Righting the Okra

Posted on August 29, 2011 by literarylee

I don’t want to belittle any suffering, any serious property damage, any major problem or cost or sorrow anybody suffered because of Hurricane Irene.  I really don’t.  I mention that because I want to tell you about the “damage” the storm left in its wake at our house which was very minor by comparison.

Here is what the hurricane did at our place: because of the strong winds, all my okra plants were seriously listing to starboard (or port…or both…I never can remember the difference).  Some, the sturdier ones growing in heavy, clay soil,were only tilting at about a 45 degree angle.  A few, startlingly, were leaning at about 90 degrees.

Irene washed and blow-dried the okra plants in the Lorelei

Continue reading →

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Bombay Letters: Horse Races, Sailing, and a Reception

Posted on August 28, 2011 by literarylee

Tuesday May 5, 1998

Dear Family,

I hope you don’t mind reading my and/or my family’s future memoirs in installments.  Do you think they’ll ever amount to much?  Maybe my wife and I will jointly write our memoirs and call it, possibly, Starting From Scratch, or maybe, Now You See Us, Now You Don’t.  How about, Love Off The Cuff?

I don’t think either of us has told you about our day at the races a few weeks back.  One of the brass at work  couldn’t attend so he passed his invitation to us.  A large, local bank sponsored a trophy race and invited anybody who was anybody over to the track for a lovely outdoor buffet complete with sumptuous Indian food, plenty of libation, and a local band with an unbelievable Paul McCartney sound alike.  We were with some neighbors, a couple from Britain.  They are some of the nicest, most hospitable and gracious people we have met here.  They were our race mentors.  For example they told us what we should wear.  During the cooler season, fancy dresses and suit and tie are required garb for the track.  However when it gets so bloody hot, like now, polos and khakis for the gents, and designer shifts for the ladies are perfectly acceptable.

After we ate they showed us the ropes.  Before each race you watch the horses be led around a little circular enclosure (the paddock), first by stable boys alone, then with jockeys on their (the horses, not the stable boys) backs.  Continue reading →

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A Literally Serious Word from the Blogger

Posted on August 27, 2011 by literarylee

If every use of the word literally were an alien, we’d be literally overrun, taken over by that large and growing crowd.  The human race is clearly outnumbered by the number of times this word is used.  If the vast multitude, the literal throng of literallies were to rise up and demand control of the planet, we earthlings would have to surrender.  We’d be literally outnumbered!

I’m not just now noticing the overuse of the word literally.  My wife and I, glancing occasionally at this or that on television, have been literally amazed at the amount people use this word.  We roll our eyes every time it happens.  Given how much that’s been, I’m surprised our eyeballs aren’t stuck in a sort of derisive upward glance.

I’m commenting now because of the news coverage we were watching after the earthquake a couple of days ago and what I’m expecting in the aftermath of the hurricane (and the volcano next week).  Continue reading →

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Feel Better, Feel Good: Memorize a Poem

Posted on August 25, 2011 by literarylee

Memorizing poems is a fun and satisfying thing to do.  It stimulates my brain, warms my heart, and sometimes makes me laugh.  Learning and knowing poems also brings me emotional and psychological benefits.  It gives me a sense of accomplishment when I am feeling pretty unable to do very much.  Poetry squirreled away in the old noggin gives me ways to express anger, love, sorrow, peace.  It can also open new horizons when I am stuck in unhealthy emotional ruts.

In August 2008, I was ending a year of recovery from a pretty severe emotional blow.  At that point I was pretty much back to my old self though a little wiser, a little more aware.  I was feeling better but still had some low days.  That, and my lifelong love of words, made it a good moment to begin memorizing poems.

When I am feeling depressed I certainly do not feel successful.  Accomplishing a task like memorizing a poem is good medicine.  Committing poetry to memory takes some effort.  It is a task to which you need to apply your mind yet can be successful fairly quickly.  Even remembering the first word is an accomplishment.  Continue reading →

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My Wife’s a Winsome Wee Thing

Posted on August 24, 2011 by literarylee

Robert Burns

Chorus.-She is a winsome wee thing,
She is a handsome wee thing,
She is a lo’esome wee thing,
This dear wee wife o’ mine.

I never saw a fairer,
I never lo’ed a dearer,
And neist my heart I’ll wear her,
For fear my jewel tine,

She is a winsome, &c.

The warld’s wrack we share o’t;
The warstle and the care o’t;
Wi’ her I’ll blythely bear it,
And think my lot divine.

She is a winsome, &c.

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Water Photo Captions

Posted on August 23, 2011 by literarylee

Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.  (Kurt Vonnegut, Man Without a Country)

Snug mountain pond

When you read the phrase practicing an art, you think: what?  Painting fine pictures?  Sculpting statues?  Writing a best-selling novel or an article published in a national magazine?  These are all examples of art, all goals that some people reach.  For a lot of us, we love artistic expression, we sense we have an artistic bent, but wonder how someone who is not a professional artist, whether writer, sculptor, painter, dancer or whatever, can do art.

Art is expressing reality through the prism of a person’s eyes and ears.  An artist is someone, and can be anyone, interpreting the world around him or her, voicing a feeling, or expressing a response to some thing, person, or event.  Kurt V. said practicing an art no matter how well or how badly is still a really important thing to do because it makes your soul grow.  It expands a person in a foundational, important way. Continue reading →

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Bites of my Summers

Posted on August 22, 2011 by literarylee

I took a bite of a childhood summer:
tart, firm, crisp, satisfying,
felt the juice of it dripping down my chin,
splashing on my shirt.

I saw two gnarled apple trees,
five smudged children,
and dozens of apples,
green golf balls hanging and grounded,
half-eaten handfuls of sticky freedom.

I heard don’t eat the apples,
don’t climb the trees,
watch out for those children:,
warnings I’m learning just now
not to heed too much,
juice I’m letting drip and run,
mouth and fingers I’m leaving that way for awhile.

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The Rider Chronicles 9 – Rider’s Blessed Burden

Posted on August 21, 2011 by literarylee

A grandfather is allowed to philosophize if he wants to.  Right now I want to.  If you’d rather be out mowing the lawn, or possibly reading a book or going swimming, you’re welcome to go do it now.  I won’t mind.  Much.  But if you’d like to hear about Rider’s Blessed Burden (which will be this grandpa phlosophizin’ some), then pull up a chair.

We are all born into preexisting webs of relationships and family connections.  Everybody derives from and is related to a pretty long list of somebodies.  Even a person from a “small” family has his or her share of folks who share a pint or a gallon of a common bloodline.  I only have to look back a generation or two on my own relatively small family’s family tree to become impressed by the bigness of the gathered multitude before, beside, and within me.

It can’t be helped, but tiny new little babies are instant inheritors of this, this, what?  Gift?  Burden?  Maybe it’s a little of both, sometimes more one than the other.  Being a lover and noticer of juxtapositions, things placed together that don’t seem to belong there, I can’t help but looking at sweet little Rider, my grandson, and wondering how he is going to bear up under the weight of all this inheritance which he instantly attained the second he was born.  Or maybe I should ask: how will he fit in and continue the pattern, the intricate mosaic of people, places, and actions that led to his birth?  Continue reading →

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August Garden Report

Posted on August 19, 2011 by literarylee

Welcome garden fans to the August Garden Report.  I’m your host, Argyle Schield, and I’ll be showing you three of our finest local gardens.  Thanks for tuning in.  Let’s get right down to it and check on the first garden, Jones.  This compact little beauty started fast and furious in the spring, pumping out the lettuce, the spinach, the carrots, the broccoli, but got bogged down when the summer season started and has been struggling to catch up ever since.  In a bold and maybe rash move, this garden’s intrepid manager put all his eggplants in one basket, planting thirteen right here, hoping for a hit.  Only five remain and all eyes are on the one that has finally set a small fruit, still far from maturity.  Bookies give it an even chance of growing to full size, and a 7 to 4 chance that the other plants will produce anything at all.  That’s gotta be tough to take.

Late-planted tomatoes, chard, and basil in Jones are performing anemically.   The gardener planted cucumber seeds, the one thing (besides the almost fruitless eggplants) growing vigorously.  Though blossoms cover the vines, no little cukes.  One day, Mrs. Schield happened upon Jones at midday and was dismayed to discover the entire garden still in shade.  In Jones’ three years on the team, towering trees have grown around the perimeter of the field, postponing the time when sunlight finally hits.  The big question on everyone’s lips: Will Jones be traded next season for a sunnier plot?  Stay tuned! Continue reading →

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The Firefly

Posted on August 18, 2011 by literarylee

Ogden Nash

The firefly’s flame
Is something for which science has no name
I can think of nothing eerier
Than flying around with an unidentified glow on a
person’s posterior.

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