My Grandparents' Generation
by Faith Shearin
Listen Online
They are taking so many things with them:
their sewing machines and fine china,
their ability to fold a newspaper
with one hand and swat a fly.
They are taking their rotary telephones,
and fat televisions, and knitting needles,
their cast iron frying pans, and Tupperware.
They are packing away the picnics
and perambulators, the wagons
and church socials. They are wrapped in
lipstick and big band music, dressed
in recipes. Buried with them: bathtubs
with feet, front porches, dogs without leashes.
These are the people who raised me
and now I am left behind in
a world without paper letters,
a place where the phone
has grown as eager as a weed.
I am going to miss their attics,
their ordinary coffee, their chicken
fried in lard. I would give anything
to be ten again, up late with them
in that cottage by the river, buying
Marvin Gardens and passing go,
collecting two hundred dollars.
"My Grandparents' Generation" by Faith Shearin from Telling the Bees. © Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2015
(In my case, make that 'parents' not 'GRAND'parents; even ME)
I still correspond in writing with like-minded friends
down with it
can't quit it
down with it
can't quit it
letter (starred) from Gaynelle O. in OR
^,^
Natural Disasters
by Faith Shearin
Listen Online
During natural disasters two enemy animals
will call a truce, so during a hurricane
an owl will share a tree with a mouse
and, during an earthquake, you might find
a mongoose wilted and shivering
beside a snake. The bear will sit down
in a river and ignore the passing salmon
just as the lion will allow the zebra
to walk home without comment.
I love that there are exceptions.
At funerals and weddings, for example,
the aunts who never speak nod
politely to one another. When my mother
was sick even the prickly neighbors
left flowers and cakes at our door.
"Natural Disasters" by Faith Shearin from Telling the Bees. © Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2015
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From Nelder, Dallas OR
re the VW posting last week
about having a tent on top
of a VW bug, 1972...
^,^
Morning in May
Grass grows in the night
and early the mockingbirds begin
their fleet courtships over puddles,
upon wires, in the new green
of the Spanish limes.
Their white-striped wings flash
as they flirt and dive.
Wind in the chimes pulls music
from the air, the sky’s cleared
of its vast complications.
In the pause before summer,
the wild sprouting of absolutely
everything: hair, nails, the mango’s
pale rose pennants, tongues of birds
singing daylong.
Words, even, and sudden embraces,
surprising dreams and things I’d never
imagined, in all these years of living,
one more astonished awakening.
"Morning in May" by Rosalind Brackenbury from Bonnard's Dog. © Hanging Loose Press, 2015
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Sharing the news:
For rest of article go to
^,^
Master visualist, retired:
does what he can do
I went to see Wis at the Avalon today (5-8-15) for lunch in the cafe
then to hear a guest speaker in the Avalon all-purpose room,
Professor Emeritus Paul Rempe of Carroll University
who today delivered an illustrated lecture of his father's
WW I experiences as an aviator in the German air force.
At first he was a cavalryman (horses) for the German (Prussian) army, his home nation by birth, but switched to flyer
of the bi-plane fightering aircraft of the day.
Pilot Rempe wore his spurs over his aviator boots.
He later emigrated to the US, a country he loved. He married Paul's mother when he was a seasoned 46 year old.
It was a fraternity in the early days of flying. They were in gauzy planes by today's standards,
bi-planes, open cockpit, wooly/furry flight gear worn; they sucked oxygen at high altitudes
through tubes. It wasn't unknown for a WW I pilot to salute his adversary when he shot him down.
[4 yr old William R. would have loved the aircraft pictured on the big pull-down screen. He once made a leggo model
of a WW I Sopwith Camel and later brought it to church to show us:]
^,^
Songs for survivors
....every sha la la la...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asQegjiHhXE
+
For all we know
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuglvdPZ-JU
Master visualist, retired:
does what he can do
I went to see Wis at the Avalon today (5-8-15) for lunch in the cafe
then to hear a guest speaker in the Avalon all-purpose room,
Professor Emeritus Paul Rempe of Carroll University
who today delivered an illustrated lecture of his father's
WW I experiences as an aviator in the German air force.
At first he was a cavalryman (horses) for the German (Prussian) army, his home nation by birth, but switched to flyer
of the bi-plane fightering aircraft of the day.
Pilot Rempe wore his spurs over his aviator boots.
He later emigrated to the US, a country he loved. He married Paul's mother when he was a seasoned 46 year old.
It was a fraternity in the early days of flying. They were in gauzy planes by today's standards,
bi-planes, open cockpit, wooly/furry flight gear worn; they sucked oxygen at high altitudes
through tubes. It wasn't unknown for a WW I pilot to salute his adversary when he shot him down.
[4 yr old William R. would have loved the aircraft pictured on the big pull-down screen. He once made a leggo model
of a WW I Sopwith Camel and later brought it to church to show us:]
Rempe showed a picture very much like this one
of a crash his dad had and survived.
.
Thanks for the day, Wis!^,^
Songs for survivors
....every sha la la la...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asQegjiHhXE
+
For all we know
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuglvdPZ-JU
