Elephant, Baby Dear Visited by Grandma

Elephant's Grandma has been visiting. This sent Merry into a flurry of cleaning, telephone calls to Cocoa, and bearing with Elephant, who is naughty: You're a bad, bad mommy, he keeps telling Merry.

Occasionally, though, he does show a more endearing side of his personality like yesterday at nap time:

Elephant: I’m scared.

Merry: Elephant, think about good things. Think about Treat Day tomorrow. That’s the thing to think about.

Elephant: Can I have the light on for six minutes?

Merry: FIVE.

At bedtime last night I asked after Elephant's Grandma, who looks a lot like an African doll with a green tyedyed dress who sits most of the day atop Merry's quilt. Apparently, though Grandma appears to be listless, she has been very busy all day doing her homework and babysitting Elephant. Tonight she ate a very healthy dinner of spaghetti noodles, a biscuit, and a dish of Cheerios.

Baby Dear, Merry's other child, has been keeping us all up with her shenanigans. We hear her singing to herself and then Merry switches on the light and says in a very quiet, even voice,

Baby Dear, I'm sorry I'm mad, but you should not be doing that. I'm going to tell Cocoa and he'll be very disappointed. You won't be a good person when you grow up if you do bad things all the time. If I hear you again talking to yourself, you're going to lose a privilege. Now this is the LAST TIME.

There is some question of how long Grandma will stay. The latest rumor was two weeks, though with Elephant's Grandma you never can tell.

Hello All

All ye good people who improve the world by existing:

There's a new book review, below, by WC Long.

The art show is coming along, but I'm holding out for more entries. Some of you have sent some stunning entries.

Don't forget, art encompasses many things: you can submit a picture of a lovely scarf you've knitted or a lush garden you've grown. Or if you've baked or cooked something quite exquisite, why, just pack it up in a box real comfortable and careful and send it to us, Express. (Submissions are nonreturnable, I'm afraid).

E-mail me with your submissions!

Thank ye!

CONTRIBUTOR BOOK REVIEW: Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo

The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Victor Hugo
Modern Library; New edition (October 8, 2002)

This story is as impressive and gothic as the building whose name it bears: a soaring classic tragedy not to be missed. Hugo is an author who can craft a story about the heart and soul of humanity, and while this one does not quite reach the heights that Les Miserables, no careful reader will leave it untouched.

Hugo’s primary strength, in the tradition of Jane Austen, is his characters. They are all full bodied people, internally consistent, yet capable of surprising one. Esmeralda, the gypsy girl, is a prime example of this. She is tender and compassionate, and yet has all the fluctuating passions and selfishness of an untutored teenage girl. Unlike many of Dickens’s unbelievably angelic heroines, wisdom and foolishness are both equally present in her, strength and weakness combined in the right proportions.

This work is not as powerful as Les Miserables simply because its theme is not as powerful. Les Miserables’s theme is grace and justice. In Hunchback, Hugo tackles the theme of idolatrous love by taking the most cherished of human loves, the love between a man and woman and the love between parent and child, and shows how they all can be twisted into a self-love that always results in the destruction of the self and often the destruction of the object of the love. He gives us a bereaved mother whose obsessive grief turns her love to hate, and a man who allows unvarnished lust under the name of love to lead him unwavering to damnation. Hugo skillfully juxtaposes these and other more subtle examples with striking examples of self-love, selfishness in all its degrees, to show that when love has fallen, it is indistinguishable from selfishness, and even from hate. Indeed, as portrayed in Hunchback, pure selfishness does not have nearly the same destructive power as twisted love. Readers of C.S. Lewis will find strong parallels between Hunchback and Lewis’s The Great Divorce and The Four Loves.

The book still has all of Hugo’s stylistic quirks that may make it tiresome to the modern reader. In particular, his habit of interrupting the story with essays on tangential topics can be tedious, and a reader may be forgiven for skimming or skipping over the chapters on the history of Paris, the history of architecture, and the interplay of the arts (although, once again, Hunchback does not attain the same, uh, level as Les Miserables; I doubt that any tangent in history can match Hugo’s detailed diatribe on the Parisian sewer system). Not that these are necessarily worthless in themselves, but they do drag down the story. In addition, there are some parts of the story that seem to be leading somewhere, notably that of alchemy, which never intercept the main plot and are not concluded, giving the book a slight unfinished feel. Perhaps Hugo intended them merely to add to the atmosphere of the story, which they do, but he develops them too much to leave them hanging as he does.

Regardless of these quibbles, it is still a work of great depth and power. Powerful because its theme calls on the reader to look into himself, and question the motivation behind his own loves. Hugo paints his characters so skillfully, laying bare their thoughts and motivations, that one can see fragments of oneself in them. The reader is offered through their tragedy a light into his own heart and a chance to root out a little more darkness.

Reviewed by: W.C. Long
W.C. Long spent his childhood in Botswana, handling snakes and scorpions with abandon. He is currently teaching his daughter the same pastimes on the Virginia coast.

(DASTARDLY) Break-in at Wazoo Farm

So, good scouts, brilliant Holmesian detectives, see if you can crack the case of the Dastardly Wazoo Break-in. The clues are AS FOLLOWS (ahem):

One: I realized only this morning that I had left the door to our back porch wide open. (So let me clarify. 'Twasn't a classic break in.) A sign (COME ON IN, FOOLS) was hanging on the doorknob, and the burglars clearly took note and felt duly welcome if not a little insulted.

Two: The following were removed from the house and vandalized: Large bag of unsalted peanuts. Left on deck: box of Trader Joe's Multigrain 0 transfat crackers-- meticulously emptied.

Three: The following damage was done: Pineapple scraps, etc., thrown in careless manner about floor. Bag of brown sugar, bags of rice flour desecrated.

Four: Burglars wore irremovable black masks.

You can't blame the burglars, as Martin said, and I agreed (thanks for pointing it out, chump)--indeed I was the one to blame. I! I took full responsibility and did the sweeping, the cleaning, and reported the crime to our local department. (It's a small town, and burglaries like this are big news.) When you publish the article in the paper, I said, Make sure you emphasize the burglary was actually my fault. The burglars actually did no wrong. Probably they had hungry kiddies at home.

This did not stop me from volubly calling the masked fellows a very rude name. The newspaper said they couldn't print that specific word, but they'd do their best with the rest of it and Gee wilikers, what a corker of a story this one was. I dare say, in the near future, there will be a sharp increase in people actually closing their doors at night.

All in all, I thank my lucky stars the chappies did not devour my sack of whole wheat pastry flour. And as Martin added, they left the Yingling beer alone. Thankfully we hadn't left a bottle opener in full view by the beer, or the robbers would have likely passed out cold on our deck steps and we'd be sad, sad, on a Friday night with pizza but no booze.

So take my advice, good people. Tonight, before you go to bed, for Pete's sake, shut your doors. And you'll have nothing to fear. It's all about education, about breaking the ignorance. This crime does not have to happen again!

Notes

Today I pitched a tent in the side yard and Merry and Elspeth and I took a picnic lunch and dropped sandwich crumbs and pineapple juice all over the inside of the tent. Then we lay on a blanket in the sun and read Mouse Soup while the tent blew away toward the street.

Tonight Martin and I went out together. (Since we don't have family living close by, we manage a date about once a quarter.) We drove down to the college and watched Guys and Dolls. I put my head on his shoulder and he held my hand, like we were students again. During the intermission we strolled to the Student Services building for a free bathroom. The night was clear and cool. I linked my arm through Martin's and said, The girls will some day leave our house. We should make sure we remain good friends. We should go out more.

Martin is downstairs mixing up a nightcap, so I'll excuse myself. Notes: Go out with husband more. Do silly things with the children like eating lunch in a tent. Life rushes by fast.

Hey, I'm An Elephant

Bobo and Cat T. (yes, these are really their names) visited me this morning while their dog Star went to the vet. Cat brought me a bottle filled with pink water and glitter. "Shake it!" she cried, and so I did. "How nice!" I told her, and set it on my windowsill.

Then I fixed them some poodles and cheese. "I just have to rinse the poodles," I told Cat.

"What?" she said, watching me rinse the contents of the colander. "You're joking, Aunt Kim."

"No, I eat poodles and cheese and peas twice a week. They're good for you." She gave me a concentrated stare, one corner of her mouth twitching but the other corner rutted in a frown.

"You're kidding, Aunt Kim," she repeated. "Right?"

"Right. I've never eaten a poodle," I assured her, and she went off to play while I finished fixing lunch.

The T. kids always, always eat macaroni and cheese with peas and ketchup at my house for lunch. We are creatures of habit, and I'd hate to disappoint. The loveliest things, I think, when you're a child, are the routine things, the things you know to expect and anticipate: love from your parents, a regular bath and bedtime, macaroni and cheese.

"On Good Friday, I get to serve," said Bobo, looking up from a bloodied pile of macaroni and cheese (the T. kids never skimp on the ketchup and just for them I keep an ungodly carton of Heinz from Sam's Club in my fridge door). Bobo, especially, is a class A ketchup consumer.

"That's great, Bobo."

He paused before helping himself to more poodles from the pot: "I'm an altar boy."

"Hey, Kim, look!" shouted Cat, who is sitting on my left. "I'm an elephant!"

For the remainder of lunch, Bobo played a game with empty yogurt cups and a rubber frog with Elspeth, and then we watched an black ant, who took up residence in our kitchen yesterday morning, crawl along the kitchen table. He finally dropped to the table and scooted under a piece of macaroni.

"Where's Ted?" the T. kids asked at intervals. I had told them the ant's name was Ted, and we should let Ted live at peace in the house. Watching Ted segued us into swapping riotous ant stories: my brother sitting in an ant hill, their baby father sitting in an ant hill in nothing but his diaper.

Right now Merry is singing Elephant a blessing "May God bless you and keep you. . ." she sings, and I dare say she is signing a cross on his pink forehead. After Elephant is tucked in and instructed not to move ("Do what I please," she tells him, "Not what you please!") Merry calls Cocoa on the telephone. She does Cocoa's voice as well. . .seems as if he's been in a meeting and has a broken leg. "Oh, of course, Cocoa! We would be delighted to pick you up!" she says. "Oh, that's terrible! They had a razor? They cut themselves with a razor? The children? Cocoa, that's TERRIBLE!"

(Cocoa now:) "Well, I have a late night. Pick me up at 30 o'clock."

Children. Honestly, they are the chlorophyll in my leaves. Non sequiturs abound. You can smell their imaginations. They are just so much FUN.

All Who Wander

All who wander are not lost.
--Tolkien's Lord of the Rings
*
*
*
*
Sister, this is in reply to your question:

What was wrong with the church we were at?

Nothing. In fact, I'd strongly recommend it to anyone who arrives in town, is looking for a well-established, well-run church, and wants a good solid evangelical education for themselves and their children. The pastor gives outstanding, well-thought sermons. The choir is pleasant, the members are educated, intelligent, and kind.

So why, why, why, are we wandering again?

I'm not entirely sure, but I'll try to explain.

Martin and I have moved almost every year, and during our moves we have spent time in Episcopalian, Reformed, Southern Baptist, more liberal Baptist, and Presbyterian churches. We both grew up evangelicals, and Merry and Elspeth are baptized Episcopalians.

We both fell in love with the Episcopalian church in college. The liturgy articulated all that we wanted to but could not; it rooted us in history; it was inclusive of many; its rich symbolism and concept of Christians bringing the Kingdom of God here on earth all resonated deeply with us. The Episcopalian pillars made sense: Reason, Scripture, and Experience. The church calendar finally made Easter exciting, Christmas celebratory, and Eucharist was suddenly a real, substantial experience of God's grace.

So of course we looked for a good Episcopalian Church when we moved here, but did not find one.

Before we visited Quaker meeting, I had a talk with my parents. (All parents warn their children:All that glitters is not gold). They affirmed what I knew about church: no church is perfect (no community is perfect); you have involve yourself and give what you can. I know this, but I also acknowledge the great sense of restlessness I have experienced of late. Recently I've been relieved for an excuse to miss church; I haven't minded when Elspeth needs my attention and I can leave the service; I've gone to church out of a sense of duty rather than joy. Church is a discipline, yes, and has been for how many years? As long as I've been alive.

Now I'm an adult, and I have a feeling that this new sense of restlessness Martin and I are both experiencing is a good reason for us to journey forth. I've always been fairly content to follow in the footsteps of those before me, and to take my children to church every Sunday. It's just what's done. But WHY?

Listen, I feel like there's enough words and messages and sermons and praise songs in the files of my brain. I'm full up. As I sat in the Quaker Meeting, I suddenly pictured what I often feel happens when I sit in church: Words, words, words, banging at my brain, images begging me to feel, swells of music tangled up in reason and emotion. I sat in church a while ago and found peace not in the church or the songs or the sermon but in the awakening world I saw outside.

What do I miss in the church we've been going to?

A sense of mystery
Community unclouded by institutionalism
Mysticism
Silence

There is more to the journey for us. Our souls are crying for something else, and I feel we must follow. Will we end up being Quakers? Who knows?

Rock On, Friends

"So where are we going to church?" My parents, visiting for the weekend in a flurry of Trader Joe's bags and suitcases, wanted to go to church. We did, too. We just didn't know where.

We've been doing some more reading on the Quakers. The Inner Light dwells in everyone; humans all have an inherent potential for good. We listen in silence. We hear God in silence.

Quakers have marked history with their moral and spiritual courage. Richard Foster is a Quaker, as are many other insightful writers, contemporary and historical. Because Quaker missionaries believed in the presence of God in every person, they were among few outsiders who treated Native Americans with respect. They spoke out against slavery. They solidified the concept of conscientious objection. They suffered greatly.

I love everything about the Quakers, I told Martin, Except the suffering part. I admit: I voice my convictions strongly, but I do not want to suffer.

Simplicity. Silence. Social justice.

Rock on, Friends.

So Martin and I drove through a day so beautiful you could tongue the air and savor each taste of spring.

Thirty minutes and countless twisting curves later, we pulled into the parking lot of the Friends Meeting House. "During the week the meeting house is a yoga studio," I told my parents. Imm, hmm. I could tell my parents had their reservations. My mother, who is highly suspicious of any seed that might grow and bloom into self-absorption, was most hesitant about the idea of an hour spent in utter silence without the grounding of Scripture or other text.

The members of my family disappeared into the room of silence and I took the girls into the big sunny room across the hall. Merry was skeptical. "This isn't church," she said, looking around at the old easy chairs, the rows of books, the toys on the floor.

"We'll have our own church," I told her, hunting through the books on peace and Quakerism for a Bible. (Did see Richard Foster, by the way). Finally I located a row of Bibles and pulled one out. "It doesn't look as if there are any other kids here, though," I said. Elspeth toddled around finding bottles of carpet cleaner, a container of seashells, everything but the toys she was supposed to play with.

Merry sat down and I conducted "Jesus Loves Me." Maybe it was the odd formality of her chair and my waving my hands in time to the song, but she seemed to adjust immediately to the idea that she was the only person in Sunday School. I found some markers and some construction paper and we adjourned to the table, where I flipped through the Bible.

Let's see. Today, we'll talk about the parable of the lost sheep. I began to read the story out of the Bible until I realized it was King James' version. So I told Merry the story and followed the lost sheep with the parable of the lost coin. Merry wanted to know what the stories meant, and though I tried to explain what I had always been given to understand the meanings were, I did a bad job. Merry didn't seem to mind, and just then the oldest members of the Meeting entered the room.

In Welsh accents, they explained that Meeting didn't always start exactly on time. "It keeps getting later and later," they said. This resonated with me in a way they could never have predicted. I am fond of blaming my time challenges on my growing-up years in Kenya, where nothing ever started on time and nobody was ever late. I ran breathlessly to classes in college and slunk into endless church services, often taking a seat in the balcony or the back row.

The Welsh friends chatted with Merry and me for a few moments and then they plucked a book off a bookshelf for Merry. The parables were over, and the Quaker education was beginning. The book was about a bonnetted girl and a breeched boy in Nantucket. Early Quaker fry, and how they lived by the ocean.

Just then my mother, bastion of Christian education, entered and offered to watch the girls while I went into Meeting. The Welsh Friend had begun reading Merry the book and at her suggestion, Merry was drawing with markers while she read. Later Merry would choose a book about cats and the woman would read her that book, too. Nothing in the way of Christian education, as my mother would tell me later. Though God made cats, I said to my mother in a joking way. Half joking way.

The room was silent, of course, as I entered. I did not know whether to nod at people before I sat down and so I looked at the textured carpet instead. Eventually I shifted my gaze to the huge panel of windows that looked out to a blue sky, sunlight, the bare branches of warming trees outside. And then I closed my eyes.

I am unaccustomed to spending an hour of focused silence. At first my mind was filled with endless scraps, like a washing machine tumbling a load of clothes. Bang, bang, bang, the contents of my mind swirled and smashed against each other. Contained there were mostly scraps of Christian songs. . .and then after all this chaos, and after looking out the window and at the man with big bare feet sitting across the circle, I closed my eyes.

Slowly the chaos of my mind whittled itself down into one bare phrase, and that phrase began scrolling through my imagination. "THE WONDER OF EACH HOUR." That was it. FOR THE WONDER OF EACH HOUR.

After a while that phrase gave birth to an image. Mary was sitting at Jesus' feet and Martha was in a chaos of bustle behind them. Mary was listening to Jesus, taking in his words, and Jesus was affirming her listening. Martha, you are troubled with many things. But Mary has chosen the best thing. FOR THE WONDER OF EACH HOUR. FOR THE WONDER OF EACH HOUR.

Then two friends shook hands, and the hour was over. People began speaking.

In the space of the hour, my father had thought over and over Jesus' last meals before his death, and what those meals meant about community, suffering, and service. His reflections opened me to new ways of thinking about Jesus, his personhood, the way he would have wanted one last year with his friends before death.

Martin's mind, too, had struggled through the bustle of thoughts to grasp one phrase, from Julianne of Norwich: All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

For the wonder of each hour. Jesus eating with his friends. All shall be well.

After Meeting all the Friends wandered into the other room and we drank tea and ate pastry. One fellow who had just returned from Venezuela where he studied harp and sustainable agriculture plucked a beautiful melody on a colorful harp. The chap with bare feet let Elspeth toddle around with his flashlight while he explained his work to us--how he refurbishes bikes for the poor and works toward alternative, renewable transportation. Also there was talk of college English, the venerable Bede and the concept of time in the Middle Ages. . .The fellow put on tire-scrap sandals and took off on his recumbent bike. We watched him pedal down the road and then we piled back in our car and drove the long way back through the green hills.

I think we'll go back.

All shall be well.

Today; Deer; Canadian Hemlock

Today we planted forty Canadian Hemlock trees in our yard. Someday they will grow into a soft evergreen hedge.

Big, muddy holes. Tiny, feathery trees. Filthy hands, shovels caked with mud. Immm. Love it.

After planting: found out that deer love "browsing" Canadian Hemlock trees.

Maybe they will never grow into a soft evergreen hedge.

Tonight: sleeping with the window open. Earth smells like rain. We can hear the gurgling of the creek. We can hear the deer licking their lips. It all makes for dreams.

Canadian Hemlock is the state tree of Pennsylvania. They must grow beautifully here though we've never seen one. Deer eat them all to nubs.

Sweet dreams, good people. Deer: eat hearty.

Voices

Spotted on church marquis:

Why do you need a voice
When you have a verse?

I turned this over and over in my mind on the way to the grocery store. Though I couldn't quite make heads or tails of the saying, the words themselves scared up images of women oppressed by their fundamentalist husbands (an abuse present in every religion's expression of extreme fundamentalism). It made me angry with the anger stirred up by trite marquis slogans, blasphemous books written in the name of Christianity (often about "how to be a godly wife"), and politicians who support latent abuses of the poor and claim to pray. It makes me angry, good people, because I am a Christian.

Last night I looked up the Episcopal Church on the internet. My mother, who is a spiritual director in an Episcopal Church in Maryland, had let me know earlier that day: "And in other news: Episcopal Church Given Up Anglican Global South for Lent." The American Church is hurtling head-first toward a break with the Anglican south.

Have you been following these sad things? (If you haven't, briefly--the tension revolves around the Episcopal Church of America deciding to appoint of a gay Bishop (Gene Robinson), the general appointments of gay Bishops and the blessing of same-sex unions. This issue sparked what more conservative Episcopalians view as a matter of the authority of Scripture; the global south, and in general the worldwide Anglican Church, condemns the American E. Church's actions and a schism is imminent.)

I looked at websites from both sides, and I was deeply grieved. Both arguments are clouded over with contempt for the other. A schism, though inevitable, is tragic and has raked up the worst in everybody. Everybody. I don't care where you stand or what you think of the issues. Humility, grace, compassion--seem to be lacking on both sides.

(And here's a little glimpse from history that does not answer questions but makes me cautious to believe there are any answers: for years in our country slavery was sanctioned by Christians. Slaves, obey your masters. It was in the Bible. It is a verse. And slavery was so ingrained into the very fabric of our society that it seems not one church in the South spoke out against slavery in any substantial way during these years and years of gross injustice. History has judged the church.)

What will history say about this latest schism? Oh, it made me want to be done. Done, done, done with church.


So I took my grief over the Church, and I took the marquis post, which by now I had internalized into memory, and laid it before Martin. What do you think this means? I asked him.

It means, he said, that you don't need special revelation from God (a voice) to know what to do. All you need is the lasting revelation (scripture) to tell you what to do.

Ah, I see. God does not reveal herself/himself in any way other than through the Bible. That's rather glum, I told him. (Forget dynamic relationship; forget the surprise of nature; forget sacred words in other books and in the mouths of people).

I don't believe it. Not for one moment.

Outside the world is covered in a trembling mist of rain. Drops hang and shine on the swelling buds of the tree outside my window. A bird with a bright yellow beak ruffles the water out of his feathers. In his beak he holds a long twig, which he drops in his anxious desire to sing. And so he is singing out there in the rain, beak wide open, throat trembling with sound. And then he is gone.

Voices, voices, everywhere! I hear the voice of God in the rushing of the creek waters; I hear the songs of God in the gentle pattering of the rain. I see the face of God in my daughter, who is sitting beside me, drawing.

There is great mystery in life. The words of Jesus, the parables he told in the mystical tradition of storytelling--these do not give tidy answers. Jesus' stories, the answers he gave to searching people, the strange things he said about himself and the many things he never said about himself--Jesus confirms mystery.

I have questions, questions, questions. At one time their answerlessness would have bothered me. But it doesn't anymore. Live into the questions, Rilke said. Last night, Martin said: the questions themselves are lifegiving. Yes!

Answers--firm, inflexible answers--these often do more harm than good. They often leave little room for grace. Their solidness excludes many. Questions? When I am willing to ask you a question, I am opening myself to you in a vulnerable way. I am humbling myself before you. I am leaving room for discussion, for childlike wonder and exploration. When I ask a question, and then I am silent, then I can listen. Then, and only in silence, can I hear with real ears. If I ask a question as a matter of form or correctness but have already decided what the answer is, I will not hear what you have to say. Your stories will be lost in the roar of my own voice. And our relationship will be damaged as a result.

The older I grow, the fewer answers I know. I am not afraid of the ambiguity. And in the midst of all these questions, I know a few things for certain, and those few things are enough.

I am convinced with every particle of my being of this: God loves us, loves this world, loves every human and animal and unfurling life that lives here on this good earth.

And I know, as I know and love my own children: God is present, in mysterious and astounding ways. God is present in the bird outside my window. God's voice is everywhere.

Often I fill myself with the clamor of other things--worry, criticism, meaningless and meaningful pursuits both. But occasionally I will listen, and I will hear, not in words, not in verses, but deep within my imagination, an imagination which gives me eyes to see what is truly real.


Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.
--Rainer Marie Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

A Note on Pictures

Wondering where the pictures I keep posting came from? They are from our Arizona trip, early March 2007. Some of them were shot on the Hopi Reservation; some of them came from the Grand Canyon, and the most gorgeous came from Sadona. More about Arizona later, but now, enjoy these glimpses of an astonishing state.

These Flying, Beating Things

This morning the air was so warm and the day so bright I felt like beating my chest and screaming wildly into the blue sky.

I buckled the girls into the car, gave a little hop of ecstacy before I climbed behind the steering wheel. Then we drove into the country. The windows were down, country music cranked up, and I felt like I was seventeen. Since I lost my way to our destination (as usual), we had opportunity to enjoy the country even more. Our merriment was not dampened in the least by the manuveering we had to do in other people's driveways. There was nobody else on the road; the hills rolled all around us like greening ocean waves. . .the sky seemed to be whistling like Bing Crosby in "Brigadoon" and we were exploding with it all: IT'S ALMOST LIKE BEIN IN LOVE!

Our friend's house is situated on a green ridge with a thick bank of evergreens on one side. Every angle of their land has a stunning view down to a valley and then to more wooded hills; the wind rushes through the trees until you forget who you are in their music.

I love trees. In Arizona beneath a stunning blue sky, I actually stood against a tree, holding the bark in my hands in an embrace. The bark felt like the hardened skin of some mythical creature whose back I might climb on, who might at any moment jump into the air and take me sailing through the sky.

Our friends have a real corker of a tree, a huge weeping willow with an immense trunk forked close to the ground. "We decided if the tree ever dies then we'll have to move," said my friend. The tree stands in their yard like a silent grandfather. He has grown there for years, and the yard belongs to him.

We had a delightful visit; it was so pleasant to be in somebody else's home and enjoy the warmth that a good family generates into their own setting. We ate apple bread and the girls disappeared to pursuits of their own. We talked about books and that was warming, too. Books are like trees, and it's appropriate they are one and the same at origin; both are alive and both are present and living whether you are there to look at them or not.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
It was raining when we left. The ground smelled rich and the air was soft. As I rounded a corner to reach home, a doe galloped down the hill and stopped just short of our car. In the distance, when they are grazing bucolically on a hillside, deer look delicate. When one is charging down a slope toward your car, what impresses you are the muscles rippling through their body; their quivering force; the magnitude of their aliveness. With beating heart I watched the doe in the rearview mirror as she picked her way along the side of the road. In the mirror she looked small and gentle again.

As we pulled into our driveway, a cloud of blackbirds swelled up from our lawn to fill a huge maple.

These rushings, these risings, these liftings and beatings.

S P R I N G!

* * * *
I can't help but think of Gerard Manley Hopkin's wonderful poem, God's Grandeur:


The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

PEEVISH THINGS: Narcissitic people who talk about peevish things

I unwrapped the roots of my roses from their sodden newspaper, and then I set them to soak in the laundry tub.

Today is the day. Roses, welcome to Wazoo.

I gave Elspeth a cookie, strapped her into the backpack, grasped the all-purpose shovel we bought back in Dutch Country midUSA, and went to it. I dug the holes for the roses and then I went to digging a trench in our front yard for the hedge. I worked in close proximity to the street and I wondered what the drivers of the cars thought as they puffed exhaust in our direction.

PEEVISH THINGS: COTTAGE CHEESE, SMELL OF CANNED PEACHES, BRUSHING MY HAIR.

This is what drivers saw: Unkempt woman talking to herself as she thrusts a shovel into the wide expanse of a front lawn. Runny-nosed child high up on unbrushed woman's back eating a cookie, happily unaware of her disheveled appearance.

PEEVISH THINGS: YOUNG APARTMENT RESIDENTS UP THE STREET WHO SQUEAL THEIR TIRES AT STOP SIGN AND HONK AT ME WHEN I BEND OVER TO DIG IN FRONT FLOWERBEDS.

The residents of my neighborhood have probably drawn their own dire conclusions about my sanity already. I could feel drivers bulking last fall when I tromped out to the middle of our front lawn, armed with a wheelbarrow and piles of the Sunday newspaper. I was determined to kill enough sod for a cutting garden this summer. Wild-haired zinnias would take the place of plebeian grass! But then it was a windy day and the newspapers blew and fluttered as I scrambled for rocks to use as anchors. Merry and I scattered straw over this mess and then I covered the whole thing with a black pool tarp left behind by the previous owners of our big brick house.

It turns out that the tarp caught the sun in a blinding pool of light, and later that fall, in a fit of blindness, I ran outside and whipped off the tarp. So now, this spring, there is a faint circle in the grass as well as two long straw-newspaper graves. But mark my words, there will be zinnias.

PEEVISH THINGS: PRESCRIPTIVE BOOKS LIKE "MEN ARE FROM MARS. . ."; FOLLOWING DIRECTIONS; PEOPLE WHO MEASURE BEFORE THEY DIG.


Elspeth was still content with her cookie so we went on and began to dig a trench for the Canadian hemlocks, which are languishing in the basement like unwelcome guests. Time to be a good hostess, I thought, as I put my weight on the good old Dutch. Digging up thick sod with a toddler on your back is good exercise, let me tell you. I not only eyeballed the site for the hedge but I actually paced it out before I started digging.

Martin pulled up with Merry, back from preschool. He got out of the car. I expected some laud, but instead Martin looked critically at my trench and shook his head.

PEEVISH THINGS: PEOPLE WHO TELL ME I AM WRONG.

"That is entirely the wrong place for the hedge," he said. I swear he gets this fetish for measurement and accuracy from his father, who will go absolutely cross-eyed at something one thousandth of a millimeter askew on wall that would have never, ever bothered me in a million years. (This makes him a class A builder, electrician, plumber--a job is well done in his hands.)

Add to this that God gave Martin enormous feet that are each exactly one foot long, and you've got the kind of obsessive measurer that bewilders the rest of us eyeballers.

"Then you do it," I said. He looked at me in some exasperation.

PEEVISH THINGS: PEOPLE WHO SEND CHILDREN TO SCHOOL WITH GREEN STUFF COMING OUT THEIR NOSES.

"Did you have fun at preschool?" I asked Merry, unstrapping Elsepth from my back.

Martin was already plotting out another line for the hedge with bricks.

"Her teachers told me she had green stuff coming out her nose," he said.

One look at her handkerchief confirmed this.

"We should call the city," said Martin, "To make sure we're not about to dig up a gas line."

Okay, uncle, uncle.

Since the hemlocks were clearly not destined to make it into the ground, I piled the girls into the house.

I took a nap, and then Elspeth and I planted the roses. Of course I didn't read the directions correctly and I am convinced now, after looking at the directions again, that I planted them wrong.

PEEVISH THINGS: PEOPLE WHO WAIT AROUND FOR SOMEONE TO DO SOMETHING FOR THEM WHEN THEY CAN DO IT THEMSELVES.

Martin arrived home for dinner. I was flattened into a rocking chair. "I defrosted some ground turkey," I told him, "But I just don't know what to do with it."

After a delicious taco salad, I thanked Martin for dinner.

"Thank YOU," he said.

"For what?" I asked.

"For defrosting the turkey," he said.

"Any time." (Defrosting a tube of meat is hard work, but someone had to do it.)

PEEVISH THINGS: UNGRATEFUL PEOPLE.

Fine, then. Thank you, Martin, for your feet and for loving to cook. Thank you for revelling in the crinkle of paper as you open an instruction booklet.

Thank you, fine compulsive Dutch gardeners, for making a good shovel.

And I'll just take care of it now: thank you, all obsessive people who love the metric system. Where would we be without your glum but perfect measurements?

All is Right, All is Right: SPRING is COME

In less than an hour, SPRING will officially begin. I know it's wrong to capitalize the seasons, but in my intuitive opinion, SPRING deserves every single one of its letters celebrated. S P R I N G.

Today was the Sabbath of the winter of our sick week. Since Elspeth wailed every time I detached her from my hip, and since the sun filled our house like the smell of good cooking, I hatted and coated the girls and we went out.

We jolly well took our runny noses and went out!

In the sunlight the girls suddenly looked as pale as porcelain, and I realized how very housebound we have been of late. The sky was blue without cloud, the air was pristine as only springtime air can be, and the street was alive with the sounds of jackhammers. We paused long enough for Merry to study the gash in the road and the men in their fluorescent jackets.

Then we pushed through the snow-melt sogginess and continued on our way. As I walked, my insides, which have seemed like a small, comfortable, but dark hovel, started to expand. Each breath I took pushed at my shadowed corners, until soon the sun was warming a cathedral inside of me; light flooded through the windows and made colored patterns on the floor and walls of my spirit.

Ah, SPRING.

When we finally reached home, we found the world celebrating in small and jolly ways. A crocus, yellow as butter, opened her mouth in a long, relieved exhalation:


An earthworm basked in the young sunshine, a great long fleshy earthworm whom Merry threatened to pluck. I yelled jealously, "No, don't touch him!" (Every gardener guards her earthworms well).
Even Elspeth's spirits were improved, and she toddled contently around the sun room as I clicked holiday pictures. Maybe I should have been watching her more carefully, as

Elspeth further celebrated SPRING by sucking out much of the contents of Merry's paint container.

The label stipulated chokable parts but contained no information on the consequences of ingesting the paint itself, so I swiped her mouth and hoped for the best.

SPRING so imbibed me with good will and hunger that I actually cooked dinner instead of asking Martin for sustenance when he returned home. . .teriyaki chicken, rice, giddy stalks of bright green broccoli. Near the end of the extravaganza I near removed the tip of my finger on the edge of a tin can. As I wrapped my bloody finger in paper towels I questioned the virtue of cooking at all.

But dinner was delicious, my finger is wrapped safely, Elspeth is sleeping, Merry is receiving a lecture from her father, and SPRING has officially begun. All then is right with the world.

In Celebration of All That's Petty (and a Few Things That Aren't)

GOLD TOE SOCKS: AMAZON: (5 CUSTOMER REVIEWS)

This morning found Merry, Elspeth and me sorting through a sea of mismatched socks in time Chattanooga ChooChoo. Pardon me, boys. . .

Estranged socks drive my sister batty, so it's a good thing she doesn't live with the mountains of single socks that mark my failed attempts at organized laundry. I've taken to pairing socks that look somewhat alike (patterned and patterned, pink and pink, etc.); Merry and Elspeth certainly don't care.

She's gonna cry till I tell her that I'll never roam. . .

Look, when you're in college you vow NEVER to be taken over by the petty cares of the world. No siree-Bob, you're going to rise above the rat race scrambling around like idjits squeezing tubes of toothpaste from the end and separating laundry and sorting silverware into little sections in kitchen drawers. You're going to shake, rattle and roll the world, baby. There will be absolutely no time for folding fitted sheets or paying bills.

Hah! But now you're out of college and one night when you're all grown up, you catch yourself writing a review on an ice cream scoop on Amazon.com. What's the matter with you? Not rattled the world's teeth yet? You've settled for a moment of fame on Amazon as you wax eloquent on your favorite forged steel ice cream scoop. Very nice. There are your ideals, swirling down the drain.

And as you consider many things, such as what cycle to dry your new wrinkle-free pants on, and how many days elapse before Netflix will send you your new film, and whether or not the kid's sheets really need to be changed more than every month, you feel your nose quivering with the inevitable sprouting of whiskers. You've joined the rat race.

* * * *

But only occasionally am I the rat in the maze, sniffing out cheesey nibbles and reading the backs of boxes for sodium content and transfat. Other times I actually take the time to read books or listen to good poetry, like

Gary Soto. What a breath of fresh air his poems are! Martin read them out loud to me last night. Soto will blow the top off your head. His narratives, if you can use such a heavy term for his precise, spare language, are startling in their layered transcendence. That sounds like a bunch of gobbelty-gook, so just let me say: if you want to read some really terrific poetry and have a good time doing it, read Gary Soto.

And here's the rundown on NPR's weekend music. In the future, I'll let Martin guest write this feature since he's genius-musicman. But for now,

Check out The Magic Numbers, a brother-sister, brother-sister group from UK. If you want to kick back and enjoy yourself or if you've got a long drive, you'll love their easy-going 60's vibe. And their songs are diverse enough that you won't tire of them. I'm the kind of person who goes for a CD out of pure enjoyment, and I can see myself wearing out The Magic Numbers' jewelcase. Four to five stars.

Stuff your ears with cotton balls before you listen to Tina Dico. Dico channels an Alanis Morissette sound accompanied by all the self indulgence and pseudo poetry that makes me cringe. Apparently Dico's passed up Coldplay and U2 in her native Denmark--chalk it up to personal taste but I find her groaning sound grating and (as Martin says) her cliched "Long Goodbye" definitive of her music in general. One star.

In contrast, Cara Dillon's got a clear, lovely sound that will knock your socks off. This singer-songwriter from Ireland is a pure pleasure to listen to, not just for her unaffected voice but for her thoughtful lyrics (she writes about topics like immigration, etc.). Though I think she could stick with more of an unadorned acoustic sound instead of the distraction of occasional orchestral swells, I give her four stars.

Oh, and here's an up and coming artist you shouldn't miss. Merry. She's already got a selection of songs and her album cover. (Check out Uncle Luke who sings background).

Stuck in House but Not Glued to Roof

Merry dreaming: Yes, summer will come.

From the second-story office window I look down to the land far below, dull green in patches where the snow is melting. Swollen with brown snow melt, the creek furrows a flickering line between the yard and a thickly forested steep slope. A bare-limbed tree waves to me outside my window, where just a moment ago a pretty brown bird was spitting out a little song.

A few short weeks will pass, and suddenly I will look out my window and see green, green, green.

But for now, March is still wintry. The wee Canadian hemlocks and the roses with a mass of naked claw-like roots sleep snug in the basement. Elsepth is still sick and she sleeps much of the day congested and worn out in her crib. Merry is sniffly, Martin and I are still in our clothes from last night. We all seem to be waiting, and the waiting is not so bad. Martin and I have both had lots of time to work on our books, and it's comforting to type away side by side into the late hours of the night.

Yesterday we opened an unexpected box from my cousin in Virginia: packets and packets of Indian spices! Delightful! Cumin, coriander, paprika, whole cloves. Martin packed them gently into a basket. They are sleeping, too, promises of flavor explosions confined within their plastic packets, waiting to be ripped open, spilling out on lamb and potatoes and onions. Their time will come. The garden's time will come. My time will come.

Well, Elspeth is awake. Time to fasten her to my hip and find a sunny spot in the house.

When was summer? The greens and warmths and long days of summer start feeling like a dream right about now. . .

Last Note: But though we are sick and stuck at home, at least we didn't glue ourselves to the roof "like a beetle." (See STORY OF MAN GLUED TO ROOF). We should count ourselves as greatly fortunate.

Nibble, Nibble, This and That

I am full of good things and I wanted to spread a tasting table for you:

MUST-SEE NEW MUSIC
Matisyahu. Orthodox Jewish Rapper. Need I say more? Go and watch his "Jerusalem" (click on "Matisyahu," above).

GOOD BOOKS LATELY READ

Sandra Cisneros' Woman Hollering Creek
I hadn't picked this up in a long time, but in Arizona I plunged into the often lyrical, imagistic writing that Cisneros masters so well. Add to this that her stories are often as short as a page and a half, and add to this that her characters are engaging and engrossing, and most of her stories stylistically hit slam-wham on the head, and you've got yourself a good read.


Wendell Berry's Hannah Coulter
W. B. is known most widely for his essays, and there's a good reason for this. However, I thoroughly enjoyed this fictional work; WB sketched the character of this mother, farm owner, wife, and hard worker well. Some passages, (the last page of the book where Hannah Coulter dies, for example) are lovely and convincing. You never forget it's Wendell Berry writing; if you want a gentle impression of the prophet's philosophies, pick up this book.

Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children
I did not expect to find Rushdie so accessible and engrossing. But I did. Combine politics, humor, quirky characters, a twisting plot, violence, philosophy, supernatural and religious experience, history, imagination, lyricism, and the longest sentence I have ever read in my life, and you've experienced just a little bit of Midnight's Children. I never expected to laugh out loud and then be so disturbed as I was while I travelled through this book. It made me stay up far too late, and that's a sign of a good story.

ENCHANTING MOVIES
Let me just say: Miyazaki. I've never gone absolutely gaga-waga about anime, but on the recommendation of friends with taste we ordered Tatoro and Kiki's Delivery Service from Netflix. We were not disappointed, and although I felt Merry might be frightened by Spirited Away, the other two were child-friendly and charming.

A few things I really love about Miyazaki:
scenery of his films, especially the clouds and trees
strong, courageous female characters
good story line
supernatural worked seamlessly (and unspookily) into everyday existence
celebration and respect of the natural world
celebration and respect of the elderly
way the characters giggle at odd times (at least to the Western ear)

There's one scene in Totoro (the stronger movie of the two) that set me laughing out loud in sheer delight, when the spirits and the children are bowing at chestnuts as they sprout and bloom. It's absolutely magical. The father character is Totoro is exceptional; a favorite scene of mine takes place in the bath while he and his two daughters guffaw at the top of their lungs to chase the soot mites. If you want a numinous experience, order a Miyazaki film as soon as you can.

Thought I Was Dreaming of the Moon

"Last night I thought I was dreaming of the moon," says Merry, "But actually I was gagging."

Merry somehow characterized the low point of my day today, when everything felt like coming up the wrong way--Elspeth's awful cold and her inability to be awake without being held, some disappointing news about my book, NO COFFEE, and a huge snow in March. Sometimes I think with glowering brows about St. Paul, who in my opinion has caused sore trouble for the world (even my conservative grandmother said she would sort him out when she got to heaven). Some days I think, whoever said "victorious life" can stick it up their wazoo, if you know what I mean.

Today I received my first shipment from Gurney's. Inside the long cardboard box I found five lovely little Canadian hemlock trees. Their roots were wrapped compactly in wet newspaper and plastic. The notice inside read:

Your Plants are Speaking to You!
We are currently dormant, having been properly harvested and stored throughout the winter.
So please, as soon as possible, plant us in some good soil and water us liberally immediately after planting.
We are ready to wake up and grow for you for many years to come.

Well, little hemlocks, one look at White Wazoo Farm and I'm afraid you know the answer. Yes, dormant for a while longer. Sleep happy in your cardboard coffin.

Spring really is coming.

Open my box, and my label might read: Please, as soon as possible, plant me in some good soil and water me immediately after planting. I am ready to wake up!

As SOON AS POSSIBLE.

Yes, yes, spring really IS coming. You promise?

Bells on Her Toes, And That's All

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
I was recently romanced by the sheer beauty of this nursery rhyme. Of course I've heard it since I was a child, and in all likelihood, you have too. But as the strains of "Ride a toy horse" filled our house yesterday afternoon, I realized for the first time what a sparkling little gem this nursery rhyme is. It's not clunky like Humpty Dumpty or smart-alecky like Little Jack Horner. It's whimsical and lyrical:

Ride a cockhorse to Banbury Cross
To see a fine lady upon a white horse
With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes
She shall have music wherever she goes.

I began conjuring up a faint picture of the lady, rings glittering on her fingers, bells jingling on her toes. I knew she must have historical significance, so I jolly well looked her up.

The most accepted story behind the fine lady includes Queen Elizabeth I of England traveling on her magnificent white horse to view a stone cross at Banbury. She gleamed with fine jewels, and minstrels accompanied her in splendid regalia as she condescended her attention on the little town of Banbury. The impressive cross at Banbury was later desecrated by anti-Catholics in one of the many bloody Prot.-Cath. conflicts.

Bells on her toes? If you were a queen, my dear, you were allotted bells on your elegant little shoes.

Very nice.

I did find an origin to the nursery rhyme that rather suits my style better, and I've been saving the best for last.

Long ago, Lady Godiva had rather an unfortunate husband. Leofric, Earl of Mercia, though he may have been a decent chap in other respects (unlikely), decided his tenants needed to pay more from their shallow pockets into his coffers. He imposed a terrible tax.

Lady Godiva advocated for the poor people until finally Leofric pulled his brows together, sputtered through his sherry: "Blast it, Godiva, I'll tell you what I'll do. Ride naked through Coventry, and you'll have your way, [irritating wench]."

So what did she do, this fine Lady Godiva?

You got it. Saddled up the white horse and mounted him stark naked. The folk in Coventry stayed indoors, but you can bet they were making plenty of music behind their curtains.

And Leofric lifted the tax.

Now, whenever you sing the old nursery rhyme, you might want to think of Queen Elizabeth in all her stately finery. But I will be singing it to my daughters with a triumphant swing, and raising my glass to naked Lady Godiva.

--Pic. Sources (in order:)http://www.rootsweb.com/~engcbanb/fairlady/page1.htm; http://www.rhymes.org.uk/ride_a_cock_horse.htm
--Lady Godiva story found www.indianchild.com/history_origins_nursery_ryhmes.htm

New Book Review

Make sure you read WC Long's new book review on Mark Twain's Joan of Arc. (Look under "More Fun" post below).

Babies, Children, Dogs, My Mother Have More FUN

Merry dances, singing along with the words of Fly Me to the Moon. Her hands are clasped in front of her, knees bending as she steps back and forth to the rhythm. Elspeth and I are watching her through the crack in the pocket doors. I'm afraid that when Merry sees us she'll become self-conscious and stop her performance.

Let me see what life is like on Jupiter and Mars. . .

Elspeth knows nothing about surreptitious watching. Soon she begins struggling to get down and I pull the pocket doors open, sure that Merry's earnest face will quickly crinkle into an embarrassed smile.

In other words, hold my hand. . .

Merry surprises me. She doesn't flinch at our entrance. She just sings on, and if anything, she's even more animated.

Children. We adults stand in awe and some jealousy at the wonderful turn of their imaginations, their sheer delight that is not compromised by the presence of others. (Didn't Madeleine L'Engle say she really DID float down her grandmother's stairs?) I don't want to see Merry's ability to engage fully in a moment crack as she becomes older.

Of course mine did. It took me a whole pile of painful adolescent years until I was able to act without agonizing over myself. I could have been in the middle of the woods on a hike and still labor under the illusion that I was being watched, weighed, and measured.

People seem to have this crippling self-awareness in different measures. Okay--right now, take your self-consciousness and subtract it from yourself. What you have left over is the amount of sheer FUN you will glean from life. It follows, then, that babies, children, dogs, and my mother have a bigger allotment of FUN than do the rest of us.

My mother used to come to our classes in late elementary school at Thanksgiving to tell the story of the Mayflower. She would roll popcorn balls for our class the night before, and then, as I sat in the front row, she'd don an old cap over her brown hair. Suddenly she would be Frances, young girl on the Mayflower ship, rolling with the ocean waves and eating weevil-bread. Most of me was wildly proud of my mother as I helped to hand out popcorn balls after her dramatic soliloquy. But a tiny part of me was embarrassed at the carefree way she lunged her face toward the audience, the way she folded her hands and squeezed them between her knees. My classmates just thought I had a great mom.

My mother is a powerful storyteller and speaker. One of the biggest reasons for this is that she doesn't get in the way. When she speaks, you let her words and the images she unfolds wrap around your imagination like huge wings. And as you listen, you fly with her story. There is no snuffling, pretentious person getting in the way, only the voice bearing the words; there are no false apologies or self-conscious gestures to make you remember that the story that so intrigues you is coming from a very talented storyteller. You only remember my mother when the story is over. See, THAT's the mark of a good storyteller.

My mother is able to live life this way, too. She always had enough spontaneity to more than cover the rest of us self-conscious, serious sods. If I want a real reaction, I go to my mother.

Most of my life, I strove to be just as spontaneous as my mother. But of course you see the problem already.

I'm a limp, failed storyteller. When I tell a joke I mix up all the details and let the punchline slip early. I apologize for myself and make my listeners wait while I retrieve a word that slipped out of my head and into the abyss. Writing is the only way I can chuck myself completely out of the way. I write, or I hope to write, like my mother speaks. Often I live life standing to the side of myself, jotting down notes to use later. Some of my most genuine spontaneity occurs when I sit down with those notes and begin to relive them on a page.

This is not always true, and certainly having children has loosened me up and stretched me out (in more ways than one). Watching your own children brings back much of the excitement and selflessness of your own childhood.

Elspeth, my one year old, loves with great spontaneity. She toddles across the room and throws her arms around my neck. And parent love is also spontaneous. My love rushes unbidden from my pores, seeping into her little body and strengthening her for all of life. In this way, in this artless love, I am just like my mother.

CONTRIBUTOR REVIEW: JOAN OF ARC BY MARK TWAIN

Joan of Arc

Mark Twain
Ignatius Press; New Ed edition (September 1989)


For someone familiar with Twain, this novel will seem a bit odd as it has none of his classic wit or biting sarcasm. Indeed, it was originally published under a pseudonym because Twain thought that people would expect these things from it and be disappointed. To be truly honest, this reviewer understands Twain’s reluctance to be associated with it, as this foray outside of his usual writing style was not his best work.

The narrator of the story is eighty-year-old man writing to his grandnephews. He was a childhood friend of Joan’s, who later became her secretary, and finally the recorder at her final trial, and thus represents a firsthand witness to all the important events of Joan’s life. His narration is colored throughout the story by an almost idolatrous esteem for Joan; he never married and it is suggested that this is because he never found a woman who could live up to her. This esteem is not a problem in itself; indeed, the reader can hardly help but admire Joan nearly as much as the narrator does. The problem is that the admiration taints the style of the storytelling. The narrator is constantly padding every part of his story with extraneous praise for Joan; barely an incident passes without him adding a comment reminding the reader that what Joan had done only served to highlight what a sublime creature she was. This is disappointing because Joan’s character is perfectly obvious from the story itself, and the added commentary only distracts. One only needs to be shown; the telling is redundant and tedious.
A second problem of the style is that the reader is never excited by what happens in the story. A good writer of historical fiction should make events of the past seem as thrilling as they were when they first happened, even if the reader knows how the story ended. Alas, Twain seems incapable of making any of the many battle scenes exciting, which is a pity as there are so many of them. The main problem is that the reader is consistently told what the outcome of all the events is going to be well beforehand, and it is usually oft repeated. Joan is injured in one battle, and he lets us know about the wound-to-be three weeks ahead of time, repeating the news of its advent so often that by the time she is actually struck by the crossbow bolt the reader is simply relieved.

The book is not without merit, however. Twain meticulously researched the subject before writing the story, reading the official records of Joan’s several trials, as well as many accounts of her life from both the French and English perspectives. So while the style may be wanting, the story itself seems as faithful to the record as possible, and thus gives the reader a fascinating glimpse into this little part of history. More importantly, what emerges from the story is the giant character of Joan herself and the model of faith and hope that she was. This seems to be what fascinated Twain about the story; he saw in Joan a larger-than-life persona and a faith that he could not entirely understand, and he wanted to capture that in a story. In this he succeeds, and the story, for all its stylistic flaws, is worth reading if only because Joan, at least as she is portrayed by Twain, is a person worth understanding and admiring.

--Reviewed by William Christopher Long
W. C. Long is, at this VERY moment, finishing his PhD in Marine Biology at VIMs University in Virginia. When asked what the heck he really does with all his time, Chris wrote: "To be pedantic, I take the clams, and mark them (the shells have to be dry otherwise the sharpies won't work) and then transplant them into the murky black York River." In his leftover time, WC enjoys his adventerous daughter and her as-yet invisible sibling.

Teach your Kids Violence: Read them the Old Testament

Last August. We sat out on the porch, basking in the late summer warmth and enjoying a quiet dinner. The coal mine groaned from across the valley but our neighborhood smelled like newly-mown grass. Merry was four.

We had company. Merry, big lovely eyes luminescent in the early twilight, looked up from her plate. "Guess what Elephant did now?" she began. (Elephant is Merry's alter ego in a parallel universe called Cornia.) Our guests listened politely. "He went into the dark dark woods, but then there was a wolf."

Since we are not feeding you dinner, let me make a long, long story short: Elephant defends himself by many means that prove futile. Finally, Elephant cuts off the wolf's head and totes it home triumphantly. Oh, fraptious day! Elephant has slain the wolf! Elephant swings in the door, announcing, "WOLF HEAD for DINNER TONIGHT!" I do believe I've left out other gory details. Needless to say our guests were well entertained and probably concluded we were bad parents who let Merry stay up watching late TV.

But everything Merry ever learned about violence (barring a couple bang-bang-you're-deads from two boys with plastic pistols) she learned from pouring over her children's copy of the Old Testament.

Today at lunch Merry paused in the middle of her peanut-butter and marmalade sandwich. "Mommy?"

Oh, blast. Merry regularly asks things like how a bathtub is built, the existence of Jesus, why did God make mosquitoes. Merry seems to believe I am an endless fount of trivia and general knowledge and her questions are far-ranging, covering more than spirituality and engineering.

"Yes?"

"Mommy, how did that little rock kill Goliath?"

I opened the door to the little storeroom where we keep compost. A musty odor filled my nostrils. Banana peels, coffee grounds. "Well, maybe it was a sharp rock, like a knife."

"But how did David know he would kill Goliath?"

"Well, I guess sometimes you just have to do the right thing even if you don't know whether it will work out or not."

As Elspeth spit out apple peels and flung bread to the ground, I realized my answer was problematic and poor. Maybe you have some good reasons as to why this answer stunk, and I have mine.

First, I hate answering in the same old cliches that parents always are guilty of on Hallmark TV and bad movies.

Second, we are pacifists. I had just told my daughter that an exceedingly violent act was the right thing to do.

Third, the sentence itself was badly constructed. Pauline-like prepositions, run-on, readability--definitely F.

Fourth. Hmmm. Well, depending on what you believe, there's a fourth. I happen to be from the camp of people that believes that most faith "giants" were real, quaking people inside somewhere. Maybe you think David had the faith to know everything would work out in the end. I don't even think Jesus knew for sure when he was about to die that everything would definitely work out. He acted out of obedience and love, not out of knowledge.

But I digress.

Merry ate her sandwich in silence. Was she turning over the inadequacy of my blithe answer?

Instead, she opened her mouth to ask another question. Very probably it was about one of her favorite Bible characters, "Bad-Man-Herod" or Sampson. Instead she said, "That place where Daddy keeps his tractor is a PIG-STY."

Ah, delight in children. Most often Merry is quick to point out my inconsistencies. But here she did not. There are only three things I do not allow into the house: play guns, Barbies (equally if not more harmful in an insidious way), and dirty shoes.

But at Merry's request I read her the Old Testament. Of course stories have conflict and often have heroes and villains and the fight between good and evil. But the difference here is the issue of Merry's spiritual heritage. When reading Merry the Old Testament, I am in a mindset of my Sunday School lessons, blowing my trumpet for the fall of the wall of Jericho; cutting off Goliath's head in glad victory; crushing my enemies with the mighty sword of Jehovah. (Certainly every tender child felt the weight of Jael's hammer as she drove the tent peg through the general's temple--oh, wait. Actually, that story is not in Merry's Bible. Neither Jael or Rahab make it to the pages. But Delilah does, of course. No Bible, not even a children's Bible, could leave out a tasty morsel like Delilah.)

I do not say, as I say every time we talk about violence on the news or in the course of life, "That is a sad way to deal with a problem, isn't it, Merry?" Instead there is the implicit message that Samson was a HERO, tearing down those temple walls and smashing all those people in the ruins. GOOD JOB, Samson!

Then there follows this strange dichotomy I often see in conservative Christian households.
Sex on TV? Superbad. Violence? The more the better!
Feminism? Lies. Subordination of women? God-given right.
Gay marriage? An abomination. War that kills innocent people? Justified.
Money spent on welfare? A waste. Billions on bombs and military? Worth it.

But I didn't mean to get so negative. Count the above as a rant born from the frustration of a person who is tired of the way things are but doesn't know all the answers, either.

Merry's question sparked by a child's Old Testament reminded me of the discomfort I feel with this idea: the divine entitlement to victory for "God's people" through bloodshed. It is a lie that has haunted America since the beginning of our country when the Native Americans were robbed of their land. It is a lie that continues to haunt us now as more innocents die in Iraq. When did we forget that we are all God's people, and all deserving of peace?

Merry sang a song at bedtime today. Imposing my mother's perspective on her song I hope it is about God's Kingdom of peace on earth (whether she knows it or not!):

The seeds have to be spread in gardens
And the plants will sprout and finally bloom
The vision of God's day has bloomed.
God is the bloomer of each day. . .
The most thing that we have to do to please God
Is to be kind to other people
For the God the only Son is in my heart all day and all night.


P.S. More on Arizona is forthcoming, I promise; I'm just waiting for pictures!

White Witch Snapped Like Dirty Laundry

Spring makes me want to gather up my house in my arms. Ah, it's laundry day for the house once again. I'll take the house to the back stoop and snap it out in the bright spring sunshine. The house crevices, hiding a season's worth of cracker crumbs, mouse droppings, layers of winter dust, toddler germs--all will be shaken clean! Begone, nasty old winter! And then I'll fold up the house like a bright white sheet, a crisp fresh tablecloth, and bring it indoors again. White Witch has been banished into a dark corner of the world. Her strength is broken, her mind awhirl with "might-have-beens."

Okay, winter wasn't that bad. All the same I am grateful for the thaw, for the little spiky heads of the crocus bulbs, for my neighbor who I haven't seen in six months. She finally ventured out with her little dog, fingers clasped around a cup of hot tea, to survey her yard. We were such good friends last summer. Perhaps we will be good friends again as temperatures rise.

Wazoo Farm looks rumpled and soggy. It has been sleeping for a long time. There are signs of wakefulness, though--a dead robin under a barelimbed bush, small deposits of deer droppings, fledgling stinging nettles in the grass. Yes, it's not the most giddy picture of spring, but it's spring nonetheless.

Today at lunch Merry said:
I heard at the beginning of Cinderella an ad that said, Who Will Save the World? [She paused, puzzled, then continued:] The WORLD doesn't need saving, Mommy. PEOPLE need saving.

The old Bible verse I've known since I was two began climbing its way hand over fist up my throat and onto my tongue. But I didn't say it. So, look you here: the world is saved, in a timeless kind of way. Yes, the world is mixed up with the confused intentions of people. (There is early tender spring and a rotting dead robin.) There is war, the product of confused and lonely people.

But then, the world is lovely, is breathtaking, as gentle and cool as the last sliver of ice melting into my garden soil.

Hurrah for spring.

Home

Home again, Home again, clippity-clop. At three or so this morning we finally pulled into our driveway. Both girls were asleep and Martin and I were close to delirium.

There are several pieces of good news.

One. No mice, and no mice droppings. (Upon return after last trip, Martin found three corpses in varying states of decomposition).

Two. A really lovely letter from my college writing mentor about my book.

Three. A beautiful, sunny, throw-open-the-windows day today.

Four. We were not blown up by creepy unibomber look-alike on last flight from Midway-Chicago.

I don't think I am an overly paranoid person. Granted, we had cajoled two children through an endless web of airport check-in and security, and soothed them through two flights already.

So we were finally boarding our last plane from Chicago-Midway to home. We were grateful though apprehensive of the late hour and the state of two over-tired children. At least Southwest is the airline with a heart, and they still do the morally correct thing and let families with small children (often on the brink of insanity) board early.

But this flight had holdovers from the plane's last destination. We tripped onto the plane, loaded with computer-, diaper-, snack- bags, wild-eyed one year old and bleary five-year old. There is a camaraderie between all preboarders (heavily pregnant women and loaded-down parents), and we enjoyed the glow as we walked past the shiny-bald flight attendant and onto the plane.

But then, slouching into his seat, encased in the hood of his University of California-Berkeley sweatshirt, a chap in large glasses in the front row gave me pause. I was not judging merely based on appearances. But as I passed with Elspeth on my hip, he let forth a great HISSSSSSS. Indeed, he hissed as Merry passed. Another sweet-cheeked little boy followed us. The hooded man put out his index finger and curled it as if to say FORWARD. And as this sweet little boy passed, he again HISSSSSSed.

It was a full flight. This hissing man was sitting in the front row, primo-seat with lots of leg room, but the two seats beside him were among the last to be filled. I don't think he hissed at all people who passed him, only children, but I can't be sure. One thing was clear: he was sending crazy vibes.

After take-off, this man disappeared into the bathroom and stayed there for a long, long time. Sitting in my seat, breastfeeding Elspeth for the umpteenth time and drinking yet another CranApple juice, I imagined the hisser bent over the bathroom sink, concocting a wildly clever bomb. Or perhaps he would burst out of the bathroom past the bald flight attendant and make a bee-line for my children, yelling incoherent threats.

I planned what I would do if these things were to happen. There comes a time in every exhausted mother's life where she imagines crazy things and then plans what crazy things she will do in response. Martin sipped club soda and wrestled the Sudoku puzzle beside me. He was unconcerned though he did admit the hisser had an uncanny resemblance (only beard lacking) to the unibomber. People are strange, he said, and flipped to the next in-flight magazine puzzle.

Of course he was right. The hisser did not do more than hiss. And I am glad, because my plans for making a great scene in case of emergency were vague at best. Yes, people are odd. And I am included.

Our home airport, when we arrived, was cavernous and echoed in the odd way airports do after midnight. Olympic-Opening-Theme music boomed over the loudspeakers as I carried a sleeping five-year old though the wide deserted terminal. Two men mopped the floor of the food court. Magazines and merchandise stared out at us through the metal teeth of their after-hour grates.

And then, much much later, Martin and I plunged into the cool darkness of the eastern night and drove through the bare-bone forested highways toward home.

Bed never feels so good as after a long absence. We had a wonderful, dream-like vacation in the west, and we hope we carried the spirit of that wide-open place home with us. Home. Our pillows were deep and our own house friendly in the early morning darkness. We had not been blown up, we had not fallen asleep on the way home, and our children were quiet and in their own beds. Thanks be.