Decoration Day

So, off we'll go, Mimi & I, in the next little while, up to the cemetery to place some of the last peonies hereabouts on a trio of graves. Thirty years it's been since my little brother was planted in one of them. Paul Wesley Harness, of the glorious brown eyes, enviable eyelashes. A 21-year-old soldier he was, posted in Germany, when he was killed. Passed out I reckon he was, riding in a car driven by a buddy who'd been drinking, who took an icy corner too quickly. Now his bones rest beside those of our folks, Elaine Wolfe Harness (1928-1992) and Raymond Robert Harness (1922-2008), veteran of WWII. He was a Coast Guard radio operator in the South Pacific.

Far away from here, away off in Scotland, is another graveyard, St. Mun's Churchyard. According to www.findagrave.com, there lie the bones of Elizabeth Blackwell, who passed from this earth 100 years ago today (on the 91st anniversary of the birth of Walt Whitman). 'Twas in the year 1849, the gents that ran Geneva Medical College, in Geneva, NY, awarded Miss Blackwell a diploma, making her this nation's 1st female M.D.

"It is not easy to be a pioneer," wrote Dr. Blackwell, " -- but oh, it is fascinating! I would not trade one moment, even the worst moment, for all the riches in the world."

If you happen to be in Kilmun, Scotland, today, do festoon Dr. Blackwell's grave with posies. Decorate her memory with gratitude, your acknowledgment of her determination & intellect.

Coming Across Mr. Percy

So it was that a writer whose writing I've not yet read, a condition soon to be remedied, was born on another 28th of May, in 1916, a scant six years before my old man was born. Walker Percy. How have I missed him? How'd I get to be this blasted old without having read any of this man's books? According to www.brainyquote.com, Mr. Percy once said or wrote that a person could get "all A's and still flunk life." Man oh man oh man, here's a fellow I don't want to miss. Here's another: "You live in a deranged age, more deranged that usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing." I'm going to hi myself to the library as soon as I get done typing here and see if they've a copy of Mr. Percy's Love in the Ruins. Why? Because the good robots at Amazon were so good as to reveal the book's opening page which begins thus: "Now in these dread latter days of the old violent beloved U.S.A. and of the Christ-forgetting, Christ-haunted death-dealing Western world I came to myself in a grove of young pines and the question came to me: has it happened at last?"

Isn't it extraordinary how we stumble upon writers? I was about to say 'discovered,' but that'd be like the numberless accounts of some European discovering something the locals had always known. It'd been there all the time. A chance conversation. A check to see who got born today. In any case, Mr. Percy got his ticket punched maybe 20 years ago and met his deadline. I've still got a few this side of the Big River so I must get after them. Let me direct your attention, whoever you are, to this article:

www.amywelborn.com/walkerpercy/article.html

Put On Your Big Girl Panties!

"Put on your big girl panties and deal with it." I don't know who said it first - Dept. of Ed. Sec'y Margaret Spellings or country singer Emily Ward (quoting her mother), but whoever it was, good on her. Happy I am to type the words here, recognizing one who risked all manner of meanness and ridicule when she got up one morning, determined not to to drag around a load of gathered skirts and petticoats on her person. Instead,author/editor/reformer Amelia Jenks Bloomer, born this day in 1818, pulled on a pair of pantaloons, bless her heart and courage. Those baggy, big girl pants, ever to be known as "Bloomers,"that might've freed up many a busy woman, never caught on in Amelia's day. Honor her, think of her, when you pull on your jeans, your capri pants, your whatever that allows you to walk freely and deal with whatever life throws at you. And, by the way, on the very day that Amelia Jenks turned one year old,another independent, steely-minded girl child was born: Julia Ward Howe. Speaking of whom, visit this site and read Ms. Julia's Mother's Day Proclamation (1870): http://www.peace.ca/mothersdayproclamation.htm

"Arise then, women of this day." Put 'em on and deal.

The Duke

Rough, tough/Didn't take no stuff. A hard man [is good to find? No thanks, Sophie Tucker. No nasty business here.] he was in so many of his multitude of movies. Stern without, gentle within: So seemed John Wayne and I don't know so much about him as to differ with that assessment. Of course I was knocked out by his young glory - that face of his as "Ringo," filling the screen when he first appears in Stagecoach, 1939. Then again in The Shootist, 1976, three years before his death. No John Wayne fan ever was I, but oh baybee. I was touched by his bone-weariness, set against my memory of all those earlier notions, those earlier pictures of him in my mind, when he was a young man. I'm thinking that as I get older, not having been a film star, I'll take to wearing a picture of my younger self in my lapel so folks will know that was not always as I appear.

So, I bring up the Duke, as he was known, because it's his birthday. May 26, 1907/Winterset, Iowa. AND get a load of this swell quotation attributed to him: "Life is hard; it's harder if you're stupid." Man oh man oh man - carve those words in stone. Write them in fire across the sky. John Wayne shares a birthday with Al Jolson, (1886) a whole 'nother story that guy was and so much for astrology, I say.

Ralph Waldo E.

"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet." Ralph Waldo Emerson.

He [She?] did just that two hundred & seven years ago this very day: May 25, 1803, in Boston, Massachusetts. Rev. William [known as Bill to his buddies? ever?] Emerson and his good wife Ruth [Was she good? Probably it is witless assigning virtue to a long gone stranger just for the sake of rhythm. Ah well, why not? Good there was in her. That is an iron-clad conclusion. Let's hope she was content in her life as preacher's wife, widow...] welcomed there new son into the world. ["The world we live in," this child would grow up to say,"is but thickened light."] They named him Ralph [after an uncle] Waldo [the surname of a great-grandmother] Emerson and thin would be all of our Bartlett's and whatsoever other books of quotations without him. Well I know that there was more to R.W. E. than witticisms, nuggets, and well-conceived thought-provokers, but much there is to do apart from today's posting. Still, I'm going to make time to read some more about him, some of him, and tip my mental hat to him. I'll be the better for having done so.

For more info, do check out www.transcendentalists.com

To dip into his writings, do visit www.rwe.org

For a bit of quotation appreciation:

"Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can."

"Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend."

"Keep cool: it will all be one a hundred years hence."

Amen and onward.

A Pair of Adventurous Souls

So, an adventurous soul : That would be Margaret Fuller, born this day 200 years ago. I know this because I clicked into Rob Velella's splendid American Literary Blog. Pay it a visit and you'll be well-rewarded, if only by learning more about today's Birthday Woman. http://americanliteraryblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/bicentennial-of-margaret-fuller.html

I would not consider myself to be an adventurous soul, but I've written about a few. One of them, Geo. Washington Carver began his adventuring in an ill-favored fashion [to enslaved parents living in a time of war] not so far from today's destination: Joplin, MO. Before I head down the road I'm going to dip into my encyclopedia and see what is written there about Miss Fuller. I'll visit this swellegant site, too: margaretfuller.org/ I intend to ponder Miss. F. & Mr. GWC as I aim my hoopie down the highway. Good people to think about, good people waiting for me at the end of today's road. I call that a fine adventure.

Bliss

If ignorance is bliss how come there are so many miserable people running around? That's how the joke goes anyway. Still, I was somewhat more blissful earlier today than I am now, having listened to the news, hearing more about some of our species having poisoned the ocean down 'round the great Gulf of M. And I found a swell little book languishing on the remainder table at the local book barn: Great Stories from HISTORY for EVERY DAY of the Year, compiled by W.B. Marsh & Bruce Carrick. I adore books such as these. Most beloved and tattered: my copy of Bernard Grun's TIMETABLES of HISTORY, a Horizontal Linkage of People & Events. In any event, in opening up the former, I read that today, May 22 marks the anniversary of the births of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859) and Richard Wagner (1813). I love these little bits. Little bits do not equal history; I love them nonetheless. Mary Cassatt was born this day, in Pennsylvania, in 1844. Thinking about the world of that time, that place: now that's history. Harvey Milk of San Francisco would be 80 I guess, had he not been murdered. Again, in any event, in that H. for Every Day, I read that today's the anniversary of this day, a Sunday, in the year 337 that 63-year-old Constantine "the Great" got his ticket punched. Celebrated he was for making Christianity the "favoured religion of Western civilization." Woe was it to the pagan hoi polloi or anyone ol' Connie deemed to be his opposition. Reading on, I found he had a thing about moral conduct. Rapists? Burned alive. Adulterers - even his own son, (later proved innocent) – executed. Servants who helped a young lady elope? Suffice it to say, not wishing to creep you out, that their deaths involved molten lead. Had one of his wives killed, too: horribly. Yikes.

So I'll tip my mental hat to the past, to Mary for her paintings, Arthur for his writings, particularly his invention of Sherlock Holmes; Richard for his music, Harvey for his courage and get on with pondering the present. Outrage is only part of the human story. There's also bliss.