Wild Apples

Memories

Memories of my Grandmother Luretta Hart Powers Hutchinson come to me more often as I myself put on the mantle of grandmotherhood.  I remember my three-year-old self, walking the potato field with her, buck naked except for one grape leaf, talking and watching her skill at the task.  I still remember her telling me to dig carefully so that I would not crush the potato.  And I remember the magic of the moment when that beautiful, golden globe emerged from the soft earth.

I remember driving with her in her big old (always old) car down the long lane to get the mail.  And I remember her calmness as one wheel skidded off the edge of the bridge we had to cross.  Grandma was a terrible driver, but that didn’t stop her.  Looking back she never seemed upset when something unexpected occurred.  Acceptance.  My grandparents lived in several houses during my childhood.  Grandpa was always trying something to make a living:  the coal mines, farming, a gas station, a repair shop.   Nothing ever seemed to work for him.  I remember one house they lived in with a wild and beautiful woods close at hand.  Just the place for nine-year-old to go adventuring with her old yellow dog named Mike. 

In her big old kitchen I can see Grandma patiently cleaning the chickens she had recently killed. She could wring a chicken’s neck lickety-split. If there was a crowd for dinner she could wring two at once.   I remember the smell of singed pin feathers, hard to associate with the delicious meal that was sure to follow. 

 I remember, too, playing with my mother’s youngest brother, Clarence E., affectionately known as Shorty while the aroma of Grandma’s cooking made us drool   He would talk me into sneaking into the kitchen and stealing a piece of chicken, thinking that Grandma would never suspect me, but knowing if he got near, Grandma would shoo him out.  I always did as he wanted and was ignobly captured.  She grabbed me from behind, chicken leg and all, laughing and warning me to keep my little fingers out of things.   Warm chicken, warm kitchen, warm memories.

It took a lot to shock my grandma.  It took a lot to get her angry.  In fact, I saw her sad, happy, thoughtful and even in pain, but I never saw her angry.  I can remember her sense of humor and her warmth, but never her anger.  One Christmas Santa brought me a Betsy Wetsy doll, and when I diapered it, I was shocked at the "pumpkin pie" spot  in the diaper.  Yes, Grandma Hutchy had put it there, and I’m glad she had such a big laugh at my expense.

And the warmth:  I remember coming in from a cold ride from the city and asking her to "fry me some milk”   That was my term for her delicious gravy mixed with the hot homemade bread that seemed always to be popping from her oven.  The oven was an old wood stove, always warm and always ready to produce her wonderful meals.

 There was no coldness in Grandma’s kitchen.  In her later years she lived in Somerville, Indiana, a very small town that time had passed once the coal mines played out.  The town consisted of one small grocery, a bar and two churches.  But rent was cheap, and Grandpa thought he could make a living doing repairs in the rundown shed attached to the old house they rented. 

 The floors, covered in linoleum, had been laid down many, many years previous.  An old Victorian oak desk occupied one corner, and a stove stood in the center of the room.  A Mission style couch and rocker were the only other pieces of furniture.  Drab.  Sad. But I remember the warmth.  Grandma would sit at the desk on Saturday night, doing her Sunday School lesson, a kerosene lamp shining down on her gray head.  When she finished, Grandpa would do his lessons.  My Great-Grandma Hart would be rocking silently and safely in the corner.  Sometimes Grandma would retire to the front bedroom to do some sewing.  She mended for people and sewed her own clothes.  She accepted her life without complaint and from this poverty radiated a great deal of the warmth I felt as a child.

          Poor, she may have been, but Grandma’s kitchen was the richest in town.  Neighboring friends would come in to chat, and Grandma always made them feel welcome.   Her ear was the psychiatrist’s ear of that small town, and her greatest gift was the ability to listen. 

I remember her deathbed.  Acceptance.  Peace and pain, fighting the cancer that took her life, that she  might have survived had she taken care of it early.  But true to her spirit, she put it off, saying, “I was worried about how Dad could get along without me.”  

Mother cried and railed at the poverty in which my grandmother had lived, but Grandma lives in my heart and soul as though she had been as rich as the Queen of Sheba. 

So what was her journey about?   “... To accept uncertainties quietly, even our incomplete knowledge of God."  I hope that she has passed a bit of her heroic wisdom on to me:

 

An Empty Quiver?

Some fool begins to chase the shadow, running after it so far that he becomes exhausted,

Not knowing that it is the reflexion of that bird in the air,

not knowing where is the origin of the shadow

He shoots arrows at the shadow;

his quiver is emptied in seeking to shoot it.

The quiver of his life became empty; his life passed in running

hotly in chase of the shadow."

 

Masnavi, Jalal Ud Din Rumi, Nicholson translation, lines 419-421.

 

" The quiver of his life became empty."  As I am putting on the monkish robes of age, I feel over my shoulder and check my quiver.  Are there any arrows left?  Have I spent my life chasing shadows?  Yes, I fear that we all are guilty of using our life's force in ways that are useless, or even unproductive, but isn't it possible that every now and then I have used my arrows wisely? 

 

A second question is, do I have any arrows left?  Is my quiver empty?  Unfortunately, I know some who at my age have lost the gleam in the eye, the hand on the throttle and the desire to pick up our bow and make a decisive thrust at life once more.  Tis a pity!  The sports hero who can no longer throw the ball, the businessperson whose advice is no longer sought, the mother who has lost contact with her grown children, the socially involved who have lost faith in what they have been doing;  these are the sad residue of a spent life. 

 

It would be folly to assume that any living man wishes to spend a life shooting arrows at shadows only to end up near the end of life with no fire left in his gut, and yet it is very unclear what we should be aiming at, or where the real target is.  What purpose is this life?  Is leading the life of an ascetic the way, or is generosity toward my fellow man my goal, is trust in God enough, or should I try to become powerful and use my power to fight for God as I see him.

 

Should I trust my senses to tell me of life's purpose, or should I search for the spiritual moment that seldom appears?  There are more questions than answers, but I have no sense that my quiver is yet empty.

 

 

 

Capital is the Fruit of Labor

"I know up at the top you are seeing great sites,

But down at the bottom, we too should have rights"

Yertle the Turtle, Dr. Seuss 

    Yesterday proved to me that every day has some form of inspiration attached to it.  It started out as a less than sought-after experience.  Ninety-five mile an hour winds bore down on Denverand swirled around our home with a power that only nature can create.  In the process, down came this very large tree in our yard, knocking out electricity on our street for many, many hours.

    We sat, we froze, we warmed our new puppy in our arms and we wished, fervently wished, for a warm cup of coffee!  Yes, a less than perfect day.  Thankfully, just before twilight, two crews of stalwart men descended upon our yard, chainsaws and mighty tools in hand, with an awesome task - how to dislodge this large, many branched monster from the wires that were designed to bring us warmth, warm food, light, refridgeration etc etc. 

    As I watched them work, even I could see the danger these crews faced and at the same time, I was  fascinated by the skill with which they worked to free the wires from this very determined tree.  It was an extremely difficult job, and one that required knowledge and skill that one only learns on the job and only because the men envolved knew just where to put a rope, just where to saw a branch was the task accomplished, and thank God, not one of these hard working gentlemen was injured.

    As if directed by baton, the tree men moved from the scene and 4 gentlemen wearing day lights on their helmets moved in.  Our darkening back yard was filled with something that appeared to be aliens from another planet. Up the poles they went, strung new lines they did and moved on to the next pole, the next transformer, and the next deadly serious job that needed to be performed- all in the dark.

 

    I was fascinated by their skill and hard work.  I don't know what their salaries were for this job, but they earned every penny.  Both the tree experts and the public service workers were performing dangerous tasks.  Electrical dangers, falls, and the danger of being crushed by this large tree as it fell were all part of the job these men did with no complaint.  I knew they must have  had children and wives at home waiting for them as the night sky darkened to black and I knew that as they climbed and prodded and did their job, my world would become more pleasant because of their focus and courage.

    Have we begun to lose the respect we had for the working man; the kind that Carl Sandberg extolled; the kind that built this nation and fought its wars?  Barack Obama is right.  It all begins at the bottom.  No CEO works as hard as these men with cleats on their boots.  No financial guru makes life more available to more people than the woodsman, the electrician, the train engineer, the airline pilot, the home builder, the carpenter, the road and bridge builders and those who get up very early every morning, put on their helmets and do the job of this country.

    I wonder if we have not been incorrect in our ability to judge the worth of our working men and women by sending jobs overseas and keeping the financial experts here.  Perhaps we should have sent the financial genius to India and kept the online workers here!  They are the heart of America

; it is because of them that America has always been a land of opportunity. It is sad that we have to rebuild that base and the respect for work we once possessed – something we should never have lost. 

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." 

                                                                        Abraham Lincoln

Words, words, words!

 

I wish that I could buy at the shops some kind of
india-rubber that would rub out at once all that in my
writing which it now costs me so many perusals, so many
months if not years, and so much reluctance, to erase.

                                                Henry David Thoreau, Dec. 27, 1853

    Henry has been observing the snow and its ability to disguise and clothe the countryside and in true Thoreauvian fashion he uses it as an analogy of a common writer's problem.  Question is, do we handle the problem of word choice or verboseness  well in 2009 – or indeed, is the erasure problem more of a dilemma today than it ever was in Henry's time?

    True, today we can erase and change our words with great speed and efficiency, but do we?   If ten words are good, are not twenty words better?  We have the ease of delivery but do we have the wisdom to know when we have said enough?  Consider the 'reluctance' factor that Henry speaks of?  Are we too fond of our words?  Yes.

        To quote Pythagoras,

"Do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in a few." 

OK.  Blog away my friend, but please say something. 

Chasing the Higher Law(s)

    I just reread "Higher Laws" in Walden. What a wonderful chapter and how beautifully Thoreau uses the English language. He deals first with the thought that man has two natures, a higher and a lower. He discusses hunting in this regard, but we'll skip over that part to

 "the true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched."

     He ends the chapter with the story of John Farmer who sat at his door one September evening. He heard a flute and 'the sound harmonized with his mood.' Henry describes a moment in which the sound of the flute triggers an inner voice in John,

"Why do you stay here and live this mean moiling life, when a glorious existence is possible for you?" said the voice.

    He ends the chapter with John Farmer's thought and it seems to me that this is the thought of all who yearn:

"All that he could think of was to practise some new austerity, to let his mind descend into his body and redeem it, and treat himself with ever increasing respect."

    What a glorious sentence! Higher laws is well worth a reread, I think. We talk so much about how we see the spirit, the higher law, or whatever one wants to call it, but what Henry is saying, is something I learned in 1st grade Sunday School. "Open up your heart and let the sun shine in." Is it really that simple?

        When the infidels begin to storm the walls of the castle, it is the peons who rush to the king and beg to be saved. When the crops are bad, it is the peons who run to the castle with bowls outstretched crying "Please sir, some more sir!" When a plague strikes the fiefdom, fear sets us trembling and rushing to the peaked hats to save us and give us light more light.

        Lux, semper lux! Always light - but no one tells the peons how to intelligently pick the Lord of the fiefdom and effectively work to create the kind of world they need.  Should our chosen leader have to pull a sword from a stone - and why a sword? Why not a shepherd's staff? Should he have to be a he?  Should he be compassionate? Well, I want compassion for me and mine, but not for that shiftless trash down the road. Make them sweat!

        I read somewhere that what we call a democracy is really more of a feudal society; we want someone to save us and speak for us.  Have we forgotten that anything worth having is worth fighting for.  Have we forgotten the work and pain that made our labor movement, our women's suffrage movement and yes, our civil rights movement?

We will not have the Lord of the Manor who will save us from all evil unless we know what we want and are willing to work for it.  Who would have believed that the American people could have raised almost a billion dollars to elect a black man for president!  It was more than all talk that pulled that off!

Let me quote Henry Thoreau here: Journal, June 18, 1854. In previous entries Henry is attacking the state for its attitude toward slavery and he says

"Men may talk about measures till all is blue and smells of brimstone, and then go home and sit down and expect their measures to do their duty for them. The only measure is integrity and manhood."

 

 

How To Become Practically Perfect

I sometimes feel we all show the mental alacrity of the governor of Illinois! Our economic woes could be solved by letting the consumer drive the market by their needs, not by their wants and the wants of corporations. My son is Director of computers for a pasta making company and their stock is way, way up! When the people are broke, they eat pasta! When the people are poor, they buy cheap things! Business here is fine in Walmart, Sears and Target. Colleges - same way. Time has a good article on the plight of the small liberal arts college. At $38000 a year there aren't as many takers as there used to be and lots more demand for financial aid! The moral for most Americans is clear - scale back, cut down, live simply! Duh! Where have I heard that one before? What was it Thoreau told us over 160 years ago? Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned here - a woman I know who cleans houses said she wants to give her son everything she didn't get as a child - now here is a desire that is putting tremendous strains on that family. I asked her if she didn't feel that she would be raising him to expect too much in the way of material things - she said she thought he should expect a lot. "A lot" to some people means all the gadgets and goodies of an extravagant lifestyle. "A lot" for others means a rich loving family with other goals and aspirations rather than the accumulation of goods. Let us define 'the good life' more readily in our media and government programs. Let us make cars that will be good for the environment and develop advertising and media presentations that make that something the people desire. (I'm not sure we know what we want until someone tells us!) If we continue to collect Hummers like flies on flypaper, we are dead as a human race. We decry the downfall of the daily newspaper, and yet it is we 'oldies' that still take the paper. If we don't support it it will die. After all this meandering around, we really don't know what is good for us. We wait until time and lack of concern turn the page of history, and then say, "OHHH, the sky is falling! Help! Help! What have THEY done to us???" Yes, let's not make fun of the Illinois gov. He's no more stupid and self-centered, and lacking in solid goals than most Americans. This turndown has made a slight change in my thinking: I refuse to buy anything from China. We have cut way back on this spending orgy we call Christmas. I have put on the sweater and turned down the heat and I drive a '95 Previa and don't intend to change that at the present. This winter is a time I have set aside to go through the trash we have collected in 50 years of marriage and get it to people who can use it. It is a winter to tidy up our Ark to keep it from sinking in this tide of stupidity in which we find ourselves. Do you see my halo and my pulpit?? Yes, you're right - like Mary Poppins, I'm practically perfect in every way!! ;> )

Clancy

    It's the little things that add the ornaments to our tree of life. As Christmas approaches, we once again give thanks for life – for the joy of experience, the love of friends and family, and yes, we give thanks even for the tragedy of loss. It is from loss that we learn to cherish and is from cherishing that we learn to love.

    Cherish – love – oneness. It all fits together in the grand scheme of the Great Teacher . We experienced something like that this Christmas season with our Boston Terrier, Clancy. Clancy was our dearly beloved eight year old member of the family. Clancy wouldn't have been allowed in a dog show if he had bought a ticket. If he had been human we would say he was born on the other side of the tracks: born in a puppy mill and adopted by us at a time when we foolishly paid no heed to the necessary questions to ask in order to get a well-bred puppy.

     Clancy was 35 pounds when he should have been 20. He was the bull in the proverbial china shop; a clumsy, oafish, utterly loving bit of nature! His ears never stood up and he was, physically, more than a bit flawed. However, in the love department, no one outshone Clancy. He could love you up with gusto and you always knew when he needed love – and he needed a lot of it. Clancy never met a bit of food he didn't like, and he never saw a human tush that didn't just ask for a wee nip He just didn't like to be ignored, I like to think. Others think that he badly needed to be taken to a dog trainer!

   A year and a half ago, Clancy developed a small wart-like thing on his side. We consulted our vet, and she removed it, telling us it was a 2 plus cancer. It could spread, but it might not. And so we hoped; humans always hope, at least until unreasonable fear or cynicism takes over. Well, our hope was in vain. 3 weeks ago Clancy started coughing – this croupy kind of cough and he developed a rash on his over-grown tummy. Cough, rash and a baseball sized tumor in side that tummy. The cough worsened and Clancy began to have seizures, obviously with a lot of pain. Yes, he had 5 seizures and we knew that our little bull was fatally damaged.

    There is a large hole in our family. Nobody clumps onto the bed in the middle of the night, tromping on all bodies therein. No one greets every guest with undue enthusiasm, and it seems so quiet. We have filled our dog-need-space with Emma, a 9 week old Boston – picture attached. She can't take Clancy's place, but she is fast creating a place of her own.

    Ah me! We will have lots of pets waiting for us if and when we get to the rainbow bridge, and each in his turn has added his joy and his pain to our lives. I wouldn't have gone this way without each and every one of them, for it is the little things, the little creatures that add so much to our love quotient and teach us what it is to feel the emotions of life. We cherished Clancy and I like to think that he loved us. Goodbye old friend.

Knowing Is Not Perception

Knowing Is Not Perception

I’ve known her - like forever,
But knowing is not perception.
Watching, as in a far-off place,
tears spilling from her eyes,
I wondered if I had ever
even tried to be so close.
I wondered,
Can we stand such familiarity in our
Narrow, self-centered world?

“Mother was alcoholic, and…
and…I didn’t really know what that meant
to me. Until just recently.”
This said at 56 years old.
“It changed us all, my brother, my sister
And me.
And when I saw her, down in Arizona
As she lay dieing – caught in the consequence
of her illness,
I couldn’t believe the pain I felt.”
Years later, here and now,
the tears still flow. Sadly,
A permanent part of her everything.
A permanent unknowing.

She wiped them away and I listened.
Bless my heart, I listened! I didn’t offer solutions,
I didn’t offer advice – for once in my selfish life,
I just listened.
Can we stand familiarity in our
Narrow, self-centered world?
Can we ‘just listen’?
Can we bear to hear the ‘unknowing’ of our friends?

Spring Wonder

Totally amazing!
Unbelivingly awesome!
Almost too small to be called a tree
the April buds winking at me
as childlike eyes,
wrinkling their noses
under the slight skiff
of Spring Snow.

Each pale green bud
covered with cotton white.
Hundreds and hundreds;
touched by some hidden hand
with a brush filled with
snowy flakes.
Viewed by one whose breathe is caught
in a moment of disbelief.

As sand, or seashells, or flakes of white
we inhabit the buds
on which we are placed;
winking and loving and
Emblazing
our corner of this earthly
twig.
Take a deep breath and wrinkle your nose!

Sue