Monday, March 21, 2011
Every Man's Memory Is His Private Literature.
(The title is a quote from Aldous Huxley)
My friend, Ronni, at Time Goes By, braves the subject of aging head-on with a calm and wise voice. As I begin to experience life on the far side of 50, I find comfort, solace, and direction at her place.
Because of Ronni and her perceptive discussions, I have been dragging my own paranoia of aging out of the shadows.
Something most every older adult fears is the loss of cognitive memory. My children have always relied on Mom to know obscure facts, lyrics to songs, and various trivial matters. They have been known to call me at all hours to ask who wrote "Mares Eat Oats", or who painted "Starry Night". My usually lightening fast memory is my claim to fame, and I pridefully accept their youthful homage. This same memory skill got me through school with mostly A's. I could handily memorize an assigned poem, such as Evangeline, and have it recited and graded before the bell rang.
Lately, I seem to struggle a little longer with recollection of such mundane facts; like trying to catch a helium balloon in a gentle wind, each stretch of the hand pushing it just beyond reach. Words on the tip of my tongue defy my efforts to propel their sound. Perhaps stress is the root cause; maybe lack of sleep, or heaven forbid, it could be a symptom of growing older. After a frustrating attempt to remember a long-ago television show theme song, I fall asleep then abruptly awaken at 2 AM, the musical notes blaring loudly through my dreams. What causes these hiccups in memory to pop up seemingly out of nowhere hours or days afterward?
Late one evening, Kman and I were reading in bed. About midway through Billy Porterfield's "Diddy Wa Diddy", at a paragraph describing a school play, I suddenly had a memory of a second grade PTA performance. Almost as if it happened yesterday instead of 44 years ago, a vivid flash of the papier-mâché wings that were part of my butterfly costume, the bright gold crinkly paper trimmed in brown and glitter-encrusted, popped blazingly into my consciousness. I could even remember the scent of 20 sweating little bodies up on the stage and see the pieces of errant glitter on my friend's long brown hair. Either Mr. Porterfield is a hell of a writer(which he most certainly is) and possesses the power of auto-suggestion, or I had experienced some sort of weird mental time travel.
Turning to Kman, I shared my funny little epiphany. Deep into his own book, he "hmmm'd" and patted my leg absentmindedly. The serendipitous vision wouldn't leave and I finally closed my book, unable to concentrate on anything but my new old memory. It was such a sweet unbidden gift that I find myself hoping that it is a symptom, a good symptom, of growing older. I suppose it could backfire and the anamnesis be a less pleasant one, but that doesn't stop me from hoping it won't take another 44 years to repeat. Certainly an odd thing; you can't consciously force such a memory, thus it is all the more wonderful when it happens "out of the blue".
And as for my trivial mind, an old show tune IS wandering through as I write this blog: "When you least expect it, you're elected, it's your lucky day!"
Remember?
My friend, Ronni, at Time Goes By, braves the subject of aging head-on with a calm and wise voice. As I begin to experience life on the far side of 50, I find comfort, solace, and direction at her place.
Because of Ronni and her perceptive discussions, I have been dragging my own paranoia of aging out of the shadows.
Something most every older adult fears is the loss of cognitive memory. My children have always relied on Mom to know obscure facts, lyrics to songs, and various trivial matters. They have been known to call me at all hours to ask who wrote "Mares Eat Oats", or who painted "Starry Night". My usually lightening fast memory is my claim to fame, and I pridefully accept their youthful homage. This same memory skill got me through school with mostly A's. I could handily memorize an assigned poem, such as Evangeline, and have it recited and graded before the bell rang.
Lately, I seem to struggle a little longer with recollection of such mundane facts; like trying to catch a helium balloon in a gentle wind, each stretch of the hand pushing it just beyond reach. Words on the tip of my tongue defy my efforts to propel their sound. Perhaps stress is the root cause; maybe lack of sleep, or heaven forbid, it could be a symptom of growing older. After a frustrating attempt to remember a long-ago television show theme song, I fall asleep then abruptly awaken at 2 AM, the musical notes blaring loudly through my dreams. What causes these hiccups in memory to pop up seemingly out of nowhere hours or days afterward?
Late one evening, Kman and I were reading in bed. About midway through Billy Porterfield's "Diddy Wa Diddy", at a paragraph describing a school play, I suddenly had a memory of a second grade PTA performance. Almost as if it happened yesterday instead of 44 years ago, a vivid flash of the papier-mâché wings that were part of my butterfly costume, the bright gold crinkly paper trimmed in brown and glitter-encrusted, popped blazingly into my consciousness. I could even remember the scent of 20 sweating little bodies up on the stage and see the pieces of errant glitter on my friend's long brown hair. Either Mr. Porterfield is a hell of a writer(which he most certainly is) and possesses the power of auto-suggestion, or I had experienced some sort of weird mental time travel.
Turning to Kman, I shared my funny little epiphany. Deep into his own book, he "hmmm'd" and patted my leg absentmindedly. The serendipitous vision wouldn't leave and I finally closed my book, unable to concentrate on anything but my new old memory. It was such a sweet unbidden gift that I find myself hoping that it is a symptom, a good symptom, of growing older. I suppose it could backfire and the anamnesis be a less pleasant one, but that doesn't stop me from hoping it won't take another 44 years to repeat. Certainly an odd thing; you can't consciously force such a memory, thus it is all the more wonderful when it happens "out of the blue".
And as for my trivial mind, an old show tune IS wandering through as I write this blog: "When you least expect it, you're elected, it's your lucky day!"
Remember?
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Sunday Christians
Courtesy of Mike Perry who blogs at the Alpine Daily Planet:
Here's Mike's Editor's Note:
This is one more story that illustrates how Texas (particularly its Legislature) has become a state of Sunday Christians. That is, we’re pretty good at loving our neighbor while sitting in that pew on Sunday morning. But the other six days of the week? Well, we’re not very nice people. We are proving at the ballot box and in the legislature that cutting taxes for the wealthiest among us is far more important that tackling the important social issues that confront a state of 24 million souls. We have a governor running for president who’s constantly bragging about the Texas economic miracle, a miracle built on the suffering of the state’s disadvantaged and helpless. This also is one more story that illustrates how our current Legislature is hell bent on cutting programs just for the sake of making cuts – even when the cuts result in greater costs to the state. That’s sheer idiocy, which is probably the best adjective available for the under-educated, misguided fools we elected in November.
Mike Perry is a great guy. You'll love his blog.
One more example of how we've become a state of 'Sunday Christians'By Michael Barajas, from the San Antonio Current
Here's Mike's Editor's Note:
This is one more story that illustrates how Texas (particularly its Legislature) has become a state of Sunday Christians. That is, we’re pretty good at loving our neighbor while sitting in that pew on Sunday morning. But the other six days of the week? Well, we’re not very nice people. We are proving at the ballot box and in the legislature that cutting taxes for the wealthiest among us is far more important that tackling the important social issues that confront a state of 24 million souls. We have a governor running for president who’s constantly bragging about the Texas economic miracle, a miracle built on the suffering of the state’s disadvantaged and helpless. This also is one more story that illustrates how our current Legislature is hell bent on cutting programs just for the sake of making cuts – even when the cuts result in greater costs to the state. That’s sheer idiocy, which is probably the best adjective available for the under-educated, misguided fools we elected in November.
Mike Perry is a great guy. You'll love his blog.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Faded Love
Photo courtesy of Tony and Eva Worobiec
(Repeater...)
In the early 1960's my parents owned and operated a little cafe in a small town just northwest of Cowtown. My dad would get up around 4:00 AM to bake coconut, chocolate, and lemon meringue pies and to get the early crew ready for the first customers of the day; ranchers, blue-collared workers, and gaunt old men with rheumy eyes and tobacco-stained fingers.
Old man Bradshaw ("Stick" to his friends and enemies alike) would always be perched on a certain stool with the morning paper opened across the counter, his skinny legs turned to one side and crossed so you could see his white socks and scrawny shins poking out from his khaki trouser legs. In the summer he wore short-sleeved cotton shirts; in the winter only the sleeves lengthened with no change to the forever uniform of plaid. He would always order black coffee, pour out some in his saucer, blow on it, then sip it with a noisy sucking sound. After that first saucer serving he finished drinking his morning joe from the cup poured with a smile and a wisecrack from Maude or Dorothy, the first shift waitresses.
If I was lucky and Mom wasn't watching, Dad would scoop up a big spoonful of the coconut custard filling for me with a conspiratorial wink. Usually, breakfast was a hamburger made fresh by Dad, of course. No tomatoes, though. Sometimes it was a grilled cheese sandwich. The only hateful constant was the glass of cold goat's milk stirred up with chalky lumpy Ovaltine. I can still conjure up the taste of that morning elixir...musky and watery, not rich like "real" milk.
I was a thin pale-faced little six year-old and Dad was assured by a local farmwoman that what I needed to put pink in my cheeks was goat's milk. Fix me right up she said. I had to hold my nose, shut my eyes and gulp the tonic down. Never saw "Kitten" on Father Knows Best having to drink this stuff.
Our old cafe was torn down several years ago. A modern "Stop 'N Go" with self-service gas pumps sits in its place. No charm, no jukebox, just a garish green and yellow painted concrete facade with cardboard tasting prepackaged donuts and Texas scratch-off tickets behind the counter. People come and go hurrying to unknown destinations; the swipe of a plastic card at the pump and no need to interact with any human at all.
Stick Bradshaw's old black and white spotted dog no longer waits outside the front glass doors, getting leftover scraps from patrons' plates and a nice scratch behind his ear as he keeps vigil in the parking lot waiting for his master to finish the morning with a walk to the post office. No more domino games in the back dining room on Saturday nights, no gang of teenagers at the booths after a Friday night game, nor a vending machine man with stacks of shiny 45's to slip into the steel slots of the Wurlitzer:
As I look at the letters that you wrote to me
It's you that I am thinking of
As I read the lines that to me were so sweet
I remember our faded love
I miss you darling more and more every day
As heaven would miss the stars above
With every heartbeat I still think of you
And remember our faded love
As I think of the past and all the pleasures we had
As I watch the mating of the dove
It was in the springtime when you said goodbye
I remember our faded love
I miss you darling more and more every day
As heaven would miss the stars above
With every heartbeat I still think of you
And remember our faded love
Sunday, March 06, 2011
Thermopylae Had Her Messenger of Defeat; the Alamo Had None
1849 Daguerrotype, Photographer Unknown.(Courtesy of Texas A&M University)
This rare image of the Alamo chapel, is the earliest known extant photograph taken in Texas. This image of the internationally recognized Alamo facade is of particular historical importance because it is the only known photograph of the Alamo taken before it was repaired and rebuilt by the U.S. Army in 1850. At that time the army altered the appearance of the Alamo in several ways, including adding the distinctive curved gable at the top of the church facade, which is perhaps its best known feature. Little is known of the daguerreotype's history, but there is evidence that it may have been given to the Batterson family of New England by Edward Miles, a local official in Bexar County during the late 1840s and 1850s. It was recently purchased at an estate auction in New England by William S. Reese, a rare book dealer in New Haven, Connecticut. The Center for American History bought the daguerreotype from Reese with funds donated for that purpose by former Texas governor Dolph Briscoe Jr. and his wife, former University of Texas System regent Janey Briscoe.
On this morning, one hundred and sixty-eight years ago in San Antonio, the Alamo fell. William B. Travis, David Crockett, James Bowie, J.B. Bonham, are but a few of the brave sons of the Republic that died today. At the time of the fall, these men were unaware that Texas had declared Independence at the Convention four days before in Washington-On-the-Brazos and a new flag with a Lone Star had been adopted.
One of the last notes from Travis written several days before, carried these words: "The bearer of this will give your honorable body a statement more in detail, should he escape through the enemies' lines. God and Texas! Victory or Death!"
Written in 1860 by Captain R.M. Potter,
The issue of slavery has been mentioned in comments here at Texas Trifles. Indeed, slavery has played a very important part in the history of America, including the untamed west. And yes, Texas eventually applied for statehood as a slave state. But, this morning's tribute is about the heroes, the men who fought bravely and fiercely for Texas.
Comments are welcome and I love my readers, but today I want no slander upon Texas, no finger-pointing or naysayers. Today belongs to my heroes and to my great state.
...The biographical equivalent of 12 hour chili - Sticks to the ribs! -
