Total Eclipse of the Sun

A COSMIC EVENT & A POSTAGE STAMP
WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Before the year ends, I want to say something about the eclipse of the decade, which I witnessed -- partially; in Las Vegas -- on Monday, August 21, 2017. Although we were nowhere near the path of totality, we did wake up to a double rainbow -- a lucky omen on Total Solar Eclipse Day!

At the time of the eclipse, Gerry was indoors, delivering a hugely successful presentation at the Cisco Global Sales Conference in the MGM Grand Garden Arena. He began his speech with a humorous nod to both the eclipse and his schedule for the day, which had allotted 15 minutes for hair styling, quite a bit more than would be needed to perfect his Uncle Fester coiffure:

"In those 15 minutes, the stylists have brought my updo to such an astonishing state of perfection that I feel compelled to advise you on this day of the solar eclipse not to look directly at my head." An appreciative audience totally enjoyed his "Total Eclipse of the Hair" joke as well as the more serious presentation that he gave on the working relationship between Cisco and Purdue.

CLICK TO WATCH

Gerry at the MGM Grand
Click for a brief video &
click again on "2 Shares"
for additional comments

As for what was happening outside under the beating sun, I was fascinated to read the many firsthand accounts of those who traveled great distances so as to witness not just what was on offer locally but the actual totality. David Pogue's account of "What I learned from my first total solar eclipse" is the one that convinced me to try to go next time; and Annie Dillard's description from last time is astounding and awe - inspiring:

"You have seen photographs of the sun taken during a total eclipse. The corona fills the print. All of those photographs were taken through telescopes. The lenses of telescopes and cameras can no more cover the breadth and scale of the visual array than language can cover the breadth and simultaneity of internal experience. Lenses enlarge the sight, omit its context, and make of it a pretty and sensible picture, like something on a Christmas card. I assure you, if you send any shepherds a Christmas card on which is printed a three-by-three photograph of the angel of the Lord, the glory of the Lord, and a multitude of the heavenly host, they will not be sore afraid. More fearsome things can come in envelopes. More moving photographs than those of the sun’s corona can appear in magazines. But I pray you will never see anything more awful in the sky."

In addition to Dillard's Pulitzer Prize winning narrative, I am equally honored to share these accounts from two writers somewhat closer to home:

1. My friend, The Rev. Ed Tourangeau

And so Day 5 comes to an end. No more states traversed today, in fact we only drove about 80 miles: to Tryon and back. Got there +/- 10, found good seats on a bit of a terrace near the "necessaries" and not far from lunch (the brisket was superb!). Chatted with/ neighbors (mostly from Colorado) and watched the last of the fog burn off to reveal good skies w/ a few fluffy clouds of no real impedance. PSAs announced critical points in the entire show: first contact, advances in occlusion, notice the temperature drop (it certainly did), "watch for the shadow approaching" (couldn't discern it), "watch for Bailey's beads .... watch for the diamond ring" (I think I saw the ring), and then "you may remove your glasses now." What struck me was the noise difference of the crowd before, and during, the process. Totality was "reverential", or at least attentive. We never went midnight black but did have two minutes plus of refreshingly cool heavy twilight. The corona was amazing and totally worth it - I encourage my readership to catch the next one, in 2024. Finally, the population of this Nebraska county where Tryon is located is about 580 souls. I expect at least 575 pitched in to host and serve us. They tried to anticipate our every need, including bratwurst, if you don't care for BBQ. Guys in little four wheeler dune buggies offered rides, and no one was too busy to chat. The entire day was part of what is meant by "Totality".

2. My friend, musician and scientist Jay Mermoud

Obligatory Eclipse Post: I was out on a sales call in Indianapolis today and was not sure if I was going to be on the road or in the city for the eclipse. I was a bit daunted by the fact it was so overcast on the drive down, but when I stopped at a restaurant minutes before the eclipse hit, several people were stepping outside the restaurant with their glasses and a perfect window opened in the clouds. I had somehow managed not to ever get around to buying eclipse glasses, but some very kind people standing in the parking lot were passing theirs around to anyone who wanted to take a look. So I did. And for a brief moment six or eight of us who really didn't know each other shared a common moment in our lives, awestruck by what we were witnessing, and extraordinairily grateful for the perfect timing of the clouds opening and generous souls willing to share their glasses. Many grateful thank yous followed, each of us a bit changed for the better by the experience. Hard not to think our creator was speaking to all of us in that moment.

My brother Bruce and friends expressed a variety of mixed emotions and opinions in response to an article that asked, "Are solar eclipses proof of God?", while all I could think of were these lyrics from our upbringing:

Oh Lord my God
When I in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds
Thy hands have made
I see the stars
I hear the rolling thunder
Thy power throughout
The universe displayed

Then sings my soul
My Savior, God, to Thee
How great thou art . . .

*********************

In the stars His handiwork I see,
On the wind He speaks with majesty,
Though He ruleth over land and sea,
What is that to me?
I will celebrate Nativity,
For it has a place in history,
Sure, He came to set His people free,
What is that to me?

Till by faith I met Him face to face . . .

Bruce and I also too a moment to reminisce about sitting out in the yard with our eldest brother Dave on an early autumn night, watching the total eclipse of the 2015 Harvest Supermoon from start to finish and back again. Its hard to beat that!

********************

The best eclipse video of the day
came from the Sioux Falls Area Humane Society

This compilation of seven eclipse moments in popular culture is also excellent, featuring, among others, Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and Little Shop of Horrors:

" . . . I was just about to, ya know, walk on by,
when suddenly, and without warning,
there was this total eclipse of the sun.

It got very dark and there was this strange
sound like something from another world.
And when the light came back
this weird plant was just sitting there . . . "

I would also include a couple of personal favorites, both by Janis Ian:

"I believe in mystery and your sincerity . . . "

"Might as well be living on the other side of the sun . . . "

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, January 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ "All The Frosty Ages" & "Crystallized Happiness"
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST ~ "Everything by Kent Haruf"
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Handed My Own Life

WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS
University of Glasgow Coat of Arms

VIA ~ VERITAS ~ VITA
WAY ~ TRUTH ~ LIFE
MENTORS ~ HEROES ~ FRIENDS
[Thanks to Peter Bunder & Good Shepherd for this photo & caption]
Back to school already! The calendar year is nearly two thirds gone, yet in semester - speak the year is just beginning! After a few decades on the academic calendar, it becomes hard to measure time in any other way. I began my Freshman year at Northeast Missouri State in the fall of 1975, finishing four years later with a B.A. in English, one of the mere fifty - two Bachelor of Arts candidates listed on the last page of the graduation program (Spring 1979). My educational goals were not shared by many of my peers (most of whose names were listed among the many hundreds preceding the B.A.'s). While I did not elect to obtain the then popular Bachelor of Science in Education, I somehow or other ended up teaching for a number of years and was imprinted by numerous examples of what it meant to be an educator.

The closest I've come to a mission field was teaching at the Community College of Philadelphia. I taught a class for students who were trying to qualify for Freshman English -- so pre-freshman English. A few had not graduated from high school, but they had special admission status as returning students. A few were traditional students (age 18 or so) who had just not been served well by the Philadelphia public school system. Most were returning students, African American women about my age (late 30s at the time) and many were grandmothers! They were always surprised to learn that I was the mother of toddlers, at my age. I was impressed by the commitment they brought to their course work, and their determination to improve the level of their writing skills. Their dedication was inspiring, and many times they seemed to surprise themselves and each other with the success of their achievements. My last semester there, Spring 1998, I participated in a departmental evaluation, in an attempt to reveal something of how these small successes were accomplished.

Always my goal was to reveal to the students their own capacity for intelligent thought, as mine was revealed to me. In An American Childhood, Annie Dillard vividly describes her initiation into the world of natural science, her early discovery, years before college, "that you do what you do out of your private passion for the thing itself." I love her scenario of revelation, though the indifference of her privileged parents fills me with some misgiving:

“Mother . . . gave me to understand that she was glad I had found what I had been looking for, but that she and Father were happy to sit with their coffee, and would not be coming down [to check out her biology experiment in the basement]. She did not say, but I understood at once, that they had their pursuits (coffee?) and I had mine. She did not say, but I began to understand then, that you do what you do out of your private passion for the thing itself. I had essentially been handed my own life” (148 - 49, emphasis added).

In Homegrown Democrat, Garrison Keillor writes of his education in very similar terms, describing himself as an undergraduate "with no money to speak of and no clear plan for the future but . . . teachers who engage him with gravity and fervor and that's enough. That was the true spirit of the university, the spirit of the professors who loved their work. That was the heart and soul of the place . . . ." He enumerates half a dozen of his most inspirational professors, concluding with a visit to the library where "that Niagara of scholarship holds you in its sway, the deluge and glory of learning, and you begin to see where work and play become one. And imagine working at something you love. And that was how the University of Minnesota gave me life" (94 - 96, emphasis added).

Several times during my undergraduate years, I too was "essentially handed my own life," not just in the English courses which catered to my "private passion" but once in a science class where we learned that "Much knowledge is gained in pursuit of even elusive goals," and once again in music appreciation where the professor explained that "we don't know what we like -- we like what we know" and then proceeded to teach us just how much there was in the world to know and like and love. Not only did I obtain personal attention when necessary, but upon one memorable occasion during my Freshman year when I arrived at an office door at the same time as a classmate, the instructor soon had us tutoring each other. My questions were answered by a peer whose questions in turn I was able to answer! Thus, even in uncertainty, my own competence was reinforced. I learned that I was capable of intelligent thought and that I could impart as well as absorb information. This was an invaluable discovery, which stood me in good stead as an educator. Though it was not always easy, I aimed for a similar transference of accountability during my years as a classroom teacher.

As for my private passion, one of my most rewarding undergraduate challenges was to work as an editor of the student literary magazine, learning to test and question my own critical thinking skills in ways which continue to influence and inform every writing task I undertake. I knew when I arrived at Northeast that I wanted to major in English; and when I took Modern British Fiction, I knew what, one day, my field of specialization would be. Never before had I read such wonderful novels or worked on such exciting assignments! From a handful of professors, I encountered generous and enthusiastic encouragement, and was challenged by their faith in my work and by the valuable information which they choose to share.

Regardless of one's private passion, the public study of language and literature should yield a certain breadth of vision when it comes to solving problems, analyzing common or repeated themes, and dealing with human conflict in a humane way. To portray the inevitable links between existence and language, to create an environment of personal actualization in which a whole and steady vision might be realized, to repair the learned disjunction between speaker and utterance, to not be fooled by wordcraft or lazy thinking -- those were some of my goals as a teacher of English. Particularly in teaching composition it seems important, perhaps it is even a mission to show students how to be responsible to language, to own it, and to overcome indifference.

I pointed out to them the significance of their own authority in what Stanley Fish calls the "interpretive community" and the relevance of their own contributions to the discursive enterprise referred to by Robert Maynard Hutchins as the Great Conversation and the Civilization of the Dialogue:

"How, then, can higher education escape dogmatism, narrowness, the invasion of academic freedom, and failure in its proper intellectual task and still do its duty by morals and religion? A possible answer lies in the Great Conversation. The Great Conversation began with the Greeks, the Hebrews, the Hindus, and the Chinese and has continued to the present day. It is a conversation that deals, perhaps more extensively than it deals with anything else, with morals and religion. The questions of the nature and existence of God, the nature and destiny of humanity, and the organization and purpose of human society are the recurring themes of the Great Conversation.

"There may be many ways in which a college or university can continue the Great Conversation, but it would seem offhand that one of the best ways is through the reading and discussion by all the students of the books in which the Great Conversation has been carried on by the greatest writers and thinkers who have taken part in it. I emphasize discussion because of the contributions that this method makes to the moral and intellectual habits we desire; and I emphasize reading and discussion by all the students and faculty because in this way the formation of a community can be advanced. To continue and enrich the Great Conversation is the object of higher education.

"The Civilization of the Dialogue is the only civilization worth having and the only civilization in which the whole world can unite. It is, therefore, the only civilization we can hope for, because the world must unite or be blown to bits. The Civilization of the Dialogue requires communication. It requires a common language and a common stock of ideas. It assumes that everyone has reason and that everyone can use it. It preserves to all their independent judgment and, since it does so, it deprives any individual or any group of the privilege of forcing their judgment upon any other individual or any other group. The Civilization of the Dialogue is the negation of force. We have reached the point, in any event, when force cannot unite the world; it can merely destroy it. Through continuing and enriching the Great Conversation, higher education not only does its duty by morals and religion; it not performs its proper intellectual task; it also supports and symbolizes the highest hopes and the highest aspirations of humanity."

Robert Maynard Hutchins
from Morals, Religion, and Higher Education
In keeping with this focus on dialogue, I stressed the need to adhere to certain objective principles (use of the apostrophe, for example, or the conjugation of verbs!) not merely for the sake of following rules, but so that the students' contributions to the dialogue might be taken seriously; so that they do not undermine their own authority as readers, writers, and speakers; and so that they may learn to make the best use of that "tight economy of energy" which for Mina P. Shaughnessy characterized the transfer of meaning via the written or spoken word. In the developmental courses which I taught, I hoped for my students to discover that expressing themselves verbally went hand in hand with reading and expressing themselves in writing; and I tried to impress upon them that most human endeavor, education in particular, is a verbal undertaking. I urged them to think of each essay as "a try," an attempt to tackle one more problem and eliminate it before confronting another.

Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory: An Introduction contains a structural analysis of the curriculum in which he warns students that literary studies "are a question of the signifier, not of the signified. Those employed to teach you this form of discourse will remember whether or not you were able to speak it proficiently long after they have forgotten what you said." Despite the appeal of Eagleton's analogy, I always was, in fact, keenly interested in what my students had to say; and I continually reminded them that it is for this very reason -- the significance of their message -- that their mode of signification is so important. Myself a student of the message as well as the medium, I have to admire "that rare educator," described by Maya Angelou in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings "who was in love with information . . . [and desired] to make sure that some of the things she knew would find repositories so that they could be shared again" (209). If, as Angelou suspected, such an impulse was not motivated solely by a love for the students themselves, then certainly it derives from a sincere conviction that they proceed with awareness, as cognizant as possible of their role in creating and naming the world which surrounds them -- a way to give them life, to hand them their own lives!

Henricus de Alemannia Lecturing his Students
from Laurentius de Voltolina, 1350s

For more on higher / liberal education, see
my previous post: "Back to School: A Scent of Knowledge"
and this vintage video: Bryn Mawr College

************************
PS
For a bit of academic humor you might want to try
33 Teachers Who Got The Last Laugh,
or Your Teachers Were Funnier Than You All Along,
which I found to be very entertaining in a Breakfast Club kind of way!
In fact, it reminds me of another movie Class in which the English instructor is handing back papers with a negative remark for each one. When he gets to the last one, his comment is "This one offended ALL my sensibilities." It's been 30 years since I saw this movie -- (warning: it's a stupid movie; so this is not a recommendation) -- but I never forgot that one funny line!

That's the thing about being a student or a teacher: it always seems to involve grading! Reminiscing about these good and bad movies reminded my brother Bruce and me of our best grading stories.

Bruce wrote to say, "I once got a paper back with the international traffic symbol for "No" -- the circle with the slash through it -- covering most of the first page. In one of the few spaces not covered by the circle was the word "NO!" in big red letters. The rest of the pages just had big red Xs from corner to corner. The test was a final that I was required to take, but it wouldn't affect my grade. I only had to get something like a 40% on the final to get an A. So, I just went in and wrote drivel . . . didn't even study. The professor called me into his office and told me something like this: 'I know basically all you have to do is spell your name correctly on this test to get enough points for an A, but you ARE going to take this final.' He gave me an incomplete and I had to go take the finals when we got back from Christmas."

The prize correction / comment, which I still enjoy for it's sheer uselessness: "Revise for smoothness." This is the one and only comment that one of my dissertation readers put on the top of my 300 - page rough draft, without one single mark anywhere throughout the entire document (did he even read it? I think not). Now, whenever Gerry and I hear any piece of totally useless advice, we just say, "Revise for smoothness" (or sometimes "Go Over").

My advisor Leonard Orr (one of the inspiring professors invoked above) gave me some useful advise: He said to wait a couple of days, change a couple of words around, re-submit the paper, and say, "I revised for smoothness." Worked like a charm!

**********************
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, August 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Surface Dwellers

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUSMy Rooms at the Beau Rivage, 1918
by Henri Matisse, 1869 - 1954

"I have often asked myself the reason for the sadness
In a world where tears are just a lullaby . . . "
~ Carole King ~
The following poem has been in my notebook of favorites for thirty years now, since my Arkansas days, back when Bill Clinton was governor. I like the combination of grief and evolutionary biology, the mystery of salt water without and within, the existential quest for meaning -- "Not that we know what we're doing here." Yet, despite our sad lack of comprehension -- "We try to do what's right":

Living on the Surface
The dolphin
walked upon the land a little while
and crawled back to the sea
saying something thereby
about all that we live with.

Some of us
have followed him from time to time.
Most of us stay.
Not that we know what we're doing here.

We do it anyway
lugging a small part of the sea around.
It leaks out our eyes.

We swim inside ourselves
but we walk on the land.

What's wrong, we say, what's wrong?

Think how sadness soaks into
the beds we lie on.

Jesus, we've only just got here.
We try to do what's right
but what do we know?

by American poet Miller Williams (1930 - 2015)
Professor of English and Foreign Languages
and Director of the University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville

Naturalist Annie Dillard draws a similar conclusion in her essay "Teaching a Stone to Talk":

“The mountains are great stone bells; they clang together like nuns. Who shushed the stars? There are a thousand million galaxies easily seen in the Palomar reflector; collisions between and among them do, of course, occur. But these collisions are very long and silent slides. Billions of stars sift among each other untouched, too distant even to be moved, heedless as always, hushed. The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out. But God knows I have tried” (89, emphasis added).

When I read "The Death of the Everglades" in Looking for America by nuclear historian Richard Rhodes, I was immediately reminded of Williams' poem. Rhodes writes that "Florida with its imperceptible seaweed tilt is deceptive, a beach itself dropping slowly into the water, a ramp on which the smallest creature may generation by generation crawl out onto the land. We came from the sea by degrees teaching our flesh to wrap the sea inside it. It courses through us every day of our lives . . . We never returned. The fish left the sea and returned, most of them. . . . The shark, with his bitter blood, never left the sea. He is old and well adapted" (56). Not like us: "we've only just got here."

With characteristic philosophic whimsy, StoryPeople artist and writer Brian Andreas captures the same sentiments. Why does the sea seem so familiar? Because all of our days we carry it around inside of us, like a story we used to know:

Place by the SeaHe kept a piece of algae behind his ear to remind him of his roots. A million years ago every place was a little place by the sea, he would say & my mind would go blank & I would swim through the day without a care in the world & it all seemed so familiar that I knew I would go back someday to my own little place by the sea.
Hidden OceanShe held her grief behind her eyes like an ocean & when she leaned forward into the day it spilled onto the floor & she wiped at it quickly
with her foot & pretended no one had seen.

WhalesI remember when the whales had wings, she said. Whatever happened?
I said. It got to be too noisy with all the airplanes & other stuff, so they flew into the ocean & never came back. Some days, she added, I think about going too.

As Williams points out, the dolphin did try living on the surface for awhile before he settled on the sea, and "Some of us / have followed him from time to time." But for the most part, we struggle along, living on the surface, trying to do what's right.

I am not as familiar with this next poem, which Miller Williams wrote for Bill Clinton, as I am with "Living on the Surface," but I include it here for historical context. I know that Williams has been friends with Clinton since the early 70's when Clinton was also teaching at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

Following Robert Frost, who read "The Gift Outright" for John F. Kennedy in 1961, and fellow Arkansan Maya Angelou, who recited a poem for President Clinton in 1993, Williams was the third poet to recite his work at a presidential inauguration. Elizabeth Alexander, reading at the 2009 Inauguration of Barrack Obama was the fourth.

1997 Inaugural Poem by Miller Williams:

Of History and Hope
We have memorized America,
how it was born and who we have been and where.
In ceremonies and silence we say the words,
telling the stories, singing the old songs.
We like the places they take us. Mostly we do.
The great and all the anonymous dead are there.
We know the sound of all the sounds we brought.
The rich taste of it is on our tongues.
But where are we going to be, and why, and who?
The disenfranchised dead want to know.
We mean to be the people we meant to be,
to keep on going where we meant to go.
But how do we fashion the future? Who can say how
except in the minds of those who will call it Now?
The children. The children. And how does our garden grow?
With waving hands -- oh, rarely in a row --
and flowering faces. And brambles, that we can no longer allow.
Who were many people coming together
cannot become one people falling apart.
Who dreamed for every child an even chance
cannot let luck alone turn doorknobs or not.
Whose law was never so much of the hand as the head
cannot let chaos make its way to the heart.
Who have seen learning struggle from teacher to child
cannot let ignorance spread itself like rot.
We know what we have done and what we have said,
and how we have grown, degree by slow degree,
believing ourselves toward all we have tried to become --
just and compassionate, equal, able, and free.
All this in the hands of children, eyes already set
on a land we never can visit -- it isn't there yet --
but looking through their eyes, we can see
what our long gift to them may come to be.
If we can truly remember, they will not forget.

[© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company]

And one last connection:
try listening to this beautiful cover of
"Gentle on my Mind,"
sung by the daughter of Miller Williams,
country rock singer and songwriter,
Lucinda Williams.

Rooms by the Sea, 1951
by Edward Hopper, 1882–1967
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, April 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Saying The Old Town's Name

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

RAIN
from One Morning by Yohji Izawa and Canna Funakoshi
January: rainy one day, snowy the next; sometimes both on the same day. For a delightful depiction of the changeable wintry weather, take a look at this trio of simply beautiful picture books, filled with succinct, sensory, haiku - like text by Canna Funakoshi, and vivid, magical collage - like illustrations by Yohji Izawa:

One Morning (1985)
Winner: First Prize for Graphics
at the Bologna International Children's Book Fair
Selected by New York Times:
Ten Best Children's Books of 1987

One Evening (1988)

One Christmas (1989).

[All three titles from Picture Book Studios]

"Homeward" from One Evening
The books feature a nameless, faceless man and his saucy, loyal little cat. One Day moves gently through an early morning routine, concluding with a charming sequence of the man leaving for work, then returning a few seconds later to pick up his umbrella. In One Evening (later that same day? maybe another day) it has just begun to snow as the man is catching the 5 p.m. trolley home from the office, knowing that his little friend is waiting there to welcome him and help at the typewriter: "Play? Letter."

One Christmas includes among its illustrations two collages in black, white, and gray, representing old memories of Christmas stockings and plum puddings. Later in the book, similar scenes are portrayed, but now in color, in the present day: the same bed post where the stocking was hung, the same table by the dining room window, the same candle stick. My favorite line occurs, when the man is at the railway station purchasing his train ticket and "Saying the old town's name."

Saying the old town's name. The old town. Is there really a hometown for everybody? Somewhere like "that place Just over the Brooklyn Bridge" that Art Garfunkel sings about:

A world of its own,
The streets where we played,
The friends on every corner were the best we ever made.
The backyards, and the school yards
And the trees that watched us grow,
The days of love when dinner time was all you had to know.
Whenever I think of yesterday,
I close my eyes and see,
That place Just Over The Brooklyn Bridge
That will always be home to me.
It'll always be home to me.

--music by Marvin Hamlisch
--lyrics by Marilyn & Alan Bergman

I guess when I close my eyes and think of yesterday, I see the small Missouri town where I lived between the ages of 5 and 10. As a matter of fact, my parents helped us kids plant a tiny little evergreen in the yard there, back in 1965; and when I drove past the house 25 years later, I missed it, crying out in dismay, "Where is the little tree?" Towering high above the house, that's where it was! But I hadn't even thought to glance up; I was searching at eye-level. I suppose if we had continued on in that house, that would have been the tree "that watched us grow."

A few summers ago, my dear obliging family indulged me with a visit to this old town, Neosho, Missouri. I wanted them to see my house and school, the town square and the park, all the places I had been allowed to walk and roam and wander. I loved showing them the house, which, gratefully, was not run down but still in good shape. It looked newly painted and very quaint; and I lingered longingly at the edge of the yard for several minutes, trying to envision every room.

Sadly, the town was more rundown than I had remembered it, the center square, alas, sacrificed to the Walmart Strip on the edge of town. Inevitably, as soon as Walmart appears on the horizon, the entire landscape of the town begins to change. The bulk of my happy memories of growing up in Neosho have to do with being able to walk around all day, wherever I wanted to go.

In her memoir, An American Childhood, Annie Dillard describes the joyful independence of such an upbringing, the sense of pride in navigating successfully and making one's own way:

I walked. My mother had given me the freedom of the streets as soon as I could say our telephone number. I walked and memorized the neighborhood. I made a mental map and located myself upon it. At night in bed I rehearsed the small world's scheme and set challenges: Find the store using backyards only. Imagine a route to my friend's house. I mastered chunks of town . . . Walking was my project before reading. The text I read was the town; the book I made up was a map. . . . What is a house but a bigger skin, and a neighborhood map but the world's skin ever expanding" (42, 44).

A walking childhood hardly seems possible now, not in Neosho. We kids used to walk to the Ben Franklin 5 & 10 Cent Store , but you can never walk to a Walmart! If you've read much Bill Bryson, you'll recall that he writes a lot about this kind of unsatisfying, pedestrian - unfriendly commercial development. It didn't take me long after moving to downtown Philadelphia to realize that, ironically, the best place to find the small town life in America just so happens to be in the middle of a big city. When living there, I could walk and walk to my heart's content. But that's another story, another town.

Coincidentally, not long before our trip to Southwest Missouri, I had encountered a new poem that kept swirling around in my head every time I heard myself "saying the old town's name." Although it is a poem about interiors, it captures precisely how I felt touring around Neosho, looking at the stony exterior of all those old remembered buildings and boarded up, empty storefronts:

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft
And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.

by Philip Larkin (1922 - 1985)

Five years after the bittersweet visit to Neosho, I tried taking the family to another small town, this time in Southeast Kansas, where I had spent many days as a girl, visiting my grandparents.

Running through my mind during this visit were the opening stanzas of a lovely Judy Collins song, introduced to me only shortly before by my friend Eve. Amazing how just the right poem or song can suddenly appear in one's life in so timely a fashion:

Secret Gardens
Words and Music by Judy Collins

My grandmother's house is still there
But it isn't the same
A plain wooden cottage
A patch of brown lawn
And a fence that hangs standing
And sighing in the Seattle rain

I drive by with strangers
And wish they could see what I see
A tangle of summer birds
Flying in sunlight
A forest of lilies
An orchard of apricot trees . . .

Great grandfather's farm is still there
But it isn't the same
The barn is torn down
And the fences are gone
The Idaho wind blows
The topsoil away every Spring

I still see the ghosts
Of the people I knew long ago
Inside the old kitchen
They bend and sigh . . .

Secret Gardens of the heart
Where the old stay young forever
I see you shining through the night
In the ice and snow of winter . . .

"Just As I Remember" from One Christmas
These nostalgic lyrics from Judy Collins describe exactly how I felt that Thanksgiving, driving down the old brick streets to see the former houses of my mom's parents & my dad's parents. If only my children could have seen what I saw: the old porch swing, the rocking chairs, the flower beds, the lilac bush, the rhubarb cobbler cooling on the window sill, my grandma on the front step waving hello / goodbye . . . but they could see only a couple of incredibly humble, patched - up, tumble - down, little old houses. Even when I tried to describe what was in my mind's eye, all they could say was, "Oh." Nor could I blame them. I would not have seen it either, had it not been for that Secret Garden in my heart!

So sad, so sweet . . . saying the old town's name.


Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, February 14th

Between now and then, be sure to read
my shorter, almost daily blog posts on
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com