Heart Beat: Washington County News (Selected Columns from the Past)

Why I Teach

2007-05-02T06:30:00.000-04:00

I don’t know why I teach. It’s not that I’m chock-full of wisdom that I need to impart. Any facts I know a good reader can find in a book. And it’s not that I have a charismatic way of packaging ideas. I don’t. Sometimes I’m vibrant. Sometimes I’m a little tired.

I’ve had other jobs, and every job I ever had I cherished. Even so, I remember sitting in a small room where I typed eight hours a day for professors who were publishing scholarly articles, thinking that I’d like to trade places and try my hand at their job. So I saved money and went back to school and worked others jobs and did it. I got to stand up in front of my own classroom and write my own articles.

Since moving into academe, I’ve learned one thing about the teaching profession I didn’t pick up on typing scholarly articles. Teaching, or working in a college, involves more than a profession. It’s a way of life that consumes both heart and soul.

Last week, I stood in a circle with students from Emory & Henry College, where I work. The students were holding a vigil in honor of Virginia Tech. “This week we are all Hokies,” one of them said. That was true. At the same time, feeling their empathy for the slain students and professors, I never felt more like a Wasp.

For too many days, I’d been watching television and reading newspapers. I was shocked and appalled and a little angry at the same time I was comforted by the thought of heroes like 75-year-old professor Liviu Librescu, who saved the lives of students as he sacrificed his own. My head hurt. I wanted to shiver, and I wasn’t cold.

Listening to a student strum a guitar, I felt my head clearing to feel more like an unclouded day. I stopped thinking about the massacre. I thought instead about the week before, when I was depressed about something and a student I did not know noticed my black cloud and stopped me in the hall to joke with me.

I thought about another student who stuck his head in my office a few days later because I was coughing loudly. “Are you all right?” the student asked. “I’m okay,” I said. “Thanks for checking on me, though.”

Standing in the circle at the vigil, I saw students I had taught, students I knew from the halls and cafeteria, faculty and staff members and friends from the community who had stopped by. I saw these students and twenty years of memories of students lighting up my night like the candles across the way by the duck pond.

I watched the students hug each other and cry. When one walked up to hug me, to let me hug her, I knew it wasn’t because I had taught her something about writing. It was because she knew I had a heart, and I knew she had a soul.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 25 April 2007, p. A4. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2007.

Southern Pastorale

2007-03-14T06:47:00.000-04:00

I like frogs. I’ve liked the slimy little critters since I was knee high to a tadpole. So the other night, when it was raining cats and dogs, it was really raining frogs. Driving home, I was in hog—or should I say “frog”—heaven. I was as happy as a Nascar fan at the Sharpie 500.

I must have passed dozens, though I counted only four frogs through the slap-dash dashing of my windshield wipers. Three of these frogs were hopping as fast as they could across the road in a noble attempt bound to teach some possums or race-car drivers a thing or two.

The fourth frog, as sleek as a moss-covered stone in a slow-running creek, was not so swift. Not even slow as molasses, it had just plain stopped in its tracks, as if it were having some sort of identity crisis: deer? frog? deer? frog?

What could I do? I pulled over, turned on my blinkers, and walked into the middle of the soggy blacktop to stare at the frog that huddled there, not quite sure what it was doing in the middle of a blacktop .

I won’t tell you what I said to the frog that was marching (or not) to its own drummer. I will say that I picked it up and carried it across the road, since it seemed to be pointing southwest, perhaps to follow the trail down the hill. Then, eager to get settled by a nice fire, I got back in my car and made it safely home in the rain.

In retrospect, I sort of wish I had stayed there on the side of the road for a spell. I could have pulled out my cell phone and called up Larry Seaquist, the politician from Washington (state, that is) who’s been trying to block a Nascar race track that some people want.

It may be impractical to put one out there, but why make us folks down here look slimy in the process of fighting it?

“These people are not the kind of people you would want living next door to you,” Seaquist said. “They'd be the ones with the junky cars in the front yard and would try to slip around the law.”

You could’ve knocked me over with a goat-feather. I thought that sort of stereotyping about these parts had died and gone to you-know-where to reside with jokes about the farmer’s daughter.

Although I’ve never been to a race, and don’t plan to, and even think the whole race thing (frog-racing excluded) feels like an odd use of natural resources, I have lived amongst Nascar fans for fifty years. Nascar fans are regular folks, like me—and like you.

On the side of the road, rain falling, I might have been able to get some ribbiting vocals to accompany me in an appeal to Seaquist and the like to broaden their minds about southerners and northerners too. We’re all human together, warts and all.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 7 March 2007, p. A4. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2007.

Who Wrote the Book of Love?

2007-02-21T06:37:00.000-05:00

Wikipedia, who else?

If you haven’t turned to the pages of the largest reference database on the Internet, on the Web since 2001, let me cite Wikipedia’s definition of itself: “Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based, free content encyclopedia project.” The important thing to remember is that “Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world.”

Almost anybody with access to the Internet can edit an entry in this massive encyclopedia, and even add something. You would think that free access would invite gremlins, and it does. That’s the quirky thing about Wikipedia. Readers can be misled if they get to a site that has not been back-read yet by one of the thousands of volunteers who check entries. Take “love,” for example.

Appointing myself a world-renowned expert on “love,” I decided to visit that entry in honor of Valentine’s Day.

Here’s how Wikipedia opened its entry Sunday: “Love is any of a number of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection or profound oneness. Depending on context, love can have a wide variety of intended meanings. It is commonly conceived of romantically, as a deep, ineffable feeling of intense and tender attraction shared in passionate or intimate interpersonal and sexual relationships. Love can also be conceived of as Platonic love, religious love, familial love, and, more casually, anything considered strongly pleasurable, desirable, or preferred, including activities and foods.”

I fiddled with that paragraph and changed a few things, including the third sentence: “Romantic love is seen as a deep, ineffable feeling of intense and tender attraction shared in passionate or intimate interpersonal and sexual relationships.” I also repaired the wording of the last sentence.

After previewing my handiwork, I checked a box indicating “minor edit” and published my work. Then I delved back into the entry to see if I could find anything a little more profound to say. Under the subheading “Religious views,” there was an appeal for more challenging revisions: “The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject.”

Talk about a daunting task. Do I have a worldwide view of the subject? I thought I did until I got my first ever case of writer’s block trying to add something here, anything, for more balance. The best I could do was mention how “The Bhagavad-Gita,” a sacred Hindu text, talks about how love evolves from selflessness. I wanted to take the time to add a reference to other sacred texts but just couldn’t. Surely there is somebody more qualified than I who can do that. You, maybe? Your grandmother?

My work wasn’t finished. Would you believe it? A gremlin was playing with the entry while I was writing (and thinking profoundly). By the time I posted my last addition, “love” had turned into “lovers.” What could I do? I moved the entry back to where it belonged. It may or may not be there today. Sometimes you may have to search for love.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 14 February 2007, p. A4. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2007.

Reading Readiness

2006-08-08T18:12:00.000-04:00

As I dip my paddle in and out of the water of the French Broad, I study patterns of light and ripples. The current creates small riffles around the rocks. I stare at these riffles as if they will tell me something I need to know.

It occurs to me that I am learning to read the water, just as I know that sailors can read the sky. Is this what my great-grandmother did so readily the times she crossed the more southern Congaree River, traveling from up country to town in a canoe?

I study the patterns on the surface of the water. Although I have kayaked this river before, this time I find myself needing to pay more attention. The water level is lower, the rocks higher. The wind is up, and rain is falling.

A river is never the same twice, I am thinking. What was a leisurely float down a calm path of water last time is now an exhilarating workout. It’s not especially white water, not exactly, but it’s white enough for me. Am I ready?

“You’re a perceptive person,” I tell myself. “You can figure this out.” I think of journalist Hunter S. Thompson, who popularized a Native American proverb: “Call on God, but row away from the rocks.”

Soon I learn to avoid the patches of water that V out like wings of phantom wet birds. Once I don’t, and my kayak ends up skimming a rock where I use the paddle to push the kayak off and out. It’s not so hard being stuck between a rock and a soft place.

I paddle. Sometimes when I see a stretch of riffles crossing the entire stream, I imagine that I am about to tumble down a fall that is longer than the two-inch drop that is there in front of me. Other times, I let my attention wander and drift some, watching the birds fly from limb to limb on trees that bind the river.

The sun falls differently on water when a rock is closer to the surface. What I see then has no analogy to the alphabet I know, yet perhaps if I do this often enough, spend more time in the water, I will learn all the signs that make up the alphabet of a river.

When I am in a river, I think I want to be in one again, soon. Too much time passes before I find myself back between the pages of a book of water. Although I love the pace of a river, I am caught between living in the moment and trying to make sense of my adventure with the intellectual apparatus that serves me on land.

Now I begin to wonder how my experience reading signs on a river relates to children who are about to start school. Do children who learn to read nature, from three-leafed plants to riffles, glide into books as energetically as I am gliding in my kayak?

I imagine.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 1 August 2006, p. A4. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2006.

Bedtime Story

2006-06-14T08:57:00.000-04:00

You know it’s summer when the variegated pansies that have colored your doorstep all winter start to droop and bright petunias move in next to them. The purple odor of a full-blown petunia spritzes away musty odors as the last leaves of autumn are swept from crevices in porches ready for chairs and visitors.

You know it’s summer when a house finch flies by every few minutes with something in its mouth, and you wonder what tiny threads and bits of hair you have deliberately swept from the house into the yard will end up in the nests they think they are hiding from you in the eaves of the house.

You know it’s summer when your cat doesn’t want to come in at night, and when it drags itself in after an evening in the woods it sleeps for twelve hours straight.

You know it’s summer when you have to lock the dog in so it won’t run out the cat door and chase raccoons that come to forage on your porch. When the pale possum tiptoes by later to eat the remains of some overripe, store-bought berries you have set out for the critters, you listen for the sound of your dog’s breathing.

You know it’s summer when the bats return, and you spend a modest portion of each day sweeping up after them, wondering if they are earning their keep by eating enough insects to warrant a broom with their name on it.

You know it’s summer when your neighbor’s grass looks a little greener and you start to compare notes. You may not be too fond of the spongy patches where moles have constructed lacy networks to travel through easily, and to elude your cat, but you always breathe a sigh of relief when the cat drops a mole at your feet and it’s still alive, ready to be rescued so it can hurry back home.

You know it’s summer when the tomatoes in your garden start bearing fruit, and the basil planted in every other spare pot is starting to sprout. Competing with the jeweled colors of the nasturtium planted in all the rest of the pots, the basil promises to catch up in time to orchestrate its flavors with the succulence of the tomatoes.

You know it’s summer when poison ivy eyes you, your toes, and every inch of skin no longer covered by practical winter clothing. The elements threaten to make you itch as much as the bee balm peeking up next to the healthiest patch of poison ivy promises to bring hummingbirds and months of smiles.

You know it’s summer when the box turtles crawl out of their hiding places and crawl through the yard on their way to somewhere else close by.

You know it’s summer when you take one look at your daylilies and wonder when you will separate them again or if you can convince your friends and neighbors to come mine your yard for perennials so you won’t have to hazard poison ivy or too much hard work in the midst of your lazy summer.

You know it’s summer when the butterfly bush that is taller than any lilac in the yard is sprouting green leaves and purple buds that will attract butterflies from miles around. Across the yard, a yellow butterfly bush is growing up, not as hardy and not as lush, but just as intent on asserting its rights.

You know it’s summer when your faith in a reluctant fig tree returns tenfold and you know, just know, that it will bear brown fruit this year.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 7 June 2006, p. A4. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2006.

When All Is Said and Done

2006-05-17T09:29:00.000-04:00

I guess I’ll sound morbid if I mention that I wrote my mother’s obituary last week, and she’s not even dead. This is the second time I’ve done it. By the time I actually need to turn one in, since she’s not ready to go, I may get it right. I may be able to capture the essence of this woman in just a few words.

It’s not morbid to think ahead. When one of my brothers died, my father dictated his obituary to me in a hotel room near the hospital where we had left my brother moments before. Listening to my father and then dictating the words over the phone to the newspaper were not the easiest chores I ever accomplished.

When my father died, I was called upon to write his obituary, although this time I could email it rather than call it in. Doing that, and seeing my words in print, I learned that in times of stress I make mistakes. My father wrote freelance articles for Southern Florist and Nurseryman. In the distraction of my grief, I wrote down Southern Living. Neither magazine looked me up to chastise me, but I chastised myself.

When my mother dies, I will be prepared. I won’t have to dry my eyes or cry through the composition of her death notice. I’ll just go to my trusty computer and call up the obituary, which I have in a neatly organized file along with a photograph of her looking as beautiful as she did the day I was born.

As much as I got my love of nature and my devotion to a messy but lively kitchen, I also got a morbid streak from my mother. I guess losing a sister at an early age made her precocious that way. Aside from writing too many poems, perhaps, about death, I have benefited from her lessons.

Some parents hide their children from death. Others help them to see that it is part of life. When I was four, my little green turtle died. What my mother did was help me to shape a coffin out of tin foil. Her nimble fingers made a sparkling but utilitarian coffin for the turtle, which we laid to rest under an azalea.

Now I like to read obituaries and not just to look for tips to jazz up my own. There are so many ways to say the same thing. Families work hard to capture the special memory of a loved one. Even clichés sound good.

When Martha Washington, the first First Lady, passed on, her notice in the American Mercury said something profound: “To those amiable and Christian virtues, which adorn the female character, she added dignity of manners, superiority of understanding, a mind intelligent and elevated.” What better definition of a good woman or a good mother?

My obituary for my mother, by contrast, is long winded. I try to say too much in too few words and end up a little clumsy. Perhaps one day I will be able to whittle it down. Just how important is it anyway to let people know how many times she volunteered in her children’s schools or how much she loved to garden?

My mother didn’t just teach me how to bury my critters. She quoted Shakespeare. Once she said she wanted this on her tombstone: “From her fair and unpolluted flesh, may violets spring.” That’s what Hamlet said when he found Ophelia. Right now my yard is sprinkled with violets. Lilacs and azaleas are lush with blooms. They remind me that death has no dominion.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 10 May 2006, p. A4. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2006.

Easter Parade Down Memory Lane

2006-04-19T09:41:00.000-04:00

When I was two, my Aunt Nell shamed my mother Audrey into making me a dress. The second child, after a boy, I was accustomed to running around in hand-me-down t-shirts and cloth diapers, if not jeans. My hair was cut boy-short, too, though not as short as my brother’s.

Aunt Nell was nothing if not persuasive. Easter Sunday, 1958, my mother washed me and slicked my hair back with VO-5 before slipping on a dress stitched in her spare time while waiting for my brother Charles, who was born just before Easter, to be born. I have a photograph my father took of me, too, wearing my new dress and holding an Easter basket. I also wore a hat.

The dress, tucked away with mementos of the past, has yellowed some with age, but it is just as beautiful. No more than 18 inches long, from bodice to skirt, and eight inches wide at the waist, this dress looks like a doll’s dress. I guess it was, to reveal the nickname my big brother John gave me: Baby Doll. It’s hard to believe a grownup was ever that little.

Cotton organza, this Easter dress was the palest blue that has now faded into white. Only the pale robin egg blue cotton stitches hint at the original color of a dress that was worn that Sunday and time and time again as I discovered what it felt like to whirl around in a skirt, even in mud puddles.

The bodice has a round yoke with nylon lace stitched by hand. Like the hem, it has neat stitches that my mother’s mother taught her to make. The pin-tucked bodice reaches a tightly gathered skirt with loops for holding a ribbon. And if this swirl of a skirt is not enough, there’s the attached underskirt that is more tightly gathered, with a handmade ruffle on the bottom. Four snaps line the back of the dress, snaps also stitched in blue thread.

I know that my mother, like so many mothers back then, starched and ironed until the skirt stood out. In the Easter photograph, the skirt is perched over my little tomboy feet wearing Mary Janes. There is another photograph of me in the dress later that year, barefoot and dirty at the town park, with the dress hanging loose in the summer humidity.

This Easter dress was the first in a long parade of dresses my mother began stitching for me to wear on Easter and to school. Looking at what remains of her handiwork is like visiting a museum of fabrics. From the wispy organza in that first dress to the sturdy pique that lines a hat she made to go with another Easter dress, my dresses say a lot about cotton.

If organza is a sheer fabric, pique is thicker. With tightly woven threads that fall in parallel raised lines, it puckers like a mouth that has sucked on too many jelly beans. My handmade Easter bonnet, circa 1964, that is lined in pique is a blue-green plaid on the outside. This hat with its tailored ruffle still fits, but it doesn’t quite go with my current attire.

In 1967, my mother stitched a pink dotted Swiss dress lined in white satin, A-line with puffed sleeves. I still have it. Although it looks as much like a doll’s dress as the organza dress does, because I was a skinny girl, I remember wearing this muslin dress with the flocked dots and thinking that I looked like Twiggy, the world’s first supermodel. In reality, I looked like a little girl.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 12 April 2006, p. A4. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2006.

The Things They Gave Up

2006-03-22T09:34:00.000-05:00

No offense to Cpl. Pat Tillman, 27, who gave up a 3.6 million NFL contract to become an Army Ranger after September 11, 2001, but I’m tired of hearing about what he gave up.

Not everybody will survive a war. Lt. Commander William H. Ayers of the U.S. Navy said after Desert Storm, “In every conflict there are losses imposed by the enemy.” Conversely, some losses like Tillman’s are imposed through “friendly fire” or fratricide. All losses are sad, even tragic.

When Tillman abandoned his football jersey to wear the uniform of a soldier, he didn’t think about what he was giving up. He thought about what he was gaining. Now although four separate investigations have determined that Tillman was shot accidentally by a member of his unit, investigators are considering the possibility of charges of negligent homicide. I am cynical enough to think that Tillman’s death is getting a closer examination because of who he was and what he was worth.

But is the life of an athlete worth millions any more precious than the life of a man like Spc. Donald Samuel Oaks, 20, of Erie, Pennsylvania, who joined the army to get money for college only to be killed by friendly fire in Iraq? Oak, who was not likely ever to be worth millions, gave up a loving family and the promise of higher education.

Then there’s Master Sgt. Jefferson Donald Davis, 39, from Clarkesville, Tennessee, killed when a 2,000-pound satellite-guided bomb from a U.S.-guided B-52 missed a target north of Kandahar. What did this career soldier give up? The Elizabethton native gave up his wife and three children.

Let’s not forget Cpl. Roberto Abad, Cmdr. Joseph Acevedo, Sgt. 1st Class Ramon A. Acevedoaponte, Sgt. Michael D. Acklin II, Spc. Genaro Acosta Pfc., Steven Acosta, and Capt. James F. Adamouski—to name just a few from the alphabetical list of more than 2,000 men and women who have died in the Middle East from both enemy fire and friendly fire. They gave up their lives, their dreams, their dedicated service to a country at war.

Cpl. Andrew Kemple, 23, of Cambridge, Minnesota, was killed last month when his Humvee was attacked in Tikrit, Iraq. What did he give up? He gave up the privilege of being buried in peace as zealots besieged his family at his funeral. These hecklers, members of a growing Baptist congregation in Topeka, Kansas, who picket military funerals, praise God for killing American soldiers. Why? Because our troops are fighting for a country that tolerates homosexuality.

Westboro Baptist Church, a self-proclaimed Primitive Baptist Church that is not affiliated with any Baptist denomination that we know, is thankful for any killing reported, friendly or otherwise. With its protests and campaigns, it is thriving on the losses that the families of men and women serving in the Middle East are suffering. Contrary to what the Westboro Baptist Church professes, though, it’s not God that’s “spreading these dead bodies all across the war zone.”

Talented Pfc. Karina Lau, 20, of Livingston, California, won a four-year music scholarship to the University of the Pacific. Like Cpl. Tillman, shortly after September 11, 2001, she felt compelled to leave college to serve her country. In 2003, on board a helicopter that was shot down by insurgents moments after taking off to transport Lau to the airport to make connections to visit family, she gave up her life too.

Cpl. Tillman would be the first to renounce the publicity that’s following his ghost around like a vulture. I think he’d remind us that war doesn’t discriminate, and we shouldn’t either.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 15 March 2006, p. A4. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2006.

My Earthy Valentine

2006-02-22T08:49:00.000-05:00

The other afternoon, I hiked for miles on an ocean floor. The sky was beautiful. Every now and then, a bird would fly by. Did my feet get wet? Not very. I managed to navigate around the patches of snow on the trail that took me to Sandia Mountain’s highest peak, which is 10,678 feet. There I took a deep breath and relished the fresh air.

That mountain I walked on in New Mexico is 10,000 feet above sea level. When I stood on its crest and looked at the terrain below, I felt like I was on top of the world when in fact I was caught in a time warp. The crest is 1.3 billion years old, which is why there are no fish anymore.

What one finds instead is limestone with fossils, evidence of marine life that existed on our continent a long time ago. I’m not sure if “our continent” is quite the right phrase, though, since the continent we live on looks nothing like the one that was here millions of years ago when so much of our world was not yet born.

About 250 million years ago, the water evaporated and trees began to grow. Reptiles appeared, dinosaurs studied today by schoolchildren in New Mexico, just as schoolchildren in Saltville, our neighbor in Smyth County, learn about the earth’s changing patterns with Saltville’s fossils from the late Pleistocene Epoch, which began to fade about 11,000 years ago.

Our very own wooly mammoth went extinct when its habitat began to change. To survive, this creature needed more snow than we’ve had this winter. It depended on a tundra diet. It depended on ice, just as the Cretaceous hadrosaur depended on water.

The Virginia Standards of Learning for Science invite children to think about dinosaurs and miscellaneous extinct creatures as early as elementary school. Children learn all kinds of things in order to understand “the concept that science can provide explanations about nature, can predict potential consequences of actions, but cannot be used to answer all questions.”

I like how the Standards remind schools to address how “rocks and fossils from many different geologic periods and epochs are found in Virginia.” If I had gone to school during the days of standards-based testing, perhaps I would have learned as much about geology as I did this past week. I’m ashamed to say that I never knew that so much of our continent had been under an ocean. I knew a good bit had been, but I had never managed to learn just how much.

After I rode the world’s longest aerial tram ride back down the mountain, I saw a bluebird fly by, a mountain bluebird. It wasn’t anything like a fish, but it did have something in common with dinosaurs. Some people think that birds are first cousins to avian dinosaurs, and they speculate about what helped these creatures manage to survive and evolve over time while other dinosaurs like the hardrosaur were becoming extinct.

Returning home, I watched more mountains move closer to me as my plane moved towards Tri-Cities. Centuries of wind and rain have worn our mountains down to half the size of the Sandia Mountains, which emerged about 25 million years ago. Born about 680 million years ago, our mountains are very old.

Marine fossils have been found here too. Next time I go hiking, I’m going to think about how I’m as close to the ocean as I was when I grew up on the coast of North Carolina—just a few million years short of getting my feet wet.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 15 February 2006, p. A4. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2005.

The Incredible, Edible . . . Acorn

2005-11-16T08:46:00.000-05:00

My affection for them started when I sent my son out to pick up the acorns that had fallen into my winter garden, threatening what was left of what the rabbits hadn’t eaten. We had to remove them before roots sprouted and took hold.

Guy picked up a thousand the first afternoon, and it didn’t take long. Those acorns looked so autumnal in their flowerpot that I asked him not to toss them into the woods as first advised. “Let’s save them for the squirrels,” I said. “When it snows this winter, they’ll have a treat.”

So there is a pot full of acorns by my front door, poised and waiting for the dead of winter. By the dead of winter, though, there may well be more buckets of acorns here, there, and everywhere. Now when I see a handful, I want to pick it up and start counting yet again. Who doesn’t love a challenge? Maybe Guy and I between us can pick up 10,000 acorns. If we can do that, why stop?

Looking at the first pot of acorns, I began to uncover a dim memory from grade school, something about acorn flour. To get in touch with my inner child, I consulted today’s encyclopedia, the Internet, to see what I might have done so long ago with acorns pillaged from my yard and never returned to the squirrels.

Sure enough, I found a recipe for acorn flour, a popular project in the schools. The first thing you have to do is leach them to remove a taste bitter to humans (not squirrels).

The Maidu tribe did this by pouring water over them a number of times in a hole in the ground covered with pine straw. Rain would work, I bet. Short of the old-fashioned strategy, modern recipes suggest that you can boil them until the shells are soft, pick them open, and then roast the innards in a slow oven before grinding them into flour for muffins or whatever suits your fancy.

Acorns are indeed nutritious. If you’re looking for a protein-enriched carb with a low glycemic index, think acorn. If you keep pigs, you can fatten them up with acorns and wild berries, according to southern folklore. If you don’t keep pigs, maybe a guinea pig could enjoy the occasional acorn, if your squirrels can spare them. Another possibility is acorn juice, a concoction revered in 17th century England for medicinal purposes.

By the time you’ve harvested 50,000 or more, though, you should shift some of the burden from food items to material culture. If people get tired of fruitcakes, just imagine how tired your friends (and animals) will get of acorn-laden goodies. With acorns to spare, turn your hand to craft-making. Why shop when the materials you need are in your yard?

If ancient Romans could enjoy adorning themselves with acorn necklaces, modern-day Virginians could too. I’d wear one. Another idea is the worry acorn. Why carry a worry stone when an acorn, said to ease the aging process, is lighter? Although I can imagine the functionality of a decorative acorn abacus, I know from experience that an acorn makes a great cat toy.

If none of the above interests you, just think acorns. Ralph Waldo Emerson pondered the acorn to say, “The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” It’s true. My pot of 1,000 acorns has the potential to grow into 1,000 oak trees. Multiply that! It’s awesome to think that Guy found the first 1,000 in a space of less than five square feet. What a mighty oak.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 9 November 2005, p. A4. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2005.

Tour d'Emory

2005-07-27T20:15:00.000-04:00

Years from now, when my grandchildren ask me to recount the story about the time I competed in the first Tour d’Emory, I will say, “The air smelled like honey.” I may even get on a bike and lead them down the same country roads so they can strive to reach not the Arc de Triomphe but the closest thing Emory has to it, Emory Gates.

To be fair, I will disclose that I was the only person to participate in this forty-minute race. After all, I was looking to achieve something halfway to personal best, not the international stardom for which professional athletes like Lance Armstrong train. My simple goal after getting on a racing bike for the first time in almost twenty years was to survive a loop of about four miles.

I did it, and I have my son to thank. Last month, you see, Guy went down the basement and emerged with my old Peugeot, a lean racing bike I had abandoned for a mountain bike and baby carrier some years ago. Since Guy is almost 15, he has outgrown several bicycles along with the baby carrier. Why not fix the Peugeot? I said I would, as long as he (a) kept to his mountain bike for rougher cycling adventures and (b) let me use the Peugeot too.

I bought this green bike in 1979 in a shop in Savannah, where I spent the summer working and riding through the old streets when I had the time. While I had grown from one tricycle or bike to another since the age of four, the Peugeot was the best bike so far. It was sublime. When I left Savannah, I knew I had found a bike that I could love.

How can I count the ways I remember my Peugeot? I can’t. I can mention fall afternoons on maze-like roads where I rode past cornfields and peach orchards until I had to smile. I remember getting off work at the Athens Observer and cycling home late at night when the fall air smelled of tea olive.

Until I moved here and bought my first car, the Peugeot was both thrilling and practical. Would it still be? Despite its years in isolation while I opted for the convenience of clunky cars and mountain bikes, the old Peugeot was in pretty good shape, needing only a tune-up and new chain. Guy wanted a padded seat, so I sprang for that as well, keeping the vintage seat imprinted with “Made in France.” Sentimental, I’m trying to figure out what would be better: hood ornament for the Sentra or paperweight?

When I left home on the last day of the Tour de France for my own petite Tour d’Emory, I set out on a long stretch of road being resurfaced. I could have waited a week to avoid loose gravel, I guess, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to get out and go. Go I did—past chicory and Queen Anne’s Lace, past cows and purple thistle, past dogs in pens that barked encouragement as they admired my freedom when I whizzed onto blacktop at last.

Okay, I did stop five times to catch my breath. Some of the hills around here are awesome. I could have shifted gears, I know, only I was so rusty I was afraid I’d do something wrong and the chain would fall off, writhing like a snake at my feet. Would I remember how to put it back on? You know what they say about riding a bike? At least I’ll never forget that.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 27 July 2005, p. A4. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2005.

William Wise, 54

2005-07-20T20:12:00.000-04:00

“William Wise, 54,” is all it ever says. I know because I check CNN daily to see if a biographical sketch has appeared next to the man with the scruffy beard and glasses. I mean the man sandwiched between Philip Stuart Russell, 28, from Kennington and Gladys Wundowa, 51.

According to CNN, Gladys Wundowa, mother of two sons, “had finished a morning shift as a cleaner in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in University College London, part of the University of London, and was on her way to a course in Shoreditch, east London.”

“William Wise, 54, was thought to have been travelling on the Number 30 to King's Cross,” reports say. King's Cross Station, notes its brochure, is “the London terminus for the east coast main line.” Network Rail adds, “The station was opened in 1852 and the station roof, the largest at the time, was supposedly modeled on the riding school of the Czars of Moscow.”

Here’s another bit of trivia for the curious traveler looking up the schedules for trains leaving from King’s Cross, a station through which over forty million pass annually: “It is also rumoured that Queen Boudicaa is buried beneath platform 8.” Before Queen Boudicaa committed suicide around 60 AD to avoid defeat by the Romans, this widow of Prasutagus, King of the Iceni, rallied native Celts against the Roman interlopers after they beat her and raped her daughters.

More is known about Queen Boudicaa than William Wise, who died in an explosion in Tavistock Square in London on the Number 30 bus Thursday, July 7. The Scotsman reports initially that his address is not known. Matthew Beard of The Belfast Telegraph says, “He was last heard from at 9:30 AM on the day of the bombing, travelling on a bus from Euston towards King's Cross station.”

Who heard from William Wise at 9:30? Somebody knows that he got on a bus, black briefcase in hand. A tall, bespectacled man, he wore a beige suit and black shoes the day of the bombing. Reports say that he was also wearing a watch and an Aries ram medallion on a silver chain.

What the newspapers cannot tell me, I find in an online forum called “Liberty Unites.” A few people have posted reminiscences regarding William Wise, 54. Tony, who knew him through work, writes, “He was a dignified, sensitive, and supremely intelligent man. I remember he was kind to me when I lost my father.” Jonathan Stanford, who also knew William Wise through work, says, “He was an ever cheerful member of the team who was always ready to help out. I am so sorry to hear he has gone.” The Faulkners remark that he was “a very good neighbour.”

The name “William” has a rich tradition in England. Derived from the Germanic “Wilhelm,” it combines words that signify “will” and “protection.” Without the Norman Invasion, which happened some years after the Romans had their turn, the name would have never made it to Great Britain.

From commentator Peter Faris, I learn that there is a reason CNN shows only a photograph with a name. “Police say,” Faris writes, “his family asked that no other details about him should be released.” It’s appropriate to seek privacy in the face of a very public tragedy. What can one paragraph say to capture the life of one man?

Queen Boudicaa is remembered as a great motivational speaker. Two thousand years from now, she will still epitomize nationalist fervor. I wonder if any history books will mention that William Surtees Wise, 54, was intelligent and kind.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 20 July 2005, p. A4. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2005.

A Tree as Lovely as a Poem

2005-04-27T20:07:00.000-04:00

All my life, I listened to people talk about the grandeur of the Red Bud. I longed to see what they were talking about, but this tree that heralds the start of spring just wasn’t in my vista. Like a Carolina Parakeet my father swore he saw deep in a forest when everybody else was claiming the bird was extinct, the Red Bud seemed just as mythical. Each spring, I’d look up and down the highways, in front yards and back, upside down and sideways. I never saw a Red Bud.

I was, however, familiar with the Judas tree, a tree that blooms up and down our roads just as it grows all over my hometown. A striking tree with fuchsia-colored flowers, it always welcomes me when I get a chance to go home in early spring since it blooms down South before it blooms here. Called the Judas tree because its stock is as old as the Bible, it is said to bloom with blush-colored reminders of a betrayer’s shame. At least that’s the folklore. All I know is that it’s a remarkable sight when I head to South Carolina to get a break from winter.

This year, when people around here started talking about the Red Bud, a tree that seemed to be blooming coast to coast without sharing any of its good tidings with me, I began to feel frustrated. I had been South for Easter, and I had gloried in the Judas tree, but that was not enough anymore. Even when I was visiting California, I overheard people talking about how the Red Bud was just beginning to bud. Where? I saw some mighty Redwood trees out there, as well as the Eucalyptus trees that have invited contoversy, but I didn’t see a Red Bud. The Red Bud was turning into my own elusive parakeet.

Spring has enough color to occupy my senses, so much color that I guess I should not have lamented my inability to spy a Red Bud sprouting here or there. Alas, I did. I realized that I couldn’t go another spring without finding one of these trees, even if it meant I had to ask somebody to take me by the hand down the secret path that leads to Red Buds.

Meanwhile, I looked at the forsythia shimmering gold and green. I watched the dogwood blossoms begin to emerge. Driving down country roads, I was struck by the colorful buds of that old-fashioned favorite, the Judas tree. I had to admit that it seemed hard to believe that a tree alleged to be synonymous with spring could be even more divine than this one.

One morning I found myself at the Emory Post Office, that repository of neighborhood wisdom. Some people were talking about that elusive Red Bud and how beautiful it was this year. Evidently, I was the only person in the tri-state area not to have seen one yet. Then somebody remarked that it seems strange to call a tree with pink flowers a Red Bud, and something clicked. “Is a Red Bud a Judas Tree?” I asked. Nobody knew.

I do now. If John A. Mitchell was the last man in South Carolina to see its last parakeet, I guess my claim to naturalist fame is I’m the last person in Washington County—if not the world—to learn that the elusive tree I pined after for so many years was always there, right in front of my eyes. Cercis canadensis. Judas tree. Red Bud. I’m glad this tree that ushers spring in is nowhere near to extinct.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 27 April 2005, p. A4. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2005.

Kiss Me, I'm Irish

2005-03-30T21:01:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day, a day when fountains run green and people all over the country find ways to be festive. This Irish-American tradition was introduced in 1737, in Boston, and people in America have been using the day ever since as an excuse to hope for spring, have some fun, and display ethnic pride—if not to party as if there is no tomorrow. Children will wear green to school or, if their Protestant parents want to make a statement, orange.

I’m not sure what I’ll wear, but I will reflect on what it means to be Irish in America. Some historians think that the Irish, along with other despised ethnic groups in our country, helped show others how to endure prejudice and hatred while opening the doors for future generations of immigrants. It’s so ironic, and so American, that the Irish who gave us St. Patrick’s Day are the same people others once wanted to ship back home or close our borders to.

“Mitchell” is an Irish name, sort of, but my ancestors slipped in before the anti-Irish sentiment was so strong. First, some Vikings settled in France and took the name Michel. Then, for various reasons, they travelled to Great Britain, moving from England to Scotland to Ireland. By the time they ended up packing their name in trunks to carry across the Atlantic Ocean, my Norman ancestors were called Irish. That was a long time ago.

What started out as Michel ended up as Mitchel in colonial America. A few Mitchels who had found their way to Pennsylvania from Ireland meandered down the east coast to a rural community in South Carolina, where my father’s by now Anglican forebears settled down to farm around 1740. Not too many decades would pass before somebody would decide to anglicize “Mitchel,” too, and add a second “l.”

It doesn’t surprise me that the “l” was added during a time in our country when anti-Irish sentiments began to flair. A rise in Irish emigration in the nineteenth century made too many snobby citizens nervous. Prejudice thus was born of the fear that Irish people leaving a famine-torn land, ready to live in relative squalor and work for almost nothing, would take over all the menial jobs and build too many Catholic churches.

My husband’s father, Willie Love, decided to come to America from Ireland in the first part of the twentieth century. By now, the “Help Wanted: No Irish Need Apply” signs were not so prevalent, though they did still exist. He was able to find work in a factory and have a good life. In the true spirit of the new country, this Anglican Irishman married a Catholic Irish-American. America is nothing if not a melting pot.

It is interesting, I think, to realize that the name Love that my son carries, along with Mitchell, also originated in France, where it was once “Loef” and meant “wolf.” The name turned into “Love” in Great Britain, with the Loves following the pattern so many did in those times, moving from one country to another, just as the Mitchels did, to find a good home, or at least a country that would tolerate them or their religion.

There was a time when the Irish were called “white negroes.” Despite prejudice, the Irish, Catholics and Protestants alike, persevered. Catholics continued to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, a day set aside to commemorate a Roman-Scotsman enslaved by the Irish who later helped Rome to Christianize Ireland. Nineteenth-century cartoonist Thomas Nast depicted Americans celebrating St. Patrick’s Day as apes. We’ve come a long way.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 16 March 2005, p. A4. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2005.

Peace, Be Still

2005-02-09T19:15:00.001-05:00

Now that President Bush has planted the flag of liberty in the Middle East, I’m wondering if I should take down the last of my Christmas decorations. We did remove the red, white, and blue lights from our porch in early January. Gondola Santa returned to the basement shortly thereafter. But what about that ceramic dove hanging on the front door below a word that gets its best press at Christmastime? I mean “peace.” Should “peace” go back into its box for yet another year?

Whenever I drive to Abingdon on I-81, I pause to look at our sign near Exit 19: “Peace, Be Still.” It’s a profound sign that works its message year-round. How many of us drive past that icon and pause to reflect or pray or find a quiet moment within the pace (or peace) of the car as it travels down the road (or, dare I say, life’s highway)? It’s nice to see this reminder outdoors, not just in a church. Perhaps we need more of these signs planted, like the flag of liberty, up and down highways between communities like ours and our nation’s capitol.

Shortly after he was inaugurated for his second term in office, President Bush asked for billions of dollars to extend the war effort, or whatever you want to call it, in Iraq and Afghanistan—leading the expenditures there to go even higher than what seems astronomical. As soon as I read that in the news, I thought of an old poster a teacher I know hangs in his office: “What if the schools got all the money they needed and the military had to have a bake sale to build a bomb?” I thought of the troops in Iraq risking their lives, or giving them.

I’m not naïve. I know that money is fungible. Who’s to say that if we spent less money on military matters, we’d shift things around so all my favorite causes were addressed? Perhaps I would still have to worry about resources and health care for the elderly, educational opportunities across our nation, and assaults on the environment here and abroad. Perhaps the extra windfall would be sent into outer space. Perhaps soldiers in the Middle East would still have to write home to ask for better food to eat, insect spray, and chapstick.

When will our troops come home? Even with Iraq completing the election, an election that cost much more in human life than in dollars or goodwill, I’m not sure Congress will push President Bush to set a deadline for the withdrawal of our overdrawn troops. Secretary of State Rice says troops will stay until Iraq can take care of its own security. Having grown up alongside the conflict in Vietnam, I know not to hold my breath. When war begins to feel like peace, and peacekeeping feels war-like, I wish every day could be as hopeful as Christmas.

As the men and women serving in the Middle East do get to come home to their families, there will be others ready to replace them. Enrollment in many high school ROTC programs has increased. The No Child Left Behind Act grants military recruiters access to personal contact information. College costs are escalating, and military recruitment packages are enticing to young people with aspirations. As one young woman in Boston reported to The Enterprise, a Boston paper, last week, “I decided it was better for me to fight for my country than not do anything.” Peace, be still. I wish, within our own land of liberty, she felt she had more than two choices.

A Winter's Tale

2005-02-02T10:44:00.000-05:00

It was a dark and stormy night. Well, it was dark. It would soon be stormy. Winter was definitely visiting these hills. And where was I? I was on a winding road in my car, returning from yoga practice, when I perceived an almost imperceptible movement out of the corner of my left eye.

Let me pause in my tale. Being human, I have the ability to embroider on the truth. While it sounds good to say that it was almost stormy, I added that detail for effect. Truth be told, it was a calm night, cold but clear. It would soon be stormy, though not that night, not for several days. In other words, I am setting you up, dear reader, to feel sympathy.

Lo and behold, it was a kitten, a tiny kitten on the edge of the road. What could I do? I pulled the car over just in time to avoid annoying two trucks behind me with an abrupt stop. Braking and turning on my emergency blinkers, I got out of the car and moved to the kitten. It came to me, and it brought another. What can I say? I took both of these kittens into my arms, and they drove home in my lap.

Another thing about being human is that I can tell a story. I can feel the need to share my story. Let me add, as if I need to, that the kittens were homeless. They were small, each little more than a pound. They were sick, too, their eyes red and pus filled. One of them sounded as if it had consumption. I thought of all the cats abandoned to the fate of winter. Not enough end up in shelter or homes. Some die on their own on the side of the road or from disease. Would the cat with the cough, by now named Charles, have to die?

Charles and Ray-Ray arrived at my house, as yet unnamed, to find a host of friendly human and animal faces. They drank a bowl of goat milk, moved into a shoebox, and learned to eat food and climb stairs. They also acquired names, began playing on the wood by the woodstove, and emitted two distinctive personalities as they enjoyed the warmth of a cozy house in the midst of winter—especially when the storm did come.

One thing about cats is that I don’t understand their language entirely. I’m not sure that if I did these two would be interested in telling me the story of how they came to be on the side of a country road in the midst of winter. All that is in the past. What counts for them is the present as they weave themselves into the fabric of the life of an ordinary human family with a soft spot for homeless animals. Even so, I have to wonder how these kittens came so close to perishing. Being human, I’m afraid I know.

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals knows winter is rough on creatures. It gives us all kinds of advice for all seasons. You’d think we could comply, given our sophisticated human brains. You’d think we’d know better than to let animals breed indiscriminately. You’d think we wouldn’t abandon animals we can’t take care of.

However they ended up as lost and and lonely hitchhikers, our two new kittens are no longer cold. Charles and Ray-Ray will take their medicine, get their shots, and spend the rest of their lives acting like cats. Their story will have a happy ending.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 26 January 2005, p. A4. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2005.

Why We Need MLK Day

2005-01-19T09:39:00.000-05:00

Anticipating the holiday, I type “Martin Luther King” into Google and get a list of resources (5,280,000, to be exact). The first link takes me to the MLK Papers Project at Stanford University. The second accesses a resource from the Seattle Times. Third, I click on a link to The King Center in Atlanta. The server for this center is out of service. I am drawn to the next link in line, one entitled “Martin Luther King Jr.—A True Historical Examination.”

Web composers can use invisible words to entice readers. The site I look at pops up high on the list because it includes these keywords: Martin Luther King Jr, Civil Rights, Black History, Slavery, Reparations, Kwanzaa, Anti-Defamation League, ADL, anti-Semitism, racism, bigotry, hatred, prejudice, bias, Holocaust, Israel, democracy, terrorism, militia, Jews, Jewish, diversity.” Etc. The embedded description makes Google say, “The truth about Martin Luther King. Includes historical trivia, articles and pictures. A valuable resource for teachers and students alike."

A photograph of Dr. King overshadows the text initially, but a “Rap Lyrics” link in a larger font catches my eye so I click it. Instead of finding a rap song, I find a tirade against Jews that introduces a long list of violent rap lyrics taken out of context interwoven with news stories of white people killed or victimized by black people.

Appearances are deceptive, especially on the Internet. I click to return to the main page. Reading the text to the left of the image of Dr. King, I realize that this is not a King-friendly site. Even with letters missing, the expletives presented as Dr. King’s reported words are easy to figure out. To the right, there is a menu with seven options, all of which look informative. They are—if you’re into decrying King. And there’s more. “Attention students! Try our MLK pop quiz!” one teaser says. “Bring the Dream to life in your town! Download flyers to take to your school!” invites another. “Why the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday should be repealed” looms large.

I believe in freedom of speech. I also believe that children are not born racist. They have to be taught. These days, if a student wants to do a report on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he or she is likely to go to the Internet. There, people who do not venerate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., are very good at making their case. That’s one more reason we need to remind children of the legacy of this great man. Perhaps children who study Dr. King in school or church, or both, will be able to put troubling information into perspective and make informed decisions about what they want to believe.

When I attended Booker T. Washington High School in South Carolina, one among the first white students to attend South Carolina’s oldest high school for African Americans, we pretended to have a radio station. We, black and white together, would huddle in a little room to play records and talk over the intercom. That’s where I first heard the words of “I Have a Dream,” which we broadcast to the school one January long ago in honor of a man who did not yet have a national holiday. My high school experience taught me why we needed one.

The fifth link in my long list of resources takes me to the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Park and related resources. It’s worth a look:

http://www.nps.gov/malu/

If you have time, in fact, there are several million sites that you or your child can peruse, most of them reverent.

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

2005-01-12T09:36:00.000-05:00

What’s the big deal? It’s just a bag of coffee beans. Or is it? For some reason, I can’t bring myself to open and grind a small bag of coffee beans from Sumatra, Indonesia, somebody gave to me for Christmas. I like the “woodsy” flavor of Sumatra Mandheling. It’s a coffee that I drink only now and then. If I drank it every day, it might not be my favorite. If I drank a cup today, I think I would get shivers down my spine.

Just consider how far these beans had to come to end up in my kitchen. They were grown, according to Allegro Coffee, on small farms by Batak natives living near Lake Toba on the island of Sumatra. The company that distributes the beans is careful to advertise that it works with small farms there to reinforce the principles of fair trade and environmental sustainability.

Sometimes farmers can work with the environment. Other times, as with tsunamis, the environment works against them. “Despite its wealth of natural resources,” says the “Lonely Planet Guide to Indonesia,” “Sumatra is struggling with a failing economy. The northern province of Aceh is at the epicentre of separatist violence and the area has been hit by devastating earthquakes.” That was the truth before last week’s earthquake. Given the current crisis, I have to wonder how much worse things can get for the people who live in Indonesia.

Within hours of the earthquake and the tsunami that followed, coffee moguls in the United States began reacting. In Washington, Scott Merle of Batdorf and Bronson spoke to “The Olympian.” "I've been getting updates from contacts in Sumatra, and it's not real scary for coffee," he said. "That's mostly because of where it grows, in the highlands—not anywhere near the coast. We skirted having something bad happen in terms of coffee." Merle finished by acknowledging that his company had a four-month supply of beans stashed away.

Dean Cycon, a distributor of fair-trade organic coffee beans based in Massachusetts, offered a different reaction. His company newsletter announced, “Our farmers suffered tremendous property damage in the mountains, many houses collapsed and roads were destroyed. The coffee warehouse in Takengon was partially destroyed, but the resourceful farmers turned the rest of the warehouse into shelter for the homeless families.” Now if you visit an Internet store to purchase Dean’s Beans, you may also donate to a relief fund, with 100% going to the farmers who work for Cycon’s company.

I’m cynical, but I’m hopeful. I want to believe that coffee corporations are more worried about “their” indigenous farmers than they are the coffee beans. My own bag of coffee says, “Growers are paid a premium for triple-handsorting the beans to produce a consistently outstanding coffee.” “Premium” is relative. I’m hoping that people who regularly drink Sumatran coffee are making a run on the beans left on the market and that the corporations here give even more profits back to the communities than they now do. I’m hoping they’ll pay more for future bean crops than fair exchange.

The label on my bag of beans says that the coffee would taste best brewed prior to December 29, 2004, a date that came and went as I watched the world watching the tragedy unfolding in all those communities by the Indian Ocean. I guess that means I should grind the beans and drink my coffee, but I’m going to wait until I deserve a cup. I can’t imagine opening it soon. Whenever I look at this bag, I see hands picking and sorting these coffee beans. Three times.

That Dad-blamed "D" Word

2004-12-22T18:46:00.000-05:00

Let’s be realistic. “Diversity” means “the condition of being diverse.” “Diverse” means “different,” or “partly or totally unlike in nature, form, or quality.” Tradition is much better than diversity. Tradition is, well, traditional. Whenever I think of how the word “tradition” was invented to signify “cultural continuity in social attitudes, customs, and institutions,” I breathe a sigh of relief. A school board that reveres traditional activities, or traditional anything, is to be commended.

With the passage of a landmark policy on non-school activities and information dissemination in the schools, Washington County School Board should not be content to rest on its laurels. More discussion should be devoted to how something as pernicious as diversity is embodied in the basic school curriculum. Forget school-sanctioned events. As it stands, children could come home from regular classrooms talking about “diversity,” a word that is a euphemism for all things nontraditional.

Consider the fact that Virginia, with its innovative Standards of Learning, is considered a model of curriculum reform. When Leah Vukmir and William Durden wrote "Introducing Rigorous Standards into Wisconsin's Schools: The Virginia Model," they were highlighting the exceptional job Virginia has done to classify learning objectives over thirteen years of schooling, from kindergarten to graduation. What were they thinking? Surely they could have picked Utah, or even South Carolina, to exemplify right thinking for the rest of the educational world.

And why is that? Diversity! Just read The Virginia Standards of Learning, a government document published in Richmond and also free for view on the World Wide Web. Diversity is written all over the face of this document. It is written between the lines. Although schoolchildren are introduced to the concept as early as kindergarten, that is not enough for our broad-minded state education system. Diversity is cycled and recycled throughout the curriculum, from science to English to social studies. Even math!

For example, History-Social Science Standard 3.12 boldly states the following objective: “The student will recognize that Americans are a people of diverse ethnic origins, customs, and traditions, who are united by the basic principles of a republican form of government and respect for individual rights and freedoms.” Should schools be teaching our children that Americans by definition are diverse? That they respect individual rights and freedoms? Shouldn’t inherently volatile concepts be taught in the home?

If it’s not worrisome enough to find “diverse” and “tradition” mentioned in the same sentence, just consider Science Standard 3.6: “The student will investigate and understand that environments support a diversity of plants and animals that share limited resources.” If we start teaching children that diversity exists not only in the American way of life but also in nature, there is no telling where their minds will take them. They might start putting two and two together.

It gets worse. English Standard 12.3 expects seniors to “relate literary works and authors to major themes and issues of their eras.” I’m not sure high school seniors are ready to discuss “a matter that is in dispute between two or more parties.” Seniors who are voting, or who are close to becoming voting members of society, should immerse themselves in literature that avoids major issues and themes, especially issues and themes of contemporary American society.

Not even mathematics is sacred. Geometry students studying logical symbols such as Venn diagrams to quantify verbal arguments must, according to Standard G1, identify “the converse, inverse, and contrapositive of a conditional statement.” Just think. This SOL assumes that adolescents can be trusted with alternative points of view. It presumes that a truth can be conditional. What’s next? Abandonment of family values?

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 15 December 2004, p. A4. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2004.

All Men are Brothers

2004-12-08T10:30:00.000-05:00

Friday, my family celebrated my older brother’s fiftieth birthday. He could not be with us. John died in 1976 at 21. His grave may be in a national cemetery for veterans, but John’s final resting place is not a grave. It is the heart of loving family.

John died of Hodgkin’s Disease, a type of lymphoma affecting less than one percent of our population. Some people get over it and thrive. Others survive the disease only to end up with other types of cancer. Even treated with chemotherapy and radiation, Hodgkin’s can be fatal. More people survive today than when John was sick, in part because he participated in clinical trials for drugs.

Early symptoms of Hodgkin’s Disease are subtle, including fevers and night sweats and fatigue. When you’re in the Navy, working hard, it’s not unusual to experience fatigue. My brother complained about his health for a few months before he could convince anybody that he was truly sick. After that, he got the best care available through the Veterans Health Administration and an affiliated medical university.

Unfortunately, my brother’s disease was virulent and progressive. Radiation didn’t help much at all, and chemotherapy helped some yet also made him sicker. But, you know, John was a hopeful sort of person. What 19-year-old isn’t? He enrolled in clinical trials. He took all kinds of medicine, knowing that one day somebody would learn something from his experience, even if living a little longer meant he would live longer with chronic pain.

While doctors didn’t expect John to live more than a few months after the diagnosis, experimental drugs gave him another year. You can do a lot of living in that time. You can read a number of books, hang out with your friends, go to movies, and generally have fun even if you don’t feel like getting out of bed. You can buy a car and work on the engine in your spare time. You can enroll in college too. John did, his report card arriving the day of his funeral.

In addition to taking painkillers, my brother drank gin. I’m not ashamed to admit it. Now and then, he would run out of his daily quota of pain pills, which only relieved the pain. Nothing could make it go away. Gin failing, he’d try Beethoven, turning up his music up as loud as it would go. And he would still hurt. There was nothing available in the medical world that would begin to alleviate the discomfort John felt, an all-encompassing pain that I have never quite been able to fathom.

Through John, I first learned of efforts being made to bring back the medical use of cannabis, a drug that had been available to previous generations. Given the persistent pain and nausea John experienced, I suspect he could have found some marijuana. After all, it was the Seventies. We lived in a college town. John, however, wasn’t the sort of person to break the law. Instead, he dreamed of a time when terminal patients would be given more alternatives than the establishment had to offer him.

Radiation made John infertile, and the disease disfigured him. His hair fell out, his spine crumbled, and he felt queasy every day of the last year of his life—but John didn’t complain. He waited to die with the same attitude that kept him hopeful he would live one more day. One morning in a biology class he took while he was waiting for Hodgkin’s to claim his life, a classmate asked him, “Are you terminal?” He answered, “We all are.” We are.

Making My List

2004-11-24T17:44:00.000-05:00

Let me tell you what I don’t want for Christmas. Please. First, I don’t want a genetically engineered kitten. I know that it’s possible to put down a $250 deposit for a hypoallergenic cat, but save your money. Gene-silencing is creepy, far more off-putting than the $3500 price tag the final furry products carry. If somebody figures out how to make a hypoallergenic cat, who’s to say that somebody else won’t figure out how to silence my own, albeit sneeze-begotten, gene pool?

Second, I don’t want a GloFish. As much as I like fish, I don’t want one that has been genetically modified to include the fluorescence of a sea anemone or piece of coral. At only $5.00, this fish might seem like a real bargain. You might even think I’d like it because its genetic base is the zebra fish, my favorite fish when I was twelve years old. Don’t trust sentimentality to prevail. When I look at a GloFish, all I can think of is how far this little creature has come since somebody took one from the Ganges and commercialized it.

Third, I don’t want anybody to rush out and pay $50,000 to clone Billy, my fluffy cat. Although some may have heard me express regret that Bill never got to reproduce, given how gentle and fluffy he is, not to mention gorgeous, I really can live without another cat that looks just like him. Although it would be tempting to do a case study of nature versus nurture, given a cat prepared in a Petri dish versus a wild barn cat that got half eaten by a dog before it came to live with me, I can live without empirical evidence that nurture creates a thankful disposition in a domesticated wild animal. So can Billy.

Fourth, as much as I wax sentimental about hamsters, don’t even think of forking over twenty bucks for a hairless hamster. While I know that these genetic mutations can occur naturally, I also know how breeders increase the chances that a mutation will occur so they can sell a freak of nature for more money than its furry cousin. A hairless hamster may be just as appealing as a hypoallergenic cat to people with allergies, people like me, but why put hamsters through unnecessary misery and mess up the hamster gene pool while you’re at it?

If you’re beginning to think I’d be ungrateful if you put your money into a designer pet, you’re right. Still, forget the gift certificate for cryopreservation. It’s not because I don’t think about Billy’s mortality. I do. It’s because, fifth, I can have a happier holiday not thinking that one day Billy’s body will be preserved in a deep freeze in Arizona until somebody figures out how to bring it back to life. What would Billy do without me, anyway, if he woke up in three thousand years? You’d have to spring for another $150,000, on top of the $6,000 for my cat, to preserve me too.

Killjoy that I am, what is left for that shopping list this Christmas? An orphan kitten, one of those endearing fluffmuffins you find through the Animal Defense League, is a possibility. But please don’t just show up at my door with one. Before I could adopt a kitten I could live with for the next twenty years, I would have to hug quite a few to find the one to which I was least allergic. Convincing Billy that he needed a friend could take a little longer. As for my husband, he’s hoping I’ll settle for a betta.

Hats Off to the Petticoat

2004-11-03T06:38:00.000-05:00

I voted yesterday, and nobody dragged me off in handcuffs. In 1872, Susan B. Anthony was arrested for voting in a Presidential election. Four years later, Virginia Louisa Minor unsuccessfully sued a Missouri registrar for refusing to register her to vote. By the time I cast my first vote for President in 1976, voting rights for citizens like me were secure. The Nineteenth Amendment had been ratified for five years in my home state, although women had been voting there since federal law prevailed.

Columnist Rose Wilder Lane voted for Woodrow Wilson in 1916. Lucky for her, she was living in liberal San Francisco at the time. Last week, politicians in Kuwait decided that it might be time for women to vote. “We will support the right to vote,” said Naser al-Sane, who has changed his opinion, it seems. We may think that countries denying women the right to vote are backward, but we shouldn’t forget that they’re a little like we were once— hesitant to admit that women should participate in government.

Nobody knows the name of the first woman to cast a vote in the United States. From 1776-1807, women in New Jersey enjoyed voting, losing suffrage only when New Jersey revoked this right following the Constitutional Convention in 1787 that shifted voting policy practices from the Union to the States. President John Adams, despite his wife’s entreaty to “remember the ladies,” vowed in 1776 that he would fight the “despotism of the petticoat” on behalf of men.

President Adams won the fight. The Union abdicated its interest in women’s rights and turned them over to the States. Between 1776 and 1807, when attitudes towards women were being shaped by our forefathers, women lost the right to vote in New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. In 1870, Utah would defy the national trend and grant suffrage to women, who would enjoy the vote for seventeen years, lose it, and then regain it in 1895. In 1896, Idaho admitted women to the voting booths. A few other states followed.

The United States is not alone in taking its time. In 1918, following a revolution, women in Russia were granted suffrage. That same year, the United Kingdom allowed women 30 and over, like men at 21, to vote. Ten years later, rights were equalized. And, no, that didn’t mean men would have to wait until they were 30.

We have our neighbor Tennessee to thank for affirming women’s voting rights in the United States, as Tennessee fulfilled the 36-state quota when, unlike South Carolina and Virginia, it ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1920. Shortly thereafter, Marie Ruoff Byrum of Missouri, who voted in a local election to replace an alderman, became the first woman to cast a vote under universal suffrage.

In 1950, while women in the United States were getting comfortable with the idea that their rights seemed secure, Canada granted full suffrage to women. Two years later, Virginia symbolically ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, although southwest Virginians such as Senator Elbert Lee Trinkle of Wytheville had campaigned for woman suffrage long before. In 1963, the Islamic republic of Iran gave women the vote.

Does it matter who won yesterday? Sure it does. Right now, I want to celebrate the fact that so many of us got out and into the voting booths all over the country. In 1984, Mississippi became the last state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. Until ten years ago, women of color in South Africa couldn’t vote. Today in Saudi Arabia, a woman is watching our election news on CNN and feeling hopeful.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 3 November 2004, p. A6. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2004.

Spooky Ideas and the Flu Vaccine

2004-10-27T06:43:00.000-04:00

I was trying to figure out what Dr. Pangloss, the optimistic philosopher of Voltaire’s famous satire Candide, would say about the shortage of flu shots when suddenly he appeared before me, a ghost. He repeated his famous advice: “It is clear that things cannot be otherwise than they are, for since everything is made to serve an end, everything necessarily serves the best end.” I recognized that peppy sentiment from a literature class. I remembered that he had applied it to every circumstance, no matter how horrific or pleasant, when he was still alive in the pages of the novel.

I can’t take the flu shot, so I tried to let Dr. Pangloss assure me that a shortage won’t affect me. But it will! It will! Since I can’t get immunized, I depend on others to stay healthy and not sneeze all over me. When he heard my flimsy whining, Dr. Pangloss told me to calm down. He asked me to remember the last time I had the flu and how it gave me an opportunity to lie prostrate for days, occasionally rising to drink hot tea and eat cinnamon toast. I got to feel like a child again, didn’t I? Didn’t I get all the sleep I needed to catch up on, and then some? Didn’t I get a vacation from work?

“But what about my elderly mother, Dr. Pangloss?” I asked. “She wasn’t up to going to Kroger at one in the morning to wait in line for eight hours the way old Homer Fink did in West Virginia.” “Old Homer Fink wasn’t either,” Dr. Pangloss replied. “But he did it! Think about all the new friends he made while sitting next to that colorful Halloween display at the grocery store. He should get out more often. Your mama too!”

It was hard to convince Dr. Pangloss that a woman about to turn 83 deserves better than that. All of those elderly people who have collapsed, or worse, while waiting for shots deserve better than that. Ever cheerful, he reminded me of the beautiful woman who had been his lively companion through many pages of the novel, even infecting him with a disease. He described the disease in more detail than I cared to remember, as it had been bad enough to read about it in graphic detail the first time, and then reminded me that such adversity never harms a flea.

As Dr. Pangloss continued to provide a descriptive discourse on “The Chain of Events Within this Universe,” I grew bored. “You’re a fictional character,” I finally exclaimed. “And a ghost to boot!” Elated to be reminded his demise, which led him to reflect on the possibility of new companions, given the shortage of flu vaccines, Dr. Pangloss began to wax eloquent about Paradise when I interrupted him to ask him exactly why he’d bothered to appear to me. “What’s the point?” I asked. “I wish a more practical ghost had shown up.”

This ghost shook his bony finger at me and reminded me that nothing, not even death or a shortage of flu shots, could change his opinion. “It would not be right for me to recant,” he said, “since Leibniz could not possibly be wrong.” “Leibniz, schleibniz,” I jeered. What was it about Dr. Pangloss, always deferring to the wisdom of a philosopher sorely satirized by the great writer Voltaire? I began to wonder if I should have conjured up the ghost of Dr. Jonas Salk instead. I know if I could, I’d put him to work in this best of all possible worlds.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 27 October 2004, p. A6. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2004.

Gordon's Scraps of Advice

2004-10-13T06:53:00.000-04:00

Children love buried treasures. Sometimes a treasure is as close as an old chest. While I was growing up, I knew which chest contained my mother’s buried past. Now and then, I’d get a glimpse, but one thing I never got to see for more than a few seconds was her sister Gordon’s scrapbook. I longed to see what was inside the pages of this black book, but it was not for my eyes.

This weekend, I visited South Carolina and found Gordon’s scrapbook out of the chest, atop a bookshelf. Emboldened, I took this treasure into my hands for the first time and opened it to the first page. As I leafed through the album, I began to jot things down to remember. (Sallie! So that was Gordon’s first name.) That’s when my mother gave it to me. She handed me her most prized keepsake.

Studying the scrapbook later that evening, I realized that it wasn’t something Gordon put together before she said goodbye to family and friends. Instead, this book was what her mother Ruth compiled in 1930 after Gordon died, at the age of twelve, in Roper Hospital in Charleston, SC, before penicillin was available to treat children with ruptured appendices. What lessons can we learn after all these years from Gordon McClary to share with our own children?

Cherish your schooling. Gordon loved school. Every time she ended up with good grades, her name ended up in the weekly newspaper alongside other names noted as “distinguished” or “honorably mentioned.” In the third grade, during the month of October 1927, she received an award for “distinction in Lessons and Deportment.” Pinned to this certificate is a button that says Crafts School Honor Roll. A report card from the third grade lists lots of A’s with a few marks of B+ for arithmetic and penmanship.

Study hard, but don’t forget the joy of extracurricular activities. Her last year in school, Gordon played Matilda Bradford in a Thanksgiving pageant. Another time, she participated in a program called “The Road to Health,” wherein children made exhibits to honor Dr. Fresh Air, Dr. Sleep, Dr. Rest, Dr. Vegetable, Dr. Sunshine, Dr. Water, Dr. Milk, and Dr. Laughter. As they are now, festivals were important then. The Parent-Teacher Association sponsored a festival one evening for ten cents admission, and Gordon helped.

Whatever your own circumstances are, remember to help others. Service activities were integral to schooling. Once, according to a newspaper clipping, Gordon and her classmates collected fifteen baskets of fruit for Roper Hospital, St. Margaret’s Home, and Kings’ Daughters Nursery. Another time, they donated two baskets of dolls to the Charleston Orphan House.

Have a lot of fun being a child. Just as our children today find time for fun, Gordon and her friends had time to play around. They shared affection freely. Colorful valentines fill the last pages of Gordon’s scrapbook, where there is also a note somebody passed her in school and a drawing Gordon made of two girls swinging: “Good Old Times.” In 1928, H.B. Reese Candy Company introduced the peanut butter cup. Gordon ate one.

Wear your life as if it will never go out of style. The first few pages of Gordon’s scrapbook contain sepia photographs of a fashionable girl from three to eleven. In one photo, wearing a cloche, Gordon grins. In another, she stands barefooted with sisters Brown and Audrey. One year, she was a cat for Halloween. In my favorite photo, Gordon is standing with a paper bag in one hand and a book in another. It is her first day of school.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 13 October 2004, p. A6. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2004.

Hope is Making Believe

2004-09-09T06:48:00.000-04:00

When I read about the candy wholesaler in Florida recalling thousands of bags of candy with toys evoking the attack on the Twin Towers, I shuddered. Think of the parents whose children ended up with the toys. They weren’t pleased.

I know that the wholesaler apologized, saying it had no idea what it was distributing, and nobody is really all that mad at Lisy Corporation. After all, why should a distributor check to see what’s in 14,000 bags it sends out to stores to sell to children? Nobody is too upset with the importer either. How was L&M Import to know that a “plastic swingset” was constructed of the two towers with a plane in between?

And how were the people who manufactured it to know that what was a popular item in Asia wouldn’t exactly fly in U.S. markets? Maybe, in fact, the shipment was a mistake. Perhaps somebody spaced out, and that’s why the toy ended up far away from home in a market bound to react with horror.

A few days after the story broke, I found myself buying a bottle of water. After giving the clerk money for the water, I noticed a box of candy and had a flashback to the time when spicy jawbreakers were kind of fun to put in my mouth. So I picked one up. I read the label. Although I shuddered, I decided to buy the candy anyway.

“May I get this Atomic Fireball too?” I asked the clerk. It was a rhetorical question. All she needed was my dime, and the candy was mine. I put it in my bag and took it with me. I carried it around on errands and thought about what was in my bag. Would Atomic Fireballs go over big in, say, Hiroshima, I wondered? Were they all that popular elsewhere?

Later, I took the candy out to read the fine print, which allowed me to do some research. The manufacturer, Ferrara Pan, introduced this item in 1954. According to the candy manufacturer’s website, 15 million fireballs are consumed around the world each week. That’s a lot of hot and spicy fireballs. They come in all sizes, too, from the individual serving I bought to a box that has an even bigger illustration of an atomic bomb detonating on the front.

The toy that accidentally ended up in Florida had a purple plane perched between two orange or purple towers, with the nose of the plane pushing against one of the towers. For days, people expressed opinions about this peculiar toy in the news and on Internet discussion boards. A few wondered what the big deal was. Other voiced outrage. Many raised their eyebrows at the popularity of such a toy in other parts of the world. How creepy could a toy get?

Given the timing, this toy has struck a nerve. It’s hard not to imagine thousands of children pretending to take down the Twin Towers. However, we know that not every child that plays with a fashion-conscious Barbie grows up with her values. Many children assign toys their own stories. One can only hope that some children out there, given different perspectives, are using the infamous swingset to make-believe a different ending to the tragedy.

I think it’s weird to eat candy evoking a bomb, but I’m the sort of person who thinks twice before biting the head off a gummy bear. If I were a child, I’d extinguish my fireball. Then I’d dismantle the plane from the Twin Tower toy and let all the people out so they could go home.

In His Shoes

2004-08-04T07:06:00.000-04:00

My son Guy is out of town, so I’m wearing his shoes. Well, they’re my shoes, really, size 39 Birkenstock sandals that he appropriated a few months ago. They’re unisex, after all, and quite comfortable. Plus they’re mine, so he gets a kick out of teasing me about the purloined sandals. I may joke with him now and then, and beg him to give them back, but I did say I’d let him have them as long as he returned them to me when he outgrew them.

So I’m sneaking around in these sandals now, the buckles adjusted for my narrower feet. They feel great, though not quite the same. They feel as if my son has been wearing them. Any day now, perhaps while he’s away this week, he’ll outgrow them. Then my feet can reclaim them. What about him? While he’s been hinting around for a larger pair, I’m not sure these are the sort of shoes a thrifty mom buys a growing teenager who has needed three new pairs of sneakers in the past five months.

In our den, there is a photograph of Guy wearing another pair of old Birkenstock sandals. He’s four. The sandals are too large for his feet, and the camera he’s aiming at me is bigger than his hands. How many pictures exist of children wearing their parents’ shoes? I didn’t want to take the time to do a scientific survey, so I just opened an old photo album.

And there I was, age two, wearing diapers and elegant black high heels. The white gloves on my hands were way too large, and they sort of clashed with the striped t-shirt. Even the shirt, my older brother’s, was a little large. Only the diaper fit. Turning the page, I found myself still attired in the shoes, my glove-handed arms hugging my older brother, who was three. John was quite dapper in our father’s high-topped rubber fishing boots.

On the hearth in my living room, two pairs of tiny shoes are lined up, my first pair of shoes and Guy’s. Mine are dark red leather oxfords, the first in a long line of oxfords that I had to wear when I wasn’t clomping around in my mother’s high heels. Guy’s are green, red, and blue sneakers. They have green laces. I don’t know why I put the shoes there to gather dust, unless it was to remind myself of our humble beginnings. We both started out so small.

As Guy was packing for his trip, we discussed what all he would take. He didn’t want the Birkenstocks for this particular adventure. When he eyed my Teva sport sandals, waterproof so he could ramble around in them all week by the ocean, I knew they were next on his list. He tried them on, and they fit—barely. Although these sandals are just about my favorite shoes, I had to let him take them with him. Now as I wear his/my Birkenstocks, it feels like a fair trade. He’s walking down a beach in his mom’s unisex sandals, and I’m walking around back home in his.

I’m not sure what I’ll do when Guy no longer can sneak away with my shoes. I guess he’ll have bigger things on his mind soon, like the keys to my Sentra. Maybe I’ll let him drive it if he dangles his baby shoes from the rear view mirror. On second thought, maybe not. I’d hate for others to tease him because his mom is such a sentimentalist. I’ve got to let him outgrow more than our shoes.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 4 August 2004, p. A6. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2004.

Gonna Need an Ocean

2004-07-14T07:09:00.000-04:00

One summer when I was at the beach, I found myself driving down unknown roads in the middle of the night to find a medical clinic in a nearby town to help me with a major medical crisis. Turning here, turning there, studying the map as I drove, I finally spotted the location I had found through a telephone book. Inside, I threw myself at the mercy of the doctors and nurses. Thankfully, they did not throw up their hands and run screaming in the opposite direction when they saw my face. The Hippocratic Oath does guarantee a certain decorum.

After a consultation, they recommended a shot of cortisone, which I took, despite my vow after a similar shot in my wrist years earlier never to take cortisone again. Sometimes it’s just hard to make myself stick with my belief in natural medicine, especially when my face is covered with burning, oozing pustules that remind me just how stupid I am sometimes to neglect my health by venturing near the worst toxin I can imagine any time of year: poison ivy. Sometimes you’ll do anything for the pain.

Right now as I pen this lament, I am under the influence of 1/18th of a high-falutin antihistamine, enough to take the edge off the interminable itching but not enough to put me completely to sleep. I am thankful that my fingers are not swollen and oozing like my ankles, and that’s because I now have enough sense to wash my hands thoroughly with Tecnu or Bert’s Bees Poison Ivy Soap after I’ve been near the woods, or even my garden. In fact, truth be told, I usually shower for twenty minutes with the stuff after I’ve walked through the yard this time of year. If I even see a poison ivy leaf, I’m inclined to imbibe some homeopathic poison ivy concoction to ward off “itching, burning and crusting skin due to exposure to poison ivy or oak.”

I don’t know what I was thinking that afternoon I decided to scavenge potatoes. I guess I was just wooed into a false sense of security by the glimpse of a few tomatoes near my languishing potato patch. With all the rain we’ve had, the green tops rotted off of the potatoes, which made looking for them sort of fun, even if I did have to walk through brambles and brush away the new growth of weeds replacing the rotten potato tops. In shorts, in flip-flops, I was hardly attired to take on Mother Nature in a bad mood. Picking the tomatoes, I just had to see if I could find some potatoes. And I was so excited to dig the potatoes, I forgot to shower and began boiling water instead (after I washed my hands).

They tasted great. I’m not sure they’re worth the agony I’m going through right now, though. A pint of blackberries might be, or a banana pepper that decided that my yard was worth growing in, but not four little potatoes that weren’t nearly as tasty as the ones I can get from the Flaccaventos at the Abingdon Farmers’ Market. Come to think of it, I bet farmers’ markets were invented for people like me who (a) don’t have a lot of luck with vegetables and (b) don’t really want to suffer unmercifully trying to grow them.

I think I will get my son to pick the rest of my vegetables this year. It’s the least he can do for his mom and her hyperallergenia, especially if he wants her to be poison-ivy free in time for the beach.

Was My Brother in the Battle?

2004-05-26T07:14:00.000-04:00

In 1964, or thereabouts, my parents took us out of school one day to go to Fort Fisher, North Carolina. This was before that Civil War fort was fully reconstructed, but there was enough of a museum for us to see the relics of some sad days gone by. I remember small medicine bottles and bloodletting utensils in a glass cabinet. Most of all, I remember a crude wooden cross half broken down in some bramble. Who knows why the cross was there, or if a cross from the war could have lasted a hundred years, but my brothers and I decided that we had found the grave of a fallen soldier.

After I read about the unknown soldiers whose remains were finally laid to rest after being found at the scene of Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield in Missouri, I thought of my day at Fort Fisher and that mysterious cross where my brothers and I lay some flowers. Later I walked up the hill to the Holston Cemetery in Emory. Sometimes I like to go and sit near the Confederate dead who are buried there atop a hill from which you can see Whitetop. The horizon seems bigger up there on that hill, but it’s not big enough to include the vista of home for so many of those men.

I’ve adopted one of these men as my kin. His Brown name is common enough, as common as Mitchell, so it’s possible we’re not related. It would be easy enough for me to find out, too. A few conversations with Robert Vejnar, the archivist at Emory & Henry, and I could probably put two and two together. Sometimes, though, as with the cross at Fort Fisher, I need a mystery to remain unsolved. I prefer to think that J. D. Brown buried in Grave 171 is my long lost cousin from South Carolina who found his way to the Confederate hospital at Emory after a battle and died far from home. I like to think it’s a small but fateful world that has put the two of us together in this community so I can put flowers on his grave.

There are two soldiers there whose names and states are unknown, Numbers 179 and 180. Once upon a time, somebody had to miss them and wonder if they’d ever walk back into a house and sit down to supper. I wonder if some families will ever figure out that their kin are laid to rest here in Virginia. Emory takes care of them, though. The Holston Cemetery is the best piece of land in Emory, to my mind. It’s high and dry and offers a panoramic view of the beautiful countryside.

The college, nestled in its small valley, could have claimed this superior view, but it didn’t. It makes more sense for the town to have sacrificed its best hill to the memory of the dead. If you’ve ever visited Arlington Cemetery, or any number of national cemeteries across the nation, you’ll agree that the war dead require more than simple plots. Their families and communities deserve the best views.

At Fort Fisher, where I roamed in the bramble, the Atlantic coastline is just across the earthen hills. Later, after my visit through history, my brothers and I would wade on the edge of this ocean where ironclad battleships once raged. Since then, I have visited that site many times. Knowing that my great-great grandfather was imprisoned there may have something to do with that, but what strikes me the most is the sense of peace I get there.

At a Loss for Words

2004-05-19T07:24:00.000-04:00

When photographs of Daniel Pearl were released by his captors in 2002, I downloaded one of them from the Internet. Imaging software is great. It is used all the time to airbrush imperfections. People also play with it to put famous people alongside ordinary people or to mix up heads and bodies. What I did was erase everything except Pearl’s head. Then I put a blue wash around it. What I was trying to do was imagine him free, surrounded by a healing blue light.

I’m not a very good magician. Despite my new-age efforts to free Daniel Pearl by erasing his shackles, he was beheaded in Pakistan after being abducted January 23 en route to interview a fundamentalist Muslim leader. His death was announced in the United States on February 22. Soon thereafter, I took down my picture of Pearl that included lines from a Psalm for good measure. The blue swirls I had added were looking too much like a halo.

A few months later, after everybody in my family was asleep, I got on the Internet again and downloaded the infamous video of Pearl being beheaded. It’s not easy watching a person being beheaded. In fact, since I had never seen such a thing in my life, I didn’t really have the cognitive structure to see, really see, this murder. I’ve seen violence. I’ve been the victim of violence. But nothing prepared me for Pearl’s execution. I can’t even say that I have a visual memory of Pearl’s beheading today, either because there was no place in my brain to store that data or because I have blocked it.

When given the opportunity to see a video of Nicholas Berg, I took it. I decided beforehand, however, that I would close the video before I saw the beheading. I had no interest in seeing this young man’s execution. I can say this much. I saw a man in orange seated at the feet of five hooded men, one of whom read from a prepared speech. As I listened to this speech, I heard muted sirens in the background but held no hope that these sirens belonged to a patrol car speeding to the rescue. Having read a translation of the speech, I knew the gist of what was being said.

No translation can do justice to the accompanying vocalizations and sound effects. Just as the speech was ending, while the speaker was saying his last few words, other people called out with passion and jeers. At that point, I imagined that the men were executing Berg in front of a group of people. Forget for a moment about virtual voyeurs. Think instead about the real, live human beings who stand there and praise God while a young man is decapitated, screaming all the while.

Just as Nicholas Berg’s image disappeared from my computer screen, I thought of his hopes and his dreams and his inevitable regret at being in the wrongest place possible at the wrongest time. Downloading the video to rewind his life to a month earlier, or even editing it to take back the actions of the killers, was not an option. Erasing the cries of any bloodthirsty bystanders would not change history.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross has written about the stages one goes through when facing death: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. I want to add another stage. I just don’t have the right language for it. It’s quite possible there are no words to describe this stage. Sadly, if there were, the people who could help us understand just the right words have been silenced.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 19 May 2004, p. A6. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2004.

Mother's Days

2004-05-05T07:19:00.000-04:00

When my mother was a little girl, she had a pet chicken. The chicken slept in the bed with her when she visited her grandparents’ farm. Later, she had a pet goat that chased cars. When I think of that goat chasing the occasional car driving down an isolated country road, I have to laugh at the memory of a mother I didn’t know until she grew up, got married, and had me.

I guess she had to turn into the sort of mother that let us keep every cat that wandered into the yard. We kept hamsters, cats, fish, homeless baby birds, broken-down earthworms, and the occasional common roach. The only time Mama ever raised her eyebrows was when I arrived home from Woolworth’s with a white mouse. It was only fifty cents, I told her. How could I pass that up?

The last time I talked to my mother on the phone, she was excited about some small creature that had crept into her yard. She didn’t know what to call it, but from the sketchy description I assumed it was either a chipmunk or a mole. Perhaps a stray ground hog. She didn’t think it was a possum, but for all I know it was. There was a time when Mama could name whatever it was that came into her yard. Now it’s up to me to fill in the blanks.

Sometimes I want to get frustrated with Mama, who is so independent that it’s hard to convince her to turn her into a compliant old lady who does whatever her children tell her to do. I guess the same woman who inspired me to hold out for my own independence all these years isn’t going to let age or a little frailty hold her back. And I can’t stay frustrated for very long.

Who wouldn’t love an 82-year-old woman who puts water out for wild rodents and feeds lettuce in jar tops to lizards on her sun porch? My mother has always loved lizards. One winter, a lizard took up residence in a potted plant and stayed there until spring. That was in the first house she and my father lived in, a small house in the country they moved to when they started having children and outgrew a small apartment. Mama still has a bird nest she’s kept from that house. It has weathered fifty years and a numbers of moves.

Now Mama lives in a small house in a city. In March when I went to visit her, I didn’t tell her I was coming. I’ve always loved to surprise her that way. I found her in the yard clearing out branches from an ice storm. She may need to hold onto my elbow when we walk through a shopping mall, but on her own turf she is sturdy and strong as an ox. Unlike me, she weeds her garden. Unlike mine, her fig tree grows like a dream.

Once Mama told me that if she could live her life over, she’d be a farmer. Not being able to live out her dreams, she has done the best she could with a backyard in the city. Now my brother helps her to break up the soil, but she does most of the work. She’s happiest out there in her sun hat, weeding or studying new growth. The mocking birds and mourning doves follow her around like great-grandchildren while her cat watches from the porch. There are no goats or pet chickens, but there is a sanctuary for all kinds of creatures great and small.

Love Me, Love My Dog—and Cats

2004-02-11T07:13:00.000-05:00

The philosopher C.S. Lewis categorized love in four ways: affection, friendship, romantic love, and charity. Valentine’s Day cards run the gamut, addressing everyone from lovers to teachers to pets. I wonder if Lewis would think that cards for pets are symptomatic of corrupted affection, or storge, since pets can’t read. Do we buy them to indulge ourselves? Perhaps the best Valentine’s present for Rover is a dog biscuit or an extra walk on the Creeper Trail. I know that my cat Billy, who doesn’t know the difference between a Valentine and a Kleenex, would prefer a bowl of goat milk.

An economist could say these cards exist because there is a market for them. Capitalism entices people to buy the silliest of products, and these cards do make us smile. A veterinarian might hypothesize that they are subliminal reminders to be kind to animals. A psychological explanation could be that such a card earns romantic capital if a man wooing a woman buys the card and sets it where she can see it. Whose heart wouldn’t melt?

Better yet, a suitor could dispense with the cards and just fill his house with additional animals. My husband’s own affection for cats was a real draw during our courtship. When he told me how he rushed to Bristol Mall one evening to find a friend for his cat Malone, who was grieving because she had lost her platonic mate, I knew I had found a kindred spirit. Friendship, or philia, between humans often foreshadows romance.

Romantic love, eros, is a human bond so celebrated over the centuries that greeting card stock has got to be worth something. While it is possible to love someone romantically without first feeling affection, friendship, or even charity, the other loves help romantic love to blossom and persevere. Isn’t it nice to find an affectionate, friendly, charitable person before we entrust a heart?

When I visited Barry during our engagement, I would tote my cat Tutti so he could get used to Malone and Sweet Pea. Perhaps the most romantic thing Barry ever said during those days was “Why don’t you let Tutti spend the night?” When I drove away that evening, leaving my cat to settle in, I knew I would be home soon. Tutti never returned to my house, and I eventually moved in with him in our new home—and with my new husband and his pets.

We’ve been together a long time, long enough for some turnover. Sweet Pea, the store-bought cat, passed on. Then Billy showed up on the edge of our yard, a starving barn cat wounded from being half eaten by a dog. We took him in, got him fixed up, and then came Spot. Spot showed up after somebody dumped her out down the road. I never thought I could feel affection for a dog, but when she climbed into my lap that first night, I knew that I would not let her ramble on. Tutti died last year, and Miss Malone, approaching 19, wonders where he has gone.

All of our animals, including the short-lived hamster Hamtaro and every fish that has swum in and out of our lives, have taught us a little more about charitable love, or agape, which Lewis saw as an unconditional love that draws us closer to what is best about our human natures.

When Barry and I are old and gray, sitting by the woodstove on Valentine’s Day, we’ll surely reminisce about the creatures that once dwelled with us. I’ll get out of my rocker to find one of those whimsical photographs pet owners can’t resist taking. Then our new kitten will come bounding through the house to remind us to pour a bowl of goat milk because, after all, a pet deserves a little special treatment. Malone, having broken a record for longevity, will look up from her cushion and meow.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 11 February 2004, p. A4. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2004.

Starling Advisory

2004-02-04T07:28:00.000-05:00

Our common earthworms are immigrants. A legacy of settlers, they have replaced native earthworms, which are, it seems, extinct. Unlike viruses that cause epidemics, or imported birds that proliferate like starlings, these earthworms respect their environment. So why are computer viruses called worms? “Starlings” is more apt. Also an import, the starling has flourished on our continent for more than a century, earning a reputation as urban pest. Think about these birds congregating by the thousands, nesting here and there, stealing nests as soon as other birds build them. No worm was ever as obstreperous.

The other day I had to delete numerous email messages from computer network administrators advising me that I had tried to send a worm through email. By afternoon, I was an official scourge, like the starling: Felicia, the urban pest, distributing worms. Or was I? I never open unknown attachments, and my virus software is always up to date. A little obsessive, however, I logged on to another virus service and scanned my entire system. I then did a full search of all drives, from my computer to my network drive, for the virus. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t there, but it wanted people to think it was. This virus was as sneaky as a starling.

Computer viruses are sneaky and destructive. I guess that’s why they’re called names like “W32/Mydoom@MM.” That day, one in twelve emails around the world was infected with W32/Mydoom@MM, which created chaos. Imagine all the servers that had to deal with “my” email messages, the ones I didn’t send, along with all the others. Multiply this phenomenon by Internet providers around the world. The mess that resulted was sort of like the mess that results when two thousand starlings party on a cherry tree.

Evidently, W32/Mydoom@MM was intelligent enough to “spoof” email identities. It could generate random email addresses, some real and some fake, in order to spread itself far and wide. It didn’t matter if my computer was healthy or not. People all over the world who didn’t understand computer viruses were going to think I was derelict. Just as a starling will steal another bird’s nest, a computer virus was trying to make the world think that it had stolen mine and that I, in turn, wanted to steal others. How crafty!

Would a worm be smart enough to pretend to be me? The common earthworm is much less flamboyant or even intelligent than W32/Mydoom@MM aspires to be. A starling, in contrast, is intelligent as well as egotistical. Tens of thousands of starlings have been known to infiltrate neighborhoods, causing structural damage to buildings and even clogging water supplies. Internet viruses are like that. They accumulate in flocks and cause lots of damage, not just to other birds’ nests.

I was not sending the virus, but I still felt that my good name, or at least my good email address, was being sullied. Given the litigious nature of our society, I wondered if I should panic. All I needed was a server in Indianapolis to sue me for sending viruses through the Internet. Fortunately, email trails would help my case. One email seemed to originate in Parsippany, New Jersey, while I was seated at a desk in Washington County, Virginia. Starlings do have wings. And no offense, but they all look a lot alike.

I know that not every worm is as wholesome as an earthworm. Some worms are as creepy as viruses, causing problems from intestinal distress to elephantiasis. However, I’m still sticking with the starling metaphor because our starling population acts more like a rampant computer program designed by human folly. In 1890, sixty starlings were imported to the United States by a man who wanted to introduce Shakespeare’s birds to our country. Last count? About ten million. Unlike the most disgusting worm, the starling is a pest because people made it one: just like W32/Mydoom@MM.

Less Than Skin Deep

2003-11-19T21:16:00.000-05:00

One of my distant cousins was Miss America. There she was! More than Barbie did, she introduced me to an iconic beauty to which I could never aspire. Just think how many little girls have compromised their dreams or grown up wishing they looked good in bathing suits and could sing like divas and save the whole world while tap-dancing.

In our postmodern age, the competition for young girls is even stiffer. So stiff, in fact, that these icons of beauty are not even real. They’re virtual. That is to say, they’re figments of the imagination: somebody’s ideal of a female that is a composite of fantasies, usually men’s fantasies about the ideal woman or girl in this century.

Take Kaya, for example. The creation of artist Alceu Baptistao, she looks like a cross between Avril Lavigne and Audrey Hepburn. Her freckles are precious. Still, although there’s something about her hazel eyes that could intrigue a person looking to get lost in somebody’s orbs, they just don’t ring true. They say that eyes are the window to the soul. Eyes are thus probably the hardest virtual mountain for virtual artists to climb, since virtual creatures don’t have souls—not yet. Maybe that’s the appeal: a blank slate of a female whose eyes don’t betray any human interaction.

In addition to being a little glassy, Kaya’s eyes are designed to be a little far apart, a flaw that makes her seem more human. If you look at other virtual girls, you’ll see similar flaws. Cool, huh? The flaws that mortal women are socialized to try to compensate for are the stuff of virtual dreams. It seems a little ironic, doesn’t it, that artificial perfection consists of selected copies of real flaws added to otherwise perfect templates?

I’m wondering if Kaya will enter the Miss Digital World Contest. This new contest, which will involve an international voting public instead of a row of judges, has been created by Franz Cerami to attract “the most beautiful and intriguing virtual models made using the most advanced 3D graphics tools.” The idea is to celebrate today’s standard, the Platonic ideal of womanhood embodied in a cyborgian image that pushes all the right buttons.

And I’m not just talking about sex, though the creation of virtual women, and girls, has brought a whole new controversial dimension to the realm of pornography, which is why Cerami—just like the Miss America officials—prohibits entrants from ever having appeared in compromising positions. Virtual girls are a boon for the porn industry, and that breaks my heart, even though I do know the difference between reality and fantasy and value free speech. Outside porn, there are a few opportunities in advertising and video games. Even Hollywood calls.

Fantasy rules, and fantasy is tempting. When I look at virtual young women, I actually begin to wonder what the daughter I never had would look like if I fiddled with three-dimensional software. Would she look like a little Felicia with a few features of my cousin the beauty queen thrown in for good measure? Or would I make her face violate every social norm of beauty to protect her from virtual predators? Would I give her my husband’s beard? Probably not. I’d probably just close my eyes and cut and paste and open my eyes to see what the software fates had given me.

I know she would be beautiful, whatever she looked like, as beautiful as all daughters everywhere, and just as obstinate as her mom. I can imagine this virtual daughter asking me for permission to leave the comfort of our home computer to morph into a violent video game or some shady movie on the World Wide Web. “I’m not real, Mom,” I can hear her saying. “What’s the big deal?” Let’s face it. If she were real, I would convince her to do something with her brains.

First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 19 November 2003, p. A4. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2005.

Nashville Skyline

2003-10-22T07:34:00.000-04:00

I drove to Nashville the other day for the Southern Festival of the Book and found myself at the Hard Rock Café. There I ordered a salad and chamomile tea. What’s a country music song without a good drink? Mine had three lemon wedges.

When I finished, I strolled up Broadway looking for bright lights and finding the Ernest Tubb Record Shop. Its neon guitar has been glowing for years. Inside, music plays to tempt you to buy some. I picked out an Emmylou Harris CD when Ray Price began singing Kris Kristofferson’s “For the Good Times.” What’s a country music song without a little nostalgia? In 1970, Ray Price prepared me for a bittersweet romance I’d eventually find in real life.

Next afternoon, I took a break from the festival and walked back down Broadway. I was delighted to discover musicians playing in the afternoon. I was even more delighted to discover I could listen to budding superstars without going into bars. All I had to do was stand on the sidewalk. My favorite spot was in front of Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, where I people-watched while I listened to old standards. A woman in a multi-generational group from Nunavut, Canada, took my picture for me in front of Tootsie’s.

What’s a country music song without a little kindness? After my photograph was taken, one of the men in the group gave me a lapel pin from Rankin Inlet, which is how I came to learn about Jordin Tootoo, a young man from that tiny town who just started playing for the Nashville Predators. Since I didn’t have any souvenirs from Meadowview on my person, I decided to send a token from Washington County up to Arctic Canada once I got home.

The Southern Festival of the Book, where I did spend most of my time, was near the capitol. As vibrant as it was, I sensed parts of downtown Nashville have seen better days. So have some of the townspeople. I gave an elderly panhandler spare change but ignored the young men who called me “Mama” and made me walk a little quicker.

What’s a country music song without a few people who are down on their luck? One afternoon, I saw one of the panhandlers setting up his own display to sell a few free books he had picked up at the book fair. I didn’t buy anything, but I hope somebody did. Later, I saw another man settling himself into a doorway of a diner for the night.

One morning, after sleeping in a hotel, I went to Starbucks and sat outside to drink my coffee. There I struck up a conversation with a young woman who had been discussing Nashville’s homeless with a man at another table. Somehow I ended up learning that she had taken drugs earlier in life but had completely turned her life around and had children she knew she would steer as far away from drugs as possible. What’s a country music song without a little redemption?

Just as I was about to leave Starbucks and head back to the festival, I saw a man I hadn’t seen in fifteen years. I called his name, and he came over and introduced me to his wife. He and she were happy as larks. Nobody passing by, not even novelist Lee Smith, who did pass by and stop to talk to us, would have guessed we had ever broken each other’s hearts. What’s a country music song without a happy ending? If I we hadn’t split up, he wouldn’t have found a truer love and I wouldn’t have either.

Who needed to go to the Grand Old Opry? I didn’t really have the time, given all the time I had to spend attending the Festival of the Book and walking around with my eyes wide open. Sometimes life itself is a country music song.

Living That Seventies Show

2003-07-23T08:27:00.000-04:00

The other night, my son came around asking for relics from the Seventies. He was looking for tie-dyed shirts and bell bottom pants, records, the kinds of things he had seen on That Seventies Show.

What did I still have from way back then? I’d outgrown my Earth shoes in more ways than one. In the basement, I did have a vintage polyester pants suit my mother handed down to me in 1987 to wear to special events. Did he want to see my first pair of wire-rimmed glasses? I started rummaging through things to see what I could find, listing events as I went to help him get a history lesson out of his quest.

“Don’t forget the Vietnam War,” my husband called out as I began reciting.

“Do you want to see a poem about the war?” I asked Guy. “I have some poems.”

“No, thanks,” he said politely. “That’s okay.”

Foraging for something a little more exciting, I found a black and white photograph of me with my three brothers, all of us attired in Seventies clothes, the hair on the boys a little shaggy and my hair long, parted in the middle just like Donna’s on TV. Then I remembered an old diary, an authentic primary source, and pulled it out.

"We tryed [sic] out for parts in Antigone today. I wish I was louder when I’m doing something like that. I must’ve been terrible!”

I probably was, but I was worse when I got the part of Eurydice and the messenger forgot to tell me Haemon had killed himself so it didn’t really make a lot of sense to the students in the audience when I committed suicide in despair.

“I went to the library and got three books on Oscar Wilde.”

Well, there wasn’t a lot of excitement there, except for some secrets I wasn’t ready to share. Then I spotted an old recording my brother Charles made in 1971 of our classic family radio show, WXYZ. Now that was a relic! I put it on and turned the volume up high.

“Ask me any questions,” I said to my son. “I can explain things.”

Throughout the recording was witty banter from Charles, the main deejay, who touched on miscellaneous events in the news as the rest of us played different roles. An interview with a forgetful old lady, played by yours truly, gave insight into a new food tax and adolescent humor. My favorite segment was when John and I did a hilarious parody of a shampoo commercial for “Protein 24,” a take-off which ended with an appeal in a voice I had at 15: “Now, girls, don’t sing the frizzy blues.”

We were funny, I had to admit, flip-flopping from slapstick to satire and back again. Between scratchy performances of Paul McCartney’s “Lovely Linda” and Blood, Sweat and Tears with “And When I Die,” albeit from 1969, we sounded so clever, if I do say so myself. Maybe a little too clever for a sixth grader’s ears?

“He’s not drunk!” I noted when Graeme, 11, started hiccupping. “He’s just pretending to be an inebriated deejay, an incongruity that would never happen in real life. Incongruity is an element of humor.”

“I know, Mom,” my son said.

“That’s satire!” I called when John, 16, started a campaign ad for George Wallace while I played “America” on the piano. “You know, satire, it means he was really criticizing white supremacy, not promoting it. George Wallace was a famous racist who ran for president.”

“I know, Mom,” my son said.

When John started mocking people who wanted to shut down “hippy radio stations,” joking about fire-bombing hippy establishments in a manner no high school student would be free to do today, neither on air nor in print, I had to interrupt again.

“He doesn’t mean that,” I yelled over the melodious voice of this forensics team member who would join the Navy one day soon. “It’s a farce, you know, he’s making fun of people who hate hippies. Some people didn’t like hippies or their music back then."

“I know, Mom,” my son said.

When the radio show stopped, Charles at 14 having succeeded in recording a great night of family fun, my son started singing Don McLean’s “American Pie.”

“Where did you learn that?” I asked him, amazed he could sing a song that kept us mystified for months in 1971. That Seventies Show. I remember where I was the first time I heard “American Pie,” Piggly Wiggly. I saw him live, too, you know, Don McLean. I was there, in person, a member of the original cast of the Seventies. He broke a string at Township Auditorium and kept playing.

I have a good memory. When I have grandchildren, I’ll still be able to reminisce for hours about popular culture before I call in Grandpa to talk about the Vietnam War.

Felicia Mitchell First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 23 July 2003, p. A4-A5. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2003.

A Mid-Life Summer's Whimsy

2003-07-16T08:57:00.000-04:00

Lately I have been thinking about my march toward fifty. Do I want to hear a drum roll, violins, or a bluebird whispering in my ear? I think I’ll go for the bluebird.

Do you know how the bluebird got its color? A Cherokee legend says that the bluebird was so awed by the beauty of a blue lake that it dipped in and out of it for five days, turning from white to blue on the last day. That same legend explains why the coyote is mud colored. While the bluebird was drawn to the natural beauty of the lake, the coyote was vain. Thinking it would look great in blue, it coveted the color of the bluebird. Focusing on appearances, the coyote got distracted and fell into a muddy ditch instead of the lake.

My own hair is now muddy instead of golden, muddy blonde with white streaks. Age, like that ditch the coyote fell in, has a way of teaching you not to be vain about crowning glories. I have to admit that I like watching my hair slowly turn white. A Creek saying alleges that white hair indicates the creator is whispering in your ear of the afterlife. My mother’s hair turned completely white the year she watched her first child, my brother John, pass over. He was twenty-one.

It’s very sad when somebody young dies. I have been blessed with a longer life, a life marked by a will to accomplish some of the things my brother wanted. I haven’t been to Paris yet, but I’ve seen a lot of the world, and Washington County, and I’ve had a chance to marry. The happiest event of my life, the birth of my son Guy, has helped me to reclaim some of the innocence I lost watching my brother suffer and die.

My son is a freckle-faced boy. Watching him grow and accumulate more freckles, I have come to trust life all over again. Philosophically speaking, his freckles represent the innocence of my own freckle-faced childhood when I marveled at life, like a beautiful blue lake, before me. They’re also cute. Did you know that if you wash your face in the wheat dew of May, you can wash your freckles off? If you don’t live near a wheat field, you can snip off the appendages at the base of dandelion leaves and soak them in alcohol to make an astringent. Short of that, you can buy some potion at the store. The world is as full of cures for freckles as it is mud.

An Irish legend has it that freckles are left by fairies who bless you. Genetically speaking, freckles are a dominant trait. One could say that my son has freckles because of Irish forebears, not fairies. Because my mother has had such a time with skin cancer, I wore sunscreen so long that I lost touch with my freckles. Sure, there were age spots to compensate, but that’s not the same. When I looked into a mirror, I saw a woman of a certain age. I was glad to be living a long life, but did I have to get old? Some women, and men, look into the mirror and decide to dye their hair. Others start saving for BOTOX® injections. I wanted freckles.

I wasn’t like the coyote, mind you. I didn’t want freckles out of vanity so I’d be cute like my son. Like the bluebird that gazed into the lake and wanted to wear its beauty, I gazed into my son’s face and wanted to wear his joie de vivre. So one morning I got up and just didn’t use sunscreen, and I had a lot of sunscreen not to use: sunscreen with moisturizers, tinted sunscreen, non-chemical sunscreen, high SPF sunscreen, even night cream with sunscreen. I quit powdering my face too. Why spend so much time hiding my partially Irish face from fairies?

The first night, after a day spent outside, saw progress. Four days later, I happened to glance in the mirror. There were more! Within a few weeks, some freckles returned—not the whole face-load, but enough to remind me of the little girl grinning behind the adult face. I wasn’t so old after all. Until my freckles fade, because I’m sensible enough to be wearing sunscreen again, I will enjoy my reunion with every one of them. I won’t even mash wild strawberries from the yard to hasten their departure.

In fact, if I begin to follow the advice of nutritionists who suggest ageing adults get more sun to benefit their skeletal systems, they may not fade so quickly. Sitting in the sun unprotected for five minutes now and then does seem to liberate my old joie de vivre. It could be Vitamin D, or it could be that outside I’m forced to look away from my mirror into a marvelous world unfolding, like a beautiful blue lake, before me.

Why Why Why Says the Junk in the Yard

2003-06-18T07:40:00.000-04:00

The first time my husband drove into my parents’ neighborhood in Columbia, South Carolina, he raised his eyebrows. In front of just about every house was some trash. Near a toilet, I spotted a serviceable chair.

“Want it?” I asked, not expecting an answer.

You see, my husband is from a small town in New Jersey where every lawn is perfectly manicured. There is no clutter. Even children’s toys are scattered according to some principle of Feng Shui.

I wouldn’t say I come from the other side of the tracks, just another culture. When I was growing up, we lived on the fringes of a ritzy neighborhood. Although our house always needed a coat of paint, we had everything we needed: the best schools in town within walking distance.

Buying that house meant that we did without a few things. Designer clothes for my mother, for example. New shoes for my father. My mother could sew, however, so she always looked like a fashion plate. And my father kept such good care of his shoes that he could wear one pair forever.

Even there, in that polite neighborhood, trash sprouted on curbs like mushrooms after a rain. Once a week, the day before the trash trucks came, people put stuff out, fully expecting the scavengers to swing by first.

I remember the time my brothers and I found a whole box of books in front of a house where somebody had died. Inscriptions from the nineteenth century caught our eye, and we took a few books home. One of those, Mothers of the Wise and Good, remains my mother’s favorite. Another with essays by Montaigne is her second favorite.

Then there was the time somebody down the street threw out some paraphernalia from World War II. My brothers and I sported leather flyer helmets for a spell, and now I have one my son can take to school for show and tell.

But this was the treasure: the Barbie dolls. I had my own Barbie dolls, two to be exact. But you know kids. They always want more. Then my friend Debbie decided she was too old for dolls and put all of them on the curb one afternoon. I’m not proud. I took the dolls. They were as sturdy as my father’s shoes. I still have them.

Inside the house where I played with my Barbies while wearing a leather flyer’s helmet, my mother reading Montaigne in the background, I should note there was no couch. All of our furniture was either some antique inheritance or some donation from miscellaneous relatives upgrading their homes. Oriental rugs with the palest of stains, offered by my Aunt Nell, who had a poodle, graced our wood floors. It wasn't until the early seventies, after we were grown, that my cousin Frances gave my mother a couch.

When I moved out on my own, I followed tradition. I accepted hand-me-downs. I scavenged. It never occurred to me to purchase new things from chain stores. I bought my first bed at a Salvation Army, a store my mother and I loved to shop in together in much the same way mothers today take their daughters to the Gap. My cousin Frances gave me a Victorian side table.

When I moved to Meadowview, Virginia, where I now live, I was making more money so I bought a new mattress. I bought some new chairs, unfinished wood that I finished myself. Still, thrift was in my blood. Other things came from flea markets and yard sales. My rugs came from Roses. A friend lent me a couch.

Then I got married. I guess you could say I married up, in terms of furniture. My husband owned a house full of it. Over the years, we have accumulated new things, donating the old. Some things, however, you can’t give away. Take my old exercise bike, for example. It’s a great exercise bike. For months a flyer has hung at the post office. The bike’s still in the basement.

I know that if I put the bike in front of our house, next to a box of clutter, the bike and the clutter would be gone in no time. But we don’t do that on my street, even if it’s not New Jersey.

I love to visit my mother. It feels so much like home to drive into the neighborhood where she now lives. If my timing is right, I see the weekly scavenger’s market. I take her around the block to check it out. Her most comfortable chair comes from somebody’s trash pile.
Once I got to set up my own pile. After my father died, my brother Graeme and I cleaned his study. By the time we were through, the curb held an old computer, an even older printer, a broken air conditioner, and a paint-scattered desk.

That afternoon a man walking by with a pocket-sized store of tools quickly unscrewed the motor from the air conditioner and went merrily on his way. It was a sunny afternoon. Who knew what else was in store down the street?