On the Bench

A bench is defined as a long seat, a pew, or a worktable. It has a seat portion and may have a backrest. A pew, with or without arms, is a long bench with back support. A worktable is a surface to create or repair. When a person sits at a bench, the bench becomes a workstation. When a person sits on a bench, it’s a place of rest or time out. But when a judge sits on the bench, it means he’s been appointed to serve as a justice in a specific jurisdiction.

When bench shifts to an action verb, it takes on new meanings. If a player in sports has been benched, that means out of action from an accident, poor performance, or breaking the rules. Breaking the rules doesn’t disqualify a writer. That’s clear by reading bestselling novels. What about a writer who is out of action? If a physical time-out, the mind still churns with ideas for the next great novel. Benched for poor performance? That’s self-inflicted.

That happened to me. Writing blogs cure-alls said to take a break. If I can’t write, I am taking a break. Next, they suggested I sit in a quiet place to meditate and empty my thoughts. I tried that. My mind whirled with a to-do list. I moved on to writing prompts. “I’m sorry I missed our coffee date, but I . . .” That inspired several excuses but no story.

A second prompt, “You’re walking down a dark street when you realize you’re being followed. What do you do?” That produced a one-word story. Run! What if your assailant has a gun? I understand weapons, so that produced a longer narrative. Run faster.

I write short story memoirs. My kinfolk were farmhands—a few landowners, others paid laborers—until the mid-twentieth century. A few facts live on in marriage licenses, probates, real estate, and religious documents. Day-to-day survival crowded their lives with little time to leave a written legacy.  That provoked a question, “What would I write if I knew I only had a short time to live?”

I remember a conversation with my oldest sister after the oncologist numbered her days. When asked about her wishes for a memorial service, she said, “Skip the funeral. Go to lunch.”

Now there’s a writing prompt that moved me off the bench and back into action.

 

 

 

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Chasing Rabbit Trails

I checked my email before tackling revisions of my mystery novel in progress. I received a request from a genealogy group to be a speaker about identifying family photos from the mid-to-late 1800s. Before I chose an optional date, I checked to see if my PowerPoint file survived the transfer to my new computer last fall. I watched the full presentation. All there, but the majority of the photos were from a later period. Mysterious Mary, a name I had dubbed Mary Dragoo years before when I learned that she was buried in Alamo Cemetery, would be a perfect example of a working woman in the Antebellum and Victorian time periods.  I scrolled through my family photos. “No results” proved to be a minor sidetrack—the first rabbit trail of the day.

I left my computer long enough to review my handwritten notes from my visit to find her unmarked gravesite in Alamo Cemetery. Gone missing. Mysterious Mary continues to be elusive. Back at my computer, I looked for the article I wrote when I first discovered that she lived in Contra Costa County in the nineteenth century. No file. Sidetrack #2.

I emailed my twin, our family history researcher, about the missing photo.  I added more information. Sidetrack #3.

She sent me the picture jpg and my original Word article from 2007. I read it to refresh my memories of my original search for Mysterious Mary and her family. I stopped at the paragraph where I mentioned that Mary’s grandson and his spouse are buried in Roselawn Cemetery a couple of miles from me. I hadn’t visited either cemetery recently. Back online for a Find A Grave search. The Roselawn posting mentioned that the memorial manager, a direct descendant, has no information on the man’s wife. An easy challenge for me from memories of visiting her gravesite. I clicked the link to share that information with the manager. Sidetrack #4.

I received an error code. The memorial manager can’t be reached. I contacted Find A Grave with the details and requested webmaster intervention. Sidetrack #5.

Next step: Update my speaker bio to include previous presentations on U.S. Civil War and Victorian period costumes. My empty stomach growls—a signal for a timeout for lunch. Sidetrack #6.

From the table into the open living room, Green yarn of a hat I’m knitting beckons me to my easy chair for a break from research. Sidetrack #7.

Ah, seven, often referred to as the perfect number. The stately oak trees from my framed print of Oak Alley Plantation, first named Bon Séjour (pleasant sojourn), remind me that no journey is wasted. I hurry back to my computer to accept the invitation from the genealogy group. This time, I’ll stay away from rabbit trails.

 

 

Debunking Family Tales

My twin and I have spent our lifetimes researching our family ancestry. We began in our grammar school days asking why we didn’t have grandparents like our friends. “They died,” my father said. When we wanted to know more about them, his answer was “Let sleeping dogs lie.” That ended the conversation.

Courtesy of Wikipedia

We pummeled Mother with questions. She believed she was French and Native American. She told me stories about her grandfather who was a medicine man. “He could make a sound like someone knocking on the door, but when I went to see, there was no one there,” my mother said. Then she talked about his magical powers. “He made a table walk. I saw it when I was a little girl.” I wasn’t surprised. Levitation seemed normal to me because I had recurring dreams where I rose and floated in the air twenty years before Sally Field and the Flying Nun TV series.

“When the gov’ment,” Mama’s tone emphasized the mispronunciation like a forbidden word, “wanted the Indians to sign the roll, my father wouldn’t sign up.” No matter how often she told this story, a sad look clouded her face. “He said they would move us far away like they did the others. That’s how them Indians from someplace else ended up on the reservation next to us.”

My favorite of Mama’s stories of how she was afraid when the Native Americans came to buy tobacco from her father. It must have been because he camouflaged his roots with his French surname. She could have done the same. Instead, she acknowledged her mixed blood in her teen years when she married an Englishman.

My twin and I traveled thousands of miles in our search to document our ancestry. We thumbed through books in public libraries and family history centers in a dozen states. We dug through courthouse records. We shivered in cemeteries—some shrouded in fog and others drenched in rain. We donned wide-brimmed hats and carried water bottles through burial grounds on blistering summer days. In 1990 we visited the headquarters of the Cherokee Nation in Tahlequah, Oklahoma—the tribe our mother believed to be her heritage.  Disappointment overrode the anticipation as I read the pages of the Dawes Rolls. None of my direct ancestors had enrolled.

Back to the stories of my great-grandfather’s magical powers. Perhaps she said my grandfather—not hers— because her grandfathers died before her birth. And the reservation next door to my grandfather? History seems to establish those parcels as tribal lands long before. But these family stories continued to trickle down through the generations.

And then came DNA testing.

My twin and I submitted our test kits in late 2017. The results proved the majority of my heritage to be French and English as I anticipated. I stared at the minor percentages.

No Native American ancestry.

All my 22 chromosomes matched my twin’s results. But I knew that. Family stories said my mother had no prenatal care with any of her pregnancies that spanned 25 years. When her last delivery became complicated, one of my brothers went into town in search of a doctor. Meanwhile, my father’s sister, a midwife, assisted in the delivery of identical twins. When the physician arrived, his main chore was paperwork for two birth certificates. The women who witnessed the at-home delivery of mono-mono twins are dead, the stories buried with them. But FTDNA will retain the records of our exact chromosome match for 25 years.

Now that’s family history.

Imagination and Inspiration

The opportunities of man are limited only by his imagination. But so few have imagination that there are ten thousand fiddlers to one composer.

~Charles F. Kettering, 1876-1958

Mr. Kettering was an American engineer, patent holder, and businessman, yet painter Howard Behrens quoted Kettering’s thoughts on inspiration.

In Lani Longshore’s blog post, Cityscape in Felt, she credited a Howard Behrens San Francisco cityscape painting as her needlework inspiration.

A framed Bellagio Promenade painting hangs above my sofa. I glance at it while I read or knit in my Lazy Boy chair. It has soothed me often, but it’s never inspired me to write—until now.

Paintings are collectibles—even more valuable if signed. The serenity of Promenade caught my eye while browsing in a resale shop. The oversized matted and framed serigraph under glass fills the wall above my sofa with prominence—no need for additional eye catchers. It hung above the couch for years before I noticed “Behrens” in black in the lower right corner. Wait! This is a famous artist.  This could be a collectible.

But mine isn’t canvas, so I gave it no more thought until a duplicate calmed me as I sat paper gowned, waiting in a medical exam room. The frame was more elegant than mine. The title and author’s name in bold black three-inch letters beneath the scene was a declaration not on my print, but the signature was the same. Later, at home, Lani’s blog inspired me to postpone knitting and write.

One of the Google icons for International Women’s Day features knitting. After I post this blog, I’ll relax with knitting while I seek inspiration from my Behrens’ print to spin a yarn with words. 

 

 

Salute to President Abraham Lincoln

I have posted the same humorous tale on several Presidents’ Day blogs. Today, I omit the dual focus of George Washington and salute President Abraham Lincoln.

I toured the 2009 Library of Congress Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition, With Malice Toward None, in Sacramento, California. My steps through multi-level floors of exhibits echoed like a true walk through history. The artifacts included Lincoln’s inaugural Bible, a lithograph of the Emancipation Proclamation, a scrapbook of the Lincoln-Douglas Debate, and Lincoln’s handwritten Farewell Address. As stated in the California Museum tour booklet, “By placing Lincoln’s words in a historical context . . . the exhibition provides a deeper understanding of how remarkable Lincoln’s decisions were for their time and why his words continue to resonate today.”

Mr. Lincoln would be rejected as a political party candidate today.  He would be considered undereducated (not enough diplomas on his attorney’s office wall) and not attractive enough for TV appearances. In his day, he seldom—if ever—appeared in public without his layers of formal attire of a waistcoat (vest) over a white shirt and black bowtie beneath a wool frock coat. He would not have stepped outside without his black silk top hat. I suspect his shoes were shined—maybe by his own hand—but surely not by an enslaved servant. Today he would be expected to ditch his favorite attire for something informal—perhaps coatless with rolled-up sleeves similar to the Rosie the Riveter poster during World War II.

Lincoln’s words were delivered with a sharp punch that bested his nineteenth-century adversaries. Now, following each speech, treasured statements of history would be ripped apart by news analysts trying to discover his true meaning. Others would second-guess his motives hidden in the sarcastic humor meant to disarm his opponent. A third team would be at work lining up prominent political endorsements in case Lincoln might be the first choice of the Republican party.

One thing that would make Lincoln stand tall today, even if hatless, would be his historical comebacks in his word-sparing with opponents coupled with his common-sense statements in office. As the agony from the weight of the Civil War fell upon him, he declared “If there is a place worse than hell, I am in it.”

I treasure my copy of Abraham Lincoln: Mystic Chords of Memory, a Selection from Lincoln’s Writings. This 79-page softcover book published in 1984 is filled with lengthy quotes from Lincoln’s writings that give me insight into the turmoil he faced. But I seldom read the pages of lengthy quotes. Lincoln’s greater resonance is from his commonsense statements seldom mentioned. One simple quote from The Lincoln Treasury rings true today as it did when spoken.

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.

The same applies to blogs. I wish I had known Abraham Lincoln as my foster child suggested in my 2015 Presidents’ Day post.

 

 

 

 

Once in a Blue Moon

I heard “Once in a blue moon” many times in my childhood. My family used the phrase to describe something that rarely happened, especially when trying to prompt someone to a specific action the second time. My child’s mind imagined an Indigo—or at least a turquoise—moon. The adults laughed at my expectations. Even though my father lived by the Farmer’s Almanac and knew every phase of the moon, he didn’t tell me that a Blue Moon was the second full moon in one month.

My superstitious mother kept me from staring at a Blood Moon in the mid-1940s. “It’s a curse,” she had said. “Something terrible’s gonna happen. Wait and see.” She never wavered from her belief to acknowledge the color was caused during a total lunar eclipse when Earth moved between the sun and the moon and created a reddish glow.

Tuesday evening, January 30, 2018, I stopped editing a manuscript to go outside and stare at the moon to witness something I’d never seen.  The bright light rose high in the sky looking much like any other full moon—not a deep cobalt or even a light sapphire. I went back inside, checked my printout of the promised total eclipse of the triple-decker treat of a Super Blue Blood Moon, and set my alarm for 3:45 a.m. Pacific Standard Time determined to witness the beginning of the umbral eclipse.

The alarm triggered the urgency to rise while it was dark. I staggered out of bed, slipped on shoes and pulled a long black coat over my pajamas. I hurried outside away from the lights of my apartment community and gazed upward. The excitement of the impending triple-header warmed me from the cold for a while. For the next three hours, I alternated staring at the marvel in the sky and returning inside for breaks, warmed by hot tea. The Super Blue Blood Moon was more spectacular than promised. When the eclipse ended and the Super Moon slid lower and lower until I could see only the top of the bright orb, I returned to my warm bed.

A second alarm reminded me that I had work to do on a manuscript edit. I clicked my way through and basic sentence structure and spell check. After a late breakfast, I traipsed through ninety screen prompts in a grammar program. If it disagreed with Chicago Manual of Style—the manuscript editor’s go-to book—I clicked ignore.

My next step, an editing program that claims to be “smart” enough to reveal misused words, punctuation inconsistency, and multiple other variances. Three popped up in the em dash category. My edited punctuation was correct according to Chicago Manual of Style. That’s when I looked up, waiting for the program to enlighten me like the Super Moon had earlier. I saw this instruction on my computer screen above the questionable areas.

 

 

Maybe this only happens once in a blue moon, but if this paid program isn’t smart enough to catch its own mistakes, how can it find mine?

In a spare moment between writing and editing today, I took a look at Super Blue Blood Moon Video, NASA TV. Now that’s  something I can trust.

 

Universal Good Weather Day

I checked my cell phone at bedtime—useless habit, I know, because I’m warm and comfy inside and not going anywhere. AccuWeather says it’s sunny and 81 degrees. My eyes tell me it’s dark outside except for electrical lighting, and my bones tell me it’s 50 degrees. I forget my bedtime rituals and rush to my computer to check my AccuWeather link.

My eyes are right. It’s dark. My bones are right too. It’s a cloudy 50 degrees.

Wake up the weatherman.

First, I click the Google icon on my screen and search for Kismén gueşli—the words that appear below the temperature on my phone screen. It returns no results.

Next, I search for AccuWeather hacked January 22, 2018.

Bingo!

Several posts originating in different countries say their AccuWeather apps show sunny and 81 degrees. Finally, a universal agreement on something.

The next step of unity is that all of us will wait—impatiently, of course—for our AccuWeather or our cell phone providers to send us a solution to make us disagree again—at least about the weather.