To Everything There is a Season

There is so much peace at waking early in the morning – before the birds, before the morning rush begins. The morning rush, these days, is so much quieter than a month ago. Yesterday Hillsborough County ordered a stay-at-home order with a 9:00 pm – 5:00 am curfew. Essential employees can go out – medical teams, grocery stores, and so on. For today, I am essential, as I prepare to go to school, once again, to distribute laptops to students who still might like them and would like to learn at home. I will leave here in about 30 minutes, and I’ll think more on the pandemic later. For now, I just want to take some moments and savor the quiet.

It is warm already; 74 when I woke at 3:30. It’s quiet outside, calm. Traffic on the distant interstate is a low rush of sound. The birds are not yet awake, although they will be soon. The sky to the east is still dark, no hint of morning. It’s always darkest before dawn – I am a librarian, and research is a true passion of mine. It’s a truism that continues, even now. It is a phrase attributed to and English Theologian, back in the mid 17th century. I take the actual meaning to be one of genuine hope; despite the dark of the night, the morning and sunlight is not far away, regardless the darkness of those last moments of true night. Are we living in the darkness before dawn? As an optimistic with realistic tendencies, I have to hope and believe this is true. There is so much strife in our world on all sides; so many conspiracies about our global situation. He said, she said, they did – did you hear? I just have to believe that these are the dark moments before the sun shines again and we settle in to our new normal, whatever that may be. Everything passes; we all know the song by Pete Seger, sung by the (Limelighters, first) Byrds in the 60s - Turn, Turn, Turn. “To everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season turn, turn, turn. and a time to every purpose under heaven”. It’s the basic theory, first explored in the Bible and Ecclesiastes; everything has a season, and this, too, shall pass.

Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me - Book Review

This is a book I would have loved as a teen. Raw, realistic fiction based on teenage angst. JL is on the cusp of adulthood with her looming 16th birthday. Her hippy parents have always raised her different from her friends, but she has always had her best friend Aubrey by her side. Her father cleans up his act and his new job sends him to far-off California, with a promise that he will be home in 6 months, and then another, and still another. JL's mother is not handling the separation well, and wanders around the house beautiful, but lost without her husband. JL is left fending for herself, with the partial support of her grandmother who refuses to see the seriousness of JL's mother's condition, but who also supports her granddaughter in her quest and love of butterflies.

JL has always been dependent on the love and support of her best-friend Aubrey. Aubrey's family is loving and supportive, yet JL finds herself and Aubrey not such great friends in high school years, especially because JL's family is falling apart and JL has too little adult supervision. JL falls in love with bad-boy Max, and she tries to cope with her growing love for him, the loss of her best friend, the loss of her father and her mother's worsening condition.

This is the story of hope, of growing up, facing changed friendships, falling in love, and experiencing glimpses of who we are meant to be along the way. It's beautifully written, full of both hope and despair, and also of the joys and sorrows the world can provide.

You Are Not Alone - Book Review

Wow. Astonishing. If you've read Anonymous Girl and The Wife Between Us and were shocked, amazed, appalled, fascinated at the convoluted oh-so-involved stories that Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen wove - You are Not Alone. Coincidentally, their new partnership with the upcoming book You Are Not Alone does not disappoint in anyway. Psychologically atypical, aberrant, seemingly down-trodden, down-on-their-luck female characters who discover new strengths when confronted with plots that twist and turn toward unimaginable conclusions.

Shay's life has taken a downward spiral; she is working a temp job after losing a dream job to "downsizing". She shares an apartment with Sean, a man she realized she has feelings for, but he's in love with someone else. One muggy afternoon she witnesses a violent act of desperation which sends her farther down a spiral; until she meets Cassandra and Jane and things begin to change. She longs for friendship, to belong to a group of friends, and at first she feels acceptance. But all change is not necessarily good, and Shay finds herself in a no-win situation. Strength comes from the depths of the soul sometimes. Like their two previous books, Greer and Pekkanen write characters and situations that make the reader glad to be part of a mundane world. When I finished you Are Not Alone, my first thought was, wow, I am SO glad my own life is extremely boring by comparison!

Glass Beach and Pieces of History

I picked up some shards of tile from my driveway today. It’s been awhile since I found any, but over the years I have gathered bits and pieces that have surfaced after heavy rains. I cannot help but imagine the history of these bits of tile. Last week I was in Ft. Bragg, California sifting through the detritus of around 75 years of garbage once dumped at the edge of the ocean and set on fire. Fires burned steadily for many years, melting sparkplugs, metal, glass, garbage all into one huge slag pile. The bottles partially melted, but some just broke into pieces. Dishes, bottles, glasses, broken china, broken ceramicware; it was burned or broken, left to the devices and ravages of the sea, and the passing of time itself. Eventually the town was forced to stop dumping their garbage and setting it on fire. Since then, the waste has been transformed into what is now known as Glass Beach. There are two schools of thought from locals; one group believes the bits of leftover garbage, now tumbled through the sands of time and the Pacific Ocean, are a part of the history of the town and should be preserved – except tourists are taking it away in droves. Local retired sea Captain Cass sees the beauty and owns the local sea glass museum. He told us that once upon a time, the glass on the beach was 7 feet thick. It is now a fair bit less than that, but each storm and high, pillaging tide tumbles the bits around and creates a new selection of beautiful, sparkling long-lost debris. If I had to guess, I would say that Captain Cass does not believe that it should be offensive for visitors to remove the glass – it was garbage after all, and the beach is a public place. I can see both the beauty and the addiction of beachcombing, but I can also see that eventually this vast treasure trove from the past will be depleted. Knowing this did not stop me from becoming a little obsessed with the search for beautiful sea treasures. Beachcombing has been a passion of mine for many years – before I ever heard of Glass Beach. I truly believe treasures from the sea belong to only the explorer and discoverer. Sea-glass hunting is a true, total addiction.

I think my passion stems, originally from my discovery of ceramic tile bits here in my own driveway. Many years ago, my father-in-law gathered treasures from houses that were torn down or were being remodeled. He congregated bricks from the streets of Plant City, when the streets were replaced, and those bricks still are in use in my back-yard fireplace. To him, the bits and pieces of broken tile, plywood, two-by-fours, piping – all of this was useful “stuff” and could be reworked into some new repurposed masterpiece. He had big dreams, my father-in-law. He’d sit in the house he and his father-in-law built from other houses that had been torn down uptown. He’d be at the table for hours; a single bulb burning in the overhead porcelain light fixture in the dark, wood-paneled kitchen. It was broiling hot in the summer – no air conditioning, and the open windows let little air circulate. In the winter, equally as cold as hot in the summer. He’d sit at the table his father-in-law built (which I still have) after work as a welder in the mines owned by Mobil, after work in his garden, and in between his bouts of Jim Beam and Mountain Dew, and he would silently sketch his large ideas along with drawings and actual measurements on coffee-stained napkins or used paper plates, old envelopes or paper bags; whatever was handy. Everything to him had use, and he could imagine just what the finished product would look like. I admired that in him; he had such huge dreams in his soul.

I don’t recall what his intended use was for the load of tile he brought home one day. It laid in the yard a long time, alongside stacks of metal and PVC pipe, alongside an entire history of broken-down stoves, and electronic washing machines – including old wringer washers set inside porcelain tubs. Tile, bricks, pipe, cinderblocks, aluminum siding, metal, plastic, wood – barns scattered all over this property. After we bought it the cleanup process began, but it never was quite a success until after his death; he knew what he had and never wanted to part with it. The to-go pile was re-pillaged and materials were removed to other, safer places tucked away in a different place. The ceramic tile – wheelbarrows full of it - became the foundation for the gravel in the driveway of the new house we eventually built. As time passes, the gravel sinks into the sandy soil, and some of the tile rises back up to the surface. Much of the tile, cinderblocks, bricks – that ended up in a sinkhole that fell years before the new house was built. Although there is a dip in that spot still, the landfill of collected detritus keeps the trees and ground around it safe. And the tile in the driveway still rises, now and then, to the surface. So; I do understand the preservation concerns of Ft. Bragg’s Glass Beach. I also understand I have my own little bit of history finding here. If that glass, tile, sparkplugs, porcelain, pottery – all those bits and baubles could talk? What a story they could tell.

A few years ago I wrote a blog post about the tile – it keeps surfacing, and it keeps triggering thoughts…it’s amazing, this circle of life.

“Pieces of a memory, March 3, 2015
I’ve always thought of finding those pieces of tile a bit like stumbling on the memories of my life with Steve. Little pieces of the past, in a way. Several years ago I wrote in my blog about that topic. My blog disappeared a few months ago – poof, gone into cyber space, but I had the foresight to save at least some of my entries. So this is a piece of my past writing; past moments, all because just now I found another piece of tile in my driveway…the tiles pop to the surface of the driveway like memories. I find myself collecting them and saving them in a glass bowl. This morning on my way to the road to retrieve the garbage can, I found two more. I brought them to the house, washed them off, and I will keep them like scraps of my life; scraps of the life I had here, ceramic scraps of the past that remind me of my life and my happiness; of who I was, and who I want to continue to be.”

Life Lessons and Aging

Age. It’s on my mind. I believe that no matter our physical age, the time to live, the time to shine is now. My friend and I had a discussion a few weeks ago. She believes at 17, THAT was her time; she owned her home city and she was the vibrancy of the future. She believes now, at 55 that it is her children’s time to shine – and that she should step aside and give way to their right to do so. Not her exact words, but that was the implication.

I can’t I just can’t. I believe that if we are alive today it is our time to live, to shine – to create, to learn, to grow; to LIVE. Once we are gone from this world – whatever our beliefs are on the subject, we are just gone, and it is too late to live the life we are meant to live. We must do it; live; while we are here, regardless of age or circumstance. We have but one life to live in this here and now. I remember the quote attributed to Nathan Hale, Revolutionary war spy: “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country”. It speaks volumes, and always made a huge impact on me. I don’t regret anything – life is as it supposed to be – and I have but one life to live.

We can learn from each other, youth and my generation; each and every generation, regardless of who we are, where we live, what we know now. It is the way it has been throughout history.

The stories around Paleolithic campfires were a way of sharing knowledge from the old to the young. The young heeded warnings, advice, tips, tricks, or they did not live long enough to tell their own stories around campfires in the future. There is so much wisdom in older generations.

As a youth myself I remember looking forward to the stories my ancestors would tell; of their childhood, of growing up, what it was like. I loved reading books about the early years of famous historical figures just to see what their lives were like when they were my age. I never believed I was better than anyone because I was younger – and I certainly did not look at those younger (or older) than myself and think, oh they know nothing and do not count. As a young adult I became even more entranced by the stories of those older than me. The man whose family owned the acreage behind my property had such fascinating tales of his youth back in the 1920s Florida; the Florida of wild, unsettled, unfenced, un-touristy days. Days when cattle could wander wherever their hooves took them, and they were gathered by cowboys, and driven back to market or to the homesteads. My father-in-law lived here in Florida for many long years, and his wisdom was originally derived from Macon, Georgia, plus his time spent in Greenland during World War 2. From both older Florida gentlemen, I learned the best way to cook chicken over an oak fire – the secret is vinegar and butter, and the charcoal must be gathered from oak trees that have fallen and aged to dried perfection. They should not be too dry or too wet, and should be a mixture of both, which takes time and patience. They taught me how to pull peanuts from the ground, shake off the sand, then strip them from their bush; how to soak them clean, and then to boil them with a ton of salt. After my father-in-law died, Felton would bring me vegetables and tell me the southern preferred way of fixing “a mess” of them. I believe in these shared lessons, in these shared experiences; I am a central New Yorker from hearty European (and Native American) stock; our methods of doing things is so vastly different. We don’t have to create the wheel each time; we can learn and grow and build from the knowledge of others. So no. I don’t believe it is just one generations time to shine, to live, to take over. I believe with all my heart as long as we are here, alive, right now – now IS our time to shine.

At 57 I will not be stepping aside for anyone to take over my life and my world. I still have my own living to do, my own mark to make. We all do. Each day is a gift, a blessing, a day to be treasured. I still have a lot to experience, and a lot of lessons to learn.

Book Review - The Widow of Pale Harbor

Hester Fox has such a unique writing style - The Widow of Pale Hollow is the second of her titles I have read. This one is a classic take on the theme "It was a dark, stormy night", because her stories are filled with dark, stormy nights. This is the story of Gabriel Stone, recently relocated to Pale Harbor to begin a transcendental church in his late wife's honor. Gabriel arrives on a dark, stormy night, and in the neglected church where he is to preach, he stumbles on a grisly find in the nave of the church. He is warned to stay away from Sophronia Carver (what a great name!) by all the townsfolk; she is reported to be a spell-casting murderess who got away with killing her husband.

Gabriel begins visiting town-folk; as the new minister he knows it is his duty. All have the same terrible warning; stay away from the Widow Carver. As fiction deems, he accidentally does meet Sophronia, and they are immediately attracted to each other. Things are not always as they seem, however; the town and Helen, Sophronia's housekeeper, are vying to keep the couple apart.

Sophronia is the editor of her late husband's magazine, and she has been receiving disturbing requests for publication, along with even more sinister and disturbing messages references to Edgar Allen Poe's stories. Together, Sophronia and Gabriel try to solve the mystery of the Pale Harbor evils, while at the same time remaining enamored with each other and trying to keep their growing bonds secret.

I thoroughly enjoyed the development of all of the characters in this book, from the spoiled, rich, one-dimensional people of the town, to the deeply dark character of Helen, and the depth of Sophronia and Gabriel both. It's a haunting, dark story centered around some completely horrific clues, hints of witchcraft and magic, along with the bitterness that can ruin a life. I found it to be old-fashioned enough in tone yet written on a level I could appreciate. I look forward to reading more stories by Hester Fox!

The Blessing of Life, and Friendships

Colorado Springs

I’ve been blessed in my life to have friends and friendships. There was a time when I let friends drift from my life; I considered my husband my best friend and all I needed, so I never really felt deprived. He was there always, for many years; a shoulder, a listening ear, consolation. He was like no other friend I’d had. He truly listened, and he could calm me like any lighthouse in a storm could. He was strong and kind, considerate; he was my rock, before that became a cheesy phrase. Until he was not all those things, and then I realized just how isolated I had made my life. Fortunately, about a year before his departure I met Edel through a chance walk, and she has remained my beacon in a stormy sea. She is there when I need an ear, a shoulder; she is my voice of reason, and she grounds me when it feels as though the seas surrounding me will swallow me whole. Our lives are vastly different now from when we met, but her presence in my life is a steady constant that I depend upon. Through her I have continued to grow a circle of friends, and they are each one vital to my life.

Honoring Wanda, Casey Key

There is a line from the movie, St. Elmo’s Fire that has always made an impression on me; “I don’t remember who met, or who fell in love with who first”. The gist of that is what matters to me – it doesn’t matter who we meet, how long we’ve been friends, it just works and something inside clicks. It’s the right moment for that kind of friendship; the person meant to be in our lives as the universal lines of life intersect at that exact moment.

Wanda and I

My friends, Dawn and Wanda; I met their mother, Loretta, first. Loretta came to my shop one day for ceramics. She had seen my roadside sign and stopped in; it turns out she lives just down the road. That was a long time ago; close to 20 years. That sign, before the county made me remove it, brought so much joy and friendship to me; I am not sure I could ever begin to list them all or touch on how much that means. Having my little ceramic shop added such joy to the fabric of my life. One day during ceramics class Loretta said, “you need to meet my daughters; I know you will be friends”, and she was right. Dawn is still on the fringes of my life; our courses have strayed over the years, but I still smile when I see her, and I love being around her. Wanda was a beacon of light and goodness, and we spent years’ worth of time at the beach, here at my house doing ceramics or eating, drinking, talking, laughing, crying. She was never perfect, could be very quiet and people just assumed a passivity about her, unless you knew her. Her face glowed from within, and her smile could light up a room.

Through Wanda I met Tammy,

Tammy, Wanda, Me, Casey Key

which expanded to Maryann and all the friends we share, on toward Kathleen, who is one of the most dear people in my life. Eventually we met Kitty, and on and on; the list has just snowballed as life rolls forward, so many door openings for friends, acquaintances, experiences. It is the direction my life was meant to go. But, eleven years ago we lost Wanda one hot, humid day in mid-July. The bonds of friendship can tighten when something so unthinkable happens. She was young, beautiful, in the prime of life; just past her 37th birthday and she died from a blood clot that no one even suspected she had. Together we stood in front of her family and friends, and we delivered her eulogy; the joys and sorrows of her life, and we wept. It did not matter at that time who met who first; what mattered is that we all had been touched by her life.

Our Wanda Angel, captured by Julian

Friendships are on my mind today, however, because of Wanda and Dawn; Loretta. Loretta’s husband is one of the men in my life I adore. Jules, JuJu – Julian. Before Wanda’s death we attended Loretta and Julian’s 40th anniversary party. There are so many memories stored away since that party; parties here at my house, meeting for dinner, attending showers, funerals, gatherings; just a few days before I left this summer, I took a picture of them sitting at my dining room table. I truly love them. The year after Wanda’s death, 17 of us traveled to Colorado Springs to honor Wanda’s life and to scatter her ashes in the land of her birth. Loretta and Julian have gone each year since, except this one, to visit where we honored her. It’s heartbreaking; her death began a new life for them, and although they’ve steadily fought age, it is still seeking them. Julian has battled cancer and other ailments over the years. His body has been poked and prodded, cut on, treated, and so on. His mind stays sharp, even if his body is not. He made me laugh the last time I saw him, and I thought, after all he has been through, he still is Julian. The other day Julian had a stroke, and it remains that he needs open heart surgery. I’ve not yet been to see him. I don’t know what to expect, I just know friendships and how our lives are all so intricately intertwined are all on my mind today. Life and love, friendships – they are all such blessings. They can be painful at times, but the living is so very worth the sadness and pain.

Loretta and Julian

Sister Hazel, Janus Landing

One night at my house

Hanging out at Kitty's