The Booksmith and September 11

This is Guana State Park, St. Augustine, Florida, on September 11, 2010, forming the blue-washed backdrop of my reflections.

One fine morning many years ago, I was scheduled to open The Booksmith, the small independent bookstore of beloved memory in St. Augustine. Though more than 20 years have passed I remember it quite clearly. It was the day we were scheduled to place Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses on the shelves for sale. Shop owner and dear friend Diana was out of town, but I remember a serious, thoughtful phone conversation in which we worried together about the possibilities. Threats had been made on Rushdie's life and on the lives of those who dared to sell the book. I was surprised to find that I was actually afraid, a little, though St. Augustine's Muslim population at that time was certainly very small, and no less peaceful than anyone else. Diana left the decision to me: if I didn't feel secure enough, I should just go home and not open that day. She'd call me later to check in.

As I hung the sign out, the very same sign I'd been hanging up the day Peter Bogdanovich shouted at me to get off the street, I looked around at the quiet Plaza and down the street toward the Bridge of Lions and the outline of Anastasia Island, then up the street toward St. George Street and Flagler College. I remember the feeling, if not the actual physical gesture, of shrugging my shoulders. How could I not open the store? How could allow I myself to be scared enough to even consider not selling books? Why had I been foolish enough to allow the threats of bullies to make me hesitate?

None of this, of course, was viewed through the lens of the events of September 11, 2001. And certainly none of us had yet considered the position of a lunatic who would, 9 years after that, threaten to burn a sacred book in order to make some sort of deranged statement. But how much distance can there be between a Muslim religious leader declaring Rushdie's book forbidden and invoking the threat of violence against its author and those who might put the book into the hands of prospective readers, and a Christian religious leader threatening to burn copies the Qur'an?

Before the book burning was called off late this week, I heard several callers to a discussion on public radio suggest the idea of purchasing copies of the Qur'an in protest. I stand with these people. While I have no more genuine interest in curling up with the Qur'an than I do with the Bible as relaxing reading in the next few months, it's high time for me to read The Satanic Verses. I'm no religious scholar, but no one knows better than I do that reading lies at the heart of education, and I believe education lies at the heart of tolerance and compassion. Christian or Muslim, Jew, pagan, atheist: surely tolerance and compassion are the real lessons in which we should be schooling ourselves in the wake that dreadful day in 2001. Read the Qur'an, read the Bible, read War and Peace, read anything you like But read on, everybody.

Dragonfly memories

Dragonflies stalk the beaches of Guana in elegantly deadly pursuit of mosquitos and possibly the beginning or end of their reproductive cycles, which are, I think, much more closely tied to their life cycles than we may imagine. Today this one was caught in a fatal tangle of waves and sand. I lifted it up with care, awed by the brilliant turquoise color of its body and the beautiful bright green of its head - colors that had spilled across my lap only last night as I worked on a warm woolen scarf for Dylan. I was able to capture the electrifying colors of its body, perhaps less so the shimmering bronze and copper-bright wings that moved delicately in the wind, in a photo: one brief moment of memory, and then it was gone.

But memory: I've been thinking about that. We talk about it often, my dear old person and I, for the obvious reason that we've lived through Alzheimer's with Pop, where the erosion of memory is the raw and never-healing edge of encroaching disease. We talk about it because pain management is a balancing act of pharmacology and surrender, resistance and retreat; memory is a wild card. In Alzheimer's, the most common memory loss is short-term. According to our dear friend David, a clinical psychologist whose illustrative description helped us envision the thing, memory loss in Alzheimer's typically happens from the outside, in. Imagine the brain is an apple: those memories you created 5 minutes ago, or yesterday, are the skin of the fruit. Memories created 5 or 10 years ago are the apple's flesh. And the things you learned before you can remember learning them (washing your face, going to the bathroom on your own, combing your hair): these are the seeds at the center of the apple. They are closely held and the last things to leave you.

What if you don't have a dementia in which memory is lost? Is your memory perfect? What DO you remember, after all? I cannot remember a time, reaching back past those snapshot recollections I have from being 2 or 3 years old, in which I could not hear musical harmonies in my mind. I could hear harmonies before I knew what to call them, how to label them, that they even had names. In memory I have always heard thirds and fifths against melodies. Melodies, in my memory, always seem to be of secondary interest; it was always harmonies I loved most. So: I do not remember the time before I heard music in dimensions.

Rodney doesn't remember a time when he did not know what the ocean was. He was born close by, he was taken to the beach as a tiny baby and the scent, the breath, the warmth and rhythm of the ocean are part of his heartbeat. (Like many who were not born on at the coast, I have a crystalline recollection of seeing the ocean for the first time: I was 7 years old and it was life-changing.) Dylan doesn't remember a childhood without Sheba, our dear old nanny-Boxer. He was 2 or so when we got her, but his childhood memories are shadowed by her presence. Mac, of course, doesn't remember a time without Dylan. He was 20 months old when Dylan was born, but in his recollections, Dylan has always been there.

Still, memory is a weird thing. It is as though a virtual video recoder is running all the time, for all of us. Our brains purr along, capturing everything, storing it all up for future retrieval. This seems self-evident; how else would we be able to call up memories of electrifying accuracy? How else would things we might in all honestly prefer to forget push themselves to high-definition recollection, front and center? And why does the film seem to break, now and then, so that review of our memories shows not a smooth, frame-by-frame view, but rather a halting clunky series of images like disjointed still images? Trauma? I was 11 when my mother died, and when I look back on those memories some of them stream along like film strips; some move with the jerky awkward flow of single images strung together. I can see clearly the scene in the darkness of evening in which my stepfather woke me to tell me she was dead. With an ache that has lasted these many years, I recall her funeral, despite being given a solid dose of paregoric to stop me vomiting that morning. I remember who gave me the medicine; I recall the glass from which I drank it. But there is so much more I have lost, or forgotten, or cannot bear to let myself recall.

Are our brains and their attendant memories and images wrinkled and changed forever by trauma, and perhaps compromised in their abilities to reliably deliver memories in their wake? Do the carefully recorded movies, those high frame-rate recordings, degrade under trauma so that the recording consists only of stop-motion still images with a different kind of power?

What do you remember, my loves, and what have you forgotten?

The face of the Sacred

Endlessly delightful: flowers that bravely square themselves off, resolutely point themselves toward scorching sun and withering salt, and bloom with such equanimity you might think them at home in an English garden. These are the faces of delicate white morning glories, looking into the overcast skies of the southern Atlantic this morning. They are a fit metaphor for a person facing chronic pain armed with a good combination of stoicism and pharmacology, though the metaphor breaks down as the person walks determinedly into the northeast wind. His is not to simply survive, as morning glories must; his is to set aside pain and keep walking, keep walking, keep walking. His is to find joy at every turn, as often as he can.

Have you ever been in a hospital on some occasion of pain or worry or fear or uncertainty? If you have, you may also have found yourself in the L&D "baby gallery", looking at tiny miracles brought to life by people you don't even know, moved to a smile or perhaps that tightness behind your eyes where tears dwell. For here is hope. Here is the future. This morning is not so different, as you dear, patient readers have heard from me so often this summer; it is not so different here this year, as turtles nest in breathtaking numbers. There is no glass-walled nursery into which we can peer for comfort, but hope prevails: here is the future.

My old teacher (she of honored memory in this blog, Sister Patricia Eileen) used to remind us that the face of Christ is to be seen in every person we meet. The "Christ" part is a matter of spiritual or theological nomenclature, in my opinion: one might refer to the face of the Buddha, the face of the Goddess, the face of the Great Spirit...in the end it all means the same thing, which is that we look into that which is Sacred when we look into the faces of our sisters and brothers. This is not always easy. It is seldom uncomplicated. But it's there. My dear old person shows me the face of that which is holy every day, and some days I am actually able to see it.

For today, it was enough to walk along the beach, taking note of the still-increasing numbers of sea turtle nests (we saw N 143 today), watching the clouds rolling out of the dark sky to the northeast, grateful for the glimpses of that which is Sacred in the sea, the wind and the small cold drops of rain that found our faces now and then.

At home, a meal came together.
If you have a gas grill here's how to make nice tender baby back ribs. (If you're a serious cook, or heaven forbid, a serious Grill Cook, you can skip this part as it will only make you laugh.) Unless you have lots of time to slow-cook ribs, this always works. Season them with salt and pepper and cook in a slow oven over a pan of water. If you have a nice gas grill you can use like an oven, do it there. Tonight I put two racks of ribs on the grill with no direct heat, cooking over a pan of water. After about 2 hours, perhaps less, put the ribs over direct heat to finish them with a nice crisping. If you have a sauce everyone agrees on, you can baste the ribs with it throughout the cooking process and certainly at the end of the process. If not, finish the ribs in individual servings to taste.

We made mashed potates in the usual way. Dylan is a master of this art, but he asked me to consult when he was nearly done: they tasted flat to him; I tasted and agreed. I tossed in a half teaspoon of kosher salt, a dash of good old Texas Pete and a big tablespoon of grated Parmesan cheese. Dylan whipped them up and we all agreed that mashed potato-ness really can be next to godliness. We have tasted it for ourselves.

A simple salad finished things off, fresh garden greens, toasted almonds or pecans, golden raisins and virtually no salad dressing. The fridge died earlier this week and was beautifully and sadly cleaned out. Beloved jars of things like tahini dressing and the dregs of pickled okra were among the victims. Still, it managed to be, as one Friend of the Blog would say, "Fit to eat". And so we are grateful, my dears.

Keeping a book

The summer has been a fine one, good weather and bad. This weather crept up from the east, with me keeping an eye to the changing cloud formations while I marked the evidence of nests, true and false, along the beach. It rained, of course, so we took ourselves to a comfortable bar for a beer and a bite. It was one of those places they keep the TVs on behind the bar without the sound. One of the TVs was tuned to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, and this started a rant inside my head. Rodney's heard it before so I spared him. You, naturally, are not so lucky.

Long years gone by, my heroes, I gave many hours to St. Augustine Little League. It was a natural fit, more or less: the boys played baseball, I'm bossy, er, assertive, by nature, they needed volunteers, and all else aside, there is this simple truth: I love baseball. Our boys played, and I volunteered in the concession stand. They played, and I was the Team Mom. The boys played on, and I learned to keep a scorebook. They played, and I eventually served as a league VP. Apart from the possibiity of good karma earned for the volunteering, the thing that stayed with me was the Art of Keeping a Book. I read a memoir by Doris Kearns Goodwin, a fine historian and deovted fan of The Game, in which she recounted learning to keep a book and sharing its arcane details with her father in the long summer evenings, and especially during several World Series. Her father taught her that a good scorebook is a guide to every pitch, every hit, every out...virtually everything that happens in a baseball game can be recorded in a book by any scorekeeper meticulous enough to take it on.

It was harder to learn than you might think. I asked people I thought would know: the coach at my kids' elemetary school, baseball fans I knew, to no avail...I had to take a class to learn the basics. From there I had help from my friend O'Hare's husband Tom, a sport cameraman who first taught me (by phone, long distance, during a Phillies-Braves game) the meaning of "6-4-3". He was astonished to find I didn't know what it meant. Later, I was astonished to find that while an average guy watching a game knows it means the out was made because the shortstop (6) threw the ball to the second baseman (4), who threw it to the first baseman (3) for the out, most of those guys aren't quite sure about the relationship of that numeric sequence to a scorebook. In time I would learn to keep a book clean and legible enough to be read by someone who had not seen the game (thank you, Lynyrd).

And when the boys eventually left Little League behind, their dad and I were left to watch the Little League World Series on television. The rant comes to this: the love of the game is a fine thing, and the gift of instilling that love in a new generation is fine, indeed. Even having a final tournament to determine, once and for all, who's best that year, or whose team has the best day that year. Having grandmas and grandpas come out for the games is a tiny bit of magic; having them cheer and perhaps have a tear gather for the departing youth of their young ones is no less common and no less magical. But maybe it shouldn't be on TV. Maybe it should just be kids, their families and coaches, the dedicated volunteers who serve as umpires and officials, who sell the popcorn and hotdogs to pay for next year's uniforms, the quiet grass and a breath of a breeze on a hot afternoon in late summer...maybe it should be just them. And maybe it will all be penciled into some grandma's tattered scorebook, stored in the attic with the dog-eared baseball cards and the balls nested in gloves, wrapped in rubber bands, until the next kids trot across the grass and the next spring sun warms the base paths. But that's just me.

Pieces of summer, for remembrance

Summer draws to an end. School begins this week across much of the state, despite the hot, humid breath of the season, almost certain to persist for another month. Still, I can see the promise of October blue skies just beyond our reach, the cooler weather hinting at the coming of the holidays, and the gathering of our precious circle around a bright blue and orange fire in our back yard. It lifts my heart, the notion of the changing weather, shortening days and the homeward-turning of our boys, however brief it might be. But it's too soon, of course. So before I trot off into the sunset on the back of my imagination, here are some things I've meant to share, little squares of summer sunshine to be sewn into this year's quilt of ideas and memory.

For instance: this enormous old gopher turtle, ambling down our road as if on his way to the corner market, as I was myself at the time. There was a time when a turtle of this size, seen finding his way along the side of a country road, would have been swept into the back of somebody's pickup truck or dumped into the trunk and cooked into a stew. He (or she) was about the size of the platter you probably use to serve your Thanksgiving turkey, or at least a big roast chicken with vegetables. He was BIG. And to my surprise, he was also FAST, so that when I tried to photograph him, his external parts disappeared into his shell a couple of times until finally he began to speed-walk away from me at quite a breathtaking speed. I stood on the side of the road, watching and photographing him for 10 minutes or so. But despite the urbanity and charm of our small city, I am often reminded that Rodney and I live in the country, among the people we grew up with, many of them still quite capable of tossing a gopher turtle into the trunks of their cars and from there into their boiling stock pots. A truck pulled up alongside me and a man stepped out. "What is it?" he asked. In a voice I recognized, to my annoyance, as the one I use when I am especially delighted with the natural world, I said, "It's a gopher turtle. I was just watching to be sure he didn't cross into the ro...", but before I could finish the man strode up to the turtle, picked him up, and hurled him into the scrub oak trees between the road and our friend Giselle's (and formerly Claude's) pasture. And then he walked back to his truck and drove away. I sighed and went to the store for a Diet Dr. Pepper and a wistful thought for my brief acquaintance with the gopher turtle.

Rodney and I had talked not long before about the contrast between our own interactions with turtles and those of our parents' generation. We've spent so much time thinking about sea turtles this summer that the topic comes up pretty often. A few weeks after my meeting with the gopher, and since I last wrote here, we ran into our friend Scott, who helps care for nesting sea turtles at our beloved Guana. Scott confirmed what we'd been hearing about the stunning numbers of nests this year, shared some other details about the science of the subject and spent some time helping educate us. I promise to tell more about this, my loves, but as I've been absent a bit and deadly boring on the topic for months I thought you deserved a break. Don't worry: it won't last. But on we go...

This almost embarrassingly flamboyant display of color was provided in late summer by a collection of bromeliads Rodney has been cultivating at the base of a palm tree. Bromeliads brush too closely to cactus for my taste, mostly. But I have a fondness for plants that work with diligence obvious even to me at their own propogation. The lovely climbing pink Seven Sisters rose we have preserved through three generations is a great example, but it's a ROSE, for crying out loud. Bromeliads? I wasn't sure. But look at this thing. It's dramatic and glamorous and sings its own song. A bit of summer under the dappled light of the oak trees.

And what ode to summer could be complete without a view of the beach? Well, at least an ode to summer in my hands...but you knew that. Here's a view of the north entrance to Guana as we found it today, scoured by a wind out of the southeast pegged by FairWeatherFriends (my preferred weather app) as being "5-10 mph". This was clearly a lie. The wind was blowing strongly enough that stinging grains of sand blasted our legs on the southbound return walk, filling in the depressions of footprints as well as dusting over shells left in by the falling tide. But the day had its own rewards. About a mile into our walk I was pulled up short by one of things we dread most to see on the beach: a baby sea turtle, motionless and beached by the tide. Flippers and all, his little body was about the size of the palm of my hand. His eyes were closed; I thought to take a photo and pulled out my phone, but Rodney was there and touched the turtle gently as he said, "Is he dead?" and to my astonishment, his EYES OPENED. The law is clear that you must stay 500 feet away from sea turtles and they are not to be interfered with, and this is a law I respect more than most. But I didn't think. I just scooped up the baby and ran into the water with him, placing him beyind the first breakers as far out as I could go. And then we watched.

It took several minutes, but his flippers moved constantly in the timeless rhythm of life with which baby sea turtles are hard-wired. He rolled in the breakers a bit, seemed to struggle, and then seemed to swim, and finally, disappeared. We watched. Finally we continued our walk, another half mile to the north and back, watching all the while for the tiny body to appear again. All the way back, we scanned the breakers and the incoming tide, watching carefully. The little turtle had disappeared, though, for good or ill. Tomorrow I'll let Scott know, and give him as a reference point the nearest nest labels. And we'll hope for the best.

So, my dears, here are some glimmers of summer as its days grow gently shorter. I hope they speak to your hearts, as they're shared from mine.

Of biblical proportions

The rain came this afternoon with comfortingly distant rumbles of thunder and a fresh, steady pouring that made it easy to drift off into a nap over my book, a Chinoa Achebe novel borrowed from Dylan. Drifting, I thought of the resurrection ferns coming back to green from their dry brown dustiness, and then was lost to thought. The rain continued.

I worked on a blog post; Rodney watched a race on television. It was preceded by a prayer, offered by a Christian minister with a fervor that astonished us both. We looked at each other and recalled moments from childhood. And those thoughts bring me to Pablo Notes. Pablo's been on a theme of childhood and other recollections associated with a collection of Bibles he's amassed. There's no religious screed here, no uncomfortable opinionating, no ranting of any kind: there is only the usual excellent writing Pablo offers, his view of youth in the Bible belt wry and as refreshing to me as a summer afternoon gin and tonic. With lime. It's writing for Writers and Readers. And the rain continues.

Enjoy.

Another dog, another potato salad

Upon careful review, it seems I can't quite keep away from certain topics here. You know what they are: sea turtles, the beach, dogs...and recently, potato salad. I promise not to mention it, at least for awhile, after this post. But since some of you very dear readers commented on the undeniable charm of potato salad when it's freshly made and the potatoes are still a bit warm, I have one more to share. But rescue before food, my dears.

Pictured is Rubin, who joined us as a foster dog today. I have a feeling he won't be here long: he is a perfectly beautiful Boxer, a dark brindle color like our old dear Sheba. (For those of you who didn't know Sheba, she helped us raise our boys in a manner reminscent of the dog Nana in "Peter Pan" and was an honored member of our family for nearly 14 years.) Rubin is a young dog, full of energy and very eager to please, and he's sure to find a forever home soon. It's always enlightening to bring a foster home and observe (and of course direct) the dynamics of the pack. This is a guy without much experience with other dogs, so it was really fun to watch our dogs exert their varying influences. Meg's timid nature challenged his ability to control dominance impulses. Ty, who brooks no nonsense, tolerated him with her usual disdain. Calvin was the hero of the day. He was the soul of balance, setting an example of calm for everyone else. We learn something new from every dog, and Rubin is no exception.

So: the potato salad and then I really DO promise to shut up about it. This is based on a Moosewood Cookbook recipe with my own touches. It's too exotic for most of my family but I love to make it when Katie is home. (Remind me to put it on the list of favorites this fall, when the whole gang is home from Africa....)

If you can get them, Yukon Gold potatoes are lovely for this salad. Peel and shop as you would for any other potato salad, seasoning with some kosher salt as they cook. If you have new potatoes or those tiny red bliss potatoes, don't peel them, just scrub them well and chop into the size you want before cooking; kosher salt still applies, of course. I'm not sure how to tell you how many potatoes you need for this; I'd use about 2-1/2 pounds but it's a salad: you can't go wrong with the proportions. You can refine next time you make the recipe, so don't let it worry you.

While the potatoes are cooking, dice an onion and a clove or two of garlic. Saute these gently in a touch of olive oil, seasoning lightly with salt and pepper. Very finely chop some fresh parsley (or other fresh herbs, as you like - a touch of fresh thyme or rosemary would be lovely) and set this aside. When the onion and garlic are translucent and fragrant and the potatoes are fork-tender and have been drained, toss together in your best big salad bowl along with the chopped herbs. Add an 8-ounce container of ricotta cheese, toss gently and serve while warm. This is one of those recipes in which a low-fat or even fat-free ricotta will do very nicely. Bon appetit!

P.S. Rodney and I noted Guana sea turtle nest N138 this weekend. If the turtles of the southern half of Guana State Park are keeping pace, there should be well over 200 sea turtle nests so far this season. In the immortal words of Lulumarie (and indeed, of us all): GO, baby sea turtles!