Mouth of the Holler

Loretta Lynn's Home is Not Disney World

On our way to Berea, KY, my husband and I stopped to see Loretta Lynn's home place. My aunt and uncle were there last year, and the photos they showed us made us curious to see the place ourselves. Loretta's beloved Butcher Hollow is in Van Lear, KY.

There's no easy way to get to Van Lear, but we meandered our way, following small signs that said: "This way to Loretta Lynn's home place." We stopped at a store, and I'm sure it's a continuing establishment for many decades, and bought a diet Dr. Pepper. I asked the lady behind the counter how to get to Loretta's. She graciously gave her rehearsed answer: "Go down this road seven tenths of a mile and you'll see a big rock with Butcher Hollow painted on it in white. Turn there and go about a mile." The man sitting nearby in a rocking chair, who looked to have been there when the store opened, grunted. I guessed it was affirmation.

Off we go and soon we see the rock. Weather has worn part of the rock away and you can see only B-TCHER HOLL_W. We turned onto a small blacktopped road. I glanced out my passenger side window once to see a sharp drop down to the creek below and nothing in the path to stop a rolling car. I fervently hoped the car’s tires maintained a purchase on the edge.

We roll onto a gravel road for a short way, only to slip onto blacktop again. Finally, in an area just past a wide turnaround, clearly for tour bus parking, we spy the narrow dirt lane leading up hill to Loretta’s home. We arrive at a dirt parking lot--with room for three cars. Luckily, we're the third one.

The cabin is clearly as it was when Loretta and Crystal Gayle grew up. Perched on the slope of a hill, the wooden batten board home is weathered grey and brown, the front canted over the sloped yard, leaving plenty of space underneath for an old harrow, a large zinc tub, a bicycle, and three dogs. To the front of the house, down over the hill, is a fenced pasture with a small barn and a tin-roofed shed. The barn is home to a white mule and two small brown horses. As we approach the porch steps, the three dogs come out to greet us, friendly as mutts generally are. Then they spy something under the storage shed. Off they go to corner whatever it is they've seen. The mule watches from her lounging position near her barn. Suddenly, she's had enough and rises and charges the dogs, running as nimbly as a race horse. She means business, though. She nipped at the dogs' flanks, and all three scurried fast under the fence and to safety.

Once on the porch, we see two hand-lettered signs: "No Smoking," and "Tours: $5 each." Inside a family is listening to Herman Webb, Loretta's brother. We wait on the porch swing, and occasionally catch snatches of conversation, which is how we know who Herman is. The sky is clear, the breeze soft and I can hear the sounds of various song birds in the nearby trees. One tree, an ancient holly, is the largest I've ever seen. Its lower branches are trimmed and if you didn't pay attention, you'd think it was an apple tree.

Finally, the family emerges and a slender man in his late 60s, with wavy white hair and still-sexy blue eyes says, "Oh, I didn't know there was someone else out here. Come on in." And he launches into his stories as he leads us through the four rooms downstairs, all with original furnishings. The first room, most likely the parlor, has a bedroom suite, a few scattered old wooden chairs and a fireplace. Over the mantel, and really in many places on the walls, are photos of family and dignitaries. I see a photo of Loretta and Tommy Lee Jones, several of country music stars, a four star general--the only one from Kentucky--and scads of family photos. Herman points to a photo of his great grandfather, whose last name is Butcher, and tells us the man was part Cherokee. In fact, many of the family are either full or part Cherokee.

In the second room, a bedroom, the first guitar that Loretta played rests on her parents' bed. He said he knew it was the first guitar she'd played because he has a photo of her playing it when she was just 12 years old. It was his daddy's guitar. He keeps it there on the bed, the strings undone, surrounded by other memorabilia--an old banjo, more photos of Loretta on her rise to fame as a music star, and a red t-shirt emblazoned with Loretta's name. The quilt is an old tacked patchwork, brilliant in the dim room.

Each wall in this room is covered with graffiti. It appears that every person nearly that ever visited this room, famous or not, signed the walls. An old Victrola stands ready to take another 78 and on top of a trunk sets an old wooden swing, the one his mom and dad courted in.

The next room is crowded with kitchen implements, such as an old wood fired cooking stove, sad irons, a cast iron kettle, and part of an old copper still that Herman says his uncle used to make moonshine. A battered white wooden table holds coal mining equipment--a miner's helmet with carbide lamp, a zinc lunch bucket and a round metal jug with a funnel top that Herman used to carry dynamite when he worked in the mines.

The dining room has an oak round table with roaring lion heads on the legs curving down to claw and ball feet. A saddle belonging to Doolittle, Loretta's husband, perches on an old singer sewing machine cabinet.

We step from the dining room back to the front parlor. Dan hands Herman $10, who never asked for payment. Besides tamping dynamite for the mines, Herman assembled furniture in a factory, played music in his own band, drove a green 1947 Chevy convertible, and he lost his wife of 51 years this past February to Lou Gehrig's disease. They met and started courting when she was in the first grade and he was in the second. He waggled his finger, "I didn't marry her until she was 18, though." Loretta, he said, does visit her home place. So far this year she'd come to see his wife and then she returned for his wife's funeral.

As we left, the dogs were still under the porch, covered in ticks and fast asleep. Three more vehicles had parked in the small lot, one an RV, making our exit a bit exciting as we rocked the car back and forth to be able to back down the small dirt lane. Two more families waited on the porch for their tour.

I can imagine the many famous stars who've come here to pay homage to a great star in country music, and I'm sure there have been droves of entrepreneurs who imagine what this place might look like lit up, smoothed out, slicked up and polished. I don't know much about Loretta and her family, but I admire them. I know, without ever being there before, that not much has changed at Loretta Lynn's home place. The only concession seems to be a boom box that blares Loretta Lynn songs to an outdoor speaker. There are no CDs and t-shirts for sale.

They clearly know and appreciate what it means to remember where you come from and who you are. And that, by golly, maybe you can go home again, if nothing more than to sit in the quiet country, on a porch swing, listening to horses crunch grain, and the snoring of three old dogs, cool in their under-the-porch wallows, and wait for a good rain. I don't know what happens to the $5 each Herman collects, but I hope it supplements his social security. As for us, he told good stories and that's worth more than $10 any day.

Aunt Norma

I’ve known her all my life, as she is my mother’s sister, and she never ceases to entertain me or perplex me, or take care of me. Recently, when I told her that she could find the phone number for the Cabell County Courthouse online, she called and left a message to say that she had gone to the site, but she couldn’t get the phone number as the letters didn’t go all the way down.

No, I have no idea either what the heck that meant. That’s my aunt Norma and at 70+ she does all right at the computer, quite frankly. Just the occasional glitch, and one can understand, surely, when the letters don’t go all the way down.

She is two years younger than my mother, and they grew up on Kanawha County farms in the St. Albans area speaking a private language between them like twins do. Norma’s hair and eyes were dark, like the Indian ancestry we share, while Mom was blonde and blue-eyed like the Irish and English side of the family. They were inseparable, playing all over their West Virginia hills, dresses made of feed sacks, like most children post Depression. Mom often told me that they hung from trees like monkeys, when they weren’t gathering the milk cow in from the pasture or scooping up eggs from the chicken coup, or flipping up rocks looking for snakes. Their mother, a diminutive woman at 4 foot ten, and their father, a farmer and factory worker of 6 foot 4 stature mostly worked hard and left kids to their own devices.  Until their mother died before she was even 50, after birthing 10 live babies and losing two to miscarriage, their lives, nevertheless, were mostly idyllic, like a Currier and Ives lithograph.

Life gets hard for many folks and my mom and my Aunt Norma were victims of hard times, but what they held in common was a sense of humor, a wit sharp enough to cut yourself on, and a determination to do better. And they did. Both funny in their own ways, my aunt was a bit more skeptical than my mom, but she also conversely possessed a more positive outlook. Both had the ability to laugh at themselves, so that getting above their raisings was never an issue. My aunt, though, always had a fuzzier logic.

We receive news of her antics on occasion. She once pounded the hell out of coffee grounds all over the countertop, convinced they were ants. Until she put on her glasses. When she was 68, she decided she wanted her own ATV until she wrecked it swerving to miss a tree in a flat yard and broke her shoulder. Oh the wailing and carrying on that brought. She’s in good shape now, though, and that ATV went back to the store immediately. She has three great-grandchildren that keep her hopping. Especially the youngest who’s apt to dislodge breakers in the electric box, which he reached by stacking boxes and buckets, causing the power to go out to the freezer, ruining several pounds of meat. And this little Dennis the Menace was only three at the time. He’s four now. And taller. That’s a scary thought, my aunt assures me.

When I was growing up, my mom couldn’t drive, so we depended on Aunt Norma to take us places while dad was at work. Yard sales were a given on a Saturday morning. Bumping along back roads, my aunt’s Rambler seemed trained to sniff out sales in the most remote places. It’s a good thing as Aunt Norma rarely paid attention to her driving skills. A yard sale sign would pop up out of nowhere and the steering wheel jerked in that direction, regardless of oncoming traffic. Once while zipping along a dirt road a car came around the bend and surprised my aunt, or perhaps just her Rambler, but whichever it was it meant we swerved into the ditch. In those days, sewer lines in the country sometimes meant the house drained into the ditch beside the road. The car landed on its passenger side. I was in the back seat, and it was my great misfortune that my window was open so that my nose was but 2 inches away from raw sewer. This was before seat belts. My aunt’s sister-in-law, Drexel, lay on top of me. My aunt teased me for years about “laying in the sewer.” I knew enough not to tease her back about her driving skills. If I had, I’d never go anywhere again. Or she’d just blame the Rambler.

Anyone in the front seat with my Aunt Norma—to this day—is safe even without a seat belt. When my cousin Joni was small, she stood on the seat beside Norma as she drove. Norma throws an arm across who ever is sitting in the seat beside her, an automatic reaction from the old days of keeping her daughter from flying through the windshield.

When my parents retired, they followed Norma and her husband to South Carolina and the yard sale visiting resumed for a number of years, until my mother died. Then Norma stepped up to the plate to take care of me in my mother’s stead. Three weeks after Mom died, I traveled to South Carolina to help take care of Mom’s clothes and effects. As I sorted, Norma had a running commentary: “Jean never wore that. The tags are still on it.” “Oh, I saw her many a time wearing that T-shirt.” “I told her not to buy them shoes. Now, look at that. Never worn.”

That’s when she had the bright idea of taking all the clothes and shoes back to the stores where Mom had bought them. I looked askance at her. Take them back? With Mom gone it seemed . . . weird. But Norma insisted. Being the practical woman she is, and knowing my mother probably better than I ever did, she reasoned this was sensible. So, a bit dazed and confused from Mom’s recent death and just glad to have someone else make decisions, we gathered the tagged items in bags and set out to discover where they had come from and to get refunds.

It was strange to approach the customer service counters at Wal*Mart, K-Mart, Hamricks, and other stores and have my aunt say to the folks behind the counter, “This here is my niece. Her mom just died. We’re here to return some clothes.” I let her say these things, take care of business. The good people behind the counters would look at me with sympathy and offer condolences and then do the best they could to determine if the items were indeed from their stores. Sometimes I’m pretty sure they were not, but they refunded me anyway. I wondered idly if they thought this whole thing odd as I was 46 at the time, but you would have never known that from my Aunt Norma. Without being condescending in the least, she simply thought of me as being 10 and in need of taking care of because my mother, her sister, has passed away. This is what nurturing women like my aunt do, and have done, forever.

Besides, we netted ninety-five dollars in refunds. “Your mom would have been proud,” she said.

Do you have an Aunt Norma? I hope so.

Cat

My Appalachian Year

I got an email from a person who’d found my blog. She’d seen The True Meaning of Pictures about Shelby Lee Adams photography in Eastern Kentucky and Country Boys a film that referenced hollow. She wanted to know what a hollow (aka “holler”) is.

I don’t know where she lives, but she said she’d never visited Appalachia. I told her my thoughts. Hollows are small valleys nestled between hills or mountains. Not to be confused with mountain folk who live on the mountain—perched right on the sides or tops and where no roads lead directly to these places—just a driveway. Hollows have a road in to them, often narrow and clinging because they follow the side of the hill or float alongside a creek bed. They take you deeper and deeper until the small compounds of hollow folks reveal themselves a few miles in. One thing’s for sure: if you find yourself unexpectedly on a hollow road, you are indeed lost and well off the beaten path. Hollow roads don’t fork off main roads, but off secondary roads. You can follow a hollow road that will take you to another hollow road, or a creek road, or often as not, to a dead end. Sometimes, if you follow a number of creek roads you’ll make your way back to a secondary road. Eventually.

You’ll find as many direct dish TV antennas on the hollow homes as you will stars in the sky. Because there is generally less light pollution back in the hollow, counting stars, by the way, is a favorite pastime, and a wealth of quiet means you can hear the blood pulsing in your ears as you ponder the stars. Most people who live in the hollows appreciate the quiet, the dark, and the privacy. Hollow folk are as complex as any others in the world. You will find stereotypes, but then on closer look, well, by golly, they’re not, are they? And you will find some sophisticated and urbane residents, those who feel they have won the lottery because they own a hollow home and a bit of land.

A fellow West Virginia native remarked to me recently that there is no such thing as Appalachia. It is merely a name someone else gave us, without our permission. He feels no more Appalachian than he feels he is French. But he does feel he is West Virginian in the sense that someone feels like they’re a Kentuckian, or a Virginian or a Georgian. There’re many who feel they are indeed Appalachian, and whatever that means to them is what it is. They might agree that Appalachia is a political name placed on the mountainous area of 13 states—West Virginia the only one wholly engulfed by the geographical area known as Appalachia. They might also say, Well, it’s a done deal. It means connection and those in the Appalachians of Georgia or New York might feel they have something in common. And a good argument is that however we acquired the moniker, it’s pretty much here to stay.

But I like this gentleman’s rejection of being called an Appalachian. It is the very nature of folks from Appalachia to throw off the definitions and naming rights of folks outside the area. Rebellious? That’s us!

A writer friend of mine who has ancestors from this area seems to reject any hint of being Appalachian, especially in her writing. She would be correct in that it keeps us from being seriously considered as authors and writers if we come from here. In fact, I was at a conference in Columbus, Ohio, this past August. There was a panel of New York editors taking questions from the audience. One lady approached the mic and asked, “Which do you find more important, the idea of a book or the quality of writing?” Only one editor answered. He said, “I’ll publish a book from Appalachia if the writing is good enough.”

Well, it’s not hard to figure the hidden message in that statement: a well-written book from Appalachia is a rare thing. It is the stereotypical attitude that we in Appalachia lack education, taste, and class (although we are often considered low class or no class, and sometimes just poor white trash). Let me see now, from which higher degree of the three I earned shall I pontificate? Oh, and by the way, we’re humble, too.

Dumb ass editor, is what I think.

A few days ago there was an article in The Charleston Gazette covering the West Virginia premier of We are Marshall. I remember when that crash occurred in 1970. I was sitting in my folks’ living room with a boyfriend. The television was droning as aural wallpaper to our smooching and carrying on. A news bulletin riveted my boyfriend’s attention and slowly it dawned on the both of us the scope of the tragedy. Neither of us knew anyone personally in the plane crash, but Huntington is but 30 miles from us. We were deeply shocked.

Making this film, with some of it shot in Huntington and on Marshall’s campus, is a big hairy deal to us. They rarely film in West Virginia because they say we have no infrastructure to support filming. I have mixed feelings, as I know this state is one of the best kept secrets in this world. Finding us may be our ruination; it may speed us to homogenization. On the other hand, the money is always welcome to all of us, as there is so little to spare.

In the article, the director and others in the film were quoted as saying there is no place in the world like West Virginia, and especially its warm, friendly people. He repeated it: I mean, folks, there is NO place like West Virginia and her people (paraphrase). The article brightened my day and should brighten the days of most of us here in West Virginia.

Appalachia appeared before me in a number of ways this past year. And West Virginia. When I told an editor from Harper Collins where I was from, I thought: Now she knows. She’ll place me on the slush pile. She did not, I’m surprised and delighted to say. Stay tuned.

Sometimes, we seem to be bidden to pay attention to something that shows up a tad too often for coincidence. Maybe what I need to understand is that being from the hills and hollows of West Virginia and Appalachia means it is my job to define the one small area where I lay claim. And that's about all any of us can do.

By the way, it’s pronounced Appa-latch-ah, not Appa-layshuh.

Happy New Year to one and all.

Cat

About Books

I always hope to find in any book I read something I can relate to in my own life. If outside my own life, I like to see something in the nature of the story that is reflected in current events. Oddly, The Battle of Blair Mountain does that eerily well considering it is about a war that took place nearly 100 years ago in West Virginia.

Battle is a carefully researched nonfiction book about the battle of Blair Mountain in West Virginia and the events that led up to it in 1921. The horrible conditions suffered by most coal miners throughout the state's coal fields, plus the lack of response and concern by the coal mine owners, led to the inevitiable collective bargaining and unionizing efforts.

When violence over unionizing efforts escalated to deaths on both sides, both the miners and the mine owners' guards stockpiled weapons and strategized for war maneuvers. The mine owners and Governor Morgan pushed for the Federal government to send troops. Machine gun-armed troops flowed into West Virginia and stopped the war just as death tolls mounted on each side. When the troops arrived, they routed the miners, estimated at 9,000 (it was estimated that about half that number comprised the opposing side of mine guards and local citizens) and convinced them to lay down their arms in the interst of peace. The miners continued to lose ground politically and locally, until unionizing efforts gained strength through the next few decades.

Carefully and methodically, Mr. Shogan leads us through the intricate web of events that were swirling around the union efforts to organize for a decade and a half before the battle. Clearly outlined are the political alignments all the way up to the White House. Political alignments and narrow interests are nothing new to us today, given the present occupant in the White House, especially. At the beginning of the last century, our country was fraught with much the same problems as today. Among the same problems in West Virginia: miners who die due to inadequate safety measures; land grabbing, with threats to people’s safety; destroying property with little or no compensation; paying less than the land is worth. As ever, few miners profit in proportion to the coal company owners’ obscene excess. Most coal land owners, as usual, live outside our region, just as they did 100 years ago.

What struck me most is how little gravitas the middle class gave to the events that would eventually reshape the work conditions and fortunes of the working class—the latter group I’m from and the former I’m barely a part of now. Most of the middle class at that time wanted nothing more than the warmth of coal burning in their hearths. Lack of support for the union meant they could afford their cheap coal or have unlimited access. Today, our need is electricity, 55% of which is produced from coal-powered electric plants. Would we support miners fighting for fair wages and safe conditions if these needs led to a battle today? The point is perhaps moot, since most coal is obtained by blowing up whole mountains, and most Mountain Top Removal firms employ less than 20 miners per site. But the problems with land ownership, taxes, and safety are still prevalent in MTR as well as underground mines that still exist.

Shogan’s book tells us how it came to pass that a war nearly took place on our own ground, something only a few decades removed from the Civil War. Lest we forget, The Battle of Blair Mountain can teach us just what components have to be in place for something like this to manifest today. We are not so far removed as we’d like to think.

The 25th Appalachian Literary Festival at Emory & Henry College

For 25 years a confab of Appalachian writers has convened at Emory & Henry in an intimate setting of writing workshops, set amid farm land and rolling hills near Abingdon, Virginia. I’d never attended, but when I read about the 25^th anniversary, I thought perhaps it was time to discover what I’d been missing.

Seventeen authors formed panel sessions and were featured readers. Lots of star power and a chance for me to meet and hear authors, many whose names I’d only seen on the covers of books.

The 170-year-old campus of Emory & Henry is lovely: old trees, vast lawns, students ambling from building to building. The panel sessions were held in the sanctuary of the Memorial Chapel and at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center in Abingdon. In the Chapel, we convened in its huge sanctuary. 

“History, Politics, Social Conscience and the Appalachian Writer.” Panelists: Lisa Alther, Jo Carson, John Ehle, and Meredith Sue Willis.

The authors confirmed that Appalachian writers by virtue of being “other” set the stage for attention to and writing about injustices, whether in the region or at the personal level. Writers use injustices as a platform to speak to outsiders who label Appalachian’s negatively. The writers said we should answer with: “We reserve the right to tell the world who and what we are.”

“Nature, Place, and the Appalachian Writer.” Panelists Maggie Anderson, Jeff Daniel Marion, Robert Morgan, and Ron Rash.

Appalachia is about place, the residents’ relationship to it, and it remains a strong shaping element. Panelists expressed dismay that the mountains in Appalachia are covered with million dollar homes and wondered who could afford them. The politics of MTR arose, but wasn’t discussed at length. The panelists lamented the increasing homogenization in our region and none considered that a good thing.

“The Perils of Regionalism: Labels and Their Limitations.” Panelists: Lee Smith, Sharyn McCrumb, David Huddle, and Gurney Norman

Nothing’s easy, is it? You fight to determine your character, without buying into absolutism, and Appalachians remain labeled, and therefore restricted and confined. If anyone can kick that off, it’d be Appalachians. The trouble is being heard. Some authors reject the label as “Appalachian writer” and prefer no affiliation with any region. If they write about Appalachia as the land they know, where their values were formed and shaped, they get labeled. Lee Smith: “An editor commented to me not too long ago in response to my saying “Appalachian literature,” ‘Isn’t that an oxymoron?’” Smith was a guest lecturer at Columbia University 30 years ago when the students heard her soft southern accent, a third of them left. Denise Giardina and Smith shared the same experience with copy editors who asked “Double-wide what?”

McCrumb said when she wrote St. Dale and offered it to a publisher the editor said, “Okay. What’s the next book? After we sell the 3 copies to the 3 NASCAR fans who can read, we’ll need to come out with something else right away.” She said that as to stereotyping, use it to outsmart them. Dolly Parton joke: when asked how she felt about dumb blonde jokes, she replied, “That’s okay. I know I’m not dumb and I ain’t blonde, either.”

“Humor and the Oral Tradition in Appalachian Literature.” Panelists: Lisa Alther, Jo Carson, Fred Chappell, John Ehle, and Lee Smith. Um, this was in the afternoon and I sorta fell asleep, which isn’t easy on those hard pews. Sorry :) But I’m sure it was really good.

“Religion, the Sacred, and the Appalachian Writer.” Panelists: Kathryn Stipling Byer (North Carolina ’s current poet laureate), Fred Chappell, Denise Giardina, and Robert Morgan.

Held at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center in Abingdon (a little town with lovely restaurants and historical buildings and sites. I recommend visiting). Denise said she considers herself a theological writer, a remark I first heard her say in 1997 when I was interviewing her to write my master’s thesis on her work. She feels we’ve grown polemic in this country, but especially in religion where there seems no room to explore, to ask questions, but to follow dogma. She said rigid attitudes are in opposition to the early fathers of the church, where the freedom to explore was natural and expected. She said that she is a Hardshell Baptist, also known as the “No Hellers.” They believe only in Heaven, not Hell.

One of my favorite quotes heard sometime during the festival: “The mountains have many voices.”

The readings:

I had a difficult time hearing John Ehle. He is soft-spoken and age is taking a toll. Fred Chappell’s reading from I am One of You Forever was fabulous. He read a chapter about a telegram that arrives to tell the family of a soldier’s death. Denise Giardina read from her novel-in-progress about the Bronte sisters. From what we heard, it should be a great book. She read from Storming Heaven a particularly funny section about Vista volunteers and how America wanted to help poor ol Appalachia.” George Ella Lyon’s reading was spell-binding. She has written a memoir, Don’t You Remember?” George Ella is apparently a reincarnation of a school teacher from a previous generation. Scribner Publishers turned it down, citing, “It’s too reflective and too self-aware. It also has two voices, George Ella’s and the teacher’s.” Lee Smith read a touching essay written to a fellow writer who recently passed away.

The word Appalachia came up for discussion and everyone agreed that the pronunciation "Appa-layshuh" is incorrect. It is pronounced "Appa-latcha," named for a tribe of Indians who pronounced their name that way.

To me, attending the festival was like attending a huge family reunion (about 125 were present). I felt like a second cousin twice removed, who showed up for the BBQ and potato salad, but it was a friendly, enthused, gathering. The family of Appalachian authors is bonded as from the same tribe, but there was a sense that when they write from their world, they are saying, “This is who we are. Respect is all we ask.”

Maybe a little awe—that wouldn’t hurt.

Paul Elmo's Poems

Paul Elmo Keenan is more than a poet (see interview with this writer on the Interview page at www.catpleska.com). But his poems are fine, that's for sure. Read and enjoy the several poems below.

SICK BATH

I draw you high and hot,

thrusting my torso

over the edge of the tub,

to let your vapors

envelope my aching form.

I sink into you gingerly,

wincing against the intensity

of your heat.

Like fatal and tortured young lovers,

who cut each other to feel

one notch of feeling more, or

who bite for blood

to become just one iota closer—

because humans don’t hold

the amoebic power of osmosis—

I want to become liquid,

so we can merge on an elemental level

and you can sweep my demons and poisons

down the drain with you when you go.

Matter cannot be destroyed,

it can only be displaced.

I lie back and let your surface

overcome my ears,

allowing myself to better hear

your ripples, the rhythms inside my body,

and the turning of the world’s gears.

I am closer to God,

either that, or

the sinus meds are kicking in.

Demons and poisons stream

in droplets down my face.

Matter is never destroyed,

it can only be displaced.

THOUGHTS INSPIRED BY LORCA

If I die,

bury me along the slope

of a West Virginia knoll,

my head toward the moon,

my feet toward the river.

If I die,

send me off with

a James Taylor tune,

something unexpected like

“Riding on a Railroad” or

“Only a Dream in Rio."
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If I die,

read some poems from

those master men who

soothed my soul,

shaped my craft, and fed

my love for home.

Read of Hayden’s battle with

the crystal and the spoon and

note that I too fought

battles of habit, health, and sanity,

and that I experienced

some measure of success.

Read of Borges’s love for

the streets of Buenos Aires and of

Sandburg’s love for Chicago.

Read anything by Eliot,

to mark the point when

the poetic totem turned.

Read some Lorca,

Despedida, the “Leave-Taking,”

if nothing else,

so folks will know

the idea I stole

to create these words.

If I die,

cover the walls of the parlor with

Monets and Pollacks, and

drink in the studies of light and color,

of order and chaos.

If I die,

raise a glass to friendship and

bid me well on

the next leg of the journey,

being pleased that I’ve reached a point

when I won’t have to wrestle with

whether or not to raise a glass as well.

If I die,

smile, laugh, and

be pleased that I’ve finally been allowed

to lay down the clay;

that I’ve become one with

the wave and the ray,

the song, the poem, the painting;

that I’ve given up all need of

the freedom of knowledge and

escaped the prison of doubt;

that I’ve left the world of Adam

to become one with the atom.

HEAVEN

Waves and rays,

infinite eternal energy;

the pluck of a non-existent guitar string;

the beam with no need of sun;

beings who move atoms like

unappetizing beans on a plate,

creating every desire,

removed from such baggage as

knowledge and, its offspring, doubt.

What does “naked” mean?

No need of fig leaves here.

What a preposterous and egotistical notion

to think that “In His own image”

somehow has something to do with

whether or not the dyslexic’s doG

has an opposable thumb.

HARDWOOD TO INFINITY

(A slam in prose)

My anxiety sounds like ping-pong balls, millions of billions of ping-pong balls bounding and bouncing up and down the hallways of my mind. The hallways are deep to infinity or at least long enough for a Kubrick movie.

            Some of the hallway floors are made of that shiny cement, the kind that invariably makes someone say, “I bet you could bust your ass on this shit when it’s wet.”

            Down some of the hallways, the walls are made of rough-hewn cinderblocks, unpainted and perfect for shredding carrots. Off of these walls, the bounce of the balls sounds grumbly and sluggish.

            Down other hallways, the walls are of wood-grain paneling. Off of these, the balls sound like a boy just learning to click really good with his tongue. Click.

            Some of the floors are hardwood, to infinity.

            The number of hallways is as uncountable as the number of ping-pong balls, and every possible flooring and siding is present, to ensure that every possible sound is produced.

            If I could see the ping-pong balls, I know they’d be glowing, like the orb that hangs in front of my eyes.

            I feel itchy, like I have bugs all over me.

            Could I somehow be closer to God?

Alter Ego

          Recently, I auditioned successfully to portray a historical character for the Humanities Council in West Virginia. Her name is Frances B. Johnston, a photographer of considerable renown at the turn of the last century. She was born in Grafton, WV, in 1864, lived to 88, and died in 1952. I portray Frances in the year 1910. By that time, she had accomplished an astounding number of artistic creations via her photographs and a considerable reputation as a business woman and feminist advocate, living and working in Washington, DC. 

          After attending the Academy Julian in Paris, where she studied art, she returned to Washington to put her artistic talents to work as an illustrator for Demorest Family Magazine. Soon she noticed the changing technology allowed photographs to accompany articles. She wrote to family friend, George Eastman, to ask what camera she might use. By way of an answer, he sent her a Kodak, a lightweight camera he’d recently invented. She never looked back. She said, “The camera will allow me to go wherever I want to go.” And that meant into a man’s realm if that’s what she wanted to do.

          Business and art were equally driving forces in Frances’s life, but beyond these forces were contrasting traits in her personality. On the one hand, there’s her diplomacy and decorum necessary to make money. She was professional, kind, thoughtful, thorough, and resourceful, and through her business efforts supported herself all her life. After working hard all day, in the evening she became a Bohemian of the first order. She and her friends held parties that sometimes involved dressing up in silly costumes and photographing themselves. She smoked and drank—bourbon, neat. She lived in a time when women’s lives were circumscribed by society to few opportunities other than as wife and mother. She chose to be neither, but was a champion of a woman’s ability to choose her course in life.

          Like the photographer Margaret Bourke-White a generation later, Frances forged new ground by visiting places considered not “proper” for a lady. She descended underground to photograph coal miners in Pennsylvania; perched on a narrow scaffolding 20 feet above President McKinley at the Pan-American Exhibit in Buffalo to take what turned out to be the last photo of the president before he was gunned down by an assassin. As the “American Court Photographer” she photographed the most powerful men in the world—five sitting presidents: Cleveland, Harrison, McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft.

          Frances, at times, could be a bit condescending, but she had a generosity of spirit that adds to her complexity and brings her alive. She gave of her time, money, and artistic expertise to many fledgling photographers. Historically, she didn’t create events recorded in our history books, but she photographed a good bit of history, often as it was happening. The Library of Congress holds 25,000 of her photos.

          Because of her strong sense of equality, we have the photographs of students at Hampton and Tuskegee; workers—mostly women—in the Lynn Shoe factory at the end of the 1800s, a female supervisor of men at a box factory. We have photos taken at the US mint showing African Americans and Whites working side by side in equality in an era of Jim Crow laws. Because of her talent, the famous flocked to be photographed by her. Besides the presidents, she photographed Mark Twain, Susan B. Anthony, Booker T. Washington, and many others. She also photographed ordinary people in the countryside, capturing their grace and dignity. She believed anyone on the other side of the lens had as much dignity as she. Her legacy continued in the latter 25 years of her life when she photographed Southern architecture that led to the core of photographs used in the establishment of the Department of Historic Preservation.

         Frances lived her life as she saw fit. She spent little time pontificating on the current issues of the day and did not participate in collective protest. She made her statement through her work and in how she conducted her life. I could wish she was my alter ego, but I will never have the courage of Frances. I can only try to portray her with grace and dignity in a modern-day setting, hoping I sink into her character enough so that the audience senses her reality and her beauty and depth. She still has much to show us about how to be in this new century.

          Soon, I’ll post a brochure with information about appearances as Frances B. Johnston. Keep her in mind for events and festivals, educational and cultural venues. The photo is of Frances B. Johnston c. 1896.

Poems in a Major Key

I met Michigan native Jean Anaporte in 1992. I was a student in her advanced creative writing class at West Virginia State University. I remember her walking in--flowing really, her vivid purple skirt fluttering behind her. A shock of almost white hair seemed to be in perpetual motion, even after she stopped moving. She lounged back against her desk and faced the class. She pounded her stomach with her fist and said, "Writing has to be visceral."

Great! I thought. What the heck is visceral? I leaned over and asked a classmate. "From the gut," she hissed. Oh! This was going to be a good class!

Jean is tall, slender, with classic Kathryn Hepburn cheeks. She always wears jewel tones that reflect her inner, vivid character--just like her poems. A full professor, she's still teaching at State, still demanding respect that all divas deserve. I hope to be a diva some day as well, but she has earned the right to command the attention. I like her despite the fact she's neither a native West Virginian nor a native Appalachian, but she's been here long enough to be counted as one of us.

I asked her recently for a couple of her poems to post (due to limitations in my understanding of HTML, spacing became a problem in the poems. I've indicated / where there should be a stanza break. I apologize to Jean and all those who appreciate the proper formatting in poetry. I'll keep working on a solution). It's good practice, reading poems. Poetry distills for us what is most important, what we might need to pay attention to, ideas we need to ponder, and sometimes stuff that's just plain fun. So, enjoy the sampling while we stay indoors, out of the hot summer sun. Diva, by the way, is from Latin meaning goddess, a distinguished female. "Nuff said.

Cat

White Leather

When people speak of prostitutes and laugh,

I remember the sweltering night a woman, who

works as a prostitute, leaned out of her red

convertible to offer me a ride./

My bare legs slid without sticking over

white leather. She mentioned her pool

and a moonlight swim. Stomach churning,

at my apartment I turned to thank her,

and her mouth covered mine./

Stiff-kneed I walked past amazed neighbors out for a breath of air,

rode the elevator to 12 F, pulled a chair to the window

and sat in my sweat-glazed skin/

looking out on all the open windows behind which

others too hoped for any caress

of the city's thick and spangled dark.

(One Trick Pony, 1 Spring 1997)

Rainteeth

I am so mean I have metal teeth.

When I don't feel like chewing

I have the rain come and slash

my enemies' skins.

It's raining. The black of the asphalt

shines out in the day. I hail acquaintances

across mud puddles with the point of my black

umbrella. Collars up to their noses, hats

over their eyes, they back away. The sky overhead,

the inside of a scoured kettle, is slowly lowering.

Soon my meanness and me and the rest of us will be

empty spoons rattling in a kettle.

Arts Indiana, Vol. 14, #5, June 1992