Cats Make You Talk Dumb

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This bit of observation came from my youngest when he was somewhere around five. He was angelic, blonde and small for his age, and his remark regarding all the “Tum-tum pusseh-wusseh! Paw-weh-cious puddy! Tum, Sweetie! Come up here'n' be Mommie’s baaaay-beh” stuff that he heard around the house has stayed with me over the years. 

Bast with her kittens, Brooklyn Museum

In those days, the adorable cat to whom we “talked dumb” was a slim, elegant black girly-girl named Bap. Her original (1970's Cool) name was Bast, after everyone’s favorite Egyptian goddess. However, “Bast” was more than two-year old Jesse could get his lips around, so “Bap” he called her and soon the rest of the family was calling her “Bap” too. 

Half a squirrel is better than...?

We’re usually a multiple cat household—“like potato chips, you can’t stop at one.”  These days, we host a mere two. B0B is our gray striped tiger, the terror of the neighborhood wild critters unlucky enough to attract his laser-green gaze and lightning fast claws. Our “joke” this spring was: “B0B! Wipe that bunny off your face before you come in this house!”  I have no idea how there can be another generation after all the body bits I’ve cleaned off the porch, but somehow, after  nine years in residence, he still hasn’t got them all. Astonishingly, somehow, each year, a few wily rabbits survive. Then, in spring, there are the little bodies again, pitiful innocents. 

     

Cat #2 is Kimi, fluffy, blonde, a rescue we were gifted. She arrived as a PTSD sufferer, so for the first few years, we hardly ever saw her. She was variously referred to as “Basement Cat,” “Dementia” or just “Stop that Damned Hissing!”  She showed up to eat, but touching/grooming by her human caretakers was pretty much forbidden—or, when these services were finally allowed, only permitted within a carefully circumscribed set of her own, often mystifying, rules. 

Traumatized Newbie

Then, suddenly, about seven months ago, all this changed. I think it was the daily-imposed-by-me-despite-the-bloody-scratches grooming ritual that finally ground down her resistance to human handling. (Long-haired cats must be groomed, or there will be vet bills you don’t even want to imagine.) She still has  rules about patting, but she’s as likely as not to be over here while I’m busily typing, trailing her fluffy tail seductively along my leg, or standing a little way off, repeatedly calling with her particularly desperate meeeoooow until I am compelled to spend time sitting on the floor to do the dedicated petting she now craves. She’s even jumped up to stand on the keyboard while I’m trying to finish/edit the soon to be published Fly Away Snow Goose —“jes' wike um’s a wee-eel too-woo kitty!”       

Happy Ending

~~Juliet Waldron

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Canadian Brides, historicals from Books We Love

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Women's Equality Day

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woman behind the man

This little known American commemoration (August 26) was created back in the 70's by Bella Abzug, a colorful, out-spoken member of the House of Representatives (1971-77). She was a labor attorney, a graduate of Columbia (Harvard, which she was qualified for, refused to admit her because she was female). She was always an activist, a force in the peace movement, the antinuclear movement and the civil rights movement too. Later, Bella became a leader of the women's movement. How well I remember her rousing speeches!

The test for whether or not you can hold a job should not be the arrangement of your chromosomes.

 Women's Equality Day is meant to be a celebration of the 19th Amendment to our Constitution, the one which gave American women the right to vote. Before that, women obeyed the laws and paid their taxes, but, never mind--taxation without representation for people of the "wrong" gender remained the law of the land.

I've always loved research, so digging around in the past comes naturally. I often write novels with female protagonists, and the social/cultural conditions which affect my heroines are always a big part of the background. 

I've just participated in a local celebration of Equality Day, so it's fresh in mind, and I think American women ought to know more about their own history. As I started reading,  I stumbled into a whole world of forgotten, not-in-the-textbooks people and fantastic facts. I thought that this month, I'd share a random few.

All Americans know the Paul Revere story, but who has heard of Sybil Luddington? When the message "The British are coming" arrived at her father's house--he was a colonel in the Colonial Militia--his 400 men were 40 miles away on some other task. The original rider/horse was too exhausted to continue, so Sybil, aged 14, mounted the family steed and rode all night--a distance of 40 miles--to call the men back to battle. We may not have heard much about Sybil, but still, at half Revere's age, she rode twice as far to deliver the same important message. General George Washington knew her, though, and later came to the Luddington house to say his personal thank-you. Now, Sybil was news to me, and I thought I knew a thing or two about the American Revolution.

Or, much later, how about Claudette Colvin? In 1955, on her way home from High School, fifteen year old Claudette refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, AL bus to a white passenger. This was some daring, as it would be 15 months before Rosa Parks did the same thing. Here's what she told Newsweek:

 “I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the other—saying, ‘Sit down girl!’ I was glued to my seat.”

Truth is powerful, and it prevails

Claudette was arrested for violating the segregation laws and the entire family was threatened with mayhem and death by white supremacists. Fortunately, the judge gave this brave young woman probation instead of a jail sentence, and, to my knowledge, the family escaped unharmed. 

And here are some fantastic facts concerning voting rights in the US. I've just learned that women actually  possessed the right to vote in several of the original 13 states, but lost it under the brand new "revolutionary" governments. 

In 1777, New York revoked women's right to vote, followed by, in 1780, Massachusetts. In 1784, New Hampshire did the same. When our present Constitution was adopted in 1787, the allocation of voting rights was left to the states. All states, except New Jersey, promptly put an end to a woman's right to vote. In 1807, New Jersey stepped backwards with the rest of the country, effectively leaving American women without the right to vote until, post Civil War, a few western states (Wyoming, Utah and Montana), began to do things differently. 

Women have still got a lot of work to do on the equality front all over the world. Here in the west, we're fortunate not to be considered chattel property, which is the case in many of today's Third world nations. However, things aren't perfect for us, either. Here are a few (not so) fantastic facts about the economic costs of being female in the US:

According to statistics released in 2015 by the U.S. Census Bureau, year-round, full-time working women in 2014 earned a real median income of $39,621 and full-time, year-round working men earned a real median income of $50,383. The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2014 Current Population Survey found progress in closing the wage gap so slim as to be “statistically insignificant."

According to the National Committee on Pay Equity, over a working lifetime, wage 
disparities cost the average American woman and her family $700,000 to $2 million in lost wages, impacting Social Security benefits and pensions.

Four in ten mothers are primary breadwinners in their households and nearly two-thirds are primary or significant earners, making pay equity critical to many families’ economic 
security.

So sisters, let's go! Get to the polls and exercise that hard won right to vote. Get familiar 
with local issues and engage in off year elections too. If you've got ideas--speak at the town hall meeting or better yet, run for office! Inequality will continue to negatively affect you, your daughters, and your grand-girls unless we in this generation fix it, once and for all. 

"...I’ve been female for a long time now. I’d be stupid not to be on my own side."

--Maya Angelou

~~Juliet Waldron

http://www.julietwaldron.com

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SHAKESPEARE ON THE PATIO

1967--Wearing Aunt Juliet's 1950's Dress which she sewed for an Ohio State dance

My mother’s parents had a beautiful backyard in the small Ohio town of Yellow Springs. Their house and backyard are the very first I remember. I was a war-time baby, and because of the housing shortage, my mother lived with her folks for some years while my father was serving over-seas. 

Grandpa had made his yard special by that time, but when they first came to town, in 1927, the “yard” was barren. The only tree was a young sugar maple which provided afternoon shade.   Grandpa Liddle was an English Professor, but he’d been raised on a farm, so he knew how to grow things. By the time I’d reached consciousness—say, 1947—his backyard had become a lovely place, now hidden from the neighbors by a living wall of cedars.

Inside this, twenty years on, was a flower garden, where colorful Dutch bulbs bloomed in spring—daffodils, tulips, anemones, narcissus—followed by all kinds of lilies and roses in summer, as well as Canterbury bells, bachelor buttons and a host of other familiar plants. There was also a pear tree, a stand of raspberries, a grape arbor and rhubarb. All the surplus was either turned into jelly or canned for winter use. In summer fresh fruit was always on the menu—my cornflakes always had raspberries; our lunches were accompanied by pears or grapes.

Celandine, brought from the NY family farm to Grandpa's Ohio yard, to mine 

In the shadiest part of the yard, by a small stable which sheltered the ponies that belonged to his daughters, he had a wildwood area. This contained a variety of ferns, trillium, phlox, wild violets, and bleeding heart. Dutchman’s Breeches, Jack-in-the-Pulpit and Dutchman’s Pipe were two of the oddest denizens of this garden.

Dutchman's Breeches

Under the big maple, on the brick patio, in good spring weather, he’d occasionally host a small senior literature class in Milton, Chaucer, or Shakespeare. This was not a problem for the students generally, as the house was only two blocks from the college and bicycles, in those days, were part of campus life. If I arrived in the middle of one of these classes, I knew to quietly head into the house. Here, I’d find Grandma in the kitchen, getting a proper English tea ready to serve. Of course, there was always some for me.  

Professor A.W. Liddle, a.k.a. "Grandpa"

Grandpa also had a little pond for goldfish. Nearby, he planted two sweet cherry trees, one for me and one for my cousin, Michael. Pies made from the fruit are another happily remembered treat, fresh ones in summer, followed by winter’s, made with Grandpa’s canned cherries. The pond was my favorite spot to sit, where I waited to glimpse furtive tail-flicks of orange.

Aunt Juliet & me. Hula skirt courtesy of a Vet on Leave from Pacific Front

I fed the fish whenever I visited. As soon as they spied me, peering down at them from my dimension of air, they would obligingly rise to the surface to take whatever I’d brought. ( I suppose, however, that, ordinarily, the resident mosquito larva was sufficient.) In the autumn, Grandpa would dip out the pond and put the fish into a tank on a side table in the sunlit breakfast room. Mostly, the goldies survived to return to the pond again in the spring. Some of these wintered-over fish grew quite large.

There were two weddings held in this garden, first that of my parents, and later, post-Korean war,  of my Aunt Juliet. I was the flower girl and my Cousin Michael, still in diapers, was the ring bearer. Later on, I nursed my first son sitting in that same utterly private backyard, while my grandparents told my husband and me stories about their 1927 arrival in this small middle-western town. 

Antioch College, Yellow Springs, OH

~~Juliet Waldron

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Monsters In Your Head

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Black Magic ventures into a shapeshifter's world

The Famous Big Foot Pic

Everybody’s had a monster. In childhood, it might hide under the bed, or out in the woods behind the house, or lurk beneath the surface of an otherwise calm and placid lake. When I first started looking into some of the Canadian roster of scary creatures, I saw some that already were familiar.   

The first and most famous is Big Foot or Sasquatch (or, variously, the Floridian Skunk Ape or the Jersey Devil, etc.), who legendarily has quite a large territory here in the Americas.  A similar creature is also is said to exist in Asia, as the Nepalese Yeti or Abominable Snowman. Farther west, there are the Mongolian Almas. In all iterations, however, these guys are tall, hairy, large – and by many accounts smelly.  

This is explained as a surviving close cousin, a beast still living, now hiding in forests and on mountain tops.  Sometimes its identified as surviving Gigantopithecus or the later Neanderthal. These mysterious creatures are said to have a world-wide – but extremely thin -- distribution.  As genetically isolated and small as these populations would have to be, and beset as they must be on every side by us--the most lethal predator this planet has ever produced--I think we human-beans are imagining things. We are--however powerfully--simply retelling ourselves some very old, very scary stories.

Disney Company's Jungle Book

Don’t get me wrong. I’m as much of a creature fancier as anyone. I was pleased to learn that there are plenty of monsters in Canada, aided by the indisputable fact that there still are huge wide open spaces without a lot of us. I recently learned that the Dene and Tlicho tribes of Great Slave Lake both have a legendary man-animal called "Nakan." This creature is closer to man in appearance than ape, at least on my amateur's scale.

I've just learned about another Nahnni Valley cryptid, the Dene's Nuk-luk, who sounds like the same sort of ape-man. He shares with the Tlicho's Nakan bad, skunk-like smells and, he sometimes wears raggedy clothes. On the person-hood upside, he has a house which he’s dug underground. In fact, that’s the way you find where Nakan hides in winter. Like hibernating bears, on cold days –and there are plenty of those in NWT -- you can see their breath rising from ground level breathing. You may be hungry enough to assault with intent to kill some sleepy bear, but a Nakan—well, it’s best to leave these awful beings alone. 

They are tremendously strong, have beards and lots of hair, and want to bring you into their sex life--no matter which sex you are! They most often steal women, but sometimes children too, “because they have none of their own.” I’m not sure why Nakan—or Big Foot for that matter--never seem to have any females. It’s not very mammalian for an animal to reproduce by budding or cell division.

My personal explanation for these man-amals is that they are black bears, standing up on their back legs in order to get a better look-see. Frankly, bears would be sufficiently terrifying for someone like me, who, at 6, suffered from screaming nightmares which involved bears searching for me--snuffle, snuffle, snuffle--while I shuddered under my bed.

Canadian monster lore is a well-stocked larder, thanks to so many 1^st Nation traditional stories. Some characters, however, like the familiar werewolf, or his more versatile shape-shifter cousin, Loupe Garou, are European imports.

Wendigo or Wittigo is a nasty character from Ojibway, Cree, and Assiniboine legends. Universally, among 1st People, the three worst sins are greed, gluttony and selfishness. If you behaved like that, not sharing food with your kin, you might turn into a Wendigo. The Wendigo are very tall, with yellowish rotting skin—and a taste for dining upon the flesh of their best old ex-friends.

Of course, starvation, not unheard of in Hunter-Gatherer societies, could lead to episodes of cannibalism. Making that choice, however expedient, would nevertheless cause a person to transform into the loathsome, man-eating Wendigo, worst of all terrors.

Opopogo—a famous water creatures--lives in Lake Okanagon in BC. He’s Canada’s Loch Ness/Lake Champlain type snaky monster,  reputed to be 40-50 feet long. Some witnesses say this guy has horns, too. Some say he's a member of the plesiosauria family, now surviving in remote fresh water lakes. 

Now, the 1^st Nation’s people had a legendary hostile spirit who was said to live in this lake, one who did not enjoy having them disturb his peace while they paddled across. It was traditional 1st Nation practice, if they had to cross the lake, to sacrifice something as they set out, a chicken or another small animal, in order to appease this angry power. Today's informants, however, say that this "monster" was a spirit, not a creature from the “primitive survivor” category of the cryptozoologist's version of the animal family.

This guy's got attitude

Whether Opopogo exists or not – the jury is still out – images of him, horns and all, may be seen on hockey jerseys for the team out of nearby Kelowna. 

Opopogo Opopogo Opopogo Opopogo Opopogo… ! How it trips off the tongue! Any monster with such a phonetically enchanting name deserves to be better known, don’t you think?

Last and not least is Waheela, a gigantic wolf with a huge head, sharp teeth, a wide splayed foot, and a reputed height at the shoulder of four feet.  Covered in long white hair, Waheela enjoys ripping the heads off people who trespass in his territory--the Nahanni River basin in the Mackenzie Mountains National Region--which is aptly named "The Valley of Headless Men." This dire-wolf like beast seems to be a relative of the Inuit's Amarok, who is gray and hunts at night. Amarok catches and eats foolish or desperate hunters who might still be outside their villages. 

Perhaps these are all simply cases of the monster hiding inside our own heads, what psychiatrists describe as "projection."  That’s probably what, the X-Files, Scully would say to Mulder, although he probably wouldn’t be listening. Imagine the way he’d just go on muttering aloud about historic sightings! His iteration would certainly go on for a long time, because any catalog of monsters just has to begin 'way far back in our collective history.  And, really, folks, we're the scariest animal that ever walked onto this planet?  Like Pogo said a very long time ago "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

    

~~Juliet Waldron

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Women's Work Memories--Doing the Laundry

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A few things have changed for women, if not all that much on the rights side--we seem to be going backwards at the moment--however, in the material world, the traditional hard work of housekeeping has grown much easier. Laundry is one of those revolutionized tasks. Still, like cleaning the toilet, another traditionally designated woman’s work, I'd thought I'd share some memories about some of the things I've seen during my own 70+ years of life. 

I wonder how many of you can also look back on these same changes, or if you have some unique stories of your own. I’m going to move through time—my little slice of it--regarding laundry day.

The first laundry days I remember was at Grandpa’s house where we took our clothes for a familial Saturday wash, because they had a machine, a rockin’ and rollin’ wringer washer in the basement. Running the wet clothes through the wringer was men’s work in my family, although the women did the rest: pre-sort, load, hang, fold, dry, and iron. (Remember ironing? The day devoted to the task, taking the clothes out of the hamper and dampening them with a spritz or a sprinkle—the ones from a little top you bought at the Five and Dime to attach to the top of a coke bottle? The back ache/neck crick from standing for hours with a moving extended arm, the pre-air conditioning summer heat?)

And, of course, for small children, there were dire, but necessary, warnings.

Beware the dreaded wringer in which careless children get their arms caught and broken and maybe even dragged in and squished to death!  And don’t forget; the release bar to open the jaws is along the top, so…!

In the early Sixties, life took my mother and me to Barbados in the West Indies. It was not the shiny tourist trap it is now. At one time, we lived in the countryside which meant in a big temporarily for rent house—the “Bajan” owners were in the UK, attending to some business there. The big white house with louvered windows stood in a grove of large trees surrounded by what seemed to be almost endless cane fields. A maid from a cluster of houses further down the road, came along with the rent—that is, mother paid her the going rate to stay on with us and do laundry and some weekly housework, so that she would be support in the regular owner’s prolonged absence.

It was a long bus ride from Bridgetown where my school was, and in the evening, when I got home, I’d enter a small lane that had a bridge over a steep-sided, fast moving creek. Down below, among the rocks, local women always seemed to be doing laundry. Many small children, wearing undershirts and nothing else, crouched and played in the water, like little kids everywhere. Here, sometimes, I’d see Elsie, who worked for us, banging a piece of clothing I’d recognize as mine, on a rock as if it had done some terrible crime and needed punishment. First she’d scrub up lather from a big cake of Fels Naphtha soap which she kept beside her balanced on a rock. Next, she’d pound, and last she’d rinse it out in the stream. When I saw that laundry method for the first time, I came to fully appreciate the high tech of the chugging basement wringer washer at Grandpa’s.

Later, after coming back to the US, entering college and getting married—all in quick time order—my husband, new baby and I lived in an apartment building which rented to married students. It was a spacious old side by side duplex, now split into four apartments. I worked part time--part time school--in order to afford my first washing machine, a long-lived trendy bronze color Sears Kenmore top loader. Wet wash was hung from the back porch on a super long reel line. 

The kindly owner of our building had set lines up for both upstairs and downstairs apartments, although the tenants overhead had to hang their laundry while leaning out a window. As this was Massachusetts, sometimes it was too wet or too snowy or cold, so we all had drying racks for such occasions. As everyone knows, with babies, there is always a lot of laundry. And with diapers, it’s best to hang them out, even if they freeze for a day or so. 

As the old saying goes, “sunlight is the best disinfectant,” even if it’s 10 below...or in the 21st Century.   

~~Juliet Waldron

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The Lennon-McCartney of the 18th Century

 

Mozart's Wife

 

The tenor, Michael Kelly, wrote a memoir which remains interesting to anyone searching for Mozart stories, particularly about the Marriage of Figaro. (The Austrian Emperor and therefore everyone else in Vienna referred to Kelly as "Ochelli" because "The names of all Irishmen begins with an 'O". Therefore, OChelli he was--in Vienna.)  Lesson #1--never correct the Emperor of Austria if you would like to keep your job at the royal opera house...
 

From the tenor Michael Kelly’s "Reminiscences," published 1826 :

 

“I remember the first rehearsal of the full band, Mozart was on the stage with his crimson pelisse and gold-laced cocked hat, giving the time of the music to the orchestra. Figaro’s son, “Non piu andrai, farballone amoroso…” Bennuci gave with the greatest animation and power of voice.

 

I was standing next to Mozart, who, sotto voce, was repeating, “Bravo! Bravo! Bennuci!” and when Bennuci came to the fine passage, “Cherubino, alla vittoria, alla Gloria militar” which he gave out with Stentorian lungs, the effect was electricity itself, for the whole of the performers on the stage and those in the orchestra, as if actuated by one feeling of delight, vociferated Bravo! Bravo! Maestro! Viva, viva grande Mozart! Those in the orchestra I thought would never have ceased applauding, by beating the bows of their violins against the music desks. The little man acknowledged, by repeated obeisances, his thanks for the distinguished mark of enthusiastic applause bestowed upon him…” 

 

No more, you amorous butterfly,

Will you go fluttering round by night and day,

Disturbing the peace of every maid,

You pocket Narcissus, you Adonis of love,

No more will you have those fine feathers,

That light and dashing cap,

Those curls, those airs and graces,

That rosy womanish cheek.

You’ll be among warriors, by Bacchus!

Long moustaches, knapsack tightly on,

Musket on your shoulder, saber at your side,

Head erect and bold of visage,

A great helmet, waving plumes,

Lots of honor, little money,

And instead of the fandango,

Marching through the mud.

Over mountains, through valleys,

In snow and days of listless heat,

To the sound of blunderbusses,

Shells and cannons

Whose shots shall make your ears sing

On every note.

Cherubino, onto victory,

Onto Military Glory!

 

(Cherubino, alla vittoria, alla Gloria militar!)

 

This is one of the most famous (and fun!) arias in all of opera. Set to Mozart’s most stirring martial music, it is mockingly sung to Cherubino, the teen would-be lady-killer, by the older servant,  wily Figaro. The Count who rules them all has just caught the boy hanging around once too often, first with his wife, and just now with Susanna, the pretty maid whom the Count is hot to seduce. As Cherubino is his ward and of noble blood, he can’t just murder him, (much as he'd like to,) so he's ordered him into the army.

 

The military is still the classic solution for boys who suffer from a chronic overload of testosterone and who are causing problems around your house—or on the street. Written in the late 18^th Century, when war still had a cloud of romance hanging round it—no machine guns, tanks, drones or poison gas just yet—it’s straight on the mark. “Glory” is meant ironically. Figaro is sobering the boy up, saying that soldiering means real danger, exhaustion and suffering. So get ready, kid!

 

It’s a nice example of DaPonte’s nuanced writing, words that inspired Mozart to write his most famous scores. Figaro first sings mocking praises—“Pocket Narcissus” has to be one of the best put-downs ever. Then he gets tougher. There will be no further perfumed romps in My Lady’s chambers. Your new bosom companions, my son, will be hardened soldiers--and your 60 lb. knapsack. No more dances, only marching, almost always in the worst weather.  In the 18^th Century, too, armies were often chronically without pay, not only because of the usual bad planning, but because wrecking havoc on civilians was (and, heck, still is) traditionally part of the game. DaPonte and Mozart, both freelance artists, know only too well that honor without the cash to back it up was a hollow thing indeed.

 

For the coup de grace, Figaro describes the pain which bombs and gunshots will cause your ears. It’s a misery particularly singled out by DaPonte and Mozart for Cherubino, a musical boy who writes beautiful love songs for all his girlfriends.

 

No more honey-dripping for you, Punk! From now on, your ears will “sing” to you of war! 

 ~~Juliet Waldron

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And because it's Nanina Gottlieb's birthday today and because she too--aged 11--sang in this opera:

 

Nanina's Mozart story