THIS NOVEMBER

Photo by Kathryn Kleekamp

Last night I read a Mary Oliver poem and today can viscerally feel the lingering impact of her consideration of what a soul is. As a longtime non-fiction writer, I am awed by what poets accomplish with exactly the same tools in my arsenal: words, punctuation, and a blank page. Occasionally I step outside proven proficiencies to write a poem. My objective is usually to simply say something of isolated importance or particular complexity. Sometimes it just feels good to play with the rhythm, descriptive words and imagery that distinguish poems. Maybe it’s the same impulse that leads birds to sing.

Out for a walk one November day in 2003, I was amazed to see crocuses blooming. In fact I found evidence of all four seasons. It intrigued me because November has always seemed to stand alone: not winter, not fall, not summer or spring. The following poem was an attempt to share that observation.

This November

spring’s lavender flowers bloom
among dead brown leaves below
green leaves holding to a willow branch
like old friends reluctant to part.

Frosty mornings become balmy days
become clear, cold, cobalt nights
crowded with stars and a restless moon
that moves among them with the solitary grace
of a lone swan in search of her mate.

November’s crisp air,
carries earthy odors, rough and worn,
good and used, like old hands.

At day’s end its black and coral skies

sprawl unrestrained and joyous,
like the work of a child
left alone in an art room.

November the loner, the balladeer
of rich songs colored with promise
and tainted with regret,
chronicler of the year's life
and death, hope and sorrow,
loss and gain;

these are November’s gifts

for those who are
inspired and healed
by change. 



Photo by Christie Lowrance

WAR, HONOR, AND MY COUSIN PHIL

Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial

Two months ago I was in Scotland and England traveling with friends Maggie and Ian,  both formerly with the British Department of Defense. We saw extraordinarily historic sites, including Maiden Castle in Dorset, where a 6,000-year-old Iron Age settlement was invaded by Roman newcomers. But among the remarkable places we visited, none moved me more powerfully than the American cemetery sixty miles north of London, the only one of its kind in the United Kingdom.  

The solemn buildings and stark lines of pure white crosses were softened by a light morning mist as we drove up to the gates of the Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial and parked, among the first to arrive at this early hour. At the Visitor’s Center interpretive guide Arthur Brookes urged us into an adjoining area where a film had just begun telling the story of the cemetery.

I sat down on a marble bench to listen. The American men and women buried here were mostly World War II airmen, but also members of the US Navy, Army, Marines and Coast Guard, nearly 4,000 in all, and the names of another 5,000 are inscribed on the Wall of the Missing. Unexpected tears ran down my cheeks as I watched aerial footage and cockpit recordings of doomed planes flown by boys who came willingly to fight and die on foreign land, so far from home. They were heartbreakingly young.

“In the UK we often think of the Americans in the War as the ones with cigarettes and chocolate,” Arthur Brookes told our small group afterwards. “But their effort made victory possible.” His careful, respectful account of that effort, as well as the cemetery’s pristine grounds and buildings with maps and plates depicting military movements, made clear that these American war dead and their vital role in a common Allied effort are honored every day.

 In 2014 we move through daily life in the U.S., often heedless of the true sacrifices American service men and women have made, and continue to make, around the world. But here in Cambridge, England, that sacrifice will never forgotten.  I left with deepest gratitude to Arthur Brookes and all who maintain the cemetery, and hope others will take time to visit. It is located three miles west of Cambridge, England on Highway A-1303 and is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

* * *

My cousin Phil lives in Jacksonville, Florida, which you know as much by his drawl as by his address. Like many cousins, we stay loosely in touch, and every couple years there’s a marathon phone call to catch up. I’m fond of all my cousins, but two things distinguished Phil: he was an Eagle Scout back when we were kids, and even I, his Massachusetts younger cousin, knew that was a considerable accomplishment. Also, he loves trees, perhaps more than I do, at least he knows them better. Every now and then he sends me a box of fragrant split pine fatwood from his land in southern Florida. Somewhere in the box there is always one piece of paper or kindling with the provenance of the tree within. I keep them, of course, who could simply burn such a record.
One says, for example:

Long leaf yellow pine
Planted? 1920-1930’s
Killed by lightning
Knocked down by tornado in 2004
Cut to dry in 2006
Split by hand 11/18/2007  

A few years ago I learned that Phil honored my father, along with trees, Scouting, and his cherished wife Helen and their children. We were having one of our marathon catch-up calls on Veterans Day. I was intrigued to hear him say, “You know, I think of your father on this day every year.”

We often talked about Daddy, but I was surprised to hear that this day had a special association with him. “In World War II he was in the thick of it,” Phil said. “And he volunteered. He was one of millions of other people who did the same thing, but he was one of us, one of our family.  He was in harm’s way and he did his best.”

My father, Howard V.R. Palmer, had married and joined the U.S. Navy in 1941. My parents shared their first Christmas together at the training center in Hanover, New Hampshire. With separation by wartime combat facing them, the only memory they shared, laughing, was always that their tiny fake musical tree was completely dwarfed by presents.

In 1944, he was a U.S. Navy lieutenant on LST 359, a troop landing ship delivering English soldiers to Normandy and returning for more. If you saw the opening half hour of “Saving Private Ryan” you saw what troop landing ships were doing. His ship was torpedoed, the captain killed. Although my father’s back was broken, he kept command of the ship until they got to England. He was soon on his way to a military hospital in Norfolk, Virginia. He also participated in military action at Anzio and Salerno in Italy. It was a miracle I ever met him.

When Phil graduated from the Navy Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island, my father and I drove down for the ceremony. “My instructors took one look at the medals on his chest, and they knew exactly where he had been in World War II and what he had been doing,” said Phil. “They went to him like he was a magnet. I don’t think I had understood how important he was, but they did.”

On Veterans Day, I'll always know that my cousin Phil, who worked as chief engineer on several Navy vessels, is remembering my father and honoring his deeds and actions of more than half a century ago.  

I thank him for that, as well as for the fatwood.


P.S. I was sending Phil a fatwood thank-you bottle of Johnny Walker Scotch until a few years ago when he requested that, instead, I make a donation to the Wounded Warriors organization. And I pass along his recommendation.  

TALKING WITH THORNTON BURGESS

Photo courtesy of Sandwich Glass Museum

Some years ago I had an assignment with Cape Cod Life to write an article on Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Massachusetts.  I spent more than three hours watching and listening to first-person interpreters in the Pilgrim and Native American villages chat among themselves and with visitors from all over the world as they swept out dwellings, chopped wood, waited for delicious-smelling bread to bake, and completed other daily tasks. The longer I stayed, the more the line between appearance and reality eroded. I knew perfectly well it was the twentieth century, but the seventeenth century was so real.  It was an unsettling sensation.

Last week I had a similar experience with the eerie spell that trained first- person interpreters weave.  David Hobbs has spent more than thirty years portraying Pilgrim-era characters, including five years at Plimoth Plantation, and for fourteen years, he has enacted children’s author and naturalist Thornton W. Burgess, the subject of my recent biography, Nature’s Ambassador. Hobbs gives walking tours in Sandwich Village where Burgess was born, as well as school programs and other presentations.  (Since I live in Burgess’ birthplace, I’m on the tour; on more than one occasion, I’ve had to speed out to the front porch in advance of his group’s arrival to grab wine bottles and glasses from the previous night’s gathering.)

As a Pilgrim or as Thornton Burgess, David Hobbs is at ease.
“When I’m in costume, I’m somebody else, so I’m not particularly self-conscious,” he says. “I’ve learned how to ‘hide’ David within the costume and make sure the character is more prevalent.”   However, he does recall feeling notably awkward traveling on the Vineyard ferry in full Pilgrim gear to do a private performance for Princess Diana and Chelsea Clinton.  His 6’4” height helps carry off the Burgess persona - the popular author was six feet tall - and David is as naturally modest and self-effacing as his character.  

For Sandwich’s 375th “Talk of the Town” lecture series, he had been invited to give a talk in character and I was asked to introduce him.  When we got together to discuss the event, we hit on an intriguing idea: why not go beyond the introduction and actually interact while he was on stage, he as Burgess and I as Burgess’ biographer.

The thought took hold immediately.  What biographer hasn’t dreamed of being able to ask their subject about puzzling, complex or unexplained aspects of their life? What would I ask Thornton Burgess? I must admit, the first thing that immediately came to mind was if he was offended by my reading his journals. I have kept journals for decades and the thought of someone pawing through them is beyond repugnant. 

So David and I decided to prepare a few topics I would introduce in the form of questions following his formal introduction, including the following:

• Although you’re best known as a children’s author, you didn’t start out in that field. Will you talk about your career as a journalist? Was it hard to make the transition from journalist to children’s writer?

• You are known for your productivity—for example, you wrote nine books in 1915. Was it difficult to find things to write about?
• You and your mother lived in ten different houses in Sandwich village. What was moving around like? What do you remember of the town, of Shawme Pond, of the glass factory?

As I sat in the front row of the Sandwich Glass Museum auditorium waiting for David to call on me, I listened to his the effortless impersonation of Thornton Burgess, and realized that I was actually eager and excited to hear him answer my questions. It was going to be as close as I would get to actually talking with Thornton Burgess.

We planned an exchange around Burgess’ father, Thornton W. Burgess, Sr. a locally admired young man who died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-four. His baby was ten months old and his widow Caroline was twenty-two. In Now I Remember, Thornton Burgess’s biography, the author mentioned that a woman wrote him saying she had often seen his mother Caroline walking in the cemetery with a little boy, and asked if it was him.  

I recalled this letter as my last question and was surprised by his grave, almost sad, response: “Yes, I was that little boy.” When we talked later about the presentation, he offered an explanation. “The fact was, around the time I started my Burgess portrayal, my own father passed,” he said. “Thinking of him helped me apply to the fact that I as Burgess never met my father, and was indeed that innocent young boy who held his mother’s hand so tightly as they walked through the cemetery.  I actually teared up tonight when I was talking about it.”

Apparently appearance and reality blur for first-person interpreters as well as for their audiences.

Watch for this “Talk of the Town” program on Sandwich Community Television – and who knows, David and I may go on the road with “Conversations with Thornton Burgess!”  

         

THROUGH AND THROUGH

In complete darkness, I creep like a burglar up an unlighted stairway from the basement apartment in my son Rob’s house. I’m trying desperately to avoid the loudest creaking steps because five people, including two small children, are asleep nearby, but no such luck. I get a few sleepy kisses before starting my 90-minute drive to the Children’s Literature Festival in Keene, New Hampshire.

With the requisite cup of coffee beside me, I head north on Route 2. A thin layer of fog lingers on fields I pass in this rural part of mid-Massachusetts, but morning sunlight is working its golden magic on the treetops. As miles pass I notice the rising grade of the road, a meaningful change to someone who lives on a coastal peninsula at an altitude of twelve feet. The hills are becoming higher, the valleys deeper, and the views across them showcase fall’s finest colors: vivid reds, yellows, browns and golds that set off classic white church steeples and houses in the small towns I’m driving past. Is there a more beautiful month than October to be in New England?

With only a minor glitch (or three), I arrive at Keene State College on time, get my information packet, more coffee,  and settle into a seat at the back of the auditorium to listen to the speakers discuss their work as children’s book writers and illustrators. Since I have a children’s book manuscript in the hands of a literary agent, as well as a published biography of a children’s writer to sell, I’m here to learn what I can.

The speakers described their paths to successful careers with humor and insight, but one young woman electrified me, an illustrator whose words echoed the deepest truths I know as a writer. Pamela Zagarenski of Mystic, Connecticut is a small-framed, dark-haired woman with dark eyes who referenced the “Lithuanian gypsy” in her during the talk. She has illustrated such award-winning books as Sleep Like a Tiger and Red Sings from the Treetops, also paints large murals, and has a card line.   

As a presenter she had me at her opening sentence: “I didn’t become an illustrator to be a public speaker,” she said, nervously admitting her nervousness. SO true! I thought. You don’t imagine the pressure of giving radio and television interviews (see www.christielowrance.com) and hour-long talks when you’re wearing a sweatshirt and no makeup in the comfy confines of your office. I realized she was talking less about being the illustrator of successful books and more about her relationship to her work, her love and joy in the artist’s path. I started furiously making notes to capture her words and wished I had my tape recorder or a smart phone.

“I have drawn every day of my life,” Pamela said. “I have always wanted to illustrate. When people ask what do you want to do with your life, I’ve never had a different answer. And I’ve never questioned my answer: I would be an illustrator of children’s books. I’m an illustrator through and through. And my choices were made, conscious or not, for art.”  

I understand. Words have always made sense to me, it has always felt right to be writing. I started keeping a journal when I was ten, and my home today has countless drawers and shelves that contain a stash of diaries, journals and notebooks, some pictured in the heading of this blog, including that first cherished Girl Scout diary, second from the right. 

To settle into my desk chair with hours and hours of writing ahead of me is THE best. To talk about writing with other writers is THE best.  To un-garble the garbled, to wrestle with an unruly paragraph and win another victory for Clarity and Concision, to create life in an inert sentence, these are THE best.  To be writing just feels good.

I’ve known many creative people: sculptors, screen writers, watercolorists, oil painters, musicians, jewelers, actors, as well as writers. We create for money, oh yes, and would that we all earned much, much more than we do, but as Pamela said, there is a deeper truth, which we can choose to accept, ignore or reject, which is that creativity is part of who we are, part of our identity. To give time and a place in daily life to our creativity, in whatever form or level of proficiency it takes, is to accept and honor ourselves.

And in that acceptance is real contentment. When I write, I feel peaceful, I feel whole. Some express their creativity with acrylic paint or charcoal, with clay or stone, with a spray paint can, with paper cuts, with needle and thread, with a forge, with a cello or flute.  Some people see visions called poems, others conjure up non-existent characters to come alive on stage, screen, television or the printed page.  Creative people know or at least sense it is possible that they will express some thing the entire world has never seen or heard or felt before. That’s a wildly heady and exciting thought. 

“I’m an illustrator through and through,” Pamela Zagarenski said.  I SO love that. Yes. I’m a writer through and through.

Note: The relationship between writers/artists/creative people and their work will be the subject of future posts.