Will I Ever Learn - Joan Shepherd

I’m playing a game on Lumosity that I cannot conquer. This morning, I was eating a bowl of cereal at the same time, taking bites between waiting for the computer to quit showing the little colored circle going round and round. I have probably played the game fifty times or more because I like the challenge even though I have only made 100% once. Only once! 

The purpose of this game is “attention”, which is my weakest area, according to Lumosity.  Called “Train of Thought”, one is supposed to get the various colored engines leaving from a central spot, to their specific matching colored area through a maze of railroad tracks. It looks simple. It is simple when it starts, the little engines puffing along slowly and then coming faster and faster. But I have only managed to get them all in the right spots once. Only once! I tried going a step higher in the game – more difficult with more engines – and did better than the supposedly easier one. But I am determined to get the easier one mastered before moving on. 

Meanwhile, the slow computer gives me time to take a spoonful of cereal with half a cut up pear and milk. Perhaps I’m distracted because of that one-half pear. It is so full of flavor, and I think it tastes like perfume. That doesn’t sound too good but when the pear is crushed with my teeth and tongue, I get a delightful taste that seems like perfume. It is so delicious, I sort the pieces out to relish their taste. Are the senses of taste and smell close together that I have them confused? 

I play a few games getting more frustrated and decide to go do some real chores. As I straighten up, putting things in their right places, I realize it is just like the game but I don’t have tracks to direct me to the correct areas. The computer sits there, becoming  worse than a slot machine in Reno. No! I have work to do! 

 My outside chores are incomplete because it is now too hot. Even so, I use my walker to go to the mail box on the corner, pick up one piece of mail, see my cat that left me for another home but allowed me to give her a pet, picked up the mail I dropped, back to the house and down the flagstone path where the walker gets stuck in the spaces between each stone, and finally reach the door. 

Now I deserve to try the game again. Just as think I’m going to make it, I miss one of the switches from straight to curving and a red engine goes into the green space. So annoyed, I let a couple more engines wander away from their designated spot. 

What is wrong with me that I can’t do this?  After all, I have a Master’s Degree. If I spent as much time learning Spanish as I do playing this game, I’d be fluent by now. I give up. Who cares that I have this flaw? Not me. Lumosity can mark me down in “attention” if they want. I have done well on some other games. But not this one!

Well…

Maybe I’ll try just one more time. It only takes a few minutes and then I’ll get back to work.

Afterglow - John Field

Such a glorious afternoon: 

Leaves shining brighter than the artificial lights 

On Broadway's highest marquees, 

The kind of theatrical foliage that makes little boys 

Leap high to shame the earth its stationary ways. 

Overhead a single sailboat gliding slowly across the skies. 

Look up there! A flock of migrating geese 

Honking their wild way home. 

In my garden huge chrysanthemums 

And roses still in bloom but overblown, 

Their petals wearing so much outrageous makeup 

They remind me of the painted cheeks

Of antique ladies playing bridge and sipping tea.

Once I searched for slow beauty 

To save me from the quick quick years I'd wasted 

And found it decorating the walls of the Prado 

And the Louvre-before I raced off to Portofino, 

Santorini and all the other grand places 

Recommended in the travel books. 

Now I'm growing old, have been for years and cranky too 

Each time my body recites its latest list of grievances. 

"Traveler, turn back!" the sky cries out to me

Whenever Sinatra sings come fly with me. 

Cramped seats? Jet lag? Fat chance. No thanks. 

I'd rather stay at home anchored to my shadow 

Treading water in the here and now. 

Wake up in my own bed and watch 

The blue arch of morning rise above the hills 

And lavish its beauty on our valley 

In the unfailing chronology of changing seasons 

For a few more years if I'm lucky 

Until life informs me I've had my share 

And am no longer needed here. But not yet. 

Not until my mind turns into a guide

Which has at heart my getting lost 

In that vast and lonely emptiness which separates 

The real world from what is not. 

Heaving a sigh, my soul will say goodbye 

And take its one-way trip to kingdom come, 

That secret, strange and peaceful place 

They never mention in the travel books

Where nothing ever ends, begins, changes or becomes.

Five Dollars - Robyn Makaruk

The sun was setting and the streets were empty, when a slip of a girl crept out from behind a dumpster and walked to the end of the street to gaze at the figure in the store window. The mannequin wore an elegant dress but it was the hat that caught her attention, a blue straw one with a large floppy brim, forget-me-not flowers and silk ribbons around the crown - a wonder to behold. If only, if only, she could buy that hat. It would transform her sad world and make it sing again. Her promise that night was to return and ask its price. Would she have the courage?

"Hello Miss, may I help you?" the elderly lady in the store asked. The girl replied shakily, "I'm not sure, I've never been here before." “What is it you wished to look at...you were eyeing the hat in the window. Would you like to try it on?" The girl replied  “Oh yes, please, but I'd like to know the price." 

“It is Five Dollars.  We are a Thrift Store and all our proceeds go to helping the poor”, the lady replied. The girl felt her pocket that contained nothing but small change but she bravely moved to try on the beautiful hat. Oh my, she breathed as she looked in the mirror. "I'd love to take it but I don't know if I have that much money”. The lady said "let's see how much you do have, and maybe we can settle on a different price." The coins were counted out to Three dollars and 27 cents.

The lady winked to the cashier and said to the girl, "My dear, you have enough to buy this hat. Would you like me to put it into a box?" She couldn’t believe her ears, but said “Oh yes, and many thanks to you for your generosity in changing the price”.

The slip of a girl carried the box to the hovel where they lived and sat down beside the bed.  "My darling Mama, we both know you have but days to live, but I have the most beautiful hat for you to wear for all the days you have left.  After you have gone, I will wear it in remembrance of you.”

Damnable Convenience - Michael James

I am the big wind, I scatter all before,

Blow dust into the neighbor’s eye,

Skid leaves under his door.

The noise I make when I blow full force,

Will deafen some, too bad of course.

Gardeners love the work I do,

And if old folks grumble,

I’ll blow them too.

My din fills ears, fumes sear the nose,

With those who use me, anything goes.

I own the air of little towns,

Darling in fact of gardening clowns,

The “Mow and Blow” boys of backyard fame,

Who cannot give my work a name, 

All love me, wear me, come what may,

Will hope to use me every day.

If you don’t like me, go complain,

You won’t get far, I’m not to blame.

It’s you stuck far back in the past,

When silence was a thing to last.

Look not for it here or anywhere,

In backyards, out beneath the star.

Not now, for here there’s no one cares,

What row I make, what ugly stares

From old man Giles who hides his ears,

And keeps the dust from off his cars.

 

Oh how they fly, those Autumn leaves,

Urged up and onward in my breeze,

To escape the dry, hot wind below

Bright reds and yellows--all my show!

Oct 22 Reading

My Grandpa - Dave Lewis

Grant Street in a central Ohio town was the home of prosperous citizens when the town was founded -  the managers and specialists in many of the manufacturing industries that started up in the area. They built sturdy and roomy row houses near the city’s  business center. Each house sported at its entrance a flight of stone steps that rose from the street to its second floor where the parlor and dining room were located. The polish and cleanliness of these stairs of granite or marble was a  cultural tradition of the Grant Street residents.

After the town had existed in its current incarnation for over one hundred years the Grant Street homes were no longer filled with wealthy people but a working class population where everybody that could work for pay did so, and often several jobs. The community continued the tradition of pride in clean, polished, entrance stairs even in rental houses.

Three boys, all in the same grade in public school were sitting on one such flight of stairs. The stairs were old and slightly worn but still they were of superior quality to the cement stairs on bigger, costlier homes across town in the new suburbs. That distinction didn’t occur to the boys but they did feel a buzz from the elegance of their seats that would make the more prosperous kids from across town envious.

The three boys didn’t look at all alike and they were each being coached in different religions. Each was a third generation immigrant with a name that was a large clue to their ancestor’s origins;         Lloyd -Wales, Fritz - Prussia,

Riley - Ireland.  

Today, in the 1950s,  they  discussed their grandfathers, all of whom were from the “old country”.

Lloyd’s grandfather had left the underground terrors of a Welsh coal mine as a young man. He ended up handling the same material above ground in the  inferno of a  Carnegie blast furnace. He repressed the hatred for his employers that paid a pittance for his sweat and the degradation of his body. Lloyd said the twelve hour shifts that his grandfather worked during  WW II left him a broken man that now spent most of his time with his buddies in a bar.

Fritz said that his grandfather had been a mathematics professor who had been wounded and captured by the British early in WW I. He had learned to speak English while in captivity and he emigrated to the United States during the 1920s. Unable to get a teaching position, he became a book keeper for a bootlegger mobster. His boss was liquidated by the Capone Gang and only the book keeper knew the location of his boss’s wealth. Fritz’s grandfather left Chicago, cleaned out the whiskey money and retired to this town with a new name. He started making wooden toys for his grand children and then branched out to toys for charities. He opened up a little shop and hires veterans to make free toys to be given away at Christmas. Fritz had a collection of every style his grandfather had designed. Originally they were small wooden trains, cars, trucks and the likes  but now the grandfather is hiring carvers and makes small wooden animals too.

Riley was the last to talk about his grandfather.  He had a rather confidential attitude as though he was leaking a secret. “My  Dad’s father guards our house. My father asked him to take care of the family.”

Riley’s father had been a policeman in the town. He had been murdered over eight years ago by a prison escapee that he had confronted. The grandfather had been a policeman too, the chief of the town police force.  He had been executed by a mob over twenty years ago. The other kids knew that Riley’s father and grandfather were dead. They were startled by Riley’s statement.

“When my  grandfather was police chief, he equipped the force with Smith & Wesson revolvers and ammunition that were US Navy surplus.  The Navy’s revolvers were replaced with Colt 45 automatics.  The revolvers used the .38 S&W cartridge which wasn’t very powerful. Most police forces had abandoned the less powerful sidearms because the .32 S&W and the .38 S&W cartridges couldn’t shoot through a car door.  Grandpa got a lot of surplus Navy ammunition for the revolvers and it all had a full metal jacket.  It was almost free and the police force could do a lot of target practice.  The .38 S&W cartridge was adequate if it was properly placed. 

During prohibition, grandfather was ambushed a number of times and he always hit his attackers right between the eyes. After grandfather was murdered, the mob boss that had him killed was found shot between the eyes with a .38 S&W full metal jacketed slug.  They compared the slug to the ones that had been dug out of the target backstop at the range position  grandfather used and it was from the same gun. Months before, Grandfather’s gun had been buried with him.”

”When my Dad was shot, he asked grandfather to take care of the family.  The man that shot my father was also found shot between the eyes with a .38 S&W full metal jacketed slug. It was from the same gun buried with grandfather.”

“The mob tried to get even - there was only my mother and I to punish.  Several months later a thug was found hanging out of our second story window. The window sash had been slammed down and broke his neck as he tried to crawl into my bedroom, his head was in and his body hung out. The ladder he came up on was still there. I was only seven  then.”

“Two months later, the son of the gang boss who had taken over, was found shot between the eyes. It was a .38 S&W full metal jacket. It was from grandfather’s revolver.  The gang scattered and we have never been bothered since. Grandfather must still be watching.”

The Gloaming Michael James

It was the boats that did it for me, the bay sloops and the dinghies,

Sliding through the waves, sailors discussing this or that option,

Voices calm across the swells.

Afternoon races over, the crews, 

Quite certain to reach the hoist before the gloaming

Retires shackles and cleats, removing them from easy reach,
Relax in their post-game contentment,

In the camaraderie of effort made mutual by common goals.

Sailboats offend not. They rend not the ears, insult not the nose.

They bring joy to all the senses: 

Grace of line, perfection of poise, sheets of color,

All things counter and spare,

In the vibrant harmony of tackle and trim.

In their sporting mode, they survived the rude arrival of the industrial age,

Riding out the black storms of coal dust and laid-down grime of soot

With scrubbed decks and new paint.

They battened hatches, stretched awnings, and hunkered down.

Now in the post-industrial era, they ride high again,

Spread new high-tech wings, grow cams and winches never seen before,

Fledgelings on clean new air.

Inland, beyond the city’s glare, in the gloaming, 

Man’s smear has also dropped from our lovely world.

It’s nightfall and flights of duck arrows, 

Visible only as plunging black silhouettes against the pale blue of sky,

Wing a swift and silent way towards their evening pond.

Crazy broken honks from geese tell of their owners’ belated fall to water.

Stars drop into sight as if from outside our firmament.

Rags of cirrus float past like yesterday’s torn sails,

Emptied of rain, gradually losing the little color they possess.

Calm fills my soul; my time of day has come.

Blessed dark covers what I would not see; stillness muffles what I would not hear.

Humans are hiding in their houses, eating, watching.

Resting after their struggle to eviscerate Nature by day,

They ready themselves for tomorrow’s onslaught, 

Downing the small survivors of yesterday’s sunny hours.

Northwestering Man has been mauling Nature since the pyramids, nay longer,

Since he followed the retreating ice and herds of deer 

As they meandered towards the flickering sheets of color in the summer night sky.

Always there was more grass, forest, fish, though summers came and went.

Lands lay behind barriers of water, of mountains, of more people,

Till he met Northeastering Man.

They made agreements, broke faith, murdered each other, spread disease,

Interbred, and they populated and repopulated until the lion and the lynx,

Moving away from Man, fell off the map.

I came to Northern California as part of that migration, 

From an island nation that knew of boats,

And saw at once that The Bay would become

The place where I would be the most.

 

I was more innocent then, 

Busy with the rhythms of my blood, 

Yet knew there’d come a night without a dawn,  

When no amount of prayer would turn the ebb into a flood.