Dr. Seuss had it right: “… and the people you’ll meet”

Photo by Carolyn Hoggard

 

 

When this blog post hits Facebook , I will have returned home from a week in the Ozarks. I go there each April and each October, and bask in the beauty of the place called Little Switzerland. I also attend a 3-day poetry retreat on either end of both weeks’ stay.

Before I left home, however, I determined to take flowers from the yard with me since they would likely be gone by the time I returned. I found the largest container on the place, filled it with water, picked a variety of flora and added stems to the water. Now, how to get it to stay upright for four hours of driving? I spied an old stewpot, placed the vase in the center, laid rolled-up dishtowels about halfway up, then dropped hands full of marbles and colored stones until the vase was solidly wedged in the pot. Voila!

At dinner the day I arrived, I met a needle felter from Chicago. She was ending a two-week residency at Dairy Hollow. Have any of you done needle felting? Do any of you know a person who is a needle felter? I never heard of the phrase/ artistic process. [Google "needle felter": you might be amazed, too.]

This 68-year-old woman who flew into Highfill in North Arkansas, then took Fuzzy’s taxi to Eureka Springs and Dairy Hollow, was surprised to be accepted at, she said, a “writer’s colony.” But the director assured her there were other types of creative activities that happened there. Fiber artists, composers, culinary pursuits—all are welcome.

After dinner, we “toured” each other’s suites, and I was lucky enough to actually see what in the world she meant by different types of “felting.” Not the craft store felt—“that’s crap,” she said. The basic material is actual sheep wool, carded but not spun. It comes in long ropes the size of the old-timey coils some women used to roll their long hair on and fasten around their heads.

After that, we made plans to hike up the rough gravel path to the Crescent Hotel the next morning with the aid of our hiking sticks. I wanted to buy a newspaper. We did, talking all the time except when we needed to get our breaths back.

 She was leaving at one p. m. At her door after our hike, she said, “Wait a minute,” and soon brought out a little plastic bag of six, needle-felted toy balls for cats. “Throw them in the air, then watch the cats scamper after them.” I want to show them to someone before I give them to Greye and Bibbs.

Since I had brought some copies of A Journey of Choice with me, I said, “Would you like one of my books?” Of course, she said yes (what else could she say?). “I’ll read it on the plane back to O’Hare.” Thus, a one-day acquaintance ended happily. We have already been in touch.

Another bit of serendipity about our meeting: My second book, Her Face in the Glass, has a woman from Chicago who moves to the Ozarks to pursue her yen for writing.

Is that not a coincidence?

 

Blogging: Serendipity and spring

 

 

                Without a leading for this week, I searched through several catch-all books. Not finding “April” in the lists, nor “Spring,” I put them back in place. Abutting the last book I shelved, a thinnish hardback standing there--without a title on the spine, or author—piqued my interest. Pulled it down, and just guess what? A book entitled . . . serendipitously. . . WHO TELLS THE CROCUSES IT’S SPRING?

                I looked no further; this was it! The subtitle was “Favorite Poems of the Four Seasons as published in Farm Journal. Compiled by Pearl Patterson Johnson, published by Countryside Press, a division of Farm Journal, Inc. Philadelphia, 1971."

                “From the hundreds of poems printed in FARM JOURNAL magazine over the past three decades, [here are] 135 of the most representative seasonal verses. . . .” she said.

                I'd purchased this book four years ago from The Purple House in Eureka Springs—the hospital thrift store—for fifty cents.

                Since April is National Poetry Month, I’ll print a few. If you wonder about the typography, the slashes denote new lines. Somehow, in posting, the lines are double-spaced. Which I don't like. So, until I learn how to make them single spaced, I'll use this format.

                IT’S SPRING! IT’S SPRING! – by Mae Winkler Goodman

                “Who tells the crocuses it’s spring?/ What calendar informs the daffodils/ To bloom, or notifies the birds to sing,/ Or bids the grass to blow across the hills?/ What messenger instructs the buds to break,/ Or violets to lift their purple heads?/ And yet they know. They know. This is the hour/ When spring takes over. Let the winter pass--/ You cannot keep it from the wistful flower, / You cannot hide it from the eager grass. / It’s spring. It’s spring! The news has got around, / Spreading like fire across the quickened ground.”

                A RED-LETTER DAY – by Yetza Gillespie

                “When every budding maple wears/ On every twig a gilded locket, / When ponds are loud with clicking frogs/ Like marbles in a small boy’s pocket, //

                “When well-bred goldfinches ignore/ The ribaldries that bluejays utter/ At picnics where the grass is spread/ With dandelion pats of butter, //

                “Then you may ring the calendar/ With scarlet, though it shine or rain, / And run outside without your gloves, / For April has come true again.”

                DAWDLING WINTER – by Meryle Moore Simpson

                “This backward spring reminds me of the way/ The children used to think of everything/ At bedtime—any quick excuse to play/ Another hour: the drinks—remembering/ Small joys they had not told—prolonged good-nights--/ Good-night, good-night, again, again, again./ Closing the door and turning out the lights/ Was never final as it should have been./ A coyote, wind, a cricket’s harmless noise/ Was cause to fret, and I had not the / heart/ To chasten them. Now winter time enjoys/ Playing a similar, slow counterpart: / Reluctantly still dawdling in the snow/ Long past the hour for frosty days to go.”

                SPRING HOUSE CLEANING – by Blanche A. Hjerpe

                “I’m short of breath, my heart beats fast/ When nature is a-greening; / I’ll bet you think that I’m in love--/ It’s just from spring house cleaning.”

                May spring put a spring in your step, the aroma of flowers to your nose and a smile on your face.

c 2015 by Pat Laster dba lovepat press

 

Spring springs, then swarms

Tax time again - during the best part of spring--PL

 Easter, taxes, yard work, more yard work, tax deadline, impending trips, chapter revisions—you who longed for spring for so long (ahem), I hope you are not in the same predicament. Of course, all gardeners are deep into dirt.
 

I’m deep into a ‘do-it-yourself’ project: a sidewalk from the front porch to street-side’s mail and paper boxes. I saw a beautiful example last year on social media (FB) and shared it. It would take too many precious minutes to locate it again, so I’ve used what materials I have, plus river pebbles and several stepping stones from Home Depot. [photo on my FB page]
 

It will replace the mere stepping-stone path I put down several years ago, which stones have either sunk into the grass, or broken in the weather extremes. The hardest part of the new project is digging out the lawn grass so it won’t overtake THIS venture. About a sixth of the way done, I’m hoping to have it finished by July 4. This year.
 

Another area I want to make into a faux patio has undergone much cleaning of broad leafs --not counting the mullein pinks  which I call lamb’s ears-- and the addition of 3 small red azaleas (4 for $10 at Home Depot). The only thing potentially untoward is if the neighbors moving into the house south of me are noisy. Bird noise I covet, but please, no human racket.
 

Speaking of noise, wait till the subdivision to be built on the north is inhabited in its projected 120 lots. Maybe I’ll have to build a privacy fence on all four sides!
 

Then there’s taxes—mine and Kid Billy’s. I decided to join the crowd and do them online. Bad idea! It asks questions I don’t know the answers to—like specific sales of investments during the year. When the IRS quit printing out the instruction booklet, they failed us who can read and who can at least attempt to do our own taxes.
 

The federal tax online workup is free, but the state one costs from $12-$20. No fair! If it says "free," then it should be free.
 

Easter Day is history, but in liturgical churches, the season of Eastertide lasts until Pentecost. We don’t just exult for one spring day that Christ is risen—but celebrate throughout several more weeks, until the celebration of the descent of the Holy Spirit.
 

This Easter day is only the second time in my life that I didn’t attend church on this high day. Oh, I was GOING to—to Zion Lutheran in Avilla with my widowed aunt, whose granddaughter’s wedding I played several weeks ago. But with two evenings of hefty yard work plus the cold wind hitting my ears all that time, I just KNEW I’d be ‘stove up’ on Sunday morning, so I called the night before and begged off.
 

That morning, I felt no painful results of my labor (thank you Lord), so I sat on the porch swing and meditated in a one-person sunrise service. As I told a friend, the crows were my brass, the robins, flutes, woodpeckers provided percussion and the doves cooed arias of hope. The ubiquitous wind was worshipfully quiet.
 

 

May your wintertime dreams of spring projects become realities—at least by summertime.

##



An outtake from the sequel to A JOURNEY OF CHOICE

 

From the pen of CELLEY REDD, acting editor of The St. Luke (Missouri) Banner.

St. Luke’s sheriff Zeke Jasper had his hands full Saturday night when a party guest from Arkansas, disguised as a Frenchman, attempted to harm the hostess, Mrs. Liddy Grindle. He presented her with a Christmas gift “to open later—when you’re alone.”

         Back in September of last year, Mrs. Grindle, editor of The Banner, had ferreted out the shenanigans of St. Luke’s school superintendent and wife-secretary. They manipulated a school board election by publicizing the election of their own cadre of candidates, none of whom was nominated.
 
         Even though it had been over a year since the couple and their entourage of five adults abruptly left St. Luke after setting the school on fire, the Hoosers apparently had not forgiven The Banner for outing them.

          In September of this year, they made a trip to St. Luke. Leah Hooser endeared herself incognito with the owner of the Blue Plate Diner, who invited the new woman to the local book club meeting.

          This is where our source heard the gypsy-dressed lady bad-mouth both the school and the newspaper. Before leaving the meeting in a huff, the woman said they were headed north to "take care of some business," and then they’d be back to St. Luke for the same reason.

           Since the boardinghouse held wall-to-wall party guests last Saturday night, it is unlikely anyone noticed the French-looking couple who came in with Mrs. Queen. Anyone, that is, except Liddy and her closest friends. When the man presented her a gift, Liddy recognized the fragrance she’d smelled when he’d ordered her out of his office sixteen months ago.
          
           She surreptitiously summoned the sheriff––dressed in plain clothes––and told him her fears.  She asked him to check out the gift. He and his three deputies prepared a space on Depot Street far away from vehicles and dwellings in case it was an instrument of death. Or dismemberment.

           According to the sheriff, the Hoosers, still under the impression that no one knew their identity, left the party early, their mission partially accomplished.

          When the couple saw activity near their vehicle—also disguised with paper strips advertising “French Dance lessons”––they had nowhere to run. They were handcuffed together, but were asked to open their gift to Liddy.

          They refused, and Sheriff Jasper knew Liddy’s suspicions were correct. He shot his pistol through the container. It exploded, scattering debris throughout the area.

         The Hoosers, handcuffed together by their inner wrists, dug their predicament deeper. Using their cuffed arms, they gave the sheriff a terrific uppercut, knocking him backwards.

         Suddenly, from behind, Xann Price, with two quick motions to the necks, knocked them to the ground, unconscious.

          Before the two could recover, their cuffs were removed and refastened so that both suspects wore their own bracelets.

END OF OUTTAKE.

~~~~~~~

            Why not get your name on my “reserve-one-for-me” list? Her Face in the Glass will be formatted in softback and e-reader and should be published by the end of 2015.

c 2015 by PL