Random Thoughts and Images

Here we are, December 6th, 2013, and I need to update my blog! All the possums are getting rowdy and irritable, waiting for news of any kind whatsoever.

The best news of all is my recent installation of a fine Christmas display here at The Library, with happy possums gathered 'round the tree.

 The Christmas Possums Display

 

This makes all the possums happy!

 There is nothing I like better than a happy possum.

 

Have a merry December 6th, everyone!

 

 

 

Library Stories

I’m a librarian at Leeds Jane Culbreth Library in Alabama. We’re just a few miles outside Birmingham, and we’re part of the Jefferson County Library Cooperative. Right now we’re working hard to raise money for a new library building.

The building we are in now is on the main street of our small town, and it was a department store when I was a child. We called it “the ten-cent store.” Now it’s the Leeds Library. The roof leaks and every time it rains, we have to place plastic buckets, trays and garbage cans around to catch the water! So, we really need a new building.

The Leeds Public Library began about 1923 in two rooms above a building on Ninth Street. As public interest and financial support grew, the city leased the building at the present location in 1971.
The official name was changed to The Leeds Jane Culbreth Library on April 19, 1998, to honor Jane Culbreth, a champion of city improvement. Her memoir, Hitching My Wagon to a Star, is available at the library.

I was born right across the street from where our library is now, in a building that was a medical clinic, and is now a dental office. While working at the circulation desk, I can look out and see the place where I was born! When I was a small child, there was a blacksmith’s shop right in back, across the alley from the library’s back door.

One of my earliest library memories is the Book Mobile that came to visit our elementary school when I was in the first grade. That was always an exciting day. When it was our turn to go in to visit the book mobile and pick out a book, it was thrilling to step up into the white library-on-wheels and look at all the books inside. The first book I checked out was a picture book called “Pooty”, about a little black and white kitten. I thought that was the funniest name for a cat, but I loved the book!

Now, I’m writing children’s stories, and hope to some day have one of my own picture books in the library for children to check out.

Leaving Gee's Bend

On Saturday, February 20th, Alabama author Irene Latham will be at Leeds Jane Culbreth Library to present her new book, Leaving Gee's Bend, with a talk and booksigning.

We're all familiar with the beautiful quilts produced by the artisans of Gee's Bend, but I know little about the history of that area of our state. I look forward to reading Irene's novel, the story of a young girl who sets out to save her sick mother and records her adventures in quilt pieces. This will be a great program for everyone who loves good books and the art of quilting.

Irene's quote, below, comes from an interview on Elizabeth Dulemba's website dulemba.com/2010/01/leaving-gees-bend-by-iren...

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I have made quite a few trips to Gee's Bend and Camden, where the Wilcox County Library is located and the town closest to Gee's Bend, thanks to the ferry. (Otherwise, it's forty miles to anyplace.) It's like stepping back in time --quiet, rural, with many red-dirt roads. And the people are so friendly and welcoming.

Of all the incredible things that happened in Gee's Bend, there were two that really captured my attention. The first was the 1932 raid on Gee's Bend. At the time, Gee's Bend was populated by sharecroppers, and the price of cotton was lower than it had ever been. So the landowner was stockpiling the cotton -- waiting to sell until price came up. Which left the sharecroppers in debt to the landowner. When the landowner died that year, the widow decided she would go to Gee's Bend and collect on all the debts. She brought men and wagons into Gee's Bend, and took everything: food, tools, animals -- basically leaving the people to starve. First hand accounts report that the residents survived on berries that winter. And yet, the women made quilts! It's just such a vivid example of how the human spirit can triumph over adversity. Then, in early 1933, the Red Cross came in with a rescue drop -- things like sugar, flour, seed, shoes, socks.

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In Leaving Gee's Bend, Latham tells the story of Ludelphia Bennett, ten year old daughter in a family of share-croppers, who is blind in one eye, but is no stranger to hardships, hard work, and determination. Though her small town of Gee's Bend is geographically isolated by the Alabama River, she sets off on her own to Camden, 40 miles away, to find a doctor for her sick mother. Throughout her difficult journey, she physically and mentally chronicles her experiences as she pieces a quilt together. This is the way Ludelphia tells her story, of seeing white people for the first time, of encountering kindness and hate. Rural Alabama of 1932 is brought to life, complete with prejudices and superstitions that are eventually overcome thanks to Ludelphia's indomitable strength.

Review
“Ludelphia Bennett reaffirms the human spirit and defines survival in this beautifully stitched quilt of a novel.”—Richard Peck, author of A Season of Gifts

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Hope all my reading and quilting friends can come to the library and enjoy what promises to be an excellent program.

What Do Poetry, Coffee, and Dan Fogelberg Have In Common?

"There's a heaven on earth that so few ever find.

But the map's in your soul and the road's in your mind."

Dan Fogelberg

Today we continued to celebrate poetry at our public library. I read selections from my poetry chapbook, TOKENS, with a few extras thrown in, to a packed house! The house was packed with Ms. Boone's senior English class, and a few adult poetry enthusiasts. The poem that seemed to be the hit of the day was my Love, Alabama Style, a rather lengthy poem about an ill-tempered, jealous cat.

While the teen audience, as well as the adults, were attentive and adroit during the reading, an abundance of coffee was consumed after the program, and a festive rip ensued. Robert Frost would have been proud of us!

The teens returned again and again, until the coffee pot was empty, asking pertinent questions about poetry writing, and expressing their own individual creativity in exuberant fashion.

After the students left the building and relative calm descended, I listened to a few Dan Fogelberg songs, and remembered what a great song writer he was. Many of his songs dealt with his hopes that we would all find a way to rescue and preserve the beauty of our environment. He sang about the beauty and magic in natural surroundings and what we all have at our fingertips, and could easily lose if we aren't attentive.

And here's Dan, drinking coffee, and getting kissed by a black kitty. Or, is the cat trying to get the coffee?

Cats, coffee, poetry and beautiful music ... these are a few of my favorite things.

Fools & Poets

April Fools Day was a delight! It's good to have a day when one can drop all pretenses and just be what you are! Because April is National Poetry Month , it was a chance to celebrate FOOLS & POETS all at the same time! Are those two words synonymous? Because I fit into both categories, I'll refrain from commenting.

My sister, Joanne Cage, an Alabama poet of some renown, read her poems at our local library today to kick off our month long National Poetry Month festivities.

Here's Joanne, looking quite adventurous and stunningly beautiful as a cowboy. Her creative inclinations kicked in at an early age, and she's been creative and witty ever since.

Here's another of my favorite poets, Robert Frost. Mr. Frost and Joanne share some similarities in writing style and subject matter, both writing about passions of the heart. To a large extent, those passions have to do with trees, leaves, home and seasons, and fragile melancholy memories.

I believe Robert F. was a bit more irascible than Joanne. One of the funniest stories I ever heard was in a biography of Robert Frost, concerning his misbehaviour on two separate occasions while fellow poet, Carl Sandberg, was attempting to read his poetry to an audience. In the first incident, Robert Frost seized a huge broom and chased a wayward bird around the auditorium, diverting all attention away from Sandberg. In the second incident, funniest of all and hardest to explain, while sitting in the audience during a Sandberg reading, Frost set a bunch of papers on fire, which subsequently ignited an empty chair, whilst Carl S. diligently attempted to press on with his reading. Robert, what were you thinking?

Other great poets worth checking out are Edwin Arlington Robinson, Ambrose Bierce, William Butler Yeats, Countee Cullen, James A. Emanuel, and Rupert Brooke.

Rupert's one of my favorites.

And then there's always Dobby Mauby. Samuel Dobbs Mauby ... he's a nut.