through the effort and pain? Because what lies beneath is beautiful. Like Baby Grace, growing inside my daughter-in-law’s womb, made in the image of God. But unlike Grace, whose soul is still brand new and untarnished, ours are dusty and need some deep cleaning from time to time.

Tonight is the last of five Clean Week services in the row, The Akathist Hymn to the Mother of God. The service is a little more upbeat than the others this week, a kind of refreshment at the end of a week of hard work. Although it’s still pretty heavy stuff—watching the Mother of God suffer her own Son’s coming passion—it’s also a time of joyful expectation. I’ll leave you with these words from the Akathist Hymn, and wish everyone a wonderful weekend!

Rejoice, Thou through whom Paradise is opened!
Rejoice, key to the kingdom of Christ:
Rejoice, hope of eternal good things!
Rejoice, O Bride Unwedded!

The Daily Show on Twittering and Flies on the Butter

Okay, I’m inserting a link to a hilarious video from The Daily Show, before I move on to the serious part of this blog post, because really, we all need a good laugh from time to time. Just click here! (and yes, you have to just sit and wait for the advetisement to roll first)

But seriously, I just discovered children’s author, Trish Lawrence’s blog (through Twitter, I must say) and loved her post from today, called “Space: The Art of Simplifying.” Her suggestions fit well with the concept of a “media fast” during Lent. Not that I'm embracing it. Just thinking about cutting back. Some. A tiny little bit. But of course, I can quit anytime.

Also just found Denise Hildreth’s website, and was so enthralled with this video of her speaking, that I stopped “doing” just long enough to think about “being.” Again. I revisit this struggle from time to time, but especially during times of spiritual intensity, like Great Lent. You’ll have to listen all the way through her video to get the title of this blog post. Or read her book, Flies on the Butter. (I haven’t read it yet, since I just discovered it today. I’m fast, but not that fast!) I tried to download the video but ran into a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo from Google, so I'm not going there. Just click on her website, HERE, then scroll down the right side briefly and you'll see the video. Click the arrow to begin.

So today, I’m going to try to limit the number of times I click on Twitter and check my email, and see if I can leave a space for God.

And work on two essays that are due in April.

Peacefully, like this.

Or this.

And hopefully not like this! (I'm going to print that cartoon off and tape it to the top of my computer monitor to remind me to sit up straight so I won't undo all the good work I just had done at my massage therapist's. By the way, if you're in Memphis and want a great massage, email me and I'll give you her phone number. She does amazing work on aging arthritic bodies! And I'm sure she's good with young, buffed ones, too, but I can't speak from experience.)

It Might Be Lent If ....

Have you ever noticed that sometimes when you enter into psychological or spiritual warfare—like seriously confronting an addictive or sinful behavior, or just trying to reign in some of your laziness or craziness—that it seems like adversaries come out of the woodwork to discourage your efforts?

Welcome to Great Lent. Many of the Church fathers talk about how Satan and his demons will go after the person who becomes more serious about their spiritual warfare. The Kingdom of Heaven can’t be won so easily, it seems. Flannery O’Connor knew this, when she wrote her novel, The Violent Bear it Away.

So here I am, on the second day of Lent, and have already experienced several “hits.” Nothing monumental, like a job loss (in fact, two friends just reported finding new jobs last week—thank God!) or cancer or death. But sometimes the small, irritating things can trip us up and disturb our peace.

Like Sunday night, right after we got home from Forgiveness Vespers, which officially kicks off the season of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church, my husband sat down in the den and opened his lap top. He had a deadline for work that he needed to spend some time on.

“Shoot!” I hear the frustration in his voice.

“What’s up?” I call out from my computer in the next room?

“I’m locked out of my computer again!”

Apparently at the VA Hospital where he works, employees have to take their computers in every three months for some sort of updating. (He uses a VA laptop at home.) It slipped up on him this time and blap! He couldn’t get in to do his work. Again, not life-threatening, just aggravating.

Like our two leaky faucets—one in the kitchen and another in the master bathroom. The kitchen faucet was getting louder and finally pushed me to the point of doing something, so I called our home warranty company. The wait on the phone was lengthy, so I did what the recording suggested—I went to the website and entered our account number and put in a service request. Within a few minutes, someone called to schedule a plumber to come out, that afternoon! Wow. That was quick. Or so I thought.

The plumber was scheduled “between 12:30 and 5.” Too good to be true? Yep. He showed up at 5:30, looked at the faucets and said, “Faucets aren’t covered in your home warranty plan. But they’ll still charge you $60 for my visit.”

So, this morning I called (and waited for a real person) and talked with a service rep, and she said that if faucets had been covered in our plan, the word “faucet” would have been on the menu for me to choose from. Since it wasn’t, I had chosen the word “leaks” on the menu. But then I had described in detail that the leaks were the faucets in the kitchen and bathroom sinks.

“But the computer doesn’t read the comments,” she argued.

“Then why have the comment box on there?” I asked.

“Those comments are given to the contractor we send out. You should know that if the word ‘faucet’ didn’t appear in your list, it wasn’t covered in your contract.”

“How would I know that? It didn’t say that anywhere.”

But the plumber obviously knew. When he walked in the door and I showed him the faucets, he immediately said, without looking at a file or calling anyone, “faucets aren’t covered in your contract.” If he knew that, he should have refused to take the call. So I told the service rep that we aren’t paying the $60 for the service call.

She agreed not to charge us “this time,” but said we are only allowed one “false call” per contract year. And the faucets are still dripping….

My third “hit” also wasn’t disastrous, just a little disappointing. Another of my essays had been accepted for publication in the March issue of skirt! Magazine, but I hadn’t picked up a print copy yet, so I went online to link to the essay, and it wasn’t there. In fact, there were only 6 essays in the issue, and usually there are about a dozen. So I emailed Nikki, the publisher, and she said, “I was about to email you. We had to cut quite a few essays to make room for a special feature this issue.” I'm okay with that. skirt! has published three of my essays, and I'll continue to submit work to them, because I think they publish quality prose. And don't you love the artwork for the March cover? It's by the artist, Brian Kirshisnik. Really, all the artwork for skirt! is good. Even the ads!

I had written the essay specifically to fit the magazine’s theme for March, and it’s not really something I would send somewhere else, so I’m going to share it with you today, at the end of this post. The theme was about luck, chance, timing, and the place those things play in our lives. The essay is called, “Playing the Hand We’re Dealt.”

While I’m on a positive note, I was thinking it might be fun to look at what I posted one year ago today, and it was the Creative Nonfiction Conference at Ole Miss. What a great time!

Also had a good time watching the season opener for my favorite TV show last night,
“Saving Grace.” Grace (played by Holly Hunter) has a new partner this season, Abby Charles, played by Christina Ricci, and so far I like their chemistry together.

And just read a good story in The New Yorker, “Brother on Sunday,” by A. M. Homes, who wrote The Mistress’s Daughter, which I reviewed in a blog post last May.

So, we’ll see what the rest of “Clean Week” brings. Each day for me is definitely a struggle to embrace the fast, to pray more, and, as the Prayer of St. Ephraim says, to “see my own sins and not judge my brother.”

At the Lenten Compline service at St. John last night, the hauntingly beautiful minor key music to one of my favorite Lenten hymns began to draw me back to what’s really important: “O, Lord of hosts, be with us, for we have none other help but thee, in times of sorrow. O, Lord of hosts, have mercy on us!”

And now, here’s my essay which was cut from skirt! this month. Hmmmm, maybe it contains another message about dealing with whatever life gives us—computer lock-downs, leaky faucets, publishing disappointments and all.


Playing the Hand We’re Dealt

My parents taught me an early—and inadvertent—lesson when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s. They were serious bridge players, and whenever their bridge club met at our house, I was allowed in the den to watch the adults play, so long as I didn’t bother anyone. They often played duplicate bridge, which fascinated me. When each trick was played, instead of the winner gathering the other players’ cards into a stack, the cards remained with each player until the end of the hand. Then all of the cards were returned to four slots in a duplicate “board,” so that the original hands remained intact. When each hand was over, the couples rotated tables and played the hands that were waiting for them in the next board.

By the end of the evening, each team had been given the opportunity to play the exact same hands as everyone else. Final scores were tallied based on how each couple performed with this equalizing factor. In regular “contract” bridge, even experienced and gifted players at the master level can’t succeed without being dealt some pretty good cards in the course of a tournament. But in duplicate bridge, it’s not so much about the cards—it’s about how you play the hands you’ve been dealt.

Maybe this early childhood lesson colored my taste in games for the rest of my life. I’ve never enjoyed gambling, or any games that depend entirely on chance. In junior high school I learned to play Michigan Rummy—an interesting type of poker—during summer vacations at my best friend’s family’s vacation house on the Mobile Bay. Maybe there was some skill involved that escaped me, but it seemed like winning was all about the luck of the draw. But I guess even gamblers have to “know when to hold ’em.”

Or when to turn in all your Scrabble tiles for new ones, even at the cost of missing a turn, when you know you just can’t increase your score with all those one-point letters. Last summer, and during the Christmas holidays, our daughter was home from graduate school, and she and her dad and I spent many hours playing Scrabble. This could have been an intimidating pursuit for me, since my IQ pales in comparison to theirs, but surprisingly, I seemed to win as many games as they did. Sometimes I thought it was because I’m a writer and spend hours every day with words, whereas my husband is a scientist and my daughter is an architect, so their energies are more focused on numbers and shapes and statistics and lines. But it also takes a creative edge to do the kind of work they do, so at the end of the day, I often attributed my relative success to luck—I must have gotten better tiles. Is it really that simplistic? Or is it possible that I actually made better use of the tiles I was given?

When times are hard, and even when they’re good, it’s easy to chalk our successes or failures up to the cards. Lots of people are out of work right now—including some close friends of mine—and when I look at the skills, education and leadership qualities those unemployed friends have, it’s tempting to go to the old axiom, they’re just down on their luck. But doesn’t that mindset lead to feelings of helplessness, rather than opening the door for new opportunities? Unemployment could offer the “chance” to spend time with family members, pursue new interests, start your own business, or learn to look inward for validation and peace.

When I learned that I couldn’t conceive children, I didn’t waste any time dwelling on my “bad luck.” I set out (with my husband) to adopt children, and by the time I was thirty-six, we had brought three precious children home, one through a domestic adoption in Mississippi and two from South Korea. Thirty-something years later, I’ve learned to grieve the loss of the children I couldn’t carry in my own womb, and I’m learning to help my grown adopted children grieve their own losses, but I have a hard time thinking that the family I’ve been given is the result of something as arbitrary as “luck.” The lessons we’re learning together—and individually—are the results of the choices we are making as we evolve in our relationships with each other and in our individual lives.

We’re all faced with choices on a regular basis. The abused wife can choose to stay or walk away. The unappreciated employee can choose to accept her place with humility and find gratification elsewhere, or take a risk and leave during a time of economic depression and nationwide unemployment. The frustrated church member can hold her spirituality close to her heart, whether she chooses to work for change that she believes is needed, or to wait quietly in the wings. Maybe the gambler was right. Whether we believe that life is a game of chance or that there’s a higher power in charge of the cards, there are a few rules we need to know if we’re going to survive: We don’t just have to know when to hold ‘em, but also when to fold ‘em, when to walk away, and when to run.

As White As Snow

The New York Times has two articles recently about the new Kindle 2. The first one was on February 9. The second one was today. I’m impressed. My birthday is one week from today. Just saying. And now for a totally bumpy transition...

The SNOW is so beautiful! I think we got three to four inches here in Memphis, but I haven't heard anything official. I started taking pictures yesterday afternoon when it was first coming down.
I love the closeups of the tulip tree branches, but I hope those baby buds don’t freeze to death.

Here’s a huge tulip tree a couple of blocks from my house that’s in full bloom and now heavy-laden with snow. I’ll watch it’s progress over the next few weeks.

And last night as I approached the doors to St. John Orthodox Church for Vespers, the bell was still being draped in the falling snow.

That's John McGee, shoveling snow off the front steps so no one will fall coming inside.

And here’s the dogwood tree my daughter, Beth, planted with her Girl Scout troop when she was about 10 or 11 years old. All grown up and glowing. (The tree, and the daughter. She's 26 now.)

Every time I pass by that tree, I think about Beth. He she is, in her uniform at a meeting at St. John. (Did you other parents notice how shamelessly I slipped into that excuse for posting a picture of one of my kids?)

Today my next-door-neighbors' little girl was building a snowman. Here she is, beside her proud achievement.

And here’s her mom, interviewing her on her phone video. You can bet that’s going out to friends and family today!

This little snowman was spotted in front of a restaurant in midtown. We stopped to take a picture after lunch out with friends from church. I wonder which of the waiters sacrificed his tie and hat?

So, when I got home I just had to get into the act. So I built a tiny snow cowgirl and put my Build-A-Bear’s hat and boots on her. Voila!

(You’re wondering why someone my age has a Build-A-Bear, right? It was my daughter’s gift to me just before I had surgery in January of last year. Her name is “Scrubby,” and she went with me to the outpatient surgery center.)

The snow reminds me of the old hymn that says, “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” Today is Forgiveness Sunday in the Orthodox Church. Tonight we’ll have Forgiveness Vespers. Here’s a nice, personal blog post (from 10 years ago) about Forgiveness Vespers, by Frederica Mathewes-Green. And for the more liturgical types out there, the complete service for Forgiveness Vespers is here. The most important thing is that we enter Great Lent without holding grudges. We get a clean start. Like the snow.

We’ll say to our fellow parishioners, face to face, one by one, “Please forgive me.” And as each of them asks our forgiveness, we will answer, “God forgives, and I forgive.” And we’ll exchange the kiss of peace. Well, it’s a hug, but it signifies peace.

I’ll send e-hugs out to my own three children and several Godchildren and dear Orthodox friends who live out of town, making sure we’re at peace as we enter this school of repentance that Great Lent is. Tomorrow. Clean Monday. And to all who are joining me on the journey—good Lent. And please forgive me.