The March of Spring, continued

This tulip-magnolia tree is blooming outside the building where my office is located. 

We continue to have unseasonably warm weather; my garden is scary with emerging lilies of the valley and budding azaleas... these used to appear in mid to late April.  Everything seems to be happening a month too soon.   I love the weather but it makes me uneasy.

Global Warming is Real

For the last three days, temperatures have climbed to the high 70's in Emmitsburg.  The pink trees are blooming.   Daffodils that usually bloom at least two weeks later than this are in full tilt.
You can't tell me that global warming doesn't exist, and isn't happening. 

I love Spring and welcome its return, but I'm worried. too.

March Madness, Birder Style

Here is the Duncraft Company's one-way mirrored bird feeder. I have a similar one, though it's not a one-way mirror. Nevertheless, Chickdees and Cardinals like these come to my window, to my great delight.

In the US, many people follow NCAA Basketball. This is the season known as “March Madness,” when the 64 top teams play each other in what to me is an incomprehensible selection process. The 64 teams get narrowed to the “Sweet 16,” and eventually, to the “Final Four,” from which a winner emerges.

People make wagers about all this.

In the Birding world, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology holds an alternate competition -  basically, a popularity contest in which birders write in and vote for their 64 most popular species, which gets voted on and narrowed down , and so on.

It’s great fun.  If you’re interested in participating, just go to their website:

Facebook page :  https://www.facebook.com/#!/cornellbirds?sk=app_107727025983833

Regular website: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/Page.aspx?pid=1478&ac=ac

The March of Spring

Crocuses are blooming in the garden in the woods. My garden by the house gets southern exposure and the warmth of the brick walls; daffodils and hyacinths are blooming there.

Last night I heard the Spring Peepers - their thousand voices to the full moon.

Sister Bertha

( Sister Bertha in 1948 at DePaul Hospital in Norfolk VA)

Sister Bertha Robertson died last week in Emmitsburg, about six months short of her hundredth birthday.

She had been in our community for 80 years.

I knew her first through her niece, Susan, my college classmate and good friend. I met Sister Bertha when I joined the community in 1978. 

She was a remarkable woman among remarkable women – never a “big name” in the community, always accomplishing invaluable tasks behind the scenes. She was very talented – a musician, a businesswoman, an administrator, but she never held down any titled positions.

She came from a remarkable family, too. On her father’s side, she was related to both Francis Scott Key and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her mother was the first harpist with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

She put what could have been a privileged and prestigious life behind her without a second thought when she fell in love with God and the Daughters of Charity at 19. I don’t think she had an ambitious or conniving bone in her body.

Back in 1995, one of our sisters, an historian, took an oral history from Sister Bertha, and I am reading it now.  It is amazing.  Sister Bertha was one of two sisters in 1964 in the US  ( they worked in Central Purchasing) who made the arrangements for our new habits to be made. The design came from the Motherhouse in Paris, and every Daughter of Charity was to change from the old cornette habit ( which the sisters had worn since 1633) into this new one on the same day all over the world in 1964.  The arrangements were being made in May and June, and the company making the habits were supposed to be able to make over 800 of them in different sizes by September 20, 1964.  It’s quite a story.

This will be the first installment about Sister Bertha. I’ll talk more about her in later posts.  I might even write some poems about her.

( Sister Bertha and I in 2007)

Lent and Leonard Cohen

He's been a favorite of mine since I first heard Judy Collins sing his "Suzanne" back in 1968. Two years ago I discovered him again, still writing songs, and giving some wonderful performances. This song of his seems appropriate for the beginning of Lent:

Anthem

by Leonard Cohen 

The birds they sang

at the break of day

Start again,

I heard them say,

Don’t dwell on what

has passed away

or what is yet to be.

The wars they will

be fought again

The holy dove

be caught again

bought and sold

and bought again;

the dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring.

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything.

That’s how the light gets in.

We asked for signs

the signs were sent:

the birth betrayed,

the marriage spent;

the widowhood

of every government –

signs for all to see.

Can’t run no more

with that lawless crowd

while the killers in high places

say their prayers out loud.

But they’ve summoned up

a thundercloud.

They’re going to hear from me.

Ring the bells that still can ring.

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything.

That’s how the light gets in.

It will be Summer eventually...

I'm taking a page from Ecobirder, whose blog  I follow, and posting this Emily Dickinson poem.
I needed to hear it today, and others might, too:

It will be Summer—eventually.

Ladies—with parasols—

Sauntering Gentlemen—with Canes—

And little Girls—with Dolls—

Will tint the pallid landscape—

As 'twere a bright Bouquet—

Thro' drifted deep, in Parian—

The Village lies—today—

The Lilacs—bending many a year—

Will sway with purple load-

The Bees—will not despise the tune—

Their Forefathers—have hummed—

The Wild Rose—redden in the Bog—

The Aster—on the Hill

Her everlasting fashion—set—

And Covenant Gentians—frill—

Till Summer folds her miracle—

As Women—do—their Gown—

Of Priests—adjust the Symbols—

When Sacrament—is done—

--Emily Dickinson

A Valentine to Paris

Two films I saw recently reminded me of my love for the city of Paris.  I saw “Hugo” on the big screen, with those 3-D glasses.  The film itself overwhelmed with its beauty; the parts where Hugo looks out on the night city from the clock tower of Montparnasse Station really took my breath away.  I remembered that I could see the roof of that station from my bedroom window at our Motherhouse at 140 rue du bac, when I stayed there in October of 2004.  From the bathroom window on the other side of the hall, I could see the Eiffel Tower!

The other film, “Midnight in Paris,” I saw via Netflix.  I loved it – what a wonderful “English teacher movie,” as my non-literary friends say.  It was Woody Allen’s fantasy of Paris, and partly mine, too. I remember reading Hemingway’s  A Movable Feast when I was in high school, imagining Paris even then.

I wasn’t in Paris nearly long enough. I was there in 1976 too, but barely remember that trip – didn’t take many photos, didn’t keep a diary, and was way too occupied with worrying about my students ( we were on a foreign study league trip) and thinking about what I was going to do with my life.    

 On the 2004 trip, I stayed for over a week in our Motherhouse, at 140 rue du bac.

                                                                     

It is an amazing building, taking up most of a city block in the 7^th arrondisment, right around the corner from Le Bon Marchee, a legendary department store. The building containing our Motherhouse was built in 1760, as the Hôtel de Châtillon, living quarters of a mistress of Louis XIV! We moved into it in 1813, An imperial decree on 25 March 1813, granted the Daughters of Charity the hotel.  In 1814 the construction of a chapel began. The chapel was consecrated in Paris on August 6, 1815 . This convent chapel is where novice Catherine Laboure received her first of four visions of the Blessed Virgin on July 18, 1830.  I took the following photos there:

 

I only had two days to really wander about the city on my own. I went to Montmartre with three other sisters, rode the funicular and  visited Sacre Coeur, walked down the million steps and ate crepes from a streetcorner vendor… then I left them and went on the Metro over to Pere Lachaise Cemetery, where I wandered all afternoon. I’m working on a long poem about that.  On the other wandering day, I walked from the Motherhouse to the Rodin Museum, spent a long time there, walked along the Seine, and back down rue du bac, stopping somewhere along the way for a  glass of red wine. As a group we toured a bit, visiting churches important to Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac and Frederic Ozanam ( founder of the St.Vincent de Paul Society) We also visited Notre Dame and Sainte-Chapelle, and I spent some time in a sidewalk café right across the street from Sainte-Chapelle, feasting on Crème Brulee and watching people.  But I could have happily continued my wanderings for many more days!

Two new poems published

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

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

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

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

The House Was Quiet And The World Was Calm 

    By Wallace Stevens

 

  The house was quiet 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

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

Our University returns to school today. We always have classes on MLK Day, even though it is a Federal holiday.  I am glad, because I begin the semester with the freshmen by reading King’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” which is a masterpiece of rhetorical writing as well as a clear statement of his beliefs about 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!

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 I taught 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

The Only Work    

by Glyn Maxwell 

When a poet leaves to see to all that matters,

nothing has changed. In treasured places still

     he clears his head and writes.

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

or ecstasies go with him to the piece

      he waits for and begins,

nor is he here in this. The only work

that bonds us separates us for all time.

      We feel it in 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 but the verse,

and it tells us this the way a mother might

inform her son so gently of a matter

      he goes his way delighted.

Poetry from W.H.Auden

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

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's excuse

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

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

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 by sisters 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.