Walking Labyrinths

It is Holy Week, a week that includes Good Friday and ends with Easter Sunday.
While normally I love tradition and ritual and the comfort of repetition with routine, I am in a state of flux right now. Nothing feels quite right anymore and I am allowing myself some options. This year I do not feel like focusing on remembering the torture, agony, and death associated with the Christian traditions. I see enough of that on the evening news!

Then I remembered the Labyrinth built by a local church, Grace Episcopal, a few years ago. It not only has a beautiful stone walk, but it incorporates a Biblical Garden.  The pastor there tries to include only old plants known during the time of Jesus; some  are  from lands Jesus walked. He has included a fig tree and an olive tree. Right now the garden is full of color and cheer, a testimony to spring, the season of rebirth. This positive scene sounded more soothing to me right now, and I paid a visit there during this Holy Week instead sitting inside a church.

A labyrinth is a walking meditation. While meditation usually means sitting still and experiencing spiritual reflection, a labyrinth reaches for the same state with movement. Built like a maze, a labyrinth isn’t full of tricky corners or dead ends. It is a slow path to the center and back out again. The center is marked by a petal shape with six sides. Hopefully, by the end of this circular walk, one finds a peaceful feeling, a spiritual space, or maybe the answer to some inner question. According to the book Walking a Scared Path by Dr. Lauren Artress, “Through the proportion, placement and position of stone, wood, and mortar—using a complementary system of numbers, angles, and design—the mind can find rest, comfort, and harmony.”

My friend has walked the labyrinth in New Harmony, Indiana. I have seen it and would love to go back to walk it someday. It differs in that its borders are not marked by stone but by neatly trimmed hedges. I do not have a great deal of experience with labyrinths, but I think they bear some investigation and further study.

What about you, have you walked labyrinths?

Good Friends Make Us Healthy

While celebrating a friend’s birthday this week at a bistro with a garden shop attached, I found this smashing piece of work. She is called The Poet. DH asked me how I know she is a poet, a writer? Well, silly man, she has both a book and a pen. She MUST be a writer!

Duke University researchers found that heart disease patients with close friends lived double the time of patients with no close friends. This is one more reason to have good buddies in our lives. I have been fortunate in my lifetime to know a lot of friendly folks, but I also have a good number of what I count as close friends. My mother told me as a child that when women go through life they are lucky if they find one or maybe two true friends. My mom’s math does compute for me.

This week some of us took one of our friends to lunch to celebrate her birthday. Long ago we would slip away from families in an evening, go out to eat, give the birthday gal a big basket of gifts so carefully chosen by the group in the weeks before the birthday. Now it is harder despite the children being grown, the men being less needy, etc. We have dropped the gift giving because none of us have many wants or needs anymore. Going to eat can be a problem with special diets of no sugar, no fat, etc. We tire earlier, long for our nighties when the darkness begins to fall. Where are those bouncy young women we once were?

Yet, there is something soothing about a quiet salad or healthy sandwich at noon in a secluded corner somewhere. Things have changed but we still are friends. While we might not spring so high in our step, we do have those shared memoires of all the earlier years. Slower, yes, but in essence we are the same people.

A new friend won’t remember my children doing things like a six year old son wanting to part his hair like President Jimmy Carter! A new friend won’t remember the times of sick husbands with heart attacks, surgeries and cancer. Only I will remember the friend who came to my house in late evening to help me make up my bed while DH struggled after surgery. Oh and the weddings, the ones among our children full of promise that were mistakes as well as the happy ending ones. There is so much shared living that needs the old friends to remember.

Friends, do you appreciate yours?

                                 An Easter basket delivered this week by a friend...

Transitions

In writing, transitions are bridges from one idea to another. A transition can also move the reader from one day to another or merely move the reader to another time of the same day. In real life, I often see transitions more as endings rather than as bridges to anything.

I don’t mean I am totally inflexible to change. I do see that a transition can be to something better, something new or challenging. But too often, crossing over to the new means I have to say goodbye to the old. I am just not good with goodbyes or endings!

Not sleeping soundly anymore is one of my poor transitions at this age. Wow, does losing sleep play havoc with my days! I have given up all caffeine except my tea pots between 5 am and noon. The rest of the day I try to wear off the effects of my good black tea. Some nights, I just hate to go to bed because I want to do more, not waste time sleeping. But I am no longer able to stay up either as I am tired if not sleepy. So transition from day to night to day can be rough here.

This weekend I made a transition in my tea basket. I have a small basket (like Dorothy going to Oz!) that carries a hot pot, two mugs, spoons, tea, instant soup, and napkins for when we travel. But my basket was wearing out. When I saw this one at a flea market last week, I bought it as a replacement. DH thought it a good idea. What neither of us realized or even thought of was the two small ends did not open wide enough to put in the hot pot! Hum.

So this weekend DH made a new lid out of cherry. Using the original hinges on the basket he put this lid on so now we can carry everything plus some crackers or granola bars. A wee tad bigger than the old basket, it is still small enough to be convenient we think. While I hated to see the old basket go with its sweet gingham lining, it was time to make the transition. I bought the new basket for $5 and sold the old basket (dents and breaks included) for $2. So I think I have a deal here.

Brown Mansion in Coffeyville, Kansas

After visiting the Dalton Museum on Saturday’s road trip, we went out to see the Brown Mansion. So called because Mr. Brown built this three storied home with a full basement and included a ball room in 1906. It has been a glorious place to live in its day. Visitors can tour the entire home including the basement…something most museum type homes don’t allow. No pictures were allowed anymore due to damage on the old paint, but post cards can be purchased of most rooms.

Isn’t this library an inviting place? The entire house is heavy with rich hardwoods; however, it is not a dark place. So many windows and sun rooms allow light to stream in making the home such a cheerful place. However, the family had its difficulties here. The Browns had four children, but only the daughter lived to adulthood. All the boys died although one lived to twelve years old, but he had severe diabetes. The daughter Olive married and divorced. She had one son who also died. This daughter lived in the house until she was 88 years old, dying in 1961.

While the door isn’t noticeable in the picture, it is a gorgeous piece of work made from wood and Tiffany leaded glass. Just recently as small pane was cracked in a small earthquake. The appraisers put a price of one and a quarter million dollars on the door’s present worth.

Brown made his money in oil and gas, having also been associated with Frank Phillips of Oklahoma oil fame. The family was Catholic and attended Holy Name Catholic Church, also an old structure. The twin tower church was built about 1907.

And what would an outing be without a quick run through of at least one flea market? Just about to leave when I saw this delightful basket and snatched it up. Nice as it is, I made a mistake in that I was buying it to replace an existing tea basket. Hum, the lovely little doors on top aren't big enough for my tea pot to fit through. However, DH says he can used the small hinges, refashion a new lid, and we will have a traveling tea basket again!

The Dalton Gang and Coffeyville, Kansas

After five days of steady rain, the sun came out and the air warmed to a delightful temp that reminded us of summer. We took a road trip for the day heading to Coffeyville, Kansas. I had spent a lot of time in Coffeyville as a kid because my grandparents lived there. The town’s claim to fame was a double bank robbery in 1892 when the town’s citizens took out the Dalton Gang. We had never been to the museum and so it was a good destination on a sunny day.

We traveled 166, a quiet highway crossing rolling farmland that was greening up for spring. The fields were muddy and ditches had leftover rainwater. We pulled into a town vastly changed from my memories. First of all, the huge old scenic bridge across the Verdigris had been replaced by a modern Plain Jane bridge. Then the humane society, a small rodeo ground, and some park features were gone. A massive flood a few years ago caused the entire town grief destroying much of the town.

While two banks had been hit in the Dalton raid, the Condon Bank building still stands. Imagine outlaws coming out the double doors and windows shattered by flying bullets. One can still see bullet holes and enter the bank from the attached Chamber of Commerce. Across the street is what is called Death Alley, a passage way as narrow as it was a hundred years ago when four outlaws met their death there…along with four unfortunate horses!

I never could understand why they built a museum to bank robbers, but it wasn’t to honor them. The museum called Dalton Defenders Museum is a testimony to the bravery and determination of ordinary folks not willing to give in the bad guys. The Daltons had robbed Coffeyville once before, and they decided to go back and do a double bank job of the Condon and the First National Bank. Through a series of mistakes and hitches, 30 citizens had time to grab guns and defend their banks. Four of them were to die in the line of duty.

There are numerous pictures of the dead gang which was a unique situation in 1892. Now we are used to cameras snapping photos of unfolding events, but that day a photographer was one of the first to capture the day for posterity. The bandits’ hats and guns are display at the museum. A picture of the Dalton mother intrigues me. She was supposedly a gentle woman (probably just worn out after bearing 15 children!!) and was related to the Youngers, a name associated with another gang of bandits. Bob was the leader of his brothers and others in the gang, and he was a very handsome man. My curiosity has been pricked, and I want to read more about these bad boys and their family.

Visiting WW II with Kristina McMorris

My parents taught me moral behavior that included kindness, charity, avoidance of slander and gossip. So I always felt funny when the “yellow peril” issue came up. They avoided explaining it fully, but I knew their feelings were strong in a negative way. We would sit in front of John Wayne WWII movies on Sunday afternoons in winter, and a lot of murmuring and low grumbles lingered in the corners of the living room while the Duke annihilated the “Japs”.

I was an adult before I began to truly understand their feelings. They were 12 and 14 when Pearl Harbor was bombed, a ripe age for forming hatred of an enemy. The publicity, bond sales, and movies all planted fear and hatred, but that was necessary in the name of patriotism at the time. But it lingered far longer than the war for people that were mere children of that era. 

I was not born until the 40’s were almost gone, yet I love the era despite the war being the dominate feature of the decade. I love the hats, the gloves, and those platform shoes. I tap my toes quickly to the music of swing. I am proud when I think of a generation of farm boys and country girls who not only took to the air and ruled, but of their work on the ground in conceiving, designing, and building those wonderful Flying Fortresses in the middle of former wheat fields.

I read Kristina McMorris’s first book Letters from Home set in the WWII era. I loved all the 1940 details and the author made me feel right back there in time. When I heard another book was on the way, I waited impatiently. Bridge of Scarlet Leaves arrived last week during those five rainy days! Perfect timing because I put on the kettle, brewed up some Irish Breakfast and read until dark. In her second novel McMorris stayed in the war years, but told the story from the eyes of Japanese Americans and the people who both feared them and loved them as well. Her own deep research allows her to write a powerful story, and her being half Japanese herself gives the story more punch.

I think Bridge of Scarlet Leaves should be required reading at the high school level. There are so many chapters and scenes in this book that could be used for rousing discussions of how people treat other people. The definitions of integrity, prejudices, fear, and forming hate could be bounced around a classroom, and under the guise of studying WWII or Japanese internment camps, students could look at some heavier issues like bullying, gossip, and defining what it means to belong to a community.

If you need a good read, grab a copy of McMorris’s newest book. You won’t be disappointed. I am anxious to share it with my good friend who was a school librarian. She is half Japanese, and I know we will have lots to talk about from this book!

Book Blurb/Taking Sinbad

Last Saturday, I tried to get back to some of the fun little writes that makes the brain play. On Saturday I did Centus, but forgot what I was doing with word count. I used the Book Blurb count of 150 instead of the assignment 98 words. I goofed! But today I am following the rules carefully, using Lisa's picture and word count of 150. For more blurbs based on the picture and complete rules to play, visit Lisa's blog at http://www.writinginthebuff.net/2012/03/book-blurb-friday-56-tail-of-tiger.html.

This big cat picture is gorgeous. Our local school mascot is the tiger so I have lived in "tiger country" for several years. We do indeed have a small circus that winters just outside of town. While we don't see the big cats outside, on warm days you can drive down the road and see a mass of elephants in the pasture acting as at home as a herd of Angus.

                                                  Taking Sinbad

Jamey had worked under Pete’s tutelage long enough to learn how to manage the big cats at Ringling Bros. Now he wanted to move on to a small Missouri circus, taking star Sinbad along, where he could tend to cats but also be the tamer in the ring. He planned on taking Pete’s daughter Sheila with him.
But when lion tamer Josh Perkins had seen Pete’s daughter shed her baby fat and grow the audience-approved curves, he decked her out in sequins to waltz about the cats during performances. Old enough to be her father, it was not fatherly interest he had in her. Using deceit, threats, and underhanded ways to keep both cat and girl, Perkins hindered their reach for freedom and a life of their own.

 Could they escape Perkins? Would Sinbad become theirs?

Tension and evil lurked in three rings. The answer was under the Big Top.