tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76580895086104862822024-02-18T22:34:59.052-06:00Lucy Crowe's NestLucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.comBlogger90125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-63210872427078904132018-08-06T12:36:00.000-05:002018-08-06T12:38:25.977-05:00Mere Mortal Magic<div>
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<i style="color: #343434; font-family: lato, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">It
doesn’t have to be</i><br />
<span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "lato" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i>the blue iris, it could be<br />weeds in a
vacant lot, or a few<br />small stones;</i></span></span></span></div>
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<strong><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "lato" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i><b><span style="background: transparent;">just</span></b></i></span></span></span></strong><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "lato" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i><br /></i></span></span></span><strong><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "lato" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i><b><span style="background: transparent;">pay
attention</span></b></i></span></span></span></strong><span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "lato" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i>,</i></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "lato" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i>then
patch<br />a few words together and don’t try<br />to make them
elaborate, this isn’t<br />a contest but the doorway</i></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "lato" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i>into
thanks, and a silence in which<br />another voice may speak.</i></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "lato" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I'm
not a poetry reader, isn't that a shame? That's a bit like saying “I
don't listen to music”, which would be unthinkable. So I'm setting
out, this summer, to remedy that situation, and when Mary Oliver
crossed my facebook page – the way so many poets, authors, and
artists do, just in the random act of a friend hitting the “share”
button – I decided the time is now. I've ordered her “A Thousand
Mornings” and may even give it precedence over my annual reading of
“To Kill a Mockingbird.”</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "lato" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Summer
has bruised me, this year, with too many stresses, ill tempers,
unfinished projects and unanticipated bills. The drawn-out decline
and final, horrid death of my beloved dog, Boo. Heat that clings like
a viscid second skin. Poison ivy on my shins. </span></span></span>
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<span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "lato" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">So.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "lato" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I've
created a quiet spot in the woods near my house – arranged two
sky-blue Adirondack chairs around the roots of a giant maple, hung
wind chimes and bird feeders, strung fairy lights where the overhead
branches dip down almost to the ground. The effect is something like
a child's secret hideaway, walls and ceiling of jeweled green, dirt
floor soft and cool. In the evening, when the sky is plum-colored and
the bats cutting capers above the house roof, I can feel my soul
unwind. I can almost believe in magic.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "lato" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Ah
Lord, life would be better, wouldn't it, if we could all subscribe to
that simple ideology?</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "lato" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Magic.
The stuff of Peter Pan and Hocus Pocus, Puff and Samantha Stevens. An
herb for bad tempers, an incense for love, a kiss for the frog . . .
Poof! Life is better! Isn't this what we all need?</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #343434;"><span style="font-family: "lato" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Alas,
we're left to create our own. Mere mortals, we make do with such as
we can – chocolate, music, twinkle lights, love. And words. Oh yes,
words. Such power, such potential, such . . . <i>magic. </i>Say a
prayer, cast a spell, whisper a blessing, spit a curse. Maybe when
your creative gears are stalled, your temper frayed, your big toe
stubbed, you should catch your breath in a quiet spot and read a
verse. Here, I'll leave you this one:</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><i>Sometimes
I spend all day trying to count the leaves on a single tree. To do
this I have to climb branch by branch and write down the numbers in a
little book. So I suppose, from their point of view, it’s
reasonable that my friends say: what foolishness! She’s got her
head in the clouds again.<br /><br />But it’s not. Of course I have to
give up, but by then I’m half crazy with the wonder of it — the
abundance of the leaves, the quietness of the branches, the
hopelessness of my effort. And I am in that delicious and important
place, roaring with laughter, full of earth-praise.” - Mary Oliver</i></span></span></span></h1>
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<span style="color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: "merriweather" , "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Yup,
pure magic. Happy reading!</span></span></span></div>
Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-8028664953212058312018-04-28T15:14:00.000-05:002018-05-02T15:17:00.646-05:00Tractors, Souls, and Generations<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Can tractors have souls? Absurd question, of course, but here - if God <i>should</i> deign to equip any piece of man’s machinery with a hereafter, the recipient would be an International 706. If metal could retain memories, if oil could lube a beating heart, then this little tractor would be the archangel of farmers everywhere.</div>
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Here she sits, at the back of my father’s machine shed beneath a lavish coat of winter dust and pigeon poop, and she isn’t cowed at all. No, not humbled even by her massive brethren or the slow air leak in her front tire. Her beautiful red paint gleams even in the chancy light; her engine is ready and waiting and . . . maybe she remembers.</div>
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But, if not, then I do. I have a heart and a soul, and I know that to ride on her fender through the chill spring daybreak was to ride straight to heaven. Wind in your hair, white-knuckled over bumps, lungs filled with a sharp crystal air like nothing I have breathed since that time - I knew, irrefutably, how <i>alive </i>I was.</div>
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And to be alive was good. It was blessed.</div>
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My father wore Levis, short-sleeved blue work shirts, and a battered, olive-green farm cap. His knuckles were scarred and the tip of one finger blunted from a long-ago accident that only my mother remembered, and occasionally spoke of with real horror. My dad - the strongest, the best dad anywhere - could light a cigarette in a full-blown windstorm, on the seat of that tractor. First match, every time. I stood in awe.</div>
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Ah, but it was easier to stand in awe, then, wasn’t it? And while the man, like the tractor, is undiminished with age, that’s a story for another day.</div>
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I want to stay here today. Here, on the wind-scoured prairie with the man and the child, the whole world spilled out in front of us like milk from a bucket. Tender blues and grays, the sweetest golds, new greens, and holy-shit-so-bright blue. The view, you see, was nine-tenths sky, the sun close enough to pluck between finger and thumb.</div>
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And the land . . . the land knew us. Remembered us, as it remembered our fathers and grandfathers, Paul with the horses and Vance with his renowned picker skills, William and Joseph Henry before them. This same dirt had dusted their overalls, this same air had cleansed their lungs and, from the seat of the 706, with the plowed earth lying like silken tresses behind us, there was no denying the perfect continuity of life.</div>
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<i>Life.</i></div>
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When it becomes hard to reconcile the child with the woman, I come here. If I’ve lost the thread of my being in the snag of internet, bills, the pager that dictates my every waking moment, I come here. And sometimes, I walk out to the shed to see the 706. To remember the smell of real spring, the fingers of wind in my hair, the heat of bold sun on my face.</div>
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To remember the awe.</div>
Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-71184776274205913482018-03-13T21:12:00.000-05:002018-03-13T21:12:44.160-05:00The Spring Cup<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Today I drank from the spring cup - an action which sounds mundane enough, but, let me assure you, has real repercussions in my personal life. Choosing the spring cup when the outdoor temp is thirty-five degrees Celsius and the indoor environment is damp with Lysol and flu, is an act of actual courage. It is, indeed, choosing to hope.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Of course, the spring cup is one of four. They’re coffee cups, Norman Rockwells, and duplicates of the set I had when I first moved away from home. Each has a depiction of a season and a boy with his dog – you’ve seen this, right? - and in the spring, the boy is already barefooted. He’s pouring cough syrup for the poor little dog, who has his head covered and is sad-eyed with the flu. Yes, like the rest of us.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Possibly because I’m a farmer’s daughter, I find myself extremely affected by the seasons, and I tend to mold my life around them. I read books, choose music and socks and movies, all according to the time of year, and it’s always felt to me as though, by doing so, I exert just the teensiest bit of authority over that which cannot be controlled.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Ah Lord, how we’ve longed for spring this year! So long, now, since the snow felt magical or the cold invigorating. No, we’ve descended into this quagmire of germs, mud and discontent. Apathetic, lethargic, peaked, we cry at home and squabble on facebook. <u></u><u></u></div>
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No more.<u></u><u></u></div>
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The spring cup came out of the cupboard today, and I filled it with Irish Crème coffee, and right away, through the back-screen door, I saw a sliver of green beneath the magnolia tree. And I know, I am absolutely certain, that if I slip on rain boots and climb the hill, I’ll find the first crocus peeking out between the hollows of a fallen tree.<u></u><u></u></div>
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I’m choosing spring. Right now, today, so that even if it snows again, I’ll know the sun is right behind it.<u></u><u></u></div>
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I found the soundtrack to <i id="m_-4449567910594335619yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1519676171456_8462">Chocolat </i>and, first thing, the opening chords blew away the stale winter blahs. A sky that had been leaden now looked tempestuous, instead - and I suspected it was tinged with blue. Behind the hill, where I couldn’t see it. I slipped on my shamrock socks and felt ten pounds lighter. I opened <i id="m_-4449567910594335619yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1519676171456_8463">Wuthering Heights </i>and saw a shimmer of lightning across the pages. Rain pelting from a nickel-plated sky to splat into puddles that smell like earthworms and heaven.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Hope is, I believe, nine-parts pig-headedness and one-part sheer ignorance.<u></u><u></u></div>
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I don’t care if it’s still winter. Today, I am drinking spring.</div>
Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-52329832719084831542018-01-30T12:57:00.000-06:002018-01-30T12:57:14.489-06:00Springtime Remodeling <div id="m_-6335340614789775287yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1516649309274_2781" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfAT5vbNgRn9FGebPKOpNkZrb_1Fn9P3NMbsld6Hq2n8z3LQoScRuAbX-o6qab9yBDE9Lb25YmPOfEXx9UmWgm4ZQg2A4yfuVGsHwPC0nzkwUUEE230MH63m6fobmlfBAT7KGoW4a7sY_W/s1600/diningroom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="576" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfAT5vbNgRn9FGebPKOpNkZrb_1Fn9P3NMbsld6Hq2n8z3LQoScRuAbX-o6qab9yBDE9Lb25YmPOfEXx9UmWgm4ZQg2A4yfuVGsHwPC0nzkwUUEE230MH63m6fobmlfBAT7KGoW4a7sY_W/s320/diningroom.jpg" width="240" /></a>Hope is the color of Springtime, the shimmery, lacy green lighting the hillside all the way to the top.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Does anyone choose their room color according to season? She sat on the floor in the middle of her decimated dining room and thought how it didn’t matter what anyone else did. Nobody existing on her budget should be drinking twenty-dollar mail-order coffee, either, but here she was, consuming it daily by the gallon. Because, well, coffee.<u></u><u></u></div>
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But back to the dining room.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Or, rather the ruin of the dining room and its much-anticipated rebirth</div>
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The room caught the light, which was both its saving grace and its undoing. Because, while the sunlight polished the piano and glowed in the cupboard glass, it also highlighted the water stains in the old wood floor and the dismal condition of the ancient paneling.<u></u><u></u></div>
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And she could have lived with that, but the same sunlight warmed the outside walls and drew the snakes, who nested in the hollow spaces between the studs and sometimes dropped out where the paneling gapped. </div>
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So. New drywall. Overhaul, mud and sand. White dust everywhere. Her husband tracked it onto the carpet. Her cat left pawprints on the counter. Winter should have been the perfect time for a project of such proportions; short days and purple evening light should have been just right. But she hadn’t anticipated bad tempers and spilled Kilz Latex, the way the grittiness that coated every surface would begin to sift into her brain and make her restless.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Restless for . . . green. Jeweled leaves and emerald grass. The gossamer shine of lacewings, the metallic sheen of dragonflies. Lily pads or pondwater or anything besides the relentless January sludging the landscape outside her window.<u></u><u></u></div>
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She craved spring the way a sailor craves oranges.<u></u><u></u></div>
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And she thought that perhaps an indoor spring could be created. These walls . . . a pale, pale color called Irish Tune, a frosted shade, like skunk cabbage leaves. Lace curtains at the windows to catch the light and dapple it across the floor, a border patterned with hummingbirds and butterflies, just enough pink to catch the eye.<u></u><u></u></div>
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She could almost smell the colors – something like mint juleps and new tomato plants. Colors that sounded like baseball games and Sunday radio; colors soft as moss. And when she thought of the way that Spring would be there, every time she entered that room, even in the depths of winter, it seemed that a bit of January thawed and receded. Nighttime held off just a breath longer than it had the day before, and, maybe, there was hope.<u></u><u></u></div>
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And hope was green. <u></u><u></u></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsFae-vdUAZp3R0xCVgQT8KkVtp90L2Slz2ygcLiVIhpnD4hqY6GsgbM0-plpiMsd9vBIUjcPXsyQmLeWVLXJuc_AoGtTCcFhjiYGkulhx_5MJa1a0lLzmjo8Pqvy1oVsKVdmwmZSIg9Ip/s1600/wallpaper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="167" data-original-width="700" height="76" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsFae-vdUAZp3R0xCVgQT8KkVtp90L2Slz2ygcLiVIhpnD4hqY6GsgbM0-plpiMsd9vBIUjcPXsyQmLeWVLXJuc_AoGtTCcFhjiYGkulhx_5MJa1a0lLzmjo8Pqvy1oVsKVdmwmZSIg9Ip/s320/wallpaper.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-60769493309301573732017-12-24T11:52:00.000-06:002017-12-24T11:52:59.431-06:00We Will Know Joy<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbTRvf5J3PuuWx3PMYWfuRxKrwgA45Z7cluquFwDNDauLNp5M-62JdDoVwaZvse-DkMazx2ZLZTAGUQvpK1uqnHqFxM7w9pbaVNmXcXW2ibDBJrohtZeJmZT8OS-qsU9uOqIGwo6SpX4WM/s1600/lightinstorm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="340" data-original-width="454" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbTRvf5J3PuuWx3PMYWfuRxKrwgA45Z7cluquFwDNDauLNp5M-62JdDoVwaZvse-DkMazx2ZLZTAGUQvpK1uqnHqFxM7w9pbaVNmXcXW2ibDBJrohtZeJmZT8OS-qsU9uOqIGwo6SpX4WM/s320/lightinstorm.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._W._Turner">J.M.W. Turner</a></td></tr>
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Oh, Christmas!<u></u><u></u></div>
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A thousand memories fisted together into a big tinsel ball that smells of evergreen, cinnamon, and life. Marvel the Mustang! I must’ve been, what? Four or five? I never forgot the moment, the joy, of unwrapping that gift. I rode that silly toy all the way to the corner – a quarter mile away - in the snow.<u></u><u></u></div>
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<span class="aBn" data-term="goog_630947586" style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(204, 204, 204); position: relative; top: -2px; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><span class="aQJ" style="position: relative; top: 2px; z-index: -1;">Midnight</span></span> mass, Mom in her long fur coat. She sang . . . well, yes, like an angel. That voice issued from that small person like Gabriel himself commandeered her soul and everybody in the church went still to listen, and to stand in awe.<u></u><u></u></div>
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The year of the pink Barbie Cadillac, the year of the flu, the year of the lost Christmas tree.<u></u><u></u></div>
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But here – there is this, and this is, after all, what I need to write about.<u></u><u></u></div>
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A late night at work, shift change and the winter light already altered into a deep color like bruises, snow falling like God gave it just one night to do its worst. My daughter’s Christmas concert at seven, and the call came in at twenty minutes to five. Four boys in a roll-over car accident.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Dark! It’s so dark out and heaven help us, we are so alone out here in this Godforsaken outpost of EMS.<u></u><u></u></div>
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But we go – of course we do, there is no choice, and now my daughter will sing without me, and these boys . . . These boys will bleed and cry like the small children they really are while we do everything within our puny powers to pull them home from the awful edge they’re teetering on.<u></u><u></u></div>
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No light. Or very little light. The fire department has its generators and the big halogens should do a better job, but its hard to see in the cramped enclosure of this little deathtrap car, and it's even harder to assess, and between the glass and the bent metal we’ll be a long time getting them out.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Call for mutual aid – but the neighboring community is already out on a call. Life Flight won’t fly in a blizzard, and we are on our own. One of the boys is crying for his mother. He’s a big kid – sixteen? Seventeen? – and I am glad I can’t see his face when he goes quiet.<u></u><u></u></div>
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<u></u> <u></u></div>
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At seven fifteen I am in the high school auditorium and my daughter is singing when I notice the blood of that angel on my work pants and now I can’t stop crying. Here in the midst of these lovely, insulated<i id="m_-3198238690897929665yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1513365547376_2841"> </i>parents with their sweaters and knee-high boots, I am in my<i id="m_-3198238690897929665yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1513365547376_2842"> </i>EMS uniform and I am crying so hard I can’t breathe.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Not leaving. Not leaving, because I need that piping, little golden voice on the stage so much. She is pulling me through and she doesn’t even know it.<u></u><u></u></div>
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So here it is, and I know this is getting long – writers are, you know, taught to feed the public in small, palatable bites – but if you can, bear with me.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Life comes at us so fast, in chunks of sight, sound, smell that our souls absorb and, I think, take with them wherever they go. I think, maybe, someday, there is a reckoning and we pull that tattered piece of ourselves out and say, “Here it is. Here is what happened to me while I was there, and here is what I did.”<u></u><u></u></div>
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Here is what I did with the sadness, the nightmares, the guilt. And <i id="m_-3198238690897929665yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1513365547376_2851">here </i>– this is important, too – here is what I did with the joy.<u></u><u></u></div>
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And I think, here on earth, we can tip Saint Michael’s scales in either direction - not by outside circumstances, but by our reaction to them.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Weigh heavy on the joy if you can.<u></u><u></u></div>
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There’s enough to bring us down – there always will be – but there is also, in equal measure, enough to bring us up. Light, laughter, love. Sometimes you’re in a black tunnel, and you can’t quite see those things; you’ve got to trust that they’re there, and you’ve got to reach for them. Lives are, I think, too easily given over to darkness, but we’re meant to fight that, individually and collectively.<u></u><u></u></div>
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It’s Christmas! Never is there a better time to feel better. Here<i id="m_-3198238690897929665yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1513365547376_2860">, </i>now, we’re called to join that army of angels who raised a joyous battle cry over two thousand years ago. Christ is here; he walks among us, and because of this we will know tears, blood, strife, but – more than that, so much more - we will know love.<u></u><u></u></div>
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We will know joy.</div>
Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-10724329534037907672017-11-06T17:58:00.000-06:002017-11-18T17:59:56.464-06:00November Ghosts<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJLwL11CcLt_4HJpFmXEopQGm4iDSiVkLBWee_IQQwbiiEGKvxgeJ7zBRgDWlBWzdkp8I2F-v0N8DfEW6k9k2R0YB4z9q8pbU-2ZOhbKO0U8Z0wA8Pnf2yZx35tV6ek_Qcz8EFUEGagIuM/s1600/november.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="437" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJLwL11CcLt_4HJpFmXEopQGm4iDSiVkLBWee_IQQwbiiEGKvxgeJ7zBRgDWlBWzdkp8I2F-v0N8DfEW6k9k2R0YB4z9q8pbU-2ZOhbKO0U8Z0wA8Pnf2yZx35tV6ek_Qcz8EFUEGagIuM/s320/november.jpg" width="273" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">At by <a href="http://www.malanda.de/index-out.htm">Malanda Art</a></td></tr>
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I was driving home with Keith Whitley playing on my iPod, and he had reached his last song – his best – before I realized October had passed. <i id="m_5136974019449995256yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1509640423801_46260">Tell Lorrie I Love Her</i> is November music, straight from the grave to your heart, where it leaves teeth marks. Golden October is in tatters; summer’s sunlit memory has faded again into gray reality.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Keith Whitley, of course, is irrevocably dead and Lorrie left to mourn.<u></u><u></u></div>
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We laugh at mortality on Halloween. Brave behind our masks and paint, drunk on chocolate, wine, and our own audacity. We are benign ghosts in bedsheets, vampires with blood-tipped fangs, stiff-legged zombies – our dance is set to the glorious tempo of gentle, sparkling fall.<u></u><u></u></div>
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November calls us to sober up, chills us to the bone with unforgiving winds and skeletal trees -darkness, always, a mere breath away.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Wiccans preach a thinning of the veil, now – something you can almost see, as though the sky is smeared in charcoals, and beyond it . . . maybe? Can you discern? A hand reaching for you? Leave an empty seat at the dinner table, then. Set out food and wine.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Pooh! Hocus Pocus!<u></u><u></u></div>
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Catholics celebrate All Soul’s Day. How close are the beloved in November! They’re in the smart of incense tearing the eyes; their shadows blend with those of the living in the twist of candlelight, and a priest – a good priest – will remind his congregation, now, of who they are.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Don’t be afraid, he will say.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Don’t be afraid because you are part of this glorious, horrible, confounding bundle of humanity here on earth. Because, yes, you are bone, sinew, teeth, but you are also soul, and that is the part you feel sorrowing right now, reaching and remembering.</div>
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The departed are reaching too, from the other side. And maybe here, now - when you need it the most - you can remember just a breath of the place they call home? The place you, too, came from – is it blue or green? Or - are those just words we need here? Pretty words that we put to a color, a <i id="m_5136974019449995256yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1509640423801_46279">feeling</i> we can’t quite grasp because humanity eclipses spiritual and that other place is lost to us now.<u></u><u></u></div>
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But not quite. Gray November calls us to remember. Remember light, remember love, arms around you, kisses on your forehead. Remember that nobody is ever really lost to you. If you go outside and shout <i id="m_5136974019449995256yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1509640423801_46282">I love you! </i>they will hear you. If you whisper it in your heart, they will hear you.<u></u><u></u></div>
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And that nudge, that feeling - that <i id="m_5136974019449995256yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1509640423801_46285">awareness </i>– is your answer. Heed it, carry it close. You’re only a transient here on November’s shores, a lost gypsy, and your soul knows that even if you don’t. Your soul hears the music on the other side of the veil; it danced there before time, and it will again.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-83654146735696427692017-10-16T13:38:00.000-05:002017-10-16T13:38:36.000-05:00Magically October<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1zgfQcIffv_khKX6f6KqkTq3FbsKbdBWrDtXu6RWB8jzZQWCeTVVbAEkYvox2WFwPQBW2DsUiQ8YkEPtkgLJuD8_j6wrJj7nRRIgb9aG7IlD7BlpgbXsu23nX-k7XqJTOYzM9kGR8duD-/s1600/Starlight-Trick-or-Treat-6x6x1.5-2016.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1267" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1zgfQcIffv_khKX6f6KqkTq3FbsKbdBWrDtXu6RWB8jzZQWCeTVVbAEkYvox2WFwPQBW2DsUiQ8YkEPtkgLJuD8_j6wrJj7nRRIgb9aG7IlD7BlpgbXsu23nX-k7XqJTOYzM9kGR8duD-/s320/Starlight-Trick-or-Treat-6x6x1.5-2016.jpg" width="315" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Artwork by <a href="http://auntlizzy.com/">Lizzy Rainey</a></td></tr>
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October came on gilded wings in the night, and by morning the air was clear and sweet as champagne, another summer laid to dusty death.<u></u><u></u></div>
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A year gone by, then, since last the witches danced on Samhain. New growth spurts, new loves, new wrinkles, but, look – while all has changed, it yet remains the same, and that is the gift of the season. October’s ghosts are the sweetest; they beckon us forward and call us backward all at once. Rush outside and the air will lift you up - carry you like a scarlet tumble of leaves – and on it you will hear the echo of every self you’ve ever been, and every self you will be.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Who could deny magic in October?<u></u><u></u></div>
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Remember small tennis shoes pounding the pavement on Halloween night? Glo sticks bracketing wrists, ghoul faces grinning – the wind caught their capes, and they flew, didn’t they? Up and up on the new, sharp wind, right into forever.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Remember nineteen? What is was like to be poised, sure-footed on the cliff of adulthood? God, what a flight, from the railroad bridge to the water below with the moon cutting the sky and the stars chasing each other in the current. That love, that year, was the sweetest love – kisses tasted like candy apples; every breath was dizzying.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Look back, look back – first real football game, so small! The cat costume that every sibling wore, the orange forever candle, bonfires and cemetery walks, baby’s first costume – all in colors that swirl and riot and escape the memory before the painter’s brush slaps the canvas.<u></u><u></u></div>
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But here – today, the wind smells like apples and the sky is hard and blue as bone china. October beckons like a siren song. Magic is ours for the taking – hold it in your palm and blow it into flame; it won’t burn you. The wind scatters the leaves off the hill into a bright, tumbling wave, and the ghost voices are calling you to fly.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Oh, jump into that current. Love like a child, run like your feet have wings – wine is the sweetest this time of year, love spells last forever, and tomorrow is poised on tip-toe right around the corner.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Hello, sweet October! We love you!</div>
Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-47948171429502168012017-09-22T22:33:00.000-05:002017-09-22T22:33:00.772-05:00A Day in the Life<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We greet <span class="aBn" data-term="goog_1417409795" style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(204, 204, 204); position: relative; top: -2px; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><span class="aQJ" style="position: relative; top: 2px; z-index: -1;">Friday</span></span> having had enough sleep – which may sound mundane to some, but in the EMS life, this is a rare moment indeed. Rare, too, for the air to have such a clear, gorgeous quality to it; it smells of the softening apples spread beneath the tree across the road. You could almost drink it, and if you did, it would taste like the Boone’s Farm you swigged on your nineteenth birthday, wouldn’t it?</div>
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But we can’t drink – we’re at work, wearing our Superman blues – so we’ll just breathe and walk instead. And hope the freaking pager doesn’t go off.<u></u><u></u></div>
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No jinx!<u></u><u></u></div>
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When you work in EMS, a lot of people ask you how, <i id="m_-3362015717747316981yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505766542760_7523">why, </i>you do what you do. But the truth is, there are a lot of days just like this. The second truth is this: we’re not quite sure, ourselves, what opened this gate in our lives and took us dancing down this particular garden path. “It’s just what we do,” is the standard reply.<u></u><u></u></div>
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But it takes a funny breed, doesn’t it?<u></u><u></u></div>
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There are components to our lives which the rest of the world would find . . . odd, but which to us are the every day. Well, here, consider this:<u></u><u></u></div>
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Sleep. It’s such a commodity that you can find us snoozing – huddled on broken couches beneath our sleeping bags - any time of the day or night. We crave sleep, we live for it. Because, of course, it’s hard come by. Our lives are subject to continuous interruption – we open ourselves up to that, anywhere from forty-eight to ninety-six hours a week.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Forty-eight-hour weeks are for wusses!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We <i id="m_-3362015717747316981yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505766542760_7534">live </i>together. We arrive at one station fresh from another, having not gone home between. We’re packing clothing, food, bottled water, coffee, books, as though we’re preparing to hike The Great Divide.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Some mornings it feels that way.<u></u><u></u></div>
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It’s strange to spend so much time with nonfamily members. Not just days, but <i id="m_-3362015717747316981yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505766542760_7539">moments. </i>The phone call from an ailing parent, the death of a beloved pet, a child’s first report card, party plans<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="m_-3362015717747316981yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505766542760_7540" name="m_-3362015717747316981__Hlk492644838" style="color: #222222;">,</a> divorces . . . all shared over coffee and, maybe, a Marlboro with the guy in blue standing next to you. This, too – those breathless, suspended seconds in the back of the rig. Full-blown CPR at seventy miles per hour, a seizure that won’t end, the accident victim going shocky.<u></u><u></u></div>
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We can discuss the contents of our patient’s stomach while eating lunch and not even realize we’re doing it until the other diners go quiet.<u></u><u></u></div>
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We live for you. A (admittedly twisted) part of us needs to be needed. We have to fix, to mend, to right the wrong that led you to call us today. Something else you might not know – we don’t really admire ourselves at all. We’re not like Chicago Fire – we’re not the brave and the wonderful. Actually, much of the time, we admire you, the patient. The most outstanding displays of courage and grace generally come from the hapless victim on the cot - and when you’ve taken a frail, sick, little old lady from the nursing home who remembers to ask you how your day is going, you learn that quickly.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Finally – we carry a lot of you with us, all the time. The parents of the girl who overdosed saw, at the hospital, our calm, blue professionalism. They missed the struggle, the rush, the overwhelming <i id="m_-3362015717747316981yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1505766542760_7547">desire </i>to put life back into that body. Their nightmares will probably never end, but, oh, we understand nightmares, too.<u></u><u></u></div>
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But not today.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Today the sun feels like a warm wash of absolute benevolence. The pagers rest benignly in our pockets as though they’ll never speak again. We’re not exhausted or burned-out or alcoholic. (Chicago Fire again.) In fact, we possess a unique perspective on the goodness of life revolving around the simple fact that we are alive.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Today, we are golden.</div>
Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-62497965038634018022017-07-31T17:32:00.000-05:002017-07-31T17:35:28.926-05:00Summer Calls Me Home<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photography by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/erebosstudios/">Erebos Photographic Studios</a></td></tr>
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Thunder wakens me the first time – deep conga roll just pass the whine of our window air; the clouds are torn and purple, the leaves on the hill already jeweled with the first fat raindrops, and I’ve disregarded morning in the time it takes to roll over.<u></u><u></u></div>
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By the time I emerge, rumpled from my extended stay, the air has cleared and the ground steams beneath a dazzling sun. Coffee, swimsuit, sunglasses, and I’m headed out.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Summer calls me home.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Here, above the valley, the land flattens out like a wide clay bowl, chipped and striped in greens and golds, the sky a hard ceramic above - a color like helium balloons or the fistful of forget-me-nots your first love gave you.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Locals call the high spot “the ridge” but in Illinois this is something of a misnomer; we have no mountains. The truth is, out here, the land falls away, flat and still as the Pacific, to an unchanging, long and straight horizon. At night, above and below differ only in the depth of their shadows - planets and fireflies kissing so that the effect is that of swimming in a bowl of stars – but by daylight, you can see forever. You can see your whole life spread out before and behind you, your soul easing from your body and soaring, following the straight corn rows all the way to the sky.<u></u><u></u></div>
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We’re used to that here, and I really only marvel at it once in a while; I don’t think about the way you can see the silvery glint of barn roofs four miles off or spot a stranger’s pick-up before you make the turn home.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Home.<u></u><u></u></div>
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When I was fifteen, I could sit at the edge of the hay field and watch the sun ooze like Orange-Melts into the earth, Venus shimmering to life between the walnut trees, the lightning bugs beginning their first tender love dance. My muscles would ache from stacking bales, my skin tighten with sun burn, but here it is – every breath, every single one, was filled with God.<u></u><u></u></div>
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If the rest of the world is Godless, it’s because He lives there at home; I’m certain of it.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Because I found, when I left – although I didn’t go far – that nothing was ever so peaceful, so simple or true again. Life has such a brutal way of smacking the innocence from us, doesn’t it? Teaching us that love isn’t love, that death is only a hair’s breadth away and it’s hardly ever happy. That lies slip easily from beautiful tongues, cruelty exists in a black chamber of every heart, and even Jesus wept. Hopelessness, depression, fear – all lying dormant within us, only waiting for the key to turn in the lock.<u></u><u></u></div>
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So. Home.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Six generations have worked, loved, nurtured this ground. Drought, blight, Reaganomics and chinch bugs met with unwavering determination and a black Irish humor. My grandfather traded horses here, my father went to school right down on the corner, and I . . . I <i id="m_-8169912426361507566yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1499816208268_14963">lived </i>here. And although I have changed my last name twice and stepped in more than a few shit piles along the way, when I’m here I know who I am.<u></u><u></u></div>
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And the rest of the world recedes - beautifully, silently sliding away until the only sound left is the wind in the corn and the murmur of Farm Radio.<u></u><u></u></div>
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I am home.</div>
Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-70110678886987158212017-06-21T13:58:00.000-05:002017-06-21T14:06:53.381-05:00The M. Mouse Calamity: Kitty-Boy's Return<div id="m_-2610407053779532782yui_3_16_0_1_1497477845932_21177" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
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<i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;">From the desk of Gothika, Dark Lord of the Grimalkins </span><span id="m_9003541919660041334yui_3_16_0_1_1479923885126_56853" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;">aka </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;">Kitty-Boy:</span></i></div>
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“Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it.”<u></u><u></u></div>
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Hmm . . . lovely, but no.<u></u><u></u></div>
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“Call me Ishmael.”<u></u><u></u></div>
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No! Oh dear no, please don’t call me Ishmael.<u></u><u></u></div>
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<i id="m_-2610407053779532782yui_3_16_0_1_1497477845932_21188">Why </i>does my human set such store by the written word? *sigh*<u></u><u></u></div>
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After a six-month hiatus – during which <i id="m_-2610407053779532782yui_3_16_0_1_1497477845932_21191">she</i> plagued you, her loyal fan base, with her tireless blather – <a href="http://lucycrowe.blogspot.com/2016/11/curse-of-stone-arms-kitty-boys-tale.html">I am back</a>. The reason for my return (prepare yourself, gentle reader) has its roots in pure evil.</div>
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She is packing!<u></u><u></u></div>
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Oh, she tries to hide it from me, confining her efforts to the closet, behind closed doors – but I . . . I am a shadow; I am a sleek, stealthy creature, a night hunter. I SEE ALL! Yes, she is packing.<u></u><u></u></div>
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The man spends moments at the computer when he is not even aware of my existence. He stares moony-eyed at the screen, fingers clicking on beach and margarita advertisements.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Where is this Florida they speak of? And could its charms possibly surpass my beauty? I think not!<u></u><u></u></div>
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I have doubled and redoubled my efforts at winning their undivided attention. While my human pours over maps and speaks with delight of this . . . this <i id="m_-2610407053779532782yui_3_16_0_1_1497477845932_21202">creature, </i>this Mickey <i id="m_-2610407053779532782yui_3_16_0_1_1497477845932_21203">Mouse (?!) </i>I sit on the back of the couch and tap her head with my gorgeous, hairy paw. I purr lovingly in her ear. When all else fails, I vomit on her favorite chair. (For a clever beast, she is appalling inept at scouting her surroundings, and she swears like a pirate.)<u></u><u></u></div>
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I roll over to show her my lovely belly (yes, like a dog!). I prance behind her wherever she goes, twitching my perfect plume of a tail. Sometimes I even condescend to bat at her shoelace. (A favorite activity of hers; I love her, but she is a simple creature.)<u></u><u></u></div>
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But – all to no avail! What to do, what to do?<u></u><u></u></div>
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Oh, she tries to comfort me! The boy will stay with me, she says. The boy! He has a <i id="m_-2610407053779532782yui_3_16_0_1_1497477845932_21210">dog</i>! A large, clumsy, revolting <i id="m_-2610407053779532782yui_3_16_0_1_1497477845932_21211">savage</i>! He drools; he reeks. (The dog, not the boy; the boy is at least moderately civilized.)<u></u><u></u></div>
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The girl will visit me frequently, she says. The girl is entirely too busy and will spend no more than an hour or two each day (!!) paying homage and making tuna offerings. She does not come close to comprehending what is required of her and, indeed, she can often be observed talking to the bird (<i id="m_-2610407053779532782yui_3_16_0_1_1497477845932_21214">Pretty </i>Bird, she calls it! Never noticing its failure to fashion real sentences.) She stops in the yard and pets the dogs! Before petting me!<u></u><u></u></div>
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This is unspeakable! It cannot be endured.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Where is this home of this M. Mouse? (And how did he come to be ruler there?) Will it be possible to follow the humans? I am ill at the thought. They travel in a horrid little box on wheels which plays the most atrocious music and smells of coconut air freshener. The man loves speed and curses at the other little boxes in the road and the woman wears atrocious pink sunglasses.<u></u><u></u></div>
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But I digress.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Surely, dear reader, you can comprehend the scope of my difficulties. The fateful day fast approaches. If you are reading this, I beg you, send help.</div>
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Want more <i style="font-family: "helvetica neue", helvetica, arial, "lucida grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;">Dark Lord of the Grimalkins? Check out his last post "</span></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Calligraffitti; font-size: 18px;">Curse of the Stone Arms: Kitty-Boy's Tale" <a href="http://lucycrowe.blogspot.com/2016/11/curse-of-stone-arms-kitty-boys-tale.html">here</a>.</span></div>
Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-44299320812098133962017-05-24T11:59:00.000-05:002017-05-24T11:59:32.019-05:00"These Iris Are Her Own"<div id="m_-2115190219620596536yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1494531240070_79467" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwKPM3XhKftj7ZZW4oJ_yEeJT-CB8GEr2Ph2gL0Wmw25K9MGzKOCJBmXTyItOjbWuebvahVtQF4ZzkAguq5xgsB3m8-rtOyP2y1emW1jEridYDuS1VT4FCTw08s5X1uCLiKxqFjU263ZiY/s1600/iris.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="545" data-original-width="468" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwKPM3XhKftj7ZZW4oJ_yEeJT-CB8GEr2Ph2gL0Wmw25K9MGzKOCJBmXTyItOjbWuebvahVtQF4ZzkAguq5xgsB3m8-rtOyP2y1emW1jEridYDuS1VT4FCTw08s5X1uCLiKxqFjU263ZiY/s320/iris.jpg" width="274" /></a>It is, at last, the time of year when every window - each little glass pane – in the house at the bottom of the hill is filled with green. Jeweled, sun-dappled – emerald, jade, and lime. The evening air has an aqueous feel to it - as though one is moving, at all times, slowly and languorously underwater, the overhead leaves swaying delicately to moon tide and earth’s pull.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Iris time. The stems budded out, now, swollen and ready to pop, the thick, woody leaves crowding densely over the sandy ditch soil.<u></u><u></u></div>
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She goes out with tee shirt sleeves rolled and feet bare, toes grass- stained. Kneels by the iris bed and loses herself in the scent of weeds and grass, the crumble of dirt beneath her fingers, drone of honey bee, swoop of swallowtail.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Iris – possibly the sweetest scent in the entire known universe. Something like grape Kool-Aid, childhood, and grandma’s kitchen all balled together with lemon sun and dew-wet mornings.<u></u><u></u></div>
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This patch runs the entire length of sidewalk in front of the house, and that would seem extravagant had her grandmother not lived there before her. Grandma, now – she filled the entire lot next door with her peonies and iris. People came from all over the county to marvel at the varieties, to inhale the sweetness, to find their elusive happiness along the winding paths or tucked beneath the arbor.<u></u><u></u></div>
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But these iris are her own.<u></u><u></u></div>
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“I want iris,” she’d said one morning to her husband-to-be, and the next day he’d pulled into the yard with the bed of his truck clear full. The sheer romance of that gesture had stolen her breath away. Who loves somebody else that much? A hundred iris, maybe a thousand! They’d planted every single bulb. Those are the great big pink ones – nobody’s ever seen blossoms like that, before or since, so fat they fall over in the ditch before you can pluck them</div>
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They smell like heaven – sniff them; your soul will remember.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Here, at the far end – the pale, pale yellows. They’re called Irish tune. A true-blue friend, a friend who could make her laugh and cry in equal measure, had given her those bulbs and then died hardly a year later. Nobody thinks about flowers outliving people, but there you go.<u></u><u></u></div>
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The dark crimsons come from a haunted house. She’d dug (stole) them in the middle of the night and a ghost had said, just at her shoulder, “don’t take them all!”<u></u><u></u></div>
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Purples from her mother; rubies from her sister.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Fifteen years gone by, and while that isn’t such a long time - not really – it was in those years that the kids grew up. Every May at iris time, they had weeded by her side - bellyaching, arguing, sometimes, yes, even laughing, but so <i id="m_-2115190219620596536yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1494531240070_79490">there </i>that to imagine them grown would have seemed absurd. How had it happened?<u></u><u></u></div>
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And Jewel! What a gorgeous little dog she’d been! Curly tail, laughing mouth, thick black coat that devilled her all summer long. She’d watch the work from beneath the bridal wreath, tongue lolling – every summer, all the way from puppyhood to old old age while the iris thickened and grew out front.<u></u><u></u></div>
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The sun ducks behind the hill long before it’s truly dark, but the air has cooled and taken on lavender shades when she straightens from her work at the iris bed. Swipes the dirt off on her jeans and stashes the trowel in her back pocket.<u></u><u></u></div>
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The May flower moon is rising, another iris day gone by.<u></u><u></u></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRJqcoZKnB1TrRySb6vTXHRFJKiKXGSek9S6V0o-2vTTwkL_25Ndw8NhKWO91ZNeKarvhsHOq2ZHI8sdhR06-FXse10EevSLsCPfETLdPu2zWVG8yNQzpIpBpmOi91we1anYMsRIFzq-W6/s1600/gate+birds.jpg" style="clear: left; color: #006677; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration-line: none;"><img border="0" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRJqcoZKnB1TrRySb6vTXHRFJKiKXGSek9S6V0o-2vTTwkL_25Ndw8NhKWO91ZNeKarvhsHOq2ZHI8sdhR06-FXse10EevSLsCPfETLdPu2zWVG8yNQzpIpBpmOi91we1anYMsRIFzq-W6/s1600/gate+birds.jpg" style="border: none; position: relative;" width="200" /></a><br /><br />~*~*~ </div>
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<span style="font-family: arial, tahoma, helvetica, freesans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;">Love Lucy Crowe's Nest? Sign up for the new blog subscription and get posts sent to your inbox twice a month. Submit the form in the right sidebar or enroll </span><a href="http://eepurl.com/QgbgT" style="color: #006677; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; text-decoration-line: none;">HERE</a><span style="font-family: arial, tahoma, helvetica, freesans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;">.</span><br /><br style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;" /><div style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; text-align: center;">
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Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-43323935807184232422017-04-11T19:28:00.000-05:002017-04-11T19:28:29.964-05:00Happy Spring!<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9mYrP4pPWu4WQgSNwjFnJy0IMH_WhHmX4gRgtJRJ2vttaAvahzS-L34RMXHuEem-NRnA_CZzxO-lmQLo9GMUypL9btV9-yRKG7myn16yGWZO5LzGlh0zLmGdToJ2HqLarC-s8CPc_I47K/s1600/spring.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9mYrP4pPWu4WQgSNwjFnJy0IMH_WhHmX4gRgtJRJ2vttaAvahzS-L34RMXHuEem-NRnA_CZzxO-lmQLo9GMUypL9btV9-yRKG7myn16yGWZO5LzGlh0zLmGdToJ2HqLarC-s8CPc_I47K/s320/spring.jpg" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Art by <a href="https://www.saatchiart.com/mrazmichal">Michak Mraz</a></td></tr>
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The rain came in the night, just a whisper on the roof - if you weren’t listening you might miss it, so accustomed had your ears become to the breath of winter.<u></u><u></u></div>
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But here – a different sound, breeze soughing in from the east and calling through the pines like a mourning dove.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Spring.<u></u><u></u></div>
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And by morning, it was a shout, a crescendo - great sheets of water spilling from a sky the color of mushrooms and forget-me-nots, the tame little village creek bullying and bruising its banks. Willow branches whipped as though the very hand of God stirred them, gutters regurgitated last autumn’s rubble and oldsters began their soliloquy of floods-gone-by.<u></u><u></u></div>
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And then . . . look – the sun.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Puddle-stomping now. The little kids wearing boots, the big kids in tennis shoes and not caring. Ride your bike through the run-off at the base of the hill, sail your milk-jug boat in the swollen ditches, steal your father’s canoe. Feel the cold and clammy winter-fingers clutching the nape of your neck and call it heat. Shed your coat even if it means goosebumps and runny noses.<u></u><u></u></div>
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It is spring and we are alive.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Farmers - to the fields! Squeeze the dirt in your fist, smell the richness, the damp. Lift your chin to the sky and watch for rain, turn the soil, fill the planter boxes. Twenty-four hours a day is not enough time because spring is here.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Nature freaks – to the hills! The bluebells are coming! Tiny spring beauties, blue-eyed Mary peering past her white petals, Dutchmen swarming the hill like a miniature army. Smell the skunk cabbage, sink your feet in the mud, search for the early morel. Dandelions! Pluck them by the handful, sniff them until your nose is yellow. Present them to your mother and she’ll set them in a mason jar on the kitchen table even though they’ll droop by night fall.<u></u><u></u></div>
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It doesn’t matter. It’s spring.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Church people – to your churches! Your Jesus is coming just as surely as the wind changed direction last night. Catholics, get your ashes, eat your fish. Baptists read your bibles. Christians everywhere, get ready, get ready. Dance and sing and be happy together. Hallelujah hallelujah, He lives.</div>
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He lives and so do we</div>
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Happy Spring!</div>
Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-39375735161862579272017-03-25T14:27:00.000-05:002017-03-25T14:27:38.486-05:00Back to Life<div id="m_3742515782299260689yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1489087517799_3421" style="font-family: HelveticaNeue, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
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“Here is the thing,” she said out loud to the cat as she set the ceramic snowmen in the china cupboard. “A lot of time has gone by.”<u></u><u></u></div>
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Four months, to be exact.<u></u><u></u></div>
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She folded lacy paper snowflakes into the desk drawer and hung pastel eggs in their place. Bunnies. Crosses, stark against a crimson sky - the painter’s five-year-old fingers incautious. Shamrocks and tulips and kites.<u></u><u></u></div>
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“Look,” she said to Kitty-Boy. “We’ve gone all the way from Baby Jesus to loaves and fish. That’s thirty-three years. I’m not sure I’m still me.”<u></u><u></u></div>
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Because, well, who the hell was me anyway?<u></u><u></u></div>
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The months of <a href="http://lucycrowe.blogspot.com/2016/11/curse-of-stone-arms-kitty-boys-tale.html">medical leave</a>? Endless, endless. At first the itch to <i id="m_3742515782299260689yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1489087517799_3432">do </i>had been unbearable, but then – at last – a happiness of sorts had come to light on her, fragile and lovely as a Luna moth. For the first time in years, she was well-rested. She visited loved ones whenever she wanted, traveled to <a href="http://lucycrowe.blogspot.com/2017/02/through-wilderness.html">Pennsylvania</a>, rode the train to <a href="http://lucycrowe.blogspot.com/2016/12/a-chicago-christmas.html">Chicago</a>. She wrote. A lot. Once or twice she even cooked supper.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Who <i id="m_3742515782299260689yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1489087517799_3435">was </i>that strange woman in the kitchen?<u></u><u></u></div>
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“You can’t be an EMT every day, Kitty-Boy. And besides, some people go their whole life and <i id="m_3742515782299260689yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1489087517799_3438">never </i>do CPR. There are people out there who have never dragged hose at a house fire or tumbled out of bed at two a.m. to answer the page. And they don’t miss it; not at all.”<u></u><u></u></div>
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Kitty-Boy would have laughed if he could; what was she trying to talk herself out of?<u></u><u></u></div>
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“When I was little, I wanted to farm like my dad. I wanted to sing like my mom. I wanted to marry the boy next door and maybe raise cattle. But I’ll tell you what, I never thought about dragging bodies out of car wrecks.”<u></u><u></u></div>
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<i id="m_3742515782299260689yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1489087517799_3445">How</i> had it happened? She only knew that when the bug bit her, it bit hard, leaving relationships in tatters, her children howling, her Kitty, for a time, unforgiving. Leaving her . . . stronger. Irrevocably dressed in navy blue, her best footwear combat boots, but stronger.<u></u><u></u></div>
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“Writing could be good for me too, Kitty. I love to write.”<u></u><u></u></div>
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But of course, she could write at the fire station in her spare time; hadn’t she always?<u></u><u></u></div>
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“Sometimes I think dealing with dead people hasn’t been good for me.”<u></u><u></u></div>
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But for each who dies, how many live? “And human interaction is probably a good thing, especially when one has hermitic tendencies.”<u></u><u></u></div>
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Besides. Not to be ghoulish, but she rather missed the traumas.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Kitty Boy sat directly on a new Easter placemat and washed his paws before finally glaring at her.<u></u><u></u></div>
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A human is nothing more than an onion, his gaze said plainly. And I’m not speaking of your precious trauma; I speak of your soul. Don’t be afraid to peel back the layers.<u></u><u></u></div>
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She thought that, indeed, she had probably lingered too long in the company of a know-it-all feline. Time to get back to life.</div>
Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-82694861723575549942017-02-28T17:48:00.000-06:002017-02-28T18:08:36.639-06:00Through the Wilderness<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1Lx83-Cm2DpkZJQ4ILx4HiRv-Uodx1cWkv4jLYR-iN800raWn2aTiFqlzClGzyeJXmJVXbvOQpLxmMNZIg6enwfOpdWCrCsOe7hV3TrihQZc0EU899Owr-NEIpvNJAjyMSgL88Rx4wnyO/s1600/IMG_0259.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1Lx83-Cm2DpkZJQ4ILx4HiRv-Uodx1cWkv4jLYR-iN800raWn2aTiFqlzClGzyeJXmJVXbvOQpLxmMNZIg6enwfOpdWCrCsOe7hV3TrihQZc0EU899Owr-NEIpvNJAjyMSgL88Rx4wnyO/s320/IMG_0259.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sunday Morning at Valley Forge Park<br />
-<a href="https://patspaintings.blogspot.com/2010/10/sunday-morning-at-falley-forge-park.html">Pat O' Driscoll Fine Art</a></td></tr>
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“Lancaster, Pennsylvania!” I tug my seat belt in order to sit forward and squint through the lowering gloom at the highway sign. (There are shadows in Pennsylvania unlike anything in my native Illinois. They are large and very dark, composed of trees - lots of trees - and, well, mountains.) “In 1847 Levi Zendt loaded his big Conestoga wagon and left Lancaster. He had six beautiful draft horses pulling it and probably some cheese-making equipment in the back along with his wife, I’m not sure.”<u></u><u></u></div>
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“Levi who?” My hubby asks distractedly; he concentrating on this winding path though the wilderness. (Which is actually a real road, but it doesn’t feel like it with the forest so close all around us.)<u></u><u></u></div>
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“Zendt. Levi Zendt. Centennial? James Michener?”<u></u><u></u></div>
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“James . . ?” He stops himself, but I am encouraged nonetheless. We have traveled all these long lonely miles to attend a funeral, and I have charged myself with providing distraction.<u></u><u></u></div>
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“Michener. He wrote a lot of really weighty novels. Anyway, Levi Zendt loved those horses a lot. So even though everyone told him ‘Levi, you’ll need oxen for this trip’ he was determined to bring his horses. Guess what? They didn’t make it and he ended up buying oxen anyway.”<u></u><u></u></div>
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Travel was precarious, back in the day; now as well. Outside my window, I’ve lost the moon behind a mountain, and trees are shielding bobcats the size of elephants.<u></u><u></u></div>
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A million miles away, in Illinois, my own kitty is probably crying. He might even be dead from missing me by now, who knows?<u></u><u></u></div>
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But it is lovely here, and history calls from every turn in the road. As though the mountains themselves are tenderly cradling those who have gone before – pilgrims and pioneers, Shawnee and Iroquois and colonists. Washington’s men are spectral shades behind the loblollies; a screech owl’s call blends with a fading rebel yell over Gettysburg and a drummer boy plays in solitude over the next rise in the road. History is lived here – the ground is steeped in the blood of the brave and true. Think of it – layers of muscle and sinew, skin and bone, laid over with tall grass and mountain flowers. Hepaticas tiny, white as pearly teeth in your palm.<u></u><u></u></div>
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We don’t feel history quite so plainly in Illinois, although of course it is there. Generation of farmers on the same chunk of land, and always able to tell you just how Grandpa weathered the Depression with four dollars pinned to the inside of his overalls. Great Aunt Delilah’s china stacked in cupboards and World War One mess kits in basements - and yet we still feel as though we’ve moved forward.<u></u><u></u></div>
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The mountain I travel with my sweetie tonight diminishes us to the size of fleas; it feels as though it must have been here when David played the secret chord, and I can’t decide if I love or hate it.<u></u><u></u></div>
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My cell buzzes and a text ends my ruminating. <i id="m_8042869418838476800yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1487190409414_63761">Kitty is fine, all is well! Be safe!<u></u><u></u></i></div>
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That’s better. I glance up again just as a hawk swoops close enough to nearly graze the windshield.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Love, hate? Perhaps something closer to awestruck.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Hello, East Coast!</div>
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Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-19757170973879867122017-01-28T18:52:00.002-06:002017-01-28T18:54:25.749-06:00Once-Upon-a-Time McDonald's <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Setting creates a mood.<u></u><u></u></div>
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She sat in the new McDonald's on Main and actually typed that sentence in order to better think about it.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Setting is mega-important to the reader and, <i id="m_7951140487771719928yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484538967630_18353">ipso facto, </i>to the writer. Chapter One: Time of day, what the sky looks like, is the air hot or cold, the ground wet or dry? Choose your words carefully and blah, blah blah.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Setting creates . . .<u></u><u></u></div>
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She sipped from her Diet Coke and stared at the opposite wall, which was emblazoned with a monster-sized glossy pic of an apple. She blinked and looked around, as though wakened from a dream, at the sand-colored walls, the spindly black stools, the elegant brown cloth window shades.<u></u><u></u></div>
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And she thought, “What in the pluperfect hell has happened to our McDonald's?”<u></u><u></u></div>
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(“Pluperfect” is a lush, gorgeous word. She typed that, too.)<u></u><u></u></div>
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This McDonald's, she thought, is where we used to hang out. Three kids and all their friends and a single mom who paid for Happy Meals with change out of a tip jar. The walls were red and yellow, then! Ronald himself grinned maniacally from a picture over the counter and nobody, <i id="m_7951140487771719928yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484538967630_18364">nobody</i> counted the freaking calories in the chicken mcnuggets. Those Happy Meals were absolutely grease-soaked. The air reeked of fryer oil, the floor was sticky as carnival taffy, and there <i id="m_7951140487771719928yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484538967630_18365">were</i> no window shades. The sky out that window was always shiny, hard blue as ceramic, and the people in here were happy, even if one of the kids dumped their pop-not-milk, because . . .<u></u><u></u></div>
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The walls weren’t brown.<u></u><u></u></div>
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And those cheap red plastic booths were just perfect.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Setting creates a mood.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Of course, the proper setting for a writer is a quiet area with beigey-poop tones and maybe apples. And quiet. The sunshine should stay just the other side of that window shade.<u></u><u></u></div>
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<i id="m_7951140487771719928yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484538967630_18376">Chapter One . . .<u></u><u></u></i></div>
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But she <i id="m_7951140487771719928yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484538967630_18379">missed </i>the glaring colors and the fly-strip floor. McDonald's felt all wrong without Ronald, even though he had always creeped her out just a little. The calories posted above the counter and <i id="m_7951140487771719928yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484538967630_18380">fruit </i>pictures - what the hell were they going for, Starbucks meets Planet Fitness? And why is nobody smiling?<u></u><u></u></div>
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Because, well, McDonald's is no longer our happy place.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Incorporating wifi and blended coffee drinks was at a cost of something far less tangible.<u></u><u></u></div>
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The writer closed her laptop and primly disposed of her fruit (what the hell?) cup before approaching the counter again. She ordered a nasty, sloppy Big Mac and a Happy Meal toy - troll! Purple hair! And she left McDonald's determined to keep her future visits on a drive-through basis only.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Setting is imperative, she thought, but not necessarily beige.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRJqcoZKnB1TrRySb6vTXHRFJKiKXGSek9S6V0o-2vTTwkL_25Ndw8NhKWO91ZNeKarvhsHOq2ZHI8sdhR06-FXse10EevSLsCPfETLdPu2zWVG8yNQzpIpBpmOi91we1anYMsRIFzq-W6/s1600/gate+birds.jpg" style="clear: left; color: #006677; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRJqcoZKnB1TrRySb6vTXHRFJKiKXGSek9S6V0o-2vTTwkL_25Ndw8NhKWO91ZNeKarvhsHOq2ZHI8sdhR06-FXse10EevSLsCPfETLdPu2zWVG8yNQzpIpBpmOi91we1anYMsRIFzq-W6/s1600/gate+birds.jpg" style="border: none; position: relative;" width="200" /></a><br />
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~*~*~ </div>
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~*~*~</div>
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Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-72702322188449101132017-01-01T01:00:00.000-06:002017-01-01T01:00:22.705-06:00It's 2017! Time for Now<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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On the evening of December 31<sup id="m_-6074501418658979517yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1483113939131_4808">st</sup>, she tucked 2016 beneath her arm and gingerly traversed the basement stairs, dodging a pair of roller blades and a saggy salt bag that had not yet made its way to the softener. A little short of breath already – 2016 was heavy – and hampered by the brush of cobwebs across her face, she lugged the Years Gone By box from the shelf and straightened the crick in her back before opening the lid.<u></u><u></u></div>
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A smell like pumpkin innards – Halloween – rushed out at her and the pop of July firecrackers made her sit back on her heels. Frogs leaped amidst poinsettia leaves and cicadas croaked in time with the 9<sup id="m_-6074501418658979517yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1483113939131_4811">th</sup> inning roar at Wrigley Field. Moldy tennis shoes reclined alongside graduation gowns, flip-flops slapped in time with the snow shovel scraping the sidewalk.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Darker things, perhaps, residing at the bottom of the box. House fires and hospital stays, the funeral stink of blood lilies.<u></u><u></u></div>
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She tossed 2016 in and quickly closed the lid.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Upstairs again, black kitty on her shoulder with his whiskers twitching inquisitively, she contemplated the New Year box. She had stenciled 2017 in a color bright as sunshine on the lid, but now, faced with the blank lines in her notepad, she thought yellow to be a foolishly optimistic choice.<u></u><u></u></div>
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So many demons to conquer, so little time. </div>
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She picked up her pen.</div>
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#1. Lose weight! Never mind that she had lost twenty pounds three years earlier and had kept the weight off. She could always lose more.<u></u><u></u></div>
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#2 Overtime hours, lots and lots. (Because new car and stupid internet and dear God, everything else that cost too too too much)<u></u><u></u></div>
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#3 Exercise. Well of course, duh.<u></u><u></u></div>
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The list was much the same as 2016’s had been, and yet it had nothing to do with what she had found in the Years Gone By box. Losing weight, in fact, looked almost trivial compared with frog song.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Kitty purred and nudged, and finally bit, just enough to get her attention.<u></u><u></u></div>
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“Stop,” she admonished, and underlined 2017 on the box.<u></u><u></u></div>
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So many demons, so little time.<u></u><u></u></div>
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What if . . .<u></u><u></u></div>
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Kitty yowled. Now. Pet me now. And, abstractedly, she rubbed his ears.<u></u><u></u></div>
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<i id="m_-6074501418658979517yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1483113939131_4842">Now</i>.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Wait! What if there is ONLY now? What if the one demon - the only demon - is time itself? Time, always hurtling her forward, always making her cry, always passing before she could grasp a hand or kiss a tear. Time, making her older, adulting her children, bending her parents. What if there <i id="m_-6074501418658979517yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1483113939131_4845">is </i>no time? What if there is <i id="m_-6074501418658979517yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1483113939131_4846">only now?</i></div>
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Now the light is slanting in through the bevels in the west window, making a pattern like purple raindrops on the linoleum. Now the kitchen still smells a little like Christmas gingerbread and Regina Spektor is singing on the iPod, an absurd song that lifts the soul and breaks the heart all at once.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Now the cat is feeling horribly neglected.<u></u><u></u></div>
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She picked him up and kicked the New Year box to the bottom of the stairs.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Hello 2017!</div>
Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-63500144065854075712016-12-21T17:36:00.001-06:002016-12-21T17:37:09.736-06:00A Chicago Christmas<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Four thirty pm and three bitter degrees in downtown Chicago, the wind cutting in from the Lake and the sky giving itself over to a glassy color like pearls. The trees are outlined in white twinkle lights and street performers in full swing beat out “Joy to the World” on garbage can lids while the throng pretends not to notice. Women clutch holiday bags and children clutch coattails, all breathing the glorious stink of the city – kettle corn and upscale steakhouse, sewer and garbage.<u></u><u></u></div>
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The red line huffs to a stop at Randolph and a Muslim woman ushers her daughter across the salt-chipped sidewalk, looking neither left nor right before slipping like a shadow into the car; she is nearly invisible beneath her hijab, and the white bread girl who sits next to them doesn’t acknowledge them.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Daughter strokes the fur on the blonde woman’s <i id="m_6160792156064570337m_-6494935844417328523yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1481920788506_69809">Almost Famous </i>coat and mother jerks the hand away.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Long limbs encased in boots and leggings cross primly.<u></u><u></u></div>
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The L rattles and sways and <i id="m_6160792156064570337m_-6494935844417328523yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1481920788506_69814">Feliz Navidad </i>is audible through the headphones of a Latino sitting closest to the doors; he appears to be sleeping, hands in coat pockets, the pink <i id="m_6160792156064570337m_-6494935844417328523yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1481920788506_69815">Victoria’s Secret </i>bag incongruous at his feet.<u></u><u></u></div>
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At Clark, the decline in speed is sudden enough to jostle the passengers against each other. They recover from this unwanted intimacy without speaking, and the doors open for a large black woman who is head-to-toe fur, face lost beneath layers of scarf and blue-rimmed Buddy Hollys. The glasses have fogged and she’s carrying bags, and for a moment she can’t find a seat. By the time she lands, the man behind her is furious. He’s wrestling a plethora of holiday bargains – dolls and stuffed dinosaurs peering from half a dozen bags - and he walks with a limp.<u></u><u></u></div>
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“Move your ass!” His voice is harsh above the racket of the L, and his skin is a shiny color like good dark chocolate. He heaves himself into a seat across from the little Muslim girl and the passengers collectively shudder. “You go left, you go right, you can’t make up your mind! Get the hell out of my way!”<u></u><u></u></div>
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The woman floats the bird before taking her seat and the child’s mouth drops open.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Her mother shrinks a little into her hijab and the Mexican’s eyes blink.<u></u><u></u></div>
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The white girl pretends interest in her phone.<u></u><u></u></div>
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“Don’t you even!” The man splutters, and the tirade that follows throws a pall over the whole car - anger and unhappiness and fear like a nasty puff of skunk.<u></u><u></u></div>
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The woman responds in full cry, calls the man a cripple, a beggar, a steaming pile of horse dung.<u></u><u></u></div>
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The Muslim woman places hands over her child’s ears. Child squirms free; her eyes are bright as the buttons on the white girl’s boots.<u></u><u></u></div>
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The black man winds up to deliver his final epistle. “You ugly!” He hollers. “You SO ugly!”<u></u><u></u></div>
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The little girl can’t help herself – she leans forward to assess, peering around her mother.<u></u><u></u></div>
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“She is!” The man leaps upon the faux pas, and now the white girl, too, sends a furtive glance the length of car before staring fixedly at her phone again. “Isn’t she?” The man crows. “Take those glasses off and show everyone how ugly you are!”<u></u><u></u></div>
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The woman again utilizes her longest finger and the little girl goes saucer-eyed before giggling out loud.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Tiny sound, at first. Musical, clear as a lingering high C, four breaths long.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Mother clucks a warning; child can’t stop.<u></u><u></u></div>
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White girl’s mouth twitches; Mexican’s iPod goes quiet.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Now the little girl laughs out loud. “Your mouth is ugly,” she at last articulates carefully, to the man, (and to her mother’s horror) and now the black woman laughs, big belly-laugh, happy.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Finally, the man laughs, too, and suddenly the air in the car is breathable again. In fact, it’s light; it smells a little like peppermint.<u></u><u></u></div>
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The black woman stands at the next stop, heaves her purse over her shoulder and grabs her bags.<u></u><u></u></div>
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“That’s right, get your ass outta here now!” The man bellows at her. “And have a Merry Christmas!”<u></u><u></u></div>
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Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-57940191395399518652016-11-28T11:10:00.000-06:002016-11-28T11:10:59.760-06:00Curse of the Stone Arms: Kitty-Boy's Tale<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE3IK3Jxa7ChN26Y3qHpibWrzTiw5o2eHOco00-Axlas3zP3U3mqLl9Vbdir1LzpxGO1jUuexUg8dbEZLmmy15dLTurNpx3gveMjRAnpZBNCbESRW-ZuQOuWfq-IoJQJtnMfIGE9fm6uzK/s1600/kittyboydarklord.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE3IK3Jxa7ChN26Y3qHpibWrzTiw5o2eHOco00-Axlas3zP3U3mqLl9Vbdir1LzpxGO1jUuexUg8dbEZLmmy15dLTurNpx3gveMjRAnpZBNCbESRW-ZuQOuWfq-IoJQJtnMfIGE9fm6uzK/s1600/kittyboydarklord.jpg" /></a></div>
<span id="goog_2142156254"></span><span id="goog_2142156255"></span>From the desk of Gothika, Dark Lord of the Grimalkins <i id="m_9003541919660041334yui_3_16_0_1_1479923885126_56853">aka </i>Kitty-Boy<br />
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“It was a dark and stormy night.”</div>
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<div id="m_9003541919660041334yui_3_16_0_1_1479923885126_56859">
No.</div>
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“Once upon a time, in a land far away. . .”</div>
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<br /></div>
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Oh drats! How does she do this? And why? Slavering for
public approval like one of her hulking outdoor “pets” – is nothing beneath her
dignity?</div>
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<br /></div>
<div id="m_9003541919660041334yui_3_16_0_1_1479923885126_56865">
Actually, it was a rather ordinary night, but for the
enormous <i id="m_9003541919660041334yui_3_16_0_1_1479923885126_56866">Iah, </i>(which modern humans, tapping into their
full literary and imaginative potential,
have dubbed “the Supermoon.” *sigh*). I had watched its ascent across the night
sky, and had fallen asleep contentedly on the kitchen table (the Man having
gone to bed hours earlier) when I was awakened by the horrible shrill of my
human’s Pavlov Response system. (Please see footnote#1.) Inevitably, the humans
shine at classical conditioning exercises, and I watched with some pride as
they hurtled from their bed, donned boots and clothing, and scurried from the
house. Their performance was marred only by a brief collision in the bathroom
doorway. Both snarled and swore most impressively. My Human showed her teeth.</div>
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I did not see them again until the lovely <i id="m_9003541919660041334yui_3_16_0_1_1479923885126_56869">Iah </i>had disappeared over the hill. They
came home positively reeking of house fire, their noses black with smoke and
their eyes circled with it. Most alarming of all, My Human had turned to stone
from wrists to elbows. (Please see footnote #2) She seemed most vexed at this
transformation ie, more colorful swearing; she is truly well versed in language
skills. The Man, as is often the case, was also quite vocal about the inciting
incident, and implied that the entire fiasco could have been avoided had My
Human <i id="m_9003541919660041334yui_3_16_0_1_1479923885126_56870">slowed down and looked before you
f**ng leaped.</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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I haven’t
the faintest notion what My Human leaped into, but the results have been catastrophic.
She has the temerity to pat my head with her stone hands! I very nearly chipped
a tooth whilst defending myself. She is hit-and-miss with my food dish and her
attempts at scooping my litterbox have been dismal. In the spirit of
generosity, I left my latest offering on the floor next to the toilet and the
ingrate swore at me! Who would have realized the tenuous connection between
human hands and brains? Is her mind turning to stone as well? I fear it is a
possibility.</div>
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<div id="m_9003541919660041334yui_3_16_0_1_1479923885126_56874">
My
Human knows I must have ice in my water bowl at all times, and yet she is
failing at even this simplest of tasks. When in desperation I stand on the
(dirty!) dishes in the sink to drink from the faucet, she responds in the
vilest manner by trying to lift me bodily with her concrete arms. I will not
stand for it!</div>
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Alas, I
fear for my well-being. If you are reading this, please send help. Preferably
in the form of salmon. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div id="m_9003541919660041334yui_3_16_0_1_1479923885126_56878" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Pink, Alaskan salmon. Fresh.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Canned tuna offerings will be
summarily rejected. </div>
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</div>
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<i id="m_9003541919660041334yui_3_16_0_1_1479923885126_56885">#1
Nine-one-one page to a fire. </i></div>
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<i id="m_9003541919660041334yui_3_16_0_1_1479923885126_56888">#2
Arm casts from wrist to elbow.</i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzbY5i-qJw80Kqeds1qG0Cm6Sd9zsQOQJVIYqgY9kcc1on3cnK02Txi6U0gfzzpUzDS-STwrwdlXmFzCZJOBcYqBBM5J11fWWaHsYNcS4tYluGwvV52ucdsjOa3llw74It2A_dXwkwSYfE/s1600/cateyes2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzbY5i-qJw80Kqeds1qG0Cm6Sd9zsQOQJVIYqgY9kcc1on3cnK02Txi6U0gfzzpUzDS-STwrwdlXmFzCZJOBcYqBBM5J11fWWaHsYNcS4tYluGwvV52ucdsjOa3llw74It2A_dXwkwSYfE/s320/cateyes2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-45695765281859328302016-11-07T11:17:00.000-06:002016-11-07T11:17:30.991-06:00Those Who Have Left Us<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkeablmA-QyFu7tA8zA1MHPAziIcaY6nIIreh4X6Dy0oOAJxPoEMufxsdhHo9sBEtI-lJTNRgCOD3egyWgZcU_b6ltp9u0LDG5ANHElO651ofndQFu52b7SVLul8G7x_0N-SHZ8QL2b5cg/s1600/allsaintsday2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkeablmA-QyFu7tA8zA1MHPAziIcaY6nIIreh4X6Dy0oOAJxPoEMufxsdhHo9sBEtI-lJTNRgCOD3egyWgZcU_b6ltp9u0LDG5ANHElO651ofndQFu52b7SVLul8G7x_0N-SHZ8QL2b5cg/s320/allsaintsday2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-d9f872a3-3fb1-70d8-fea5-0e447d23f9d7" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">All Soul’s Night creeps upon us in new darkness, the sun snuffed before six thirty as effectively as calloused fingers pinching a faltering flame.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Light, then; we’re seeking light.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">And we find it, in a fashion. Here in these old wooden pews where the same families have sat for generations with the stained-glass saints gazing impassively from above, already immortal. Here in the scent of candle wax and cool, moist brick. Here in the words, the kneelers, the lovely ritual. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Eternal rest grant to them oh Lord. And may a perpetual light shine upon them.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ah. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Them.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Those who have left us. If you’ve lived very long, you have them; if you’ve lived well, you loved them and you probably still do. Everyone here carries this with them. Think about that for a moment – all of us here, suffering that quiet loss together and yet still so alone. I could name you . . . ah well, they’re gone.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">My line of work loans itself to the occasional death; my keenest losses are sometimes total strangers, and I don’t know if that makes it easier or harder. I only know that it is. And so, I am thinking of the hands I have held, the comfort I have tried to extend, the way that death slides over a face as implacably as the lavender sky smoothing after the sun has set. I am thinking this when something the priest says reels me back.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“If we live to give God joy,” he says. “Then we live in joy.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Such a lovely voice, this man – an even and perfect tenor that loans itself well to sweeping statements. He imparts this nugget as though it is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">ipso facto.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Is it? </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Live in joy. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But no. Sweet October has blown away as quickly as it came, and with it the color, the laughter and the bright expectations. November is as gray and chilly as the Chicago lakefront; it knows no joy. And the dead are – whether by accident or design, holding your hand or not – dead.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Ah, but they’re not. We’re here, tonight, because of them, aren’t we? And don’t we feel them – the caress on our cheeks, the voices in our ears, the little breath of life stirring the downy hair of the child sitting in front of you?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Where they are, they are living in joy.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But it’s bigger than that. The priest is right. If we – all of us here, and everyone we knew – were to go forward in joy from this night on, then our worries, our sorrows, our carefully cultivated grudges – none of these could hurt us ever again. We’d have no room for hurt, or for tears, or for misunderstandings. Joy. Each moment, every breath, etched in gold. The utter certainty of loving and being loved. We could wrap ourselves in that and this fear – this fear of loss, of heartbreak, of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">dying</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> – would cower in our wake until it finally disappeared altogether.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.295; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">That’s so big, it’s probably too big for us. But maybe we’re meant to try.</span></div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Outside, darkness has set in with a vengeance, the tiny pools of crystalline light from the stained-glass windows fading completely before I have gotten to my car. But I crank Sister Hazel on my iPod, and I sing along, all the way home.</span>Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-65860369216423139272016-10-04T13:47:00.001-05:002016-10-04T13:47:03.260-05:00October Magic<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-ArivaITWZq9ORVjWXrKz4LdEzMw1x8KPDgTp9tbxcyMw8wuZ8CLYho1U1oWptHvoNBewZdW_a0ExJb7i4xN80jKcDhvH_UmJyHDSwbxh5VSPZWwToybh0xwjuLJ_fsMZlpvQuSbxCfXy/s1600/October+girl+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-ArivaITWZq9ORVjWXrKz4LdEzMw1x8KPDgTp9tbxcyMw8wuZ8CLYho1U1oWptHvoNBewZdW_a0ExJb7i4xN80jKcDhvH_UmJyHDSwbxh5VSPZWwToybh0xwjuLJ_fsMZlpvQuSbxCfXy/s1600/October+girl+%25281%2529.jpg" /></a></div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6973">
October soared homeward in the middle of the night, landing
in her yard somewhere before daybreak. By dawn the spreading oaks in the
cemetery had taken on a crimson tinge and the air had become so clear and chill
that to drink of it was to know an immediate intoxication. </div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6973">
<br /></div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6975">
She would have known it was October even with her eyes
closed. Would have felt it in her blood, would have remembered the way it
slipped like a cool satin cloak around her shoulders.</div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6975">
<br /></div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6977">
And so, she kissed her true love right away, because there
is nothing so magical as love, and as always in October, she was insanely,
delightfully in love again.</div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6977">
</div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6979">
After that, she danced to the soundtrack of Practical Magic
with her black kitty, folded every single summer dress she owned into the
closet, and put a purple witch hat on the scarecrow.</div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6979">
<br /></div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6981">
She burned leaves just to watch the smoke swirl in curlicues
against a sky as shiny and hard as blue ceramic, and she sent good prayers
skyward with each plume.</div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6981">
<br /></div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6983">
The Halloween box had spent eleven months in the basement
but there wasn’t a speck of dust on it. In fact, when she pulled it from
beneath the stairs, she noticed the way it glittered like moon light beneath
her fingers, and when she removed the lid, a chorus of little voices sang
forth:</div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6983">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimNIFUoD1ojfsRfG3UkSx8hyphenhyphenuC1DDB0cwYJjnnZrW5Cv881_bIjKqZK3sxdangQJ2ba4SU-u3qizKilSA5oh0eLiHEKELP8e6OXm4fG6TtHHqgVQ6TRc9y3I5Tz5a4GjTG6UT_nUqH0Axe/s1600/Octobergirl+6+Mcbridegallery+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimNIFUoD1ojfsRfG3UkSx8hyphenhyphenuC1DDB0cwYJjnnZrW5Cv881_bIjKqZK3sxdangQJ2ba4SU-u3qizKilSA5oh0eLiHEKELP8e6OXm4fG6TtHHqgVQ6TRc9y3I5Tz5a4GjTG6UT_nUqH0Axe/s320/Octobergirl+6+Mcbridegallery+%25281%2529.jpg" width="252" /></a></div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6985">
<i id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6986">Ooooh, there’s my
favorite ghost, Mommy!</i></div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6985">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6988">
<i id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6989">Halloween’s coming,
skeletons will be after you!</i></div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6988">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6991">
<i id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6992">I want to take the
bloody knife to school tomorrow!</i></div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6991">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6994">
For a moment, she hesitated with her fingers still clutching
the lid; she could feel the passage of time as ominous and cold as November
thunderheads, rolling and tumbling and never-ever looking back, and she knew
another year had passed. But October isn’t about regrets, and when the thunder
passes . . . well, the fat, white moon
owns the sky; she dug into the box with both hands.</div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6994">
<br /></div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6996">
She unearthed cackling jack-o-lanterns, hanging skeletons,
swooping bats on invisible wires, and by evening some of the little voices from
the box had dropped by in their adult form, only to become children again.
(Hershey bars and candy corn are the best cure for dull adulthood, but if you
persist in being a grown-up, you should sip a little apple wine to relieve <i id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6997">that</i> headache.)<br /></div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6999">
The sun lay down earlier than it had all year, in a nest of
golden feathers, and the big dipper poured star dust over the yard. By
<span class="aBn" data-term="goog_282419757" tabindex="0"><span class="aQJ">midnight</span></span>, she had really and truly let summer go.</div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6999">
<br /></div>
<div id="m_3065886473746969642yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1475379937787_6911">
</div>
Hello, beautiful October.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRJqcoZKnB1TrRySb6vTXHRFJKiKXGSek9S6V0o-2vTTwkL_25Ndw8NhKWO91ZNeKarvhsHOq2ZHI8sdhR06-FXse10EevSLsCPfETLdPu2zWVG8yNQzpIpBpmOi91we1anYMsRIFzq-W6/s1600/gate+birds.jpg" style="clear: left; color: #006677; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRJqcoZKnB1TrRySb6vTXHRFJKiKXGSek9S6V0o-2vTTwkL_25Ndw8NhKWO91ZNeKarvhsHOq2ZHI8sdhR06-FXse10EevSLsCPfETLdPu2zWVG8yNQzpIpBpmOi91we1anYMsRIFzq-W6/s1600/gate+birds.jpg" style="border: none; position: relative;" width="200" /></a><br />
<br />
~*~*~ </div>
<div style="font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px;">
</div>
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
~*~*~</div>
Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-81075313534742717402016-09-11T11:37:00.000-05:002016-09-11T11:47:38.413-05:00The Great Boatlift of 9/11<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWOKkxN5vjB3RaOGvx3YR20PtsypbwOwTkrgSXwe2PC7onlfceuIDG5-c34rIJnzp6mJQ2Kov5-qAOAQDFhpejuzC5Frhmbp4j6Qby295ed5ufK7pSRNYE657_px7cBoD4lbEP8BICaVp0/s1600/boatlift.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWOKkxN5vjB3RaOGvx3YR20PtsypbwOwTkrgSXwe2PC7onlfceuIDG5-c34rIJnzp6mJQ2Kov5-qAOAQDFhpejuzC5Frhmbp4j6Qby295ed5ufK7pSRNYE657_px7cBoD4lbEP8BICaVp0/s320/boatlift.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<i>The great boatlift of
9/11 became the largest sea evacuation in history. Larger than the evacuation
of Dunkirk in World War II where 339,000 British and French soldiers were
rescued over the course of nine days. On 9/11, nearly 500,00 civilians were
rescued by boat. It took nine hours.</i><br />
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
If you don’t do anything else this September 11<sup>th</sup>,
watch this video.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If you’re feeling glum about being American, watch this
video</div>
<div>
.</div>
<div>
If you’re one of those who believes we have become
increasingly sedentary, uncaring, sheep-like, watch this video.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
What I love most about the Manhattan Boat Rescue story is the fact
that, for so long, it was an untold one. That, for years – while the firemen,
EMS and law officers were lauded for their heroics on September 11th, were
given their (very) just dues – the New Yorkers depicted here went largely
unnoticed. In fact, they were probably kicked back in their boats, tipping a
beer and sharing tales of their . . . well, yes, their heroics.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
They look like such ordinary people, don’t they? Because
they are. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But listen, just listen, to what they did. When the towers
were burning, when absolute panic and chaos had set in, they turned to their
spouses and their kids, and they said “I’ve got to do something.” And then they
did. They got into their boats and, without training, without protection, with
no thought whatsoever for their own well-being, they went to work.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It’s easy, now, to remember September 11<sup>th</sup>
through a veil. A day in history that has begun to take on sepia tones. But the
reality was absolute terror. And when these ordinary people in their “ferries,
private boats, party boats” answered the Coast Guard’s call for help, they had
absolutely no idea what they were getting into. Their world was burning,
Manhattan was being evacuated in the only way possible – by boat – and like the
firemen, they were running into the fray. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“I just had to do something.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Listen to them in the background, that edgy accent
encouraging, cajoling, steering people – strangers – to safety. “Over here,”
and “I want you to hold my hand.” Listen to them and ask yourself if you’re not
proud to be an American. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>This, </i>this is who
we are. Sometimes, we only need a mirror to see ourselves</div>
<div>
.</div>
<div>
Here, today, when we
commemorate our darkest moment, let these common, ordinary New York Boat Rescuers
be your mirror. <i>They </i>are America</div>
<div>
.</div>
We are America.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRJqcoZKnB1TrRySb6vTXHRFJKiKXGSek9S6V0o-2vTTwkL_25Ndw8NhKWO91ZNeKarvhsHOq2ZHI8sdhR06-FXse10EevSLsCPfETLdPu2zWVG8yNQzpIpBpmOi91we1anYMsRIFzq-W6/s1600/gate+birds.jpg" style="clear: left; color: #006677; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration: none;"><img border="0" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRJqcoZKnB1TrRySb6vTXHRFJKiKXGSek9S6V0o-2vTTwkL_25Ndw8NhKWO91ZNeKarvhsHOq2ZHI8sdhR06-FXse10EevSLsCPfETLdPu2zWVG8yNQzpIpBpmOi91we1anYMsRIFzq-W6/s1600/gate+birds.jpg" style="border: none; position: relative;" width="200" /></a><br />
<br />
~*~*~ </div>
<div style="font-size: 14.85px; line-height: 20.79px;">
</div>
Love Lucy Crowe's Nest? Sign up for the new blog subscription and get
posts sent to your inbox twice a month. Submit the form in the right
sidebar or enroll <a href="http://eepurl.com/QgbgT" style="color: #006677; text-decoration: none;">HERE</a>.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
~*~*~</div>
Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-26253996088358313122016-09-04T17:38:00.000-05:002016-09-04T17:42:28.612-05:00The Professional Editor Lady<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkCNVmNBR769t18GVre0xErp9BuVjmdA9FDS7llU4ZJdETptxjNTG7WCsyUenHTte8bb4pqqCREQ5jA5JM5LqEAs9RFldxfk7wdxRQwLxRRr0y_u5ytuUjZjvo7hpH_7oyavKEwqZIIhdc/s1600/BennyFrame.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkCNVmNBR769t18GVre0xErp9BuVjmdA9FDS7llU4ZJdETptxjNTG7WCsyUenHTte8bb4pqqCREQ5jA5JM5LqEAs9RFldxfk7wdxRQwLxRRr0y_u5ytuUjZjvo7hpH_7oyavKEwqZIIhdc/s200/BennyFrame.jpg" width="165" /></a></div>
<div>
“Big News, guys.” The Nice Writer Lady gathers her
characters on the front porch, her anxious gaze darting from one pensive face
to the next. It is August, and the light has an aqueous quality to it, sun
motes floating through the lazy flip of fat green leaves. The old Sugar Inn has been home now for
several years, and they’ve all left their mark on it – Rush’s guitar leaning in
a corner, the girls’ shoes abandoned by the back screen door. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“How big?” Bob O’Neill, quintessential alpha male, leans on
the railing and folds arms across his chest, already firm in his disregard for
The </div>
<div>
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN1ZW5_dDxWG9sjNpwqBVj8ZeifSFhwLLkXjZklmBz3XVIp2A8PVchKiV3XXgk_oZqVLDdiJcBHaUrrozK5RNhZexx6If29L9Hej14TsN0LSmz8jo6wGEcDhN4Z3SazPz_RIGAjpulxBxp/s1600/bobbywater.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN1ZW5_dDxWG9sjNpwqBVj8ZeifSFhwLLkXjZklmBz3XVIp2A8PVchKiV3XXgk_oZqVLDdiJcBHaUrrozK5RNhZexx6If29L9Hej14TsN0LSmz8jo6wGEcDhN4Z3SazPz_RIGAjpulxBxp/s200/bobbywater.jpg" width="164" /></a></div>
<div>
Nice Writer Lady’s (admittedly often dubious) proposals.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“I’ve hired an editor,” she blurts, and she can feel
astonishment in the ensuing silence – Rush’s calm stare spiking a flush in her
cheeks, Bobby’s derision making her squirm. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“But we were done!” Nicola combs fingers through her hair,
vexed. “Remember? We <a href="http://lucycrowe.blogspot.com/2016/04/nicola-and-thee-writer-lady.html">talked</a>!”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“And that was a huge help.” The Nice Writer Lady placates.
“But we need to do more.”</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfsbHISHmupe7Ic33jW3IRBKkzcl9pbrriZhiSmmJMWT9_ymlF3yg2axUT_ofnVTYYYk7A_XLmplfRtrM0ok-NvRvbrnFQymY1ZrgIHFaSPi1RZDovYFt16Eo88EjBrPH6LjmXpGG6H7C0/s1600/nicolaframe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfsbHISHmupe7Ic33jW3IRBKkzcl9pbrriZhiSmmJMWT9_ymlF3yg2axUT_ofnVTYYYk7A_XLmplfRtrM0ok-NvRvbrnFQymY1ZrgIHFaSPi1RZDovYFt16Eo88EjBrPH6LjmXpGG6H7C0/s200/nicolaframe.jpg" width="166" /></a></div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
“What?” Bobby demands.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“Your name, for one thing,” she says, and enjoys his
apoplectic expression just a bit. “The Bobby/Benny thing is just too much for a
lot of readers.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“Are you kidding me now?” he splutters, and she regards him
through her reading glasses, silently consulting her higher self until she can
ride smoothly past his complaint.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVLWrb5T-1egO-efndF5UytGoqhz9jvHYHE5ykSn1jiTfbGKEai6MoKABGBMrQ1uiCYJjSFf3mv3bx2ZTIJaVMqCQmB503v9IcBmzzwocGUVrpIWR1AO2IbYdzdfENFzMfInbHvZXqdhwb/s1600/john.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVLWrb5T-1egO-efndF5UytGoqhz9jvHYHE5ykSn1jiTfbGKEai6MoKABGBMrQ1uiCYJjSFf3mv3bx2ZTIJaVMqCQmB503v9IcBmzzwocGUVrpIWR1AO2IbYdzdfENFzMfInbHvZXqdhwb/s200/john.jpg" width="164" /></a>“I’ve learned a lot,” she says. “About story structure and
character arcs and what the reader wants. It’s been fascinating.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“Reader who?” Bobby is furious, but Rush quiets him with a
dismissive hand wave before making a gimmee motion at the Writer Lady.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“Tell us more,” he says, and she is proud of him all over
again.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“Well, take Nicola for instance,” she says. “Do you see how
she just disappeared from this conversation? She has to quit doing that.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“Nope,” Nicola says. “Going fishing.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“And Benny.” The Writer Lady persists. “There’s kind of been
a public outcry about her. I mean, she was supposed to be central.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Benny is currently swimming. All eyes turn to the lake, the
slender shape cutting a path through the glittering tide. Is that Angelo with
her, or Toot?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“The Professional Editor Lady is sure the story belongs to Benny.”
The Writer Lady can’t help sighing just a little. “Oh, and you two, Rush and
Bobby – or whoever you are now – you’ve got to go to work. I mean, what do you
do all day?”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“Hang here and play guitar,” Rush said. “Sometimes sip from
a glass of Jamesons.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“Exactly,” the Writer Lady says. “You have an exciting
career” – Bobby snorts - “You’re narcotic officers. Let’s see more of what you
do.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“Okey-dokey.” Rush rises slowly to his feet and plants a
kiss on Nicola’s head. “We’re setting up surveillance downtown tonight. Wanna
ride along?”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“I do,” The Writer Lady is already on her feet. “But only if
this relates to Benny. And, existentially, to Nicola.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“We’ll make it work,” Rush says after a heavy pause. “You’re
not rewriting the whole thing, are you?”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
“Oh heavens no. Only pieces. Say, can the Professional
Editor Lady come along too? Her name is Bonnie; you’re going to love her.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
~*~*~ </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCCTz8Z3D8eHjyk_JhCZHx99jjzAnA6ExD8k5yyWLvxpuum9bxgFdcgiOTLl8lnZvDQsLJlxWV9OAyoxGmJOG4HhWhn3qqBfYlXdW4ec5mvbKqXJ53EWHeBrQFwK-5pBraKTYq4WjKuskz/s1600/edit-find-replace-clip-art-at-clker-com-vector-clip-art-online-Lz38fK-clipart.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCCTz8Z3D8eHjyk_JhCZHx99jjzAnA6ExD8k5yyWLvxpuum9bxgFdcgiOTLl8lnZvDQsLJlxWV9OAyoxGmJOG4HhWhn3qqBfYlXdW4ec5mvbKqXJ53EWHeBrQFwK-5pBraKTYq4WjKuskz/s200/edit-find-replace-clip-art-at-clker-com-vector-clip-art-online-Lz38fK-clipart.png" width="200" /></a><b><span class="fn"><span class="full-name" dir="auto">Bonnie Milani </span></span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<span class="fn"><span class="full-name" dir="auto">"The Professional Editor Lady" is now accepting new clients. Interested writers can contact her through her LinkedIn profile <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/bonnie-milani-763a006">here</a>. Bonnie is also the author of several books, which can be found <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Bonnie%20Milani">here</a>.</span></span><br />
<span class="fn"><span class="full-name" dir="auto"><br /></span></span>
<span class="fn"><span class="full-name" dir="auto"><br /></span></span>
<span class="fn"><span class="full-name" dir="auto"><br /></span></span>
<span class="fn"><span class="full-name" dir="auto"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
~*~*~</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
New to Lucy Crowe? Get to know Benny, Nicola, Bobby, and Rush in her first novel "Sugar
Man's Daughter," and join the mailing list for blog posts and updates
on Lucy's next novel,"Maypops in September"</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sugar-Mans-Daughter-Lucy-Crowe/dp/1937758435/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382145563&sr=8-1&keywords=sugar+man%27s+daughter" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="127" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxtu5TfUvumAy5ejmyZJqgiPSG_v8nvaAiRSEIK0QHe3q0C9lPEXZP4qZBdRdfZgSzVY1sX0bGUGnPDwNSrjrUMn_wWHCGb70k6blVFA12lNJ7SAPkiA-AY0NEz8sMG5gFGz_ldN0-T1Tu/s400/sugarad.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sugar-Mans-Daughter-Lucy-Crowe/dp/1937758435/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382145563&sr=8-1&keywords=sugar+man%27s+daughter"><b>Sugar Man's Daughter</b></a></div>
Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-5278666534611120882016-07-08T15:41:00.000-05:002016-07-29T12:30:26.213-05:00Here in America<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Here in America, we’re pretty sure the sky is falling.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A lot of us have quit watching the news, but the fall-out
leaks onto us anyway, through well-meaning Facebook buddies and Twitter posts
that are more “shout” than “tweet.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So here it is: a couple of rabid, frothing-at-the-mouth
lunatics running for the highest office in the land. An unconscious college
student raped behind a dumpster; forty-nine beautiful, dancing, happy people
killed in Orlando; another lovely man shot by another terrified cop; fi<span class="null">ve men in blue slaughtered in retaliation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The evil foisted upon us by each other is chilling, and
every single day there is a new story. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Does anyone understand that we are doing this to each other?
That we are the enemy? The dancing people aren’t gay, the murdered man isn’t black,
the cop isn’t white. While we’re at it, Donald probably isn’t the antichrist
and maybe Hillary hasn’t earned her striped pajamas just yet. No – we are all just
people, we are all just us.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We are all afraid together, and it’s killing us. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fear is the impetus, the new driving force that has become
such a part of our day we don’t notice it anymore. We ingest it by the spoonful
with our morning coffee.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So take a minute and think about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Think about what is being handed to you by
the media, your neighbor and the girl at the check-out counter day after day
after day.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fear. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first part of conquering it is recognition. We have to
know we’re afraid. We’re not angry, or hate-filled, or religious or patriotic –
or any of the other hackneyed excuses we slap like Band-Aids over a gaping
wound that Quick-Clot couldn’t fix. No, we’re afraid. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We’re afraid when we listen to the news and tally the latest
loss of life. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We’re afraid when the Isis soldier encroaches on our social
media with another bloody trophy head clutched in his fist.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We’re afraid when the people in the next booth speak a
different language. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When we hear a siren, when we see a thundercloud, when we
feel a lump beneath our skin that wasn’t there the day before. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And the fear makes us smaller day by day. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The antidote, of course, is love. And it’s hard to even say that, because it sounds like such
a platitude. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Try not to see it in pastel colors, soft and fuzzy as a
teddy bear. Make it bright in your mind - a noisy, deafening cymbal crash, a
massive, rolling wave. Love as a verb. Love as an affirmative action. Love that
floats a battle cry, clear and sharp as the rebel yell. Love that storms the
beaches, takes no prisoners, conquers and stands firm.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Love that shelters the refugee and shakes the illegal’s
hand. Love that doesn’t care if you wear a rainbow, a sombrero or a turban.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Think of it as a grass-roots movement, a refusal to be
controlled by the fear-mongers. You can start small, and be absolutely assured
that nothing you do in the name of love is ever small. Dragging a tree limb
from the road might save a life. Holding a hand can thwart a suicide. See
yourself as a vital part of the whole, and then . . . well, act accordingly.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What if we all refused to be cowed ever again? <span class="null">What if we weren’t afraid of Isis or illegals or racists or cops or
thugs or internet bullies?</span> Imagine believing that the God in you – the
one filling your lungs and making your heart beat - is just as alive, just as
whole, in every other person you see today. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Because He is. Believe it. </div>
Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-2404188394773959412016-06-10T23:56:00.000-05:002016-06-11T00:00:44.460-05:00Hello, Beautiful June<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqnxH0BPr9u_feX-NJ7tx_Q3qg0HTsSMFPuS9fsdbURFW3hxQ1Y4ezf15MBwq8-xtE79MbWhoYbMa7hNc0-R8RXKOYKpybcE8bVFi8Zi9ypJk7nk40gSP2sItd2lKTrLjljQ7YghhzlmDF/s1600/summer20163.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqnxH0BPr9u_feX-NJ7tx_Q3qg0HTsSMFPuS9fsdbURFW3hxQ1Y4ezf15MBwq8-xtE79MbWhoYbMa7hNc0-R8RXKOYKpybcE8bVFi8Zi9ypJk7nk40gSP2sItd2lKTrLjljQ7YghhzlmDF/s320/summer20163.jpg" width="232" /></a></div>
<div>
It’s June!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Who remembers the opening to “Dandelion Wine”, Douglas lying
in bed on the first day of summer? Wake up , world! He exhaled and the
streetlights went out, blinked, and the old people across the way stepped onto
their porch for the morning paper. Opened his fists and dawn spiraled across
the sky, spilling gold and pink and lavender over the mist-shrouded town.
Mourning doves rustled their feathers and sighed like complacent church women,
a new breeze tickled the willow branches, and the windows slapped open on the
house next door. And . . . </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Summer. Began.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And Douglas knew, even though he was only twelve, that he
was completely and utterly alive that day. And he recognized the
responsibilities of being alive – the main one being, of course, to be <i>aware</i> of said life. In a way that, quite
possibly, only a child could master, he goes through the summer with a sort of
hyper- awareness, noticing . . . well, the snap of a silken web across his
cheeks, the heady stink of a dandelion beneath his nose, the power of feet and
legs, sinew and bones that enables him to run forever. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Dear God, I want to be twelve again.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But summer is upon us, and here is what I know about that:
if, in the evening, when the light is a lemony slant through the green tangle
of the lilac bushes, I take a tall glass of rum-and-coke to the porch swing and
wait there, the Winter Girl steps back. She who huddled in the cold shadow of
her losses begins to stretch in the sun’s dying rays. Tears already drying, she
sniffs the wind like a small forest creature and registers the sweetness of
grass and new tomato plants. Her skin goosebumps beneath the tread of a tiny
ladybug and her eyes follow the circle of bats at the streetlight. And summer
explodes in her mind with the fizz and pop of a thousand Thunder Snaps. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Summer. Is here.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Douglas took the summer of 1928 and bottled it. Dandelion
Wine lined up in gleaming bottles on the basement shelf, each with its own
label and its own memory. This bottle: the smell of peonies, this one: the cold
rush of creek water over toes. So when the inevitable winter returned, he had
only to traverse stairs - spiders and damp mold stink – to find, again, his
joy.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Were people smarter back then, or is a child, simply by the
nature of the best, always more intelligent than the rest of us?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The girl on the porch swing sips through a straw, closes
contented eyes and toes her shoes off onto the porch boards. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
</div>
Hello, beautiful June.Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7658089508610486282.post-44812027890790610112016-05-28T17:02:00.001-05:002016-05-28T17:05:46.558-05:00Seventy-Seven Steps: Happy Memorial Day!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8baprDTCzpQEqDOW83SoKCknaNVLti17KSqlvDZBGlB615ZqUudHl78ngNZqxdatjERM7iMzH5Jv6HOmrBgibO0SezOvlDgoKx6o-BYxpVXPi4RF36z3D-E4Yo9WjNWBK36d14hROwXrM/s1600/mountbloom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8baprDTCzpQEqDOW83SoKCknaNVLti17KSqlvDZBGlB615ZqUudHl78ngNZqxdatjERM7iMzH5Jv6HOmrBgibO0SezOvlDgoKx6o-BYxpVXPi4RF36z3D-E4Yo9WjNWBK36d14hROwXrM/s400/mountbloom.jpg" width="301" /></a></div>
<div>
Seventy-seven weathered, moss streaked steps to the
cemetery. Ivy wraps the wrought iron railing and the hum of bees is a far-off,
languid sound - mosquito whine is closer, intimate as the tiny mole beneath
your lover’s left earlobe. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The kids run ahead, shouting, peony blossoms clutched in
sweaty fists; the petals leave a trail not unlike a bride’s path. fragrant and
pink and utterly vulnerable to the whims of the breeze. The women follow
slowly, iris bouquets cradled to their chests.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“Do you remember Daddy and that old riding lawn mower?”
Their voices are a continuous rill, energetic as bird song.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Shriek of laughter; a soft hand slaps a lady bug from a
crimsoned cheek. “Didn’t he just love it?”</div>
<br />
<div>
</div>
<div>
“Aunt Millie put sugar in the gas tank, I swear she did.”</div>
<br />
<div>
“She was a mean old thing.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“But” – and here is the satisfying conclusion – “She had a
good heart.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The voices overlap, memories caught in the reaching arms of
the elms where they remain, nestled like robin eggs in the silvery wind-tossed leaves.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The kids have reached the summit, have abandoned their
flowers and are playing tag amongst the tombstones, their laughter pin-wheeling
against a heavy sky, a sky that is just beginning to forgive. The women don’t
offer correction because the cemetery above the village has been a playing
place for generations; here, in fact, the dead are more alive than anywhere
else.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And comfortably so. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Here beneath the live oaks with the dandelions rioting and
the prairie breeze pushing in the homey stink of cows. Here where grass is a
thousand jeweled shades of emerald and nobody notices if you slip out of your
shoes. Here, where everybody from down-the-hill comes home at last.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“Do you remember Junie?” One of the women kneels, lays her bouquet
beside a listing gravestone. “The first time she came up here – and she was
just a little thing, couldn’t read – she ran right up to Grandma’s stone and
said how pretty it was.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
They’re off again, magpies chattering while the sky at last
splits to reveal a hands-span of azure so bright it hurts the eyes.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“ . . . and he had the bluest eyes, didn’t he? Well the
whole family did.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“ . . . didn’t think Eddy could go on after . . . “</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“ . . . used to bring the cows down from our hill,
remember?”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Remember, remember. And the dead - while they are in a place
where time matters not at all - are here as well. In words, in thoughts, in
little girl’s smiles. As real as your child’s shadow darting quick as Peter Pan
on the cobblestone path or the squirrel tossing acorns from the tree limb. Here,
Memorial Day is not so much an honoring as a simple acknowledgement, Scout
greeting Miss Maudie on the screen porch step.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
That’s how close your loved ones are. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The women at last finish their task and gather at the spigot
by the gate, where they cup cold water to their faces like the children they
were the-day-before-yesterday, drinking and scrubbing the sweat at the back of
their necks. They gather up discarded shoes and the sourball wrappers that seem
to follow children everywhere and shoo their offspring towards the steps.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Early evening already, the limpid light sweet as
lilacs.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div dir="ltr">
</div>
Seventy-seven steps down, home on either end.Lucy Crowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16763986083601056597noreply@blogger.com0