A PRESCHOOL EPIPHANY

Undated photo, circa 1950s, a classroom visit by children's author Thornton Burgess



A few weeks ago I experienced an epiphany, the kind that lingers in your mind in the days that follow it.  I had just dropped my four-year-old granddaughter off in her classroom at a daycare center in Arlington, Massachusetts. Children there were eagerly tackling such morning activities as painting, assembling building materials, and creating special projects. She had time for a quick hug good-by before dashing into the thick of things.

I could still hear the enthusiastic purposefulness as I walked downstairs to leave. At the bottom of the staircase I started to turn right to the door outside. But something caught my eye. I came to a full stop before a closed preschool classroom door in order to read a poster on it. “Things We Want to Learn” was the title. Below it was each student’s name and the specific subject he or she wanted to learn about. I was curious to see what young children considered worthy of learning. 

“Sea creatures” was notably popular. I imagined it had been the recent focus of the teacher’s efforts. I pictured small hands waving wildly as children shouted out other topics, such as “Pirates,” “Kitty Kats,” and “Pets.”  Some showed a natural science bent with their interest in learning about “The rain forest” and “Giraffes.” One child wanted to learn about “Numbers.” Ah, indeed. I remembered approaching my mother after I had gotten a solid grip on addition, subtraction and multiplication. I had heard intriguing rumors of something else you could do with numbers, and demanded, as if she had been keeping a secret from me, “There is another thing, isn’t there?” I pestered her until she explained division to me.

“Blueberries and strawberries” was another choice. I pictured a small child looking at a bowl of these lovely fruits and wondering why one is red and tapered and the other blue and round. Children consider these things when we give them time, while we adults are more likely to focus on eating them and the calorie count. But my favorite subject that one child wanted to learn about was “Clouds.” Can’t you see this child playing outside, maybe on a swing or at the very top of some piece of climbing equipment. Looking up, he or she may have observed clouds passing overhead, and idly wondered, “Why do they move like that? What are they made of? Where are they going?”  Answers aside, when was the last time you or I asked such good questions?   

As I stood in the hallway studying this fine documentation of preschool educational aspiration, I so appreciated the thrill of learning that children bring into the jaded, answer-burdened world we adults have designed. Children aren’t ashamed to ask questions, and they want clear, simple, useful answers. (Admittedly I wouldn’t be helpful in explaining the life cycle of a cloud.) Children respect learning for learning’s sake. They trust knowledge will become useful sooner or later, so the more they can accumulate, the better. Plus, it just feels good to know things.  It feels good to know that 3 + 2 = 5 or 9 X  2 = 18, especially when others don’t. I particularly enjoy knowing, for example, that the Erie Canal was completed in 1825. For those like me fortunate enough to have children in their lives, it’s our job to satisfy the childhood craving for knowledge with patience for one more question, one more childish  observation. Our patience is important because, for one thing, the information we provide might actually turn out to be useful, and for another, the craving will pass as children become teenagers who know everything.

To a great extent my respect for naturalist and children’s author Thornton Burgess, the subject of my biography Nature’s Ambassador, is based to his superb grasp of a child’s love of learning. One fourth grade boy was asked by Anne Carroll Moore, the legendary New York Public Library librarian, to explain  his delight in Thornton Burgess books. “He sees what I see and I understand his language,” the boy responded. Burgess never considered children an inferior audience, never wrote down to them, and never used his children’s books as a launch pad for adult books. He shared a child’s abiding interest in learning about the natural world. Nature, Burgess maintained, was endlessly attractive to children, and therefore was the perfect tool for learning. His 1924 article in Nature magazine stated the belief that environmental education should be taught in every curriculum from kindergarten through 12th grade. 

As I walked back to my car, I thought about that preschool poster covered with intellectual ambition. Then a new question popped into my mind: “What do I - as a Nana-aged person – want to learn?”  Not what do I want to do or be or have in my linen closet, but what do I want to learn about? What do I want to understand? What an exciting question! So far I have decided on:  shipwrecks, roses/peonies/morning glories/trees, care and feeding of the soul, glorious writing, Saint Margaret and King Malcolm of Scotland, and where the shut-off values for water are in my house. And Nature, of course. And clouds and numbers, definitely!      

WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND

What Goes Around Comes Around, Historically Speaking

My grandmother Helen Moore was born in 1883 in Dumont New Jersey, one of the Scottish Christies that settled in and farmed the area.  She was a tall, handsome woman with strong opinions and a keen sense of purpose and humor. An avid reader before glaucoma took its toll, she gave me her leather bound copies of Thomas Hardy and Jane Austen as Christmas presents. What inspired her as an 18-year-old teenager to undertake a career in elocution I don‘t know, but she studied extensively with Marion Short, a highly accomplished elocutionist popular in the New York area. I inherited Nana’s professional memorabilia, including her business card, numerous programs from performances in halls and churches, and the enthusiastic personal endorsements she received between 1901 and 1904. One fan described her as “of attractive personality, ease of carriage and no little dramatic power.”

Most of her performances were in New Jersey, so imagine my shock when I discovered on her program two personal endorsements from Sandwich, Massachusetts where I’ve lived in for nearly 40 years.  “The readings of Miss Moore in our vestry on Thursday evening, July 31^st were received with much enthusiasm,” wrote Dr. Edward S. Talbot, D. D. S. …”We predict a successful future for her, and hope to hear her again.” “My Dear Miss Moore: Your recitation was much enjoyed by all,” wrote Elizabeth Clark, Corps Secretary. Dr. Talbot’s former home is a few hundred yards from my house, and   Elizabeth Clark’s name is familiar to me as a good friend of Thornton Burgess whose biography I recently completed.

What brought my grandmother, a young professional elocutionist from New Jersey to a Cape Cod village in the early 1900s? How did Nana travel? Where did she stay? Did she have friends or family in Sandwich? These questions go unanswered for now, but our remarkable town archivist Barbara Gill provided a bit more information about where my grandmother likely performed. Elizabeth Clark was undoubtedly the secretary of the Women’s Relief Corps, she said. It was attached to the Charles Chipman GAR Post and met upstairs at the commercial building on Jarves St. now owned by the Brown Jug. The purpose of the Corps was to raise money for Civil War veterans, and they often held fund-raising programs in the Sandwich Town Hall auditorium.

If it is known that my grandmother participated in a program for the Women’s Relief Corps in Sandwich, it is almost certainly known that over 100 years ago she performed in the Sandwich Town Hall auditorium.  (Which is where I’ll be on March 22, introducing actress Carol McManus who will recite a poem from Nana’s repertoire for the March for the Arts Town Hall event.)  

Who knows? In the early 1900s Thornton Burgess was in his late 20s and working as a journalist in Springfield, Massachusetts. Perhaps he took a day off to visit Sandwich friends the day my grandmother was performing? Perhaps he went with his friend Elizabeth Clark to hear a visiting elocutionist from Dumont, New Jersey? As historians know better than most -- anything is possible!  

"WISH YOU WERE HERE"

I live in the central village of a seaside New England town old enough to celebrate a 375th anniversary this year. Those of us who live beside tidal bodies on or near historic places like Sandwich, Massachusetts come to expect new discoveries as an ordinary course of events, not by way of invention, of course, but through a diary or letter found beneath attic floorboards or foundation stones uncovered to reveal the outline of a 17th century house.


In places like this, unimagined discoveries await you on a beach or in a closet or inches below the grass of your backyard. When we were replacing a small porch at my house with a large deck, for example, we dug up an 1868 coin and a small pale blue-green glass bottle with a one-inch tall circular neck atop an eight-sided container presumably for ink. I’ve often told company that “it may have been made right here at the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company.”

Some forty years ago my friend and neighbor Carol, then editor of the town’s weekly newspaper, attended a selectmen’s meeting when the discovery of a unique piece of Sandwich’s glass industry history was announced. The official 1879 stamp of the Glass Blowers Union had lain undisturbed in an attic until the property’s change of hands brought it to light. For the small gathering the seal was inked one final time and a few prints were made. Knowing my interest in town history Carol saved one for me. It’s in a small frame in my living room, along with other treasures of great interest and dubious value.

Recently I was at the Sandwich Glass Museum talking with Katie Campbell, director of the Sandwich Glass Museum and the Sandwich Historical Society, about my recently published biography on Sandwich native Thornton W. Burgess, an influential naturalist and children’s author. In fact, many members of Burgess’ family were well-known in the historic glass factory’s management and production – Watermans, Spurrs, and Chapouils ─ and Burgess as a boy sold his mother’s popular molasses candy to factory workers. On the way out of the museum I stopped to chat with staff members Robert and Caitlyn. Casual mention of my little ink well and the seal imprint produced an unmistakable gleam in their eyes.  So I walked home, retrieved my prizes, and brought them to the museum for curator Dorothy Hogan-Schofield to inspect when she returned to work.

Yesterday I went to collect them and learn her opinion. The glass ink well was manufactured, Dorothy reported, but, alas, most likely not at the Boston & Sandwich Glass Factory. (No more entertaining speculation!)  The stamped imprint was interesting, but, in fact, the museum had at some point acquired the union seal itself which she kindly offered to show me along with other exciting pieces, including the small, dark utilitarian desk at which the seal had been used.

“Have you seen the post card exhibit?” Dorothy asked, and escorted me around the corner for a quick look at the museum’s newest exhibit which is based on early 20^th century postcard views of familiar town locations. Many items are organized by street, so residents, homeowners and tourists alike can easily relate to the contents. “Look, here’s School Street,” I said exclaiming anew at my favorite postcard scene that shows Thornton Burgess’ birthplace on a lovely, broad tree-shaded street.

“And there’s the Casino!” I said, pointing out postcards of the large town’s community building that once stood on School Street. “Thornton Burgess was the keynote speaker there at Sandwich’s 300^th anniversary dinner. “For the 250^th they set up a tent behind the Casino big enough to accommodate 2,000 people,” remarked Dorothy. “Really?” I said. “Oh, here’s the boardwalk!”  I leaned closer to the display case to read its construction date: 1875. I realize that it was still fairly new when Thornton Burgess crossed it in March 1879 with other townspeople hurrying to see the gigantic blue whale that had washed up on the town beach.  

“This is one of my favorites,” commented Dorothy. We stopped before a scene at the Town Beach showing several completely clothed women on dry land standing near a passel of children in the water, none fully immersed, which reflects nothing but common sense to anyone familiar with the bay’s ridiculously cold temperatures. Nearby are images of the now highly desirable residential Town Neck area when it was a cow pasture. I recall Burgess’ story of herding cows there as a young boy in the late 1800s. One got onto the nearby railroad track and to his horror was run down by an approaching train.

I’m aware of imposing on the curator. But it’s early on a gray winter morning and there are few visitors. We can spend a few more conscience-free minutes savoring this marvelous collection of images and items that capture the classic, tranquil beauty of our town, a place she and I know and love well. Here is documentation, not that we need it, that so much has been unchanged by the passage of time.

I came to the museum with two small discoveries in hand, and left yesterday with a wealth of discoveries of a different kind, thanks to a collection of commercial art, collectibles, and handwritten messages on simple postcards. Whatever you do, make time between now and June 2014 to visit the Sandwich Glass Museum’s special exhibit “Wish You Were Here.”

And if you experience one gasp of surprise, one thrill of discovery while visiting this special exhibit, ask the staff to pass along your thanks to the curator who will undoubtedly be upstairs completely engrossed in assembling the museum’s next major exhibit.

 

          

 

              

A MAN WHO LOVED DEEPLY

With Valentine's Day approaching, I'm reminded of the privilege I had as a writer to witness a special love story that I would like to share again... 


A few years have passed since I accepted the invitation of my neighbor, author and columnist Jim Coogan, to give a talk to the Sandwich Men’s Club on my book Nature’s Ambassador: The Legacy of Thornton W. Burgess.  Good questions followed the presentation, but one stayed with me: “What kind of man was Thornton Burgess?” 


It was not a difficult question to answer. You don’t spend four and a half years researching and writing about one individual without getting to know your subject as well as, if not better than, family. It’s a question I long wrestled with when organizing Burgess’ biography. Understanding his personal and
professional relationships, character, and personality had to precede writing about his illustrious career path as a renowned writer and naturalist. 


 As I stood before the audience, thinking how to best describe Thornton Burgess, much ran through my mind. I immediately pictured him as mid- to late life photographs showed him: a substantial man, six feet tall, glasses, pleasant, amiable, with a certain lightness about him that suggested a ready sense humor. I thought of the man who understood young children so well and wrote stories for them for more than 50 years, who cared passionately for the welfare of wild animals.


 “He was a gentle man,” I began and went on to elaborate on that and other qualities.  It was later when I realized that I had failed to mention one vitally important trait in Thornton Burgess, a trait easy to miss in a man whose professional output and success had been so visibly his measure.
 
He was, in fact, a man who loved deeply. My confidence in that comes less from knowing the height of his happiness in love than knowing the bottomless depth of his sorrow in love’s loss.


 Thornton Burgess was married twice. In 1905 he married Nina Osborne, 24, an adorable and popular young woman who shared his love of the outdoors enough to agree to a tent camping honeymoon in the Adirondacks. He called her his “little girl,” and indeed she looked it. Four hundred people attended their wedding and about half that number came to the reception at their home. Ten months later the same minister who had presided over the joyous wedding conducted a funeral service for Nina who had died the day after giving birth to a baby boy. Unbearably anguished and distraught, Burgess was unable to attend. Within less than a year he had married the woman he adored, witnessed or learned of her death, and become a father.  

Written about eight months after Nina died, journal excerpts quoted in Nature’s Ambassador depict his grief:


“I have scattered a few flowers on the grave of Her who was the light of my life and who only a year ago so bravely and cheerfully looked forward to her hour of traivel [sic]. I shall try at least to be cheerful. I owe it to my friends. But O I am so lonely…


“It is thirty-three weeks tonight since my little girl entered the larger life and still I cannot reconcile myself. Still I cry “Why? Why? Why? Why is faith so poor a comforter?”


“Thirty-eight weeks ago tonight that my little girl was taken ill. I’ve lived years. I wonder when and where I shall meet her. God help me to guide her boy right.”   


He had no choice but to rally. There were bills to pay and mouths to feed, for his mother Caroline and infant son Thornton W. Burgess III were dependent on him. Five years later he remarried to Fannie Johnson, the widow of Burgess’ colleague at Phelps Publishing and the mother of two teenagers. In the decades that followed, the Burgesses provided a reliable core of financial and emotional support for their three children and 10 grandchildren.

When Fannie died from various health problems in 1950, Burgess, then 74, was completely devastated. “My Lady (his nickname for her), my beloved, passed at 9:15 and my heart is broken,” he wrote. “I am utterly desolate…”


In the effort to hold himself together, he found refuge in three activities: writing, driving out into the western Massachusetts hills, and visiting friends and familiar places on Cape Cod. But beyond these diversions he grieved to the depth of his being.


Reading through his journals I began to notice something unusual in the entries that followed Fannie’s death. Each one started with the same words: “I’m glad I belong to you - my Lady.”   Surprised at the repetition, I turned to the next week. Every entry began exactly the same way. I continued turning pages and discovered that week after week, month after month, for a full year, Thornton Burgess began his journal with those tender words of Fannie’s that reminded him of their lives together, words he wrapped around his twice-broken heart like a poultice: “I’m glad I belong to you.”


 Burgess was remarkably generous to his family members, supporting them as family had supported him and his mother in their poverty in Sandwich. He forgave infuriating (and costly) youthful transgressions. He was a loyal and lifelong friend to many. And his love of nature and wildlife, the heart of his dozens of books and thousands of stories, lectures and radio programs, was sustained from childhood into his final years.


By all accounts, Thornton Burgess was a man who loved deeply.

Live Radio Interview

                                   

                                     

The prospect of being interviewed recently on live radio was exciting, but I felt a little nervous as I drove to Woods Hole and parked behind the large house that is home to WCAI FM, the Cape and Islands NPR station. Talk about a view! Offices here face the daily sunrise over the Elizabeth Islands and overlook the Woods Hole waterfront, alive year round with sailboats, fishing boats, and Steamship Authority ferries entering and leaving the harbor. 

After being ushered into a room dominated by a large sextagonal table covered with microphones, headsets, wires and booms, I sat down to wait for WCAI’s Mindy Todd. The popular and seasoned host and producer of The Point, a weekday program on critical issues of interest, had invited me here to discuss my new biography Nature’s Ambassador: The Legacy of Thornton W. Burgess.  A 20^th century author who brought conservation values and nature education to generations of children, Burgess was born and grew up in Sandwich about twenty miles from WCAI offices. He was also the host in the 1920s and ‘30s of the Radio Nature League which may have been the first nature program on the air specifically directed to children.

 I watched a program being broadcast in an adjacent room. A longtime writer, I truly love the process of gathering information to shape and package for unseen audiences. In about fifteen minutes I would be called on to provide information to a similarly unseen audience -- but with no opportunity to delete, Google, revise or reflect for a day or two. Would I remember important names, dates and events? What if I coughed or sneezed? Who could have understood my mixed feelings better than Thornton Burgess!

 He relished the challenge of exploring a new medium as a different way to promote his children’s books and syndicated stories, but the first time Burgess walked into a broadcasting studio, he was at a distinct disadvantage. He had never seen or spoken into a microphone. He didn’t own a radio set and understood practically nothing of radio technology or production. The station manager briefly instructed him where to sit, introduced him, and left. Burgess was a seasoned lecturer accustomed to audiences of thousands, but he felt like a complete fool reading one of his stories to an empty room.

I, however, was put at ease immediately by Mindy Todd who walked into the studio with a welcoming smile and warm handshake.  After she settled into a chair at the table, we chatted casually for a few moments. I was almost caught off-guard when she began to introduce me to WCAI listeners. She had obviously read Nature’s Ambassador carefully, and moved smoothly from topic to topic with questions that ranged from the writer’s Cape Cod childhood to his motivation for writing and the source of Peter Rabbit’s name (Burgess or Beatrix Potter).

Before I knew it, our half-hour was up. She thanked me for joining her and suggested we continue the conversation in a future interview. Off the air we tentatively planned a program with Smithsonian researcher Marcel LaFollette, author of Science on the Air (University of Chicago Press, 2008) which describes the popularization of science in the early days of radio and television.

Please tune in to The Point with Mindy Todd on February 18 at 9 a.m. to hear our conversation about the days of early radio and the role of Thornton Burgess and Smithsonian curator Austin Clark in bringing natural science to a newly-discovered audience of children and adults.

 … and later in the month I will be the on-air guest of Mark Lynch, host of “Inquiry” on WICN in Worcester. Tune in on February 27 at 3:00 p.m.

In a future “Said and Done: A Writer’s Blog” post I’ll look more closely at Thornton Burgess’ Radio Nature League and its unique importance to conservation.        

Photo credit: Jennifer Junker 

A Winter Window

Although this little horse is a gift from New Mexico, he will always remind me of Cape Cod snowstorms, good friends and expectations.

In January 2013, after winning an international Irish poetry contest the previous year (the only American to enter) my friend Jacqueline Loring was on a New England poetry reading tour with Preston Hood and other friends. She was using my house as a home base because, after decades living and working on Cape Cod, she had recently packed up her house, computer, screenplays and other literary work, and moved with husband Gary to Albuquerque, NM.


No more boiled lobster and clam chowder for dinner, or moon tides and eel grass at the beach, or tall ships, tugboats, and tankers sailing through the Cape Cod Canal. As if someone waved a magic wand over her life, she, Gary, and daughters Revah and Kendra purchased a ranch, horses, saddles and bridles, were co-parenting a black newborn foal named Acheron and getting licensed to operate a therapeutic riding program called Enchanted Equine Adventures for military veterans and people with MS. Just like that.

But while she stayed with me a massive snow storm hit, no power, no heat, no stove for four days, house temp down to 37 degrees. We burned all my fireplace wood, most of the candles, and trudged across the street to Carol and Mickey McManus' house for brewed coffee, cooked food, and a warm room in which to have a glass of wine before returning to my polar cave.  As I recall, Jackie wore her Birkenstocks throughout the ordeal, but I could be wrong. Eventually, the power came back and roads were cleared. We loaded the car with plants I’d been minding for her, and she and Kendra set off for New Mexico, dodging winter storms all along the way. Gary was at the end of the driveway waiting when they finally got home.   

It’s a year later.  In early January 2014 the Cape is clobbered with another snowstorm, 12" of snow with 50 mph winds and sub-freezing temperatures. Anticipating a power outage as usual, I brought in wood, put salt and shovels by the front door, cooked a chicken, got out candles, and checked on the hospitality of Carol and Mickey who have a gas stove.  As I’m putting wind stoppers on window sills and doorways, I spot Jackie’s hostess gift last year, a little painted horse popular in New Mexico. I think to myself: look at that attitude, head high, striking out for whatever’s ahead, not unlike the gift-giver herself, prancing off to some new adventure.

I move the little horse from a low table over to a snow-encrusted window ledge in my kitchen, a reminder that I too set off expectantly into this new year, in search of whatever new experiences and good fortune await me on the pathway of my life. The little horse will also reminds me that  snow melts, but true friendship always remains. 

Writing about a Provincetown Artist

Because writing is generally a solitary activity, writers need to cultivate and maintain social contacts. For me the Cape Cod branch of the National League of American Pen Women serves as both a social and professional outlet. The following 1,000-word article was composed this week as the first in a series intended to deepen the connection between artists and writers who make up our organization. 

 A four-hour interview with photographer/writer Linda Ohlson Graham was the article's basis. I think it is a good example of how the methodical collection of information serves a writer. Other than the correct spelling of her name, her town of residence and the general impression that she led an interesting life, I had no specific knowledge about Linda prior to our interview. I've conducted countless interviews (and will write about the process in future posts!), but, regardless of length, each one requires people to trust me with something that belongs to them. 


                              A PROVINCETOWN ARTIST:  LINDA OHLSON GRAHAM

                 by Christie Lowrance

                                                               
 Linda Ohlson Graham is a woman whose life and art have been defined by space and place.  Her stunning photographs of sprawling, near shapeless coastal landscapes depict the glorious union of earth, sea and sky, a theme that has become the core of her writing as well as her photography.  Her tiny 200-square-foot room on the ground level of a hilltop house behind Bradford Street in Provincetown seems an anomaly until one learns she lived aboard a sailboat for five years and has survived three near-death experiences.

Born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, Graham moved to Provincetown at nineteen. Unhappy with the town’s in-season chaos, she decided to visit Detroit and stayed for six months, working in a restaurant and spending long, peaceful days in the presence of the grand frescoes of Diego Rivera in the Detroit Institution of Art.  When she returned to Provincetown, she worked at several restaurants, but left again when the opportunity to go sailing arose.

She spent most of her late 20s and early 30s on several boats, exploring the Inland Waterway and covering 12,000 miles visiting ports in the Caribbean and Central and South America.  Within these years she learned to meditate and chant, and cites an example of their benefit on a day the boat was becalmed and the engine “clanged and banged, then died,” says Graham. “We chanted for the wind and it came up.”  In her travels she used a Canon Rebel with Fuji film to photograph people from diverse cultures and countries and has some particularly striking images of Haitians whom she describes having “joy in their hearts and a lilt in their voices.”

Graham also began developing a skyscape collection.  “I always wanted the (shipboard) watches at sunrise and sunset because of the spectacularly gorgeous streams of color,’ she said. “Sunrises and sunsets are each so individual. The name “EARTH OCEAN HEAVENS came to me like a lightning bolt out on the open ocean, with the thought that I would publish a book some day by that title.” 

After returning to Provincetown in the fall of 1978, she took a job cooking at the Café Edwige. She also crewed occasionally for the Hindu, a 65-foot, two-masted schooner that made cruises and day trips out of Provincetown.  When she was 32, her mother encouraged her to come out to Colorado.  In Denver she married Douglas Graham, twenty-three years her senior, who owned an extraordinary 1,000-piece collection of works by English Romantic landscape artist J. M. W. Turner.  Together they opened his home as a Turner museum, and in it their daughter Isis was born. “I was proud of the museum and loved living in it,” Graham says. “We had popular concerts there once a month.”

She had not sought an explanation for her dizzy spells until she and her husband separated after nine years of marriage. A physician insisted she have a CAT scan immediately. It revealed a golf ball-sized cyst. She had brain surgery the next day.  After surgery she began writing, a voluminous collection now titled “Notes from My Journal Immediately Following Brain Surgery.” She says that the writing simply flowed, and from it she began to pull out single lines or passages that particularly appealed to her.  She has made framed work that incorporates both her photography and writings.

When she returned to the Cape in 1996, there was a rainbow over the Sagamore Bridge.  Coming back to Provincetown “was heaven,” she says. “It was home in my heart. I know so many people here; I have so many longtime friends here. I’ve known one since he was fourteen. “   

On a recent occasion she was heading back to Provincetown from an Upper Cape meeting on global peace.  Her violet wool beret, plum-colored scarf, long black skirt, socks and clogs readily identified her as artistically inclined. She stepped aside to let a visitor enter her L-shaped room which contains a bed, two large chairs, four small chairs, two tables and an inestimable number of books whose titles reveal her interests and passions: Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gnostic Bible, Pablo Neurda, Milton, Discourses on Rumi.  Photographs and mementos are everywhere.  Colorful rugs cover the floor and a small bowl of dried leaves and silky white milkweed seeds serve as decoration, as do a collection of necklaces, horseshoes, and her daughter Isis’ artwork.

Inches, not feet, separate the components of her home.  A small refrigerator is a few steps away from her bed, table and chairs, and Graham says she does a lot of cooking on the diminutive stove nearby. Perhaps it is her Thoreauvian lack of material burdens that enables Graham to explore whatever interests her, whether Stonehenge monoliths and crop circles in England or Caribbean shores.

But for a free spirit, she has quiet ways. In conversation her dark chocolate brown eyes may glance mischievously for a listener’s response to some surprising revelation or turn aside to watch a distant idea take shape. She plays with her glasses as she recites a poem, one of many she has memorized. She has a soft speaking voice, but demonstration of a chant proves it to be surprisingly loud. 

Graham has been a member of the Salt Winds Poets in Harwich and Gulf Gate Poets in Sarasota, Florida. Her art work has been displayed in solo exhibits at the Cape Cod Museum of Fine Art, Falmouth Library, and Cape Cod 5 Bank in Orleans, among others.  Out of the majesty of her photographic images and the personal urgency of her prose writing has come a purpose, a mission:  global peace. 

She has worked on several peace initiatives and was named poet laureate of Colorado’s Department of Peace. Graham believes it is attainable through quieting the human mind.  One of her favorite personal writings is “Please hold the thought with me that peace on earth and calm weather patterns can easily happen ...  in a moment or two of silence in enough of the collective mind.” She continues to write and photograph in hope that her vision of peace will find universal acceptance, if not today, perhaps tomorrow.