Second Spring Literary Anthology

2018

Second Spring Literary Anthology

Second Spring Arts Festival Winston-Salem, NC

This Anthology is dedicated to Nancy Hall, founder of the Second Spring Arts Festival. Nancy started the festival with the idea of promoting creativity among older adults and encouraging them to participate in the arts. Nancy is a great example of embracing aging and making a difference. “My original intent was, and still is, to showcase some of the best artists we have in terms of literary, visual and performing arts and in turn, to inspire others to explore their creativity. The festival provides the avenue to do that.� Nancy Hall

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2018 Anthology Award Recipients Memoir

The Basement Stair Dance

By Diana Chatham Callaway Poetry

Dark Dance for Valentine’s

By Janet Joyner Essay

Good Dog

By Martha Rowe Short Story THE RED BLUFF MADONNA

By Janet Joyner

Honorable Mention The World Has Become Too Complicated For Me

By Helen Etters

Thank A Veteran

By Howard Pearre

ARISTOTLE AND THE CROCUS

By Robert Versteg

The Story of Josie, a Traumatized Kitten

by Arlene Mandell

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Table of Contents You Are Here, You Are There, You Are Everywhere 5

by Rebecca Barboff The Basement Stair Dance

by Diana Chatham Callaway

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Hats: A Communication Aid

By Diana Chatham Callaway

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AGING

By Polly Craft

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Spring Cleaning

By Helen Etters

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The World Has Become Too Complicated For Me

By Helen Etters

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YOU NEVER KNOW HOW A STORY WILL END

By Naomi Foote

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Presidential Qualities

By Bill Gramley

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The Traits My Parents Gave Me

By Bill Gramley

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My Dad and Me

By Debbie Davis Gough

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A Life Tuned to Music

By Nancy Hall

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THE RED BLUFF MADONNA

By Janet Joyner

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Dark Dance for Valentine’s

By Janet Joyner

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AMAZING GRACE

By Martha Koontz

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The Story of Josie, a Traumatized Kitten

by Arlene Mandell

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FAVOR IN TIME

By Ken Myers

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Thank A Veteran

By Howard Pearre

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Going Back to School

By Patsy Russell Reece

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My Happiness

By Patsy Russell Reece

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The Dumbest Thing I Ever Did

By Martha Rowe

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Good Dog

By Martha Rowe

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THE BEYOND-ERS

By Emily Sturdy

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A U.S.A. SOLDIER

By Emily Sturdy

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Music Makes the Heart “Happy”

By Jeanne Talich

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A CACOPHONY OF CROWS

By Robert Versteg

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ARISTOTLE AND THE CROCUS

By Robert Versteg

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An Evening of Kosher Gospel

By Helen Webb

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Writings

By Helen Webb .

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You Are Here, You Are There, You Are Everywhere

by Rebecca Barboff You are in the song that croons on the radio with a heartbreak for a loved one gone.

You are in the bird that lands on the window sill – chirping with an insistence.

You are the shadow that is cast before me, as I walk in the light of a silvery moon.

You are in the orange tulips that grace my table and spread their branches to touch the sun.

You are in the eyes of my friends – that twinkle that comes; the tears that well up and the compassion that runs deep.

You are in the flowers – the seeds hold your secrets – of growth, of love, of life.

You are in the buds of your hydrangeas that threaten to bloom – so early, they are almost afraid to come out.

You are in the sunshine – that stream of light that pours in from the kitchen door and warms my toes.

You are at the kitchen table – watching our friends bring nurturance to your lover.

You are in the eyes of our beloved Charlie – that forlorn, yearning and oh so wise look.

You are in the laughter of friends and family, as they talk of days gone by, reminiscing about your antics.

You are in my heart – sometimes a soft, steady beat; sometimes a thundering, pounding crescendo that leaves me breathless.

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The Basement Stair Dance

By Diana Chatham Callaway My first self-propelled vehicle was a small, wooden trike with a flat, almost triangular seat, three wooden wheels, handlebars, but no pedals. The method of perambulation was for the toddler to scoot the contraption with feet-onthe-floor power.

In the 1930's wall-to-wall carpet was not yet popular.

Our floors were mostly wood or linoleum on which the wooden wheels rolled smoothly. My habit was to circle the house from the playroom, through the adjacent kitchen, to the dinette, the living room, the bedroom hall, and back to the playroom...over and over.

There was, however, one possible obstacle to safe, easy transit. Occasionally, my father, upon heading down the steps to the basement, would absentmindedly leave the door open in the kitchen.

Now, tell me, what kid can resist a recently opened door?

That door, usually closed, must hide secrets worth investigating. So, of course, at every opportunity I trolleyed my conveyance to and through the door...which opened upon steep stairs. I remember the thrill of launching myself down those wooden steps, bumping my trike rhythmically from one to the next.

From the basement my dad always heard me hit the top step and readied himself for the ordeal to come. As I was descending happily, he was running frantically from side to side, realizing that my bumpy descent would not safely reach the bottom step, but not yet knowing from which side of the open stairs I would fall to the concrete floor.

I now call it his basement stair dance, for its activity was choreographed by his anxiety: run to the left; no, she's leaning right; charge around to the other side. She will

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fall out one side or the other about halfway down. For me, this dance was the epitome of pleasure. I had my dad's full attention and he was performing just for me.

When at last I pitched sideways off the steps, miraculously, Pop was there to catch me safely in his arms before I could hit the hard floor.

Isn't it wonderful how hard parents work to keep their children safe and how confidently young children expect and count on that protectiveness.

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Hats: A Communication Aid

By Diana Chatham Callaway As I wheeled the cart toward my car in the grocery store parking lot, a gent using his cane to push up the car's hatchback and wearing a billed cap called out, “I love your hat.” Figuring that he was not envious of my multicolored, striped, obviously female sun hat, I assumed that he was starting a conversation. I moved closer to read the logo on his billed cap—U.S. Navy—and replied, “And I am impressed with yours. When or where did you serve?”

That question opened the verbal gates. “Twenty-five years, all over the world. I helped bring former prisoners out of Vietnam.” Then he named some other locations.

When I commented that my husband had served in the Coast Guard, he said he had worked occasionally alongside Coast Guardsmen. He praised their work saving lives. As he went on garrulously recalling personal history, the young woman accompanying him— obviously annoyed by his tendency to take up her time conversing happily with strangers—finished plopping grocery bags in the back of the car, and without a word, climbed in and started the engine, rude evidence that she was impatient for him to shut up and get in.

As he opened a passenger door of the car, he asked, “Is your husband still with us?” When I replied in the negative, the old fellow straightened up, tipped his hat, briefly saluted, and added: “Put a flower on his grave for me.”

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AGING

By Polly Craft I guess I have never thought much about aging. I guess I have never had time. I know that we are born to die but that has always been in the farthest back of my mind. I think I have been too busy.

When the children were little, I always had more to do than I had time for, seeing that their needs were covered, getting them to school, being a grade mother every year in one class or another, making sure they attended all the extra curriculum they wanted to do, and just being there when they needed me.

Then later when I was working full time and still holding down the fort, I was just too busy to think about age.

The definition in the dictionary for aging is “advancing in age.�

I have found, though, that some folks think a lot about aging and they want to mention age.

The first real experience I had with this was when I worked at Social Services. My boss was just out of college, with a high degree, and in his mid-twenties. He was ready to set the world on fire I was married at 18, had our first daughter at 19, second daughter at 21, and last daughter at 25. I had gone back to work outside the home to pay college tuition for these daughters. This boss kept bringing up the fact that he was only 25 and that he was going to be a millionaire before he was 40.

I was just 40 and trying to make enough money for college tuition. Also, I did the payroll and I knew if he saved every penny he made in the fifteen years he was talking about, he still would not have a million dollars.

He thought I was so old. I just chalked it up to immaturity and went on my way, doing the office work

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and paying little attention to him. I worked for him for 8 years and when I got an upgrading and went back to work at the Forsyth County Health Department, he was still trying to find a way to becoming a millionaire.

My next boss was older than I was and never mentioned age.

But as the years go by, a lot of people ask how long Floyd and I have been married. I tell them we have been married all our lives.

I guess age is something that most people think about and some people worry about as they get more advanced in life. I had an experience not long ago. Floyd and I were going through the line at K&W Cafeteria. When I got to the end of the line, the cashier rang the bell, and here came a waiter wanting to carry my tray. I quickly told him I could carry my own tray.

I remember when I used to go into stores and at the cashiers desk the cashier would ask if I was over 55 or 60 or whatever they considered seniors’ age. I can remember when they quit asking and just gave me the seniors’ discount.

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Spring Cleaning

By Helen Etters Spring is starting early this year, and I’m late with my spring chores. With the tutoring and advice of our friend Susan, I’m cleaning out our three bluebird houses.

This starts with getting over my reluctance to remove the abandoned nest — I kept putting it off for fear that the little wren families might return and find their homes demolished. Susan assured me that once they have gone, they will not return.

With my bent towards anthropomorphizing I objected – what a waste! Why build a new home every year when last year’s is still sitting pretty on a good foundation? Susan would have none of that, and we moved on to the lessons about a mild soapy solution in a spray bottle.

So far, we’ve had only wrens in our bluebird houses. I like wrens just fine and don’t want to run them off, but I’m hoping for bluebirds this year.

We have nesting red-tailed hawks in our woods, and I love to watch the crows and hawks in their daily power struggles. Summer evenings, we hear the lovely flute-like songs of the wood thrush, and the tweeting and singing of the towhees. Each summer the thrush reminds me of Robert Browning’s “Home Thoughts, From Abroad:” That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture!

The fluting song of the wood thrush is, indeed, the musical sound that I look forward to every summer.

The towhee comes in a close second.

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We have lots of songbirds at our feeders. So far this spring, it’s mostly chickadees and titmice.

I sit on the porch in the rocking chair with my camera and a book. I scatter safflower seeds along the porch rail. The birds have become so used to me over the years that they will come quite close. When the birds come to the rail, I shoot ’em. They used to be frightened off by the camera, fleeing when I lift it, but they don’t mind the camera any more. And I never use a flash when shooting birds.

They are accustomed to seeing my husband and me most evenings, each of us in our own favorite rocker, like Dagwood and Blondie, each with our books and drinks of choice.

I hope this year we will get bluebirds.

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The World Has Become Too Complicated For Me

By Helen Etters I do not like my new cell phone. I plan to either take it back to Target or put it under the wheel of my car before I back out.

I can remember when no one had to learn how to use a telephone. You’d pick up the receiver and dial a number, pulling the dial to the right and letting it go. You’re three when you see that, and you instantly catch on. Later, when dials were replaced by buttons with numbers on them, the learning curve wasn’t too steep for me. I caught on to that right away.

Now, the whole world is changing faster than it took that rotary dial to fall back into place. And the smarter my phone gets, the more my brain cells deteriorate. There is a direct correlation between the birth of new electronic devices and the death of synapse connections in my central nervous system.

I liked the cell phone that I laundered in my pocket last night. It had buttons that push. I could press left and right and up and down and feel the tactile response. I could text with my thumbs almost quarter as fast as my granddaughter, and I never type “u” for “you.” This new one has no tactile feedback. It wants me to slide my fingers across a screen.

I also liked the cell phone that I laundered before I laundered this one, but that was months ago and I am no longer mourning it. See, I can move on, when practicality requires it. I can learn new things. Like checking my pockets before doing the laundry.

The second time I left a cell phone in my pocket and ran it through the laundry (no, not this time, this is the third) I bought a tiny sd card, put all my contact info on it, and thought I was ensuring that I would not have the

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aggravation again of losing all my contacts. See, I was thinking ahead. I put the sd card safely away, and I even remembered where I put it. But it turns out the sd card is not something that I can slide into my new cell phone and lo and behold find all my people. No, the contact info is on the sd card, but either my new phone does not know how to sort it back into usable data or I don’t.

So if you, gentle reader, are one of the people inadvertently washed away, you might send me a text with your name included, and I will start to rebuild my data.

If the world continues to change at this pace, I won’t even know how to get up on the right side of the bed by next winter. Because there will actually be a wrong side. Or maybe there already is.

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YOU NEVER KNOW HOW A STORY WILL END

By Naomi Foote It was a beautiful autumn day. The windows were down.

I was on Lewisville-Vienna Road and driving past Grainland Drive. There had been a shooting on Grainland over a year ago. All of a sudden a loud, ear shattering blast startled me! It sounded like someone had shot at the car. Who would shoot at me?

Four of the writers who attend the Lewisville Writing Group use Lewisville-Vienna Road to reach the library where we meet. Nancy and I turn off of Yadkinville Road, and Diana and Alice turn onto it from Robinhood Road. Why would anyone shoot at us?

I looked down and realized the passenger side view mirror had shattered and had flown into the car. It was on the floor, along with the motor that operates it. I’d been following another vehicle, driving the speed limit.

Had I hit a mail box? The car began to shudder, and I realized I must have touched the gear shift. The car was in neutral. I pulled off the shoulder of the road to put the car in gear.

As soon as possible I pulled into a parking lot and realized I was covered by shards of glass. I shook as much of the glass as I could off my clothes. The shards were also on the right side of my face and in my hair.

On the return trip home down that same road, I could see no mailboxes on the ground. No mailbox posts looked damaged. It was and still is a mystery!

Parkway Ford ordered the necessary replacement parts, and three days later l was sitting in the Customer Service Department next to a young man in his 20’s who had a flowing beard and wore a ball cap. He tried to explain to me the extensive repair needed for his vehicle. Since I am automotive illiterate I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. He’d already sat there for two hours.

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You can always find something in common with another person. I’d asked if he traveled? He described a road trip to Texas to visit family. I told him my daughter and I had recently returned from our Indiana trip where the highlight had been to hear more WW2 stories from Uncle Tom. I shared some of those stories with the young man, including the one about Uncle Orvas who never spoke about his WW2 experiences. When I asked him and other family members at the 50th anniversary of DDay what they remembered, Uncle Orvas sent me his name, rank, and serial number. Others who served in our family had details they shared, all but Uncle Orvas.

It was this trip that Uncle Tom told us details about Uncle Orvas’ Unit liberating Dachau Concentration Camp during WW2.

The young man listened quietly. He said his brother returned last year from his second tour of duty in Afghanistan. On this trip home his brother was mute.

Finally Dalton (the young man) asked his brother to go camping with him... just the two of them. They loaded the truck and drove to a quiet spot in the hills. They left the road and drove through a meadow to the edge of the surrounding trees... just the two of them. Small talk and the sounds of nature were all they heard. No cell phone calls interrupted the silence.

After two days Dalton’s brother began to talk. And talk.

And talk. It must have been a healing time for him to speak from his heart and not be judged in any way.

When Dalton was finished with his story about his brother, I suggested his brother write his memories for himself. They wouldn’t have to be shared. No one would ever need to know he was writing.

I told him that one of our writers shared a story about a veteran crossing the country on his motorcycle with the American flag flapping in the breeze in back of his cycle.

The veteran shared that he was crossing the country in

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memory of his friend, who died in front of him in the hell hole called Afghanistan. Our writer suggested to this mourning veteran that he might consider writing down his memories about his friend. After listening to what she said, he told her that was the most useful thing he’d ever been told.

Before I knew it, two hours had passed and the repair work on the mirror had been completed. As a courtesy, the repair of the mirror included a car wash. I replied, “yes, thank you, and be sure and sweep the glass shards out of the back seat, too.“ Did I get shot at? I will never know. But there are no strangers among us. We all have something in common.

And that was the lesson I learned at Parkway Ford.

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Presidential Qualities

By Bill Gramley I have paid fairly close attention to the demeanor and actions of President Donald Trump during his first year in office, 2017. I have kept a file of clippings related to Mr. Trump and I have read many of the columns and lettersto-the-editor about him both favorable and unfavorable printed in The Winston-Salem Journal and a few other periodicals. While I have been both a Republican and a Democrat in my life, my main concern at this point in time is about the qualities of this President.

I have also written two letters-to-the-editor of the Journal in 2017 because a couple of his actions struck a sour note with me. I didn't like the way the President used a National Prayer Breakfast to say we ought to pray for Arnold Schwarzenegger because he wasn't doing as good a job with a certain TV program as he had done when he was the star of it. To bring this topic up at a prayer breakfast did not seem appropriate to me and sounded like an effort to aggrandize himself. That isn't what prayer is about, especially when I think about the time Jesus noted how a certain Pharisee touted his own greatness compared to a lowly publican. The prayer for mercy uttered at a distance from the Temple by the publican was heard by God and the man went home justified whereas the demeaning comments of the Pharisee were a misuse of prayer. In addition, Mr. Trump has touted his unique knowledge or relationship toward many subjects and topics. He said, among other grandiose statements such things as, “Nobody loves the Bible better than me,” and, “There's nobody that respects women more than I do.” (Actually if he read the Bible, he would note that God's truth challenges greed, power, and idolatry, but I suspect he would probably say that it, too, is fake news. And, so far as women are concerned, he has been a sexual predator of women and often disrespects them.) I think Mr. Trump is egotistical.

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In my second letter I objected to the way the President lambasted some professional athletes because they chose to kneel or in some way disregard the usual handover-heart standing posture that people take when the National Anthem is played before games. He called one of the protesters “a son of a bitch.” I believe citizens of all classifications have a right to protest faults in our country because it usually takes protests to bring about changes for the better. I think of Rosa Parks who refused to sit in the back of the bus when the laws of that era really were meant to keep the races separate and unequal. These athletes were continuing the effort to change police tactics when at times blacks are shot when such actions were not necessary. They, and other protesters, believe that “black lives matter.” President Trump's reaction to these signs representing the ongoing struggle to make America just seemed like an effort to curtail protest and the civil rights that our Constitution permits. I believe he is intolerant.

Conditions in America may not be as terrifying as the situation was in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 40s when Dietrick Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church in the Barmen Declaration spoke out against what Hitler was doing that ultimately led to the persecution, imprisonment, and execution of millions of Jews, gypsies, and handicapped persons. And we may not live with the terrors and harsh restrictions of Apartheid that put Nelson Mandela in prison because he protested this system. The belief that the white or Aryan race is superior to other races was behind both these forms of terrorism in Germany and South Africa. Eventually, by war in one case and by grass roots organization and protests in the other, those policies and practices were ended. But President Trump in the aftermath of the march in Charlottesville, VA where neo-Nazis and White Supremacists showed how violent and hateful they are, failed to condemn those groups. His support of Hispanichater sheriff Arpaio of Arizona (whose illegalities he commuted) and the sexually abusive and court-order

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defying U.S. Senate candidate Joe Moore of Alabama makes me conclude that Mr. Trump is a racist.

Quite often President Trump attacks those who question his actions and his Executive Orders. Rather than say that he disagrees with those who oppose his decisions and present reasons why he takes the stands he takes, he makes personal attacks or derogatory snipes about them. He has consistently claimed that most reports and views that question his decisions are “fake news.” He uses Twitter almost daily to attack his opponents. His barbs do not enhance him and the office he holds, and his method and manners exude hatred.

Related to this is the fact that the President simply tells lies, beginning with the statement that the crowd at his inauguration was the largest ever. A fact-checking organization reported late in 2017 that something over 350 of his statements during the year were false, which requires the public to stay awake and leads to a lack of trust in him and in anything he says. His usual rebuttal is to bounce the truth away from himself and to point out what others have done rather than correct his statements. I can't recall any heart-felt apology he has offered for his words or deeds. This refusal to be honest is certainly a negative quality in a President. He lacks integrity.

Some people praise Mr. Trump for his shoot-from-the-hip spirit, his maverick style in which he unilaterally decides to withdrew the United States from international treaties and other friendly forms of cooperation. He clearly does not follow traditional patterns of Presidential decorum for the most part and truly believes he can do whatever he wants to do without restrictions. Some aspects of his life and routine really don't matter, but his habit of “firing” people as he did earlier on a TV program has continued into his Presidency. He is often childish and petulant.

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When I look at him, I never see him smile. He apparently never laughs, at least not in public, and he has a rather defensive look and he is quite ready to denounce leaders of his own party, federal judges, or leaders of other nations, even those who have been traditional allies of the United States. He acts like a bully and has pushed at least one prominent person out of his way so that he could be front and center for a photo opportunity. He likes to be the focal point. Once he had his Cabinet take turns going around the room and testify to how much they like serving him. (I thought of that well-known hymn, “How Great Thou Art,� when he did this, although I think that hymn was intended for Someone else.) He is clearly narcissistic.

Another thing that bothers me about Mr. Trump is the way he announces what the punishment ought to be for some persons who have been accused of a crime. He seems to be taking over the role of the judicial branch of our government. To do such a thing is to move our country closer to an autocracy and away from democracy which is, by the way, a government by the people and for the people, as Abraham Lincoln once put it. And I am one of those people who believes that freedom of speech and assembly and freedom of the press are absolutes.

I have read the views of some writers and journalists who like and support Mr. Trump. I even corresponded with one of them and said that I think the morality of a President is extremely basic and important. This writer responded that he personally ignores the character of the President and simply supports his policies and accomplishments. That's all that matters. Some of the other supporters make a similar point. And, while they didn't say it, I think they meant that he may be a scamp, but he is their scamp.

In summary, I believe Mr. Trump has dismantled the respect and dignity and honor that the office of President of the United States of America has long held. The

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qualities that he has displayed during his first year in office reflect the nature of his soul, and because he is always in the spotlight, his attitude and his demeanor do not bode well for the future of the people and the decency and compassion of the nation's reputation that he was elected to represent and serve.

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The Traits My Parents Gave Me

By Bill Gramley Both of my parents were born in 1905 in Pennsylvania.

Dad's father was a minister in the Evangelical United Brethren Church. They moved around mostly in Pennsylvania where Grandpa served in places like East Prospect, York, Marysville, Milton, and Mount Holly Springs. They never had much money, but had a garden and canned their produce and bought a couple of bushels of potatoes each winter as one of their staples. Dad once told me that if he and his brother, Heil, got an orange in their Christmas stockings, it was a big treat! Mom grew up in the Evangelical Congregational Church in Bethlehem. She had two older sisters, Esther and Beulah (names popular in the late 19th century) and a brother, Joe, two years younger. I knew all of them and have fond memories of my aunts and uncles and their children, my cousins.

Both families believed in education. And thus it was that Mom, Caroline Illick, and Dad, Dale Gramley, met at a small coed college named Albright, near Reading, PA in the 1920s. Dad was on the football team, playing tackle, even though he had a gimpy leg. I wish I had asked him how he could run on that leg. Neither family believed alcohol was a good thing, so they never had any of that in their homes or in our home as my three brothers and I grew up in the '30s and '40s in Bethlehem.

I mention all of this because the traits my parents gave me stemmed from love of family, education, religious teachings, and conservative restraints. Dad worked teaching journalism at Lehigh University and Mom was a homemaker, even though she taught Latin for a couple years after college. They got married in 1929.

But I wanted to write about the traits and qualities they gave me. And the one that comes most easily to mind is their sense of humor, their love of laughter. Home was a

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happy place. I can still remember some of our friends and us sitting around in the living room talking, and then Dad would say, “Let's sing a song!” It was funny because he couldn't sing very well, but he'd start out with, “O come, come, come, to the church in the valley, O come to the church in the dell; there's no place so dear to my childhood as the little brown church in the vale.”

We knew enough of it to sing along and laugh. Mom's favorite joke was about the young woman who wore glasses but didn't want to wear them when her date came to call on her. She had put a pin on a tree trunk across a field. When they went out, she said to her date, “Oh, I see a pin over there on that tree trunk. Let's run over and get it,” and they started out and she tripped over a cow. Dad told the one about a fellow getting a haircut and telling the barber that he was going over to Rome to see the Pope. When he came back, his barber asked him if he had seen the Pope and he said he had.

“Well, what did he say?” the barber asked. He said, “Hey fellow, where'd you get that lousy haircut?” Stupid, yes.

Silly, yes. Laughter, sure enough! The gift of humor, the gift of laughter! How blessed I am to have received and continued that all across the years.

Another important quality is integrity and both my parents lived it and taught it. One time Dad said to me, “Wherever you are working in the future, don't even take a postage stamp from the office for your own use.” I still think about that basic quality and I have tried to follow the value of honesty with my taxes, my business workings, and in relationships with people. That includes keeping my word, telling the truth, and accepting criticisms about myself and my flaws that others point out to me. Sometimes being told what I have done wrong is hard to accept, but I try to listen and learn and change for the better. And all of that has helped to shape my integrity.

I felt mercy a number of times when I had done something I should not have done. I once drove a truck

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into a tree when I shouldn't have been driving it at the work place. Dad did not punish me. He even helped take care of the repairs. Same thing with a window I broke with a baseball I threw into it. There was nothing quite like receiving loving-kindness from Dad and Mom. I have tried to replicate that quality with my children and others, knowing that it is one of those gifts that comes first of all from God. I was taught to be tolerant. Dad, being eventually a newspaper editor, believed that I needed to listen to both sides of issues and topics (as he had to in his work) even if I had a strong opinion about what I believed. I had to learn to listen to what others had to say and know that they had beliefs different from mine and that the world is far from perfect or that my views aren't necessarily the views of the majority of people. I had to be open to the fact that people come from differing backgrounds and belief systems. That is not an easy quality to retain. But then I came to understand that reasoning and logical statements that I offered are probably less important than how I live and model my beliefs.

I was taught to care about others. Mom used to make sandwiches for hobos who knocked on our door. She was a great cook and often took meals to mothers who had just had a baby. I realized that we were well-off compared to many people and that our purpose in life is not to become exclusive and in-grown. Later, I remembered the story Jesus told about the rich man who was in danger over his destiny because he ignored the poor beggar, Lazarus, who came to his door daily asking for crumbs. I began to support many charities over the years and never found that I suffered because of that. I am usually blessed by sharing. I have more than enough.

Most of us celebrate people. We stop to prepare a special meal or cake for birthdays. Mom embodied that as she made a big deal for each of us and our children's

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birthdays. Our favorite desserts were icebox cake and ice-cream-in-the-middle cake, things that Mom made faithfully for us and that I continue to offer to our family.

It is a good tradition. We are glad each of us was born and we say so in these moments of celebration!

I was told to “hang in there.” “Don't expect me to come and fix your problems, son,” my Dad once told me when I complained about how the referees in a basketball game favored the other team. He said, “If you fail a test in school, you have to learn to accept it.” I learned that we all get treated unfairly, especially in competitive sports, and that I had to accept those slights. A number of times he said, “At the end of the game you have to face yourself, live with yourself, and know that you have done the best you could with your abilities.” That is truly a life-long lesson to keep.

I was taught to worship and study. My parents went faithfully to worship and Sunday School and we went with them because they knew, as I also eventually realized, that we need to be reminded again and again of who created and redeemed us. They taught us to let the Bible continue to teach us, judge us, inspire us, and comfort us. In addition, they believed we should study and get a liberal arts education so that we would know where to find resources when we needed them. It was good advice.

I watched my mother weep when my older brother, Hugh, at age 46, died suddenly. I didn't handle that loss or any others I've had over the years with any sort of ease, so I guess I learned from her that it is important to weep, to mourn, to try and find healing through the sad days and nights that press us down when we grieve. I have tried not to be stoic or unmoved by the death of loved ones and friends. To weep over the loss of someone we have known and loved is a very good thing.

Thus it is that I say, “Thanks, Mom and Dad, for all the gifts and qualities and blessings you gave me. I hope

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you know how much I appreciate you and your love for me. It truly equipped me for my pilgrimage and I hope I can do the same for those who follow me.�

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My Dad and Me

By Debbie Davis Gough The air smells like oil in my dad’s old garage.

His hands are all greasy as he works on all the cars.

I watch his expressions as he figures thing out.

Then he smiles over at me saying, “I Love you, Sweet Girl.”

I learned quite a lot in my dad’s old garage Like changing sparkplugs, tires, fuses and lugs.

Though all these things are important to me, Nothing is more special than his smile that says, “I Love you, Sweet Girl.”

Now that we are older – my Dad and me, The oily smell in the garage still remains.

We still walk together, he still holds my hand And he smiles as he says, “I Love You, Sweet Girl.”

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A Life Tuned to Music

By Nancy Hall Music has been with me throughout my life. Although I don't remember, I was a colicky baby. An older sister, whose bedroom was over the parental bedroom and baby bed, would come downstairs and rock me until I quieted.

When I was still young, Mama would bring me out of the bathroom and dry me by the fire, even though we had steam heat. It was Saturday night, and the Grand Ole Opry out of Nashville was playing on the radio. I later called it “hillbilly� music and did not like it.

My oldest sister played the piano, and we gathered around to sing songs. I also took piano lessons in the home. Then came recital time and I was assigned the "Moonlight Sonata.� Somewhat in the middle, I forgot what came next. I tried several times to find my out, to no avail. Finally, I just stopped playing. Most of the audience probably did not know of the error. However, a cousin who was familiar with music was in the audience.

I was mortified because of her presence. She never mentioned it, and neither did the teacher. After that, I played both clarinet and oboe and enjoyed both.

Many college freshmen are required to take either a music or art appreciation course. My brother, John, chose music, and am I glad he did! He introduced me to classical music that I enjoy immensely.

Then, there is church music. How many times did I sit through "Just As I Am" while the pastor was trying to influence people to join the church. "Amazing Grace" is another hymn that I sometimes have difficulty singing as it reminds me of a lost relative. Mama and Daddy attended different churches. Daddy's church did not have piano or organ music. There was usually some person who pitched the song, and the congregation would follow it. I can still hear a cousin's high pitch voice

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singing: "Oh, how tedious and tasteless the hours when Jesus no longer I see..." I also learned that music was a barometer of how my Mama was feeling. When she sang hymns, I learned that she was upset or worried about something.

At Meredith College, when lights were out, we hurriedly turned on the radio to "Our Best To You" with Jimmy Capps. It was a time to learn what was happening on the social scene. Quite often we heard a scream and later learned that somebody had been pinned or gotten engaged.

After a social work friend from Oak Ridge moved back here, we visited in Asheville several times a year. We were at a restaurant when she broke the shocking news.

She had lung cancer and the prognosis was not good.

Still she continued to smoke. I remember that the lovely ”Pachelbel Canon in D” was playing in the background.

One of my first apartments in Winston Salem was with a Moravian couple. They had a band, and I was allowed to play in the Easter band. Perhaps many of you have been awaked in the wee hours of the morning by the sounds of the Moravian Band. After all the bands had finished playing, we gathered for a big breakfast. Then we gathered to hear the Bishop before heading up the hill to God's Acre. "The Lord is Risen!"… the memory of it still gives me chills.

Finally, as I have spoken to groups, I might exhort them to heed what was said to the singer in Flashdance , “Take your passion and make it happen.”

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THE RED BLUFF MADONNA

By Janet Joyner I first remember Ma Caulder seated, at Red Bluff, on that sandy shelf recessed in the clay bluff overhanging the river. The waters of the Little Pee Dee at her feet were black, but the clay of the bluff, red. Hence the name.

Ma held draped across her lap, like one of those Madonnas in an Italian grotto, the limp and mudspattered body of her grown son, Buddy. Buddy the Second, that is, begotten of her son with the same name.

At Ma’s feet the water had that black-tinged-with-redfringes color of long-steeped tea, and was calm beside the bank, unlike its midstream treachery. She dipped a rag into it, and squeezed out the water to wash Buddy’s face. I was swimming near the river’s middle, where the turbulent currents were, and fought to keep my distance.

I dove down. In its depths, the river’s seduction was raven dark, and slick. When lungs could no longer hold air-need at bay, my head tilted upward, face moving towards the light, layering me through the dark, then successive levels of burgundy, reds, ochre and, finally, gold, to burst from the water’s surface, like those darkly mysterious reflecting pools out of which peep the polished self-portraits of the Old Masters.

Buddy was limp from humiliation, not exhaustion. The truck tires had spat mud on him. He looked like a statue cast in mud, a grown boy spilling from his mother’s lap.

In its middle, the speaking river accelerated the flow of infinity, recycling my feet into a flutter of fins, just so I could stay where I was against its current. I was a proud swimmer. But careful to stay upstream of the bluff where Ma was washing Buddy. She had produced the rag from somewhere on her person, dipping and squeezing to make-do as vessel. Mica-speckled red striations in the cream-colored clay framed the two and

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signaled her gestures with flashing suns too painful for the naked eye.

The truck that humiliated Buddy had been stuck to its axles in low country mud. It was a good morning’s worth of puzzle to the men anxious to lose themselves in a swampy labyrinth where whiskey-primed vulgarities would reach no further than the moss-hung canopy of cypress. A sort of ritual return with a fish or two for excuse. They tried rocking the truck, by rapidly reversing, but the mud wasn’t snow, and the boat-laden pick-up sank deeper. They hunted up and dragged from the Caulder’s place some old boards to put under the wheels. Only they couldn’t get them under. It was a real event of a mud-sticking.

About noontime the Caulders materialized around the event. They never observably approached anything, but always appeared as from nowhere, showed themselves briefly, and returned just as mysteriously into the invisible. There was Ma; Willie and Big Buddy, the first generation of sons; the gravid daughter; and the second Buddy, sired by the first of that name.

They just sat. Squatted really. Squatted and watched.

With their disturbingly absent eyes. Wide, open eyes, like a dove’s at the other end of a double-barrel shot gun. Only Buddy’s eyes were slanted. Buddy, the second, that is. He was not right. He came with his fingers all stuck together. He had never learned to make words, only noises. They said he was strong as an ox.

But harmless.

After a while, Buddy jumped up and started dancing around the rear wheels, waving his webbed hands, grunting sounds like sentences laboring to be born. They all laughed. Buddy just danced and grunted louder. The more they laughed, the more he danced. Suddenly he stopped, backed under the truck, and heisted up the right rear wheel. There were shouts of approval. A great

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scurrying to get the boards under. Then Buddy moves to the left wheel. And off they went in a race of wheels, mud and laughter.

It was the laughter that humiliated Buddy. And it was June, 1942. Our last summer without war. In those days, a free man with modest means could afford a place to escape to if he knew where the rivers ran unmolested and did not require indoor plumbing. My father was such a man; Red Bluff was such a spot, a golden retreat surrounded by swampland teaming with the tail ends of evolution that hadn’t yet made it to the land.

Getting the car into the bluff without sticking in the mud was always an adventure. We hadn’t got stuck this time, but we had had an adventure. We had covered about half the distance from the paved road to the bluff, had rounded the second curve to the right when we came upon Willie Caulder relieving himself by the side of the road. Willie just dropped his hands but left his thing poking out of its dark hole, as though it were hands there that made for taboo.

It was the first grown penis I had ever seen, and I wanted a real good look at it. But what kept riveting my focus was the fly button next to it. Something about the button was funny. It looked anachronistic, too taut and unused for the old denim around it. Perched at eleven o’clock on the head of the penis, the button had that rakish angle of those ridiculous bows on the dark hats of the pink-faced Salvation Army women who stood begging on street corners. …Well, I had seen one. Instantly, I became an old woman, an initiate, a colleague of mothers and grandmothers…and the woman in our vehicle’s front seat who was my own mother. And I was now in the know; had faced my own Medusa, without a mirrored shield.

The road held one more difficulty: the hole just ahead of the fork whose right axis led to the bluff landing; the left

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one led to the Caulder’s. We passed the hole all right, but never seemed to get past the mystery of the Caulders. They had land, but did nothing with it. It ran to swamp on the river side; the woods thickened each year on the road side. They were enveloped in vegetation, like a tribe of Indians, only white. They could neither read nor write our language, nor knew they needed to.

What they could read, the men at least, was the river.

The river, where it plays, circles, lures and entraps into itself like a giant man-eating flower; into itself become swamp no maps have ever charted. They knew it as though they had made it. They traveled it silently in dugouts, stroked it in silent circles, arm and cedar-hewn paddle grown into flagella for unicellular locomotion towards their illegal fish-traps and liquor stills.

I wondered what the women did. There were no buffalo hides to chew.

The Caulders were as silent on land as in the water.

They seemed to thrive feeding on themselves at the water’s edge. They were a whole species away. They had made it to the land, but no further; or else had come full cycle and were returning, the first of a kind. In that case, we were headed in the wrong direction.

It was sometime during the war when Ma Caulder showed herself again. I know it was war-time for I had refused to remove, even for a trip to Red Bluff, the armband and paper cap that signaled my rank of Colonel in the Junior Commandoes. We were an army of scrap metal gatherers billeted in the school rooms of the nation. It was our war, too, and I was a proud soldier.

Ma came under cover of night and, for this one time, knocked to make her presence known. Her right hand proffered a yellow envelope announcing a telegram, which my mother understood she was to read. It was a letter from the War Department.

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Standing with her back to the night, Ma’s face just hung there like a distant moon while I heard my mother’s voice transform the words into Big Buddy’s death. The moon never changed. It disappeared behind clouds too dense to understand. Later, my mother said the letter was three months old. Three months is a long time for a question. My father said he had read it for her last month, and the month before that. Ma showed that letter to everybody as often as she could. It would be years before I understood that it was not for grieving that Ma kept unfolding Buddy’s death out of that yellow envelope.

The last time I saw Ma Caulder she was squatting on top of the bluff at the foot of the persimmon tree whose fruit furnished the fermentation in the Mason jar by her right hand. Transfixed by the noon gold in the water, her owl eyes did not follow the head in its quarter turn to the left. After the tobacco spittle had landed, the head returned to its original position.

I approached cautiously. Odors from her body, tobacco juice, and the Mason jar penetrated, choked the air like waves of Catholic censers dispensing clouds, incensing the monstrance of her central mystery.

She spat again and reached for the jar. I had come to say I was sorry. The night before, they had found Willie floating face down between three cypress knees.

Acknowledgment of her son’s death, as of my condolence, was cursory: “Allus did tell ‘m boys t’stay off’n duh river when dey’s drunk.”

I ran back to our side. I do not know if I ever saw her face. The gaping buttonhole at her breast was strangling me with it looseness. Her bones had been sucked to milk; all her life had flowed through those nipples. I swear by the sun above and for as long as these waters flow that I will never ever be fooled into being loved. But

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first I must stoop down and pick up this frog that is turning me to stone. I must pick it up in both hands and walk it slowly, ever so slowly, back into the river. What if it wee-wees in my hands? Will they drop off? Will I die? It won’t do to throw it back; I must wade in kneedeep, open my hands, and let it kick free.

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Dark Dance for Valentine’s

By Janet Joyner The shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, 2018, left 17 dead.

We know the steps of this dance. It’s not as though we haven’t witnessed it, been to this ball before. Students scattering, falling, blood on the floor.

Media loop endlessly on replay. All the talk, talk, talk. But no new acts to sever the clever market obfuscation, how a musket for defense morphs into assault automatic.

The choreography of ruin, the world breaking like glass under a microscope.

The way it doesn’t crack all at once, but spreads out from the damaged cavities.

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AMAZING GRACE

By Martha Koontz She forgot where she lived, how old she was, her children, and so much more. The one thing her dementia never could claim was her music. I can still see her sitting in her rocking chair singing “Amazing Grace” with her eyes closed. It always amazed me how dementia could destroy practically everything she had ever known but never took the music. The day before she died at age 96, she was singing “Jesus Loves Me.” Music had a calming effect on her. She suffered for years from the sundowning, a phenomenon that causes erratic behavior starting at dusk and lasting until the nighttime and sometimes all night. When she would become confused during these episodes I would suggest singing one of her favorite hymns. After a while she would sit down and start singing with me.

Music had a happy effect on her. So many days she called out for her “Mommy” and wanted to go home. In her mind, she was a little lost girl again and she was looking for a safe haven. I would reassure her that she was safe, and her Mommy would be home soon. I couldn’t fathom the thoughts racing through her mind. Let’s sing until she gets here I would say. After a few bars of music, she was in another place and another time.

Music kept her engaged. At times, she would retreat and never speak a word. Her eyes looking beyond what was before her. A solemn sadness seemed to envelope her as she drifted away. No amount of talking could coax her back, but the music could. I would play one of her favorite CD’s and before long she was smiling and would sing along.

I thank God that as her mind slipped into oblivion, she found salvation in the music.

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The Story of Josie, a Traumatized Kitten

by Arlene Mandell I was spending the summer as a volunteer at the local animal shelter. I came in one morning, circulated around the cat cubicles, and was startled to see a new little kitten covered with bad cuts on its eyes, nose. and body.

The staff had named her Josie and put her together with Valentina, an older, sweet-natured cat. Story was: the day before, a woman driving through town saw three young boys dropping heavy rocks on a tiny kitten. As the kitten frantically tried to run away, they pelted her with stones. The woman pulled over, caught the kitten and drove straight to the shelter. The staff gently treated the wounds, but she was so banged up and terrified, they didn't think she would make it through the night. She did.

As a survivor of a violent assault, I was drawn to this little one huddled in the corner. I lifted her out, wherein she curled up into a tight fetal ball. I held her next to me, stroked her lightly and spoke soft words; volunteers are told kittens need to feel the human touch and hear the human voice. No response. I put her back, then turned my attention to Valentina, dangling a toy mouse in front of her. When she swatted it, I said ''good girl.'' I saw Josie watching and dangled the mouse in front of her, too. As she took a feeble swat, I felt a surge of hope: she's a kitten, she wants to play. I gave her a ''good girl'' and that was all for the day. After that, I came every morning to cuddle and talk. She stopped curling into a ball but was otherwise unresponsive.

A week later, she was transferred to a group room with other kittens her age, all running, jumping, pouncing, stalking, doing what kittens do, but she could only huddle under a chair or hide in the corner. I took her, with a bunch of toys, into a private room used for potential adoptive families to be alone with a pet.

Inhibited at first, she began to investigate, then got lost

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in play. While there, I sat down on the floor near the toys, repeatedly tapping my thigh. Eventually, with much coaxing, she walked toward me and climbed up on my leg. Finally, a breakthrough!

After a few days, I took her with those same toys, from the private room back to the group room. Ignoring the others, she got busy with her own special toys, when another kitten pounced on her. To my surprise, she swatted him, then looked quickly to me for a reaction. I said, loud and clear, ''good girl.'' She went back to what she was doing. The following week, I brought a tall climbing-post into the private room. She took off from across the floor, leaped straight to the top and held on.

Was this the same frightened little kitten huddled in the corner? This time when we returned to the group room, without hesitation she plunged into the rough and tumble action with the others.

A month later, I walked into the shelter to see a family with three daughters standing at the desk filling out adoption papers for Josie. The oldest, a 14-year-old, had recently lost her cat and was inconsolable. An hour earlier, when the girl walked into the group room and sat down on the floor, Josie boldly came right over, climbed up on her leg, and it was love at first sight. I watched as the little kitten sprawled out on the girl's chest, seeming to melt into her. While they were at the desk, I told the family Josie's story. After hearing it, the dad said he wanted her even more. They adopted a gentle older cat as well for the younger girls, and called a few weeks later to say both cats were doing fine. It was the most fulfilling summer of my life.

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FAVOR IN TIME

By Ken Myers ONCE I WAS A LITTLE BOY THEN I GREW TO BE A MAN WHEN I HEARD ABOUT JESUS THEN I HAD TO TAKE A STAND OH GOD DIRECT MY PRAYER ON WHAT TO SAY GUIDE ME LORD BY NIGHT AND DAY. HELP ME FATHER TO HAVE THE LOVE TO SHOW. GIVE ME THE WISDOM I NEED TO KNOW MAY MY GIFT OF LIFE'S MAIN GOAL BE ABLE TO WITNESS ABOUT JESUS TO A LOST SOUL.

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Thank A Veteran

By Howard Pearre It was ninety-six, late afternoon, August degrees. But with the a/c set at sixty-six, the driver of the 5.0-liter, 467-horsepower, $64,650 MSRP Lexus RC F sport coupe had no sense of the sweltering heat. It occurred to him that the cream color car could be a metaphor for his life—luxurious cool comfort inside and a hard shell of steel and glass shielding him from the unpleasant outside.

He waited impatiently for the left-turn arrow to change to green and looked at the man standing expressionless on the concrete median two feet away. He avoided eye contact but couldn’t help reading the two Magic Marker lines of the man’s cardboard sign: HOMELESS VETERAN ANYTHING WILL HELP I’ll bet. Anybody could get an Army field jacket. And why, why would somebody wear that on a day like today? Maybe it’s part of his act. He felt the contempt welling up. How could a man humiliate himself that way, trading on his own vulnerability and the guilty feelings of others for an occasional dollar?

Just another part of the unpleasant outside, the homeless man evaporated from his thoughts. He reached for his cell phone and scrolled through Facebook postings. His mind wandered to the sounds from the radio. He returned the cell phone to its cradle.

The arrow changed to green, and, as he steered the Lexus into the intersection, the music on the station suddenly became irritating. He glanced down at the console and reached his right hand to push a button to eliminate the irritation.

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But his hand did not go the last inch. Instead, his arm rocketed upward. His hand and wrist slammed into the car’s headliner where they were crushed into a sack of flesh and bone fragments.

At the same moment, all of his other body parts moved suddenly and violently. His upper torso crunched backwards into the leather upholstery and, in the next instant, flew forward. The locked seat belt ripped the skin on his chest diagonally. His head danced on his neck and shoulders like a punching bag on a spring. Back into the headrest it went, then violently forward, then backward again. His knees rose upward slamming into the steering wheel. His left arm flung up and out, caroming off the padded door with such force that the ulna and the radius both snapped near the wrist. Like its right counterpart, it was crushed into fragments.

The cell phone, mounted a moment before in its hard plastic cradle, shot by his ear. Smashing into the back window, it suddenly became a formless jumble of microchips, capacitors, and diodes. The polished chrome coffee mug flew upward where it encountered the headliner. Latte rained down in droplets blending in with the tan seats.

All this took place in about the same time it would have taken the car’s airbags to deploy—if the car had been hit from the front or side rather than the right rear corner.

The Lexus driver did not register the fragmented bones, the torn tissue, or the smashed internal organs. Nor did he hear the radio continue to broadcast the irritating music. He was not conscious.

The driver of the eight-ton dump truck was luckier. He would lose his insurance, his commercial drivers license, and his job, but he would walk away, drink a little that night, and get some sleep.

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The crash had caused him a momentary panic, but then he’d had the presence to quickly shove his cell phone, along with the ear buds, into his jeans. His lawyer told him later his quick thinking probably saved him from a prison sentence.

The three-eighths-inch thick steel bumper was bent slightly, some cream color paint was stuck to it, and its “Thank A Veteran” bumper sticker was badly scratched.

That was the extent of damage to the truck.

Up to then, he’d had a pretty good day hauling stumps to the landfill at fifty dollars a trip. He knew pushing the truck to forty-five in the thirty-five zone was risking a speeding ticket, but he was eager to get in one more trip before the day’s end.

Suddenly, the music coming through the ear buds annoyed him. Diverting his eyes momentarily to change to a new app on his cell phone, he missed that the traffic signal ahead had turned yellow. When he looked up, he saw that the light was red, that an expensive looking cream colored car was entering the intersection, and that a man in a ragged jacket was standing on the median frantically waving a piece of cardboard.

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GOING BACK TO SCHOOL

By Patsy Russell Reece The year was 1956 when I graduated from High School at the age of 17. In July I had my 18th birthday and in August left home to go to Nursing School at City Memorial Hospital in Winston Salem N C. It was a three year, year round program. Depending on whether I passed my State Board Exams or not determined if I would have the honored title of Registered Nurse and would be qualified to work in most hospitals except those in another state which required you take their state board exam. Very few people went to university unless they planned to teach when they finished and most likely diploma RN's would go later to earn the Bachelor of Science if they decided to teach.

Fast forward to 1986...by then I had held many positions in different hospitals, nursing homes, private duty and working with physically and mentally handicapped children. I had been working for the past 16 years, after my youngest son started school and had been promoted to supervisor of a surgical unit and the Psychiatry unit.

One day we were attending our weekly supervisor's meeting when our Director of Nursing said she would like to have a heart to heart talk with us. Almost all of the supervisors at that time were 3 year diploma nurses, She stated very seriously that we should carefully consider returning to school to earn a BS degree. She said she would not be our director forever and one day she would be gone and someone from somewhere else would "come marching in as Director of Nursing and everyone who did not have a degree, would lose their position in nursing administration".

There had been times I had wanted to return to school, but having four children to send to college seemed to make that impossible. We were told the hospital would pay all of our expenses if we kept our grades up. So I decided to take a course at a time hoping that would

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satisfy enough that I could keep my position. Many of my colleagues balked at going back to school. A couple of my friends and I decided we would go to Forsyth Tech and take Physical Ed while we were still young enough to do it. Later we enrolled at Gardner Webb University taking classes off campus in Statesville at the Davis Hospital.

Later some of them dropped out, but I kept plugging along, taking a course or two at a time.

None of my grades in a three year diploma school were accepted for college credit because it was not like an Associate Degree that would automatically transfer in.

Therefore I started with no credits at all and would have to take a two day exam, like State Boards, to prove I had the knowledge to receive the 32 hours of credit for my earlier nursing. By that time it had been 33 years since I took the Board exams. Also I could go to the Winston Salem Library and take what was called Clep exams to receive credit for required general college courses. I was very happy to have passed the college English course even though I had not had an English Class since High School. I also passed the sociology exam and was given credit.

Then came the time to take the 2 day basic nursing exams to receive credit without having to repeat the classes. I will admit I was very concerned about the exams because many improvements had been made in nursing and advanced knowledge from the many years back when I first took the exams. I had to be in the exam room very early in the morning so I got up early and headed out. It was the month of July. I had not been on the road very long when I realized I was on the wrong road. I was flying on to Statesville on HY 421 when I should have been on HW 40. Looking at the clock I decided I could cut across at a place and still make it in time.

About that time ice started forming on the windshield.

Something had happened to the air conditioner and I

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could not turn it off. Now...in the month of July I had to stop often and scrape the ice off windshield and try to get on the right road and make it to the exam site before they locked the door. Finally I arrived in Statesville and decided to run into the IHop quickly and get some breakfast and decided if I turned the car off then it might be ok when I tuned it back on. WRONG! The car would not turn on at all...now, what could I do? I called a local funeral home and asked a friend of ours if he could come and get me and told him my timeline. I had only 15 minutes to get to the school. Believe it or not he came and we made it and I felt like I fell through the door just as the professor was locking it.

It was the second day of the exam and the hardest. The exam covered 5 areas of nursing...Medical Nursing, Surgical Nursing, Psychiatry, Obstetrics and Pediatrics.

Obstetrics and Pediatrics would be my most difficult ones because i had not worked in those areas in a very long time and many advances had been made that I was unaware of, especially with pharmacology and dietary.

Those two would be the exams I took that day after the nerve wracking trip I had just made. I rolled up my sleeves, took a deep breath and started. Finally I finished and left the room a bit drained. Meanwhile my friend that had transported me had gotten my car started and brought it over to the school and left it for me and I began my journey home ... on the right road this time and with the air conditioner working as it should. A week later I received word I had passed all of the exams and would receive the 32 hours of credit I needed. It was an extremely happy day.

Well I kept plugging along, working all day and heading to Statesville for the night classes. Before the fall session started in 1992, I realized I would graduate in the spring if I took a full load, so I did. Many were the weeks I would wake up on Monday morning and realized there would not be a moment for myself the entire week. Every day I went to work, managed 7 nursing units, left the

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hospital at the end of my work day and drove to Statesville, carpooling with several friends, stopping at a hotdog stand, grabbing dinner and then to the Nursing Library at the school to do homework and then be ready for classes from 6 pm until 9. We joked that we ate enough hotdogs that year that end to end they would stretch all the way from Statesville to Winston Salem. We arrived home around 10 or 10:30, fell into bed and the up the next morning and in the hospital by 7 am. It was a surprise to me that I made the Dean`s List. When I asked the professor why was this the first time when I had been making those grades all along, she said this is the first time you have been a full time student...funny,I had not realized I was considered full time.

Then came graduation day. We gathered on campus at Gardner Webb. ,. All of my family, including my husband, my Daddy and Mom, 3 grandchildren, my 4 children and their spouses. I proudly marched in cap and gown. My family unfurled a large banner in the balcony that said “Congratulations Grand Mommy.� They shouted loudly and clapped when I walked across the stage and received my diploma. It was a happy, unforgettable day. Many of my colleagues lost their positions. Those who refused to go to school. I survived to work a few more years before I retired. The hospital would have paid for me to get a Master's Degree, but I decided I did not want to work that much longer so I passed on that with no regrets, but so proud of my BS degree, earned when I was 56 years old.

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MY HAPPINESS

By Patsy Russell Reece What is HAPPY? Happy means contented in mind, highly pleased, satisfied. HAPPINESS is the state or quality of being happy, contentedness and pleasure. There are many things in my life and in the present that bring me happiness and joy, but if I had to pick the one thing that has brought me happiness, pleasure and satisfaction for all of my life, I would say music, specifically SINGING. Singing, it seems, has provided the background of my life. From the earliest days of singing with the radio and with my mother as she played the ukulele, I can hardly remember a time when I was not singing.

A recording was made of me singing at about three years old when I sang a song about Esau and another about a Little Doggie that used to sit and beg... poor doggie fell down the steps and broke his little leg. Esau was about a man so tall and slender that when he went to take a bath, when the bath drained he went down the hole. My parents had me sing these songs when company came.

It made them happy. They would smile and clap.

When I was four years old I went with my mother to take little baskets of jelly beans at Easter to the children in my brother's first grade. There was a little stage in the room and the teacher had me stand on the stage and sing a song called “OH JOHNNY.” The first graders clapped for me. When I started school I would come home after school and sit beside the radio to hear Kate Smith sing “GOD BLESS AMERICA.” She sang that at the same time every day and I loved to sing with her. In the first grade I sang in an operetta and was a bean and I sang a one liner. There are so many stories I could tell about singing in children's choirs at school and at church.

God gave me a talent and a love for music and singing.

In the fourth grade I was in the operetta ...HANSEL AND GRETAL...I was Gretel and sang the lovely song "When at

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night I go to sleep, fourteen angels watch do keep" etc.

My debut in high school was as a ninth grader in a talent show when I sang “SOME ENCHANTED EVENING.” The article in the local newspaper about the show said I was a "lovely new songbird" in the high school. After that I was in many shows and sang with the school dance band and the school mixed chorus.

Singing in choirs continued to bring me joy and happiness as I moved on through the years. Just before my daughter was born, I was singing with the choir in First Baptist Church in Statesville and we sang the HALLALUJAH CHORUS...always a thrill to sing. It was to be my last song to sing for a very long time because after she was born ...my voice was gone. Whenever I tried to sing the notes were not there...a strange sound was all I could make as if the notes split into two tones and would only squeak out. Later when I went to the doctor he checked my thyroid which he found to be deficient and gave me medication, but the problem seemed more than that. Later I heard that some` anesthetics could possibly cause voice problems and I wondered, could it be the anesthetic I was given when she was born had caused the problem? Once I had been a high soprano, which I was when I sang the last “Hallelujah Chorus.” Now my speaking voice was even weaker and no voice for singing at all.

This condition lasted for many years. I prayed often that God would heal my voice. When I went to church and hear the choir sing it would bring tears to my eyes. When alone I would try to sing, but could not. There were times I went through depression and would take a mild antidepressants. It did not occur to me that not being able to sing may have caused the depression because I thought it was just life and never really knew what caused the "blue "spells. .

A very long period of time passed by (eighteen years) and I had resigned to the fact I would never sing again.

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At that time we were going to a large Baptist Church. A new church was forming. A group from a former church we had attended was starting a new church and had called my father in law, a retired preacher, who at one time had been the preacher there. We did not leave our church at that time, but a few months later we started going to the new church to be with his parents. The choir director whose choir I had once been a member of, as a newlywed, was now the director in the new church. After a month or so I received a call from him asking me to come and sing a special anthem with the choir for the next Sunday and he needed all the bodies he could get in the choir that day. I told him my story of how I could not sing anymore and he said..."The vocal chords are like a muscle and must be exercised." I told him I could no longer sing soprano. He said come and lip sing and when you can hit a note ...hit it. He said he would put me beside a strong alto and I could learn to sing alto.

He would not take no for an answer so I went to the rehearsal and was in the choir the next Sunday. It made me happy just to sit with the choir. I did as he said, and did a lot of lip singing and occasionally a note would come out ever so softly. About that time there started to be accompaniment tapes in the stores and I bought a couple of them and started singing at home ... the main one was “BRING BACK THE SPRINGTIME.� Later I found some vocalizing tapes and started practicing with those.

Gradually I began to sing alto pretty well. As time went

by I got some high notes back and once more I was singing soprano.

There was a time after the director left our church we were without a choir director for rehearsing and for a year had no choir. I volunteered to rehearse the choir and on Sunday the song leader would come in and direct the choir. That turned out to be a wonderful time in my life as I worked with the Pastor and had the opportunity to select the songs for the Sunday morning worship service. I selected the choir music and once more we had

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a choir at our church. For four years I had this pleasure.

This opportunity was one I never had even dreamed of having the opportunity to do.

Since then I have sung with the Avery County Chorale when I am at my place on Sugar Mountain and the Mozart Club locally for 25 years as we did “Handel's Messiah.� Now I am so happy singing in the choir at our church where this past Christmas I was blessed to sing a duet for the Christmas Eve service. I have even had the opportunity to once more sing some solos. The voice is still not as strong as it once was, but it is good enough that I can sing with our little choir.

Forever I WILL BE GRATEFUL my old friend and choir director called that day and would not take no for an answer and by his caring and insistence I can sing again.

God answered my prayers by sending him to me and once more I can be content in mind, highly pleased and satisfied and experience My Happiness.

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The Dumbest Thing I Ever Did

By Martha Rowe Many of the dumb things I did revolve around my contact lenses. Not only was I a novice, I was a pioneer. In 1957 my optometrist and I tried out these new contact lenses that covered only the cornea, not the entire eye, and which had been developed less than ten years earlier.

As long as I stayed in the humid South, I managed okay.

But when I moved to El Paso in 1959, the trouble began.

Somehow I had missed instructions that my rigid gas permeable lenses were to be stored in a wet solution every night to keep them hydrated. In the dry desert air, they kept popping out, usually at some inappropriate time.

We were standing outside in line waiting to see the movie “Ben-Hur” when out flipped a contact. My husband yells “stand back” and clears a path around us.

Against all odds, we found it on the cement sidewalk, just as the line started moving into the theatre.

For what must have been the tenth time that year, we were down on all fours looking for one of my contact lenses. This time it was beginning to appear hopeless.

Newlyweds and fresh out of college, we could ill afford the expense of a replacement. Dave had even rented a vacuum cleaner and we had gone over the floors of the entire apartment. Carefully we had sifted through the contents of the bag, but no contact lens appeared.

Resigning myself to the sad fact that I had indeed lost a contact lens, I mailed the one I did have back home to my optometrist in Winston-Salem. I could not tell if it was for my right eye or my left eye. I asked him to identify it and order a replacement for the lost one. He mailed it right back and said there was not one missing.

I had sent him two contact lenses, stuck together.

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There is a lot of glare in a grocery store. So many things are packaged in shiny materials. There I was at the Fort Bliss PX shopping for cheese. Leaning over the counter looking at the different kinds of cheeses in their cellophane wrappers, I realized something seemed wrong. I was seeing out of only one eye. Where was that contact lens? Frantically I shoved cheese packages around for what seemed like an hour. Other shoppers were throwing curious glances my way, that poor woman who can’t make up her mind which cheese to buy, but I was desperate to find it. After Dave came home from the base that evening, we went back to the PX to look some more. Searching through a little pile of sweepings at the base of the cheese counter, it was a miracle that we spotted it.

It was after we moved back to Winston-Salem that the dumbest thing I did with one of my contact lenses happened. We were at a cousin’s house. One of my contacts seemed cloudy or dirty. I already knew a little trick to fix that. I took it out and put it in my mouth, a temporary, stalling measure. I could have excused myself and gone to the bathroom where there was water and a mirror. But no, I was involved in a lively conversation right then and did not want to get up and leave. A fateful mistake. I was chewing gum. Somehow my contact lens got mixed up with my gum. I chewed it.

My faithful optometrist was incredulous, yet again.

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Good Dog

By Martha Rowe His name was Wiggins, and he was a rescue dog from the Humane Society. He was an adorable puppy who grew into a handsome dog with a noble mien. Of unknown lineage, he appeared to be a mix of Labrador retriever and pit bull. His coat was the color of river sand; his eyes, golden. His chest was white, as also the tip of his tail and his boots. A starburst of white decorated the back of his neck, and a line of snow melt ran between his eyes and across the bridge of his nose.

At ease, his ears were at half-mast. His short-haired fur stayed soft, inviting strokes, if you please, his whole life.

Wiggins learned the usual commands: sit, stay, heel. At “leave the room” he would obediently do so. Good dog.

Outside he could pee on command. But to come on command? No deal. He would stand aloof and assail you with “the stare,” and then continue wherever or whatever he had in mind. That was his biggest transgression.

Wiggins was not allowed in our bedroom. He would stop at the door, where he would edge his nose inside just as far as he possibly could and still not be technically inside, but could keep us in sight.

Wiggins was a very sociable dog. He enthusiastically welcomed visitors, usually by crotch-sniffing or some other equally unacceptable behavior. He would follow Dave to the barn, to the river, to the mailbox. In the house he was my shadow. He would put his head on our lap and snuggle against us, trying to get his nose in our pocket or up a sleeve. His disposition was sweet. He really did want to please. He would furrow his brow and cock his head to one side when we talked to him.

Curious as always, and hopeful for a delicious and forbidden tissue, he poked his nose into every trash can.

He loved a belly rub and a towel. I think he would purposefully ask to go outside in the rain just so he could

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be toweled dry when he came back in. He was a tailthumping licker, and his tongue was a foot long.

A blanket was his favorite possession. He would always run to his crate and drag one out to show it off to anyone who might come visiting. We tried stuffed toys with him, but he would dissect them to pull the squeaker out, and by then they were in shreds. As for balls, he loved to chase whatever you threw, but refused to give it back.

We bought hard chew toys and rawhide for him.

Dave had a dirt bike, and he and Wiggins developed a routine. Dave would ride all over the fields, and Wiggins would run full speed alongside him. He was a runner all right. Dave clocked him at 26 mph. Running helped keep his weight in control, for he topped out at 75 pounds.

The vet had suggested green beans or carrots, if he still acted hungry once given his daily allotment of dog food.

Green beans he snubbed, but would wolf down any amount of carrots we gave him.

Whenever any luggage was brought out of the closet, Wiggins would perk up. His carry-on was an old camouflage AWOL bag that had belonged to one of our sons. And that was where he was headed to board anytime we left to go on a trip. He knew that. Oh boy, that family had a dog at their house. Wiggins was going to have unlimited playtime with his doggie cousin, Murphy.

Thunderstorms were his nemesis. They terrified him. He would yodel until somebody would come to rescue him from his sleeping quarters in the laundry room. One of us would sit on the sofa in the family room, day or night, and keep a hand on him to comfort him until the storm had passed.

Squirrels were a frustration. For years when he would spot one, he would insist on being let out to furiously charge after the interloper. He never once caught one, which was a good thing, I think.

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Wiggins could talk to us about food. He would tell us when he wanted food to be put in his bowl or when he wanted a treat from the pantry. He was absolutely indignant when somebody would close the commode lid in the bathroom and he could not get to his toilet water.

He was quite particular about his water. There was no need to put his water bowl outside, because he only drank bowl water inside the house. Outside was a different matter entirely. He lapped at any puddles, muddy or not, that he came across.

Wiggins could instantly recognize the sound of car keys. He loved a ride in the car, and would stand on the floorboard at the back seat and stretch his front legs out across the console, looking like a hood ornament, with his head erect and level with the driver’s. He seemed to believe it was his job to help navigate. A truck dog he was not. He would stand in the bed of the pickup truck facing backwards, tail tucked, looking absolutely miserable.

Fiercely loyal and protective, Wiggins would bark his head off at anything lurking, or perceived to be lurking, around his house. His bark was ferocious, but not once did he bite anyone, or even threaten to bite. Barks would fade to snorts before he gave it up.

A fire in the fireplace mesmerized Wiggins. He would sit on his haunches and watch it. When he was ready to lie down, he would go into racetrack mode, circling and circling. Wiggins could read signs. He knew that when the TV was turned off, it was time for everybody, including him, to go to bed.

Only once did Wiggins run away. We never did know the full story, because he would not admit to lawbreaking.

We looked all over the neighborhood and put out fliers with his picture, offering a reward. We finally found him over at a trailer park in the company of a couple of other

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dogs, muddy and bedraggled. Bad dog. It was his one and only fling.

Advancing age gradually changed our dog. His back legs would not work well, and many times we had to help him get up. He would walk sort of sideways, with his back legs just following along. He would look for a spot in the sunshine. I think the warmth felt good to his old bones.

Sometimes when he dozed, one of his legs would kick, like he was running, like in the old days.

When the end finally came, we buried him under a special tree out in the fields. He looked serene, like he was just taking a nap. Dave dug a deep hole with the Kabota, and we placed Wiggins on his bed with his blanket. If some later civilization finds his bones, they will know this was a dog someone loved well, and for a long time.

Good dog.

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THE BEYOND-ERS

By Emily Sturdy BEYOND-ERS! Older Adults with power in their hands, they are really cool!

Done it all, they surely have, depression tots, fought in our country’s wars.

Toiled at jobs for forty-five or fifty years; married, raised children, for most, four was par.

Lived past the age of 70 - beyond the age experts claimed they would!

Beyond-ers is what they choose to be called; Seniors with an attitude!

Beware of this! Dare not refer to them as old!

Bounced on the head with a golf club you might be - get knocked out cold!

Favorites of grandchildren, especially are they – for with them they happily play!

These special boys and girls are bright enough to know, with Gram and Gramps, they usually get their way.

Beyond-ers whiz down the freeways in their flashy convertibles, their white hair blowing in the breeze!

Donned in the newest sportswear, they hike up steep mountain trails with skill and ease.

Rattling in every gym are treadmills holding up these enthusiastic elders as they run a couple of miles every day to strengthen their legs and knees!

Enter a dance floor with a jazzy band, Beyond-ers will be there! – Shagging, Twisting, even the fast Beat of the Swing.

Alive and spry is this most astonishing group of individuals; they will do almost anything!

Beyond-ers! Don’t sell them short! They are really quite smart!

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Why, they attend college, they surely do; signing up for classes in Finance, English and Art. Coming and they always are; finding time to be a helping hand.

Cheerfully they volunteer: hospitals, schools, Meals On Wheels, Ronald Mac-Donald House; For their free help there is in great demand.

Living off dividends of investments, travel they do, by air and sea, to exotic regions near and far.

Once on land they tour the countryside in a snazzy rental motor car.

Beyond-er couples lovingly hold hands during their romantic twilight beach strolls.

As you are now aware, retirees are not as they once used to be.

BEYOND-ERS they now are – a new rare breed; fun, happy, carefree, exciting, adventurous souls!

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A U.S.A. SOLDIER

By Emily Sturdy Gallantly under fire Bull dog courage to defeat Foreign dictator’s evil desires Put one’s life on the line, Protect the freedom of which is our country’s design.

Reluctance in days of urgency not to run astray.

A believer on the side of Democracy; volunteer you do without delay Be not undaunted valiant warrior For God blessed soldiers with a heart of oak.

Upon your back he clothed you with a hero’s cloak.

Your path of allegiance to this land was freely spoken Until you draw the last breath of life, The vow remains unbroken.

Never forgotten will you be, by we, your countrymen For your passionate deed!

Always be honored are these who like you Stood tall and strong, faithfully meeting our country’s need.

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Music Makes the Heart “Happy”

By Jeanne Talich From the time I was very young, I have been aware of how music has the effect of calming our souls and changing our thoughts and emotions. It doesn’t matter if it’s singing, playing an instrument, dancing in your kitchen, or passively listening to music while performing daily tasks, negative thoughts can be changed into uplifting thoughts through the melodious sounds of music. Just as the sense of smell is very powerful in activating memories, certain songs we hear often bring back memories and emotions and can relax us if we’re having a stressful day.

During my early childhood, I suffered a great deal with asthma and eczema. My mother was a nurse and she explored every possible option for treatment to make my life more comfortable. In those days, before everyone had a TV set in their home, many families had either a piano or some other instrument, which was often played as a pastime and source of enjoyment. My mother discovered that by encouraging me to play the piano, it calmed me and lessoned my allergy symptoms. I learned to love the piano, and after taking lessons, I gained an appreciation for all types of music – and the arts in general. I believe exposure to music is so very important in a child’s life. For me, it was the beginning of a life-long awareness of the role music plays in mental, physical, and spiritual well-being.

I recently read about a study done by Dr. Bjorn Vickhoff at the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden. The study monitored the pulses of 15 choral singers as they sang their way through three different choral exercises. In each of the studies, the researchers found that both breathing and heart rate were synchronized during the exercises. Singing is all about breathing. When you sing, your breaths become bigger, deeper, and slower. And in the tiny “in between” heart beats, your heart begins to

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slow down. So, you could say singing “calms” the heart down. The calming effect of singing in a choir can be as beneficial to an individual’s health and mental well-being as physical exercise. The study, named “The Body’s Musical Score,” showed that singing actually enhances something called: heart rate variability (HRV).

Singing also regulates activity in the “vagus nerve,” which is involved in our emotional life and our communication with others. Songs with long phrases achieve the same effect as breathing exercises. In this way, we can exercise certain control over our mental status. The vagus nerve is literally the captain of your inner nerve center – the parasympathetic nervous system, to be specific. It is your vagus nerve that tells your body to chill out by releasing stress hormones into your body. It does a great job of overseeing a vast range of crucial functions, communicating nerve impulses to every organ in your body. New research, using vagal nerve stimulation, has shown promise in treating chronic inflammation, epilepsy, and Alzheimer’s disease, and may allow these and many other illnesses to be treated without medication and side effects.

I won’t go into all the scientific ways that this vagus nerve functions within our bodies, but I must say it is an interesting study. I learned that by doing abdominal breathing or holding your breath for four to eight counts (which is what you do when you sing), you can manually stimulate your vagus nerve, which controls the heart rate via electrical impulses and slows the pulse.

We are truly fearfully and wonderfully made. And God made us with incredible sensitivity to His existence through our five senses, as well as through our spirit, which He placed in us. He also gave us the medium of music to communicate our thoughts and feelings back to him and express our gratitude to our Creator. The God who made us knows very well that we need ways to experience His peace by taking advantage of the sources

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of calmness and beauty He provides. Music is a gateway to many of those spiritual, mental, and physical benefits we need to overcome the trials we face in life. Yes, music has the ability to even make our hearts happy. God’s Word confirms the importance of having a “merry heart.”

The Bible teaches us that there is a basic relationship between our mental attitude and our physical well-being.

The word “heart” has a meaning beyond the physical organ that pumps blood throughout our body. It is that part of our being (our soul) that directs our actions and attitudes. What you think, and what you are in your heart has a direct bearing on your mental and physical health. What is on the inside eventually manifests itself physically on the outside.

“A merry heart does good, like medicine, But a broken spirit dries the bones.” Proverbs 17:22

Sometimes we are going to face heartache, pain and difficulty that goes far beyond anything we thought we could ever endure. Sometimes we will be in the waiting room of life for weeks and months and years, but we can know that God is with us and is working out His plan in our lives. Romans 8:28 tells us that God is at work whether we see it or not, whether we feel it or not, whether we understand it or not, whether we believe it or not. So our attitude makes all the difference at that moment. The question is “Do you believe there is a God who is at work in your situation?” The Christian answer is YES. We can have a merry heart even in the darkest moments of life if we believe in His sovereign will and His goodness. We can have a cheerful heart if we believe there is a God in heaven who loves us, who is at work in ways that we can’t see.

One of the ways we can connect with God, so He can speak into our lives and give us a merry heart is through the gift of music.

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The next time you feel like signing in the shower, in your car, or when you join in song with your fellow worshippers at your church or synagogue, your heart will thank you!

The LORD is my strength and my shield; My heart trusted in Him, and I am helped; Therefore my heart greatly rejoices, and with my song I will praise Him. Psalms 27:8

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A CACOPHONY OF CROWS

By Robert Versteg I walk into the sunshine of my day Up the road called Marlowe Avenue Where crows Caw! Caw! me on my way.

Their Caw Caws today are nothing new, Quite unlike what anyone will hear When a Red-Tailed Hawk comes into view.

Our house we built with trees around so near that we might wake to birdsong where we live, and say with Percy Shelley "Hear! Oh Hear!"

The repertoire of crows is quite extensive, For they are social creatures through and through, And seldom are they merely, merely pensive.

This is my introduction to the crow, But there is so much more for us to know.

II Consider now the Hawk, so solitary.

This loner seeks no friendly conversing -A puzzle and a mystery to me.

The flying Hawk! That hunger-driven cruising!

His objective -- to snatch a fledgling life, or eggs, from tree-top nests.

Now crows commence their loud and raucous strife.

From all the trees around I hear Caw! Cawing!

The hawk, no doubt, would rather hear a fife.

From all the trees around the crows come flying.

I hear their loud and louder Caw! Caw! Caw! Each moment in their numbers multiplying.

As crows fly close around the hawk's prey, The hungry Hawk dives . . . swerves . . . and flies away.

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ARISTOTLE AND THE CROCUS

By Robert Versteg The fallen leaves lie frozen now under the weight of snow so deep that Nature seems, with buried brow, to lie in an enchanted sleep.

A hare limps by the withered hyacinth -shadows shiver between being and non-being.

Beneath the frozen leaves, the ground and snow. a flower--not a flower--stirs within inchoate matter, and a form begins to grow.

Olympus, in its enduring majesty, presents nothing metaphysical as this congenial crocus will that moves in its entelechy.

The wintry ground begins to yield to a force mere matter cannot know; soon stem and blossom gain the field and rise above the fallen snow.

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An Evening of Kosher Gospel

By Helen Webb Last year my Friday bridge partner, who is Jewish, invited me to a fundraising event at Temple Emanuel.

Having been raised as an Episcopalian and now a member of a Baptist church, I have attended numerous inter-faith meetings and events at Temple Emanuel, but never just a synagogue event. Barbara explained that the evening included wine, dinner and a program entitled Kosher Gospel. Kosher Gospel would certainly be different music for me‌as , like medicine it be for the members of Temple Emanuel! All week I looked forward to the event, and I was not disappointed.

We were greeted warmly at the reception desk. The fellowship room looked elegant with blue linen table cloths covering the round tables set for eight and the silver wrapped in matching napkins, tied with yellow ribbon. At each place was a fan, similar to those funeral homes use as advertisement. The evening’s program stated on one side: Kosher Gospel and Temple Emanuel printed on the other side. Floating over the center of each table were three helium filled balloons tied by long yellow ribbon to a decorative weight. In the middle of the room was the buffet table arranged and decorated as if it was in the finest of country clubs. A waitress with trays of small open-faced tomato sandwiches glided among us as we drank wine and hallelujah punch. The rabbi led the singing of grace, in Hebrew, before the buffet line formed. Except for personal conversations and general welcoming statements, most everything was said or sung in Hebrew.

After dinner we went into the sanctuary for the program.

Kosher Gospel fans decorated the ends of each pew.

Joshua Nelson is the lead performer for the Kosher Gospel Quartet. He is a Jewish African American from New Jersey. The other three members of his singing group are also African Americans. Joshua played the

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piano and sang. He wore a brown boubou accented with gold embroidery and a matching African looking, but actually, Jewish hat. The other three were dressed in black with different types of jackets and hats.

Information from the internet stated that Joshua liked the emotion shown in the Negro spirituals which developed during slavery in the United States. As the Jewish people also endured slavery he decided to rescore Hebrew music with gospel type music.

I loved the music, even though it was sung in Hebrew and I know not one word of Hebrew. I could feel the emotion of the beat and hear the richness of the voices.

The congregation knew the words to the hymns, but not the gospel type tunes; so, many tried to sing along with the quartet. Some folks had trouble getting into the groove of clapping their hands; but they tried. The women were better at getting a little body movement involved. They never raised their hands above shoulder height. I had my hands and arms up as high as they would go. Twice, the singers were able to get the congregation to stand and move a little with the music.

During the first standing number, one of the performers started pointing my way and I pointed back. This pointing went on for several minutes. No one else was pointing. (I had recently been to a Christian music rock concert and observed how an audience was supposed to react to the musicians.) Another time, I made my way to the center aisle, hands high and body swaying, to dance with a few other brave souls.

Joshua Nelson has a good sense of humor. He told interesting stories about his music and for what occasions some of it was written. I was fascinated watching the expressions of the various people sitting around me. Because they knew the Hebrew words to the music, those who did not sing along to the hymns would quietly recite the words. Some of the women would show a little movement with the music, but the men sat straight as arrows. I noticed one white-headed

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gentleman sitting straight, his face showing no emotion, but one hand and a foot were keeping beat with the music. The man sitting in front of me sat with a disapproval expression on his face the entire time. (His wife must have made him come.) I’m certain that only one or two in attendance had ever heard a Jewish hymn sung to “Down by the Riverside” or danced the Havana Gila to the tune of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” When they sang Havana Gila, everyone stood up and moved to the end of the pews joining hands to form a line that snaked back and forth through the aisles until everyone was in the line. After the program was over, everyone returned to the fellowship room for coffee and a table overflowing with delicious desserts. I had a marvelous evening!

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Writings

By Helen Webb Music, dance, and writing are alike in that all use the hands as facilitators of expressing thoughts of the mind and emotions of the heart. In my youth I took piano, flute, tap, ballet, and ballroom dancing lessons. For my seventieth birthday, I treated myself to belly dancing lessons. I can enjoy and appreciate a wide variety of musical and dance experiences but it is writing which gives me the greatest pleasure.

Before the days of computers and cell phones, one communicated with out-of-town relatives and friends with notes and letters. Long-distance phone calls were expensive and a true treat. Consequentially I learned to write thank you notes and letters at the age of six. Later I corresponded with many camp friends from Virginia.

After college, love letters were the most fun to write. In 2018 letter writing is a thing of the past. Nevertheless, writing is not dead!

I write for myself. Feelings, hidden deep down in the bottom of my heart, slip up to my brain, flow down my right arm and out my fingers on to paper. The word picture changes back and forth as the eyes and brain see the emotion from a different perspective. As I read and reread the words, the emotion escapes into the air and is resolved. The hidden feeling has been acknowledged.

Since joining a writing group about three years ago, I have released numerous toxic feelings: feelings of worthlessness, of resentment, of inferiority. Feelings of happiness and hilarity in the everyday activities of life intensify as they appear on paper. My younger brother played the piano much better than I. When upset, he would sit at the piano and play. First playing loudly and fast up and down the keyboard then gradually ending in a peaceful tune. Watching him, one could see the

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emotion being released. My writing does for me what Walter’s piano playing did for him.

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Filled within the pages of this book you will discover a collection of memories and stories that will inspire and entertain. Some will make you laugh, some will make you cry and others will motivate you to live without the fear of aging.

“I guess I have never thought much about aging. I guess I have never had time. I know that we are born to die but that has always been in the farthest back of my mind. I think I have been too busy.”

--Polly Craft, Aging “The last time I saw Ma Caulder she was squatting on top of the bluff at the foot of the persimmon tree whose fruit furnished the fermentation in the Mason jar by her right hand.”

--Janet Joyner, The Red Bluff Madonna “I sit on the porch in the rocking chair with my camera and a book. I scatter safflower seeds along the porch rail. The birds have become so used to me over the years that they will come quite close.”

--Helen Etters, Spring Cleaning “I walk into the sunshine of my day Up the road called Marlowe Avenue Where crows Caw! Caw! me on my way.”

--Robert Versteg, Cacophony of Crows “I had to learn to listen to what others had to say and know that they had beliefs different from mine and that the world is far from perfect or that my views aren’t necessarily the views of the majority of people.”

--Bill Gramley, Traits My Parents Gave Me .