Another article for my employer’s monthly publication Reference Notes:

Montgomery and the River Region: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow by Mary Ann Neely

Ref 976.1

As an educator, author, and scholarly writer, Mary Ann Neely has studied and lovingly documented Montgomery’s history for many years. She is a graduate of Alabama’s own Huntingdon College and Auburn University.  As businesses and historic homes change hands, city landscapes are damaged and rebuilt by flood and fire, and philosophies for management of city resources have changed, Mary Ann Neely leads us through a whirlwind tour of Montgomery, Autauga, Elmore, Lowndes, and Macon Counties – and we don’t even have to brave the heat and tired aching feet to see it.

Her extensive knowledge of the history of our community is accompanied by old daguerreotypes of Montgomery then, and critically acclaimed photographer Robert Fouts’ images of Montgomery now.  Mr. Fouts spoke alongside Ms Neely at the Alabama Center for the Book’s Book Festival this past April. His dedication for his work shone through. He noted the loving, extremely painstaking work of sorting, cataloging and preserving his mentor John E. Scott Jr’s extensive collection of historic photographs.

Mr. Fouts and Ms Neely then got themselves into many situations that were precarious at best in an effort to reproduce the angles and views in those old photos, to allow the reader to compare then and now. Stories of knocking at the doors of complete strangers in remote areas, ‘not really’ trespassing, and hanging precariously off of bridges or standing in traffic in an effort to get the exact shot added enjoyable detail to their description of the process of writing the book.

Each section of the book details the origins and growth of a section of our community. We see the inevitable losses of time—the Parkmore Drive in is now the site of Advance Auto Parts. Mothers will no longer purchase their daughters’ bridal trousseaux at Al Levy’s.

Court Square here in Montgomery has come a long way from the Wild West look of 1874 to its serene, small-scale urban look today. The “Hog-Wallow in the Square” became the graceful fountain decorated by Hebe, the Goddess of Youth and Cup-Bearer of the Gods, in 1885. Our current downtown revitalizations reflect a similar spirit of progress and awareness of the need for beautification of public places.

Driving around downtown Montgomery on one important errand or another, one might wonder about this or that landmark—the Commerce Street tunnel, for instance—but never have time to follow up on its significance. The tunnel flooded the basements of buildings along Commerce Street in 1929 and was closed for nearly fifty years. Restored and re opened nearly fifty years later, it is the gateway to the River and the Amphitheatre. 

Painful moments in our community’s history are documented as well. The city’s effort to make ‘separate but equal’ truly equal after the 1901 constitution was sincere. Mayor William Teague ordered arrest of Montgomery Traction Company officials and employees who refused to create equal trolley routes for blacks. As we know now, this effort deteriorated into the conditions which led to the bus boycott of 1955. But today, improvements to the Court Square area have restored it to a more pedestrian friendly, graceful nod to the area’s original proportions and purposes.

Our riverfront, in 1898 piled high with muddy bales of cotton waiting to be shipped to Mobile, is now a place for outdoor recreation and city-sponsored entertainment.

In the second half of the book, Charles Barnette’s corporate profiles highlight the people and institutions who built our area from the frontier-like towns of 100 years ago to the growing metropolitan region we live in today. The history and the movers and shakers of businesses from hospitals to utilities to churches to higher education to industry remind us of where we’ve been and the potential in our future.

My only complaint about the book is that it leaves me hungry for even more details. As time passes, the marks of the personal and communal history of our community fade. How did the people live who rode those trolleys and built those businesses and boycotted those buses? What was the shipping business centered on our river like, and how much of it remains? How do our citizens live now, so that we can have a record for future books like this one?  It would take several volumes, I am sure, for Ms Neely and Mr. Fouts to cover all the many, many changes to Montgomery and other neighborhoods and communities. I hope they are still working on it!

In closing, I quote Mary Ann Neely. She echoes my hunger for additional detail. On pages 19-20 she writes:

‘In some instances, there are images that may be disturbing where once elegant mansions or simpler cottages have given way to industrial sites, car lots, or vacant weed-infested fields, but in others there is a tree, a building, a view that instills that wondrous sense of continuity that gives the viewer such a satisfactory personal feeling of “I have been there, and I like what I see.” That is the purpose of this book—to give the reader the understanding that, yes, we have been there – that all humanity has connections with every other generation. Of course, we wear different clothes, travel in different vehicles, live in different houses, but look into the eyes of an individual in an old photograph, wonder how it felt to live in a dogtrot house in the winter, attend Tuskegee Institute in 1890, wade through Downtown Prattville in the flood of 1939. We are all a part of what we have met, either in this life or through the pictures that reflect the change and the continuity of Central Alabama’s unique and beautiful River Region.”

Someone didn’t cage the tomatoes in our suburban backyard raised bed, despite my good advice… but we still got a good size haul of them, enough to freeze several quarts. And we have a few lovely red bell peppers, which are just ridiculously expensive and not even that good at the grocery store.

So, I had to figure out something to do to use some of these delicious blessings from our garden. You need:

Red Bell Peppers.

Tomatoes.

Fresh Basil.

Garlic.

Salt.

Balsamic Vinegar.

French, Italian or Focaccia bread.

Heat oven to 450. Wash and seed red bell peppers, and slice them into big chunks. Coat red peppers and pan generously in olive oil and roast in oven as long as desired– I do not like my roast peppers burned, but Carrabbas’ bruschetta has a little bit of burned pepper skins in it. It’s just what you like.

As the red bell peppers begin to smell sweet and look close to done (the skin wrinkles up), throw in some minced garlic (not too much), stir up, and roast a bit longer.

Chop up fresh tomatoes and get most of the seeds out. You want about twice as much tomatoes, or three times as much, as you have of the red peppers. Slice up fresh basil, as much as you can get– no more than about 1/4 your quantity of peppers– very, very fine. If you don’t have enough fresh basil you can supplement with dried.

When the peppers are roasted, pull them out of the hot oil to cool. Throw the tomatoes into the roasting pan, add a bit more olive oil, slice up the roasted pepper slices very fine and throw them back into the pan, and roast the tomatoes with the red pepper for a little bit.

Start adding basil til it looks like enough. Roast a few more minutes. Taste to make sure you have enough basil.

While roasting, stir together some more olive oil with some more minced fresh garlic. Slice plain French or Italian bread, or focaccia bread, or both, pretty thin. Lightly soak both sides of the slices in the olive oil/garlic mixture and put on a cookie sheet. Roast with the bruschetta sauce until very lightly crisped/browned but still tender. Put any leftover olive oil/garlic mixture into the sauce.

When the bruschetta sauce appears to be roasted well enough that the flavors have blended and the juices have come out, take it out of the oven and add a splash of balsamic vinegar and a sprinkle of salt, and taste. Continue adding small splashes of balsamic vinegar and sprinkles of salt until it tastes good to you. It may also need a few more splashes of olive oil. Olive oil is good for you and also holds the nutrients into the veggies and makes the consistency of the sauce so much more pleasing.

Serve warm in a bowl with a spoon to spread on the rounds or slices of toasted bread. Damn, damn, damn good!

I imagine it would be almost as good with a can of diced tomatoes, canned roasted red peppers which are very cheap at the dollar tree, and some fresh basil from the produce section… and we have frozen tomatoes we can use for this, this winter.

This is a slightly longer version of the little article I wrote for my library’s monthly Reference Notes–

Every time we use a cell phone, a computer, an electric light, heat or cool our home or drive to work, approximately 80% or more of the energy (depending on where we live in the world) comes from non-renewable resource fossil fuels. Our appliances, even when not in use, are leaching power for tiny lights or clocks or sleep mode or pilot lights.

Demand for fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal) is rising quickly, and production is becoming more expensive. The Economist points to nationalist and political tensions and the challenges of accessing oil in difficult terrain.

In spite of our concerns about the environment and global warming, pollution’s toll on our health, rising costs, and dependence on foreign resources in unstable regions, America’s cars and houses are getting bigger and bigger. The decline of urban quality of life and business opportunity creates suburban sprawl. We commute to work and school, and drive across town to get groceries that have been transported across our nation or around the world. Families relocate to find jobs or affordable housing, and we lose small local communities and must drive long distances to spend time with friends and loved ones.

Meanwhile, rising superpowers China and India extend American-style fossil fuel burning amenities to their immense populations.

Soaring gas prices are a major problem for working families who are also facing the foreclosure crisis and rising food prices. Each year Americans die because they cannot afford to heat or cool their homes. In Fueling our Future, Robert Evans notes that pollution from fossil fuel burning has been linked to heart disease and cancer, and a 2001 study at Harvard linked it to infertility and early menopause as well. The International Panel on Climate Change found that as the earth’s temperature rises worldwide drought is not certain, but likely (Evans 13).

For those of us not profiting from the fossil fuel energy industry, this is all a bit of a worry.

In The Citizen-Powered Energy Handbook, Greg Pahl’s expert sources predict that a horrific energy crisis could be upon us any time between 2010 and 2037. Visions of California’s rolling blackouts, or of the gas lines of that made the US look like a struggling Communist bloc nation during the 70’s dance in our heads.

A comfortable lifestyle using less energy and using energy that does not create pollution or greenhouse gases and does not depend upon tense relationships with antagonistic foreign nations is possible now.

But energy is a commodity-to be produced, bought and sold in the greatest quantities and at the highest profit possible. This model is not just incorrect for our energy future (no pun intended). It is a dangerous gamble.

Scientists and entrepreneurs with excellent ideas are struggling to gain a financial toehold to launch and improve sustainable, pollution- and waste-free technologies to run our homes, industry and transportation with renewable or sustainable resources.

Resources at Montgomery City County Public Libraries sum up the advantages and disadvantages of renewable or sustainable energy.

At this time it actually costs more fossil fuel energy to create biomass and biofuel than they yield. They produce carbon dioxide and may compete with food production for land. If they are managed as commodities like fossil fuels energy, consumers risk the same vulnerabilities we face today- severe weather and other events can result in shortage and drive up price

Hydrogen fuel cells are incredibly efficient, but cost more to produce than they yield.
Solar power is endlessly renewable and free of pollution but requires large surface areas to yield power even approaching the scale of fossil fuels.

Many are opposed to the stately ranks of giant sculpture like windmills needed to produce wind electricity on any great scale. Storage of any renewable energy produced is an important issue still to be solved. Daytime and evening demand must be more carefully balanced with renewable energy resources to insure an adequate supply.

Nuclear power and our long term dream, nuclear fusion, are incredibly efficient, with no greenhouse emissions. Much like the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on a purely statistical basis this seems to be our best bet. Evans details ways nuclear power production has become much safer (124-26) But the millennia-long legacy of nuclear waste, the dangers of uranium mining, and the tragedies at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island make many wonder if it is worth the price.

If we don’t own profitable stock in an energy trader, what can we do?

Evans states that we must reduce demand / consumption and work for greater
efficiency (174). In the wake of the 2001 energy crisis, California’s efficiency mandates and credits for using alternative energy created both great grumbling and great opportunity.

California is now a worldwide model for reduced consumption, but its hugely profitable Sempra Energy, for example, is still building infrastructure for and trading huge amounts of natural gas in the unregulated energy industry. Efficiency and reduced consumption are key, but not enough. According Evans and Pahl’s sources, the transition from mostly oil, coal and natural gas to mostly renewable energy must go forward quickly.

Sustainable profit is possible.

Even as pollution caused by China’s industrial revolution - fueled mostly by coal and other fossil fuels - spawns whole ‘cancer villages’ within China and washes up onto America’s shores, the richest man in China is worth 4.8 billion dollars because he can barely keep up with demand for his solar modules.

But until policymakers and consumers make a move on a massive, nationwide scale, our best chance for improving our health and saving our endangered ice caps, species, and pocketbooks is one family, one business, one building at a time.

Montgomery Public Library offers many excellent books on creating homes, buildings and lifestyles that employ alternative energy or greatly reduce dependence on fossil fuel energy, from Solar Power your Home for Dummies (690.83 DEGUN) to Eco-Renovation the Ecological Home Improvement Guide (643.47 HARLAN).

Greg Pahl takes it even further. He supports the Community Supported Energy (CSE) Model. Consumers can choose local energy just as they are choosing to purchase local food to improve nutrition and reduce environmental toll, animal cruelty and disease outbreaks (for more on the advantages of local food, see Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, 641.973).

Pahl notes that hydroelectric power on a massive scale is very powerful, but major sites in America have already been developed (causing great disruption and damage to the environment. However, on a local,community scale, where geography and river flow permit, hydroelectric power would be excellent and environmentally benign (Evans 104). Evans even mentions burning solid waste or capturing methane gas from landfills (102).

Solar power is also much better suited to a distributed application. On a community or local level, fields of mirrors the size of Rhode Island would not be necessary for solar power to make a huge difference, and in places like Arizona, peak production would coincide with peak need.

My money is on solar power, based on an episode of National Public Radio’s Science Friday program. But local communities can make the best decisions based on their unique resources, geography and values. Community energy requires greater responsibility, but it also keeps 3 to 4 times more money circulating in the local economy than absentee ownership (Pahl 267).

“Local communities… tend to be better stewards of their immediate environments because they know that if they are going to continue to thrive they need to conserve those local resources… While the global free-market economy has repeatedly demonstrated that it has no soul or compassion, most communities by contrast are blessed with both (Pahl 268).”

Take advantage of the resources the library offers to learn how to live well while consuming less. Learn about the various options and voice your informed opinion within your community.

Tonight, when I need my insomnia, it has finally deserted me. I am lonely (an existential thing, not a lack of loving sweet friends thing cause I have those in spades, saw several of them tonight, and I don’t have enough time to be with all of them as much as I want.) I am exhausted. I need to get a lot done before heading out for my trip this weekend. I want to leave the house clean and peaceful, I have no choice but to a) get all the crap out of my car and b) get crap selected and packed into the car. I want to ‘just quickly run up) a couple itsy bitsy baby quilts for Courtney’s cousin’s teeny weeny 26-week twins, who decided to come much more quickly than their September due date. And I am so tired.

My high school best friend is just as deliciously mean as ever and I love her so much and I can’t wait to see her. She’s bad, bad, bad. Her little sis just had the baby (out of wedlock, the only way to do it). She announced to her extremely loving, sweet, and clean living mother that she’s through with men and it’s women only for her from here on out. And we’ve connived to make her brother my second husband and make me his third wife, which is gonna be tough cause I identify and empathise with his second and current wife in many ways. But they’ve given up on him having any kids, and my childbearing years are almost over, right? But if I lived with him I’d probably be sick of him too. The everyday magic I expect… Feh. Maybe we could just have a baby together. His wife’s too old… I could have my freedom AND my baby and he could have his beloved wife and his baby. Don’t people do that sort of thing all the time? Still, I have this horrible fear of abandonment and fear the reality that my marriage isn’t working out and so could I never contribute to the abandonment of someone else or the demise of someone else’s marriage. So as good as it sounded…

I gotta figure something out quick. I will soon be older than her mom was when she thought she was going into the change but had surprise baby Kell instead, who now has her own surprise baby.

And I wonder if they’ll let me get in the tanning bed they keep in the garage. (You might be a redneck if… but don’t forget I pride myself on it.)My mother said the tanning bed would cook my ovaries, but I’m not using them right now. And I gotta tone down these varicose veins and stretchmarks posthaste. Skinny legs are not sexy legs, trust me.

G’night.

Two of those burning questions were answered– where was the raisin bran, and where was the oatmeal? I knew I’d bought the oatmeal just Saturday… both had simply disapparated… was there a breakfast-only thief stealing from me in the night?

Thank heavens, no. I found them both.

But others go unanswered. Like why can’t I get myself to bed early enough to get enough sleep? God knows I’m exhausted. I popped half a pill, and now the second half… maybe it will kick in soon.

And why, when I can’t sleep, am I so drawn to the pitcher of homemade sweet tea in my fridge? I really think caffeine causes anxiety for me. So I try to sneak it in… organic green tea… homemade sweet tea, greatly diluted with sugar and water and soooo good… there’s only a teensy bit of caffeine in those, right? None of that nasty soda or coffee for me.

Here’s the burningest question.

I can’t find my child’s other thermos.

I have two– one to wash and one to use. I put spaghettios in them for her lunches, spaghettios exclusively– once I sent cheesy mashed potatoes and another time I sent a delicious soup and she scraped a few bites off the top of the cheesy mashed potatoes and of the soup ate not one bite. So much for that. Anyway… I found the thermos from Friday, when I forgot she was having her end of year picnic at school, this morning (Tuesday) and I know I will have to face opening it some time.

But that’s just one. Which means the other is… out there somewhere, waiting and probably full of mold. Ugh!

Yeck!

Have I mentioned how much I love Spoon? I love them. LOVE them. Although I have to admit that the naked (if jaded) emotion in the songs embarasses me even as it thrills me. Imagine being that, well, that naked? I can’t. It is so immediate it hurts. It’s like picking a scab. But like picking a scab, I can’t help it. I haven’t loved any band like this since My Morning Jacket. Click pop out player down lower right. After my favorite song by Jenny Owen Youngs, some good SPOON.

Is Austin the place I need to go to start over and settle down into forever?

Why can’t I go to bed and get the sleep i need?

Where is that thermos? I have to find it and scald it with boiling water before it explodes!

Maybe the pill is in my system good. I can still get seven hours of sleep… I used to be a morning person, what is happening to me?

Evidence that everything can be just terrible and just painfully beautiful at the same time…

I had an insane, beautiful conversation with my mother a couple of weeks ago.

It was like a long, long walk, with many diversions, none of them the least contiguous with the one previous. Flight of the bumblebee? Not even that coherent, but the flow was so clear and straight all the same.

We don’t talk to each other like this all the time– but it happens often enough that it’s usual. This is what makes me want to be friends with someone– their ability to go from subject to insanely divergent subject and speak with some knowledge of and interest in any and all. And now you see where I get my ADD, maybe? A surfeit of intelligence that’s not being used for survival (at least not for physical survival), so it just bubbles away on all these crazy things– anyhoo, I come by it honest. I didn’t say it at the time but it makes me wonder what either of us could have done with just slightly different choices, upbringings… and perhaps some Adderall. But they didn’t have that, then. And as much as we bitch, if I really examine it… I think that at least on a cosmic level we’re both reasonably well situated just as we are.

The gebbeth finally caught up with her– that is, she got the name of her chronic illness these last two years, which somehow eluded her incompetent pulmonologist and the rheumatologist who told her to get out of his office instead of testing her– her new pulmonologist figured it out immediately, a systemic case of autoimmune disease which will probably allow her some quality of life for some time, but is still probably her nemesis even if in five or ten or more years from now.

The only reason I’m not angrier is that it can’t be reversed, no way no how, so it cost her little but confusion and annoyance and some slight worry, not to know these last two years. I did mention lawsuit, but she said you know, he always seems to be out of the office giving a deposition. I have a feeling I’d be waiting in a long line for the pleasure to sue him. I just want to enjoy my life.

In one’s sixties, one can reasonably expect that one’s nemesis will be making itself known before too long– but to me, though I am not in her shoes, it would have to be a fucking bitch to finally learn its name even so.

She’s kind of always been this way– it doesn’t take learning the name of her killer to inspire her to think and talk like this. But I guess she’s just more so right now? She’s also wisely enjoying life quite well these days, at least I think she is.

So she started out with how she spends her time in her little lung-clearing thumper massage vest– much the same way she’s spent most of the past two years, in quiet pursuits, hoping to find rest and peace to ease her cough and tiredness, listening to unabridged audiobooks of the classics. So in this conversation I started really taking note when she broke into– Robinson Crusoe.

I can rewind, actually, to telling her that I think it’s awesome that she’s going back to all these classics (The Hunchback of Notre Dame was the week before and she had the most wonderful things to say about that book, things I would have absolutely missed because I’d have been utterly bored, but now I’m thinking maybe we all need to go to Paris for my baby’s sixth birthday?) but that I have just never had any patience whatsoever with most any piece of literature by a man. I remember telling her of the exceptions I could remember– One Hundred Years of Solitude, and A House for Mr. Biswas, and that’s it. Oh and I did enjoy Dickens’ Victorian soap operas of deprivation and false hope… but A Tale of Two Cities, another of her favorites? Forget it.

So she tells me Robinson Crusoe has everything he needs– we all do, yet we’re so unhappy. I know I am. What’s with us? I’d said to her earlier in the week, as I bitched (as I do, unceasingly) about my lot and my anxiety about my lot, I said callously, though it wasn’t my intent to be, I’m just incredibly self centered– if I had a devastating illness like you maybe I’d be more zen about all this. And I know I should.

Anyway, she said that the whole book was about Crusoe accepting that abundance. If it takes all day to fashion a — I dunno, a nose hair trimmer out of palm leaves, or whatever it was Robinson needed that day, well all he had was time, right? She didn’t say nose hair trimmer. I just made that up for lack of a good example. But for real. What she was telling me reminded me of Rumi, but I feel peaceful just thinking about it, and Rumi doesn’t do that for me any more.

She said he realized that his every trouble was caused by refusing to enjoy his good life and insisting upon reaching for more. She said she didn’t know if Crusoe or Dafoe made the connection between his journey to get slaves and his subsequent shipwreck punishment/enlightenment. I would like to know more about that… but I didn’t follow up.

Then we talked with great anticipation of the coming visit of Miss Du. Miss Du was my mother’s very fashionable and wise young spinster friend in China. I would call her a best friend, but they didn’t pair off like that, over there, and Mother could tick off countless names of people who consistently went to great lengths to spend time with her and to make her stay comfortable and enjoyable. But Miss Du–well she’s just the inimitable Miss Du. I’m going up there the month Miss Du gets here and want particularly to spend as much time with her as I can, especially with my little one.

Then we were off on Anchee Min and the relief it is to read her retellings of history from a woman’s point of view. She is channelling– maybe not consciously, but like Amy Tan, I really believe she’s channelling. I was relieved to hear that Mother was just as confused as I was by Becoming Madame Mao– but she still had many good thoughts about China then and today to add to our mutual confusion. She reminded me that Anchee Min herself lived through it. Then she said that the daughter of the Communist Party dignitary who disappeared during that time and is mentioned in the book teaches at mother’s local college. Could we meet her? Maybe Miss Du could introduce us? If certain Chinese talk to other Chinese while they are here, that is… I can see them coming all this way to this strange country, alone, yet having a stratified caste system in which they do not fraternize. We’ll find out!

I encouraged my mother to go back… she said her lung damage is irreversible… I said but you were so happy over there! You were walking everywhere, climbing mountains to visit shrines… she said I must have been in remission while I was there (she had her first round of pneumonia when she came home the first time, and when she recovered from that she got up and went back for four more months). I said or maybe it was the Chinese medicine, the purgatives (heh) (not a good thing, in a country with a toilet situation like China).

Then she confessed that she’d checked out the Left Behind series. She was tickled as well as shamed by her spiritual prurience. She said she’s always thought she’d be one of those left behind. I said, I don’t think so. You’re one of the few people I know who gets it. She said, but I always think something is missing. I said that is the human condition. That longing is our life task– we are here to long for unity, the unity we cannot have until we return to dust and ashes. And then, of course– we are in the midst of unity, like Robinson Crusoe– but still we long for it. But those who don’t long, who don’t see that something’s missing? They’re just dumb. She said wasn’t it Moliere who said that women’s only desire is to be loved? That was me. I said well. Moliere was a man. We’ll see what that disappeared Chinese dignitary’s daughter says about that.

Off she went, then, on learning about past life regressions on Oprah. She said it sounded so good. She said, you know, the ones who have the gift don’t even want it because it’s so bizarre. She talked about the credentials of the, um, regressor she’d seen. But she just couldn’t get her head around it, unless our entire being is entirely in our imaginations, in which case of course we have past lives because we made them up. I said didn’t you see What the Bleep do We Know? Don’t you think of Quantum Physics– the act of measuring changes the outcome? Both are true? Of COURSE it’s entirely in our imaginations! [Mass delusion... Jung... the Akashic Record...]

[And I want to know where she got the bit about the Dalai Lama's willingness to scrap the idea of reincarnation?]

I had to jump back in with Left Behind. I said, you know, I don’t want my apocalyptic vocabulary screwed with. Left Behind is like, you know, Hollywood. I like it just as I have it– a mix of Revelation, Southern Baptist fire and brimstone, and the biker of the apocalypse in Raising Arizona. I’ve seen it a time or two… like the day we set out on the interstate after that blizzard in 1992 or so– no one, nothing but white, as far as the eye could see- silence, and white. That was apocalypse. I don’t want that fucked with.

Then I told her about teasing my friend Courtney, who called to ask me for about five random children’s books, at five forty when I’m madly dashing around because we close at six, without checking the library’s catalog to see if we had them. I thought she’d found them in the catalog, but had neglected to tell me if they were even at my branch much less the call numbers. I’d been off on a goose chase. I said, I have an analogy. There’s the Universe of Books. Then there’s the Universe of Library. Because the Universe of books is so vast, as is the — uh, rethinking those perhaps the library should be a black hole? anyway, these two are classic both are true and never the twain shall meet. When they touch, it is a cataclysmic rarity. But we have a small chance for crossover between them. The maze of portals between the universes (and dead ends, too) is called Catalog.

Then we were off talking about death. We already talked about death a good bit, before we got the Name… although maybe we’ve been inspired by her illness, I can’t say, but motherhood made me really give death– and the nature of the divine– a hard, hard look. I told her about how my little one said, do you notice I’m not asking you what happens when you die any more? I said, why is that? My baby said, because I knew you were serious when you said that if we worry about when we die we won’t enjoy while we are together! What a kid.

At that point I’d tested Mom’s theory that my little girl keeps asking what will happen when I die because rather than needing to hear that a mother’s love reaches beyond death, which is what I told her, she really just wants to know who will take care of her. I asked my baby if that were true and she said well, yes. I asked her who she wanted. She said Daddy, and I said well Daddy would be first in line! I told her the proposed line of succession (although mom’s illness may change that, uncomfortable thought) and that there will be a long line of folks fighting to take care of her. This seemed to satisfy her. She hasn’t mentioned it again.

But I am so grateful to her for asking! I am so thankful I had the chance to tell her, because she brought it up, what I needed so desperately to be sure I told her (as opposed to the answer she was requesting– to think I completely missed that!) just in case, that my love for her is bigger than death, that in fact a mother’s love (or love for a tiny child) is not only strong beyond time and death but is also the closest shadow of the divine we will ever see on this earth. What a blessing those awkward questions can be.

[Will I need my mother's blessing before I can let her go? Do I have it already? I'm certain she's given it many times. But do I know it?]

Then she asked about my dogs, I guess. I said, remember in the Little House books when they found Jack frozen in a little ball on the front step? That’s what I’m waiting for with Lucie. I said she’s a model of dignity and perseverance, just like my childhood dog. We talked about how impossible it is to know what’s going on with my fifteen year old– is she staying because she wants to be with me? Or because she thinks I need her? Or does she even give a damn? I asked how she knew with my childhood Brittany Spaniel. She said the dog was seizing couldn’t take herself outside to potty any more, and my dad told her she’d done a wonderful job, and it was okay to let go.

(!)

We talked about how the loved one is often desperate to ‘go home’ but stays because the loved ones can’t let them go– my children need me. Mother brought up that death is often a relief both for the dying and for the survivors– but then the survivors have to go through horrible guilt for feeling that relief. We talked about her mother, in the hospital recently with heart trouble, saying your Daddy must be wondering what’s taking me so long.

This is some serious doublespeak… Mother was a nurse for many years, in places from the ER to the OR to the Psych unit, and before that she was an EMT. She knows whereof she speaks. She used to tell me the most hilarious, disgusting, horrible stories, completely steeped in the blood, guts, sputum, stupidity and poor hygiene of our mortality– although she never talked about losing a patient, whether from the imperative to protect confidentiality or because it affected her too deeply or because she didn’t allow anyone to die during her tenure, I don’t know. The few times she’s spoken to me about it in general terms, she’s always had a ‘this must not be’ approach to potential death. But you know she saw it. And now you know where I get my relentless ‘this must not be’ when I hear about an illness or injury…

And some day, of course, even if we hadn’t learned the killer’s name… we’ll have to face it too, it’s a rite of passage for most of us, watching our parents lose their parents, losing our own. I believe firmly that it’s good to talk it over now.

But I stayed with the dog side of the doublespeak. I said, i can’t really tell what she wants because I’m concerned that her dying is what’s most convenient for me.

And– although I won’t know for sure until it happens, I will be upset when she goes, but I think I am ready. What I can’t handle is– what in hell do I do with the body? Even in its emaciated state, it’s still pretty substantial. How do I dig a hole deep enough for that, deep enough to prevent it from stinking and getting dug up by varmints? Our yard is big, but not that big.

Mother extracted a promise that I would not just pet and comfort Lucie, as I do every day, but actually commune with her, ask her what she wants, tell her it’s okay to go on.

[And last night when Lucie was unable to use her back legs to walk down the stairs and I had to carry her, I went and petitioned my five year old regarding Lucie's departure to the Happy Hunting Ground to see what she thought. I was a bit sickened, as I looked into those clear brown eyes, to think I was feeding my insanely acute child a line of shit... but I couldn't quite explain why returning to the earth is a good thing in terms a five year old is going to buy. I did tell her that while it's a good thing for Lucie, it's just hurtful for us because we'll miss her. I was honest about that much. I still haven't told her about our dear Sitte's death. I can't. So I know I shouldn't lay the dog's impending departure at a five year old's feet... but if there's one thing I hate, and have always hated, it's a nasty surprise, and this is my way of allaying her fears and saving her that nasty surprise. And if I can teach her some acceptance and peace, to be stored up for later departures, so much the better. A book I am reading that outlines the differences between how boys/men and girls/women perceive, worry and physically experience emotions tells me I'm actually doing a pretty good thing.]

That’s all the notes I have. Well, I’ve written down O Brother Where Art Thou, but I can’t remember what if anything we said about that. But it is one of the greatest movies EVER, so it’s okay to mention it anyway.

So we’ve been grappling with centuries of obliterating sexism, the Cultural Revolution, enlightenment, quantum physics, the apocalypse, and death… and am I unhappy? No. I’m happy at the end of this conversation. I feel connected, and thoughtful, and thankful to be able to talk to my mother like this. Crazy, or what? But it is what it is. I went in and, before going to sleep, wrote down everything I could remember from that conversation so that I could eventually share it here.

I’m finally bestirring myself to do something interesting with my blogs. I am trying to get my project playlist player to work on wordpress (it already works on facebook, but you have to click play). Right now on wordpress you can click pop-out player at lower right… that’s not exactly what I want– what I want is for it to kick on as soon as you get to my blog, but that’s okay. We’ll get there.

And heck, I may even write something sometime soon. I had the most insane, thoughtful, intellectual, enlightening conversation with my mother the other day. I took notes, it was so amazing. I’ll try to commit it to electronic paper some time soon.

Minnie! I’ve loved her for a long, long time, since Circle of Friends, but The Riches sealed the deal.

What a beautiful, perfect mommy!

You can read more here and here.

It came to me today. All I want when I leave work is to go to a place where I am happy. It could be a social gathering, populated by the good girlfriends I already have, who are generally too busy with kids and home to meet me after work. It could be anywhere that people are glad to see me and know something about my joys and my issues– one of our homes, a local park, a bar might not be so good because of the various legal and financial ramifications, but it would be okay, especially if it was a table outside. It could, probably should, also be a place I go in solitude, one I have built, whether physically or emotionally/spiritually, for that purpose.

I’m reading David Wann’s Simple Prosperity right now and thinking hard about what this guy says– we are so busy earning and acquiring and consuming things to make us happy that we miss out on what really makes us happy– like strong relationships, fresh air, health, a tranquil home, fewer but more truly lasting and beautiful or useful possessions, truly good food, and community. My friends and I often dance around the simple truth of our irritated and exhausted discontent and isolation when bitch about the education system we have vs. the education we want for our children, or talk about the lack of ‘walkability’ in our town and of social capital in our lives. I think we’re onto something, although we’re going to have to do a lot more thinking/wangling before we make much of a change– if we ever do.

Anyway. Consume less. Be happier. My mom and dad told me so. Their parents told them and/or they figured it out some other way, and they passed it along to me.  Okay not in so many words, but they definitely had the consume less be happier thing well in hand.

My family prepared me for life with so many important truths– some of which I’ve been able to make use of more readily than others, because until very, very recently I wasn’t seeing the forest for the trees.

But that’s not because they didn’t tell me.

Here’s the first installment of my thoughts on these issues. Here’s what I got from my parents, loud and clear.

Homegrown Tastes Better. I wasn’t so much about the homegrown veggies as a kid, but I darn sure could put a hurt on some peaches or strawberries fresh from the garden or the orchard down the road, especially sliced, poured over a biscuit and smothered in ice cream. There will never, ever be a storebought tomato, peach or strawberry like the ones that came out of my parents’ or grandparents’ gardens, and it breaks my heart that those days are gone. I can eat a really good tomato on white bread with a pasteurized process cheese slice and Miracle Whip, and be so happy it is indescribable. I could eat that for breakfast lunch and dinner for quite a while, I’m reasonably sure– at least as long as tomato season lasts.

Clothes and linens we make are better. I’ve been making, buying at estate sales and thrift shops, and hoarding cloth napkins since long before I became a cloth diaper/cloth napkin/no paper towels or wipes allowed ecofreak. I now have separate groups of towels for floor/bathroom cleaning and dirty jobs, dishes/food prep use, and towels to be used on actual people, and never the twain (or whatever the equivalent is for three) shall meet.

I do stop short at toilet paper, tissues, and feminine hygiene, although 1. I feel guilty about it and 2. I have a girlfriend or two who even uses cloth for those as well and while I can’t bring myself to do it, I get it. I totally get it, and I’m okay with it. It’s just, well, you know. What’s the difference between that and a cloth baby diaper? Okay, I’m just not at the place where I can manage grownup bodily substances, not my own and not others.’

Like every kid between, say, nine and whenever they get to start picking out their own clothes, I was often embarrassed that I did not have designer clothes like my little friends, and ashamed of the economies my parents would employ when buying for our family. But my mother put such love, talent, and style into clothes she made for me that I felt like a princess. She made sure there were no seams to irritate my incredibly sensitive skin (a symptom of my ADD, who knew? I thought it was just cause I’m a princess). She made sure I had pockets for my fiddly busy nervous hands. She chose fabrics in themes that reflected something I loved or had done lately. She found a beautiful costume pendant from her childhood, with a blue jewel in the center, and put it on a blue velvet ribbon for a choker to go with the dress she made for my band concert in seventh grade or so. I felt like a girl in Seventeen magazine.

Now I feel like a total loser if I don’t give a friend or loved one a quilt when a baby is born. I can kind of rationalize if I can go get them, say, a Strasberg item or a truly iconic toy (for a while I was all about the Glowworm)… but I still feel like I’ve let them down. I mean, I strip quilt, piecing on the machine… but I do the actual quilting by hand and I love it. LOVE it.  (Notice I’m not saying I do it well.)

My dad built beautiful furniture for us. When we lived in Texas I had a jungle gym he made, INSIDE my house, in the living room. What does that say about my parents’ priorities? (or maybe they were scared the tarantula we found in our back yard one time would carry us off… no that’s not true, because I spent hours outside by myself back then. Well, then it must have been their priorities!) I always think about how sad my childhood was. I always forget about the jungle gym and the three story dollhouse he made. It was taller than I was. I never realized how cool that was until just now.

I had a funky cool desk painted a lovely shiny blue outside and white inside. My brother had a beautiful captain’s bed… my mom has a wonderful sewing cabinet which must have two dozen little drawers in it.  My parents had beautifully painted tall shelves for all their books and records. They have a side table in their front hallway that was sanded and oiled so lovingly that it looks and feels like satin.

We absolutely do have a terrible sweet/carb addiction and a propensity for weight problems in my family… but my mother made our sweets. She made pies, cakes, chocolate chip cookies, exotic, beautiful, incredibly delicious and troublesome desserts out of fancy schmancy cookbooks. My standards are now so high that I am often disappointed… we happened on a bakery in one of our small towns that made sweets that were just as wonderful as home made. I can still remember the incredible Black Forest Cake my parents bought Just Because. But it didn’t take long for the modern era to send that place out of business. It’s sad, because storebought just never has tasted that good.

I’ve been fantasizing about having enough actual dishes and flatware (even if they came from the thrift store) for huge parties so that I don’t have to throw away paper plates and plastic cups and forks– and having time (or staff) to wash and room to store such– all of my life.

And I’ve always fantasized about having a  home out in the country that was big enough for ten or twenty people to come and stay in perfect comfort– plenty of bathrooms, plenty of rooms and beds, plenty of space to relax in relative quiet and solitude or get together for a huge loud party in a main living area big enough for a band and dancing.

We Need Nature. My parents cursed us by moving us to various insanely backwoods, rural parts of the country when I was growing up. The isolation was painful at a time when kids want so badly simply to Belong. But now I think about playing with my cousins in my grandparents’ huge back yard until the last shred of daylight was absolutely gone,  or the long solitary hours in the fresh air, walking through woods or old unused fields by myself when I was 10-14 or so and I so wish I could have them back and give them to my child.

I get panicky when I can’t be in some fresh air and sunshine some portion of every day. I find that my child, any child, behaves so much better with an hour or two of outdoor time each day. I put a lot of time into my (still extremely ragged) yard and (still not too productive) raised bed gardening, and it gives me so much satisfaction regardless of result.

We Need Actual Experiences. My parents also took us to do all sorts of things I would never admit to when I was growing up, and many times it was just a misery. We found fossils and cracked geodes out in the actual outdoors where such things actually occurred naturally. Okay, that was actually super cool. But I still couldn’t tell anyone about it.  We hiked, cross country skiied, canoed, fished, ice skated, shot BB guns occasionally but only at targets (or, in the case of my little friends at daycare, at each other), went to a few outdoor live music festivals (horrid dorky music like bluegrass, shudder, which I now love with all my heart!) and folk museums and worst of all, CAMPED. What a misery! But now I can’t imagine children who live their lives shuffling to school and back again, with no recess, their only recreation television and video gaming. I can’t imagine a life where I didn’t know that there used to be such things as blacksmiths and butter churns and corncribs and relative safety for children spending long unstructured hours alone outdoors.

I’m not there yet… some aspects of the life of blacksmithing and churning butter must have been incredibly oppressive and difficult– if it weren’t we’d still be doing it right? Creating true community and home and happiness, as opposed to consuming it–I’m not quite sure what that means to me.  But I’m thinking about it really hard.

I was resigned to, in fact fine with, simply plopping my pocketbook down at a table full of complete strangers in the incredibly crowded ballroom and enjoying the show in anonymity. So I was thrilled to find that little ol’ me had a seat reserved up front with fellow committee members at the recent Alabama Library Association Author Award luncheon. We were honoring Watt Key for Alabama Moon; Deborah Wiles for Each Little Bird that Sings; Daniel Alarcon for Lost City Radio and Gregory Waselkov for A Conquering Spirit.

All of the authors’ remarks were characterized by humor, warmth and gratitude. I am humbled by the opportunity to be a small part of the selection process. I love the folks on the committee, and look up to them and honor their opinions. I am so proud of the works we were honored to honor, and thrilled that all of the authors consented to appear. All of them were so gracious in accepting our appreciation.

Almost as soon as I sat down I had to tackle one of Life’s Big Questions.

I wasn’t sure which was worse– allowing the obviously delicious pork roast to grow cold on my plate and go to waste, or asking the table at large if anyone would like mine. Sometimes I’m just not sure where the line is between good sense and good manners. If you’re ever eating with me and you see that the delicious meat main course is getting cold and you would like it– please ask me. We may be at Her Majesty the Queen’s table, but I’m sure she wouldn’t want us to let it go to waste. I’m from the country, where rather than thinking it’s gluttonous and in poor taste to ask ‘you gonna eat that?’ we think well of people who eat well and press another serving on people whether they want it or not. I hate to see good food wasted, so ask me. I won’t be offended in the least.

Anyhoo.

I read Each Little Bird last year and again this year. I cried just as hard at the end of the second reading as I had at the end of the first. It’s a wonderful, perfect little book. It’s just campy enough to be funny, but not so much as to be anything but true to the South (the South I know, anyway). I was so grateful that Wiles offers such a loving, entertaining, well written book that touches on places kids need support–Loss, and How To Act– whether they are dealing with fears about the death of a loved one, or with actual loss. Cause let’s be honest. If a child has the good fortune to make it to ten or so without losing a loved one, he or she has either been worried about the eventuality or will some day have to make sense of the reality.

Wiles spoke candidly of her personal struggle with sudden single parenthood, loss of her parents, and for a time loss of herself and her writing. She was witty, not morbid, and explained with an equal mix of gravity and wonder where she’d been and shared her gratitude for the feedback from her readers. I was able to take deep breaths to keep back my embarassing tears until she finished speaking with a story from a bereaved mother whose ten year old son’s friends had, she hoped, found some way to cope with her son’s death. Then I finally allowed myself to surreptitiously wipe.

Much of what she said sticks in my mind but the most important thing was what her agent told her when she was exhausted and uninspired and thought she’d have to pay her advance back– don’t worry about it, but promise me you will sit in front of that computer every day and think about What You Can Write.

Afterward I waited and waited to talk to her. When I finally did she looked hard at me and said, we know each other. I wish it were true! I’d love to claim that we did. But I asked a friend on the committee if it were possible and my friend said I probably just look like someone. Anyway, I told her how I loved the book and how much her remarks meant to me on many levels. She gave me a great big hug.

Watt Key’s Alabama Moon also dealt with some tough stuff. He said he wasn’t writing for kids. Controversy raged hot as a California wildfire amongst the members of the committee– is it a juvenile book, or a YA book? Should we go on the age of the main character (juvenile)? Or on the content? But again, such important themes, and believe you me, if a kid is interested in such things he or she needs this book. It was all there– a sense of betrayal by the government. The ability to fight and survive. Loss. Struggling against people who are Just Plain Bad, and having to see one’s beloved parent as mortal and fallible. Uncompromising integrity and dignity balanced against growing to accept the ways of the world. Key even threw in a bit of indomitable high spirits and humor. I loved the dear, scrappy, intelligent and caring young main character– and his poor parents– and was in his corner every single second. The monumental task of burying his own father at ten years old and setting off to survive on his own– the story was so well done that while it sounded awful, it was completely believable.

Key’s remarks were also a story of perseverance. I don’t know if he was exaggerating, but to hear him tell it, he pretty much sat down to become a writer and just kept pitching book after book from LA (Lower Alabama) to New York. He said Alabama Moon was his tenth or so. He just wouldn’t take no for an answer. He told with great relish of what joy it brought him to say, with a mix of self deprecation and jubilation, yeah, I’m a writer. I have to go to New York. When he mentioned that being from Mobile he had always thought of New York as the pinnacle of intellectual life in this world, Alarcon’s forehead crashed down on the honorees’ table with great drama and humor. But Key’s ‘aw shucks’ can’t cover up the universal richness of Alabama Moon.

Gregory A. Waselkov spoke with the true enthusiast’s joy about his subject matter and the unlikelihood of his ever being where he found himself in that moment. He said his ordinary job, which he loves, is getting paid to watch others dig in very hot weather. He talked about how the book came about. It is so important to have context amongst all the sentiment surrounding the near genocide of Native Americans in our part of the country, and he did a wonderful job, extensively documented but also very readable, of providing just that.

His remarks didn’t emphasize perseverance. He was all about just being surprised and tickled to be there, an academic startled to find the headlight of acclaim shined right in his eyes. But the archaeologist’s work, by nature, is so painstaking, detail oriented, so dependent upon hard work and the passage of time for any understanding to begin to coalesce. He was invited by the state to take inventory of what must have been incredibly extensive records and artifacts, and the book came out of that undertaking. I can’t imagine the immense body of most likely tiny and disparate puzzle pieces of records and artifacts, or the process of piecing them together.

I found the urban, dystopic, present/near futurist Lost City Radio troubling and disturbingly plausible as well. It had me at hello, of course, because I’ve loved Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the works of other Latin American writers and their milieu for twenty years and more, and loosely followed events in Chile and Argentina as the pop culture icons they were in the 1980’s. I was sorely tempted to go through Lost City Radio to see if Alarcon held to the minimum standard for decent writing I was given by Professor Vazquez-Bigi in college– never repeat any word on a page. I fought hard for this book to be our winner– other books in the final round were quite worthy and well done, but what I liked about this one was its broader picture of human destiny and loss– not to mention its loud and clear Latin Americanness and the way that it ties Alabama to the rest of our world.

I was shocked to see that Daniel Alarcon looked, not like the fiftyish mixed blood university don I expected, or even like a forty something sideburned hipster, but like a student. I’m sure that if I hadn’t been so enthralled by the book, I might have found his picture somewhere and been prepared. If his photo was in the dust jacket, I just ignored it. At the end of the book I was probably too busy simultaneously exulting in the depth of the story and the richness of the writing, and shaking my fist at God to bother.

I asked him (Alarcon, not God), afterward, how old he is. He’s much older than I’d thought, but years younger than I am, and I couldn’t even begin to fathom the creativity and vision that produced that book. I can’t imagine someone that young writing something full of such social awareness, depth, lies, dashed hopes, love, and sorrow. I loved so much about the book but the page where the neighbors ask Norma tenderly if they should help her beat her new young charge sticks out in my mind, and the hope with which so many bring Norma their stories, and the few who will ever regain contact with the loved one or community they lost.

Our suburban villages may not be numbered in today’s America, but they may as well be, in their facelessness, loss of community, and in the isolation of their inhabitants. Alarcon actually grew up in one of those faceless suburbs, although to hear him tell it, it didn’t affect him much at the time. I wonder if, like me, he had to leave the South to begin to appreciate the richness of its literary and musical character. I don’t know if it’s the genetics of being from a Latin American country touched painfully by revolution and explosive growth, or just his personal ability to experience (he went back to Lima and taught as a young man), imagine, compare with the faceless American suburban existence, empathize, and write down.

Alarcon did not mention his time teaching in Lima. I’m sure he was too modest. He mentioned the contrast between his suburban teenhood and the way of life in Lima, where nobody is safe, not even the educated middle class traditionally able to insulate itself against such things in most countries. He said his mother’s reaction when he presented her with War by Candlelight (which I felt was also a strong contender last year, but I was the only one so in love with it) was ‘Didn’t we give you a good childhood?’ How funny, sad and sweet that her impulse must have been to give him a ‘normal’ life, and what does he end up doing so very well– telling those disturbing, heartful stories.

He summed up by invoking the names of Garcia Marquez (but of course, I knew all along, without bothering to consult any critical resources) and Faulkner. I had to admit in our conversation afterward that my great passion for Latin American and Spanish Civil War writings is matched by a sort of dead place where my appreciation for Faulkner should be. I read up a bit before I wrote this, and I see how pathetic a scholar of Latin American literature I must be if I don’t see its connection with Faulkner. His stuff always just made me tired and frustrated. Even as a teen I just couldn’t care less about the tradition- and alcohol-addled characters and situations in the stories I had to read in high school. To me it’s just another species of Deliverance.

My book group at my library is reading The Sound and the Fury this month, in fact. I have the large print edition, in hopes that it will somehow be less painful and boring and endless to read. Maybe I didn’t appreciate it because I read it before I left the South, when my heroes were still The Kinks and The Pretenders, Blue Turtles - era Sting and Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath, early U2 and OMD. Maybe this time it will be different. I’ll report back.

I saw Watt Key and Daniel Alarcon in the hotel lobby as I was on my way– probably up to my room to kick off my heels for an hour before the next event. I wanted so badly to just check in and say, has anyone invited you guys anywhere? Is anyone welcoming you? Do you need someone to hang out with? But I didn’t want to be a pain in the ass.

You never know, at this level, whether someone is just too important and busy (or just busy), or whether they feel like a fish out of water during their Alabama odyssey and could actually use some kindness. I’m a terrible introvert, but when I’m out and about in a strange place, I usually wish someone would just take me on. But not everyone is like me. Most people probably aren’t. Alarcon is from here and probably had plenty to do. I didn’t want to be a shameless clingy fan, spouting off about how much I love Gabriel Garcia Marquez and pumping them both for information about what inspired them. So… I said congratulations, and thanks so much for coming, and moved on.