HEMAN, a man from Vermont

by Adele Houston (1993)

"What makes America work?”
Grandpa slipped his soul into conversation
like a late-night visit to the cookie jar - clandestine
spirit, satisfaction, hmmnn - sweet energy.
His eyes twinkled with exclamation: "It's people!"
I suspect this old Democrat who fettered party fundraising letters
with the lavishness of a nesting Oriole - took a vital life step, the day
this question "What makes America work?" infested his psyche.
He left pastoral, rural Vermont - the farm
earnest to sweat for the sweet favors of a dream.
His hands and back, supple and furrowed as the land.
His mind, quick to cast off - long like shadows on rowed corn.
His morning - up with chickens. His retirement - retooling
the incorruptible gears of his clock - set for a Century. Meticulous
ideas, sprung from a barn -- welded by the heat of a coal stove.
The syrup runs and the sugar house glows - the morning
rises after the mountain. He is a Vermonter.
Our visits began with the drive
North. Off the concrete highway by dark. Along
riverbeds of boulders, hints of streams, long steep trails, shadows
of logged timber littered with Birches, white and yellow
a patchworked hill, night capped with Balsam Firs
Collectively we, retired
our eyes, slumped head to shoulder, quilted
grandchildren in the back seat of a '64 Impala.
There was an aimless, busy quality about the cutting
of rhubarb and asparagus, the harvesting of berries by the peck,
tractor rides that turned up potatoes, brook crossings, stepping stones
to reach snow pea vines. In the yard, there were four John Deer seats
recycled on the ride-a-round and a moon-walk grain mover among
the chickens. There were reincarnation promises - the ’52 Pontiac
car hood would clear the ice pond in winter. There was game
to be eaten, not played to win. There were mysteries
in hymns, cistern water and the Fraternal Order of Masons.
More than half a Century later - the Maple Syrup
still sweetened whatever went with eggs, still fresh
from hens in the yard. The tractor pulling what the man
could once manage by hand, the barn full
still of mystery - the conversation
often leaving Vermont and returning - like the man.

Fresh Eggs. A sign
brings back all that is Grandpa.
All that Heman dreamed in Green Mountains.

Will I keep at bay Echoes of 2008?

 Pencils are unfamiliar

 At the keyboard, I must face disabilities. I do not type, I am trifocals challenged. What it feels like to write with a pencil is a distant memory. What it feels like at a keyboard is imperfection. Crippled.

ditto 2023

The New Year is attended by fatigue, a lack of momentum, and an ever more fleeting commitment to ideas that are hard; that must be coaxed, shuffled, strained, and simplified to enter a public place.   

In 2023 I was powering through a technical nightmare and barely had time to notice a holiday.

The ‘Glimpses through stained glass blog – is sometimes an incoherent public scribble, does it qualify as a journey journal? Or merely an inside look at my distractibility even as I write a line.

In 2023 the visits are rare.

My 2008 year-end review:

Seeking Synergy

Overwhelmed

Inundated

Besieged

Beset

Retirement, will it be a reprieve?

Spring of 2023 starts tomorrow.  Today I am mired in back-ups that date back to 2008 and all those words bubble up again. The TV station will turn 30. I will turn 70 and my memoir -- what will it be?

The Gritty Part of Integrity

As honeymoons are eclipsed by days of light

and orbits evoke forward movement in celestial time,

lasting transformation still rest upon integrity.

"Sometimes it takes a long time to sound like yourself" ~ Miles Davis

In the imagination of the 10-year-old me, people were famous if they had a quote published in Reader's Digest. This was my secret aspiration for fame. The promises of the family's first magazine subscription were palpable. When I decided to get back on track with some of my goals I googled to find some current Twitter-sized wisdom only to find the iconic magazine filed for bankruptcy in 2013.  On the magazine's website circa 2009, there were 4242 pages under the browser navigation Wit & Wisdom of previously published quotes.

The allure of Chinese cookie wisdom remained foreign, quite literally, for nearly a decade. And, the ubiquity of social media quotes, or misquotes, shared by millions would be for generations yet to come as would be the promises of blogging. On November 27th, 2007 as AdeleHouston who appears in the middle of everything my blog GlimpesThroughStainedGlass enters hyperspace.  

transformation in technology
Stories can connect the world. The truth is always beyond the next word or the 1st: Hello.
Ayoh, hallom, HELLo, the stories of this common, nearly universal and reflexive greeting "hello" are many, multi-faceted and often linked to the advent of faceless communication with technology. One storyteller shares the idea that a prankster's potentially irreverent humor can become a clever, simple and transforming change in the world. So 'hello' is my choice for starting a blog whose purpose is to gather ideas that give me pause, stir passion or have no perfect place to be. 
whole be thou - an alternative version of the meaning of hello as a contraction of archaic English seems to hold a promise of transformation.
Hello visitor

It is the near equivalent to what Natalie Goldberg suggests as first-thoughts in Writing Down the Bones if it were to be done with a pencil. The remains of my actual first-thoughts in pencil notebooks are barely decipherable. Most were lost to life's natural disasters. I must confess that the quality of the writing is ostensibly first-draft, however, the exploration of the ideas in hyperlinks gives me and any random reader insight into what I was wrestling with and how I anticipated that the urge to write might help fix life itself. 

With the exception of many of the poem entries, sometimes shared in iterations, the blog posts were random raw attempts to explore connections and eke out serendipitous insight. In the 2009 post wisdom quotes - I do read the tea tags the Mark Twain quote "The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself" helps me deal with the suicide of a young friend. It did not make it into my trash. It was to be a reminder to visit Twain's CT home.

I found the tea-less tag again today (March 2020). It's professed wisdom morphs. I still reel from the loss of a most genuine young person whose discomfort overcame him on Oct. 3rd.

A wise friend eulogized this life. A Christian burial or this non-believer but one of many anomalies of existence that contributed to discomfort.

From the eulogy:

He was genuine. Do not underestimate the interminable value of such a quality. It made his words drip with honesty, his gestures bleed sincerity, his compassion captivate with clarity, and his life – touch every person who found themselves fortunate enough to cross its path. He was a good man. Let me repeat this statement, for it seems to necessitate an extraordinary emphasis. He was a good man. In these lives we lead, such men are as rare to find as they are difficult to lose.

Being genuine is often a lonely road. I agree with this characterization. As hundreds of young acquaintances and some true friends mingled among disarmed friends-of-family to pay respects or say farewell... another anomaly played out and spoke to the dissonance that created such profound sadness and ultimately, loneliness. However, I am left to wonder if good humor was also a mask on this soul, and sadness the ultimate poison. Believing that masks do not just hide but often provide a layer of understanding, I wonder: if the temptation to give-in to pain can be replaced in others because they touched this profound loss.

~~~

At an LGTB Rally [National Equality March] many lay claim to the temptation of life taking in the face failure to be accepted and the possibility of equality. To all those attending and knowing such a pain -- may they find strength in the self-knowing as exemplified by Lt. Dan Choi. May those who feel the pain of distance from family for any reason - may you find a larger human family to connect every day - not just at this rally.

I am grateful that a trip to the theater helped me know the story of Matt Shepard. As a mother, I am encouraged that as of 10.08.09, the nation was one step away from a better union with a conference report on the Matthew Shepard Act before the Senate with the real potential to become law.

The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act is an American Act of Congress, passed on October 22, 2009, and signed into law by President Barack Obama on October 28, 2009, as a rider to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2010 (H.R. 2647).