Merry Christmas, as merry as possible in 2020!

 Venison-based chili

 

                It’s Saturday morning. The tree’s not plugged in, much less decorated, although it is set in place, ready for my ministrations. The mantel has various things on it, waiting to be fleshed out in a holiday array. Four containers of Christmas stuff sit on chairs or on the floor.

                While son and I were in the attic yesterday, I cleaned out all the drawers of an old bureau from Mom’s era: veneer fronts that had peeled off in many places, the hardware on one drawer missing, so I decided since Eric was here to help, to get rid of the drawers leaving the shell for tall storage items. Today, a wood-worker friend Stanley came by in the light rain and took them away. While he was here, he metal-detected.

    In the top drawer of the chest was a blue shoebox of old tree decorations from who-knows-when. But the box looked sturdy. “aerology/ by AEROSOLES. “ Curiosity got the better of me, even with the time passing minute by minute.

                From what the internet had available, I discovered that this company began in 1987 and one of their products was a comfort shoe for women. I’m presuming now, that one of Mom’s children either bought her a pair--and that accounts for the box—but it doesn’t give any clues about where the tiny ball and bell-shaped ornaments came from. One other ornament was a foil-covered ball attached with a chenille stick. Another was a small metal cookie cutter also with a chenille hanger. Could these have been from our tree in 1942 when we moved into this house? Could these be from Grandma Flossie’s (Mom’s mom), hence the first Mrs. Severn’s collection? We’ll likely never know, so it would be a fine topic for a piece of creative non-fiction, or a poem.

                

            But I digress.

            Yesterday, I concocted a Dutch-oven-full of venison-based chili, and a recipe of fudge using only a jar of peanut butter and a container of vanilla frosting. The instructions didn’t say the cook needed the brawn of a lumberjack to mix those two foods into a fudge. But, with the help of a wooden utensil, I did it. After it cooled in the fridge, as per recipe, I had to taste. More fluffy than other fudges, but good. (How could it not be good?) With overnight chilling, it was even better today.

Perhaps before the day's over, I'll decorate the tree and the mantel. Or perhaps tomorrow. It'll get done in time for sure.

                Merry Christmas! 

c 2020, PL dba lovepat press, Benton AR USA

Looking ahead then looking back

 

Beautyberries close up

 Now that the election is over—if it IS over and decided—we can get on with our political angst (on both sides) and set about to straighten out our part of the country—if it needs it. We can concentrate on how to navigate the upcoming holidays.

Our family Thanksgiving plans, like many others I presume, are cancelled. 

But, to sort of make up for that, I am involved in two other fun activities. One is our monthly writing group meeting next Wednesday, meaning that BFF Dot is overnighting at Couchwood so we can both attend. 

               

The other is a new event: hosting the local poets meeting. Our regular gathering place, the main fire station, is closed for the year. For the past two months, the group has met at a pavilion at Tyndall Park. But plans are that mid-November temps will preclude meeting there again. So I volunteered. That gives me the opportunity to decorate the front part of the house with all the fall-motif collections I’ve amassed over the years.

Let me finish out goings-on at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs that I began last week. On another day, either Saturday or Sunday, we stopped at La Familia for lunch. Again, we were masked and seated ourselves at a booth near a wall.

Lunch boxes—many, many lunch boxes--decorated an upper shelf as far as we could see. Patrons sometimes stopped by close to us to gape at them. I don’t remember ever carrying a lunch box to school, but I remember Dad’s black one, about as large as our mailbox, with a tall thermos inside. I’m drawing a blank about what Lydia ordered but I had a taco salad.

The weather during the week until late Thursday was raw—cold, windy, raining, or rainy. We stayed in and wrote. Monday night was communal dinner in the Main House. Though there were two other writers around, they’d chosen to eat in their rooms. Greens/veggie salads, pureed  soups—one night, carrot and tomato, another night, served in what I call a cereal bowl, squash, and coconut. Those two items were enough for entire meal, but, no, we had a plate of chicken, roasted broccoli and carrots, and mashed potatoes. We ate most of that meal at the table.

Another noon, we drove out of town toward Rogers to Rowdy Beavers. It was raining, but I didn’t hear any rowdiness and saw no beavers scurrying around. LOL

  

Wednesday night, we ate salmon, roasted veggies, and rice. (Jana alternated between potatoes and rice.) Another night was a pork chop, potatoes, and roasted cauliflower. On our last night, Thursday, for dessert, Lydia had store-bought wafers and I had two severed fingers, complete with slivered-almond fingernails and red food coloring blood. They were made from a sugar cookie recipe—in honor of Halloween.

 Lydia finished her long-in-progress novel and I worked steadily toward the Creative-Non-Fiction assignments looming before the term ends in December.

The drive home on Friday merited a gas-stop again at Marshall, then a side trip to Leslie where my youngest brother—he of the Arkansas River flood a couple of Mays ago—lives after leaving Mayflower. He is in possession of an orchard, raised vegetable beds, and a two-story house with a basement.

                

He also has animal neighbors: 30 feral pigs, bobcats and even a bear or two have been spotted by neighbors. Ooh!

c 2020, by PL, dba lovepat press, Benton AR USA

 

For the umpteenth time, a week in the Ozarks

Lydia, several years ago @ The Wharf, Hot Springs

 

                With COVID-19 cancelling most group activities, writer-friend Lydia and I made plans to drive to Eureka Springs and spend a week as residents at the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow, a first for her, but a return for me. She has one novel to wrap up and another to continue. I have this column to compose and a slew of MFA assignments/ requirements to work on.

                October is always a good time to travel north and this year was no exception. Yellows, reds, and oranges interspersed with pines and cedars provided many “oohs and aahs” especially as we drove through Clinton, then into Marshall where we gassed up, stood in line, social distanced for the restroom, then bought a sweet snack to take us the rest of the way. It was early afternoon. I was impressed enough to pen a poem: “The men/ at Marshall’s gas/station all wore their masks/ which surprised me in this mountain/ county.” The forests became more colorful the farther we traveled.

                I was the passenger this trip. Lydia was a careful driver. A little after three p. m. we pulled in to the Colony and were greeted by the new-to-me director, Michelle. We were all masked as was Jana in the kitchen. Packets and keys in hand, we headed to the door of 505 Spring Street to unload. Afterward, Lydia moved the car across the street to the lay-by. Her suite is downstairs; mine is right inside the front door next to the communal kitchen/ dining area. I’ve stayed in this suite since this building opened. Originally, it was Muse 1; now, with all five of the suites having been remodeled, mine is the Zeek Taylor Suite.

                By the time we’d each unpacked and put things away and marveled at our newly-decorated suites, it was dinner time. Of the four residents, we were the only ones to choose to eat down in the Main House. We sat at the ends of the long dining table. Jana (Yahna, of Czech extraction)  served a crunchy veggie salad, then brought on a plate filled with beef chunks covered with (shudder) mushroom gravy and a mound of rice. (On my pre-sent foods-I-don’t-like list were cooked turnips, liver ’n onions and tofu. I’d forgotten gravy and mushrooms.) I picked at the rice and beef, forced to consume gravy with the bites, then dug into the baked apple dessert, a small fruit topped with a fig, wrapped in a pastry igloo. A few bites of that, and I decided I’d had enough. Lydia felt the same, although her gluten-free dessert was a pudding of some kind. We each asked for a to-go box, and took our uneaten dinners back to our rooms. We ate them the next day at the 505 dining table.

                We both accomplished some needed work from then until bedtime. I turned out the light right before ten (I hadn’t had my daily nap), but she stayed up till midnight, her usual bedtime hour.

                That was Friday. Saturday, we masked up and headed to Sparky’s for a late lunch. After waiting for twenty minutes, we were seated at a two-fer table by one wall. We de-masked. She had a burger and I had a Rueben, half of which resided in the fridge beside the gravy dish. But we are happy we came even though it was in the low forties, temp-wise. More later.

 

c 2020, PL dba lovepat press, Benton AR USA

Even after the book’s published, I still jot stuff in my journals

 

              If I were publishing a supplement to my latest book, “A Compendium of Journal Jottings,” here are some of the things I’d add—from my journals of late.

                NATION – A Kennedy, who was in the House of Representatives ran for a Massachusetts Senate seat and lost. – I didn’t know that Sitka, Alaska used to be a Russian settlement founded in 1804 by a Mr. Baranov, a colonist and early 19c. governor of Russian Alaska. The land was long inhabited previously by Alaskan natives, many of whom he killed or enslaved. (WaPo)—NIAID ( National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) is one of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institute of Health. (WaPo)—I hadn’t heard that FDR wanted/ tried to pack the SCOTUS in 1937. (WaPo) –William Howard Taft served as chief justice of SCOTUS after he was president.  –Thurgood Marshall became the first black justice in 1967. –Harry Blackmun authored the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. All three of these men are buried at Arlington where Justice Ginsburg now lies beside her husband. (AP) -- One-hundred-thirty-nine-thousand families are renters.

                GIVEN NAMES – Agence, Lummie, Mudelean, Raygan, Brudcus, Thor, Alleyene, Emonya, Earnese, Idrees, Andeessen, Tolton, Finus, Qindi, Lopha, Edathara, Genois, Dareh, Larynzo, Arnon, Ashaki, Astead, Ledyard, Precilla, Dekeesha.

                SURNAMES – Greenfieldboyce, Sussman, Lacina, Greenhouse, Clodfelter, Samenow, Sun, Wen, Tubiana, Bleacher, Ameringen, Gregorian, Glassman, Hausfather, Steptoe.

                WORLD -A quarter of all known animal species are beetles. (NPR)

                WEATHER – Medicane = a Mediterranean cyclone; a storm all but unknown until the 1990s, was headed for Greece on September 18, ’20.

                UNIVERSE – Phosphine, a chemical detected in Venus’ atmosphere that could have been produced by a biological source. We won’t know until sending a spacecraft there to take a reading of the atmosphere. (NYT News Quiz, mid-Sept.) Venus roasts at 100s of degrees and is cloaked by clouds containing droplets of corrosive sulfuric acid. (Ibid.) – Cygnus Loop =  colorful ribbons of a supernova’s blast wave that screaming (sic) through space, heating and compressing dust and gas in a way that causes the ribbons to glow. So bright that humans would have seen it from Earth 15,000 years ago. (Business Insider)

                ANIMALS – Elephants are the only animals drinking below the surface of the water and sucking the silt, which is where neurotoxins reside. Botswana has the largest population of elephants at135,000 animals. (Bloomberg)

              PLACES IN ARKANSAS – Crosses, Wild Cherry, Tollville, Ingalls.

              UNKNOWN WORDS – “caravanning” – a group of motorists driving to a specific area and planning to loiter. . . blocking off intersections or loitering on private property. (AD-G) – “shambolic” = chaotic, disorganized, or mismanaged.—“abstruse” = difficult to understand; obscure. – “kakistocracy” = government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state. (FB) – “non sequitur" = a conclusion or statement that does not logically follow from the previous argument/statement; usually untrue; an absurd statement. (Bing).

c 2020, PL dba lovepat press, Benton AR USA

             

Between college terms—getting home projects started

           Mid-week, I will begin the fourth Master of Fine Arts (MFA) class online from University of AR at Monticello. This one is “creative non-fiction” instructed by an out-of-stater, one advantage, the director said, of online classes. Do all these years and weeks of writing columns for The Amity Southern Standard—about 1,100-- count as “creative non-fiction”? I assume so, but with three textbooks, I no doubt will be required to widen my horizons, as I was encouraged to do in the latest poetry class.

        

      

        

                Son drove over from Hot Springs last Friday to help with sanding the original wooden screen door on the south side of the house. During its 86 years, this house had shifted and the door wouldn’t close properly. He bought and brought a spring to add to the turnbuckle already there. The diagonal piece is the turnbuckle. Turnbuckle was a new term for me. [A turnbuckle, stretching screw or bottlescrew is a device for adjusting the tension or length of ropes, cables, tie rods, and other tensioning systems. It normally consists of two threaded eye bolts, one screwed into each end of a small metal frame, one with a left-hand thread and the other with a right-hand thread.]

                After adding a short piece of scrap wood he found in the shed, he closed a gap on one side of the door. Still, there was light between the other side of the door and the frame. After much sanding of the threshold, the door closed better, even with that tiny gap that “no fly or mosquito can get through.”

Eric and I social-distancing. You can see the door that I have to sand & paint.

                Now, to paint the door white to match the other wood parts of this ole’ house. That’s MY job.  I won’t set a date to have it finished, however. Plus, I must buy a sander.

                Last weekend and the first of this week were busy. First off, I usually stop for the week’s supplies on the way home from church, but last Saturday, since I was expecting guests early in the week, and since I had a $5-off coupon for that day, I decided to shop. Guess what? I completely forgot the $5 coupon. It was clipped to my list, which I stuffed into my pants pocket. Duh!

                Today was final cleaning and prepping for tomorrow’s writers meeting here. Only four of us, so we can social distance with no trouble.

                Then, Wednesday, the fall term begins. I’m s-o-o-o-o thankful I don’t have to travel to an on-sight classroom.

                Stay safe, all!

c 2020, PL dba lovepat press, Benton AR USA

Poaching unripe ground fall pears

Unripe, ground-fall pears

                I swore I wouldn’t do anything with this season’s pear crop and have offered the fruit to several folks. However, the day before son Eric came to mow the acre, I picked up the ground-fall pears—small, unripe—so he wouldn’t have to mow over them. They filled the bottom of a plastic dishpan which I brought up to the house. What could be done with them, I wondered, besides throwing them out for the rabbits and squirrels and chipmunks? My curiosity got the better of me and I went to Google: how about poaching them, eHow.com’s article suggested. The only food I’d ever heard of poaching were eggs, which I never actually did.

                So I bit. Washed the fruit, layered one deep in a Dutch oven, covered them with water, set the pot on the stove, then read the directions: “Steep the pears in a fragrant bath of fruit-forward white wine (no), water, sugar, scraped vanilla bean (dumped a bit of liquid vanilla instead), and cinnamon (one stick).” I tasted the “water.” Not sweet enough: added more sugar, then the last of the maple syrup, the rest of a bottle of cranberry juice, and an instant package of Tang. Mixed. Tasted better, sweeter.

                Turned on the burner and when the liquid boiled, I lowered the heat so it could “simmer for 45 minutes.” Nothing about covering the pot, so I didn’t. But I set two timers and stayed fairly close to the kitchen area during that time.

                When the timers sounded, I turned off the heat, pulled out from a lower cabinet a plastic-wrapped round silver-ish tray that I’d never used in the fourteen years I’ve lived here, covered it with a drying towel and placed each pear on it. The skins were shiny instead of dull like when they went into the brew. The liquid had cooked down to a small amount.

pears after poaching

                After they cooled, I pulled out a cutting board and a serrated knife and began cutting each in quarters, removing the stem/seeds/hard spots (rare). Of course, I had to taste the first one. It was semi sweet, both skin and pulp. When all were cut, I plopped them back into what liquid was left, pulled down the largest casserole dish I owned. Sure enough, it held both the fruit and the juice. But barely. If I’d trembled while putting the covered bowl into the fridge, it would likely have spilled. It didn’t.

                The recipe continues: “The poached pears can be served warm, cold or at room temperature, by themselves or accompanied with poaching syrup (?). Vanilla-bean ice cream and some additional wine for zing add an extra note of indulgence.” Probably not, but perhaps. When my Florida son comes for the weekend, we’ll see if my experiment was worth crowing about. And perhaps repeating.

The fruit is crisp and crunchy. And sweet. I call it a success. 

c2020, PL dba lovepat press, Benton AR USA

Being back online is a blessing for a writer

Time for air conditioning

                How dependent I am on a working internet at my advanced age was brought home to me when a July 2 thunderstorm took out the modem. Even after a 52-minute consult with two Filipino women—one whom I could understand; the other whom I couldn’t—and trying everything they suggested, which I’d already done once, a tech was scheduled for Tuesday, the 7^th between 2 and 4 p.m. FIVE DAYS LATER! OH, WOE!

                By my schedule, I should be napping since I arose with the alarm to get my taxes to town to the agent, to buy stamps at the post office, to buy printer ink at Office Depot, which was locked and barred, then buy birdseed at Tractor Supply with Mother’s Day gift cards from my younger daughter. Three errands out of four wasn’t bad, eh? Oh, and I stopped at a Dollar General for retirement cards. Lately, my cousin and my BFF have both retired. And now I had stamps!

                I was more careful selecting bird seed this time because the young birds didn’t care for all the small yellow seeds; they wanted sunflower seeds. In desperation one day, I bought some cockatiel seed from the grocery store. No, thank you. Perhaps the squirrels and chipmunks enjoyed what was spit out or pushed out, or what I dumped out the following morning.

                I was saddened by the death of Hugh Downs. In 2014, I read his book, Letter to Great Grandson, 2004, Scribner, p. 93 where he said, “To walk around the south pole—thus around the world—takes twenty-four steps, each step in a different time zone.” This scrap of paper was one of the things I found when I cleaned off the surface for the modem. Isn’t that strange, that I found his quote from six years ago around the time of his death? Wonders never cease.

                Birthday joys abounded even as late as today. My older daughter and her son, who was in Finland as an exchange student until the country “deported” all exchange students at the onset of COVID, came by to visit. We social-distanced. She brought fresh plums and tommy-toe tomatoes from a farmers’ market in Conway and a fresh, still-in-the-package mask. Jake, who will be a music major at UCA this fall, looked through my enormous stack of LPs and took home a plastic crate full. Now, who would like the others?

                Stay out of the heat if possible; wear a mask in public, and stay safe otherwise.

Grandson Billy Paulus and nephew Keith Hoggard @ my 80th birthday party

               

Flag Day June 14 -

                It just so happens that while reading A. Scott Berg’s 2013 biography of President Woodrow Wilson, titled eponymously Wilson, I came to the summer of 1916 when, after much provocation from Germany upon its neighbors far and wide, and after years of Wilson’s determination to “stay neutral,” things got so bad that the president went to Congress for permission to put the U. S. into the war.

                I’ll pick up on page 403 and since copyright allows reviews, I’ll quote a few sentences: “June 14—the day in 1777 on which Congress had adopted the Stars and Stripes as the emblem of the Union—had been sporadically observed ever since the start of the Civil War; but in the spring of 1916, Wilson officially proclaimed it a day for ‘special patriotic exercises’ on which Americans might ‘rededicate ourselves to the nation, ‘one and inseparable,’ from which every thought that is not worthy of our fathers’ first views of independence, liberty, and right shall be excluded.’ It had an electrifying effect.”

                From The Big Book of American Trivia by J. Stephen Lang published in the waning years of the 20^th century—1997—come these questions about “Grand Old Flags”: “Flags are more than pieces of fabric. They’re symbols, often highly charged with emotion. Small wonder that their design and care have been important parts of American life.”

                I’ll skip the first one (June14 is what holiday?) 2. What was John Philip Sousa’s flag-waving march, written in 1897? 3. What familiar D. C. sight is 555 feet tall and has fifty American flags around it? 4. What southern state’s flag shows a woman trampling a man? 5. What southwestern state’s flag features the sun symbol of the Zia Indians on a yellow background? 6. Over what historic Maryland fort was the first fifty-star U. S. flag raised in 1960? 7. What was added to the original U. S flag in 1795? 8. What state’s flag was designed in 1927 by a 13-year-old schoolboy? (Hint: the 49^th state)

                Answers: 2. “Stars and Stripes Forever”; 3. The Washington Monument; 4. Virginia’s—the female figure is actually an Amazon warrior woman, trampling on a tyrant. The state motto is Sic semper tyranniss—“Thus always to tyrants” (in other words, “Don’t mess with us Virginia folks”). 5. New Mexico’s;

                6. Fort McHenry in Baltimore, site of Francis Scott Key’s writing of “The Star Spangled Banner”; 7. Two new stars and stripes for the new states, Vermont, and Kentucky; 8. Alaska’s.

                Finally, from The Morrow Book of Quotations in American History by Joseph R. Conlin, 1984, these tidbits: Oliver Wendell Holmes – 1809-1894, Physician, poet, and wit: “One flag, one land, one head, one hand/ One Nation, evermore!” from “Voyage of the Good Ship Union,” 1802. And John Greenleaf Whittier (1807- 1892) Poet: “Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,/ But spare your country’s flag,” she said.” (from “Barbara Freitchie,” 1863.

                Fly your flag on Flag Day.

c 2020, PL dba lovepat press, Benton AR USA

Mostly photos of flowers and happenings around the Couchwood acre

What's left of a two-story-high brush pile in the southeast yard

One of two drift roses, second year, with driftwood, in front yard

Rose campion (I used to call lamb's ear) in the south patio. These plants grow everywhere a seed falls and are beautiful this time of year.

A community of toadstools that son says show tree roots below. Indeed, this is where a hackberry once lived until it needed cutting for the neighbor's fence, and I agreed.

Close-up of toadstools, south yard

I had trouble keeping the photos in the order I downloaded (uploaded?) but I guess it doesn't matter how they are arranged, does it? The rain keeps coming, the grass keeps growing, and we'll be thankful this summer if there's a drought.

First Sunday back to church at Tull AR, Mother's Day '20

c 2020, PL dba lovepat press, Benton AR USA

What to do with a persnickety feline?

  On my latest “must-do” list, I accomplished two: resupplied meds and bought Fancy Feast canned tuna for Greye, the 14-year old who was born on this hill and is the only one of his litter still living. Oh, how I wish I'd kept a ledger of the cost of the cans of cat food I've thrown out to the other creatures who live on this acre. 

              A little history: Mid-October of last year, he brought the back half of a rabbit to the door wanting inside. Of course, that was not an option. I picked up the late animal and threw it as far south as my left arm could throw. And ever since then, Greye's refused the dry food that he'd been eating all these years: Nine Lives with added nutrition. I finally sacked up the remaining and gave to Roxie W. for her feline.

            Since then, I've had to try something else--many something-elses. At first, he gobbled up cat cannedsalmon. Then, sniffed at it. Later, he gobbled up tuna, then sniffed at it. Cod, whitefish, shrimp, salmon mixture, pate, shreds, gravy, every brand and style that was available. For a while, he scarfed down Fancy Feast's tuna grilled flaked. I bought all the stock the stores around here had. (They didn't restock after a week, boo.)

        Last Sunday morning, I was in the car by 8 a.m. for a quick trip to the close-by dollar store. Greye needed Fancy Feast Grilled Tuna or Flaked tuna. None on the shelves (I’d bought up the last cans last Monday. )Another walk back to the front door with an empty buggy drew questioning eyes from both clerks. “Gotta find something Greye will eat. ‘Bye.”

                On the road to the nearest other dollar store (same brand) about three miles south, I met zero vehicles that early on Sunday. This store didn’t have the food Greye liked, but I bought a box (12) cans of various Fancy Feast fish/ salmon pate, plus three packs of four each tuna push-ups. Plus, litter. Plus a host of other things for myself.

                Face covered with a scarf (I was the only one with such), I checked out. An older man was in line behind me, also with cat food. We chatted about the changing appetites of our pets.

                At home, I pulled down a small plastic bowl, put one can of Fancy Feast in it, stirred it, then added one serving of tuna push-up, rather like a thick gravy. I mixed it and set it down at Greye’s “table.” One look, one smell, and he turned away. Now, what do I do?

              Since then, he's snubbed all the different kinds of Fancy Feast, the shreds of Friskies. All he'll eat are Temptations treats.

             Tonight while making my supper of turkey and Colby cheese on rye, I  tore off  small piece of the cheese and threw it to where he was standing. He actually ate it. When I placed a Ritz-like cracker beside it, he didn't "bite."  Then I thought, 'Wonder if he'll eat part of this sandwich?' So I sliced off an inch slab, placed it in a plastic bowl, smothered it with a push-up pack of tuna-flavored gravy and showed him. 

            Aha! He appeared to be eating, but when I looked, he'd only licked the tuna gravy and left the sandwich. Tomorrow's another trip to the store. Early. With face covering.

           And by the way, I'm way too old to have such a recalcitrant "child" to tend. Anyone want an otherwise sweet old cat?

                 

           c 2020 PL, dba lovepat press, Benton AR USA     

What can we do while sheltering at home?

                 For us without small grandchildren to homeschool, for us without (on purpose) TV, for those of us who prefer quiet to ‘white noise’, how have you spent your ‘shelter at home’ time? Some folks binge watch old or Netflix movies, clean out cabinets, file computer works and hard-copies that probably won’t be read until our descendants happen on them (when and if they go through our stuff ) after we’ve moved on.

                Others have used the time to catch up on reading. Since I ‘shelter at home’ most of the time anyway, nothing much is different other than the cancellation of various groups—Bryant Bunch Lunch, local poets’ meeting, church, Lucidity in Eureka Springs, Spring Celebration of Poets Roundtable of Arkansas, Girls of ’54 breakfast.

                Instead, on days without rain, I’ve worked in the yard trying to tame the spring-growing, ubiquitous privet, rake leaves from the flower beds, trim back the loropetalum, and move the houseplants to the front porch.

                Several folks from church (fifteen miles away in Tull) have checked on me, and a family going by the house who saw me outside wheeled in to see if I needed anything, and my retired-from AR-DOT son came over to mow and weed-eat. He and I stayed six feet apart during the entire morning, which was hard to do but we blew kisses to each other.

                I can tell more folks are on their computers or iPhones; my computer is much slower nowadays, it seems. I completed my MFA assignments on Tuesday before they were due on Sunday, so I began reading David Brook’s The Second Mountain. Greye-the-old-cat climbs up on my throw-covered lap for some close, quiet contact. Now, if I could find something he will eat longer than two days at a time.

                This past Sunday, I did vary my routine a bit. More than a bit, really. First, I slept (and dreamed) until nearly 10 a.m. I brought the local and state papers inside, cleared them of the advertisements, made coffee and checked email, Facebook, national news online.

                I looked through my CDs to find some choral music and found two discs of such. One was “Vivaldi” and the other was Faure’s “Requiem” both performed by my sister’s community chorus, NoVa Lights when she lived in northern Virginia. Then, instead of sitting at the table or on the loveseat, I sat on the sofa by the lamp table and began reading the Perspective section of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. I actually read nearly every article, column and letter to the editor, which I usually do NOT do. And by four o’clock I had even begun the BIG PUZZLE, always a difficult one. But it was nap time, so I turned off the music player, set the alarm for 6:30, warmed the heating pad and neckpiece and enjoyed a shortened snooze. Monday, things got back to normal.

              Now that the daffodils have gone, irises are popping up everywhere. My roadside bed is full of early whites and a few blue-purple ones. Later, the nursery stock whites and maroons with dazzle with their large blooms. Azaleas are coming into their fullness and beauty. If we have to stay home, we can enjoy the blooms. And hope the bees flock to the flowers, too.

c2020, PL, dba lovepat press, Benton AR USA

An update on—and happy birthday to -- Kid Billy

                 On Thursday, March 19, Kid Billy a.k.a. Billy Joe Paulus, turned the ripe old age of 30. Gee-whiz, it seems like only yesterday he was 8 months old and asleep on a woman’s shoulder in a foster home somewhere in rural Clark County--on a 72-hour hold from Human Services.

                Still asleep, he was moved from one shoulder to another—mine—placed in a newly-purchased car seat, and we traveled to Benton in Saline County. We were both unaware of what our future together would bring. 

Seventy-two hours? How about thirty years? His first five years were spent in Benton on West Sevier—across the street from Our Lady of Fatima School. At only $135 a month, the tuition was worth walking him across the street to (the late) Mrs. Debra Cloud’s classroom. He loved Mrs. Debra.

In September after the beginning of first grade, I took a job in Arkadelphia. Before I could secure a house there, I drove back and forth. The Fatima teacher and principal wanted to medicate him for ADHD. I actually asked the teacher (whose son was a problems my in middle school music class) if she wanted me to take him out of school that very day. She backed off and said no, so we were good for a time.

We found the perfect house in Arkadelphia on North 15^th Street with great neighbor-landlords. They had a son a little older than Billy named Jesse. And they had cats.

Sure enough, Dr. Kluck watched Billy for 10 minutes and pronounced him, yes, definitely afflicted with ADHD. He prescribed Ritalin.

But that was then and this is later.

 On the first day of March when he was 23, I watched him sing with both the Henderson Concert Choir and the Chamber Chorale. He stood stock-still for long periods. His hands held the music folder up so that his eyes could flit from score to director without obvious head movement. Focused? I’d say so!

After the concert, he introduced me to the friend who’d asked him to go in with some others and rent a house in town for next term. I wrote out his part of a down-payment (in addition to paying his on-campus apartment rent: what we do for love) on the spot.

                I still give thanks to Dr. Jim Buckner, who offered KB, from Benton High School, a band scholarship to HSU. Thanks also to the former choral director, Dr. Eaves, who accepted KB into the select choral group, and to Dr. Ryan Fox, the choral director, for being supportive friends and excellent—no, superior––choral men. KB was one of only two or three non-music majors in this group. Which made Grandmother extremely proud.

                Even today, two trumpets still lie somewhere in our residence, unused. But KB, after six years as a Reddie, who changed his major three times, and finally quit school, worked at Cracker Barrel in Arkadelphia, then in Bryant, and now in Hot Springs where he lives.

                This “fifth child” of mine is why I don’t volunteer. I think 30 years of raising a grandson, seeing him through low-salary times by paying his car payment and rent occasionally, should be considered my volunteer work.

As well as my passion. Happy birthday, Billy.