The water is again rising at an alarming rate in Houston, in Texas, in Louisiana, Mississippi, etc. And on a Halloween Saturday at that. Unfortunately, there’s no candy to be found in my house–trust me, I’ve searched–but there are always books and (as long as the electricity stays on) coffee. If you, like me, are planning to turn off the lights, stay in tonight, and maybe read a spooky story, I have a few suggestions: Ghost Summer: Stories – Just a tip: don’t download this to your e-reader late at night and immediately start reading it. It’s not conducive to sleep and the stories will suck you into Tananarive Due’s fictional Gracetown where ghosts and monsters may be part of everyday life, but shouldn’t be mistaken for…
Posts from the “Photo Essays” Category
Willie and George with Baby Georgia, circa 1943
My maternal grandmother died just this past month, but had she hung in a while longer, she would have turned ninety on September 7, 2014. My grandfather was her one and only love, and they’d been married since they were teenagers. Like many Americans of the Great Depression era, their lives as children had been difficult, but their love was both enduring and redemptive for them.
George was a young Marine during World War Two. He ended up landing via submarine in Japan, where his platoon fought in the famously brutal battle of Okinawa, where he lost all his men and was himself shot, but survived. Willie, like millions of other American wives, waited for him back home with steadfast loyalty, and hoped and prayed that he would be returned to her in one piece.
My mother, Georgia, who is the little girl in the photo, was born in the middle of the war, and Willie and George would go on to have two more daughters once it ended. So, I never knew them as they are pictured here, but funnily enough, it’s how I like best to remember them: young and fresh and somehow innocent despite the serious challenges they’d already overcome, and those they were no doubt facing when the photo was taken (circa 1943). Maybe they just made people tougher back then, as I know a lot of men and women of my grandparents’ generation who embody a combination of dignity, stoicism, quiet wisdom, and grace that is not evident in the generations that followed them. My parents-in-law are of this same generation, and are cut of similar cloth, though they are English. As my mother-in-law was speaking of Churchill over dinner two nights ago, she said, “He was a real statesman. We don’t seem to have statesmen any more.” Indeed.
These songs are unabashedly sentimental, but they are wonderful, too, and they comforted a lot of separated lovers through more than one war. So, here’s to you, Willie and George. I’ll be seeing you.
1944 HITS ARCHIVE: I’ll Be Seeing You – Bing Crosby (a #1 record) – YouTube.
Bobby Darin – Beyond the sea – YouTube.
▶ Shirley Bassey :::: Hands Across The Sea. – YouTube.
We have some cactuses growing in pots on our back terrace. They are pretty and harmless, unless touched … or, so I’d thought. I had never really looked at them up close until recently. Robin took some photos of them out in the sunshine, thinking that I might enjoy them, and looking at the results made me realise two things: firstly, that I really like the aesthetics of cactuses, which I’d never thought much about until then; secondly, that we are harbouring an alien colony, which may or may not be planning to destroy us.
Nevertheless, they are tiny, so I think we don’t have to worry just yet. Having said that, anyone who ever read The Day of the Triffids understands that all it takes is a random catastrophe to strike humanity, permanently weakening our capacity for self-defense, in order for botanical horrors to take over our planet. And to think that people have been worrying about zombies all this time.
This one is pretty, I think …
Before my husband and I married, he lived here in Melbourne, and I lived in Houston. We talked on the phone daily, usually during his mornings and my evenings, but that would vary, and the time of day we spoke would inevitably influence what was taking place in our surrounding environments. The first conversation we ever had about possums, which are nocturnal animals that frolic in the Melbourne suburbs come twilight, went something like this:
Him: “There’s a possum in my garden and I am watching it as I talk to you.”
Me: “Ugh. You should shoo it away. They are revolting. I am an animal lover, for the most part, but I find it hard to love feral rats and possums, and possums just look like gigantic rats to me, anyway. Besides, can’t they carry rabies?”
Him: “We don’t have rabies in Australia. Anyway, I think they’re beautiful creatures. Your Opossums must be different from our Possums, I think.”
Me: “Oh. Well, that’s not fair. How come you haven’t got rabies? And, seriously, Australian possums are beautiful?”
“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.”
~ Edith Lovejoy Pierce
“As a writer, I can think of no greater terror than confronting a blank page, except perhaps the terror of being shot at.”
~ Richard Castle, Naked Heat
It seemed like such an good idea: I’d take myself to lunch. Tea. Croissant. And a blank journal. A blank journal may or may not be an ideal companion. Its pages stare mutely at you as you sit, pen poised, listening to the buzz of conversation around you. It doesn’t ask how your holidays went. It doesn’t inquire after friends, family, pets, or the traffic on the way over. It just sits and, in the words of Uncle Remus, “don’t say nothing”. So I sat among the people who had the good sense to bring a human to lunch and had a private conversation with myself, inside the world of the journal. And by the end of lunch, the journal was a little less blank and a little less mute. Not a bad way to start the new year.
Texas Hill Country Vista
First, a few things I love: a great view; revisiting someplace and finding that I still love it or, better yet, finding something new to love about it; and a good story. I also have a great fondness for dessert, but that’s another list.
We’ve driven right by this spot at least twice before on the way to Alamo Springs Cafe (for their a-mazing burgers), but we never stopped to check out the view. It was worth stopping for. As we stood and admired, the kid asked about the structure over to the left. I told him it was probably a fire lookout tower and that it reminded me of a story.
Sometime in 1936 a girl took a walk in the woods of western Louisiana with a girl friend. They came upon a fire lookout tower and climbed up to check out the view. In addition to a view, they found a sleeping man. He was the CCC volunteer assigned to man the tower and was happily sleeping off the previous evening’s fun. The man awoke to a girl with big grey eyes and a dark ponytail peering at him. She was a shy 17 year old in a blue pinafore. He had a rakish grin, was 26 and, worst of all, was “Louisiana French”.
Of course he immediately began pursuing her. For two years he courted her with compliments and gifts and promises. The thing that eventually won her over was when he paid to have her mother’s remaining teeth removed, and then covered the cost of her dentures. He proposed, she accepted and in 1938 they were married. And then in 1939 they had a baby girl, my mom.
So, I explained to the kid, a fire tower like that one was responsible for my standing there, admiring that view.
Don't worry, the roaches and I will be around for a long, long time.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about the apocalypse–actually make that the apocalypses. Not that it’s a new obsession. My theory is that as soon as we had something to lose, we started worrying about someone taking it away. Growing up, I heard lots of talk about THE Apocalypse, but that was mostly on Sundays and the idea that Jesus might be a zombie almost never came up. But nowadays it seems to be apocalapooza* with possible supernatural annihilation coming from all directions.
Zombies are a popular possibility, as even my co-blogger has noted. And of course we are constantly at risk of attack from vampires and werewolves. (Except Alcide, he’s clearly on our side–but I digress.) It’s a good thing we have the government keeping us safe from the bogeymen. I’m just assuming that the presidential monster killing mantle got passed on after Lincoln, but I haven’t seen the movie yet so I’m not sure. And speaking of presidents, apparently we Americans expect our president to take care of all sorts of invasions, even those from outer space.
Yahoo!, with its usual helpfulness, is here to help us prepare. Recently they listed apocalypse-proof homes in their real estate section. They were a bit pricy, especially for the end times when funds will be in short supply (I assume), but it’s good to have the pointers anyway. Which brings up the question: what will I need for the apocalypse? Canned food, safe water, durable clothing, garlic and silver, and, maybe most importantly, several good pairs of reading glasses. After all, what’s the point of a good apocalypse if you can’t enjoy it?
*I think I just made up a word!
Photo by Sandra Peterson Ramirez
My fav cowgirl combo, with white tights and panda shoes, circa 1969
Nostalgia is a funny thing. I find, as I age, it becomes funnier still, or perhaps curiouser and curiouser is a more apt phrase. With some regularity these days, my long-term memory tosses up random files from the Life Narrative Archives of my brain.
Of course, if we are honest with ourselves, Freud and I both know that this memory selection-process is not random at all. These moments of reverie are triggered by my present life looping back to my past in subtle but poignant ways. Sometimes, it’s the way sunlight slices through a room at a particular time of day; or the texture of a shirt I’ve dug out of my closet, that’s still wrinkled from its last wear; or the feel of a sandy wind blowing across my face, on a certain patch of beach, at high tide.
My introduction to the idea of a zombie apocalypse came early, as I was not yet four years old when my parents loaded my older sis (who was six) and me into the back seat of the family car and headed off to the local drive-in to see Night of the Living Dead. We watched the terror unfold as most children do, with our eyes peeping through our fingers, and frightened squeals spluttering from behind our palms. At random moments, my mother would take exception to some grotesquery and slap at our heads, ordering us to “get down, don’t look!” which would prompt my sister to assert herself as the elder sibling by shoving a pillow over my face – ostensibly to protect me…
These photos really need a sound track. As I’m creating this post, I have this running in the background so I have an accompaniment of bird and bugs and perhaps frogs chirping away. There’s also the hint of a breeze rustling the trees and high grass. For me, that is the sound of Texas. Not the traffic and the constant construction of the city, but the almost quiet of nature. The only thing that trumps it is rain on metal, whether it’s a tin roof or a window unit air conditioner. And of course after the rain all the singing and chirping and buzzing returns.