ALL QUIET ON THE BUCKET FRONT

 Silence has descended on us again.

The house is suddenly very quiet. We had an influx of visitors who came to meet my California family.  It was quite  lively here on Wednesday  when  my cousin Louise (connected to me on the Mowry side--my paternal grandmother's  people)  dropped by with her husband Frank. I love to talk to  Frank because he is full of Pawtucket memories.

 When I mention a person or place it is like TWO DEGREES OF SEPARATION.  He  knew their family or the street that they lived on, or their brothers etc.  He  ran a  variety store in downtown Pawtucket on Main St so that means that he has that kind of  knowledge of people and places.  I recall going into that store for joke gifts or stuff for Halloween.  He and his wife are  lively and very smart. They travel constantly and they eat out every day.  What a couple.  They brought a coffee cake to devour with our regular daily tea time.

  We were joined by another friend Elaine who teaches at  Providence College.Elaine was one of the students in the first class that I taught after I graduated from  college. She was in my 9th grade homeroom at Saint Xavier  Academy in Providence. She  shares my passion for the dramatic arts and has begun to write plays in the last five years with some success.  So she also brought treats to  share  with tea. Thus we were a happy chatty and well fed crowd,  I loved the way the chatter and tea  kept flowing. My husband who is from India brews a perfect cup of tea--Irish style and kept all the cups filled.  It was one of the best gatherings that I have  enjoyed recently. 

I love to be with people, and  when I was in good health I went out all the time.  But now the  writer side of me  has finally found the peace and quiet to emerge and takes up much of my time. And  creative work  requires some degree of peace and quiet. So I would say that a more introverted self has emerged. I do miss the fun of the convivial settings and I do wish that my husband were not so silent. But this is the hand I am  holding now and it is the hand that I must play.

Yesterday, the day of the departure of  my grand daughter Rowan and her mother I dreaded the moment that they would actually  leave.  But the fact that two friends who used to teach at Brown and had retired and left RI in 2009 came back for a visit helped to  smooth over that terrible rupture of departure.

 I think of that  great song from MY FAIR LADY  "I've grown accustomed to your face,"  That perfectly sums up what happens with family that lives far  away.  You want to see them and when  you do it is fine and when they leave it opens the void again that  you had papered over.
 For a week I had the reality of my grand daughter and not just a distant  occasional voice on the phone. She  only texts most of the time.  The rupture of  her departure has left me bereft.

 I am grateful that Paul and Marijo had come by to visit and have lunch with us.  They had lots of stories to tell and  many travel experiences to share. They are a remarkably fit couple.  Their presence  when my darlings left  helped me to  not feel the pain at that instant and  not dissolve into tears.
    
 Those did not come until later last night when fatigue overtook me. (See TEARS, IDLE TEARS) But  I woke up feeling better today and I spoke to Charlotte in PA where she is having another short visit with her mother.  I hope that this trip produces a change for the better  for all of us. I saw their reality but they also saw ours.  It has given me a lot to think about.  I will ponder it in my heart.

BEAUTY AND The BUCKET

Sharing the Simple Pleasures  of  Pawtucket

My grand daughter and her mother arrived here last Thursday and I have been sharing the delights of  Pawucket with them,   Maybe because so much of my delight in  this place was shaped by childhood experiences,  I depend on memory and I see always what is not  here.  But  for my  guests I have  had to concentrate on what is still here or what has been added to enjoy this scene.

And I have  found things that I had been  looking at but really looking through--always  picturing what used to be.  My grand daughter Rowan cannot see what is no longer here. But she can see what is here and that has helped me to see these places afresh and with  some present day delight.  

The geese and their goslings in various stages of development were on full display on Monday when we visited Slater Park. So Rowan walked amidst them for awhile and was quite smitten.  

She also had a  positive experience  at Sunset Stables  at Lincoln Woods,  They  rode our together  mother and daughter through the woods with a small group of other riders, No mishaps and everyone happy if a little sore today,

Today they got off quite early to  get one of the fast  ferries to Block Island. And from all reports they are having a great experience On a special tour and had a lovely lunch.  They will come back to the Bucket tonight.  

I spent four quiet hours this afternoon  working on some of the FOUND poems from my past  that turned up in old journals or poem folders. Ones  I started but never tried to publish.

JUST NOT PERFECT ENOUGH! I am treating any that I still  think have something worth developing  as drafts and really find it fun to play with their form and improve sound and images.

REMEMBERING RICHARD GREENBERG

Norma Jenckes

June 17, 2018

NOW ALL WE CAN SEE  IS HIS BEAUTY

Saddened to hear of the death of an old friend. I met Richard in Urbana in 1967 when we were both attending the University of Illinois as graduate students. Although in different departments, we were introduced by a mutual friend and instantly clicked. Richard had a great sense of humor and also he was quite philosophical in an almost mystical way.

 Our time together at Illinois was only a few years, but through the good offices of that same mutual friend, we continued to keep abreast of the developments in each other's lives. I offer my condolence to Richard's children and their mother. Richard was extremely supportive of my son Joe whom he encouraged and helped after his graduation and move to NYC.

 In those years in the 80's I sometimes would also run into Richard and was always warmly welcomed to the Greenberg Associates offices in the city.  Richard with his brother Robert had started a  design firm RGREENBERG ASSOCIATES that soon became world famous for their extraordinary  design of film titles.

I do recall several lunches in Los Angeles in the 90's when I was visiting family. Richard's creativity was enormous and wide and he had taken his talents to LA. Once over a late lunch in a place in Venice Beach we both noticed the mist beginning to envelop the scene. And I recall Richard in his poetic way saying,

 "At times like this in the misty afternoon fog the dirtiness and sadness of LA seem to disappear and in the fog one can't see much but what we do see is finally beautiful,"

 I have not met Richard for several years, but I am certain that as the late mists came into his life as they do to us all, anyone who looked could see his beautiful soul shining.

I N LOOKING FOR  ONLINE OBITS, I CAME ACROSS THIS  HONEST AND AMAZING  ESSAY BY HIS  SISTER

http://www.chicagomag.com/arts-culture/June-2018/On-the-Life-and-Death-of-My-Brother-Dickie/

WAITING FOR A VISIT IN THE BUCKET

 MY darling grand daughter and her  wonderful mother are coming to town 

Yes, after a  terrible  period of two years I am expecting   to see my grand daughter ROWAN and her lovely mother CHARLOTTE tomorrow. I am so excited and also a little apprehensive.

Let me tell you--I am a mess.  I am afraid that they will be shocked  by how much worse I am than two years ago.  Surgeries, infectious  diseases and  stints in rehab  to recover have   taken  me down.  And I am not back to where I was two years ago--never mind back to  health.

I hate to whine but I do want them to have a good time here.  I have   kept my eyes open for events that they might enjoy and hope to get a list together.

I KNOW THAT WHEN ROWAN  USED TO  SPEND  A MONTH WITH ME EACH SUMMER  she liked the rituals of RHODE ISLAND--clam cakes and chowder, coffee milk, Del's Lemonade, time at the beach, and frequent stops at DUNKIN'  I can still provide those easily.
These were all so easy when I was living in the house in South Kingston and  had a pool in my back yard and the ocean at the Breachway less than a mile away.

And I could go and enjoy these things with her.  But this has  all changed. And I have very little mobility  or endurance. She is now 20 years old and is  coming  to spend  just 7  days.  So how can I best use that time?

Yesterday Mikey came by for a couple of hours and he  tried to make  the  study area of the  double living  room more  open and clear.  We had been using  it as a staging area  for  transferring the  debris  of  70 years that was stashed in the cellar, patio and garage into  more durable  plastic  containers, or relegating them to be given to the Salvation Army  or the Library or  Linn Health Care.  There are still too many books piled on the coffee table  and some  boxes of files and tax records heaped around the area  where I sit.  But as Mikey said about the two bedrooms that he helped me to make less cluttered  "They are not perfect but they are PRESENTABLE."

That was Mikey's word PRESENTABLE  and I think it is an apt one.  But I fear  that  Yash and I are not presentable.  Oh, I should not include Yash he is always   presentable.
But I have serious doubts about me.

HOW CAN I BEST RENEW OUR BOND  that  I fear time has frayed?   She has also been through a lot since we last met.  I want her to know that  I love and accept her just the way she is.
 NO CHANGES REQUIRED.

I learned from my   more than 4 decades in the classroom that ACCEPTANCE  and  ATTENTION and APPROVAL  are the three  A's that must be on a teacher's report card. Without them we cannot do our job.

I think that is true of  being a GRANDMOTHER--we must maintain a judgement free zone in the lives of  these  descendants, Even when we don't understand  their actions--especially when we don't understand.  They are facing a different world than the one we faced at 20--and it is NOT AN EASIER WORLD.  It is a scarier and a more unpredictable place.

SO I guess the best thing I can do is show my APPROVAL, GIVE HER MY FULL ATTENTION and 
let her know that I ACCEPT HER  TOTALLY>

Let's see how I do with that formula.
WISH ME LUCK AND A LOVING TIME. 

BEWARE THE IDES OF JUNE

So much new grief in June

Yesterday, Saturday, I attended a funeral at Oak Hill Cemetery in Woonsocket for the father Peter Vangel of my good friend and  champion of Oak Hill, Elizabeth.  The ceremony was grave side and so I was able to drive in and watch from my car.  I wish that I could have  been  more active. He was a jewel of a man and had a great career as an educator and superintendent of schools. It was a beautiful  occasion with a ceremony led by an Orthodox priest and a  Cantor. The sounds that filled the grave site were  holy and soothing.

 My friend Elizabeth has cared for both her parents for more than ten years. Her devotion is  only surpassed by her refusal to allow the dictates of others to tell her how to conduct her life and prolong the lives of her  parents. She regularly amazed friends and neighbors by spiriting both parents off to Block Island where they rejoiced in the ocean views and invigorating fresh breezes. 
She once told me that after her father's first hip replacement a phrase came to her head. You can either live dying or die living. SHE chose the die while living and that meant to her living life to the full.

I also mourn the death of a friend who did die living.  My dear friend from Cincinnati Jackie Demaline. She was the  Drama Critic for many years at the Cincinnati Enquirer  and we became close friends  when I was the drama specialist at the University of  Cincinnati.
 It is rare to meet anyone in life who shares  your passion for a subject. So meeting Jackie added greatly to my life and my work. She and I would concoct schemes for new  organizations or events to promote drama. 
To name just two-- I began with her help and instigation and with other interested people  the Theater of  the Mind--a play reading series at the Mercantile Library and The Cincinnati Playwrights' Initiative to produce  readings of new plays by local playwrights at the Aronoff Center.
She was a great Provocateur and she was witty, feisty and dynamic. Also loving and kind.   I will miss her and so will the many friends that she made. 
 I made the move to get to know her better when in the 1990's I was invited to one of her legendary Birthday Parties --I missed the last in May. 2018.  There we were in a  small restaurant--Jackie ate most meals out in public. And I was  late. When she saw me, she rose from her chair and came forward to greet me with a hug.

 I don't know what  inspired me but I was moved by the warmth of her gesture to  answer in kind.  And without expecting to and without planning, I recited out loud a little poem that I knew as a child.
(with apologies to Leigh Hunt who wrote "Jenny Kissed Me")
I  proclaimed:
JACKIE KISSED ME WHEN WE MET
JUMPING FROM THE CHAIR SHE SAT IN
TIME YOU THIEF WHO LOVE TO GET
SWEETS INTO YOUR LIST, PUT THAT IN

SAY  I'M WEARY,  SAY I'M SAD
SAY THAT HEALTH AND WEALTH HAVE MISSED ME 
SAY I'M GROWING OLD BUT ADD
 JACKIE KISSED ME.

So I send to Jackie in eternity this last kiss. May she continue  to  make us aware of her love and care by prodding us to do more  with our creative  energies. She always did.

Sometimes writing this blog I feel like the spider that 
Walt Whitman describes in his poem--

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

This is how spidery  I sometimes feel as I weave the warp and woof of these blog entries and toss them out  to the wilds of the internet. I guess that being old makes one feel more isolated and for me the   exploration of my own creativity  seems like the only and best option open to me.

That is why I am grateful  to my readers who comment--not because of what they say,  but because now I know they are there and it gives me  proof that some of the gossamer threads I throw out from here in Pawtucket do catch somewhere.

O MY SOUL

IF GOLD RUSTS, WHAT WILL SILVER DO? ANTHONY BOURDAIN ,RIP

MOURNING THE  SAD SUICIDE OF ANTHONY BOURDAIN

I could not believe my eyes when I turned on the TV late to learn that Anthony Bourdain had  taken his own life while working in France  on  his show  for CNN.

Strangely, I feel personally bereft. I loved his show and often watched re runs --I felt that I knew him. He was one of those people who seem to have everything to live for. What is the stigma that hovers around suicide?
What is the conversation that we  can have with the people we love about suicide. 
Why do we ask why? When perhaps it was an action of a momentary despair not a reason. Is it because we think that if we know why, we can avoid that condition and not fall to the same fate.

This is as far as I could get each time I tried to write something about Anthony Bourdain.  It felt both too momentous and too presumptuous. 

Then I came across some words written by a  Dominican priest :

It is when we are finally stumped, when we can think of nothing more that we can do. that we can most easily--though even then it is not simply easy-- appreciate that problems are not just things  calling for solutions. A problem is, more essentially, a unique situation calling for expression.  It calls for a poet, a painter, a composer. And sometimes in God's providence we may be that poet, painter, or composer. Each individual  situation in our world is an artistic rather than an administrative challenge.
 Father Simon Tugwell, OP

I thought that there is something profound here. It helps explain to me why I have been so disheartened by the response--they only can give us an administrative response -- in the news: mainly being the flashing of phone numbers to call  for a suicide hotline and earnest instructions about how to talk to  a person who is talking about killing himself.  It is the same sinking sensation that I feel when after each terrible school shooting  they bring out the bromides about the mentally ill or the need for more guns  in schools. It is deeply sickening and discouraging. And administrative-- not creative.
These are deep problems in our society and they reflect a profound social despair.  How can we respond to that creatively and see it as  moment for creative self-expression?

WE will miss Anthony Bourdain and I wish that he had been able to find a creative way to express his despair  rather than the FINAL SOLUTION of  Self--destruction. 
He had brought so many talents to the TABLE OF LIFE  and now he has left it early --there is an empty chair.

FLAVIUS BOUCHER and his GIft to Saint Joseph Church

MY FRIEND'S FATHER WAS A  SELF TAUGHT SEMI-LITERATE ARTIST IN PAWTUCKET

NOTE:  a version of this blog entry was published  on this blog on August 1, 2015,  I am reprinting it because  A reader asked if my friend Lucille spoke French at home. She certainly did. In those years many schools in Central Falls had half days in French. I learned my first French  by picking up their phrases --so I only knew the familiar forms.  But I learned so much more  from this family.

 Reading recently of  the theft of a small statue of Saint Joseph that was  adorning a small garden in the  yard of Saint Joseph's Church on the corner of Walcott Street and South Bend in Pawtucket  made me instantly  think of  a person who had once also created a statue for that same Church yard.
I pity the thief who took the  small, mass made object and only hope he did it out of  an overflow of devotion.
I want to recall the fact that once that Church yard held  original  artwork of a pious parishioner.
 I am thinking of  Flavius Boucher, he was  a semi-literate French Canadian  who was the father  of my best friend Lucille Boucher. He was also a self-taught genius of a sculptor in  granite.  Flavius was  an  extraordinary  human being with a  natural talent  for  cutting stone. Professionally he was a mason and stone-cutter. but he  went further.

 In the 1950s when  I was  visiting  his family  home on  Columbus Avenue everyday, he began  a miraculous self transformation to an artist in stone.  I could  not believe the  long hours he spent patiently finding the  forms and faces in the great blocks of granite that he  brought to his workshop  garage. He rigged a  hoist and  would  create statues  especially busts of such historical  figures as Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower, Pope Pius, and  even  heads of his three  children, Arlene, Lucille and Raymond. He would use a caliper to  measure their  noses and lips-- I was so  envious of  those  lovingly crafted images of his children.

 In my my eyes Flavius was  an ideal father.  He enlisted my  help  in his enterprise in an original and creative way.  Since he could not  read or write beyond the most basic  English, he asked for my help  because I  was known as  someone  who read obsessively and liked to write   poems. He instructed me  to read  aloud to him the  histories he found of the figures he was  drawn to recreate in stone.

Then after he had listened to me read and reread the encyclopedia entry he had found, he would try to create aloud a  brief  history of the  person and also a history of his own interest and of the stone itself to accompany the work he was  creating.  He would talk to me about the person, his interest in the person, and the special characteristics of the stone itself. Then I would  frame sentences  that  reflected what he was telling me.

  Remember--I was in grade school at the time.   I would read them back to him repeatedly until he was satisfied.  When  he liked the  way I had expressed his ideas, he would thank me and ask me to  write in print a copy of what we had  composed together.  Then he would  place that on a  cardboard and stand it next to the  bust he had completed.  I  never heard what  became of all the things he  carved  so  perfectly.  I know that he sold some of them,  I know that he  got orders  from some people  for specific  subjects to be carved,  I also know that many of his finished works languished in the stone dust of his work shop.

But he worked on--- and one of his works, a statue of Saint Joseph, he contributed to Saint Joseph's Church.  That statue is not where it used to be, and I am not  aware of how it was  moved or when, where or why.  I walked around the  church grounds that I had known since childhood. One day  several decades after I left Pawtucket, I drove to  my friend's old three- decker on Columbus  Avenue and walked around the large yard and tried to  see into the garages.  I could find  no trace of  the old stones or  the workshop. I don't even know when Flavius died because all of his children left Pawtucket and went their separate ways.

I do know that he influenced me  because of his originality, his productivity and his fierce  persistence in creating his art in a world that was largely indifferent to him.  He and others that I knew and cherished in Pawtucket also modeled  for me the kind of dedication  to art and to their  creative genius that impressed itself on me as real artistry and real intellectualism.

 Those relationships guaranteed that  I would never make the mistake of thinking that education and intelligence are congruent:  that  just because  a person is educated means that he is intelligent or  just because a person is not educated maybe even illiterate meant that they are not intelligent.  No, intelligence and creativity  are  like  birds that  can alight on' the  branch of any tree.

THE SECRETS OF THE DUGOUT AT MCCOY

Or what I learned from  baseball players

Yesterday, Sunday afternoon I took one more drive around MCCOY Stadium looking for any signs of that elusive BLUE POND.  I came down Columbus from York Ave  and turned  right onto Lake Street and I kept following it.  I could see between the houses lined up there to the parking and driveway around the Stadium that they all back up to and look down on. 
 Yes, the Stadium is on lower ground and it  looks like a large  bowl because it once was  a relatively large  pond.  All drained and  gone now--it can only live in memories like mine and maybe yours, dear reader. Could not even sniff out the stinky swampy remains.

 I could  find  no  signs of the Blue Pond.  At the end of Lake --it is a through street, I came out on Division Street just past the Stadium parking. I turned left and went the few yards and then turned left again into the Stadium entrance. A game was in progress and it was a  mild and dry Sunday afternoon. As I drove close up to the stadium  I  could see the familiar winding ramps and the gates at the top of them that I had  climbed over so many days.  My climbing days are over, but I felt such  peace and  happiness as a  wave of sound washed over me. 
 I wanted to go inside. 

I have always loved that moment when you finish your climb up the ramp and you enter the seating area  and look down at the rows of seats to that gorgeous emerald green field  hidden like a jewel in the very heart of the  building.  I also  always love a rain delay when  the crews com out and spread that enormous tarp over the  green grass. So beautiful.

But as I got older I seldom climbed the fence; there was an easier and more direct route in my childhood. I just walked  up to the main gates to the field and walked in--I did that if the man who was sitting in the little guard house to the  left of the gate was in a good mood.
Or if he was  reading his paper and didn't notice-- or if he was taking a little snooze. So most days one of those conditions was met and I walked in and  romped over to the dugout.  

There I was  well-received. I loved listening to the players as they practiced and commented  on the game. They sang songs and they often asked me to sing some of those songs that my father had sung to me  PISTOL PACKIN MAMA  and BEAUTIFUL BROWN EYES.
 I also loved chewing and spitting some of the pumpkin and sunflower seeds that they offered me. I imitated them, their walk and nonchalance and cool swagger. They seemed to me the essence of manliness. 
I never met a player I did not  like--I deeply imprinted on them and their ways and looks. Think of Ted Williams in his prime--that long lanky look, and his easy going and often laconic ways.
Think of Joe Dimaggio walking with the casket of  Marilyn Munroe --as one  commentator describes after his death:

Joe DiMaggio was probably the man in the actress’s life who had sincerely loved her the most - he supported her in the aftermath of her divorce from Arthur Miller in 1961 and arranged her funeral after her tragic death in 1962. Last and not least, he sent several times a week roses to her grave until his own death in 1999.

I came to admire that  kind of stoic faithfulness and deep if often hidden emotion AND when they released those pent up feelings--watch out!.
I loved the way that they would all rush  out of the dugout if any team member got  hit by a ball or started a scuffle with the batter. 
I learned about the signals  between the pitcher and the catcher. AND I  developed  a great admiration and respect for the catcher position because it is difficult and also carries a large psychological load. The  catcher must know how to read, please and calm the pitcher. This relationship is captured so well in BULL DURHAM and that is one baseball movie that gets it.

 Years later when I fell madly in love with  a man I met in Illinois where I was in graduate school, why was I not surprised when he told me that he had  played baseball in the minors. 
  

SCARY TIME AT DICK'S

MY MOTHER WAS RIGHT

If you have been reading the two other blog entries about Dicks you  know that it was a place where greasers with Ducktails lingered chugging cold sodas. I gained some place in their midst by chugging with them but mostly by keeping my mouth shut.

But one hot August day was different. There was more tension than usual--part of the charm. I was not paying attention to the quarrels AMONG THE DUCKTAILS. I knew only a few by name and even fewer ever spoke directly to me. 

They dressed alike. Their uniform was jeans, white t-shirt with cigarettes in one wrapped sleeve, and some had leather jackets, some had different patches on those jackets, and some had heavy black boots that Bikers wear. And some wore high tops.Some had bandannas tied around their necks. 

"What KIND OF A DAY WAS  IT?  
It was a day like any other day that alters and illuminates mankind and you are there". (Funny that just came back to me  just as  I was  writing this--that was the lead in to a favorite TV show of mine  I think it was called YOU ARE THERE. They would pick a  date in history and tell us the story of that day,)

This hot day during a chugging session an argument started. Everyone seemed to be shouting at once--something about a '51 FORD. Suddenly the sound of breaking glass caught my attention and  brought silence to the scene. One of the boys had broken a  soda bottle against the cooler and was standing with the broken bottle in one hand.  He called out another boy who stood up and  whipped the bandanna from his neck and  began to wrap it around his wrist. In his other hand  he was holding something metallic.

Suddenly a click sounded in the silence. He had a switch blade in his right hand and he started to circle the boy with the bottle.  Someone threw bottle boy a t-shirt and he wrapped it around his exposed  arm. I heard a man's voice shouting --"NO not here--take this outside."
  
But they kept circling each other and everyone backed away. Except me--I was frozen to the bench. Right in front of me, they were swinging the knife and the broken bottle. Then the jagged bottle made contact with the switchblade holder's forearm and blood started to pour out.  The switch blade holder jumped in a kind of startle reflex and lunged low at the other boy, his knife caught the bottle holder's thigh and cut open the denim. Bright red blood started to run down his pant leg. I must have been screaming  because someone told me to SHUT UP.
And they suddenly seemed to remember that  I was there.  The store clerk had by this time  moved to the door and was  holding it wide.
All of youse --GET THE  HELL OUT. 
 They surged in a mass out onto the sidewalk.

  I sat there and  the clerk came back and closed the door and locked it. Then he pulled down the shade in the window and turned the "out for lunch sign"  around. 

He looked at me and then he gave me some wet paper towels.  I then saw that I had some blood that had  spattered on to my blouse and on my arms.  I washed it off and  he gave me another orangeade.
  He turned up the radio on the counter for the baseball game.  He sat next to me on the bench and the stillness was broken only by the voice of Curt Gowdy calling the RED SOX .
"You should not have seen that," the clerk said.
"I am tempted to tell your mother, I know where you live."
OH, Please, I won't tell anyone.
Can you keep a secret? 
I promised I would.
And then he added something--and  never come back here ,
DO you understand? 
 I nodded, yes. 
He made me say the YES out loud. 
 He took the empty bottle from me and added it to the empties  in the racks next to the cooler. 
I offered him a dime but he laughed and said. MY treat.
And that was one secret of many that I did keep--not just from my mother--I did not even tell Lucille.
UNTIL NOW. 
      
I would meet these boys or their doubles later in life when they became a fixture of the White Tower that sat on the West side of the Main Street Bridge, some of it cantilevered over the water. 
BUT BY THEN I WAS A TEENAGER TOO 

GAME 4 -- BE GOOD OR BE GONE. BEGORRA

I HATE A SWEEP --NO BROOMS ALLOWED!

Settling in for the fourth and I hope not the last game of the NBA Finals.

I do not have my CAVS cap on yet--game has not started and  the  23 Jersey that I ordered from FANATICS the night the CAVS   won the Eastern Finals has  yet to arrive.
So if the CAVS lose  I know  who to blame.

I am not ready to join in the speculation of  where he goes and when LeBron leaves Cleveland. He should do what ever he thinks  is best for his family and  their future. Wherever he lands, he will improve the team and the city itself.

We are in the last five minutes of the half and  Cleveland has come back from an 11 point deficit to take the lead.  Then they start trading it  back and forth.  When the Cavs lose the lead,  the GSW smell blood and turn the aggression  up . When the Cavs lead by  just 1 point they relax a little  going down court and  GSW gets open looks and shots. So they retake the lead and add  to it.
The Cavs lack the  killer instinct.

And Curry ends the first half with a  3 pointer that  brings the score to a GSW 9  Point Lead. OMIGOD!

Now at the end of the third quarter the deficit is 20 points.

They did it again :
THE SLAUGHTER IN THE  THIRD QUARTER.

Now in the last quarter it has become a BLOWOUT

LeBron has  gone to the bench and there is 4 minutes left to play--but he will not play them.  He takes  the applause of the Cleveland  fans.  So the basketball season is over. 

A CLEAN SWEEP--I GUESS I DID NEED THAT BROOM!

SONGS OF CHILDHOOD

HAIL THE ETERNAL CHILD WITHIN 

Funny thing is that I still think of this song when any one disses me--or I think that they have  neglected me in some way 


 I don't want to play in your  yard
I don't like you anymore
you'll be sorry when you see me
Sliding down my cellar door.
You can't holler down  my rain barrel
You can;t climb my apple tree
I don't want to play in your yard
if you won't be nice to me.

That is a song that  I some times chanted to a girlfriend who lived  nearby. We were part of a trio--Kathy Rigly and Eleanor Cute and me--and you know how unstable triangles are  in terms of friendships -- someone is always feeling  left out.  And that some one was sometimes  me.

It was not until I was  in the 3rd grade that I made a friendship with a  girl in my class  who was  my best friend. We never fought and we did every thing together. Her  name was Lucille Boucher.

Other songs that I remember  that I sang or my mother sang around the house---
ALWAYS IN THE WAY  became a hit in 1903

Always In The Way

Please, Mister, take me in your car, I want to see Mamma,
They say she lives in Heaven, is it very, very far?
My new Mamma is very cross, and scolds me every day,
I guess she does not love me, for I’m always in the way.

Always in the way
So they always say,
I wonder why they don’t kiss me,
Just the same as sister May,
Always in the way,
I can never play,
My own Mamma would never say
I’m always in the way.

JUST BREAK THE NEWS TO MOTHER


BREAK THE NEWS TO MOTHER (Chas. K. Harris) **This song was was an 1897 re-write of another Charles K. Harris song, "The Brave Fireman" (written in 1891). It became a big hit the following year, 1898, with the outbreak of the Spanish American War While shot and shell were screaming across the battlefield The boys in blue were fighting, their noble flag to shield Then a cry from our brave captain said, "Boys, the flag is down Who'll volunteer to save it from disgrace?" "I will," a young boy shouted, "I'll save the flag or die!" Then rushed into the thickest of the fray Saved the flag, but gave his young life, all for his country's sake We carried him back and heard him softly say... Just break the news to Mother, she knows how dear I love her And tell her not to wait for me, for I'm not coming home Just say there is no other can take the place of Mother Then kiss her dear sweet lips for me and break the news to her >From afar, a noble general had witnessed this brave deed "Who saved the flag? Speak up, boys, 'twas a noble and brave deed" Then a cry from our own captain said, "Sir, he's sinking fast" Then slowly turned away to hide a tear The general in a moment knelt down beside the boy And gave a cry that touched all hearts that day "'Tis my son, my brave young hero. I thought you safe at home" "Forgive me, father, for I ran away" Just break the news to Mother, she knows how dear I love her And tell her not to wait for me, for I'm not coming home Just say there is no other can take the place of Mother Then kiss her dear sweet lips for me and break the news to her

AFTER THE BALL

After the ball is over
After the break of dawn
After the dancer's leaving
After the stars are gone
Many a heart is aching
If you could read them all
Many the hopes that have vanished
After the ball.

I looked these  songs  up on You TUBE--how wonderful to have this memory check so close at hand  -- and all these songs were written in the  1890s by a man named Charles Harris.  

        My mother was not born until 1910--so these must have been songs that her mother  learned  and sang to her. And I guess they were very popular in the early decades of the 20th Century. Harris was the  first man to sell  over one million song sheets of the same song.  The radio   gave people the chance to hear music in their homes. 

My father sang me to sleep some nights  and he had two favorites that I asked for over and over:
Beautiful Brown Eyes
Willie, I love you, my darlin'
I love you with all my heart
Tomorrow we might have been married
But ramblin' has kept us apart

Beautiful, beautiful brown eyes
Beautiful, beautiful brown eyes
Beautiful, beautiful brown eyes
I'll never love blue eyes again

Down through the barroom he staggered
And fell down by the door
The very last words that he uttered
I'll never see brown eyes no more

Beautiful, beautiful brown eyes
Beautiful, beautiful brown eyes
Beautiful, beautiful brown eyes
I'll never love blue eyes again

Funny to admit that years later I heard the  Song  "Brown -eyed Handsome Man"
And loved it.  Kind of the story of my life -- my father and any boy or man that caught my eye  had those Brown Eyes.  Early imprinting--I guess..

and Pistol Packin' MAMA


Pistol Packin' Mama by Al Dexter, 1943
Drinkin' beer in a cabaret And I was havin' fun!
Until one night she caught me right, And now I'm on the run
Lay that pistol down Babe, Lay that pistol down,
Pistol Packin' Mama, Lay that pistol down.
She kicked out my windshield, She hit me over the head,
She cussed and cried, and said I lied, And I wished that I was dead.
Lay that pistol down Babe, Lay that pistol down,
Pistol Packin' Mama, Lay that pistol down.
Drinkin' beer in a cabaret, And dancing with a blonde,
Until one night she shot out the light, Bang! That blonde was gone.
Lay that pistol down Babe, Lay that pistol down,
Pistol Packin' Mama, Lay that pistol down.
I'll see you every night Babe, I'll woo you every day,
I'll be your regular Daddy, If you'll put that gun away.
Lay that pistol down Babe, Lay that pistol down,
Pistol Packin' Mama, Lay that pistol down.
Lay that pistol down Babe, Lay that pistol down,
Pistol Packin' Mama, Lay that pistol down.
Now down there was old Al Dexter, He always had his fun,
But with some lead. she shot him dead, His Honkin' days are done.
Recorded in 1943 by Al Dexter, an ol' East Texas boy from Troup.
After my father left in 1953 I would ask my mother to sing them to me but she  refused-- said I was too old for that  lullaby stuff.
I get it now--it was too painful. 
My mother had to take a factory job and she worked the second shift. So I only had Anna there and it was us two trying to lull my sisters to sleep. No one was singing to me.

My mother started singing a new song around the house  by another Country star Ferlin Husky   "Since You've Gone".

Since you've gone the moon the sun the stars in the sky know the reason why I cry
Love divine once was mine now you've gone
Since you've gone my heart my lips my tear dimmed eyes a lonely soul within me cries
I acted smart broke your heart now you've gone
Oh what I'd give for the lifetime I've wasted
The love that I've tasted I was wrong now you've gone

(You can hear Ferlin sing this song on YOUTUBE and you will hear the longing dripping from every note) 
 Finally my Aunt Anna asked her to stop singing --it was all too close to the bone.
Notice that  I do not include the Irish songs.  The list would be too long--anything John McCormack  recorded. My mother knew them all.  One of her first purchases after  my father left and she had a regular  salary that would not be spent on horse racing was to buy a new rug and a new record player.
And then I discovered  a local DJ on the radio CHUCK STEVENS
and he opened the doors to musical heaven for me,

NEVER PERFECT

Waiting to get better

This has emerged as my problem--I wait to get better .

BETTER PHYSICALLY, BETTER MENTALLY AND  BETTTER SPIRITUALLY 

and promise myself that when I am better I will do the things I want to do. 

This seems to me to be a dangerous continuation of a self-undermining habit I have had all my life. I have often been waiting for more time or a better time to pay attention to my own work. I have not allowed myself to devote myself to creative work. 

MY job-- my teaching, my research, my editing, my scholarly writing all took priority. I think they did because they were not as scary--I knew that I could do them and not risk rejection. ALSO in the spirit that Bill Bellichek has made famous--I needed to do my job.

 I knew since childhood that teaching was my vocation, and I loved the time in the classroom. I also separated my intellectual life from my creative life--or I should say that I made my intellect primary, and I allowed my creative life to augment and enhance my scholarly writing and presenting.

I enjoyed being creative in the classroom and I encouraged  my students to be creative.

I wrote daily. I kept journals obsessively and I tried to  write down any good lines  as soon as they struck me. I was afraid that if I ignored them, they would stop coming. I figured that my inspirations were  like me:  they might visit  but would not come or stay where they were not wanted.

 I never put my writing of poetry and plays in first place--or not for very long. It was always something that I promised to myself. 

OH, I do recall a few times when I managed to give myself permission to just write creative  work.

  One wonderful semester in the Fall of 1981 our son Joe was off to his Freshman year at Duke University, my husband had a grant to do research on Canadian Theater history in the city of Winnipeg.  So I realized that I could  get an unpaid leave from Bryant College and  spend that time also in Winnipeg.

That I would follow Yashdip's daily agenda of all day reading and writing and  then come home and make a simple supper.

I walked from the 3 room furnished apartment that some friends of Yashdip's brother had  found for us near downtown Winnipeg to the University of Winnipeg in the city center.  Yash went out to the better research library of  the University of Manitoba. 

For the first time in my  adult life I put my writing at the top of my list of things to do. I wrote daily from 9 to 5 sitting either in the University Library or more often at a  table  in what they called the Buffeteria. So the supply of coffee and little snacks was always  present close at hand .

I was very productive, I was writing poems every day because I had no distractions of job, or research, or household or childcare for the first time since I was 20 years old. Now finally I was giving poetry 4 months --not much -- but more than I had dedicated before.  

LATER -- NOT NOW. Now I feel the pressure of time and the fact of disease and aging processes. These scare me and make me understand that in the immortal words of Elvis--IT'S NOW OR NEVER

SO perfect or not I will try to publish  my work and show it to people.

I will stop the false shyness and  recognize that I do the work for the joy of self-expression.  THIS BLOG has taught me that. Do I  like having readers?  and getting comments and feedback from them?  Of course I do.

Would I write if no one read the words or commented on them. YES, I WOULD --I DID for years.

Well the evidence is right before your eyes.  I have  kept this blog going for years with  no sign of readers of comments.

How nice it is to have three followers and some readers who leave comments.  And the  count of page views  tells me there are more out there.  I know because I  read blogs without always  leaving comments.

The creative  joy is in the experience of  writing and clarifying my ideas --I am a person that has  kept a  journal  since college.  The  joy is in the act of writing and expressing myself. I write to the future, I am leaving a record of my thoughts and of life  here and now.

I just received a great encouragement in this eye on the prize  of the future  when I read the most recent issue of ROOTS the journal of the RI Historical  Society.  In this issue they have published a precious testimony that calls across the years "The Journal of Anna Maria Angell Arnold, 1867-1869"  a journal of a young mother nursing her invalid husband returned from The Civil War until his death.
She wrote to the future and the journal was treasured by her grand child and published now. 

And I and many others are reading it and blogging about it in 2018--what greater testimony to the sanctity of remembrance. 

GAME THREE --- REDEMPTION OR DAMNATION??

READY OR NOT --HERE WE COME

Hope that tonight they all come out to play.

SO far so good in the opening minutes. I love the pass to the  backboard by LeBron and then jumping in to catch the bounce back and  dunk it in. Spectacular control. 16-4 largest lead for the CAVS.  Keep it up.

Well the dream stayed until the half and in fact even survived the notorious THIRD QUARTER SLAUGHTER.

I did not lose faith until the last five minutes of the game. Then KD showed his dominance and no one could guard him--maybe no one can!

So here we are  the series has gone to 3-0 and Jalen has taken out his  broom.


But we still have another  BASKETBALL GAME  and I would be the last to  predict  a CAVS loss-

THAT WAS WHAT I NEVER WANTED TO HAPPEN!

HE AIN'T HEAVY.........

HE'S MY TEAM MATE

Well, LeBron finally fessed up--he does feel like he is doing more than his share and it  is exhausting.

WHY AM I NOT AMAZED? 
And why is the  press corps acting like this is some scandal ?

You heard it first here--even LeBron gets tired and discouraged--he is a human being.

What I have often marveled about is how LeBron is so upbeat and how he finds the place for optimism in a dark mine of  pessimism and doubt that some people seem to live in and throw their dark fears at him.

Will the CAVS win the  FINALS?  I don't know.
I pray that they are not swept by the GSW.
AND I hope that the cheers of  the Cleveland faithful rally the entire team and they give enough back to the effort to bring them victory.
May the basketball gods smile favorably on the Cleveland three-pointers tonight.

Like all of us, LeBron has shown  himself to  be human --all too human. 

FORBIDDEN PAWTUCKET

BEFORE WE GO BACK TO DICK'S VARIETY 

Let us take a detour to the  Blue Pond

it is the only one  of all of the five forbidden zones that  is now completely erased from the  landscape of Pawtucket.

How did they manage that?  
I mean 
1.only the Barrel Yard is completely intact  and
2. the DUG-out at McCoy Stadium.
3. Dick's Variety is no longer in business; but the building that housed it is still standing.
4. The Back lots are there,  but they have become the place  for a  large trailer  park
5. THE BLUE POND IS GONE

Where are they hiding it?  I know just where it used to be. I have driven in the back streets that run off Columbus Avenue and  border the Stadium  --nothing there --but houses.

I still know  how to walk there,  and I have retraced my steps from the backyard of my girlfriend Lucille's house which sit as the first  house on Columbus and right across from the Back Lots.

On a cold  winter night after I had  finished helping to do dishes I would sling my  ice skates over my shoulder and put a few  big raw potatoes into my coat pockets.  I would almost skip down Rhode Island  Avenue and could feel the reassuring thud of the skates  against  my back.  I ran into the warmth of Lucille's back hallway and knocked on her first floor tenement door. 

Lucille was usually ready; she  would come out with her skates and a  quarter pound of  butter that she had sneaked from her fridge.  We would go out the back of her house and into her back yard.  Her yard butted  up to the parking so in minutes we were walking over to the right and we would pass the back yards of  other houses lined up on Columbus. 
When we reached a  woody area we followed a narrow path and often times we could already see the fire blazing there that  boys had lighted  on the frozen shore of the pond.

Why was it called the Blue Pond? Because the water in the pond was colored a dark indigo. AND when that water froze it created a miracle of a mirror that we skated on. As the night darkened, the moon rose, the flames of the bonfire ignited,  it became an enchanted place.

My contribution to the enchantment  was the potatoes in my  pockets--we laid those on the edge of the fire, When they were tender, one of the  gloved boys would snatch them from the fire and  Lucille would produce her butter. One of the boys with a  knife would cut the potatoes in half and would  place a large  hunk of butter on each. That hot buttery potato on a freezing night under the stars was the best treat I have ever had--nothing has matched it  or even come close.


HOW CAN A CITY LOSE ANYTHING AS WONDERFUL AS THAT?

Maybe if I had access to old city plat  maps I could find the lost  wonder.  I know that I did not  just conjure it.

In fact  sometimes in the summer I would go looking for it and  it was hard to find,  The area  was more overgrown and the  main clue was the smell. Follow your nose.  It was a slimy swamp with blue-black oozing water and bright green  algae  blooming on the surface.  Someone  told me when I asked that it had  once been part of a bluing factory,which is part of a manufacturing process in soap making.

I wonder if that swamp was all that was left of the pond or small lake that had been drained or/and diverted and filled in to construct McCoy Stadium. After all, the street that  runs off  Columbus Ave and  runs along the line of the Stadium parking and drive is called LAKE STREET.
So maybe this odoriferous, black ooze of summer time filled with croaking frogs and transformed to a magic mirror of stars when it froze in  winter was all that remained and was that lake's revenge.
But now there are only houses--so someone built a house there and someone is living there.
So whoever owns a house on Lake Street built in the late 50s or after and wonder about a strange smell in your cellar some summer days.... now you know.

PASS IT ON -- I NEED AN ORANGEADE  AT DICK'S.
Let's go there .


  

GAME 2-- I' LL KEEP THIS SHORT BUT NOT SWEET --

This is feeling all  too familiar:
  DO NOT SNATCH DEFEAT FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY.

Sarcastic calls of MVP from the GSW fans when JR misses a free throw. 
Playing well is the best revenge.  Well, they could not make it happen and Curry was on a roll. Back to Cleveland

POETS IN THE BUCKET

 IF POETS DON'T CELEBRATE POETS, WHO WILL?

.

In the next Pawtucket Arts Festival I would like the poets to project the image of POETRY as a BIG TENT.\
  I would  love  us to put the emphasis on inclusion.

MY FIRST INCLUSION WOULD BE TO DROP THE  LINE BETWEEN ELITE AND POPULAR CULTURE

  After all the Nobel Prize in Lit went to a  singer-song writer;;

BOB  DYLAN.

"I Want You" (Blonde on Blonde, 1966)

The guilty undertaker sighs
The lonesome organ grinder cries
The silver saxophones say I should refuse you
The cracked bells and washed-out horns 
Blow into my face with scorn
But it's not that way, I wasn't born to lose you

That is just one--anyone reading this  above the age of ten  could add a  half dozen more.

 Leonard Cohen's death has caused many of us to look at his  books of published poetry and his great song lyrics.

 “Anthem”

One of Cohen’s most popular verses urges us to accept our shortcomings with this superb metaphor — “Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering/There is a crack in everything/That's how the light gets in.” In interviews, Cohen says he agonizes over his verses, sometimes taking years with one song to perfect his meaning. “Anthem” gives us permission to express ourselves imperfectly. Human imperfection, after all, is what cracks open the self to reveal the soul’s inner workings.

We are surrounded  by poetry in our lives and young people are listening to poems when they listen to  music and their lyrics.
So my SECOND inclusion would be to include  people of all ages.

MY THIRD INCLUSION WOULD BE TO  INCLUDE  NON ENGLISH POEMS,  And since Pawtucket has a large Hispanic population I would begin by featuring poems written in SPANISH  and the experience of Spanish speaking people here

Translation for Mamá What I’ve written for you,

 I have always written in English, my language of silent vowel endings never translated into your language of silent h’s.
 Lo que he escrito para ti, siempre lo he escrito en inglés, en mi lengua llena de vocales mudas nunca traducidas a tu idioma de haches mudas
. I’ve transcribed all your old letters into poems that reconcile your exile from Cuba, but always in English. I’ve given you back the guajiro roads you left behind, stretched them into sentences punctuated with palms, but only in English.

 He transcrito todas tus cartas viejas en poemas que reconcilian tu exilio de Cuba, pero siempre en inglés. Te he devuelto los caminos guajiros que dejastes atrás, transformados en oraciones puntuadas por palmas, pero solamente en inglés.

 I have recreated the pueblecito you had to forget, forced your green mountains up again, grown valleys of sugarcane, stars for you in English.
 He reconstruido el pueblecito que tuvistes que olvidar, he levantado de nuevo tus montañas verdes, cultivado la caña, las estrellas de tus valles, para ti, en inglés. 

In English I have told you how I love you cutting gladiolas, crushing ajo, setting cups of dulce de leche on the counter to cool, or hanging up the laundry at night under our suburban moon.
 In English, En inglés te he dicho cómo te amo cuando cortas gladiolas, machacas ajo, enfrías tacitas de dulce de leche encima del mostrador, o cuando tiendes la ropa de noche bajo nuestra luna en suburbia. En inglés

 I have imagined you surviving by transforming yards of taffeta into dresses you never wear, keeping Papá’s photo hinged in your mirror, and leaving the porch light on, all night long.
 He imaginado como sobrevives transformando yardas de tafetán en vestidos que nunca estrenas, la foto de papá que guardas en el espejo de tu cómoda, la luz del portal que dejas encendida, toda la noche. Te he captado en inglés en la mesa de la cocina esperando que cuele el café, que hierva la leche y que tu vida acostumbre a tu vida. En inglés has aprendido a adorer tus pérdidas igual que yo
. I have captured you in English at the kitchen table waiting for the café to brew, the milk to froth, 6/3/2018 

What a great poem that  enacts the problem of translating in the very poem itself.
How I would love to hear this poem read by a Spanish speaker and an English speaker.

Celebrate other poets who have lived and  written poetry in Rhode Island.
For example--

 Nancy Sullivan who was a prominent RI poet who taught for many years at RHODE ISLAND COLLEGE just died this past year.

We could  bring her work forward in some way.Also contact all of the people who are teaching poetry in local colleges to be part of the Festival and to  promote it with their students.

I think also  that we  should do a bit of research to see the  history of poets in Rhode Island. We always only seem to know Galway and the lovelorn  time Poe spent in Providence,   Surely there were so many more. Let us celebrate them

I throw these Ideas out because I hate the way poetry is often presented as an elite experience whereas we are hearing, remembering and reciting poetry every time we  sing along to our car radio-- must admit I do that daily.  And do not overlook rap music--the lyrics are everything.

I am putting these suggestions  forward  in the spirit of Patti McAlpine's request to me and other poets  for feedback about how to celebrate Galway Kinnell at the Pawtucket Arts Festival in the upcoming September. . All ideas and responses are welcome.