Book Review: The Salt Bairns, by Cynthia Tidrick

The Salt Bairns by Cynthia Tidrick
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was fortunate to receive an advance copy of THE SALT BAIRNS and have to say, it was one of the most meaningful and insightful fiction reads I've been privileged to find in a very long time. Cynthia Tidrick has constructed a magical world, full of shadows and vice, and yet the colors and characters within the narrative surround each other and the protagonist with genuine feeling and knowledge. The reader cannot help but become swallowed up in their world, traveling onward in a rich and memorable adventure as the story unfolds. The author's unusual turns of phrase are yet clear and so beautiful, with atmospheric descriptions that enable the reader to grasp deeper meaning and understanding of the many layers in this tale. Skillful and sometimes shocking illustrations add to the fantastical quasi-realism of the work. Five glorious stars.

*Thank you to the Author for the advance read copy.

View all my reviews

the anarchy of nature

A forward shift in time and possibility ...eglantine - the sweetbrier rose - with graceful blushes lets us know that fall approaches, celebrating the last burnished notes of summer

...and in like manner, willow heralds the spring with effusive yet subtle gestures in palest green.

In the fall, the summer birches shed their green for pumpkin, burgundy, rich yellows, molten gold. They stand, godlike, unaware and unheeding of our passing.

In November the world is setting the stage for sleep, to rest awhile before the cycle begins again. The promise of delicious, rose-colored fruit glistens in the midst of soft rain, held aloft on greenbriar branches, steady and peaceful. In the quiet you can feel the gentle pinpricks of preparation, feel the heartbeat of movement that carries us, blissful, through the coldest months until the rising sap presses up the stems and new life bursts upon us once again.

Wishing you a restful winter, and a joyous awakening in the months to come.

winter, warm and humble

Then came old January wrapped well in many weeds to keep the cold away

Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

Cold weather tends to bring out the hibernation in some of us. I happen to subscribe to this tendency, and do not apologize. Nothing seems more apt when the wind howls at the door than to curl up with a good book, snuggled deep in the blankets, the better to doze when the inclination takes us.

“I sit beside the fire and think
Of all that I have seen
Of meadow flowers and butterflies
In summers that have been

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
In autumns that there were
With morning mist and silver sun
And wind upon my hair

I sit beside the fire and think
Of how the world will be
When winter comes without a spring
That I shall ever see

For still there are so many things
That I have never seen
In every wood in every spring
There is a different green

I sit beside the fire and think
Of people long ago
And people that will see a world
That I shall never know

But all the while I sit and think
Of times there were before
I listen for returning feet
And voices at the door”

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring 

look. just - look.

Post by Matt Martin.

Poetry Monday: Burnt Norton

Time is the moving image of eternity --Plato

Source: Poetry Chaikhana, Dervishes

Burnt Norton
T. S. Eliot (No. 1 of 'Four Quartets')

I

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
          But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
          Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.

So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

II

Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.

And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
          Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.



III

Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence

Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.

     Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness, deprivation
And destitution of all property,
Desiccation of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fancy,
Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
This is the one way, and the other
Is the same, not in movement
But abstention from movement; while the world moves
In appetency, on its metalled ways
Of time past and time future.

IV

Time and the bell have buried the day,
The black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?

     Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher's wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world.



V

Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there

Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.

     The detail of the pattern is movement,
As in the figure of the ten stairs.
Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable;
Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,

Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always—
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.

Source: British Listed Buildings, Burnt Norton

Further readings:
"Time, Eternity, and Immortality in T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets" by Terry L. Fairchild
"Poetry Landmark: T. S. Eliot's Burnt Norton"
"Let Us Go, Then, to Burnt Norton" by Rebecca Hurt
"At the Still Point: T.S. Eliot, Dance, and Modernism" by Susan Jones
"GARDENING / A Poet's Garden: On a walk" by Helen Chappell

Of Forests and Men

Love is Not Love

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments.  Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

--Shakespeare, Sonnet 116

'Nuf said.  Carry on.

barefoot on the earth

Go placidly amidst the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. --Desiderata


"It all seemed to good to be true.  Hither and thither he rambled busily, along the hedgerows, among the copses, finding everywhere birds building, flowers budding, leaves thrusting --everything happy, progressive, and occupied. ...He thought his happiness was complete..."  --Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

In Romancing the Ordinary, Sarah ban Breathnach reminds us of the spiritual connection that may be made in the simple act of removing one's shoes and walking about with our feet "'in touch' with the sacred."  It shames me to admit I worry when my children run about barefoot because I worry too much about cuts and scrapes.  Naturally they ignore me; I'm glad, for as much as I adore shoes, I prefer the feel of my toes on the bare hardwood floors of my home and the coolness of the grass beneath them as I'm hanging out the laundry.

We never touch but at points.  --Emerson 

Physical touch literally reconnects us with what matters.  When we are feeling scattered and stretched too thin, finding something tactile beneath our feet is calming and helps us to find our ground, so to speak.  Remove your shoes and whether inside or out, and walk about your Universe, so that your soul learns not to fear its weakness, by grasping the strength to be found in the Sphere:  small, humble, silent affirmations that touch you.

Comfort Food

Chardin, Grace Before a Meal

Looks like more rain is heading this way; the view outside is dank and drippy.  True to form I want to head to the kitchen to put something together that tastes good, is easy to prepare, and brings a satisfied warmth to the bellies in my house.

Here are a few of our favorites.

Bubble & Squeak

`Now, cheer up, Toad,' she said, coaxingly, on entering, `and sit up and dry your eyes and be a sensible animal. And do try and eat a bit of dinner. See, I've brought you some of mine, hot from the oven!'    

It was bubble-and-squeak, between two plates, and its fragrance filled the narrow cell. ..and Toad, between his sobs, sniffed and reflected, and gradually began to think new and inspiring thoughts: of chivalry, and poetry, and deeds still to be done; of broad meadows, and cattle browsing in them, raked by sun and wind; of kitchen-gardens, and straight herb-borders, and warm snap-dragon beset by bees; and of the comforting clink of dishes set down on the table at Toad Hall...   

Bubble and Squeak has a somewhat negligible reputation amongst foodies, which must be due to the fact that traditionally it was made up of leftover mashed potatoes and old cabbage boiled down in a pot to muculent ignominy.  We've made our version of delectably seasoned Virginia pork sausage, fresh cabbage, and new potatoes.  Quite the rainy day fare!

Take half a head of fresh green cabbage, wash thoroughly, and slice into 1/2" thick sections, chopping these in half again, and set aside in a bowl into which you've poured about 1 c. ice-cold water.  Wash and cube about 4 medium russet potatoes, leaving skins on, into pieces 3/4" - 1" in diameter.  Brown 1 lb. local sausage (Valleydale, Weinberg's, Neese's are all good choices, depending upon where you live) in a large skillet until down, lift out and let drain; pour off most of the sausage grease from pan, leaving crisp drippings.  Place the cubed potatoes in the skillet with 1 tbsp. unsalted butter and 1/4 c. water, cover and cook over medium low heat 15 minutes.  Add sausage and cabbage, layering over potatoes, cover again and steam about 10 more minutes just until cabbage is lightly done.  With spatula, lift and turn over the mixture to blend, cover tightly and remove from heat and let sit about 10 more minutes.  Serve with piping hot biscuits and butter or cornbread.  So good.


Shrimp & Grits
Nathalie Dupree, Charleston chef and former SC Senatorial candidate, has written an entire cookbook on this delectable concoction.  Being from Virginia, I'd never heard of it until I moved to South Carolina.  After my first bite I honestly wondered how I'd actually lived up to that point.  Never fails to lift my spirits, no matter how bummed I may be or how difficult the day has been.  Pure heaven defined in a china bowl.  Serve with green salad and hot tea.

Cook grits according to package directions using milk instead of water for a creamy consistency (Generally, measure 1-1/4 c. grits to about 4 c. milk, heat slowly on medium-low heat, add 1 tbsp. butter and 1 tsp. salt, stirring often until mixture is thoroughly cooked and thickened but not lumpy.  Keep covered.  Takes about 20-25 minutes). 
While grits are cooking, brown 3 - 4 slices fresh bacon on both sides, remove, drain, crumble, set aside, reserving pan drippings.  Add a bit of olive oil if necessary to make about 1/3 c. total in pan.  Wash, peel, de-vein about 1-1/4 lb. fresh medium-sized shrimp and remove tails.  Place shrimp in pan on medium heat, turning quickly but gently with spatula as the shrimp heat thoroughly, and as they are finishing, replace crumbled bacon in pan and lower heat.  Add a splash of white wine or apple juice, 1 tbsp fresh chives, 1 clove fresh minced garlic, fresh ground black pepper, dash tabasco or other flavorful hot pepper sauce to taste.  Cover and remove from heat, let this mixture sit for about 3-5 minutes so that the flavors continue to meld.  Serve up grits in large round cream soup dish with shrimp mixture ladled over the top.  Serves 4-5 admirably.


Bean & Bacon Soup

A childhood favorite.  Great with a grilled cheese sandwich and a nice dill pickle or two.  Using freshly dried herbs gives this a monumental flavor that will bring them back for second helpings every time.

1 lb. pkg. Navy or Great Northern Beans, washed & drained
1/2 lb. smoky sliced bacon strips, cooked according to package
2-3 medium carrots, peeled & chopped
1 small white or yellow onion, minced and cooked in bacon drippings until clear, drain and set aside
1 8 oz. can tomato paste
6-8 c. water
2 cloves garlic, peeled & minced
1/2 tsp ground sage
1/2 tsp ground thyme
1 tsp snipped rosemary
dash turmeric, ground black pepper, salt to taste

Cook beans according to package directions in large soup pot or dutch oven until tender.  Add cooked bacon, crumbled, along with about 2 tbsp pan drippings from bacon, and mix thoroughly to distribute.  Add carrots, cooked onion, tomato paste, water to desired consistency, and seasonings.  Cover and cook thoroughly on medium-low heat for about an hour.  Serves 10-12.

21 Things I Learned from Lorelai Gilmore

1. There are very few pains that cannot be cured with a liberal application of Rocky Road ice cream, eyeliner, and martinis.
2. You can run from your troubles, but eventually you’ll run back. Otherwise you’ll never get over them.
3. Laughter is the best medicine.
4. Real love never ends.
5. Good things only get better. Sometimes this happens when you’re not looking.
6. Celebrate birthdays, weddings, and the life of your neighbor’s cat with the same warmth and enthusiasm.
7. The first snowfall of the season is a living, breathing, sacred thing. No matter when it happens, go outside and greet it with effusive joy.
8. Your first duty is to your children. Everything else can wait.
9. Even weirdo freaks have souls.
10. Coffee is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Beer runs a close second. Sorry, Ben.
11. Say you’re sorry as soon as you can, and mean it.
12. Wait. Time heals all wounds.
13. Show up. Look smashing.
14. Be yourself. No one else can pull it off.
15. Appreciate everyone, including obnoxious picky French men, gossipy busybodies, aging drama queens, control freaks with bad toupees, and grouchy hermits. If nothing else they keep life interesting and amusing, and sometimes they are exactly the right person for something very special.
16. Never underestimate the inexpressible importance of the perfect shoes, scarves, and handbags. Also, Hello Kitty. Pink sweaters with ruffles and flowers. Black mini skirts. Tulle. Skinny jeans. And pearls.
17. Movie nights are for eating, philosophy and social commentary. In that order.
18. Your first love will always be special. Your first real love even more so.
19. There are a lot of amazing female role models. After you’ve followed their example for awhile, be one.
20. Take others much more seriously than you take yourself.
21. Read. Often, or not. There’s a lot to be learned from books. But if you don’t read, surround yourself with people who do. Some of that wisdom will rub off.

Humility and a Secure Future

Reading "God Never Blinks." Regina Brett has so much to offer to a world down on its luck, seemingly running out of time, with so much to worry about. With plans scattered like so many specks of dust to places invisible, it's much too easy to forget our basis for faith, and how to reach out and hold on to what has kept us going in the past. Taking one more step forward sometimes feels too damned hard, and hardly worth it. After all, why wake up to one more day of struggle? Isn't it better to just roll over and hit the snooze button? "Forget about life for awhile"?

Why yes, actually. Sometimes that's exactly what we should do.



Life of Agony reminds us exactly what it's like to be worn out and in dire need of escape, maybe with a bit more of an edge than Billy Joel did, but the message is the same. Sometimes we do need to just get it all out in order to forget how bad it all is. And that's okay. But after that, there's something else that's the spiritual and emotional equivalent of clearing the air so we can breathe again.

It's called forgiveness.

Ms. Brett has a bumper sticker that says, "God Bless the Whole World. No Exceptions." She goes on to tell us "Forgive Everybody Everything." I can vouch for the goodness in that. There is nothing anyone's done to me that's worth the spiritual and emotional turmoil of holding a grudge. Nobody's worth eating up my liver over. Nobody gets to be that powerful over me and my life, and as far as I know, nobody really wants to be.

This is not to say nobody's mistreated me. Far from it. Like a lot of people, I'm one of the "walking wounded." But you know what? That just means I've learned a few things. It doesn't mean anyone owes me anything. That honor belongs to - you guessed it - just me.

For about five minutes, it does me good to get angry and rant and spout out all the venom and bile that some peoples' actions incite. But after that, it's good to just put all that away and move on, looking around to see the good things that are still surrounding my world and reminding me that it's never too late to put down that burden and step forward into the light. In fact, if I don't, it's just going to get heavier and heavier the longer I forget to do so.

"Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past. At first that sounds harsh, but once you let go of what you wanted the past to be, you can start changing the present and create a better future," Ms. Brett writes in Lesson 28. Well, duh. Why didn't I figure that out already? Sometimes we need people to point out the obvious, so we can clear the smudges from our eyes and actually see what we're looking at. You can't move beyond something, or stop being a victim, until you stop calling yourself a loser, and take back your own power over situations. Forgive, and then forget. Choose life, and remove yourself from that pain. Put it down. Let it go.

Here's a gem of real value, and I'm putting it here where I'll remember to come back and read it from time to time:

Humility is perpetual quietness of heart.
It is to have no trouble.
It is never to be fretted or vexed, irritable or sore; to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me.
It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised, it is to have a blessed home in myself where I can go in and shut the door and kneel to my Father in secret and be at peace, as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and about is seeming trouble.
--Dr. Bob, co-founder of AA and the Twelve-Step Program

Well then. Today is my lucky day. Yours, too! Go out there and forgive somebody. And then treat yourself to a big slice of that pie called Life. There's very little you can do that will more strongly ensure control of your own destiny. And what's more secure than that?

Traveling Light

I find myself sick of traveling, frankly. All I want to do now is curl up with a book, stare outside, look at the window, ponder a bit. Listen to loved ones, think about what they've said, listen some more. This is a major change from past propensities, which was to pick up and go at the merest wisp of a suggestion. Travel meant going beyond the place that I was, seeing new things as much as re-connecting with old ones.

Reading this piece at Salon brought this home recently. This is a wonderful article, well-crafted and superbly worded, the author has the grasp of language that slips into your mind easily. The second-person point of view is difficult to do well, but she does it with single-minded aplomb, leaving no question of her genius. It is taken from a larger work, Stranger Things Happen: Stories, and when I saw this I stopped reading long enough to add to my "To Read" list at Goodreads. It was that good. She was speaking to me, I was sure, or at least someone who had shared my experiences - we were kindred and I followed her down the rabbit-hole with faith that was quite blind. I was expecting a swirling, satisfying finish, where all is right in the end.

Silly me.

As I wrote to my sister when I sent her the article, dear Ms. Link had it right at the outset, she took you along a steep, winding and bloody difficult path, but surely she stopped just short of where the journey really reached its final destination. She knows the fairy-tale path so well! How could she have missed the whole point?

Read the article, mind you, before you travel further, or you're not going to believe me. You'll think I'm making this all up. And read this interview with Kelly Link by Laura Miller, Romance and Other Myths, which is right as rain throughout except for those needling little thrusts both of them make at the insanity that is "true love." Ms. Link and I share some similarities, we have both lived a "peripatetic life," but for pity's sake at some point we all have to settle down sometime. Maybe it's just the propensity of some people to joust at windmills, but it would be a sad world indeed for those of us who crave the warmth of quiet home fires to think that all this patient belief in love is all for naught. Phooey. Inside a voice whispers, "She missed the point."

Yet I still want to read her work, if only just for the repeated satisfaction of re-discovering that this belief in love is really just belief in myself. She's right, of course - the too-hard, misbegotten journey where you press on until your feet are cut to ribbons from all the miss-steps you've made is a bit much. When you get to the end of that trial how do you even know you're there? You're too busy picking glass out of your feet and re-applying eyeliner, wetting your lips, rehearsing what you're going to say so he doesn't get the wrong idea, and trying to remember where you left the keys. It's all drama at that point, and who has the energy for that?

So you clear the air and start over. Throw out the dirty dishes, add to the archaeological treasures in the backyard. Sweep up the shards from the broken mirror, apologize. Let a brief, beautiful memory or a shared glance make you smile. Back up, turn the wheel. Don't go down that path. Refresh your mind in shared laughter, challenge yourself to swallow pride over what was lost through ridiculous circumstances and look how simple things become once you've forgiven him. Forgiven yourself for being so blind and wicked.

There are two, no three, other fictional heroines, very different and yet similar enough to make the comparison in this instance, because their epiphanies are more - shall we say, agreeable. Theirs are stories I can relate to, be satisfied with, because these women and men forgave, and forgot, and in so doing reaped the benefits of what I believe is a more fulfilled existence, because it is shared. I don't have words to say just why this is, but it's true. No man is an island. No woman, either. Jane went back to Rochester. Elizabeth married Darcy. Luke and Lorelai figured it out in spite of everything. I know of a few real-life couples who did this, too. Sara and Richard. Gwen and Gavin. Joan and Robin, whose story in An Unfinished Marriage is remarkably simple, which makes it all the more interesting and applicable.

Truce. Because every day with your partner is practice for how you'll succeed in the real world, and how you treat those closest to you mirrors how you treat yourself.

Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not keep a record of wrongs. Love never ends. Faith, hope, and love - these three, but the greatest of these is Love.

"That Day is Coming"

Awhile back I found this article fascinating and thought-provoking. It doesn't actually even have a title, but it attends to the subject of out-or-not-out gay actors with sobering insight.

Gay Actors in the Film Industry - A History Lesson

After you've read that, hop on over to the LA Weekly News and read this amazing interview and article with Hollywood publicist Howard Bragman, who assists gay performers who want to come out to do so in a sane and effective way.

The Secret Lives of Queer Leading Men

Quote from the article:
The publicist hasn’t brought out an A-list, gay male actor — yet. But Bragman says that day is coming, and after the first superstar decides to reveal himself, a fundamental shift in American acceptance of gay leading men may not be far behind. He’s currently working with a famous musician who’s still closeted from the public, but who will come out next year. And the manager of one major movie star approached Bragman a year ago and asked about his client’s possibly going public, but the actor still refuses to pull the trigger.

“I felt a little frustrated with that superstar,” Bragman says in reflection, “because it had to be ‘handled.’ ”

I have a lot to think about these days. Seriously, there has to be a way to engender support for honesty. There just has to.

I hope you all are well and happy out there. Think about this with me, won't you?

SustainFloyd next Weekend

We visited Floyd last month and really can't wait to go back again.

From friend Fred's blog:

After a successful assembly at the foot of Buffalo Mountain for a drizzly-foggy October 10th “350 climate action”, SustainFloyd now looks ahead to the first community festival of its kind in the county, the SplitRail Eco-Fair, to celebrate ecologically-sustainable aspects of agriculture, arts, commerce, education and life together in vibrant community in a changing world.fragmentsfromfloyd.com, Fragments From Floyd, Oct 2009
Read the rest here

YouTube video of Buffalo Mountain assembly

Really wish I could go, but probably won't make it. It's a rather busy time for me right now - but my heart is there, and I have high hopes for a great weekend for those who can!

Because We Do

The last thing Sam said to his brother Dean at the end of last night's episode (5.04) was, "Because we don't have a choice." But the line that was silently transmitted through the look Dean returned to him was, "No, Sam. It's because we do."

Sam and Dean's journey is all about choice.

Free will sustains the human condition. To succomb to the temptation of blindly following rules imposed by others in order to feel safe, in the right, or morally superior is to give in to the power rush that enables people to do horrific things to one another.

To protect from those who have given in to that temptation is the free choice of those who would seek to also protect the right to choose for all mankind. And that is the sustainable lesson here.



This season is difficult to say the very least. It's the end of the journey, the downhill run. We know where they're going, what we aren't certain is all the twists and turns it will take to get there. But if where we've been with the Winchesters is anything to go on, they're not going without me. I'm so there, hanging on with all my might.

Amen, and even so come.

Check out my friend Marla's excellent Supernatural episode 5.04 recap post at Eclipse Magazine

Open House, by Elizabeth Berg

Open House by Elizabeth Berg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I liked it. I felt brave for picking it up, bringing it home, because my husband had just told me he wanted a divorce, and the central character of the book is going through a similarly served entree, and I just felt like I wanted to see what it would be like when someone you really love leaves you. Live it vicariously, see if I was brave enough. Because I was seriously considering jumping off a bridge, and I wanted to see how someone might go through it and actually come out on the other side.Mind you, if hubby hadn't said it, I probably would not have picked up this book. But he did, and I felt woefully unarmed, unable, unwilling to go through all that. So I read the book.I loved the characters, with all their flaws that are not too cliche, too predictable. I love that she made some difficult decisions, fell flat on her face, picked herself up again, tried harder.I love that the person she falls in love with about 3/4 of the way through this book is not perfect.I love that she refuses to be alone as much as possible, by renting her home to a wonderful diversity of human beings, and that when she must be alone, she cries and lives through it. I needed that grounding, that soulful peace.This book is probably not for everyone. This weekend, my husband said he was sorry, that he took it back - and it wasn't too late; I only lived for five days with this grief and worry.Long enough to read this book, and to know that it is not a human failing to want more. And that life is a river, that we all want the same things: to be wanted, to reflect on things and find understanding in another person.

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Learn. Remember. Pass it On.

THE ULTIMATE SILENCE
October 12, 1998



Listen to the mustn'ts, child.
Listen to the don'ts.
Listen to the shouldn'ts,
The impossibles, the won'ts.
Listen to the never haves,
Then listen close to me ...
Anything can happen, child.
Anything can be.

~ Shel Silverstein

Ten years ago, Matthew Shepard was murdered for being homosexual.

What will you do to end the silence?

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Interview with the Bishop

Church Times has unlocked this previously locked interview with Gene Robinson, the openly gay Episcopal bishop for the Diocese of New Hampshire.

I found it interesting and provocative. I've long thought it was a shame the issues had to come to this juncture. I encourage you to read, and ponder. Most importantly, he says to please keep communication lines open. That is the material point.

and sunrise greets the dawn

Image courtesy Wright and Associates

Society Hill. Cashua. Darlington.

And - just so you blend in and aren't immediately branded as "you ain't from here, are ya?" - that's Cash-euw-ay. Not Cash-eu-uh. Say it soft and let it roll off your tongue like sorghum syrup, smooth as the serene Pee Dee River itself. I haven't really been there yet, but it's on the list.

Society Hill is the little town where the crew goes for a special meal during the Kolb project. It used to be just the way it sounds - and in a matter of speaking, still is. Gracious folk come out laying platters of barbecue, vegetables, cakes and pies down on a table around which gather the scientists, who for one night are treated like family no matter from whence they hail. Most of them are not from the South, and many are young, in their third or fourth year in a University program, and in general have a slightly bemused attitude toward the natives.

Many are older, and have been here many, many times, or now call our state home. They let them stay, as long as they behave and are respectful of their elders, and don't forget that no matter how long they live here, they will never, never be natives, and there are certain subjects therefore that they will never understand and opinions thereon may be tolerated out of respect for a friendship, but will never be shared.

We know ourselves and our idiocyncracies and foibles, and are comfortable with them. Thank you all the same.

I did not attend this meal, but I always hear about it. One of the ladies makes certain my husband's favorite, Key Lime Pie, is on the menu. They all get a taste of the local 'shine, and are expected to render an honest opinion on its vintage as compared to the previous year. They leave with full bellies and humble hearts. The outpouring is a bit overwhelming, for they are essentially strangers and infiltrators, yet the locals treat them with kindness and hospitality usually reserved for family and the closest of friends.

As little as some have, it is still wondrous to know there are places where a handshake is as good and enforceable a contract as a registered document at the courthouse, and the fact that someone looks you in the eye while you speak means that not only will he remember you, but your words as well, even if several months pass by and you do not speak. So I smiled as I listened to the team still expressing gratitude and astonishment at the bounty spread before them earlier in the week. And I was reminded of arms laced over a community well-fed, bustling with purpose, accomplishment, peace, and generosity.

As previously related, I left early the next morning. In the seat of South Carolina auto racing, I stopped to refuel at a corner market. A neatly hand-lettered sign on the pump caught my attention, and I squinted in the reflected sunlight to make it out:

Welcome to the Corner Connection
Due to drive-offs, we ask
that you please pre-pay for
gas after dark. Sorry for your
inconvenience.

The attention paid to politeness and sincerity was as clearly etched in those words as the pleasant expression on the attendant's mouth as I entered the store. A small man with a merry face akin to a hobbit's, he bobbed behind the counter talking smack with a big man in pursuit of a lottery ticket while I paused at the counter display of pre-packaged donuts, bear claws, and other disgustingly sugary substances. There was no way I could eat that stuff, so I moved over to the aisle where the pretzels were stored, forgetting one major facet of small-town life, even as it was drifting into my ears, my eyes roaming inattentively across the shelves.

"Hey there good morning," the clerk spoke to me, savoring the words with a long, sweet essence of kindness in each syllable. I looked up and waved, then ducked my head down again. Uncomfortable with strangers, especially males, I resolved to get something quickly and get out of there. I could eat real food when I got back home, only about an hour away.

"Gimme one of them educational tickets, the green ones," the big man spoke up.

"Yeah? Gitcha in trouble," was the affable reply.

"I don't care."

The clerk continued to greet each customer in like manner: "Good morning, there." "We sure appreciate your business." "Come back now, anytime."

As I type these exclamations now there is no way to communicate the warm hospitality and plain goodness in the man's speech. I heard it, and it cracked my shell. Tentatively, I approached the counter, laying a bottle of orange juice down and a pack of Orbit gum.

"Do you happen to know where I can get a biscuit around here?" I asked. I gestured vaguely down the road in the direction I was headed.

"Why, we got the best biscuits you'll eat right here," was his reply, and I was immediately struck with my stupidity. Of course they did. This was the "Corner Connection," after all, not a big BP Plaza. I'd chosen it specifically because it was NOT a franchise market, and its neat appearance bespoke respectability and pride in honest work. You find these all over the south, if you'll just look, mind you. You out-of-towners ought to broaden your horizons, and try the local fish. But as I was sayin'.

"Do you wanna plain biscuit, nothin' on it?" He gestured toward the back and also along the heated window just to his right, where neat packages containing portable breakfasts waited neatly, exactly --and i do mean exactly as my grandmother made, and a few extended cousins still do, to take along to work for those who must do so in the mornings. I knew in those wax-paper wrapped shells lay the melting-hot goodness of homemade biscuits with scrambled eggs, sausage or bacon, and the hot sauce was sitting right there at my elbow if I cared to embellish it a bit.

"I think I'd just like a plain biscuit, thank you --oh," as I saw him walking toward the kitchen, I faltered.

"'Melda - do we have anymore o' them biscuits back there? Nice lady out here wants a plain one." He fairly danced on the tips of his toes. I knew the woman back there, whoever she was, had been up with the sun like me that morning, only with a purpose of mind that led all the way down to her fingers, and in turning out fifty or so breakfasts, she'd already done a days' work, and was in the midst of scrubbing up. I could not do that to her. Or myself. Sheesh.

I closed my mind against things like cholesterol and fat calories. Today was a day. The end.

"No, no, that's all right." I waved at him, staring at the case and spying the answer I was looking for. "Do you have any sausage ones, made up?"

He turned, smiling. "Sure do." He opened the case and a heavenly smell poured out. Ohmygod. Yum.

He grasped a hefty one and popped it into a little brown bag, handing it over with what I knew to be his trademark smile, tho' I'd never seen him before and likely wouldn't again. "That's the local Weinberg's sausage," he added with satisfaction.

"Well, I love that," I responded. I had no idea, which fact added to the word "local" consummated the decision for me at once.

"Do you? It's good, " he said, nodding as he took a bill from my extended fingers. He rang it up promptly and handed me my change.

"We sure appreciate your business. Come back anytime."

"I'll do that. Have a lovely day." And I went out into the morning, a treasure in my hands and heart. In the car, I opened the paper and bit into the softness of the biscuit, reveling in the spicy flavor of the homemade sausage on my tongue. So good. Moist. To hell with factory-sized hog farms. Waste of resources, pollute the watersheds. This was heaven, and you can't get it from industrial hogs. (I should have stopped at the farm-store when I saw it on the way out of town and picked up several packages for the next time I make cassoulet. Nothing better, and there's more in common between the family Provencal and these Darlington-area farmers than you'd think at first. It's all about taste.) These babies were raised spoiled as hell, living fat and happy off the land until the day they died, and the sweetness of their existence underscored for me the expanded meaning the words, "family business" have for me now.

Just as the word, "primitive" now evokes a mindset evocative of grace and peace, where food and goods and services touched by human hands are still evident, "still in the family" means they haven't let go, haven't sold out, someone still rises every day to greet the dawn expending hours of energy in just doing what they do best, working at an honest trade or purpose, where the sounds of birds calling and cows lowing and the wind in the grasses frame a lifestyle where you can still hear the heartbeat of the earth.

Truly the light is sweet
and a pleasant thing it is
for the eyes to behold the sun.

And I started up my car, and drove home, unabashedly poetic about the fact that I'd just put $20.00 in my gas tank. These days of multiple-miles-per-hour travel like this are ending, drawing to a close, and I am saving up memories to recall for the future. I am where I am supposed to be. It is life-affirming to come into contact with people for whom, in spite of the Internet (and I love it so), in spite of rampant commercialism, in spite of the assimilation of a mass-market cultural freakism by so many other places, there still remain those with whom I share a deep cultural connection, with whom it would be silly to compare notes, because even though we are separated to a vast degree by education and political views, we line up exactly to the nth degree on what matters most.

Community is worth saving - and there are so many communities, even those intrinsically associated as Darlington is with a sport like auto-racing, who remain diversified enough, close enough to the ground and still interlinked with their agricultural roots, that they will be saved, they will endure, they will survive and go forward to the next thing that awaits. The keys to their future lay within their past, and in their vast inner wisdom, they never lost it. Again I have to say it: We will be fine.

Amen, even so come, Lord Jesus.

moonset over the pee dee

We woke this morning in the dark, gathering our things and venturing out into the world to find that frost limned the windows with silver lace. I spent a cozy night in a grain silo converted into a dollhouse, or rather a hunting lodge; four floors of airy living that the longer I stayed the harder I knew it would be to leave.

But I was only a momentary visitor to the Great Pee Dee Heritage Preserve, a once-a-year enticement that gives me fodder for ruminations and prose for long months afterwards. Like any foray into the wild, either modern or anachronistic, here is where I re-learn that my connection to the land is temporal and severe.

Image courtesy Johannes Kolb Archaeological Site Public Outreach

Last evening I drove up from Stateburg, entering the Darlington Historic District just as the sun dropped below the horizon, so that the last few miles of the trip were cloaked in gilded splendor, tracing the tender branches of the newly-budding willows that lined the corridor of the river, silhouetting the great Black Angus cattle as they lumbered toward dinner, the glow of new green grass behind them shouting the advent of spring as much as the fecund scent of orchard blossoms.

The Silo

Husband, the archaeologist, has a valid excuse to stay the entire ten days that the annual event is open: he's working. From all over the southeast dozens of volunteers, students, and faculty descend on the property once inhabited by one Johannes Kolb, a farmer of some success in this community that still derives the bulk of its income from agriculture. The site has been studied for over ten years, and has yielded a wealth of information about its former occupants.


But I do not come to study in any official capacity, I come to absorb and wallow in the good company and newly unearthed information. Archaeologists live simply, but believe in epicurean comforts. And there is always music. They incorporate what they have learned into their evening relaxations, as they turn a warm fire into the means by which reproduction earthen pots are kilned, as close as possible to that used by the makers of the shards dug up during the week. The bits are studied as to form, structure, and composition, and copies are attempted.

Some of them are marvelously useful. Others for some reason or other do not make it through the firing, coming from the ashes with deep cracks or scars, but these are still considered useful for what they yield about the process.


So we sat in the dark after dinner, imbibing our choice of refreshment, and laughed and talked and sang to the two guitars that appeared to accompany the evening's quiet melodies from the tree frogs and waterfowl. As I said, they live simple but rich, and anyone who wanted to suggested a song and whomever knew the words would sing. The musicians created fantastical accompaniment, and the frogs provided rhythmic backnotes.


There is a lesson here: everything we have is all we need. They discussed the pits they'd dug, and assessed their uses as aboriginal refrigerators. They showed me how the pots were formed for differing purposes - some for boiling, some for storage, some for carrying. Some of them know how to make cordage from fibers found in the eastern woodlands, they know what mushrooms to eat and what leaves will treat wounds.

One of them can make fire in his hands. I didn't say with his hands, I said in his hands. That deserves its own post, for now I will leave that to your imagination, so you may feel the wonder of the phenomenon in the same mystery as the children for whom it was created millenia ago, and you may think about from whence come magical legends of such things. They weren't as magical, or as mythical, as you may believe. But I'll give you a hint: the aboriginal was a chemist.

The promethean in me laughs up her sleeve at that.

This is how I know humanity will be fine, no matter what. This is how I can bury my nose in my books, tend to my children, live my life, with only half an ear to the wind, listening to the wails that beset much of the world obsessed with oil and finance and danger. You tend to that if it pleases you. I'll be as far away from that as I can possibly be, heart dancing in accompaniment to the wind that breathes through my soul.

How can you live like that? I ask you.


Today is Good Friday. Let me tell you why it is ALL good: because everything we have is all we need. And there is only so much we can accomplish if we are listening to angry voices, trying to make up for sadness in which we had no hand, and for which the only answer is to pick up and walk away. And be the beacon. It only took me about 3/4 of my life so far to figure that out - Good God, do you think I want to dwell on how much time I wasted? Wouldn't you rather concentrate on what you've learned and may put to good use, enriching your everyday life and that of those you love?

I believe you would. And so would I.


The definition of wealth contines to evolve, and I am today as wealthy as I've ever been, even though dollar-wise I bring in less than 1/4 of what I did five years ago. I measure my wealth in smiles, and laughter, in peaceful moments around a campfire, in viewing miles of lovely arching trees, old oaks, willows, and pine; in quilted pastures through which creeks tumble in tranquil paths, neat farmhouses set back from the road, brick stores, lumber roads, and a deepest-blue veiled purple morn. And I measure it in better health, and seeing less stress in the eyes of my children. My world is a succinct registry of all that matters.


This morning I had a perfect sky of cerulean blue edged in a silken swath of apricot. Last night I took part in community harmony of the happiest sort, and watched artists at work making useful, beautiful things out of river mud. I was warmed by a red-hot purple-gold fire of wood gathered not fifty feet from where it was built, that served a dual purpose both in beauty and utility. I slept in a building that gives new meaning to the words "adaptive reuse."

PeeDee River at flood stage

It cost me exactly $14.43 in gas money. Everything else was free.

If that isn't your definition of a bargain, I'd really like to know it.

But there is more. Tomorrow I'll tell you all about it. But first, go out and greet the sunrise, say good-night to the moon. That is where it begins.

Note: You can read more about the Johannes Kolb site in this article originally published in South Carolina Wildlife Magazine, Life on a Sandy Knoll, by Christopher Judge.

Archaeologists Chris Judge and Jason Smith