Loose Leaf Notes

May 9, 2008

A Trifecta of Bloom

1. For a small window of time in the spring, three blooms converge in symphony of color in the corner of my yard.

2. Dogwood, azalea, and baby irises come in one after the other, and for a week or two they co-exist together with colors layered like the fruit of an English trifle.

3. I especially love this winning combination because all the players are wild. A purple carpet of naturalized irises circles the white blossomed dogwood tree, while wild azaleas spin around it like a pink skirt. I’ve take dozens of pictures at different times of day and in different weather but none of them do the scene justice. It’s a like a poem that needs to be heard out loud, a living beauty that needs to be seen face to face to be fully enjoyed.

Post note: Happy Birthday to my brother Johnny.

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May 8, 2008

Breaking the Thirteen Thursday Time Barrier

1. I was recently typing the name of my book of poems, Muses Like Moonlight, and typed "Mooses Like Moonlight" by mistake.

2. Written on the inside on my latest notebook: Note to self – in writing.

3. I can understand why my youtube video of the Hokie Wave Cheer at the Dave Matthews and John Meyer concert at VA Tech has gotten nearly 2,000 hits. What I don’t understand is why THIS video has gotten almost as many.

4. I wasn’t kidding about getting drunk on the aroma of apple blossoms while visiting an orchard on the Parkway HERE. The next day I even had a hangover from breathing all that pollen.

5. I was sipping tea on the front porch today when a cloud of pollen that looked like smoke passed by. It caused me to question for a second whether I was crazy enough to have lit the wood stove and forgot. I didn’t think so because it was nearly 80 degrees.

6. Mara says we need to bring some mud to our next spoken word night. Her idea was prompted by reading Tom Ryan’s latest issue of The Floyd Enquirer, in which he reported this: A full contact mud wrestling poetry slam has been scheduled for the title “High Priestess of Poetry”. The crowd favorite seems to be Mara “Drama-O-Rama” Robbins but the smart money is split between Colleen “Soul Crusher” Redman & Katherine “TeaTime” Chantal.

7. And about Floyd Fest, there was this Tomfoolery by Tom: It was nice to see that Kris & Erika were able to negotiate a “non-presence” of the Federal Interdiction Anti-Fun Force at this year’s festival (Floyd Fest). I was a little taken aback, however, to learn of the myriad compromises they made in reaching that accord. Changing the festival theme from “A Family Affair” to “A Family Values Affair” was bad enough but allowing Pat Robertson to M.C. and letting Dick Cheney sit in with Donna The Buffalo to perform “Ubber Deutschland” are bound to have a chilling effect on the festivals ambiance. I guess I can learn to live with these concessions but I was aghast at The National Rifle Association becoming the primary sponsor & forcing all staff to wear “Don’t Inhale” T-shirts. You can read the full online tell-all HERE.

8. A real 9/ll Call: "We made brownies and I think we’re dead.” More of this hilarity is HERE.

9. Michael Moore on Larry King talking about Obama’s relationship with Reverend Wright: Jeez, you know, I mean I go to Mass still. I'm a practicing Catholic. I've been that way all my life. But if I had -- if I had gotten up every time I heard a priest from the pulpit in my travels around the country say things like I've heard them say, that birth control is a sin, that women should not be priests, that women should have a different role in church ... I would have been walking out so much -- that would have been so much aerobic activity for me ... I wouldn't look like this.

10. In the nearly three years I’ve been doing Thirteen Thursday, I actually forgot it was Thursday once and posted on Friday. My excuse: “I thought yesterday was Wednesday, which would make today Thursday, but of course it’s really Friday. Everybody says so."

11. Have you seen the human clock? It runs continuously and changes ever moment with photo scenes people have sent in from around the world telling the time.

12. Also from my Thirteen Thursday on Friday: "I’ve always been fascinated by the group mind that humans share, which causes us to agree about certain things like what day of the week it is, or to stay in our own lane on the right side of the road while driving down a highway. What would happen if we completely dropped out and forgot these collective agreements?"

13. In August 2006 I wrote this: “I think of blogging as rapid fire target practice. Doing it daily, I can't help but improve my writer's aim, but sometimes my arm gets tired!” Hey, I guess that means I should have carpal tunnel by now.

Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13's are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here.

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May 7, 2008

Irish Night at Oddfellas

1. A front row seat at the First Friday Irish Night Jam at Oddfellas Cantina.

2. Lucy Goldman Singing Dougie Mclean’s “Ready for the Storm.” Tina Liza Jones (on the left) was strumming an unusual guitar; I think it was THIS.

3. Several played fiddle and one played a harp. I wish someone in the group played THIS, an instrument that when played well can bring tears to my eyes.

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May 6, 2008

Once Upon a Time

My introduction into the world of archetypes came when I was a girl by way of fairytales and nursery rhymes. To this day Rumplestilskin and the Snow Queen repeatedly show up in my poetry. When I first saw the kiln at the university where my potter son was a student, memories were stirred of Hansel and Gretel pushing the witch that had imprisoned them into the oven. When I’m in the garden, I watch rabbits and wonder which one is Peter. Because of the story of Cinderella, a pumpkin will always be magical to me.

In all native cultures there are stories and creation myths to illustrate truths that can’t easily be grasped directly. Jesus used parables to teach. Professor of Mythology, Joseph Campbell said, “A myth is a lie that tells the truth.”

Growing up in a working class family, the literature available to me was How Now Brown Cow and the stories of Hans Christian Anderson. All summer long I tested the meter of language with jump rope and bouncing ball songs. My mostly Irish father spouted nursery rhymes, both traditional and made up. Ours was an oral tradition of reading, reciting, and singing out loud.

As a girl I always held out hope that I would hear the nightingale’s song in the woods. I guarded myself against adults who could have been the Snow Queen in disguise. Whenever I went out walking, I had the urge to drop bread crumbs to mark the way. Rhymes like Hey Diddle Diddle the cat and the Fiddle fostered an early love of sound and world play.

Fairytales and nursery rhymes also gave me access into an inner life. They provided a context of meaning for the unexplained mysteries. Themes played out in fairytales – fate, survival, temptation, loss, courage, fear, and perseverance – are all the ingredients that make for good storytelling. Stories mirror life and give insight into the underpinnings of it.

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May 5, 2008

Specialty Gardens: Making Dreams Come True

The following appeared in the All About Her regional newspaper insert on May 1, 2008.

Appreciating nature in our own backyard can be a first step to being a good steward of the earth. Pam Cadmus, owner of Specialty Garden Design, wants more people to enjoy their home surroundings. “We don’t love our habitat enough,” she said.

Sitting on a white wooden bench in the front yard of her Floyd County home, daffodils and hellebores were in bloom as she explained the evolution of her landscaping business.

Raised in New York, Pam moved from California to Floyd in 1978. “I wanted to be part of a community and to take care of myself in a real way,” she said. Soon she was growing vegetables and chopping wood.

In 1979 Pam became the branch librarian of the Floyd library when it was housed in the basement of the Floyd County courthouse. Her job as librarian continued after the move to the new Jessie Peterman Memorial Library building. She also served as librarian in Blacksburg for four years, and is currently on the board of the Floyd County Library Building Fund, which recently oversaw a building expansion.

Pam liked being a librarian, but often found herself looking out the window, dreaming of starting an herb garden or something similar that would allow her to work outside.

In 1997 she created the “Specialty Garden Design” business logo and set about to manifest her dream, one garden at a time. “When I hit fifty, it was do or die,” she said. Initially, she had a partner but became sole owner a couple of years into the business.

It’s easy to see that Pam has a special affection for dwarf conifers, which feature prominently in her home gardens. “They give color, texture, and form all year round,” she said, pointing them out and spouting off the names and varieties like a horticultural whiz. She’s also fond of ornamental grasses and frequently includes them in designs to compliment perennials, flowering trees, and shrubs.

Specialty Garden Design, now in its 11th year, has grown mostly by word of mouth. Although most of Pam’s work is residential, she has designed for local restaurants and an arts and crafts center. She has clients from all over the region, including Blacksburg’s Virginia Tech professor and renowned poet, Nikki Giovanni.

“We work together finding ways to create natural habitats for birds. Nikki loves birds,” Pam said.

According to Pam’s website, specialtygardendesign.com, she works closely with the experienced gardener, the novice, and everyone in between. Her work includes designs for small and large properties, ponds, patios, walls, and walkways. She has created formal entrances, English borders, and native landscapes.

In 2002, when Floyd’s Harvest Moon Food Store moved to a new and expanded location, Pam designed and installed showcase gardens on the grounds, working alongside the small crew she employs. A member of the Virginia Society of Landscape Gardens, she was the recipient of the 2005 Town of Blacksburg Award for Design/Landscaping.

The fifteen acre property Pam and her husband have owned since 1982 has about two acres of gardens, including a vegetable plot. She uses slow releasing organic fertilizers and stresses the importance of watering when plants are getting established. When asked about pesticides, she said, “There’s no substitute for getting on your hands and knees and weeding, pulling up weeds at the roots.” She recommends using mulch to control weeds and hold in moisture and has confirmed that a half buried cat food can filled with beer will keep the slug population down. “Slugs like Bud Light and Coors Light, so you can go cheap,” she joked.

Now that she’s 60, Pam is thinking about the next phase of her business plan. She wants to do more design and less installation and hopes to start a nursery of dwarf conifers and ornamental grasses. But she doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon. Spring is one of her busiest seasons. At home, she’s moving one garden to make room for an addition to the house and has plans for a wildflower meadow.

Another upcoming project will bring Pam back to the library. Using plants that have been donated by local nurseries, she and another landscaper have volunteered to do the landscaping at the new Jessie Peterman Library addition.

By assisting homeowners to fulfill their visions of creating beautiful surroundings, Pam has made more than her own dream come true. Her talent for enhancing the inherent richness of private and public environments benefits us all, encouraging us to enjoy nature and to spend more time outside.

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May 4, 2008

Apple Blossom Time

1. Last May I hiked down into the abandoned orchard, where Joe and I pick apples in the fall, to see the trees in bloom. But because of a late freeze, there wasn’t a single a bloom on a single tree. Disappointed, I trudged back out of the valley knowing there wouldn’t be a single apple in the fall, and there wasn’t.

2. After seeing that the crabapple tree in our yard was in bloom, I knew it was time. We parked the truck on the Blue Ridge Parkway and hiked down to the orchard.

3. We were giddy with delight at what we found, a spectacular abundance of bloom. Where last year I felt life’s frailty, now I felt its fertility. How magical to think that every flower would be transformed into an apple -- winter food, pies, and crisp -- and that each seed from each piece of fruit could become another tree.

3. Our favorite tree at the bottom of the valley looked like a bride in gown of lacy white.

4. No charge for this affair. No planning. Nothing to buy. Free corsages for all the spring prom dresses, for the maidens and maids of honor, and the fairytale heroes and heroines.

5. We laid on our backs in the grass and watched a butterfly feasting on flower nectar. Bees buzzed, birds chirped, and with every gust of wind paper thin white petals, popped from fuchsia pink buds, drifted down on us.

6. Drinking in so much apple blossom aroma can be intoxicating. I thought about Sleeping beauty and Rip Van Winkle and remembered the time we set up camp on a beach in St. John and woke up in bed of jasmine. I drifted off, wondering if there would be an apple blossom hangover the next day.

Post note: Read The Romance of Wild Apples (the orchard in the fall) HERE.

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May 2, 2008

The Story Within a Story

I’d be a terrible court reporter because I like to cover stories that are inspiring, ones that show kindness, open-mindness, people contributing something positive or standing up for what's right. Whether it’s freelanced or an assignment, I like to find the silver lining in a story, something I can get excited enough about to want to share with others.

Since I wrote my first "Letter to the Editor" at the age of nineteen, activism has been an aspect of my writing. In the past, much of my writing dealt directly with issues I care about, but I’m learning that shining a light on these issues doesn’t have to be direct and that the opportunity to shine an indirect light can turn up in unexpected places. Sometimes activism comes in the form of reporting other people’s activism.

The condemnation of mountain top removal recently showed up in a story about a poetry reading at the Floyd Country Store when poet Jim Webb read an emotional poem denouncing it. When he said, “until they stop mountain removal, I’m going to read this poem at every reading,” I felt inspired and wrote down his words for a blog entry that would later become a Floyd Press newspaper story.

I’ve written well over a dozen commentaries about the Iraq War that have been published at Commondreams.org, The New River Free Press, and the Roanoke Times. I've pointed out in various ways that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, that the Bush Administration misled us into the war, that the invasion was illegal, and that the outcome has been predictable and disastrous. Darker and more tiring than I imagine court reporting to be, after a while I felt at a loss for what to say about Iraq.

I knew the Poetry Symposium at Virginia Military Institute last month would be fertile ground for my writing, especially knowing that Vietnam Vet Bruce Weigl reading his poetry at the military academy would likely be an eye opening line-up. I went to the event to blog about my poet friend Mara – a reoccurring character on my blog who was presenting poetry and a paper – but when Weigl stopped in the middle of his reading to say about Iraq, “I Hate this War,” I was glad I was there to record it.

This spring, I was asked to write a story about landscape designer Pam Cadmus for the April issue of All About Her, a regional newspaper insert. Early on in our interview, when Pam (who uses natural fertilizers and no pesticides) said, ‘We don’t love our habitat enough,’ I knew it was a privilege to be writing about her. When the first line of the story came to me, ‘Appreciating nature in our own backyard can be a first step to being a good steward of the earth,’ it felt like my small way of promoting and celebrating Earth Day.

Sometimes the inspiring thread of a story isn’t that obvious. Last year I did a story on a Mary Kay beauty consultant for All About Her. For me, the important part of the story wasn’t about beauty and make-up; it was about a self-employed young mother making her own hours so she could be at home with her two young children. The story led me to research some of the unhealthy ingredients used in the make-up industry, not part of the story I was writing but something I hope to write about in the future.

One of my favorite stories was the one about placed-based education and a prototype class my husband helped to start in which students collect and record stories of their elders, in this case WWII vets. It was a thrill to see the students engaged in such a constructive and self-empowering activity, and doubly so to have had the pleasure to meet the vets, most of them humble and fun-loving men who didn’t want to go to war but made the best of it when they did.

Many years ago, I penned a monthly column on home schooling for the Museletter, our local alternative community newsletter. More recently I wrote one about a creative young teenager who has released two CDs of electronica music and who happens to be home schooled.

In the same newsletter, I sometimes wrote about women’s issues, ritual, and rites of passage. Last year I wrote a story for the newspaper about a Wise Woman Priestess who marries couples, and more recently one about another wise woman who midwives "end of life." Even the story I did about knitting, I viewed as one about wise women. The story depicted local women of all ages helping each other and sharing a valuable hands-on life skill.

More and more ideas and lifestyles that were once thought of as fringe are finding their way into the mainstream. I’m glad to be in a position to write about them, and to hopefully tell the good stories of some everyday good people.

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May 1, 2008

13 Thursday: The Curve Ball

1. New motto for my overbooked husband: "No" is a complete sentence.

2. Handwritten on the inside cover of my book of Mary Oliver’s poems: The poet’s answer to Georgia O’Keefe’s paintings.

3. Seen on a Get Well Greeting Card at the Pharmacy: “Don’t worry – Stressed is just Desserts spelled backwards.”

4. Flamingos remind me of long legged ballerinas in pink tutus.

5. I have never played pool but I play in the pool. I like the 8 beach ball the best.

6. It was so cold the other day that I had to start a fire in the wood stove. While crumpling newspaper, I noticed a Washington Post photo of the Pope’s red shoes. The caption beneath it said, “There’s no place like Rome: Pope Benedict XVI arriving at Andrews Air Force Base with his ruby red slippers, rumored to be Prada.”

7. I was so jealous.

8. Best quote about the Pope’s red shoes came from a woman in Central Park: “He’s got big shoes to fill and the red shoes are just the ticket to do that.” There’s also a song about them HERE.

9. Funny how the pope’s hat is almost like a wizard’s and a wizard’s hat is the same as a dunce’s.

10. A witch’s hat and church steeple also have a point in common.

11. HERE’S my blog friend Rick Mullen reading his poem, “The Chelsea,” from his newly published chapbook “Aquinas Flinched.”

12. My shoes aren’t red but my last name is.

13. My favorite burgundy silk pajamas were recently spotted HERE.

Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13's are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here. #131

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April 30, 2008

You Light Up My Life

1. Illumination

2. Social Graces

3. Bold Faces

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April 29, 2008

Endings

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.” ~ Richard Bach

I have no problem starting poems or stories (like I have no problem filling up closets). It’s ending them that’s hard. Endings should look like they’ve always been there, as though there were no possible other conclusion. But readers might be surprised by how many endings a writer might try, or by how hard a good ending is to come by.

Sometimes a whole movie is ruined, if you don’t like the way it ends. Movie producers know this, which is why they sometimes film more than one ending and test audiences to see which one works best.

I’ve noticed that songs are even harder to end than written pieces. There aren’t a lot of options for ending songs. They either fade away into silence or build up to a crescendo and then abruptly stop.

I’m not surprised that endings are the hardest part of writing, because they’re also the hardest part of life. Birth is expected and exciting. Death is dreaded and often painful.

The problem with an ending is that you don’t know what it is until you get there. You hope you’ll know it when you see it. Some endings do come without effort, and you just take down what is happening. But others you have to find. Sometimes a false ending presents itself. You think the story is over, but it’s not. And then there are the series of small endings, conclusions to each paragraph that you have to figure out.

They say that every ending is also a new beginning. I like to think that’s true, because it makes endings feel less final. Is there ever a truly final ending, one that can’t begin again? That’s like asking if there’s an end to the universe. And if there is an end, what exists beyond it?

I’m getting ready to end this now. But that shouldn’t be a problem. You, as the reader, can turn the page or decide for yourself what comes next. As for me, I’m ready to start my next writing project. I only have to decide this: Should I sit in the moonlight for new inspiration, or should I go back to cleaning out my closets?

~ Taken from Muses Like Moonlight: A Closet Poet Comes Out, my 2004 poetry collection and short essays on writing.

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