Scattered Showers in a Clear Sky

Two new poems published

2012-02-06T07:15:00.000-08:00

I have two poems in the latest issue of Press 1:

http://www.leafscape.org/press1/v5n3/higgins.html

"The Ghost Map"

and

"Named after Saints"

Poem from Rosa Alice Branco

2012-02-02T05:45:00.000-08:00

Mornings on the Ground

by Rosa Alice Branco

To accept the day. What will come.

To pass through more streets than houses,

more people than streets. To pass through

skin to the other side. While I make
and unmake the day. Your heart
sleeps with me. It wraps me up at night
and the mornings are cold when I get up.
And I'm always asking where you are and why
the streets no longer are rivers. At times
a drop of water falls to the ground
as if it were a tear. At times
there isn't ground enough to soak it up.

--tr. Alexis Levitin, New European Poets, Miller &Prufer, eds

Photo: White-throated Sparrow by Mary F. at Mary's View

A Poem by Kay Ryan

2012-01-26T13:01:00.000-08:00

I greatly admire Kay Ryan's poetry - the compression, the word choice, the zap at the end of many of her poems.
On this very dreary rainy January afternoon ( have I said this before?) the Mockingbirds are still feisty and active.

Mockingbird by Kay Ryan

Nothing whole

Is so bold,

we sense. Nothing

not cracked is

so exact and

of a piece. He’s

the distempered

emperor of parts,

the king of patch,

the master of

pastiche, who so

hashes other birds’

laments, so minces

their capriccios, that

the dazzle of dispatch

displaces the originals.

As though brio

really does beat feeling,

the way two aces

beat three hearts

when it’s cards

you’re dealing.

A Poem by Wallace Stevens

2012-01-21T13:44:00.000-08:00

In the lull between writing some new poems of my own, I’musing this blog to post some of my favorite poems. I love this one by Wallace Stevens. Even on an icy January afternoon, it carriesme off:

The House Was Quiet And The World Was Calm

By Wallace Stevens

The house wasquiet and the world was calm.

The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,

Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much to be

The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.

The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:

The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,

In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself

Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

The Reader, 1933 by Henry A. Payne

Inspiration and Rapture

2012-01-17T11:34:00.000-08:00

I read this poem by Eamon Grennan several years ago on one of those "Poem a Day" calendars. It has haunted me ever since, though I lost the paper on which it was printed. Finally I located it again:

Detail
by Eamon Grennan

I was watching a robin fly after a finch—the smaller
chirping with excitement, the bigger, its breast blazing, silent
in light-winged earnest chase—when, out of nowhere
over the chimneys and the shivering front gardens,
flashes a sparrowhawk headlong, a light brown burn
scorching the air from which it simply plucks
like a ripe fruit the stopped robin, whose two or three
cheeps of terminal surprise twinkle in the silence
closing over the empty street when the birds have gone
about their business, and I began to understand
how a poem can happen: you have your eye on a small
elusive detail, pursuing its music, when a terrible truth
strikes and your heart cries out, being carried off.

Sparrowhawk (also known as Sharp-shinned Hawk) photo by Patrick Meharg

Martin Luther King Day

2012-01-16T11:20:00.000-08:00

Our University returns to school today. We always haveclasses on MLK Day, even though it is a Federal holiday. I am glad, because I begin the semester withthe freshmen by reading King’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” which is amasterpiece of rhetorical writing as well as a clear statement of his beliefsabout just and unjust laws, civil disobedience, and non-violent direct action . It helps to remember what the demonstrators were fighting against.

Later in the semester , we will be reading this poem:

Ballad of Birmingham By Dudley Randall 1914–2000

(On the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963)

“Mother dear, may I go downtown

Instead of out to play,
And march the streets of Birmingham
In a Freedom March today?”

“No, baby, no, you may not go,
For the dogs are fierce and wild,
And clubs and hoses, guns and jails
Aren’t good for a little child.”

“But, mother, I won’t be alone.
Other children will go with me,
And march the streets of Birmingham
To make our country free.”

“No, baby, no, you may not go,
For I fear those guns will fire.
But you may go to church instead
And sing in the children’s choir.”

She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair,

And bathed rose petal sweet,
And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands,
And white shoes on her feet.

The mother smiled to know her child
Was in the sacred place,
But that smile was the last smile
To come upon her face.

For when she heard the explosion,
Her eyes grew wet and wild.
She raced through the streets of Birmingham
Calling for her child.

She clawed through bits of glass and brick,
Then lifted out a shoe.
“O, here’s the shoe my baby wore,
But, baby, where are you?”

Thank Your Teachers!

2012-01-12T15:21:00.000-08:00

This blurry photo is of me in my first year of teaching, back in the Fall of 1972. I can't believe that I have been teaching for almost forty years!

What prompted this reflection?

This morning I received an online greeting from a student Itaught back about 30 years ago, at a high school in Petersburg Virginia. She wrote:

I cannot tell you how many times I have thought of you over the years. I am glad to hear that you are doing well. I credit my love of writing to you. You seemed to take an interest and were kind enough to give a little praise. It made the biggest difference to me throughout my life.

She found me on her high school’s alumni association page. It made my day!

I have been blessed in recent years to meet several of my former students again in the flesh – now that they are married and parents of grown children. And, in turn, I have gone back to my own home town and visited one of my old teachers, and thanked him. So that makes three generations of gratitude.

Teaching is frequently a thankless job, simply because students are so involved in their own lives that they are not yet able to appreciate the work of their teachers. We teachers don’t expect to be thanked, and are immensely gratified when someone shows up after thirty or forty years to say that they remember .

Poetry from Glyn Maxwell

2012-01-11T09:41:00.000-08:00

The Only Work

by Glyn Maxwell

When a poet leaves to see to all that matters,

nothing has changed. In treasured places still

he clearshis head and writes.

None of his joie-de-vivre or books or friends

or ecstasies go with him to the piece

he waits forand begins,

nor is he here in this. The only work

that bonds us separates us for all time.

We feel itin a handshake,

a hug that isn't ours to end. When a verse

has done its work, it tells us there'll be one day

nothing butthe verse,

and it tells us this the way a mother might

inform her son so gently of a matter

he goes hisway delighted.

Poetry from W.H.Auden

2012-01-10T07:26:00.000-08:00

This is the beginning of Part Three of Auden's long poem "For the Time Being":

Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes --
Some have got broken -- and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week --
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted -- quite unsuccessfully --
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.

(photo by Carolyn Frank)

A Poem from Rilke

2012-01-09T13:19:00.000-08:00

In my MOD CIV class, I'll be reading poems with the class as well as looking at the history of Europe from about 1850-2001. This is in addition to the books the students will read ( see earlier post).

Anyway, here is the first poem we will meet:

The Future

The future: time'sexcuse

to frighten us; too vast
a project, too large a morsel
for the heart's mouth.

Future, who won't wait for you?

Everyone is going there.
It suffices you to deepen
the absence that we are.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Translated by A. Poulin

The Twelfth Day of Christmas

2012-01-05T07:31:00.000-08:00

I probably should have started counting days on Dec.26 instead of 25, so that January 6 would be the twelfth day. So it goes.

Anyway, I am heading out to Pennsylvania this afternoon to visit friends for weekend, so I will be away from the computer on Jan.6.

So here is the Epiphany card:

The Eleventh Day of Christmas

2012-01-04T06:32:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton died on this day, in this valley, in 1821.

The portrait was done when she was a young married woman, in New York City.

She married at 19, had 5 children, and was widowed at 29. A few years later, she converted to Catholicism and moved to Baltimore, where she founded the community of the Sisters of Charity, and the first free Catholic school for girls staffed bysisters in the country. Here's a poem I wrote about her a few years back:

Elizabeth’s Bible

Mercy was your favorite word.

How many times

underlined in psalm and margin

by your wondering hand.
Mercy -on your eye
tears,
the sea, and thanks.
Mercy – vows
in an underground chapel-
let us not forget
our communion
of tomorrow.
Mercy-
thinking sea voyages,
passages to heaven,
thinking
how children breathe
their first
earth.

The Tenth Day of Christmas

2012-01-03T12:46:00.000-08:00

Cooper's Hawk in the Courtyard this morning!

Probably an immature female - very large , but still brown back and brown streaks on breast - not that slate grey back and brick speckled breast yet... I didn't have my camera with me, and it doesn't have the kind of lens needed to capture her trip from one crab apple tree to the next in the frosty air. Here's what she looked like though - photo from Google and Wildbirds Unlimited:

here's the courtyard, taken later this morning:

I was thrilled to see her - needless to say, the juncos and finches were not!

Today I worked on course work, and sent out book lists to the students.
Here is the list of books I sent to the MOD CIV class. In addition to the History text, and the poetry, each student must choose one of these books ( one to a customer), read it and prepare a presentation on it to the class. Since they come from all majors, hopefully they can find a book relevant to their particular approach to this time period:

Set in:

1859 England The Origin of the Species Darwin (NF)

1886 London The Secret Agent Joseph Conrad

1900-present Man andMicrobes: Disease and Plagues in History and Modern Times ~ Arno Karlen (NF)

1800-2000 Western Europe The Knife Man:Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of Modern Surgery (NF) Wendy Moore

1911 France Madame Curie by Eve Curie (NF)

1914 England The Thirty-nine Steps John Buchan

1917 Germany AllQuiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque

1918 – present TheDemon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, OneDoctor's Heroic Search for the World's First Miracle Drug by Thomas Hager (NF)

1930 Russia Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler

1930’s-70’s England, France,Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey The Historian Elizabeth Kostova

1937 Spain For Whom the BellTolls Ernest Hemingway

1939 Germany The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

1939 SovietUnion TheGood Republic William Palmer

1940s Italy A Kiss fromMaddalena ChristopherCastellani

1940’s France Sarah’s Key Tatiana de Rosnay

1940 Russia A Day in the Life of IvanDenisovitch Solzhenitsyn

1940 SouthAfrica Cry, the BelovedCountry Alan Paton

1940 Hungary Fateless Imre Kertész

1940’s Hungary/France The Invisible Bridge Julie Orringer

1945 Japan Hiroshima John Hersey (NF)

1948 Israel Exodus Leon Uris

1950 Nigeria Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe

1960 Egypt Wedding Song Naguib Mahfouz

1960’sAfrica King Leopold's Ghost: A Storyof Greed, Terror, and Heroism in ColonialAfrica Adam Hochschild (NF)

1965-90 Prague Open Letters: SelectedWritings, 1965-1990, by VaclavHavel

1965 SouthAfrica African Stories Doris Lessing

1970 Moscow Gorky Park Martin Cruz Smith

1978 Albania Broken April, Ismail Kadare

1970’sIreland Harry’s Game by Gerald Seymour

1980s England/France Black Dogs Ian McEwan

1980s Turkey Snow Orhan Pamuk

1980s Milan The Metal GreenMercedes Timothy Williams

1980’s Czechoslovakia My MerryMornings (1986) or My First Loves (1986), by Ivan Klima

1989 Berlin The Magic Lantern: TheRevolution of 89 witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague Timothy Garton Ash (NF)

1950’s – present Europe Aftermath: TheRemnants of War (NF) Donovan Webster

1989 Cuba Havana Bay Martin Cruz Smith

1989 Germany “Revolution 1989”, by Victor Sebestyen, (NF)
1990 South Africa Boyhood Scenes from Provincial Lifeby J. M. Coetzee ( 1998) (NF)

1990 Kenya TheConstant Gardener John LeCarre

1990’s Ireland My Dream of You by Nuala O’Faolin

1990s EasternEurope Café Europa: Life After Communism Drakulic (NF)

1999 Ireland The Bombmaker by Stephen Leather

1995 Belfast Diaries: War as a Way of Life by John Conroy NF)

1990s Romania The Appointment Herta Muller

1993 Eastern Europe Balkan Ghosts: A Journey ThroughHistory (NF)

~Robert D. Kaplan

1996 Eastern Europe *Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies andTheir Journey (NF) Isabel Fonseca

1996 Russia Wolves Eat Dogs Martin CruzSmith

2000 Turkey Istanbul: Memories of a City by Orhan Pamuk (NF)

2000 Kosovo The Hemingway Book Clubof Kosovo by Paula Huntley (NF)

2003 England Saturday Ian McEwan

2003 London Londongrad: From Russia with Cash Mark Hollingsworth and Stewart Lansley (NF)

Europe 2008 A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (NF)by Gregory Clark

It's quite an eclectic list, but the presentations have been very interesting to the class and to me, in previous years!

The Ninth Day of Christmas

2012-01-02T07:13:00.000-08:00

Since it is still the Christmas season, here's a card I once received from Sister Marita Ganley SC:

I'm turning my mind back to school... still have two weeks before the Spring semester begins, but I have a good deal of revising in process on the syllabi for two of the three courses I teach. Today I am working on Mod Civ - that's what we all call CVEN 201 - The West in the Modern World. It's the History of Europe from roughly 1850 to 2000. I teach the history with poetry. What I hope is that it becomes the Chaucer method of history: teaching the big events , but through the eyes of the people who lived through them. I use poetry for this. My students and I read and study about forty poems from European and British poets of that era. The first one we meet is Rilke. Here is his poem entitled
"The Future":

The Future

The future: time'sexcuse
to frighten us; too vast
a project, too large a morsel
for the heart's mouth.

Future, who won't wait for you?

Everyone is going there.
It suffices you to deepen
the absence that we are.

Rainer Maria Rilke ( Translated by A. Poulin)

The Eighth Day of Christmas - Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T11:30:00.000-08:00

I'm starting out by posting this wonderful "New Year's Carol" by Benjamin Britten:

Sing reign of Fair maid
With the gold upon her toe
Open you the west door,
And let the old year go

Sing reign of Fair maid
With the gold upon her chin
Open you the east door,
And let the new year in

For we have brought fresh water
All from the well so clear
To wish you and your company
A joyful happy year.

And here's another favorite Christmas card. It's appropriate, for January 1 is also the feast of Mary, the Mother of God:

The Seventh Day of Christmas

2011-12-31T06:09:00.000-08:00

It is a custom in the Daughters of Charity for the whole community around the world to be in retreat today. So I will be praying for all my blogging and Facebook friends as well as for many others, and other intentions.

I post this Christmas card - probably my very favorite - on this day of silent retreat. It is another creation of Sister Barbara Ann:

The Sixth Day of Christmas

2011-12-30T14:15:00.000-08:00

List Making Time

The blogger at one of the sites I visit wrote down herdreams for 2012. I’m attempting to dothe same here.

What are my dreams for 2012?

The altruistic ones:

· World Peace,

· Universal Health Care,

· Equal Distribution of Food and Money,

· a Cure for Cancer

( not that I’m asking for much…)

The selfish ones:

· Full federal and state funding for the Homes forAmerica project in both wings of our house

· twenty new vocations to the Daughters ofCharity,

· no more trees cut down on Emmitsburg properties( the former PH or the Mount)

· two weeks at Cape May

· getting to go to the MacDowell Colony thissummer

· being cured of the radiation damage sustainedfrom the cancer treatment

· having central vision restored to my left eye - and seeing a Snowy Owl in the wild!

These are some of my dreams. It’s clear that they are notmy expectations. Can they be my hopes?

What are the differences between dreams, expectations,and hopes?
I don’t have many expectations at all, but I do have manyhopes.

Here is another favorite Christmas card. It was created by a friend of mine, Sister Barbara Ann Underhill of the All Saints Sisters of the Poor in Catonsville, Maryland:

The Fifth Day of Christmas

2011-12-29T07:56:00.000-08:00

Here's another favorite cookie recipe. It comes from my mother via her lifelong friend Molly Stauffer Johnson ( both of them departed now). It's probably 100 years old or older, from the Pennsylvania Dutch country:

Date Walnut Cookies

1 cup brown sugar

2/3 cup butter

2 eggs

½ tsp baking powder

1 tbsp vinegar

2 cups sifted flour

½ tsp salt

½ tsp baking soda

1 lb. Pitted dates

1 cup black walnuts chopped

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs. Mix well.

Add soda and vinegar.

Sift flour, baking powder, salt. Add to the wet mixture.

Add dates and nuts.

Drop on greased cookie sheet.

Bake 325 10-12 min.

Really good. Welcome at any season, but especially during the winter.

This morning I sent my application to the MacDowell Colony , to see if I can spend two weeks there this summer, writing poetry. Wish me luck!

Another favorite Christmas card:

The Fourth Day of Christmas

2011-12-28T14:02:00.000-08:00

Cold and blustery, but sunny - major change from yesterday. The lead photo on this page was taken LAST January... no snow this year since Halloween.

I had a wonderful leisurely day - anotherenjoyable visit and lunch with a former student, then more cookie baking! This time, the second half of the Butter Cookie batch.

Recipe:

Ingredients:     1 lb. butter
                        2 cups sugar
                        4 cups flour
                        2 eggs
                        1/2 teaspoon salt
                         1 teaspoon vanilla

Cream butter and sugar; add eggs, salt, and vanilla. Add flour gradually. Refrigerate, covered,overnight. ( I form this batter into sticky rolls and roll in waxed paper, and freeze to slice and bake later)
For rolled/cookie cutter cookies, roll thinly on floured surface.

Bake at 400 degrees on ungreased cookie sheets for 5-9 minutes or until brown around the edges.

Really good!

After the cookies, I mixed and baked my own version of Chex Mix - more Cheerios than anything else. All cleaned up now, and ready for some reading.

Here is another favorite Christmas card - with one of my favorite birds. I have several who are regular visitors to the suction cup feeder on the window of my bedroom:

The Third Day of Christmas

2011-12-27T14:00:00.000-08:00

And a rainy one it is.

I've been working on syllabi for the three courses I'm teaching in the second semester:
Freshman Seminar, Mod Civ ( poetry and history of 20th century Europe), and The Church in the Modern World/ Women of Faith. More on those another time.

I went out for lunch with four of my former students - women I taught back in 1975-76, when I was 28 and they were 18. We reconnected about two years ago via Facebook: what a great invention! The ten year difference in our ages means nothing now; they are mostly married, with grown children. I love seeing them. They made my rainy day bright.

Speaking of bright, here is another favorite Christmas card. It's not religious, but I love the artwork and the spirit of goodness:

The Second Day of Christmas

2011-12-26T08:13:00.000-08:00

Here's another favorite card - sent at least twenty years ago by Ralph and Rita Harper - my beloved Hopkins professor and his wife, an artist who was born and raised in Greece. I love the depiction of Joseph and Mary as middle-eastern people.

The First Day of Christmas

2011-12-25T06:44:00.000-08:00

We really should begin celebrating Christmas today - the Feast of the Birth of Christ - and keep on celebrating at least for the twelve days - until Epiphany. We could continue celebrating until the Feast of the Holy Family, or even until Candlemas Day, February 2nd. When I see families taking down their Christmas trees on December 26, it makes me sad. Keep them up!

Here is one of my favorite Christmas cards:

Ten Favorite Christmas Carols

2011-12-24T11:12:00.000-08:00

“Harry, I think it’s Christmas Eve”

One of my favorite scenes from the seventh Harry Potterbook, and one of the most poignant:

Harry and Hermione have gone to visit Godrick’s Hollow, thevillage where Harry was born and where his parents died. It’s midnight, andit’s snowing, and the music of carols drifts from the little church.

The two young wizards don’t have any background or educationin Christianity, though the Wizard School celebrates the holiday with Christmastrees and feasting and vacation ( muchlike the non-wizarding world of real time). Still, they know the sacredness ofthe time. Hermione reads the inscription from the Potters’ gravestones: thelast enemy that shall be destroyed is Death. She conjures up a wreath ofChristmas roses and places them on the tomb, as Harry weeps. It’s such an English Christmas scene. This makes the very next scene so much morealien and horrific, when evil shows its terrible face.

Anyway… I started to write about my ten favorite Christmascarols:

1. In the bleak midwinter

2. Ding dong merrily on high

3. Once in Royal David’s City

4. Bright Day Star

5. Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning

6. I heard the Bells on Christmas Day

7. People, Look East

8. In Dulci Jubilo

9. The Holly and the Ivy

10. Deck the Halls

I love the way these carols are sung. I love the harmonies.I love the lyrics. Maybe these favoritesderive from my many years of listening to the festival of nine lessons andcarols from King’s College, Cambridge; they certainly categorize me as anAnglophile!

Fifty years of journals

2011-12-24T11:09:00.000-08:00

Today I have had a shameful amount of free time – well, timeI should have spent working on the syllabi for next semester, but didn’t - and decided to look through my previousjournals to see what I wrote about Christmas.

It struck me when I went to Journal #1, which began March20, 1961, when I was in the seventh grade.

I have been writing a journal for fifty years! The one I’m in now is number 56; the journalsare not regular in their entries. I had one or two books for the four years Iwas in college, but five books for the two years I was a postulant/novice.Again, I had two books for the six years that I was the Sister-Servant ( localsuperior) of our house at Alto Road… and then three books for the two years Iwas studying at the Washington Theological Union. Also, the books differ in size, though mostof them are black marble copybooks. Whataccounts for the amount of writing? Time, primarily. Also,stress. I wrote the least when Iprobably should have written most --- when life was tough. And even now, I don’t like to go back andread those particular volumes ; the writing brings it all back way too vividly.

Christmas poems

2011-12-22T09:26:00.000-08:00

I recently finished a "10/10" -- ten poems in ten days, on the Writers Anonymous site on Press 1. Three other poets were writing along with me. Since it was Winter Solstice, and so close to Christmas, many of the poems reflect that theme. I began to take some favorite lines from Christmas carols and spin some poems off them.
Here are several:

Approaching the Dark

Approaching the dark,

I consider the ladybug
traversing my copybook,
ardent-hearted red,
looking for a place to spend the winter
who must view the edge of the desk
as the Grand Canyon,
but who can fly
to the radiator
to the icy marble windowsill
where the sky turns dianthus pink
looking for a place to spend the winter
singing

Gaudete

Always we are following a light

Always we are following a light.
It draws the eye, the light in the window
of the house in the distance
aacross the dark meadow
at the end of a dark lane.
Snowflakes catch the headlights
on a road where the shoulder shrugs and
disappears into the blizzard’s buzzard boast.
The small flame on the candle in the clear glass vigil
flickering at the feet of our Lady of Chartres,
Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre,
only light I see
from the other side of the room.

Late in time, behold him come

Late in time, behold him come.
Not the Christmas child
but my homesick student
early balding boy, shy , tall,
missing from class since Halloween,
arrives on exam day to see if it’s too late
to drop the class
and the other classes, too.
What has he been doing in these busy weeks
as rainy fall turned into
clotted winter,
so far away from family,
on the side of this brown mountain?
What will he tell that furious father
or the grandfather
whose name is on the School of Business?

Nuns Decorating Their Christmas Tree

Richer by far is the heart’s adoration…

It’s a fake tree, safer for the giant convent

Where so many old sisters lie helpless in bed.
We’re in another wing, still working,
Still mobile, lucid, continent,
Though our young women live far south
In houses in poor neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, we decorate the fake tree

Already festooned with lights by the
Maintenance men.
We bring out those shiny brites
from the fifties,
wondering which of our sisters,
now dead, purchased them
in some long ago Woolworths.

We bring out our family heirlooms,
ornaments from our trees at home
hung by us as little girls
long before we joined this
enterprise.

We bring out bells and angels

from our siblings,
Redbirds and partridges.

Everyone comes with her Christmas

from home
which we join with our convent Christmases.

Together, together,

with stories of our Christmases as young nuns,
cutting down the tree, anchoring it in place,
when the aromatic presence
caused our hearts lilting love.

And still, through cloven skies they come

In the full moon’s glare, the sky’s lit up with clouds

fluffy and definite as clover,

they scud and trip, pretending to be close

when no one’s angels pass between their cracks

where mice can pass through cracks as fine as fingernails

the cloven hooves of horses, cows and goats

the clouds resemble
where the angels enter the world
like young nuns coming from their cloister
into the sunlight.

Look now! For glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing

When I first learned to play the piano,

in the piano rooms at school,

not having a piano at home,

first learned to read music,
I bought a book of Christmas carols,
seeking out the ones I never heard

but liked the lyrics. Liked the titles:

The Holly and the Ivy

While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night
The Coventry Carol
The Cherry Tree Carol
Once in Royal David's City...

I’d read the music , try to sing the melody,

but having no piano

and no memory of the tune,

no idea of the timing,

I’d give up and go back to

Silent Night.

Vainly we offer each ample oblation

All over America,

in thousands of KMarts,
anonymous donors are paying off
the balance of layaway accounts.
Fifty dollars here,
Two hundred there,
so people with no credit but love
can release
their children’s Christmas toys
from captivity.

I woke up happy

2011-12-11T08:56:00.000-08:00

Gaudete Sunday, in the Catholic tradition. At Mass, the priest asked the question "When were you last happy?"

I woke up at 5:45, grumbling because I could sleep late and didn't. But I went back to sleep and dreamed I was at my Alma Mater, Saint Joseph College, in the present time. I was a professor there, and was living with the students on Third Marillac. It was move-in day in September. The campus was teeming with students and parents. It was a sunny, lovely day, and everyone seemed to be busy and happy. I climbed up the stairs from the ground floor to the first floor, and someone's Dad said to me, "Why don't you use the elevator?" He indicated an elevator just around the corner, in a new wing. I then noticed that the whole dorm had been renovated. It had always had the high ceilings and large windows, but now it was even brighter. There was carpeting in the halls, which seemed to be wider than I remembered. The students ( it was still all girls) were busy moving into their room. I boarded the elevator and climbed to the top floor, the third floor. The scene there was the same, even better, because there was a cafe-like coffee place in the middle of the third floor, where students and parents were enjoying coffee and talking. I looked out the window at the campus, and could see all the way over to Brute - the dining hall building. Everywhere students and parents were walking.

I woke up happy. Even after I remembered that my Alma Mater had closed in 1973, and that in 1979 the campus was purchased by the Federal government and now housed FEMA, I still felt happy.

Happiness is a mystery, isn't it?

Almost a month

2011-12-10T16:20:00.000-08:00

has passed since I wrote here. Can't believe the swift passage of time. I've been occupied with end of the semester grading. Before that, I was occupied with a "30/30" - writing thirty poems in thirty days on the listserv Inside the Writer's Studio. Between the two activities, I almost forgot about this blog.

Need to finish the grading and get back to writing.

I'm watching the winter birds from my bedroom window. A pair of Red-bellied Woodpeckers are regular visitors to the birdseed bell hanging there.

I had some good photos of them, but the photos were lost when I got this new laptop. I don't own a computer; the laptops are from school - they are replaced every five years. The folks in "I.T." there were not able to retrieve any of the photo gallery pictures that I hadn't stored in folders. Sigh.

new publications

2011-11-19T09:01:00.000-08:00

I have two poems in this issue:

Blue-Winged Teal

Small dabbling duck,

wallow in freshwater,

mince your steps on the sticky fronds

of April,

rest your blue bill on your speckled chest

like a dignified dowager

looking down her nose.

Fashionable in your touches of sapphire

on breast and wings,

your color is more blue than

what the paint store calls teal,

something more moody than

turquoise,

more matte than satin.

and...

The Cat and the Fireworks

At the first volley of fireworks,

unseen except for flashes

of lightening like light,

the calico cat sprang to alert.

leapt to the windowsill,

retreated under the bed,

then emerged and sprang to the

top of the bureau.

A low growl rumbled from

her belly-

a sound I never heard her make before.

Deep, rolling growl

sound radiating through fur

as she watched from

her patrol post

for the duration of the fireworks.

She became the cat in someone’s bedroom

in London,

on the first night of the Blitz.

She became the cat distracted from catching rats in the church

in Dresden,

as the planes rained down fire and boulders.

She became the cat cowering in the doorway

in Baghdad,

When the Americans bombed Saddam

back to his bunker.

All the cats

in all the arrowstruck, cannonstruck

cities down the centuries,

interrupted, startled,

terrified, growling deep,

feral, innocent,

instincts bristling.

Our House

2011-11-18T09:39:00.000-08:00

Picture a building four stories high and miles long – seven wings. Four wings in a square with a central courtyard. Branching off the four wings, three more. A Wing through F Wing.

The Facebook Page for "Provincial House Transformation" posts this description:

“St. Joseph’s Provincial House, a 360,000 square foot building, was completed in 1965. The house was originally designed as the chapel and headquarters of the Daughters of Charity. Since then, the chapel has become a minor basilica dedicated to Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton and to where she has been laid to rest, St. Catherine’s Nursing Center leases an area of the house to provide nursing care and rehabilitation to lay people, and the Daughters of Charity elderly and infirmed sisters have moved in from Baltimore to live in the house (St. Vincent’s Care Center for nursing care, and Villa St. Michael for assisted living). In the meantime, the provincial house has remained the headquarters of the Daughters during the entire time.”

Here's a photo from the early '60s, when it was under construction:

At that time, one wing was for the seventy plus novices ( we call novices “seminary sisters”. Another wing was for the seventy-plus postulants.In another wing were 60 plus retreat rooms for the sisters who came back for retreats in the summer. In other wings lived the 40 plus semi-retired "Provincial House Sisters" and in another, the 5 sisters who ran the Province.

To get more of an idea of how the uses of this enormous building have changed, I've drawn a few sketches. If you click on each, you will see the whole sketch, and can read the information.

Here it is in 1965:

Here's how it was in 1978, when I entered:

here it is today:

Here's how it will be in another two years:

I live in one small room on the second floor of "E Wing" The noise of drills and hammers and asbestos removal and reconstruction is loud in most of the halls and wings.

This is a needed change, but it's still hard to live through.

New poem published today!

2011-11-08T12:53:00.000-08:00

Here's the poem - it appears in the Autumn 2011 edition of the Seminary Ridge Review:

Vineyard Stories

One son was invited and he said yes
and he did not come.
the other one said no
and regretted it
and came.
Was that the same son
who was killed by all those
tenant farmers?
Were those farmers
the ones
who worked all day
and got the same pay
as the ones who came
at the last horn’s blow?
Did all this happen
in the same vineyard
that glistens in the evening sun
where the lovely macramé of
green strings
reaches out
for the anchoring pole?
Grapes are heavy in the
September air.
Here is a place for
the liar and the rash.
Here is time to say no
and change your mind.
Here, also,
the jealous
and the killer.
Here, harvest.

Snow for Halloween

2011-10-30T07:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, a "nor'easter" hit the east coast of the USA - and well inland, too. We're four hours from the ocean, but it snowed all day here. I was worried about snow weighing down the trees still filled with golden leaves, but here it was just warm enough for the snow to keep melting. Our neighbors in Pennsylvania and further north fared much worse.

This is the earliest snow in my memory - apparently a record-breaker all around.

On another topic, I am seven days into another "30 poems in 30 days" at ITWS ( Inside the Writers' Studio).I'm very happy to be joined in this round by several poets from previous rounds: John Vicks, Valerie Fox ( who alerted me and invited me to jump in), Annie Bien, Brenda Nixon, and a new voice, Sarah Munroe. This website/listserv really helps me to keep writing daily. I have also become close to these other poets - one can't help feeling close when one has read about 200 poems, and has had 200 poems of one's own read by them. And commenting back and forth.

New poem published today!

2011-10-15T13:44:00.000-07:00

My poem "Diptych" went up today at the online poetry magazine Damselfly. There's even an MP3 file of me reading it. Very exciting!

http://www.damselflypress.net/

Issue 17 Poetry

Diptych
Listen to the Poem
Her face came together between August and October
like two photos that fit better together than they did apart.
That first trimester of her life
the bones, mirror images, two ivory cups,
curled toward each other and joined
in the center of the forehead, nose, cleft of the chin
seamlessly and whole.
Like a diptych skull
Like cupped hands hinging toward each other.
- A native of West Chester, PA, Anne Higgins teaches English at Mount Saint Mary’s University, Emmitsburg, Maryland. She is a member of the Daughters of Charity. She has ninety poems published in magazines, as well as five books of poetry published.

Another boot entirely

2011-10-03T17:51:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, I fell down some steps on my way to my 11AM Intro to Poetry class. They were concrete interior stairs. My backpack saved me; I had slipped and both feet went out from under me, but when I landed, the backpack hit the steps instead of my back or head! However, my left foot twisted under me... leaving me with an AVULSION FRACTURE. Never heard of it - the doctor showed me on the xray. Seems that this occurs when tendons or ligaments tear away from the bones, pulling pieces of the bone with them. Yes, it hurt like the devil!
However, it's not a broken bone ... so I have been outfitted with a walking boot from the Darth Vader Collection ( see photo). It's removable so I can shower and climb into bed. What a relief after the first three days
when it was splinted and I couldn't put any weight on it.

Foot is still quite swollen and bruised , but not as painful. I return to the orthopedic doc tomorrow for more xrays and another verdict...

It's Pouring

2011-09-07T12:00:00.000-07:00

We're getting the remnants of Hurricane Lee; right now in buckets. Before the last hurricane, I bought myself a pair of glossy black rubber rain boots; travelling from my office to the classroom building to Patriot Hall ( the dining hall, named by a benefactor for those who died 9/11/01) is wading through many puddles.

Today I brought my camera to record some of the bright and cheerful rainboots worn by many of the young women around campus. I'm so glad these have become stylish! In my day, we wouldn't have been caught dead wearing them, and as a result we went around with ruined shoes and constant colds.

Hurricane Irene

2011-08-27T14:32:00.001-07:00

She's coming soon.

It's raining here in Emmitsburg... more to come, and harder, and wind.

Not so bad a forecast, though, as Cape May...

Bear Gulch Road, Woodside California

2011-08-15T08:11:00.000-07:00

Today in this humid, rainy August weather in the valley here in rural Maryland, I came across an entry from my journal from August 31, 2001. Just before that, I had been staying at our Provincial House in Los Altos Hills, California. I went out for a ride to see the Djerassie ( sp?) Artists' place not far from there, on Bear Gulch Road, in Woodside.

I never reached my destination; I became too afraid to drive any further on Bear Gulch Road. These photos, from Google images, don't begin to give a true image of it:

Bear Gulch Road - the size - narrow as a twin bed,
bolstered on the right by the mountain's shoulder,
on the left by a chasm broken by huge old redwoods.
I hugged my car to the right side...
what if some reckless and impatient California driver
came up behind me?
I saw myself rolling down into eternity,
into the embracing , unbending arms of redwood.

It's strange to me that I have not been afraid when I have flown in a helicopter; have really enjoyed the view...
But put me out in the open , anywhere near a precipice, and I fling myself to the ground and hug the ground,
so afraid I am that somehow I will fall. Even in a car, that feeling persists. Way back in 1973, my friend Mary Lou "Scotch" Kincaid and I took a camping trip across the United States. We began in West Chester and went northwest, all the way to Seattle, Vancouver Island, the Canadian Rockies, and back across Canada and into the US at Niagara Falls. When we traversed Glacier National Park on Going to the Sun Highway, I had a terrific experience of fear of heights. Here are some photos from Google images that give some indication - no guardrails on most of this road, which snakes along the edge of high mountains:

This road was much more frightening than Bear Gulch Road, when I see these photos and remember. In any case, I've also driven on California Route 1, from the Golden Gate Bridge all the way north to Mendocino, and remember that as another nightmare ride. As much as I love California, I don't think I could live there with those roads. Within my adventurous inclinations there lurks a true fraidy-cat.

Recent Publications

2011-08-08T09:51:00.000-07:00

My poem “The Least Terns” is up on the Miriam’s Well blog.

http://miriamswell.wordpress.com

And I just received word from Lalitamba that two of my poems, which they accepted in 2008, appear in their latest print publication. Better late than never!

Here they are:

The Angel and the Gargoyle

I'm into God; I perch on stone pillars.

Spread golden light; spew rain water.

I wear a halo; I wear pigeon dung.

Deliver messages; spring and crouch.

Golden light like honey; dirt encrusts my cow face.

I accompany travelers; I guard the gates.

Kneel over graves; hunch over parapets.

Deliver death; terrify children.

Wings like hope; browns like shelving.

I'm always eighteen; no one asks.

My eyes lift to heaven; elbows on knees,

palms raised in praise ; chin gripped in talons.

Both of us brace, grace,

corners of garden,

walls of cathedral.

Angry Enough to Die

God found Jonah and asked him, "Have you reason to be angry?"

"I have reason to be angry," Jonah answered God,

"Angry enough to die."

My shady gourd plant is gone,

my cucumber, my castor,

under which I sheltered,

within which I heed.

Now I grope for the sky, that false mirror,

hot burning my skin,

skin cancer blossoming like a dandelion.

I have reason to be angry.

I have still not tasted

the flavor of my tears.

Still I mirror

Magritte's painting,

where the sand yellow leaf blossoms a watchful hawk,

though the leaf borer makes lace of his breast

so the grey sea gapes though it.

Angry enough to die.

I'll eat and drink till my heart chars.

Till that sunset burns clear through.

He is not speaking.

I lower my concrete mask

and listen.

Magician Stories

2011-08-07T09:13:00.000-07:00

I am presently reading ( or, rather, listening to it on my iPod) Lev Grossman's novel The Magicians. It's not the most interesting novel of its kind; the ideas are, but the prose is somewhat affected - that prissy irony which sometimes I sense in the attitude of the author. However, the plot has held me. I want to see what happens to Quentin and his peers. ( Later: after finishing the book, I just plain did not like it)

What is it about me, or about these books? I read them voraciously. I am drawn to them.

I am NOT drawn to the Twilight series, or to many other “magic” related books. Just these.

It seems that one common thread is the theme of slipping into another world. Passing through onto Platform 9 3/4… or passing from a weedy garden in Brooklyn into Breakbills… or through the back of a wardrobe into Narnia… or through the gates of an old graveyard …or using a special knife to create a small tear in the air… or the appearance of a very old book with a woodcut of a dragon… something about these actions or images pulls me in.

Part of it is the quality of the writing. Part of it is my poet’s imagination. Part of it is being a dominant Intuitive. But there’s a part I don’t understand at all.

Here ‘s a poem I wrote when trying to express this attraction:

Addiction

Oh Harry Potter,

how have you bewitched me

with your orphan story,

your unobtrusive self?

Your movie melody echoes in my dreams,

plays lightly right below my consciousness,

a lilting down up down

with xylophone

evoking magic.

Why do I love the halls of Hogwarts?

Shadowy and drafty,

watched over by the moving portraits,

deceived by the moving staircases?

Why do I love the moon on the lake,

the roots filling the floor

of the forbidden forest,

your incantations bringing light?

Give me some time with your loving owl!

Place her gently on my knee,

where I can stroke her wide white feathers

and gaze into her golden eyes.

Give me time to dip my face

into the mercury syrup

of the Penseive,

to see my mother six years old,

whole, playing, undisturbed.

Poetry

2011-08-06T09:52:00.000-07:00

“For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions ... they are experiences. For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and things, you must understand animals, must feel how birds fly, and know the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning.”

—Rainer Maria Rilke

The other night, I had the pleasure of reading my poetry at the Ragged Edge Coffee House in Gettysburg. The little upstairs room was full of other poets; I followed an open reading period in which most of them shared a poem or two of their own, or a favorite from someone else. It was very enjoyable. It’s heartening to find that there are colonies of poets in Gettysburg, Hanover, York, as well as in Frederick, Columbia, and Annapolis… not to mention Baltimore and Washington.

The Art of Losing

2011-08-04T13:43:00.000-07:00

Here is a poem by Elizabeth Bishop:

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. --Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster. Before: Zinnias in garden - August 2010 After: Holly trees uprooted, plants removed - August 2011 "One Art" is one of my favorite poems; it’s by Elizabeth Bishop, who is one of my favorite poets. I am not a good loser. When I lose an object, I spend hours searching for it, and more hours searching for it in my mind. Many times, my mind gives me a mental picture of the lost item in its location, but many times, it doesn’t. It is very difficult for me to let go of the search for the lost item. About two weeks ago I lost the credit card sized ID card needed to gain access to many places in the large house where I live. I call this object my “flasher.” My peers know this for another meaning and get a big laugh out of it when I say I need to get a new flasher. Today I succumbed and went to the Security guy to get a new one. But I have been searching for the old one for two weeks, expending untold energy on the search. Losing loved places, as Bishop says, is much harder. I still live in this place which is no longer the “PH” ( Provincial House) and is now to be called “Holy Family House.” How long it will take me to remember it by that name, I don’t know. Losing the names of places is hard, too. I begrudge every tree that is lost to me, that is cut down by the grounds people both here and on the campus at the Mount. Today I mourn the loss of some of our old gardens on this property;the new grounds guy tells me they were old, worn out plantings, and the trees were diseased and had to go. I myself feel like an old, worn out planting sometimes, too. I know that my vocation is tied up with the qualities of availability and mobility, and in many ways I am highly mobile but not so available as I once was. I think about Elizabeth Seton, one of my favorite models, and how many places she lost, and worse, PEOPLE she lost, during her short life. Those losses cost her dearly, but made her focus on the one Person she would not lose.

Meet Your Grace

2011-08-03T08:03:00.000-07:00

Here is a poem I wrote for the occasion of the uniting of our four provinces into the new Province of Saint Louise:

Meet Your Grace

God invites you:

Come to Me heedfully,

Listen, that you may have life!

Meet your Grace:

You are servants instructed in the Kingdom of Heaven.

You bring from your storeroom

both the old and the new.

Meet your Grace:

God renews with you

the everlasting covenant,

the benefits assured to Vincent and Louise.

Meet your Grace:

the hand of the Lord feeds you –

God answers all your needs.

Nothing will separate you

from that Love.

Meet your Grace:

She comes to you

with tickets to new lands.

She comes to you

with wine and milk.

She comes to you

with cloud by day,

Fire by night.

Some statistics about the new province:

The Daughters of Charity Province of St. Louise by the Numbers:

Province of St. Louis includes 562 Daughters of Charity
Province of St. Louise Sisters serve in 22 US States, Washington D.C., and Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Daughters of Charity minister in 190 different works in the above locations
Province of St. Louise Sisters serve in foreign missions on every continent except Antarctica
Worldwide, there are more than 19,000 Daughters of Charity

It was quite a gathering in Baltimore this past weekend. About 400 of us were in attendance. High volume of talking, to say the least! My introverted self had to retreat to my room to recharge my batteries.

More on this event later.

Between Fine and Dead

2011-07-25T07:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I listened to a podcast on the wonderful radio program called “On Being.”

This one was an interview with Jane Gross who created the “New Old Age” blog in the New York Times about working with her aging mother, and who ultimately wrote a book about her experience. .

This podcast was called “The Far Shore of Aging”. .

I was taken with this podcast, because it reflected so much of my own experience with caring for my parents up until each one died – my Dad, in the summer of 2007, and my Mom, in the autumn of 2010.

One of the lines that struck me was her observation that those of us who are middle-aged don’t think much about the space between “fine” and “dead” until we are in that space with our parents. How true that is! She also said that we never know how long that space will be, or what will be contained within it.

It made me think that my parents were “fine” until they reached their late seventies. Then, my mother’s eyesight and memory began to go, but slowly. They were living in an apartment by then, still assuming that they were fine. However, my father had started to do the cooking and the cleaning because of my mother’s macular degeneration. The crisis came at Thanksgiving the year that he was 83 and she was 82; I was at home visiting when it happened.He developed the symptoms of what was prostate cancer and had to have a catheter until his surgery. He became depressed over this, and asked me to “get us into Emmitsburg.” This was the nursing home located in the large house where I live. I told him that they weren’t sick enough to get in that nursing home – but asked him if I could look for an assisted living place for him and Mom.

Blessedly, he said yes. Thus, he spared me the agony that some of my friends have endured – parents who refuse to leave their homes, no matter how disabled they become.

So, in the summer when he was 84 and she was 83, I moved them to Baltimore , into the assisted living part of the Little Sisters of the Poor’s home for the elderly. They loved it there. It is a beautiful place with lots of big trees and gardens surrounding it, and is all on one floor with long corridors and wings, and smaller units thoughout. Though they had always been homebodies and fairly non-social, they both enjoyed the social activities and made friends with the other residents.

This went on for almost two years, but they were both gradually declining. Especially my father,

Who developed Alzheimers. I won’t go into all the details, but he had a personality change, began to have trouble with tasks that used to be second nature for him ( like counted cross stitch)

And began to display distorted thinking. The crisis came when he went AWOL with their car

And was gone all day on a snowy February weekday. The State Police found him up in West Chester, getting gas for the car, and cheerfully thinking nothing out of the ordinary had happened. I had to get someone to drive me to West Chester, and then get him and the car and drive him back to Baltimore. After that, the Little Sisters told me to take the car and not return it. That was one of the worst times for me.

When she was 86 and he was 87, medical emergencies caused them to be moved into the skilled care part of the home. The sisters and the nurses and aides could not have been more loving and skilled. Then I began the horrible process of applying for Medicaid for them. That involved months of “spending down” their money, assembling the paperwork, filling out the applications, etc. The social worker at the home was very helpful, but the caseworker for the State of Maryland was so awful – cold, unsympathetic, and , to me, downright cruel. Eventually they both qualified, so that the home could get the funds they needed to pay for my parents’ care.

While I was going through this, I experienced huge amounts of anxiety and stress… which took its toll on my own health. I was working full time while all this was going on as well - but I still was more fortunate than many people who don’t have their parents in a care-giving facility, and who have to physically care for their parents and maintain their parents’ homes.

Again , I won’t go through the description of all the incremental losses. He died at age 93; and she died at age 95, both , very peacefully, and in a place where they were well cared for and well loved by everyone.

That space between “fine” and “dead” lasted about fifteen years for them and for me.

As Jane Gross said in the podcast, the adult children then look at their own lives and wonder how long that space will be for them, personally. I know that physically I have already left “fine” but am in “mostly fine” with five medical crises behind me. I see some of my peers walking with canes, and am glad I still have limber limbs and bones and back.

It is thought provoking, though, to know so much life is behind me.

Visiting the Chapters of the MWA

2011-07-22T05:30:00.000-07:00

Last evening , in the 100 degree heat, I travelled down Rt.15 South to Rt.70 East to Rt.32 into Columbia MD, to the Sunrise Senior Citizen Living Residence, where the Howard County Chapter of the MWA held its August meeting. I don't know exactly why, but I was expecting to be on a panel , presenting in a large room with an audience of senior citizens and MWA members, talking about the experience of having my poems published in the MWA's anthology Life in Me Like Grass on Fire, and comparing that experience to having books of my own poetry published. Not so.

The activity bulletin board at the center had no listing for our panel;turns out that the Chapter meets there , in a small multi-purpose room , rent free, courtesy of the center. Three of us on the panel:Vonnie Winslow Crist, Eric Goodman and I, were joined in a discussion by Danuta Hinc, and about six other members of the Howard County Chapter. I was initially disappointed, but it turned out to be a good and interesting discussion about a variety of aspects of publication, and I enjoyed meeting the other writers.

Now I'm going to check out their blogs and web pages!

In late May, I attended a reading from the anthology at the Carroll County Chapter, held at the Carroll County Arts Center in Westminster - much closer to Emmitsburg. A large room was filled with people, and it was quite a good gathering.

I'm hoping to attend another one of these in Anne Arundel County in August.

Heat Wave

2011-07-20T07:27:00.000-07:00

It's coming from the center of the country; it's already here, and mounting. Humidity makes it worse. I hesitate to complain, since I have the privilege of living in air conditioning. Thinking about those who don't, especially the elderly.

I've been writing, working on the new manuscript. Here's one from it, written after I read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks :

Henrietta Lacks, like Rose Red

kept her nails short, but painted them crimson.

Toes, too, so that even at the autopsy,

the assistant saw the chipped red on the dead toes

and knew this was a woman who loved beauty and color,

Who loved Clover, Virginia and its fragrant foliage,

Who loved to cook spaghetti for her hungry cousins,

Who loved to go dancing.

From what furnace of hell did that cancer come,

That viscous vicious virulent voracious purple grape

Called Adenocarcinoma?

Was it radiated by her husband’s philandering

Returned

Before the Hopkins radium tried to kill it?

Pearls of it studded her insides

By the time it blocked her bladder

and poisoned her with her own fluids.

Here's a draft of the poem that gives the title;

A Vexed Question

Said the witch,

Preferring a hexed one,

A vixen caught by the paw,

Chewing her foot off

To set herself free.

Vexed question

Vexing, missing, shifting

From why to how

Point of law

Often discussed or agitated,

Never determined or settled.

Difficult and troubling

What is not forgiveness?

What is not to forgive?

What’s the virtue in resentment?

Send again the sentiment?

The sediment?

Presentiment?

I know... they both need more work. Working on it.

Did I say that many of these poems come out of my experience of cancer/cancer treatment?

After two years, I am finally able to tackle this topic.

St.Joseph Provincial House

2011-07-09T06:27:00.000-07:00

I belong to a Religious Congregation, the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul. The community was founded in 1633 in Paris, but its US foundation came in 1809, right here in Emmitsburg Maryland, where I live.

It's a large apostolic community with about 80 provinces all over the world. The founding US province in Emmitsburg eventually became 5 US provinces, but this month we are going back to 2 provinces in the US, primarily due to fewer members. The Provincial House for this combined province will be in St. Louis MO, so very shortly, Saint Joseph Provincial House in Emmitsburg will no longer exist. The big building is morphing into "Saint Joseph Ministries" comprising the residence for our retired sisters as well as a skilled care facility for other people, and, hopefully, HUD-funded single apartments for the elderly.

I hope to continue living here and teaching over at the Mount. And writing and birding and gardening.

Attached is a nine minute slide show video of some of the faces of our sisters, and some scenes of the building, that I took over the last 15 years:

St.Joseph Provincial House

July already

2011-07-03T07:24:00.001-07:00

Where have these weeks gone? I feel guilty for not adding to this blog. I've been out of school... no excuse.
One week spent at Cape May
Four days spent in Cincinnati
Two weekends spent working with the incoming freshmen at the Mount.
Many days spent catching up on dentist, doctors, etc.

I have been writing... new manuscript, which I was calling Incremental Losses, but which I am now calling Vexed Questions. I heard my colleague Sarah Scott use that term to refer to still unsolved questions regarding Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar."

According to the dictionary, it is a legal term which means "Point of law,often discussed or agitated,never determined or settled...difficult and troubling..."

The term fascinated me, and I've set up the manuscript in sections headed by some of my own vexed questions.

Actually, I have many vexed questions. More later.

Spring Rain Continues

2011-05-17T08:44:00.001-07:00

Obviously, these were not taken in the rain --- but we did have a week of wonderful blue sky days before the rain resumed.
Not much to say today. Gearing up for a drive to Washington in the rain, and hoping for some poetry soon.

Happy Easter!

2011-04-24T08:27:00.000-07:00

My favorite Easter hymn:

Now the green blade rises
from the buried grain,
wheat that in dark earth
many days has lain;
love lives again,
that with the dead has been:
Love is come again like wheat that springs up green.

In the grave they laid him,
Love whom hate had slain,
thinking that never
he would wake again,
laid in the earth
like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again like wheat that springs up green.

Forth he came in quiet,
like the risen grain,
he that for three days
in the grave had lain,
quick from the dead
the risen Christ is seen:
Love is come again like wheat that springs up green.

When our hearts are wintry,
grieving, or in pain,
Christ's touch can call us
back to life again,
fields of our hearts
that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again like wheat that springs up green.

Words: John Macleod Campbell Crum (20thC)
Music: Noel nouvelet, medieval French carol

more NaPoWriMo

2011-04-11T12:24:00.001-07:00

( these are still shabby, and definitely first drafts, but here they are)

Available

Birdseed is, on my windowsill.

A car is, in the parking lot.

My dream of the bullying Sister Cromwell is,

Returning night after night

To tell me I must dispose of all my books.

Travail prevails

I avail myself of a veil

The vale of tears

The veil that rain makes on her loom of light.

Travail makes

Travelling trials and tempest.

Bridal veil,

Bush denuded by my cousin and I

Who scattered white blossoms over the green lawn

Like snow

Like torn up paper

Like litter glitters on green.

My parents' wedding day-

April 10 -

Cold and blustery in 1944

Outside the rectory of Saint Agnes Parish

In the brittle afternoon sun.

My mother holding her hat on her head,

Shivering in her new suit.

No wedding gown for the non-Catholic ceremony

Of thirtysomethings in the rectory.

My father dapper happy in a new dark suit

So glad she said yes.

The inner life of a paper clip.

To what does it long

To be attached?

What is its memory

Of being twisted into shape?

Does it resent not being

A staple?

Garden Update

2011-04-11T09:19:00.001-07:00

Virginia Bluebells,
Tulips,
Violets,
Lilies of the Valley coming up...

more NaPoWriMo

2011-04-09T15:15:00.000-07:00

#8

Phoebe , nestmaking

Slatey grey on the tilted head,
brown dark shiney eye thoughtful
facing camera
absorbed expression on her face
fiber filament of last summer bindweed
clutched in beak
ready to add to cushion
the mudspattered floor
on the edge of the ceiling.

NaPoWriMo

2011-04-09T15:10:00.000-07:00

stands for National Poetry Writing Month... I'm still trying to catch up. Should have 9 poems by now, but this is only the 7th, and it's a revision of one I started several years ago, about the grounds at our Provincial House in Los Altos Hills California:

What the Angel Saw

God planted a garden in the high hills west,

and there placed the black tailed deer

in the cool of morning to stroll by the lake,

arch their necks in the breeze

where the fountain shines a spray of water

on their fine fur.

Out of the coyote ground

grew trees for a throne,

their months each one twelve

fruit produces,

grapefruit, apricot, lemon, orange,

leaves for medicine,

eucalyptus oil to light

my lamps.

Underground hoses rise to quench the garden

with crystal clear as water.

Beyond there, the brown hills divide

and become the abode of millionaires.

There shall curse a deserving nothing.

The middle of dawn flowed,

light growing

down the steepness,

giving life to the river in me,

thanks to the Angel who opened the blinds.

National Poetry Month

2011-04-06T09:19:00.000-07:00

I should have written six poems by now; however, the first five days were so busy that I couldn't . Now I am fighting inertia.

So I will post five poems "from before" and add a sixth one, hot off the press:

#1

Typo

One slip of the finger and

Divine becomes Diving

Deep in my dream to the floor of the flooded cellar

Through a window to the green sheen

Of chlorine depths of the swimming pool

At Lenape Park

Where I opened my eyes to stinging wonder

Of watching my white wrinkled feet

Flutter like flippers

And back to Harry Potter somersaulting into

The lake and down to the lair of the grindylow

And back to myself,

Sprinting off a cliff into Crater Lake,

Turquoise and freezing

Gritty grey crumbled lava clouding my eyes

As I plunge further, further,

To the center of breath.

The Stone Dog

My father and I

Wander the Protestant cemetery

Oaklands

Examining the tombstones

And a flat stone

With a life size stone dog

A Labrador

Keeping watch

Over the bones of his owner.

I’m small enough to ride him,

And I do, while the brown leaves flag me

While my father smokes and waits.

Peripheral Vision

My mother can see me this way

Seam ripper stole her center

Partly curly hair weather

Perennial Thyme

Capricious Apocrypha,

burning aura of clementines.

Saving Stamps

candy for later

the cerulean warbler

money

my soul

The Meaning of Radiance

Radiation still cooking my colon

Years after the machine

Delivered its killing light

Waves in defenseless air

Through the tissue in the wrong place

At the wrong time.

Light of sun distilled, forced

Through tunnels into funnels

Glowing the teeth of the smile of the

Child in Hiroshima.

The Meaning of Radiance

Corot Blue

puckered with clouds,
Damask wards off rain
Father Hopkins, lick ink into my pen
shake blue over paper.

Advising Conference

2011-03-28T12:14:00.000-07:00

My students are signing up for next semester's courses. I try to give them good advice about prerequisites, major requirements, and the importance of choosing alternate courses before they sit in front of the computer screen for the online registration. Most of them are very organized and come with a plan. Each year, one or two come with no clue. I wonder how their lives will unfold.

In the garden, the flowers are coming on a bit later than last year. We continue to live in a cold snap. I wonder where that expression, "cold snap" came from. Sounds like a poem.

Life in Me Like Grass on Fire

2011-03-19T12:13:00.000-07:00

The Maryland Writer's Association has published an anthology of poems about love, and three of my poems are included in it!

I love the title, Life in Me Like Grass on Fire - and the cover art.

Garden Report, part one

2011-03-19T12:08:00.000-07:00

The waking garden lifts my spirits

The Emperor of All Maladies

2011-03-15T07:28:00.000-07:00

I'm reading this book right now; am about a third of the way through it. It is gripping; the story of cancer and the evolution of cancer treatment. The author, an oncologist, is an excellent writer, and he tells his story in a way that is not only understandable to a non-scientist like me, but tremendously interesting.
I don't think it's interesting to me just because of my own experience with cancer. However, I must say that I have learned more about my own struggles with anemia in this book that anywhere else.
I keep reflecting on how little my doctors told me. They told me what they assumed I could understand, but I was capable of understanding so much more. However, I did not even know what questions to ask!

More on this another day.

My Amish Family

2011-03-01T07:39:00.000-08:00

I didn't know about my grandfather, David Kauffman, until I was 22. On the way to a family gathering that summer, my mother mentioned ( by the way) that he had been Amish. He was raised Amish, but did not join the Amish religion when he reached adulthood. Instead, he met and married my Mennonite grandmother, Fannie Denlinger. So I assume he joined the Mennonite religion. I discovered in 2006, that they attended the Kinzers Mennonite Church, and were buried in that cemetary. My grandparents died within two years of each other when my mother and her brothers were children. That, I knew. It was the Amish part, or the fact that I have a small army of Amish cousins, I did not know. I am still gradually learning more about this side of my family,
through the gracious friendship of my Mennonite first cousin Glenford. It is quite a story.
Here is a photo of my Uncle Harold Kauffman ( Mennonite) when he was teaching in an Amish school. The other photo is the back of my second cousin twice removed, Rachel Stoltzfus. The third photo is one my cousin Glenford took recently of some girls going into an Amish wedding in Perry County, PA.

Giving Talks

2011-02-22T14:51:00.000-08:00

I've been asked to give three different talks in February, March, and April. I gave the first one this past Friday at the Survivors' Reception at the Relay for Life, which was held at the university where I teach. Relay for Life is a wonderful event held by communities all over the nation and all through the year; it's a fundraiser for Cancer research. Our students raised about $39,000 this year. Last Friday their efforts culminated in an event which involved about 200 students walking around the indoor track in our Field House from 7PM to 7AM... in relays, with lots of other activities going on at the same time. I walked with about 30 other survivors, and then spoke at their reception.

That talk wasn't too difficult to compose. I told my cancer story, which I have told in this blog back in 2009. I tailored it to them. Here are a few excerpts:

...Talking to survivors, you know and I know that cancer is not pretty. Much of the details of what cancer does to the body, and what the treatment for cancer does to the body, involves messy details. But when you are going through cancer treatment, you live with those realities every day...

...Procrastination didn’t kill me. By the time I went to the doctor and was diagnosed, the cancer had spread, so they couldn’t operate. However, I was very fortunate that the cancer had not spread to the lymph nodes. So I began the journey through cancer treatment that all of you have been through. The details are different for each of us, because we had different kinds and stages of cancer, requiring different kinds of treatment. But in many ways, the experience is the same.
My cancer doctors prescribed a treatment plan in which radiation was the main weapon. I had chemo, too, but the radiation was the main weapon...

...You all know that the main side effect of all radiation is fatigue. I had that, but also the radiation gave me such out of control diarrhea that, three weeks in, I had to stop teaching for the semester.
I also didn’t realize how dehydrated I was getting until I woke up one morning with impaired vision. My vision was so blurred that I couldn’t read. I went to the eye doctor, who told me there was nothing wrong with my eyes… it was my brain, suffering from the dehydration.
I ended up in our infirmary from Feb.6 to April 8… continuing to go for treatment each day, but also getting IV fluids, and being monitored by the nurses. The doctors all told me that my vision would eventually clear up, and it finally did, in May. But up until then, I thought I would never read again, or drive again, or teach again. It was a very hard time for me.
However, the treatment killed the cancer. I’ve been cancer free, with clear PET scans, ever since...

...Something no one told me when I was going through treatment was about the radiation damage, the long term damage. I found out about this, when the damage began to show up, and then, when I read the cancer boards and blogs on the Internet. So many other persons have the same kind of damage...

...that most of us as survivors are just glad to be alive and to be functioning. To go back to living a normal, ordinary life again is what we really want, and we treasure those ordinary, undramatic days that we have been given...

Then I read them three poems, two of which were posted earlier. The third one, "Henrietta Lacks as Rose Red," is still really unfinished. I told them her story and read them two stanzas of the poem. It is a hard poem to read:

Henrietta Lacks as Rose Red

She kept her nails short, but she painted them crimson.
Toes, too, so that even at the autopsy, the assistant saw the chipped red on the dead toes and knew this was a woman who loved beauty and color,
Who loved Clover, Virginia and its fragrant foliage,
Who loved to cook spaghetti for her hungry cousins,
Who loved to go dancing.

From what furnace of hell did that cancer come,
That viscious vicious virulent voracious purple grape
Called Adenocarcinoma?
Was it radiated by her husband’s philandering
Returned
Before the Hopkins radium tried to kill it?

So that was the first talk.

The second talk is coming up on March 23. I'm talking to a parish group about poetry about Jesus' passion and death. I've given this talk before, so I am just revising and refining it, perhaps finding some better poems.

The third talk is April 3, at the Theology Honor Society Induction at the Mount. I have not yet settled on a topic. I know that the subject will be something about poetry and spirituality, but I am not yet sure what. Today I was toying with the idea of talking about the poetry of Geoffrey Hill, but I really don't know enough about his poetry to do justice to it in a talk. I am also toying with the idea of giving a dramatic reading of my friend Kate Daniels' long dramatic poem "In the Marvelous Dimension" but haven't really decided yet.

In the meantime, I need to return to paper grading and journal reading, and to my own writing.

I am ashamed at how little I have written in these months.

We had five inches of snow last night; just when we thought Spring was imminent. The daffodils are up about two inches in my garden, but now they are covered with snow again.

Snowing

2011-01-28T11:33:00.001-08:00

We've been "passed over" by the snowstorms that crippled the Northeast over Christmas and through most of January, but the latest storm hit us.

Only eight inches... not so bad.

Heavy, wet snow - very beautiful.

I think of the first two stanzas of an old poem I learned as a child:

The First Snowfall

by James Russell Lowell

The snow had begun in the gloaming,
And busily all the night
Had been heaping field and highway
With a silence deep and white.

Every pine and fir and hemlock
Wore ermine too dear for an earl,
And the poorest twig on the elm-tree
Was ridged inch deep with pearl.

Found the iPod !

2011-01-20T16:53:00.000-08:00

After three days of obsessive searching, it turned up. Under the bed. What does this say about the state of my scrambled brains?

I'm so relieved. I'm also very happy to be able to finish listening to Henning Mankell's Wallander

novel, One Step Behind. It's a page turner... what should I call that when I am listening to it? It's a Swedish police procedural; the hero, Kurt Wallander, is a dynamic character, and the plot is gripping. This is the fifth Wallander novel I've read/listened to.

I Lost my iPod this afternoon...

2011-01-17T19:09:00.001-08:00

What a sense of loss. I had it in my skirt pocket - stupid - shallow pocket - and somewhere between my office at school and the car, it slid out.

I've looked everywhere... including going back over to the Mount to retrace my steps, and all through the car with a flashlight, but to no avail.

If some student has picked it up, I hope they turn it in. When they see the type of music stored on it,they will know that it belongs to an old coot:

Christmas music from Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians.... Joan Baez in Concert... The Beatles... Fleetwood Mac... whole books like The Help, and several Wallander murder mysteries, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince... podcasts of music from the Taize Community... clearly not your

undergrad's choice of stuff!

Photos of birds and flowers and gardens and Cape May...

I realize how attached I have become to this little machine.

Telling myself I can live without it...

Zick Dough Hits the Spot!

2011-01-14T17:05:00.001-08:00

To the left you see a Titmouse chowing down on the Zick Dough I have stuffed into the top of the suet feeder on my windowsill.

Zick Dough is a concoction devised by Julie Zickafoose, one of my favorite naturalists and bloggers. It's made of melted peanut butter and lard mixed together with oats, flour, cornmeal, and Chick Starter. The birds love it.

I have had great entertainment watching them go for it.
I keep waiting for a Bluebird or a Robin to find it.

January in Emmitsburg

2011-01-14T16:56:00.001-08:00

Some new poems

2011-01-14T16:48:00.000-08:00

In the weeks of resting up, I have been writing. Getting another manuscript together. I think this one will be called Incremental Losses. If that's not too mordant.

Here are two new poems:

What you don’t know won’t hurt you

I said as I cleaned my dirty glass

Then you will see what will happen

Said the old woman, shaking her head.

I said as I cleaned my dirty glass

It’s time to get my vision checked.

Said the old woman, shaking her head,

It’s only been five years, after all.

It’s time to get my vision checked

Watch the blurry doctor shake his head

It’s only been five years, after all.

Plenty of time for an eye to go blind.

Watch the other doctor shake her head,

The woman-trouble doctor with bad news:

Plenty of time for a tumor to grow wild

Beyond its house and spread out to the yard.

The woman-trouble doctor with bad news:

It’s only been ten years since your last test:

Beyond its house it’s spread out to the yard.

Then you will see what will happen.

It’s only been ten years since your last test

Said the woman-trouble doctor, shaking her head.

Five years blur and ten years blood ignored.

What you don’t know won’t hurt you.

A Sudden Fear gripped me

Big black wore a roman collar

loud haranguing voice gripped my plackey heart

griped about my mistakes

groped in my head for control, contrition,

grouped its army of righteousness around me…

My clotted heart murmers an incantation:

Fear far fair fewer fever

sudden sodden

Would that a bucket of water would melt you…

Would that saying your secret name

Like Rumpelstiltskin

would force you to flee

from my memory

Where have I been?

2011-01-14T16:38:00.000-08:00

I kept wondering why I was so tired... and then I began to get short of breath when climbing the hill from the parking lot at school to my office... and then I could not get warm... and then I was so itchy...
Finally I went to my doctor and she had some blood drawn. Turns out I have severe anemia from bleeding from radiation damage from the cancer treatment. My hemoglobin was 7 -- 13 is normal. Two days later I passed out in the hall at home and scared everybody, so I had an ambulance ride to the hospital... hemoglobin level down to 6.9. So they kept me overnight and gave me two pints of blood.
So the hemoglobin went up to 11, and I felt much better.
The doctor told me I had to take it really really easy, and eat spinach and red meat, and take iron pills... all of which I have been doing since these misadventures in December.
It was the most peaceful and quiet Christmas I ever had.

I'm better, but the hemo still isn't up to where it needs to be.
But school starts on Monday, and I will be happily back in the classroom, teaching Freshman Seminar, Mod Civ, and Women of Faith.

This tree is naked now

2010-12-02T11:25:00.000-08:00

but less than a month ago, it was shimmering.

My Reading Life

2010-12-02T11:04:00.000-08:00

A number of my Facebook friends have been posting this list. I decided to examine my own reading life to see how many I have read.

The question:

"Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here (Does anyone REALLY believe this statement??). Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you've read in their entirety. Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read only an excerpt. "

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible ( over the years, in small pieces)

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare ( maybe not all the histories)

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno - Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Mom died

2010-10-19T08:56:00.001-07:00

the night of October 6. She was 95, and was very debilitated, but she still knew me. I was glad that I was able to drive down to Baltimore and be with her. I had never been with anyone at their moment of death, and it was both intimate and mysterious.

She and I certainly had our ups and downs over the years, especially when I was in my teens and twenties, but in these last fifteen years, all of that was put away.

There was so much about her as a person that I never knew. She was orphaned in childhood, and would never talk about her first twenty years. Only when I was in my twenties did I learn that her father was raised Amish... and only in the last four years did I learn ( from my cousins)

that I have a small army of Amish second cousins. So many questions I wished I had asked her

when she still had her memory.

Labor Day Weekend

2010-09-03T13:22:00.000-07:00

Warm and humid here in the country... Hurricane Earl is passing us by.

School is in full swing. This semester I am teaching 3: Freshman Seminar, Intro to Short Fiction,
and Christian Spirituality. I've taught them all before, but seem to need a good bit of time to improve them this time around. I am enjoying all three classes.

Am tearing myself away from reading/listening to a Maisie Dobbs mystery: Pardonable Lies.

Here are some photos of my garden in this late summertime.

My new book arrived on Wednesday!

2010-08-21T00:46:00.000-07:00

I've been sending this manuscript around for about nine years, and it finally found a home with Wipf and Stock. The poems are more religious than the ones in the other books; that's probably why the manuscript kept getting rejected. Over the years I've kept revising it, and last Spring I changed the format , adding prayer reflection questions after each of my poems.

I love the cover! The publisher designed it, and nothing I would have come up with could equal it.

Here are some more details about it:

Description:

Designed for daily use as well as for retreats, DIGGING FOR GOD is an invitation to linger in the gardens of the Bible and the gardens of the heart. Using the passages concerning five biblical gardens, and then her own experiences distilled into poetry, Anne Higgins provides meditative ideas and questions as springboards to prayer. These poems will nudge memories. For all who are, as May Sarton said, "hopeful gardeners of the spirit," this volume offers fertile ground for prayer and reflection.

Website:
http://wipfandstock.com/

My book is available for order as of August 18, 2010at orders@wipfandstock.com

$15

It will be available on Amazon in 6-8 weeks.

Photos from California

2010-08-17T10:34:00.000-07:00

From June 22-July 6, I enjoyed the wonderful, cool, dry weather of Northern California, living at our Provincial House in Los Altos Hills. These Photos come from there.

More Summer photos

2010-08-17T10:30:00.001-07:00

The final segment of Summer

2010-08-17T10:19:00.000-07:00

Today I went to the first faculty meeting of the new semester. This time next week, the first year students will be on campus.

It's been a lovely summer - some good trips and then some slow-moving and peaceful weeks.

I confess I've done more murder-mystery reading than anthing else. I'm feeling guilty about not producing any poems. Just couldn't break out of my inertia.

I do have a new book coming out, though. Perhaps when I get home today, it will have arrived in the mail.

Again, I'm going to try to post some photos from the summer.

Flowers before the drought and heat

2010-07-21T08:20:00.001-07:00

These photos were taken in mid-June. After that, I was away for two weeks in California,
and during that time the East Coast suffered with record heat and no rain. So my garden doesn't look this good at present. Though we have had rain, the heat and humidity keep me indoors.

June garden photos and a poem or two

2010-06-14T17:15:00.000-07:00

The narcissist in the garden

Every tulip an accolade
Every weed a reproach
Every rabbit a personal greeting
Every groundhog flinging brick bits and powder a deliberate attack
I dreamed the Hollyhocks
grew tall as trees,
proliferating on an inner wall of my house.

Bishops weed I was betrayed into planting
which now aggressively threatens
The pink feathers of the astilbe, mine – all mine!

Scattered Showers in a Clear Sky

Two new poems published

Poem from Rosa Alice Branco

A Poem by Kay Ryan

A Poem by Wallace Stevens

Inspiration and Rapture

Martin Luther King Day

Thank Your Teachers!

Poetry from Glyn Maxwell

Poetry from W.H.Auden

A Poem from Rilke

The Twelfth Day of Christmas

The Eleventh Day of Christmas

The Tenth Day of Christmas

The Ninth Day of Christmas

The Eighth Day of Christmas - Happy New Year!

The Seventh Day of Christmas

The Sixth Day of Christmas

The Fifth Day of Christmas

The Fourth Day of Christmas

The Third Day of Christmas

The Second Day of Christmas

The First Day of Christmas

Ten Favorite Christmas Carols

Fifty years of journals

Christmas poems

I woke up happy

Almost a month

new publications

Our House

New poem published today!

Snow for Halloween

New poem published today!

Issue 17 Poetry

Another boot entirely

It's Pouring

Hurricane Irene

Bear Gulch Road, Woodside California

Recent Publications

Magician Stories

Poetry

The Art of Losing

Meet Your Grace

Between Fine and Dead

Visiting the Chapters of the MWA

Heat Wave

St.Joseph Provincial House

July already

Spring Rain Continues

Happy Easter!

more NaPoWriMo

Garden Update

more NaPoWriMo

NaPoWriMo

National Poetry Month

Advising Conference

Life in Me Like Grass on Fire

Garden Report, part one

The Emperor of All Maladies

My Amish Family

Giving Talks

Snowing

Found the iPod !

I Lost my iPod this afternoon...

Zick Dough Hits the Spot!

January in Emmitsburg

Some new poems

Where have I been?

This tree is naked now

More on my reading life

My Reading Life

Mom died

Labor Day Weekend

My new book arrived on Wednesday!

Photos from California

More Summer photos

The final segment of Summer

Flowers before the drought and heat

June garden photos and a poem or two