Second Blooming

Spin Cycle: The Best of Ireland

I've always thought that I must be at least a bit Irish, because I identify with it all so completely. So I did the Ancestry.com thing and discovered a tiny bit of Irish blood, we're talking six generations back. But it is there. The Logans, from County Westmeath.

 

I LOVE this crest so much! Not only does it boast TWO stabbed, bloody hearts, but the motto translates to "The valour of my ancesters."

 

Those are me people! I'm an Irish lassie!

And so, in honor of St. Patrick's Day, I present my personal favorite Irish things.

Stout

Ah stout! The perfect food. It neatly combines booze and dessert. It's sort of an entire food group unto itself. While Guinness is certainly the iconic Irish stout, I asked my friend Brian, who is a proud Irishman and a beer geek, I mean, mmm...expert (and his wife reads this blog, hi Laura), and he says that the very best Irish stout is actually Murphy's Stout, from Cork, Ireland.

 

Guinness devotees don't shoot the messenger, this is Brian's opinion! But he does really know his beer.

And he says if you want to go domestic, buy Black Bear Stout from Bear Republic Brewery, which I've had and is to die for.

Literature

Although the Irish didn't invent the English language, they certainly perfected it. Irish folks just know how to turn a phrase. The number of great writers who have come out of that tiny green island is staggering - James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift, William Butler Yeats, Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney - feel free to add your favorite to the list.

Van Morrison

I know that most people consider U2 to be the best Irish rockers ever, but for me nobody compares to Van the Man. Van just always touches my soul and puts me in my happy place. Part rock, part jazz, completely soulful and totally sexy. Both Moondance and Poetic Champions Compose are near-perfect albums. Most people know him for his big hits like Brown-Eyed Girl and Moondance, but most of my favorites are the "deep-cuts. The perfect slow-dance music. Oh yeah...

 

 

Corned Beef and Cabbage

Though "Irish cook" is often thought of as an oxymoron, there are quite a few iconic Irish dishes that are amazing. The following is my friend Amanda's recipe for Corned Beef and Cabbage. Amanda is a damned good cook, and an Irish lass. She took several versions of this and tweaked and perfected it, and she has generously allowed me to share it with y'all. It takes the standard Corned Beef recipe and kicks it to another level. And you have to love any recipe that involves this much liquor!

Amanda's Corned Beef and Cabbage

Based on a House & Garden 1965 Recipe

Serves 4 with leftovers

5 pounds corned brisket of beef (I use the flat cut)

2 bottles Guinness (large bottles)

6 peppercorns, or packaged pickling spices

3 carrots, peeled and quartered

3 onions, peeled and quartered

1 medium-sized green cabbage, quartered or cut in wedges

Melted butter (about 4 tbsp.)

For glaze:

Whole grain ground mustard (or Dijon)

Brown sugar

Place the corned beef in the slow cooker and add with 1.5 bottles Guinness, and water to cover.  Set slow cooker for all day (minimum 6 hours, I would say, or up to 10 hours on low).  After about an hour, I skim off the scum and add the seasoning packet, a little ground Mustard powder, and a little more Guinness to cover.  I then let it cook all day.

If you want to serve the corned beef with cabbage and carrots: About an hour and a half before it is scheduled to be done, add the carrots and onion.  During the last 45 -30 min. (depending on how “crunchy” you like your cabbage), add the cabbage. You can skip the vegetable step if you just want the corned beef for sandwiches or hash.

Remove the cooked corned beef, and slather it with a glaze of equal parts whole grain mustard (or Dijon if you prefer, or a mix of the two) and brown sugar.  Put the glazed corned beef in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes or so, until the glaze browns a bit.

The vegetables should be done at the same time as that finishes. Brush the vegetables with melted butter to serve.

Alternate glaze recipe:

¾ cup bourbon

¾ cup apple juice

3 Tbsp. Mustard

1.5 cup brown sugar

DELICIOUS!

Irish Saints

Anybody who knows me well knows that I'm a bit of a saint geek. I love me the saints. And while we all celebrate St. Patrick, there are actually quite a few really good Irish saint stories.

St. Patrick - So...he wasn't really Irish, and he probably wasn't really named Patrick, and he certainly wasn't the first missionary to Ireland and didn't really convert all of Ireland single-handedly and most likely there weren't really any snakes there for him to get rid of. But we love him anyway. He had been kidnapped and enslaved by Irish pirates, then after he finally got home, decided to go back to do some converting. Which seems pretty brave to me, so I'll give him the snake thing.

St. Brendan the Navigator - May or may not have been the first European reach North America, crossing the Atlantic in his tiny currah. He and his crew sailed for seven years and he said he baptized several mermaids, and once saw Judas Iscariot taking a vacation from hell on a passing iceberg.

St. Brigid - I love pretty much every story about this Patroness of Ireland. As a young girl, she was known to magically multiply the the household supply of butter.She desperately wanted to become a nun, but because of her beauty was constantly pursued by suitors, so she prayed to be ugly, and God answered her prayers, helping her to become grotesquely disfigured. After becoming a nun, her bathwater was often transformed into beer for the thirsty clerics and she was known to hang her cloak on a sunbeam to dry. By some crazy coincidence, her feast day is the same as that of a pagan goddess also know as Brigid. Who'd have thought?

St. Columba - The patron of both Ireland and of poets, which is fitting, right? Columba was one of those famous Irish scribes who copied manuscripts, but also wrote verse himself. His copying a manuscript without the author's permission led to the first copyright infringement lawsuit, and eventually an actual war. As penance for having caused a war, Columba banished himself from his beloved Ireland, living in Scotland from which he swore he could see the hills of Ireland. While in Scotland, he did some cool stuff, like banishing a monster from the river Ness to live in the loch. He did eventually go back to Ireland when the High King attempted to outlaw the Poets Guild. Columba gave an impassioned defense of poetry and verse, and saved Irish poetry forever.

Denis Leary

I must confess a life-long weakness for Irish badboys. Something about the weird combination of smartass/drunk/funny/Catholic has always gotten to me. Denis is the epitome of all these things. He drinks and curses and is hysterical, yet has been married to his wife since 1989. He met his wife at Emerson College, which I was thiiiiiiiiiiis close to attending (Daddy nixed the expense), but if I had gone, I just know he would have married ME instead. I'm sure of it. Hmm...Mrs. Denis Leary. Sigh... Anyway, here is a video of Denis singing the funniest Irish song ever written. The lyrics actually make me cry with laughter. Enjoy...

 

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

__________________________________

Don't miss Ginny Marie and my other St. Patrick's Day spinners! It's not too late to add your post in the Linky below.

Check back on Monday for next week's Spin Cycle topic!

 

 

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The Possum

The great George Jones died on Friday.

Growing up in Texas, I tried very hard to hate Country Music. I was part of the Rock and Roll generation. I thought Country was old-fashioned and hickish.

But my sweet Daddy loved Country-Western music. It's what we listened to on the radio in his car. And I have always hidden a deep and abiding love of the Country greats. Hank Williams. Patsy Cline. Loretta Lynn. Glen Campbell. Eddy Arnold. Johnny Cash. Merle Haggard. Tammy Wynette. Willie and Waylon and Dolly. Bobbie Gentry. And "The Possum", George Jones.

 

Jones lived a hard life, filled with heartbreak and drinking and torment, but nobody could channel heartbreak into music like he did.

RIP George Jones. 9/12/1931 - 4/26/2013.

In honor of George and of my Daddy, please listen...

 

Memorial Day Rerun

I first wrote this on Memorial Day 2010. I feel it's worth a repost. Thank you to all who have served. Have a fun Memorial Day.

_________________________________

My Daddy served in the Navy during World War II. He seldom if ever talked about it.

I knew that he served in the Pacific, and at some point lived on a island, but I never knew where. He told me that he wasn't really involved in any combat, that his age (he was already in his 30s by then) and the fact that he had a law degree kept him mostly doing administrative work. But he was never an officer. He seemed a little saddened by these facts, but never went into any details.

Once, when I was a little girl, we went to Georgia to visit an old Navy friend of Daddy's, a Mr. Brewer. I remember that the Brewers had a huge, Taralike home, and he and Daddy sat and told stories of M*A*S*Hlke military SNAFUs. It was a little bit shocking, listening to the "man talk" and hearing Daddy use what I considered to be bad words, like "bastard" and "son of a bitch", language he NEVER used around me. I remember one of their slightly "off-color" stories was about a time when the Navy powers-that-be decided that it wasn't decent for the native women of the island to be going around topless, so they issued t-shirts to be distributed to the natives. The women seemed delighted with their new shirts, and accepted them happily. The next day, the soldiers went to see the villagers, and all the women had cleverly cut holes in the front of their t-shirts and pulled their breasts through them!

But truly, that's all I knew about his Navy experience.

After Daddy died, I discovered a book in his bedside table. It was a self published book, put together by one of the men in Daddy's WWII unit, about the history of their experience. And it was absolutely fascinating.

It turns out that Daddy was with Argus (Aviation Radar Ground Units) 16, the unit that occupied the Tarawa Atoll following the Battle of Tarawa. The Tarawa Atoll is part of the Gilbert Islands, and was a valuable piece of real estate as the Americans hopscotched their way the Pacific and closed in on mainland Japan. Important because of it's airfield and strategic location for monitoring radio transmissions in the area.

The Battle of Tarawa was fought by the 2d Marine Division on November 20 - 23, 1943, and is considered one of the bloodiest and most savage battles of WWII. 1000 US Marines were killed, and almost 5000 Japanese.

According to this book, Daddy's unit arrived just after the battle, and it was their job not only to occupy the island, get the airfield operating, and set up radio operations, but also to "clean up" the island. Apparently, as they made their way ashore, the bodies of dead Marines floated around them and banged up against the sides of their boats.

So cleaning up meant dealing with the 6000 dead bodies. 6000 dead bodies.

 
Imagine the mixed emotions they must have felt. The bodies of their comrades who had fought and died. The bodies of the enemy. Feelings of sorrow. Feelings of pride. Feelings of shame that it was these Marines who had done the dying, while you weren't part of the combat forces, just the clean up and occupation. And of course fear, because the Japanese continue to bomb the island, long after the battle was over.

So on this Memorial Day, I'm remembering the lives of those 1000 Marines who fought and died on Tarawa Atoll. Because I'm sure that my Daddy never forgot them.

 

 

Let the Wild Rumpus Start!

“And [he] sailed back over a year
and in and out of weeks
and through a day
and into the night of his very own room
where he found his supper waiting for him
and it was still hot”

 - Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

RIP Maurice Sendak

Born - June 10, 1928

Died - May 8, 2012

“But the wild things cried, “Oh please don't go- We'll eat you up- we love you so!”

 

Spin Cycle: Secret Santa For Elizabeth

The first thing I did when Sprite's Keeper gave me Elizabeth of a moon, worn as if it had been a shell for my Secret Santa assignment was…panic. Because I know Elizabeth, and not just from her strong presence as a writer on her blog, but I actually know her, she is my friend. We live in the same community, and our boys are in the same Cub Scout pack. We've camped together for God's sake! Here we are out for martinis…

And so I feel tremendous pressure to do her justice, and share this incredibly excellent woman with all of you.

So I decided to make a list of qualities that I would use to define Elizabeth. I came up with...

Graceful

Intelligent

Beautiful

Strong

Talented

Funny

Honest

But before you all start hating her, the following words also came to mind...

Cynical

Angry

Sarcastic

Rebellious

Sharp-tongued

It's the mixture of all of these qualities that makes Elizabeth such a remarkable person, and a moving, eloquent, honest writer. Because she's not just a mommy blogger. She's a real, honest-to-God published writer, a literary soul, a poet, an aesthete. She has an uncanny ability to locate and reveal the beauty in mundane everyday life.

And Elizabeth's everyday life is not easy. She is the mother of three beautiful children, and her oldest, Sophie, has a severe form of epilepsy Sophie's disabilities are profound. Her specific diagnosis is "refractory seizures of unknown origin", which basically means that no one knows why she is the way she is, and no one knows what to do to help her. The bottom line is that for the last 16 years, Sophie has suffered daily from multiple seizures. She must be fed and bathed and dressed and kept clean. She is unable to walk without assistance, and has never uttered a word.

 

 

In addition to Sophie, she has two darling and clever boys, Henry and Oliver, and a husband, Michael, who is a fabulous chef and spends most of his time at his restaurant, which Elizabeth refers to as “his mistress”. It’s safe to say she has a tremendous amount on her plate.

 

And while Elizabeth could well be a college professor, or a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, or possibly running a Fortune 500 corporation, she has chosen to stay home and care for her children. No small feat.

Elizabeth is an outspoken advocate for all special needs children, and her blog is a safe haven for other parents with similar situations. And while I say that she finds beauty in the mundane, and often in the painful, her blog is never one of those glossy, smiley-faced, look-at-me-and-the-graceful-way-I-handle-all-that-God’s-thrown-at-me kind of blogs. She is an Atlanta-born Southern girl, and is not afraid to yell at the world. She will often go off on one of her liberal diatribes, but really, who can blame her? What she goes through to provide health care for Sophie is mind-boggling. But if she gets particularly testy and perhaps…goes too far…she’s not afraid to cop to it with a bit of mea culpa.

I find myself envying her grace and charm. She is a woman of style. She's the kind of mother who casually serves her kids fondue for dinner...and they eat it. Her home is beautiful and tasteful in that “Parisian flea market” kind of way.

Why should you read her blog? She writes about literature. And art. And melancholia. And liberal politics. And her boys. And disability. And she's always almost painfully honest. She's an extremely prolific blogger (she told me once that I should post more often, something that I'm just terrible with), with her posts ranging from lengthy essays to a simple picture or video. And she's one of the best commenters I know (another failure of mine!).

Oh, and have I mentioned that she's also a pastry chef? Sigh...yes, she also bakes the most gorgeous cakes and cupcakes...

I’ve tried to choose some specific posts to share with you, but she’s so prolific, that it’s been hard to decide which posts were particularly representative of her blog. I will, however, share this snippet, which, though a bit on the angry side, I feel embodies all the honesty that I love about her blog...

I, like most cognizant folks of contemporary culture, am saturated with doing good, feeling good, feeling virtue, feeling Zen-like, seeking to understand the positive pathways of the brain and how to ensure them, being mindful, counting my blessings, listing things to be grateful for, etc. etc. Every now and then, though, I'd like to surrender. I'd like to say to those people whose kids are really young or newly diagnosed that you know what? It's not going to get better. It's going to get worse. Your mind and your nature will be chipped away to such a fine point, you'll be capable of pecking at any closed door and slipping through. You'll be bitter and angry and self-righteous and you'll get things done, but you'll also do a lot of crying in the shower and sliding down the proverbial wall. 

I would like to be the John McEnroe of parents of disabled children. I'd like to curse at the ref when I miss a shot, scream at the fans and maybe even throw my racket and storm off the court. I'm out of here, I'd shout, I'm through with this shit.

I suppose it's actually time to meditate.

I hope all of this hasn't embarrassed Elizabeth. And I worry that this isn't good enough, that I haven't done her justice. So I will stop trying, and leave you with what Elizabeth says is her favorite poem, and the source of the name of her blog.

Adam's Curse

By William Butler Yeats

We sat together at one summer's end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, 'A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.'

. . . . . . . . . And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There's many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, 'To be born woman is to know-
Although they do not talk of it at school-
That we must labour to be beautiful.'

I said, 'It's certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam's fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.'

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one's but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

Please go and visit Elizabeth at a moon, worn as if it had been a shell. And while you're there, add her to your Google Reader. I promise you won't regret it.

__________________________________

And then visit Sprite's Keeper for more Secret Santa posts in which everybody writes about another blogger who they love and admire.

 

 

Spin Cycle: A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words - Part Two

This week's Spin Cycle topic is "Picture Essay".

Yesterday I showed you the picture...

 

And here's the essay...

That is...my Mama. Yep, the one with the bottle of bourbon and the mustache. The place was Chicago. The time: 1945. According to Mama, she and some friends were just having a little party in her apartment. When I asked her why it was all women, she reminded me that "the boys" were all off fighting in WWII, and the girls were left to have fun on their own. That, by the way, was one of her favorite party tricks - the mustache thing. She taught me how to do it when I was just a little girl. The bourbon thing she taught me much later.

Yes, back before my Mama reinvented herself as a church lady and bastion of Southern gentility, she had...a bit of a past. In fact, there were many bits that she never told me about, which I have now come to understand were somewhat nefarious. But out of respect for her privacy, I will only tell y'all the bits she chose to tell me about. She loved to tell a good story, but I'm not entirely sure about the veracity of her tales. There are many things that I have, since her death, come to know weren't exactly 100% true. So keep that in mind.

Mama was born in Aberdeen, South Dakota in 1923, the 5th of 7 children. They lived in a big farm house and her daddy was an attorney, and member of the South Dakota House of Representatives. Her life changed drastically when she was 10. Her mother died (of pneumonia, I think) and her father died a year later (not sure why, but Mama claimed it was from a broken heart). Seven children, the Depression. A hard time. Mama's older sister, Gladys, and her oldest brother, Frank, raised all their younger siblings. Uncle Frank once said that "some days they ate potatoes and water, and other days they ate water and potatoes.)

I don't think that Mama ever got along with her sister, Gladys. Poor Gladys was a young woman of 21 when their parents died, and she was forced to put her life on hold while she took care of all these little kids. And I think Mama was a bit of a handful. While she never really told me this directly, I am in possession of Mama's old high school yearbooks, which are FILLED with inscriptions telling her how much "fun" she was, and how much "personality and pep" she exhibited. She was a yell leader. Her senior yearbook has THREE references to a certain Prom Night, all illustrated by little drawings of bottles with "XXX" written on them, and something about "fun" in the backseat that time they all drove to Sioux Falls. Mama did tell me that Aunt Gladys refused to let her wear lipstick, so she secretly bought some and hid it in her purse, then would stop and put it on while walking to school, using a shop window as a mirror.

According to Mama, after graduating high school in Spring of 1941, she went away to college at the University of Washington, in Seattle. I am not at all sure if this is true, but she does seem to have been in Seattle at this time. I can't imagine how her family was paying for college for her, I don't think she was much of a scholar - pretty busy having all that "fun". Anyway, she claimed that Aunt Gladys had insisted on giving her a home perm before she left for Seattle, but it turned out horribly. In a fit of hysteria, she pulled out her fingernail clippers in the bathroom on her train to Seattle, and cut all her hair off into a short, but stylish bob. I like to believe this was true.

Then, on December 7, 1941, she was snow skiing with some friends, and when she got to the bottom of the mountain for lunch, everybody was screaming and crying and when she got the the lodge, they were all clustered around a radio. Pearl Harbor had been bombed. As all her brothers joined the military, she was forced to leave college.

She said that she then got a job in a factory at a shipyard in Seattle. Rosie the Riveter stuff. I asked her once what she had done exactly, and she said something vague about sorting bolts on a conveyor belt. As you can imagine, a girl with all that "personality and pep" didn't last long in such a tedious job, and she soon headed off for the big city.

Eventually, she made her way to Chicago. By herself, which I think was pretty bold and adventurous at the time. She said that she talked her way into a job as a telephone operator for a big sporting goods company in Chicago. She lied and told them she knew how to run a switchboard. Apparently, on the first day, she created a complete disaster and got all the lines switched. But instead of firing her, they promoted her to Receptionist. I told you she had "personality and pep"! She loved working there because all the young men were away fighting in the war, and the place was populated by older, "fatherly" men who looked after her. Yeah, right.

She had quite a few stories from that time. She claimed that she modeled for Marshall-Fields...

 

She claimed that she was hit on in nightclubs by both Danny Thomas and Mel Torme, but succumbed to neither of them. Danny Thomas was a married man, and Mel Torme was...short. She also claimed that she had several male friends who were gay, and she liked to go out with them because they'd take her out to a nice dinner and a movie, but didn't try to get any S-E-X.

My favorite Mama-brush-with-greatness story was about a night when she was out with her friends. According to Mama, in those days all the girls wanted to look like they could hold their liquor. So they'd drink and drink, then go into the bathroom and make themselves throw up, then go back out and drink more. Sort of alcoholic bulimia. "All the girls did it!" she claimed. So this one night, she was in a nightclub bathroom vomiting up her Mai Tais and heard the girl in the next stall doing the same. When they both came out to clean up and rinse their mouths, the girl in the next stall turned out to be...Veronica Lake.

Another of her weirder stories was about a time when she and a roommate were painting their apartment. She said she was trying to paint the ceiling, so she balanced a chair on top of the radiator, and stood on it. Of course she took a tumble, and the back of the chair rammed her between the legs. Unfortunately, she had in a tampon, and she got so swollen up that she had to go to the emergency room to have the tampon removed. I have fact checked this crazy story, and tampons were, in fact, being sold by the late 1940s - but most women still used Kotex. Maybe she was a pioneer.

Now I need to explain that these tasty little stories came out of her in drips and drabs. Most of the time, she pretended to be terribly upright and straightlaced, and then suddenly one of these tidbits would come tumbling out. Mama was a puzzle.

Interestingly, it was during this period of her life when she converted to Catholicism. Which in my mind, must have involved some serious thought and a certain amount of spiritual curiosity. But all she really said about it was that she liked being Catholic, because there was a cathedral in Chicago that held masses every hour on the hour all night Saturday night, and she could just leave the nightclubs, hit a mass at 2:00 in the morning, then go home and crash and she had fulfilled her Sunday church obligation and could sleep in.

Her life during the entire second half of the 1940s is a mystery to me. I know her sister, my Aunt Joey moved to Chicago to go to nursing school, and they lived together. But that's about it.

The last Chicago story that Mama shared was that she had been engaged to be married. To a rich boy from Long Island (ha!) named Lawrence Vincent Snyder, III. She claimed that they had even gone so far as to send out the wedding invitations, when she chickened out and ran away. She said she had a good girlfriend, Mary Jane, who had gotten married and moved to Austin, Texas, of all places, and when she ran away from Lawrence Vincent Snyder, III, she got on a train and hightailed it to Austin, because she didn't think anybody would think to look for her in such a place.

The rest, of course, is history. She met my Daddy and became upright and ladylike and a wonderful wife, homemaker and mother.

So there you go, the story of the picture. Myyearwiththemouse blew me away by guessing Chicago! And very close to the right date. But I have to give the prize to Michele, who wrote and entire, brilliant story about these partying ladies. Tell you what, Michele, when you come out to LA for that conference, I'll take you out for a drink.

Please drop by Sprite's Keeper for more spins on "Picture Essay".

Eight

Happy Birthday to my precious Jude!

 
 
 

I love you more than life.

Erin Go Bragh

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I hope you're all wearing your green.

 

The Serious:

The Breastplate of St. Patrick -

I arise today

Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,

Through the belief in the threeness,

Through confession of the oneness

Of the Creator of Creation.

I arise today

Through the strength of Christ's birth with his baptism,

Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial,

Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension,

Through the strength of his descent for the judgment of Doom.

I arise today

Through the strength of the love of Cherubim,

In obedience of angels,

In the service of archangels,

In hope of resurrection to meet with reward,

In prayers of patriarchs,

In predictions of prophets,

In preaching of apostles,

In faith of confessors,

In innocence of holy virgins,

In deeds of righteous men.

I arise today

Through the strength of heaven:

Light of sun,

Radiance of moon,

Splendor of fire,

Speed of lightning,

Swiftness of wind,

Depth of sea,

Stability of earth,

Firmness of rock.

I arise today

Through God's strength to pilot me:

God's might to uphold me,

God's wisdom to guide me,

God's eye to look before me,

God's ear to hear me,

God's word to speak for me,

God's hand to guard me,

God's way to lie before me,

God's shield to protect me,

God's host to save me

From snares of devils,

From temptations of vices,

From everyone who shall wish me ill,

Afar and anear,

Alone and in multitude.

I summon today all these powers between me and those evils,

Against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my body and soul,

Against incantations of false prophets,

Against black laws of pagandom

Against false laws of heretics,

Against craft of idolatry,

Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,

Against every knowledge that corrupts man's body and soul.

Christ to shield me today

Against poison, against burning,

Against drowning, against wounding,

So that there may come to me abundance of reward.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,

Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ on my right, Christ on my left,

Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,

Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,

Christ in every eye that sees me,

Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today

Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,

Through belief in the threeness,

Through confession of the oneness,

Of the Creator of Creation.

The Blarney:

 

 I've got my corned beef and cabbage in the Crockpot, and the Guinness in the fridge.

Erin Go Bragh!

Seussed

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

 

Black History Month Week Four: Zora Neale Hurston

"I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality,

rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions."

- Zora Neale Hurston

Writer Zora Neale Hurston definitely walked her own way.  And she knew how to make an entrance. On May 1, 1925, while still a young Harlem writer, Zora attended an awards dinner sponsored by Opportunity Magazine, at which she won second place for fiction with her story "Spunk" and second place for drama with her play "Color Struck". She strode into the center of the room, filled with writers and arts patrons, both black and white, dramaticallly tossed her long, multi-colored scarf around her neck, threw back her head and cried out the name of her winning play "Coloooor Struuuuck!" Her exubberant pronouncement literally brought the party to a halt. Afterward, no one remembered the winners of the first place prizes. But Zora Neale Hurston had indeed arrived.

 

Born in Alabama in 1891, Zora Hurston moved with her family to Eatonville, Florida when she was just a toddler. Eatonville was something of an anomoly in turn-of-the-century America, the nation's first all-black incorporated township. It was, as Hurston described "a city of five lakes, three croquet courts, three hundred brown skins, three hundred good swimmers, plenty guavas, two schools, and no jailhouse."

Here she had a somewhat idyllic childhood, growing up in an 8-room house on 5 acres of land, and surrounded by this culturally affirming town. In Eatonville, blacks formulated the laws and governed the city.  Zora's father, a Baptist preacher, was a town leader and her mother, a school teacher, directed the Christian curricula at the church.

While her strict father tried to squash her spirit, her mother encouraged her to "jump at de sun." Hurston explained "We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground."

Zora's happy childhood came to an abrupt end when her mother died in 1904, when Zora was just 13 years old. Her father very quickly married another, much younger woman. The always hot-headed Zora did NOT get along with her stepmother, in fact, the story goes that she tried to kill her in a fist fight. The stepmother soon convinced Zora's father to send her away to boarding school, but they eventually stopped paying her tuition, and the school had to expelled her.

Zora took a series of menial jobs, eventually joining a traveling Gilbert & Sullivan troupe as a maid to the lead singer. Eventually, she ended up in Baltimore, 26 years old, but still with no high school diploma. In order to qualify for a free high school education, Zora decided to shave 10 years off her age, claiming to be just 16 years old! And after conveniently losing these ten years, she never found them again, claiming to have been born in 1901 for the rest of her life! Do you think I could get away with that? Luckily, she had the looks and the vivacious and youthful spirit to pull it off.

 
 
 
She was graduated from Morgan Academy in Baltimore in 1918, and began her studies at Howard University. At Howard, she was one of the earliest members of Zeta Phi Beta sorority, and co-founded The Hilltop, the university's student newspaper. In 1925, she was offered a scholarship to Barnard College, where she was the only black student. The received her B.A. in Anthropology from Barnard in 1927, when she was 36 years old. But everybody thought she was 26! She went on to spend two years as a graduate student in anthropology at Colombia University.

It was during her time at Barnard and Colombia that Zora elbowed her way into the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920's, where she befriended poet Langston Hughes and actress/singer Ethel Waters. Though Hurston rarely drank, fellow writer Sterling Brown recalled, "When Zora was there, she was the party." Another friend remembered Hurston's apartment as a spirited "open house" for artists. All this partying didn't keep Hurston from her work, though. She would sometimes write in her bedroom while the party went on in the living room.

Through her career, which spanned 30 years, she published four novels, two books of folklore, an autobiography, numerous short stories, and many essays, articles and plays. The book considered her masterwork, "Their Eyes Were Watching God", was published in 1937, but it wasn't until her autobiography "Dust Tracks on a Road" was published in 1942, that she finally achieved the well-earned acclaim that had long eluded her. Unfortunately she never achieved financial success.

Like most free-spirited artists, a bit of scandal followed Zora Hurston. She was married twice, but both marriages were short-lived. Her second marraige was to a 23-year old man. She was 48. Though I'm guessing she told him she was 38! She was also rumored to be a lesbian. During her anthropological research, she seriously studied the voodoo culture of New Orleans, which inspired two of her books. In 1948, Zora was falsely accused of molesting a ten year old boy. Though she was able to prove that she wasn't even in the country at the time of the alleged attack, her personal life suffered from the scandal.

During the late forties and fifties, Zora Neale Hurston continued to work as a reporter and writer of magazine articles, but for the most part, her work fell into obscurity. Popular black writers of the time, Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison moved black literature into the area of the political struggle for equality and respect. Wright criticized Zora's work as "quaint", and her work fell out of popularity.

Zora Neale Hurston died on Jan. 28, 1960, at age 69, after suffering a stroke. Her neighbors in Fort Pierce, Florida, had to take up a collection for her funeral, but they couldn't collect enough to pay for a headstone, so Hurston was buried in a grave that remained unmarked until 1973.

That year, a young writer named Alice Walker, 9 years before she wrote "The Color Purple" traveled to Fort Pierce in search of the grave of the writer who had inspired her so tremendously. She located the Garden of Heavenly Rest, an over-grown segregated cemetery, made her way through the waist-high weeds and found Zora Neale Hurston's grave. She lay a plain stone headstone, the most she could afford at the time, on which she had engraved "Zora Neale Hurston: A Genius of the South".

Two years later, Walker wrote an article for Ms. Magazine entitled "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston". The article lead to a revived interest and eventual republication of all of Zora's works, and was part of the emergence of a new type of African-American literature, lead by Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou, which focused on black experiences, but didn't necessary focus on racial or political struggle.

Her home in Fort Pierce is now a Historical Landmark, and they celebrate an annual Zora Fest. She's been listed as one of the top 100 African-Americans in history, she was the subject of a PBS "American Masters" and Oprah just produced a tv version of "Their Eyes Were Watching God" starring Halle Berry. All of which both thrills me and breaks my heart at the same time.

But as Zora herself said "A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shake it."

 

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Okay y'all, that's the end of Black History Month. I hope you learned something, and discovered a few amazing people.