Reading Sets You Free

Reading Sets You Free
(Image from Blue Cereal Education)

Yes, it does set me free. It always has.

Amidst the Covid-19 Pandemic, books keep me from being "locked down." I don't care if the books are in the hard copy form of actual physical books or if they are electronic. As long as the words are there. As long as they take me some place and show me a thing or two or twenty-seven.

Many of my friends  are working jigsaw puzzles. Thousands of pieces puzzles. They rescue them from the backs of closets. They retrieve them from storage units. They order them online. They share them back and forth and back again. They have preferences: puzzles about travel, puzzles about cats, brightly colored puzzles, oddly shaped puzzles.

I can't do puzzles. I have a cat. My Kočka, would no doubt love for me to work jigsaw puzzles -- on the dining table, sans 24-hour guard.

He plays with things. Carries things around. Loses things. He probably doesn't think he's "losing" things. The only thing he loses is "interest" in those things he carries around.

Kočka is an unusually smart cat, but words in books are beyond him. In fact, the books themselves hold no interest for him. And because my e-reader, unlike my cell phone, does not respond to his touching the screen, he's not interested in it either -- soooo, he leaves them alone.

Consequently, I may lose my place in whatever book I'm reading, but I won't lose the book, be it hard copy or electronic.

Our public library is closed for the foreseeable future. You can go online and put books on hold. Hard copy books you pick up curbside. It goes like this. They send you an email when the books you want are available. You park in the designated area at the library, call them to tell them you've arrived and open your trunk, then get back in your car. They bring your books out in a brown paper bag and put them in your trunk. You get out and close your trunk and go home. (Kinda puts you in mind of receiving contraband, doesn't it?) No face-to-face contact. Minimal risk of spreading Covid-19. Or you can download the books you want to your e-reader with absolutely zero chance of spreading the virus. Either way, it's free.



This week I finished Diane Mott Davidson's Tough Cookie, a cozy mystery, one of Davidson's series featuring the caterer sleuth Goldie Schultz. Her books are set in Colorado and are liberally sprinkled with recipes. 

Of course, I have to interrupt reading to prepare this recipe or that. The only thing is, even though her books are set just up the hill from where I live, I still have to amend them for cooking at altitude. At a book-signing, she explained that she has a professional change the recipes so they work at sea level.



And then I read Fredrik Backman's Britt-Marie Was Here. Let me just say, if it's a Backman book, it's worth my time. He writes people I know and philosophy I understand.

         

                   "A human being, any human being at all, has so perishingly few chances to 

              stay right there, to let go of time and fall into the moment. Explode with passion.

                    A few times when we are children, maybe, for those of us who are allowed 

              to be. But after that, how many breaths are we allowed to take beyond the con-

              fines of ourselves? How many pure emotions make us cheer out loud, without
              a sense of shame?
                     All passion is childish. It's banal and naive. It's nothing we learn; it's 
               instinctive, and so it overwhelms us. Overturns us. It bears us away in a flood. 

               All other emotions belong to the earth, but passion inhabits the universe."

Those two books, I downloaded on my e-reader from the library. 

My next book was Nevada Barr's Liberty Falling. Several years ago while my Daddy was still living, one of his care-givers brought me a grocery bag filled with Nevada Barr books. For those of you not familiar with her work, she writes murder mysteries, a bit more action-packed than Davidson's. Barr's main character is Anna Pigeon, a Park Ranger. Each mystery is set in one of the National Parks. This one takes place at The Statue of Liberty National Monument, Ellis Island National Park, and in New York City's Manhattan.

Remember the old James Bond movies, back when they included not only flash/bang/chase scenes but actual dialog. And that dialog was snarky?  Like when Bond was on the dance floor with a beautiful woman and he saw reflected in her eyes an assassin aiming at him. He spun her around so that it was she who was shot. He danced the victim over to a chair, gently sat her down in it and said to a bystander, "Do you mind if my friend sits this one out? She's just dead."

Barr laces her high energy action with the same kind of humor. At one point, Anna ascertains that a fellow Park Ranger, though injured, is not in danger of dying and she must go ahead and save the day. 


Barr writes,

"Anna squirmed under the Dumpster and retrieved Andrew's gun. A Glock 9mm, a good weapon. She chambered a round. 'I'll be back,' she promised. Arnold Schwarzenegger had said the same thing in Terminator 2. It sounded more convincing with the accent."

And a few pages on:

"Regardless of how divinely inspired, New York frowned upon unauthorized persons shooting people with borrowed guns. Anna spent seven hours with three different law enforcement agencies giving statements, defending her
actions, accepting congratulations, being bullied and drinking bad coffee. Drowning in polluted salt water was beginning to seem like the good old days."



Despite the current administration's hurry to "reopen," the simple fact of the matter is Covid-19 is here to stay. Until there is a safe and effective vaccine, those of us in an "at risk group" or who interact with people in such a group should continue to stay home when possible, observe six-feet social distancing and wear masks when away from home, and wash our hands often or use hand sanitizer.

And do whatever we can to limit cabin fever -- work jigsaw puzzles, read, watch old movies, dance in the laundry room, sing in the kitchen, paint, bake, write, take online ukulele lessons -- make our own happy!

Y'all stay safe.

All Writers Should Be Poets

Writing is Magic
image from Dreamwidth Studios

Yes, all writers should be poets. And word musicians. They should play language, the simple, normal language of real people. Because simple, normal people (whether they have the time to see it or not) live in all the colors of sound and sight and touch. And thought.

Barbara Kingsolver is just such a writer.

From Pigs in Heaven:

              "Cash learned beadwork without really knowing it ....
                He never imagined ...
                he would have to do another delicate thing with his hands ...
                to pay the rent. But since he started putting beads
                on his needle each night, his eye never stops
                counting rows: pine trees on the mountainsides, boards in a fence,
                kernels on the ear of corn as he drops it into the kettle.
                He can't stop the habit, it satisfies the ache
                in the back of his brain, as if it might
                fill in his life's terrible gaps.
                His mind is lining things up,
                making jewelry for someone the size of God."

The words are Kingsolver's. The line breaks are mine. The experience is ours. Yours and mine in this time of Covid-19 when we keep apart from our old lives. We work puzzles (jigsaw and otherwise) or binge watch TV or read or sleep or garden or bake or any and all the things we each do to satisfy "the ache in the back of" our mind. To fill "life's terrible gaps" brought into such fine focus by our new, slow-paced, quiet time.

Maybe, in this new, slow-paced, quiet time, we are all "making jewelry for someone the size of God." .

My World

My world

     If I close my eyes and reach out my hands to either side, I can touch the edges of my world. On March 7, 2020, the Novel Corona Virus 19 contracted my world. On that date, I returned home from San Antonio, Texas by way of Houston. That's 1,226 miles. During the almost two months since then, the farthest I've been away from the hallway in this picture is 6.4 miles.
     This is my hallway. Behind us and to our right is the great room, my kitchen/dining/living room. My husband and I cook, eat, read, watch TV, and doze there. The first door on the right is the coat closet. Ostensibly meant to hold visitors coats. The last visitors we had were since our niece and her family. They stopped over on their way to go skiing in the mountains then back home to New Mexico. They left our house March 10.
     March 11, I went to my exercise class at my Rec Center. March 12, my rec center closed. And my public library closed. The two suns of my circumbinary social system went dark.
     On March 17, Colorado's governor and the State Public Health Department issued "Public Health Order 20-22 closing bars, restaurants, theaters, gymnasiums, casinos, nonessential personal services facilities, and horse track and off-track betting facilities statewide." (And here I didn't even know Colorado had a horse racing track. I knew there had been Gray Hound racing in Colorado, but it had shut down sometime before I moved here and was then banned in 2014.)
     At first Stay-at-Home was frightening and oppressive. The Rec Center where I went four days a week for exercise class was closed. That was my connection with the community. That's where I'd met my friends, where I interacted with them, where my walking group had been formed.
     I call it "my walking group" but it is truly "our" walking group -- a loosely knit group of people mostly over 65. We are from all over -- as global as Covid-19. And some are that rarity, Native Coloradans.
     Thank goodness, the Stay-at-Home Order has exemptions. We can walk in our town's public parks or on its streets as long as we observe six-feet social distancing and wear masks.  That's what the walking group does now, almost everyday.
     We used to go for coffee, or whatever, at various shops and bakeries after our walks. That's when we visited. By that I mean we talked about everything -- politics, religion, families, children, grandchildren, science, health, books, movies. You name it, we talked about it. There was always empathy and plenty of laughter.
   
     Those shops and bakeries are open for curb service only now, so we sit in empty picnic pavilions or set up our folding chairs in parking lots and driveways (maintaining social distancing, of course) and we visit. We still enjoy empathy and plenty of laughter.
(This photo was taken after the 6-feet, but before face masks were mandated and before those who live in Senior housing were restricted to their apartments and allowed no visitors and no communal dining.)
         
Oh, yes -- and now we have Zoom meetings. That could be a joke "How is a group of Senior Citizens like a kindergarten class?"
       

     One day last week, I understood that this is my world for the foreseeable future.
Oddly enough, recognizing that was very freeing. My world happens to be in the midst of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. Mountains and lakes, and wondrous skies with glorious sunrises and sunsets.

Sunrise and Sunset (Both photos looking west from my back deck.)  

   





We have walking trails that feel like we're away from the city, while still being in the city. The herons and cormorants and egrets, the geese and ducks and robins are all back from their wintering grounds. They're building nests and hatching babies. They remind me that life goes on.
   
     Life does go on and we observe the current restrictions knowing that we are protecting our families and friends as much as we can. And they are protecting us as much as they can.

This is my world.

Time for Tears

Anne with an E

I'm having a hard time dealing with my emotions in this hard time of Covid-19.

It is likely that my children and grandchildren will not be able to travel from Texas for a visit this summer. My life is out of my control. I am being kept away from my friends. No in-person exercise classes. No going to coffee shops or the library or museums or movie theaters.

Standard television fare other than the news has not been my cup of tea for many years. And now even the news is more upsetting than regular television. The local news, the national news, the BBC world news just make me angry or scared or so sad I don't think I can stand it. Not even PBS's News Hour with Jeremy Brown covering the Arts and Culture from his home salves my heart for long.

Thank goodness for Netflix, Brit Box, Amazon Prime, MHz, and TED.com. I can watch what I need and what I want, when I want. With my breakfast to start my day. Late at night if I can't sleep. Any time when I can't be doing what it is I would rather be doing.

These online television options offer all kinds of escapism, abundant opportunities for enlightenment, humor both sharp and gentle, and inspiration.

Oddly enough the show that is most effective at helping me deal with the heavy sadness, the sorrow I feel for the whole world, is the Canadian Broadcasting Company's Anne with an E. It's based on the novel Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery, published in 1908.



"Since its publication, Anne of Green Gables has been translated into at least 36 languages and has sold more than 50 million copies, making it one of the best selling books worldwide. The first in an anthology series, Montgomery wrote numerous sequels, and since her death, another sequel has been published, as well as an authorized prequel. The original book is taught to students around the world." -- Wikipedia

And I've never read any of these books. How did I miss them? Oh, well. I'm a slow reader. I didn't read a Bobbsey Twins book until I was a Junior in High School or a Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House book until my daughter was reading them. But I did read all of  Louisa May Alcott's novels. That counts, right?!





I've also not watched any other television or movie productions of the Anne of Green Gables stories. To be honest, I thought they would be children's stories. Treacle and pablum.


The Canadian television series Anne with an E, created by Moira Walley-Beckett, must be an adaptation rather than a faithful rendering of the books. I can't imagine that a writer who wrote during the early 20th Century would be so progressive in their thinking. The TV series deals with the very harsh realities of the late 19th Century that an orphan most certainly must have dealt with -- bullying and bigotry against all and sundry who were somehow different from the dominant white, English-speaking, Canadian culture. (An awakening for me. I grew up believing those attitudes unique to my Oklahoma -- here meaning "Southern" -- roots.) And the equally harsh realities of life and death due to the limitations of medical science at that time.




Anne was an orphan, farmed out to whatever family would take her in. She was treated like a servant or worse until she was sent to the elderly Cuthbert siblings, Marilla and Matthew, played by Geraldine James and R.H. Thomson. Anne, played by Amybeth McNulty, was sent to the Cuthberts in error. They had requested a boy whom they expected to help them work the farm.




Marilla and Matthew have grown old and sterile, untouched by the world beyond Prince Edward Island, the culture into which they were born. Anne, with her life-saving imaginary world, turns their prim and proper life upside down. Indeed, the whole community of Avonlea's.

Life for these characters is hard. Some people do mean, unacceptable things to them. Sometimes their own attitudes cause them great pain. Some of them never change.  People die. A baby is born. Some of the people do change.  And I cry.

But the sorrows and joys are not gratuitous or unrealistic. Somehow, shedding tears for these characters' sorrows and joys in their very harsh time is cathartic for me living in our own very harsh time.

Whether for their sorrows or joys, or for ours, it is a time for tears and tears help.

The Best Night Out

Civic Center Music Hall

I grew up in small town Oklahoma. As a teen, we lived in a college town on the northern edge of Oklahoma City, it was still a small town and quite separate from The City, but....

The college afforded us access to things other small towns lacked. We could swim in the college indoor pool year round. We could use the college library in addition to our school library and the local public library. Plays were performed by the drama department. There were recitals and concerts, poetry readings, and art shows. We had a veritable smorgasbord of the arts by college students, instructors, and invited professionals. Consequently, I developed a taste for that kind of entertainment.

Now in the time of Covid-19, here I am living within easy access to a big city, complete with all these things from multiple colleges and universities plus the Denver Museum of Art, Colorado Symphony, and Colorado Ballet. Let me just say, Colorado Ballet is an excellent company and Denver has an excellent ballet audience.

We have travelling Broadway shows, and big-name concerts at top venues. Red Rocks Amphitheater is almost within sight of my house -- if you take away a couple of ridges and lots of trees.

But not right now. The doors are closed. The halls are silent. The lights are out.

So I'm remembering the best night out I ever had -- keeping in mind, I've had many best nights out.

This one, though, came when I was living in a different small town in Oklahoma. Guthrie, Oklahoma to be exact. A perfectly fine small town. Actually, as small towns go, it wasn't quite that small. It was and is the County Seat which means it had more than its fair share of lawyers and doctors. It had a daily newspaper, plenty of restaurants specializing in good, hearty food -- one that could actually qualify as fancy (and expensive.) A movie theater, a drive-in movie theater, and umpteen history museums (Guthrie was the Territorial Capital of Oklahoma.) The Masonic Temple sits on a hill overlooking the city. It has a very fine pipe organ and the nicest Ladies' Room I've ever been in complete with a baby grand piano in it's sitting room. The only Ladies' I've ever been in with a sitting room.

But you know, sometimes you just need to get out of your day-to-day life in your safe but too familiar small town. You need to see people you don't know.

A fellow single mother and I drove out of Guthrie to The City. Her daughter and my son were with their respective fathers so we had no immediate responsibilities.

First there was dinner at a restaurant fancy enough to have semi-private booths, cloth table cloths, and cloth napkins. Then we sat with hundreds of people we did not know at Civic Center Music Hall watching the Oklahoma City Ballet. Oklahoma City has the best ballet audience! They actually feel free and know when to applaud instead of waiting until the end of a performance.

From there we went to a jazz club for more good music and a drink or two, some good conversation and maybe a bit of flirtation.

The club closed, but we weren't ready to go home yet. Or at least not all the way home. So to the Hill Top Cafe in Guthrie. The Hill Top was one of those tiny 24-hour places with stools at the counter facing the grill, some booths around the outside walls and two long communal tables down the middle of the floor. It caught folks when the bars and clubs closed and, because it was just down the road from the VFW Hall, it caught all those folks, too, after they had danced and drank their Saturday night away. In The Hill Top at that hour, we could see any hair style, any clothing style, any age group over 21.

And even some people we knew. People who had also broken away from their mundane small-town life for whatever their style of best night out might be.

Finally, as the sun came up, she dropped me at my house. There is just something wonderful about ending your best night out, safe in your own small town at the hour you most often got up.

Some Days Are Stone

Some days are just rocks

It snowed Easter. It snowed all day Easter and the day after. We set a record low temperature for Easter's date. A record set in 1933. We dropped even lower the day after Easter, breaking the record for that date set in 1933. And we broke the record for the lowest high temperature for that date, also set in 1933.

PLUS the sun didn't shine for those two days. Yesterday the sun did shine but it was too cold for me and for the group I walk with to walk. My Rec Center is closed indefinitely. That means no exercise classes. I know. I know. There are exercise classes online that I can exercise with "in the comfort of my own home," she says sarcastically. (And by-the-bye, why is sarcastically spelled that way? Five syllables! Nobody says it using five syllables! Four are quite enough.)

But my friends won't be in my own home. Well, not until after lunch. And then by ZOOM. It is better than nothing, but we spend most of the free 40 minutes helping each other get both our faces and our voices on. Yesterday we watched one friend's left foot most of the time and my voice kept disappearing. "Twenty-first Century technology, PFAW!" she says spitting on the floor. (No, I didn't just spit on the floor. I'da had to clean it up.) 

I never did Zoom until this whole coronavirus mess. And quite frankly, I don't want to do it long enough to get good at it.

I used to watch the local news in the morning. We have a meteorologist here who is great at explaining Colorado's weather and I love weather. Since I'm from Oklahoma where the weather is nothing if not exciting, Colorado weather is wonderfully different, positively exotic. Who ever heard of giving the weather forecast based on altitude?! "...above 7,000 feet will have up to a foot of snow." And graupel and virga. Graupel is soft hail -- tiny little snowballs. Virga is rain that doesn't make it to the ground because the air it's falling through is so dry that it all evaporates.

Since 'rump moved into the White House, the news is not so pleasant. (I use the contraction of his name, because it would be impolite to call the President of the United States "ass.") I thought his bleeding in and around my weather news irritating, sometimes infuriating. Since covid-19, it's gotten scarier and sadder. 

So I just can't watch the morning news. I can't go to exercise class. And I can't walk with my friends when it's so cold. Not even observing social distancing and wearing a mask. To think, a month ago, it wasn't this bad. Four months ago, I didn't know having to live like this -- here -- was even possible. 

                                                                  Although the death toll includes people of all ages, it is especially high among certain groups. Seniors and those with underlying health problems. At my age, I and most of my friends, are "Seniors."                                                                                                                                  Lord, even the Rolling Stones have postponed their North American tour due to Coronavirus. But then, they're all older than I am -- though just.

"Some days are stone."

Even my online newspaper leads with this roundup of the news "Coronavirus spikes in homeless population, unemployment FAQ, more snow and cold coming." Yep, snow's coming again tomorrow. And we're supposed to get more snow than the seven inches we got Easter Sunday and Monday.

That old John Denver song is right. "Some days are diamonds, some days are stones, sometimes the hard times won't leave me alone." But you know what? Today we have sunshine and I will walk with my friends observing social distancing and wearing a mask. Today the sunshine will make stones sparkle like diamonds and as far as the snow goes, well --

Me and Scarlet O'Hara,  we'll "think about that tomorrow."

Some Days Are Diamonds

"Some days are diamonds, some days are stones" -- Dick Feller

It's Easter Sunday. 

When I awoke this morning, it was dark, 23 degrees, and snowing. The forecast is for snow the rest of today and tomorrow and tomorrow night. 

Travel is discouraged or, in some instances, banned. When we walk together, we walk apart and wear masks. When we meet for coffee, we have Zoom meetings, spending much of the limited time helping each other navigate the technology so we can be together virtually.

And today is Easter. Traditional sites for Sunrise Services are closed. Churches are closed. The world is closed. All now relegated to the virtual.

Traditions are now virtual.

The Easter tradition, for Christians, is a time to commemorate Jesus rising from the dead, promising  life. For Jews, Passover (which shares calendar time with Easter Week) commemorates the tenth of the plagues sent by God to force the Egyptians to free the Israelites. By marking their doorposts with the blood of a spring lamb, their firstborn lived while the first born children of their Egyptian neighbors died. A promise of life in a world of death. 

"Sometimes the hard times won't leave me alone"

In this time of our own plague, traditions that promise us hope and give us peace are especially needed, but are available to us in such changed forms, it's hard to know if they will provide hope and peace.

And right now, it is snowing.

 "Sometimes a cold wind blows a chill in my bones"

But if I am still and quiet, right here, right now, I can see that today is "diamond."

I am here, cossetted in my warm home. Not alone, but with the man I love. We have food and water and access to the world. We are well. Those we love are far from us but they too, are well.

The sun may not be shining on my home today. The weather is closed in around our neighborhood and we can't see the foothills, but we do have the bright white of snow. 

Snow bathes the world in the most beautiful silence. A silence accented with birdsong. They know it's Spring. 

This layer of snow somehow makes me feel separated and safe from the worries and fears that are today's Covid-19 plague.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      And when the sun returns to our beautiful snowy world we'll celebrate the light on our neighborhood and on the foothills.

So for now, I'll have a nice cup of coffee, some buttered toast (homemade, sourdough of course) and enjoy this Easter that the snow has made "diamond."