Trees

Trees have been woven into my life and my imagination since the first day I could hold up my head and look around the place where I was raised. The oak trees around our house and out on the borders of fields seemed like gods to me, watching over us and the land.



This photograph I call Treescape. I took it looking out toward what used to be pasture, just a few yards from our backyard.




I took this photo bouncing along in the pickup truck while my brother drove us through the pine stands that are part of my late father's tree farm.



These old oak trees stood at the border of the acreage we drove through looking at the various stands of pine.



And finally, longleaf pine, a quick glimpse as we finished our drive-through. We are trying to encourage more longleaf on the farm. If you want to know more about this native species, read Janisse Ray's ECOLOGY OF A CRACKER CHILDHOOD. And go to the Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center's website--www.jonesctr.org The Center is located in Baker County in the Dougherty Plain of southwestern Georgia.

My Great-Grandmother's Oil Paintings

This is my first morning back in the mountains after a week in southwest Georgia. It's cold! Well, not as cold as it will be later, but it's 37 degrees, which feels pretty cold after south Georgia weather. I had business and family matters to keep me busy while there, but I did make some photos of three of my great-grandmother's paintings. Vicki Lane asked to see some of them, after my post about Cindy Davis and my great-grandmother, Ella Valentine Fry (7/10/08--Paintings that burn through my Eyes). Here is one that hung beside the staircase until we moved it to the house in Camilla where my mother now lives.



This painting hung in the living room and has always been one of my favorites.



This painting once graced the dining room. I apologize for the glare on one side of it.



There are many more still in the farm house. I'll hope to make photographs of them eventually.

Cheri L. Jones, Poet

A few weeks ago I met Cheri Jones at a four-woman reading at Osondu Bookstore in Waynesville (see 8/24/08 post). Her reading from her recently self-published book moved me a great deal, and I am happy to present some poems from that book, CHAINS.

For more of Cheri's work, I'd encourage you to go to her website (just click above on her name). You may either order her book from her or find it at Malaprop's and Accent on Books. Or urge your local bookstore to stock it.

********

meet Red . . .



Red's world ended in a gunshot.

That's when everything began.

The day his Pop died shot,

little Red became a man.



Evil exploded, whistled, popped.

Shocked Red felt its fatal blast.

Their wagon shuddered, stopped.

His father's life passed, passed fast.



Red heard sweet Willie's anguished scream.

Time slowed. Strength melted away.

Neighbor Frost (in Red's dream)

turned his horse, then sped away.







bliss



A lone jay wings

across the hazefiltered pink of dawn.

You can hear moss

growing in the lingering gray damp.



Cling to this moment of ecstasy

as it changes in seconds

and disappears forever.







ruminations . . .



Maggie hugged her knees

wishing she could ride

a big ferris wheel

up into those clouds

(cotton candy clouds)

and sticky her face

with sweetspun pink fluff.



Maggie hugged her knees

wishing lots of things.

Twilight descended.

She listened tensely

to hushed bickering,

looking for fireflies,

waiting for fireflies.



Their yard was all mud -

no grass, no driveway.

Their car loomed large there,

a shadowy threat.

In the car time dies.

After a prayer at

eighty miles an hour,

the blurred world whirls by.



While Daddy bellows,

". . . and He watches me,"

his rough calloused hands

grab, hit, pinch, twist, bruise,

welt, humiliate.

Is Dan's God watching

when the car swerves on?

What's Left

I had only two sunflowers this summer. The rabbits ate my fancy ones from the seed company as soon as they were a few inches tall. The Wal-Mart brand sprouted just fine but then withered away, except for these two surivors. Now after all the rain, they are nodding off, like they're ready for a long nap. I'm sorry to see them go.



We are still able to have fried okra for supper, but our okra plants won't be producing much longer either. My zucchini got squelched by the marauding cucumbers that are now climbing over the divider-fence, as if wanting to do battle with the numerous butternut squashes intent on conquering the entire garden. I don't know how we are going to eat all that squash, but unlike zucchini, it keeps a good while if stored properly. (Any butternut recipes out there?)

And what am I going to do with all those apples? I'll start with a pie tonight.

New Southerner Literary Contest

This is a great opportunity for new and experienced writers alike. It's a brand new contest, not heavily advertised due to budget constraints. Could you help me spread the word? Deadline is October 1, just a few weeks away!

Bobbi Buchanan, editor
NewSoutherner.com
375 Wood Valley Lane
Louisville, KY 40299
502-239-3438

New Southerner Literary Contest
$200 prizes for poetry, fiction and nonfiction

Three prizes of $200 each and publication in New Southerner will be awarded for works of poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction.
* 5,000 word limit for prose
* 50 line limit for poetry
* Entry Fee: $10 per entry; checks should be made payable to Swallowtail Press
* Multiple entries accepted
* Postmark deadline: October 1, 2008

Final judges:


(Cecilia Woloch, photo by Mark Savage--ceciliawoloch.com)




Nonfiction — Kathryn Eastburn (author of A Sacred Feast and Simon Says)
Poetry — Erin Keane (author of The Gravity Soundtrack and The One-Hit Wonders) and Cecilia Woloch (author of Tsigan and Late)

Fiction — Silas House (author of The Coal Tattoo and Clay's Quilt)



(Silas House--silashouse.com)

All work must be typed on standard-sized paper. No manuscript will be returned; for acknowledgement of receipt, include self-addressed, stamped postcard with submission.

Send two copies—one with the author’s name, address, phone number and optional e-mail address in the upper right-hand corrner, the other with no author information. Include separate title page for each entry indicating title of work, category, author’s name, address and phone number.

Entries must be the author’s original, unpublished work and should be appropriate for publication in New Southerner, an independent journal dedicated to promoting self-sufficient living, environmental stewardship and support for local economies. For more information, see our submission guidelines online at newsoutherner.com/aboutus.htm.

Winners will be contacted by telephone and/or e-mail by the end of November. Winning entries will be published in the winter issue of New Southerner, scheduled for release Dec. 10. Judges may choose to award honorable mentions in each category.

Entries and entry fees made payable to SWALLOWTAIL PRESS should be mailed to:

New Southerner Literary Contest
375 Wood Valley Lane
Louisville, KY 40299

Questions regarding entries should be directed to bobbibuchanan@newsoutherner.com.

Walking the Talk: Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

The man who cleans our stove and chimney each fall also works throughout our region, including Cashiers and Highlands. He expressed his astonishment at the square footage of many of the houses there, even though some are used only a few weeks out of the year. Many of these developments are erroneously titled "Preserves," perched on slopes with little consideration for the defacement of the mountains on which they are built. These Preserves, with poetic sounding names--Wildflower, Trillium, and so forth--are taking over our mountains, altering the landscape, polluting streams, destroying community. Lately, committed groups of citizens, including The Watershed Association of the Tuckasegee River, have taken their stand in opposition to the Legasus Corporation, speaking out at meetings and hoping to educate the public about their concern for responsible, environmentally sensitive development.

The Watershed Association of the Tuckasegee River has attempted to work with the Legasus Corporation, becoming involved when the US Army Corps of Engineers circulated a permit application by Legasus to build a gated, second-home community at Webster Creek in the Tuckasegee area of the county -- including 828 residential units, 2 golf courses, tennis courts, club houses, stables, and other amenities. The permit calls for the impact of 3,890 feet of streams classified as water-supply level III, with some also classified as trout habitat.

One of the most articulate voices in the campaign to make sure that Legasus does as little environmental damage as possible is that of Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin, a woman I met in a poetry workshop a few years back at Campbell Folk School. I've followed her poetry ever since, watching it grow and deepen. I wasn't surprised when her chapbook PATRIATE won the the Longleaf Press chapbook prize last year. She was featured on our ncarts.org Writers and Books site last December.




As Jeannette has pointed out in a recent email,"as the first, and one of the largest, developments to seek a development agreement with the county, what Legasus does has far-reaching implications... the impacts to the watershed, viewsheds, environment, and quality of life—taxes, traffic, air and water quality, loss of historic landmarks and unexamined Cherokee (and earlier) sites, The environment doesn’t vote, but people do. After all, Legasus is just trying to make money in the time-honored way around here—it’s up to the governing agencies to shape the course. While it would be nice if developers would suddenly “develop” an environmental and social conscience, we shouldn’t look for it to happen. What we should expect … DEMAND … is that public agencies serve the public good."

Later (Sept. 19 and Oct 4) there will be events to rally the community – and by that we mean, across WNC, because this development is only one example of how our landscape and culture is being overrun and ruined all through the Blue Ridge. "


Some informative links:

http://www.smokymountainnews.com/issues/08_08/08_13_08/fr_legasus.html
http://www.smokymountainnews.com/issues/08_08/08_06_08/fr_financing_dev.html
http://www.smokymountainnews.com/issues/08_08/08_06_08/fr_ecofriendly_wary.html
http://www.smokymountainnews.com/issues/08_08/08_06_08/fr_honor_system.html


To get an idea about River Rock -- go to their website: www.riverrocknc.com
To understand the plan for the Webster Creek development, go to the permit application
to the US Army Corps of Engineers: http://www.saw.usace.army.mil/wetlands/Notices/2008/0800492.pdf
For a differing opinion of the development, check out and navigate around the blog:
http://gulahiyi.blogspot.com/ -- you will find commentary on many topics including Legasus.



(The historic Moody Farm … soon to be yet another golf course?)

SOME OF JEANNETTE'S POEMS WILL BE POSTED IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS.

Legasus Development

Please go to Ruminations from the Distant Hills (gulahiyi.blogspot.com) to find commentary on the huge development being planned for southern Jackson County. I will be posting more about one of the spokeswomen fighting this corporate contamination of our mountain region, Jeannette Cabanis Brewin, a poet who walks the talk and is one of the smartest and most articulate voices we have in western North Carolina.

Go to ncarts.org and link to the archive for December 07 where you can read more of Jeannette's work from her prize-winning chapbook, PATRIATE.

MORE TO FOLLOW ON THIS ISSUE.

Bad Reviews: An Antidote

(all photos by Corinna Lynette Byer)

WHATCHA GONNA DO?

When they say your language is PLUSH?

"The plush language and potentially captivating narrative are dulled by excessive sentimentality."
(reviews.coldfrontmag.com/2006/06/coming_to_rest_.html---Melinda Wilson)

INDULGENT?

"Kathryn Stripling Byer’s poems in Coming to Rest are often indulgently sweet.
Byer continues the poem in this fashion, with overwritten lines like, “I’m trapped in a coma / of middle-aged dullness” that evoke frustration rather than sympathy."


OH, WHAT'S A POET TO DO?"




Hey, lighten up, says Lord Byron, lap-dancing in the easy chair! What do they know? Dance the flamenco and forget about i!








And be grateful for a few crumbs of praise! Woof, woof!

"On rare occasions, her sentimentality is successful."



Dance, dance, and this goes for everyone who's ever been rejected by a magazine, ever gotten a bad review, or ever not gotten a grant from either the NEA or the Guggenheim Foundation, or whatever local or state arts council.

Two Landscapes

From ARCTIC DREAMS, by Barry Lopez:

A Lakota woman named Elaine Jahner once wrote that what lies at the heart of the relligion of hunting peoples is the notion that a spiritual landscape exists within the phyical landscape. To put it another way, occasionally one sees something fleeting in the land, a moment when line, color, and movement intensify and something sacred is revealed, leading one to believe that there is another realm of reality corresponding to the physical one but different.

In the face of a rational, scientific approach to the land, which is more widely sanctioned, esoteric insights and speculations are frequently overshadowed, and what is lost is profound. The land is like poetry: it is inexplicably coherent, it is transcendent in its meaning, and it has the power to elevate a consideration of human life.

In Praise of Libraries and Librarians, Part 1: Dana Edge

This is a photo of Dana Edge, a woman I admired tremendously and with whom I lost contact during the months of her terminal illness this spring. (This photo shows Dana's sense of humor as Western Carolina University's Reference Librarian and Consultant to the School of Business. Its title: Dana Shocked! I love it.) I'll make no excuses. Yes, I was busy with poetry/travel commitments, but I could have made time to get in touch, at least by email. To visit. Now it's too late. And a woman who gave the label "librarian" special meaning is gone without my having told her how much I valued her friendship and regard for my work.
Dana cared about poetry, the environment, politics, travel. She bought my books and she made comments about my work. How rare is that? As a librarian she took her job seriously. She was efficient and passionate (the two are not mutually exclusive), and she cared about literature. I had never officially met her until the day she came up to me in Western Carolina University's Hunter Library to tell me that she liked an op-ed I'd written for the Asheville Citizen-Times shortly before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, one that had been posted on the library bulletin board.

Yesterday Hunter Library held a "Celebration of Dana Edge," a reception with good food, good friends, and displays of Dana's photos, posters, various brochures she had put together for the library and other mementoes from her time in our library. In them one could see a woman involved in life in its many unfoldings.







Here is the announcement from WCU. If you wish to honor a woman you most likely don't even know, by a contribution to The Hope Chest or the Canary Coalition, that would be wonderful. The Canary Coalition is a local environmental organization fighting to save what we have here in Jackson County and WNC, by the way.

❉❉❉❉❉❉❉❉

Dana Merrill Edge, Reference Librarian, Liaison to the College of Business , and Assistant Professor at Hunter Library, died Sunday morning, August 24, after a brief illness. Dana came to Western in January, 1995, leaving behind a successful business career managing resorts at the Grand Canyon, Napa Valley , and Death Valley . Academic librarianship was a second career for Dana, and we were lucky she chose WCU, where projects she took on benefited from her intelligence and high standards. Quick wit and an elegant demeanor marked all of her endeavors here. Dana loved her time in Cullowhee and the many friends she made here. We will all miss her!

Dana’s family asks that memorial gifts be made to Hope Chest – A Women’s Cancer Center , P.O. Box 16948, Asheville , NC 28816, or to The Canary Coalition, P.O. Box 653, Sylva , NC 28779.

Dana's obituary in the Asheville Citizen Times: http://obituaries.citizen-times.com/obituaries/obit.php?id=56409

Here is the video that WLOS ran last weekend. The piece with Dana is called "Outrunning Time." She appears toward the end of the video. (It's less than 10 minutes long.): http://www.wlos.com/shared/newsroom/absolute_le/wlos_index.shtml



(Passion Flower in our garden)

Garden's End

The most beautiful blossom to me is the okra blossom. Although our tomatoes are finished, the chard, and most of the cucumbers, the okra is still coming in. My sunflowers were eaten by rabbits, except for these two, below. They are standing tall here as September begins. The apples are littering the ground, as if begging me to save them for pies, apple crisp, butternut & apple bisque.

How does our big dog Bro feel about all of this? Roll over and wallow in the September sun!






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