A tiny sparrow on an ordinary day

On Thursday, I made a brief stop at a local grocery store, on the way from and to other errands.

Parked the car, and on the way to dumping the plastics in the recycling bin, saw a sparrow, crushed, but not gruesomely, in the parking lot. (Why do birds insist on running when they can fly? I've seen robins do this a lot. Anyway, I don't know what caused this bird's demise.) Another sparrow kept hopping around his-or-her fallen companion. Clearly, to me anyway, hoping for the late sparrow to pop up and start hopping around again.

The little tableau was still in play on my way out. Another shopper commiserated.

"That's so sad!" (...Pause...) "I don't need to see that!"

But she said it in a nice way. By way of someone noticing something sad.

I did not actually cry, but when I got back to my car, the tears began to flow.

Sometimes I think it is small tragedies like this that release the tears we hold back from larger ones.

My Mom died last year.

Russia invaded Ukraine this year

Then a tiny sparrow died this week.

Of course, I have shed tears over my mother's death, and still do and will until the end of my days. I never know when they are going to come. But in general, my life has gone on. As I'm sure many of us do, I mostly carry my grief in a private space. 

I can't bring back my Mom.

I can't help the victims of war.

I can't help a tiny sparrow.

What is it about that little dead bird, on an otherwise ordinary day, that brings me to tears? 

Maybe it speaks to the real powerlessness that we have. We go blithely about our days, doing ordinary things, like grocery shopping, that we take for granted and thinking that life will just roll on and on.

Only in the face of dumb tragedy do we see how ... precarious? ... our existences are.

The tiny surviving sparrow only knew something was wrong. It was spared the experience of grief.

This witness, not so much.

 

The end of a story

Dad & Mom on their wedding day, St. Louis, 1954.

 

 

 

I had trouble choosing a headline for this post. It was going to be "Tears, Miles and Lowered Expectations," to go with grief, driving home and the shit of expecting one year of a pandemic to be over, done with and la-la life goes back to normal. Fuck.

But it's about me and my Mom. Our story together is over, so the chosen title seems more appropriate.

Mom died in June after a mercifully (and she would agree with that categorization) brief illness. The week or so before she passed away she had been in Maine, with sister Suzy and her two boys, Mom's favorite grandkids. My sister Mary was along as well.

The trip had been postponed from 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

I hadn't seen Mom since late 2019. Husband and I drove up from Pittsburgh in April 2021 for his mother's funeral. We had not seen her either, in about that amount of time. She died alone, tired, I think, in her locked down assisted living facility (which was a really nice place), on Good Friday. She was 91.

For mother-in-law's funeral, as the pandemic seemed to be easing, we stayed with Mom in her new condo. It was so good to see her face and feel her hug and hear her say "It's S-O-O good to see you!"

We didn't stay long. Got the tour of the new digs, ordered takeout, sat in the evenings and afternoons talking, talking, talking. About Dad. My brothers. Mom's family. Just figured there would be time for more visits.

Mom was in relatively good shape, as far as I knew, for a 90-year-old. Still driving (unlike the stereotype, she drove too fast! Not too slow). Still sharp mentally. But she had her aches and pains. Rheumatoid arthritis for one. And the still-simmering grief of losing, most recently, her youngest son in 2018 to gliablastoma. That was hard.

I kept thinking, every time we came home: I have to get Mom on tape, record her stories.

Never did, but the bonus/burden is that I now have decades worth of home movies and audio tapes to go through that Mom & Dad saved over the years.

The hardest, or maybe one of the hardest, things about this is that I can't talk to her anymore. I miss that so much. I keep thinking "Oh, I should ask Mom about ...." and then realize that I can't. No more Sunday phone calls. No more .... birthday cards, impromptu gifts, visits to art fairs, weekend breakfasts ... just, oh gosh. I have a drawer full of birthday cards. And a birding guide she gave me only a couple of years ago.

Mom's story was so interesting, and I was a big part of it, but not the whole part.

She was a beloved only daughter. A nurse (briefly). A wife to a husband who loved her deeply, as she did him. My parents weren't without their travails, and, in fact, Mom did say that at about the 12-13-year point in their marriage, she was ready to bail (my words, not hers). And, of course, this is only my take on their story. I honestly loved my Dad, but really did not know him well. They were married for 41 years and she lived another 26 after he died.

I guess, really, you never know what you sign up for. You think you do, but you don't.

The thing is, I am so grateful my parents met, married and stuck it out through the rough times. And those rough times never, in my memory, were inflicted on any of us seven kids. Sure, there were short tempers. But in a household of nine people, that's hardly surprising.

All of the family stories handed down from Mom, Grammio and to a lesser extent, quiet Dad, were all about fun, goof-ups and making the best of bad (for Dad and Grammio, pretty bad) or ridiculous situations.

I didn't know this until after Mom died, but she had a love of poetry, and the book she had thumbed well somehow went missing the clearing of her estate. Pretty sure she inherited that love from her own Dad, who wrote daily in a diary and loved musical theater.

Kind of got off on a tangent here. Still ... there's so much about my Mom that I didn't know and now, never will.

I'm glad I was a part of your life Mom. Thanks for being in mine.

About a dog

This story starts way back in the mid 1970s, but my reason for writing is right here in 2021. 

A few nights ago, in the waning days of the year's first month, I watched on our office TV a film released in 2019, "A Dog's Way Home." Kind of a latter-day "The Incredible Journey," which I loved as a child. The stories are similar. Beloved but somehow lost domestic pets find their ways back to their people.

It's been many years since I've seen "Incredible Journey," so I don't recall many details. Just that the trio was comprised of a Siamese cat, a Staffordshire terrier and a Golden Retriever.

"A Dog's Way Home" follows a single dog, Bella, a pit bull mix, on her way home to her beloved Lucas, his girlfriend, Olivia and his mom. Her travels take her from New Mexico to Colorado over the course of two winters.

Bella makes friends with a pack, becomes a mother-dog to an orphaned cougar (Big Kitten) is hunted by wolves, adopted several times on her journey and finally, finally completes the game Lucas taught her: Go Home.

But not without a final road to cross. And it nearly proves fatal.

She is hit by a car.

Now this movie pushes all the right buttons for a tear-jerker, but it brought tears to my eyes because of where this story began in the '70s.

It was spring, I remember because I was wearing just a jean skirt and a light top.

I left my apartment by the Ohio State campus headed for a morning class (which one, I don't remember).

As I approached Lane Avenue, a dog on the opposite side started to cross, trotting right into traffic.

A car hit him, then ran over him.

Amazingly, the dog got up, trotted back to the side of the street it had started from and laid down under a young tree. It sat with its head up for a moment, then the head went down.

I was in a panic. I ran back to my apartment, a matter of moments, and phoned campus police.

I don't know what I thought they could do, and I can't recall what their response was, I think the dispatcher promised to send a car.

It didn't matter. The dog had died.

I wish, rather, that I had gone to the dog and comforted it. Stroked its head.

Where it came from or where it was going, I'll never know. But it was just a simple ordinary day for that dog that ended in what I can only imagine was great pain. And tears for me. Then and now.

It would be many years from then until I had dogs of my own and learned all they had to teach me.

I don't know if I can really think of that pup as my first dog. If it was, I failed it by not comforting it.

But if there is a rainbow bridge, little dog, I'm sure you made it to the other side.

Forgive me.

Desks and work

 

The desk!

A messy desk is a sign of a creative person.

So the narrative goes.

During my working days, I kept a fairly neat desk. Oh, I had my postcards and buttons. At one point, I even had storage space above my computer to keep copies of the print products that I designed.

But, mostly, I did not like a lot of crap cluttering up my work space. It was always extraordinary to me that coworkers could, in a building that OSHA would have summarily condemned, pile up papers, news releases, clippings and all other sorts of flotsam and jetsam. Once, many years ago, an editor pulled out a sheaf from a notorious hoarder's pile and she (the hoarder) immediately knew that her territory had been disturbed. Tears followed.

(And seriously, my newsroom was definitely a tinderbox waiting to be lit. There were the aforementioned  hoarders and then there was the morgue. Full of ancient clippings of long-ago events that would set you sneezing [the clippings, not the events] the moment you pulled out a file from an overstuffed shelf. Unfortunately, too, it was unguarded, so many valuable prints were stolen over the years.)

So the narrative of now is this.

 My desk at home is messy, but in an orderly way. My morgue is two paces away, containing a boxes of ancient and fascinating clippings about my life: diaries, photos, letters. I don't think OSHA would condemn it, but it definitely needs some Marie Kondo-type attention.

Collage No. 9

I'm making stuff from the flotsam and jetsam that sits on it. 

(Favorite quote from a former colleague, who got tired of some copy desk questions: "Is anal-retentive hyphenated?) :)

 

 

All Hallows Eve

Allegheny Cemetery (Photo by Katy Buchanan)

Halloween, for a long time, hasn't been a big deal for me. (Best Halloween ever? My mom made me a Morticia Addams costume when I was in seventh grade!)

So some years ago, when the number of trick-or-treaters at our house diminished to a trickle, leaving us with too much candy to take to the office the next day, my husband and I decided that the evening would be dinner out.

Close the drapes, turn out the lights and head to a restaurant. It was a nice tradition for a while. While I missed carving the pumpkin and roasting the seeds, it was kind of a relief not to rush around with one more decoration in the busy Labor Day-to-Christmas season.

I do feel kind of curmudgeonly about it, like I'm no fun, especially with friends and family who wholeheartedly embrace it. But so it goes.

This Oct. 31, 2020, I really had forgotten about it until I had to dress in black for a protest at the home of the publisher of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. My former employer, where the union employees have not had a raise in 14 years, no contract in three, to name two of many injustices. I added an orange scarf and purple gloves to complete, so to speak, the outfit.

After days of rain and gloom, Saturday dawned as one of those perfect fall canvases: drenchingly blue sky, leaves of red and gold and lawns still in brilliant green.

Since I was in the Shadyside/Friendship/Lawrenceville neighborhood, I did something I've been wanting to do for a long time. Revisit Allegheny Cemetery.

Decades ago, I wrote about it for the Associated Press, when I worked in the Pittsburgh bureau. Somewhat more recently, I wrote about a Japanese woman, living in Pittsburgh, who made it a point to visit the grave there of songwriter/native son Stephen Foster each year on the anniversary of his death (Jan. 13, 1864).

What I've always taken away from visits is how much history is buried there. Not a startling deduction, sure, but it allows so much room for ruminating and daydreaming. Some headstones are so sad because they testify to long-ago lives that often ended just after birth. There are grand mausoleums that have photographs inside of those who rest inside; sometimes flowers, too. 

And the sculptures! The wealth of art is amazing, although I noticed today that some tombs have window openings and door grates essentially bricked over. Whether those features have been lost to the indignities of time, the elements or vandals, I don't know.

Still, it's a beautiful place. You might even say restful.

Flying. And dreams of

It's mid-September and the days grow short. Every day I squeeze in some patio time in the lengthening southwestern Pennsylvania light.

 

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail.

One pleasant surprise this late summer has been the arrival of four Monarch butterfly caterpillars. I noticed them a bit more than a week ago on the swamp milkweed that we had planted last summer as part of a landscape project. I knew it was Monarch food, which is why I insisted on it, but was not quite up to speed on how they consumed it.

 

So naturally, I was disappointed over the summer by the dearth of Monarchs in my back yard. Lots of Swallowtails and skippers, though, as the season waned.
 
Back to last week. Surrounded by unfinished Sunday newspapers and various magazines, I noticed four beautiful yellow-green and black striped caterpillars munching away on the milkweed leaves. It's the caterpillars, not the butterflies, that consume the milkweed. The females find the plant and lay their eggs on it. So the Monarchs had been visiting. I just hadn't seen them.

I feel bad now, because in spraying the milkweeds with a garden hose to dislodge aphids, I may have dislodged Monarch eggs as well. I'll know better next year.

 

Monarch chrysalis.

One day, the caterpillars disappeared, only to show up, hanging upside down in a J shape, on nearby shamrock hollies. Within a day, they had shed their final skin and were covered in jade green with gold necklaces.
 
The chrysalises are like pieces of jewelry. It may be a couple of more days before they actually break out and start feeding on the nectar of nearby plants. Of the four caterpillars, I count three hanging, waiting and dreaming of flight. (Looking closely, you can see the wings through the transparent chrysalis.)
 
They won't soar like the hawk (probably a red-tailed) I watched this afternoon, circling high overhead in big, lazy circles. Over the 15 minutes I followed it, the wings flapped only twice.
 
But they will flutter and feed all the way to Mexico, where they'll spend the winter. I hope fate will be kind enough to get them safely there.
 
Vaya con dios.

 

Pal Is Still Lost

In my rare pandemic peregrinations, I drive the same few routes over and over.

• Local grocery store (Instacart does not work well there).
• Further out grocery store  (where wine is sold).
• Local hardware store (for bath strips and grab bars that husband now needs.) 

Masked up at all of them and in and out without dilly dallying.

Photo by Katy Buchanan

On the runs to the second (farther) store, I pass several versions of this sign.  Either "Pal Is Lost" or "Pal Still Lost."

You can see by the fading and running colors that the notices have been up for a while. It's now mid-May 2020; I think I've been seeing them since mid-April.

I hope Pal's people have found him or her, and have merely forgotten or neglected to take down the signs. That there are so many of them speaks to the love Pal's family has for this little cat.

For some reason, Pal reminds me of a chapter in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," the opening tale in C.S. Lewis's "Chronicles of Narnia."

The chapter is titled "The Spell Begins to Break." The White Witch's terrible winter is nearing an end, yet she still maintains her power to turn Narnia's creatures to stone with a flick of her wand.

As the Witch and her dwarf (with captive Edmund in tow) slowly realize that her grip on winter is ending, they sledge along ever more slowly through Narnia's melting snow.

Father Christmas has already been by and the villains come upon a "a merry party" composed of squirrels, satyrs, a fox and a dwarf, all celebrating with meal of plum pudding and other delights.

It ends poorly for the little gathering. The Witch turns them to stone.

An increasingly remorseful Edmund thinks of of those small stone figures, "sitting there all the silent days and all the dark nights" until they just crumble away.
 
Right now, it seems the chances of Pal being found are crumbling, too.

Maybe the signs will come down. If not, they will continue to fade to illegibility, melancholy reminders of a beloved little cat, missing in all the silent days and all the dark nights.

Color me

Arrangement by me. Mother Nature helped.

Well, the ceaseless rain took a brief break on Wednesday here in Pittsburgh, so I went for a walk.

April's breezes have been scattering blossom petals and young leaves all over the place.

I picked up these maple seedlings and baby leaves on my stroll. The deep rose red and bright pistachio green are one of the best color combinations in nature. (Complementary on the color wheel.) 

I don't know why this pairing speaks to me, especially because my birthstone is amethyst and I love all things purple.

Here's the thing, though. I love purple with green. I love walnut brown with green. And blue is not my favorite color (except for denim, it will never hang over my bones) but I love it with green.

And I'm not talking about Kelly green. I'm talking cool limes, pale spring leaves and the glaucous shades of evergreens.

It's been years since I took a class in color theory, but what I remember is that I liked the gradations, the hints of what happens when you mix a bit. Talented artists do this mixing all the time to great effect and with more art education than me.

I just pick it up on the street. 😊

(Update: April's showers are more than living up to their name. The drenching has resumed.) 😞

Noodling about doodling

A doodle by me. Katy Buchanan

In a way, sheltering is an opportunity to be meditative. To think about things, and, if you are fortunate, to be able to write about your experience. And then there's the opportunity to get really nervous. Yeah,  I've been doing that.

So, meditative has been (amid chores) long walks and doodling. Another thing I've been doing is looking over a notebook that I kept on hand when I had the incredible (in retrospect) luxury to go to meetings and be bored ... because you know, meetings! And people who hijack them! A former colleague, who is also a very talented illustrator, used to get teased about the stuff she drew during budget meetings. (For you non-newspaper people, a budget meeting is a daily get-together of department heads to go over coverage for the day and how it will be displayed, A-1 being the prime (print) real estate. In retrospect again, considering the profitability of journalism today, the budget meetings probably should have been about the money. Well. Water long under the bridge.) That notebook is full of doodles and notes that are now pretty much incomprehensible.

Anyway here's a doodle drawn over the course of a non-meeting week. I've figured out that doodling is a way to make mistakes and learn from them. After all, it's not like I'm going to be graded. And it's not like I'm going to be in any meetings anytime soon.

I plan on sharing some meeting doodles. But just this for now.

And of course, after publishing, this just hit me. Any Major Dood!

Traveling

Photo by Katy Buchanan

Last time I was at the CMOA,  in early February 2020, I actually found out the name of the sculptor. Did I bother to write it down? No. Proof positive that I'm an idiot.

 So. The 2020 spring has upended the known universe.

About two years ago, I kept tentatively making plans to spend a month in Paris. Note the word "tentative."

Here I am, two years later, no Paris trip completed and confined to my ZIP code for the foreseeable future.

One thing I was not tentative about was checking out a pile of books from my local library before it closed last month.

So I'm not a total moron.

I'm pretty close to done with the pile, so I'll be reading online soon, but these books have been a real trip. They've taken me to 19th century Paris and St. Thomas, 18th century London, 20th century London and early 20th century Nepal.
Here are some of the titles:

 "Poison Thread," (Old London) (based on a true story)
"A Marriage of Opposites" (Old St. Thomas and Old Paris) (based on the life of Impressionist artist Camille Pissaro)
 "The Steady Running of the Hour" (Old London, mostly, Iceland and Nepal and Berlin. Also, Paris circa 2013-14. Also, the muddy trenches of WWI.)

I'm now into an anthology edited by Stephen King titled "Six Scary Stories." Two more books to go before online reading (or before a deep dive into my library of New Yorkers, NYTimes and 'Grant' by Ron Chernow, which has been sitting around for ages).

Re: "The Steady Running of the Hour." I grabbed it mostly because of the title. I just love those words. So meditative. An OK novel (it's the author's first) but the love stories that weave together the long-ago yesterday and today were uncompelling. Long-ago Imogen is an awful, dreadful person, trying to get her soldier-lover Ashley to desert. And today-Tristan falls in with people so casually and so without any sense of self-protection that it's hard to take his 'romance' with Mireille seriously. And she's just like Imogen ... begging her lover to quit his duty. She's awful, too. At least Ashley stood up for himself. Tristan just goes along, like a cow with a ring through its nose.

"Steady Running" is also filled with too much research detail (James Michener, anyone?). I'm an experienced enough reader to know when I feel comfortable moving past paragraphs and pages of facts (about, in this instance, guns and terrain and and climbing gear). As the cleaning lady in "The World According To Garp" testified, the mark of a good book is you want to know what happens. That's what keeps you turning the pages. Not lots of detail about how guns work.


That said, I think research-iness and wordiness sometimes speak more to lapses by editors. Authors are understandably proud of their work. Writing is hard. Research is hard. But winnowing words is work that needs to be done, too.

Oh, and here I am, criticizing. Said the person who never made her trip to Paris. Or who never wrote a book.

Carry on. Or, better, Allons' y

About the photo: Last time I was at the CMOA,  in early February 2020, I actually found out the name of the sculptor. Did I bother to write it down? No. Proof positive that I'm not a total moron, but I am, in fact, an idiot.

Vessels

Photo by Katy Buchanan

I don't know why, but I love collecting pots and vases and glasswork. At one point in my life, I made them, when CMOA still had art classes ( I so loved wandering past the bone room to the clay studio. )

Pottery was fun. And hard! You really develop some strong arms using the wheel and kneading the clay (actually, that is the hardest part ... trying to get out all the air bubbles.)

Anyway, CMOA ended those art classes some years ago, and I had stopped attending before. I still see my former instructor, Valda Cox, at the 3 Rivers Arts Fest and the Fair in the Park.  (And by the way, on Shady Avenue on Fair in the Park weekend, there are some great yard sales.)

Back to my point. I am trying to declutter, but I have some vessels that I just can't part with. Why do I like things that hold things? Stability? Safety? Beauty? For whatever reason, I love them. And some were purchased when I really could not afford them (and the shops no longer trade). Not pictured here is a really pretty glass vase that I bought when Fifth Avenue Place in DT Pittsburgh had some cool shops.

Here are a (very) few of  my favorites (including an empty bottle of perfume by Paloma Picasso. (Perfume bottle design is a fascinating land of art all by itself.)

Photos by Katy Buchanan

Paloma Picasso perfume bottle.

Red pot is from Fireborn Studios on the South Side.
One on right from a shop in Lawrenceville.
The little crackle glass vessel I bought at a yard sale in Shadyside. Looks like a Blenko.

 

 

 

From Toadflax in Shadyside, November 2019.

Valentine's Day, Gerri and the Alcoa Building

Photo by Katy Buchanan
I don't have a photo of the Alcoa Building in my archives, but, in the spirit of Pittsburgh's mid-century renaissance, here's one of Gateway Plaza, with the Gateway 2 & 3 buildings in the background,

I took an acquaintance out for coffee on Valentine's Day.

She's 90 and has never driven. We met several years ago when I volunteered for Mt. Lebanon Village, part of a larger volunteer organization. We ran into each other at the grocery store a couple of weeks ago.

She's a nice lady, walks with a cane due to arthritis yet still gets out to do grocery shopping and lunch with other members of the group.

I remembered from our conversations of several years ago that she worked as an artist/designer for Gulf Oil and later Alcoa, back when Alcoa had just moved in to its digs in the-then new building bordering Mellon Square in Downtown Pittsburgh. (It's apartments now.)

She had such an interesting career, working for those companies designing brochures, creating messages.

She told me that when the Alcoa Building opened, one of the major innovations was that the windows opened from side to side (interiorly), not up and down, so that they could be cleaned without benefit of exterior window washers. And in some of the top-tier executive suites, the paneling was of Philippine mahogany.

It all sounded very "Mad Men." In the end, though, she was a woman who worked, cared for her son and lived the day-to-day.

And she still gets out and enjoys life.

That was a nice Valentine's Day get-together.

Cat who won't sit on my lap.

Photo by Katy Buchanan

Look at you,

you elegant cat

who won’t wear a collar

or sit on my lap.

I recall the day

that you came to stay

you were so very small, and so very tabby

Your name was Bob Jones and

who names a cat that?

(Seriously?)

Anyway, does it matter?

I think it does not.

Because, Jones, you know

you will

never,

ever

sit on my lap.

Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat! (Again? That trick never works!)

Photo by Carol Treat Morton
Artwork by Olle Eksell

Our story begins in Frostbite Falls, Minnesota. 

(Had to get that Rocky and Bullwinkle nod out of the way.) 

I’ve been driving up to Elyria every couple of weeks since about May 2019, helping Mom declutter her huge ranch to get it ready for sale. She’s in good health, but taking care of a big house and a large piece of property (with a pool) is way past getting to be way too much.

My parents bought the place in 1971, so there are decades worth of stuff to sort, save and clear out. It’s a cool home, and my well-traveled parents filled it with an eclectic collection of art and furniture, heavy on the MCM influence.

One recent Sunday, our plans to tackle the attic were stymied, so we went into the office, which we’ve been working on bit by bit, and pulled a bunch of file folders to go through.  Dad was a fanatic about keeping receipts for everything, (and keeping lots of other stuff, too) and I think this habit rubbed off on Mom.

We get to the last folder, pix of antiques, records of art purchased, jewelry appraisals, etc. As we’re tossing and saving, an envelope with a brochure and a business card slips out.

The brochure was tucked in the folded over envelope. It came from a shop in tiny Patagonia, AZ, which Mom visited on a birding trip in 2006. The shop had some weavings by Joe Montell, and she was instantly struck by one similar to the one below, which was pictured in the brochure. It looks like the artist’s name is woven in red.

It was a very large work, and the price was $3,000. Though she could afford it, she thought it was just too much money, but was tempted enough to have the shop send her along the artist’s brochure. She never bought the weaving.

Flash back to October 2019. Good friend Carol Morton hosted BFFs and me for the Detroit Free Press 13.1 marathon. In her new home. With a cool shower curtain (at the very top of this post) that we both really believed had to be by whoever drew the Rocky & Bullwinkle series. A quick Google search didn't retrieve any results except for a vague reference to the animation being outsourced to Mexico and, since we had a lot of talking, walking and beveraging to do, we let it drop.

Now back to November 2019 with Mom. The brochure cover art and the typography immediately caught my eye, just because I love so many MCM things. I opened it and started to read the “about the artist” blurb. Imagine my surprise when I came to this sentence:

So this guy, Joe Montell, did Rocky and Bullwinkle! In Mexico. And Mom could have bought one of his tapestries!

What a bit of serendipity! (And I'm sure the Rocky and Bullwinkle writers would appreciate this, too. But that's a post for another day.)

And the shower curtain design was by this artist, Olle Eksell. How his style and Joe Montell's were so similiar is another mystery.

Anyway.

Mr. Montell passed away in 2007 and he had a great career in art, as an animator and textile artist.

Links below are about him. I think it's just fascinating how our lives work out. Thank you, Joe. (And thank you Mom, and thank you Carol.)

https://yowpyowp.blogspot.com/2011/01/a-part-of-life-of-joe-montell.html

http://artofjayward.blogspot.com/

Harper Lee's "Furious Hours"

I’ve just finished “Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee,” by Casey Cep.

It’s part murder mystery, part journalism, part biography and very well-researched.

The title takes its name from a reference to the Battle at Horseshoe Bend, between the forces of Gen. Andrew Jackson and some members of the Creek Indian tribe in what was then Mississippi, but is now Alabama, in 1814. (Harper Lee mentioned this in a lecture about someone else who would be interesting to read about, 19th century Alabama historian Albert Pickett.)

The book is about Harper Lee’s attempts to complete a second book (not counting “Go Set a Watchman,” which was the base on which “To Kill A Mockingbird,” was built.)

She came upon the tale of the apparent serial killer Rev. Willie Maxwell by cocktail party chance, and spent an amazing amount of time (years and years) trying to bring his story, the story of his victims, of his lawyer and of his murderer to life, but in the end, could not. In good part because the lives of black Americans in the South were not documented. Unless they were lynched.

Casey Cep has done a great job of examining why writers write, how they write, and, how, sometimes, they cannot (lack of good and supportive editors being a one reason).

In the end, “Furious Hours” seems to me more apt in referring to the time spent honing “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Trying to bring the story of the Rev. Willie Maxwell, Tom Radney and Robert Burns, seemed more of a slow boil of frustration. I suppose in that sense, it was the last trial of Harper Lee, daughter of a small-town lawyer.

Good book, well written and, again, very well-researched. A Borzoi Book published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2019.

Doors open

Kate in Boston, 2015, visiting Heidi.
(Photo by Heidi Pervin Yamaguchi)

Lunch time in the cafeteria at a suburban Maryland Catholic elementary school (Holy Cross in Garrett Park) where I landed in in 7th grade. Another stop in the bouncing around life of an Army brat (I didn't know that was what I was called until much later) and second U.S. school after three years in France.

At this school, I remember being best friends with Patti Miller, and listening to Sister Mary Paul rant about the Congo. (So, yeah, late 60s.)

Back to lunch time. I'm sitting at a table when schoolmate Sally S., kid of a big Catholic family, squeezes her right hand around the back of my neck. Hard. I don't really remember being bullied, just this one incident. Maybe there was more going on, because I also remember being fed up, so I reached back with my right hand and dug my fingernails onto her grasping claw. That ended it. I was a small person then; I'm sure Sally was too. In memory, she is sallow, with a severe pageboy haircut and a nasty sneer. Perhaps I'm piling on.

I guess I went through a door that day. Not to being a  bravesuperwonderfulstrong  person for the rest of my life. But to being someone who, for a moment, had had enough.

Other doors have opened in my life, thankfully not by Sally's method.

Starting at a new school in France, par example, led me to another best friend, Evelyne Eon (I had a lot of one-year BFs). We called each other "petite" as we ran around the playground holding hands. I remember her fondly. Our little-girl friendship made the constant upheaval of Army life bearable, if only for a while.

At Ohio State, karate lessons opened the door to a lifelong friendship with Heidi Pervin Yamaguchi. You know how some memories are seared in your brain?  I remember a late spring night in Columbus, sitting on a curb along High Street in North Campus with Heidi, just talking. Nothing pressing, just the murmurs of two young women sharing time before we became grownups with responsibilities. Brain may have trimmed this memory over the years, but I love it nonetheless.

I am so lucky to have made good friends during my life. And some of them are not even flesh and blood.

I love the girls of this last group because they all went through doors, too. And more valiantly than me. They are, as my earliest through-the-door friend exclaimed, "Curiouser and curiouser!"

So, you might guess that my first valiant girlfriend is Alice. I do not recall the first time I read "Alice in Wonderland." It might even have been read to me by Mom or Grammio. Whatever the provenance of the story in my brain, I love that Alice embraced the absurdity that came her way. Falling down a rabbit hole? What a perfect time for a nap! Land in a heap of twigs in a long hall with many doors? Then eat cakes or drink beverages as instructed! Believe impossible things? Why not!

“There’s no use trying,” said Alice, “one can’t believe impossible things.” 

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. 

“When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day.
Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

My second valiant girlfriend is Lucy Pevensie, whose tumble through a wardrobe door during the Blitz starts her adventures in Narnia with Edmund, Peter and Susan. Lucy is special. Her siblings doubt her when she returns to Spare Oom. Edmund bullies and betrays her, yet she never gives up on her new friend, Mr. Tumnus, on her new adventure, or even on Edmund. Throughout the chronicles of Narnia, she is loyal, brave and forgiving. My dad's mother bought all seven of the books for us seven grandchildren and, at least at the beginning, read them to us. I was first, so I got "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe," in which Lucy's story begins.

My third valiant girlfriend is Coraline Jones. Neil Gaiman's heroine, knocking about in a creaky, high-ceilinged old house, discovers a door that leads to her "other" mother. All will be well. Except, when it isn't. Coraline realizes that buttons for eyes mean blinding yourself. For her, it turns out that distracted real Mom and real Dad, are, though imperfect, better than other.

I check in with these valiant girls often. But the door always swings back to reality and my true BFFs. You know who you are. Lots of love.

Pool

The Buchanan family pool.
(Photo by Katy Buchanan)

I have splashed through my last laps at home.

My family has inhabited this space for 48 years and it is past time to go. The pool won't be open next year.

So many good memories of parents, siblings, schoolmates, neighbors, nephews, in-laws and friends enjoying this space.

My dad used to swim laps in this pool. So did my mom.

I remember, after coming back home from college, skinny-dipping with friends early in the morning and sharing champagne and strawberries with sour cream and brown sugar.

The pool was part of the scenery and of the reception on my wedding day.

The service for my late brother Chris was held on the deck that he used to power wash.

My late brother Peter fearlessly bounced off the long-gone diving board. (I don't remember using the board, but I do remember doing racing dives off the deep end. Mom was a fanatic about all us kids knowing how to swim.)

There were noodles, inflatables, water guns and lots of hilarity. And so much time spent just sitting on the deck and talking into the evening, the underwater light keeping dusk away.

Originally, there was a wrought iron fence surrounding the pool. I remember spending a high school summer stripping the white paint off of it. A few years later, my parents had the fence taken down and the pool refurbished. It still has the pretty blue tiles from that remodel circling under the coping.

My nephews as recently as this summer came to visit and, in between gaming and practicing guitar, dove in with the casual exuberance of very young men.

The water was cold on Sunday, but the sun was shining. After about 45 minutes, I got out and, even though I had slathered on sunblock, was still a bit sunburned.

The best thing about swimming is that it really gets your heart rate up. You can feel its benefits throughout the day. And you'll sleep well, too.

Thanks for the memories, pool.

Art appreciation

"Era of Cool" show at the Westmoreland.  Art by John Van Hamersveld.
August 17, 2019. (Photo by Katy Buchanan)

I can't draw. I can doodle, and scribble and do good design. I've even thrown a few nice pots in my time. I'm fine with that.

And yet ... besides wishing that I could sing, I wish, I wish my brain was built for the super-driven creativity and exultation of purpose on display in "Era of Cool,"  now at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art.

I'm more of a dilettante. I love learning new things, that's my passion and my weird discipline, I guess. Still, when I see cool art like this, I feel on the outside looking in. Why doesn't my brain work this way? I want it to, but ...

Blah, blah. Anyway. This art speaks to me because it is referential, not realistic. That sense of representation is why I love the Impressionists. They took reality and beautifully reduced it to shape and color. This is not to say I don't love the work of painters like Caravaggio or Vermeer. Their art is stunning and sends you deep into pondering the stories of the people they painted. But the artists who can strip off detail and take reality down to its essentials, I don't know why, but their work really does it for me.

In the 1960s, John Van Hamersveld used a photo of surfers, reduced it to its bones and made a poster for the movie Endless Summer that is just as stunning today as it was then. The yellow sun at the center draws you in, and you can see how the surfers converge toward it, chasing the light and the wave.

I had some 90 minutes to see the exhibit on Saturday, which is about my max time for gallery wandering. Admission is free. Plus, I got to see a painting by one of my favorite American artists, Milton Avery.

Here is my Endless Summer image.
Taken at Dormont Pool in Pittsburgh, around 5 p.m.
August 19, 2019. (Photo by Katy Buchanan)

Get busy living

Reading my mom's biography that's she's compiled over the years ... this stands out. She was recovering from the birth of my middle sis.

"Dad brought me 'The Guns of August' by Barbara Tuchman. I somehow managed to finish it in the five days I stayed in the hospital. Probably the last book I read for 20 years. Things got rather busy after that."

Five post-partum hospital days.

Wow.

And reading "The Guns of August" in 5 days.

After birth of kid 4 of 7. And my dad brought her such a weighty book.

Families are interesting, aren't they? (And things got busy!)

Also "Guns of August" is still on my to-read list.

I miss my dad. So many questions I would love to ask him. But he was a pretty private person; guess that's where I get it from. 

 

A summer night in 2019

Late summer is such a drowsy time. The season is cresting and heading downhill to autumn.

The back-to-school ads and commercials have started, but it's hard to take them seriously. All of August lies before us, a last blast of (hopefully) sun and lazy days of kids playing hoops in the street or zooming along the sidewalks on scooters. The fireflies stuck around 'til early July, kind of a rarity these years.

In my neck of Pittsburgh, the last day of July 2019 is hot, with towering clouds and a sky that looks ready to unload, yet again, cosmic buckets of rain. But so far, no showers. The bizarre weather manifests in a rainbow over thunder gray skies as I head home from meeting a friend on the North Shore.

(Photo by Katy Buchanan)

Home is drowsy, too. Filled with the murmuring hum of fridge and dehumidifier, the quiet tick-tock of a battery-powered clock. And, even though the windows are closed, I can still hear the steady burr of legions of crickets.

The dining room has a good view of the back yard and while I'm watching in the early evening, a hummingbird stops twice to fill up from the feeder.

I really love summer.

The photo is from June 21, the  summer solstice, at Randyland in Pittsburgh. A happy place.