World Beginnings

  Gradually, I have been cleaning and tossing old memories because they mean nothing to anyone but me. The picture above is my first husband, our son Steven and his two children Erik and Hope. Thomas Leroy Witcher was born in Choctaw County, Mississippi, in 1945 to the poorest of poor families. His father, Booker, was elderly when he married Bessie, an illiterate fourteen-year-old girl. Together they had seven children. Old Booker had given up the drink and became a fervent religious convert in his dotage. The family had so little to eat, his mother canned peas and beans, and there was certain to be at least one fly in each jar. The family joke was that was all the meat they had to eat.  Thomas and his sister Maybelle were the only ones to make a life for themselves. Maybelline attended Belhaven College, married a fellow student, and they became missionaries. Thomas attended the local junior college for a semester and dropped out to join the army. One summer day in 1966, a friend and I

  Sri Lanka, 2005 One of my classes in Sri Lanka was analyzing E. M. Forrester's masterpiece  Passage to India , one of the most important works of the 20th century. In an attempt to convey the mysticism of India to these young people, I learned about a very unusual Hindu temple in Colombo. In short order, I arranged a field trip. The picture above represents the type of structure we would see around Colombo. But the temple we visited was unlike any Hindu temple in Sri Lanka. After talking about proper behavior in a holy place, we traveled to this temple. I wish I could remember the name. Arriving, I was struck by the concrete structure before us, nothing like I expected. Fortunately, there were only about twelve students, and they huddled around me as we entered the dark interior, leaving our shoes at the door. Unexpectedly, we had come on a particular holy day. Hundreds of candles lit the interior, creating an otherworldly sense. Devotees had brought offerings of flowers whose s

How does a teacher bring literature to life for teenage students? How to help them feel the pain and joy the writer is trying to convey? We, Grade 12's, had just finished the sad and painful poetry of the WWI poets Owen, Sasson, and others. We also studied the poets' lives, and the students were surprised that Owens and Sasson were homosexuals, which led to other discussions about masculinity. The class was shocked at how young they were.   Quite by chance, I learned that Cairo had a war cemetery from WWII, so I visited to see if I could extend the student's understanding of the tragedy of war. I discovered that there were almost 1,800 graves, and they were arranged by the soldiers' date of death. Unlike the United States, other countries buried their dead near where they fell. So there were British, French, German, Australian, Indian, and all countries involved in the war. All major religions were represented as well as men and women. Soon I arranged a field trip, and

  Upon the untimely, early death of my father, we moved from Seattle to the tiny burg of Kilmichael, MS, population 300, on Saturday night. But when we first arrived, we stayed at our Uncle Doyle’s house out in Poplar Creek, MS, an even small community gifted with a small general store with a gas pump. We lay have well have been on another planet. Behind Uncle Doyle’s house, there was a smelly ditch with a big plank over it leading to the barnyard. In the late afternoons, we were allowed to cross the ditch to feed the chickens a few ears of corn that we would carefully scrub off. While this was fun, we were amazed to learn where eggs came from, we were warned to watch out for the “old King snake” that lived in the corn crib, so we never went very far into the dark corn crib. I can still smell the musty odor of the corn and the barnyard. But there was also a big bull that we were warned to stay far away from. Every evening the cows would come up for feeding and milking, and one of us wa

 It is a glorious time of year here at Lake Chapala, Mexico. The sky is clear blue; the lake is full of water for the next year; birds are singing, and wind chimes tinkle. Along the lake's edges are masses of yellow flowers and some white; even though they are weeds, they are beautiful. It is peaceful here, unlike my friends in Florida, huddling in closets as hurricane Ian batters them. It has been a week of excellent and annoying events. My friend, Lissa, helped me catch my cat, who refused to get into the carrier and come to our new rental. That was so good. BooBoo kitty and both dogs welcomed Bobcat home, and soon he found his favorite chair, curling up for a long nap. But in our little slice of paradise, too many people take in a stray, only to leave it in a box or locked in an empty rental. In the last few weeks, more than one person dumped three cats at the Lake Chapala Society, no doubt because it is well known that feral cats are fed there. But it isn't a refuge, and th

Long ago, in a land far away, nope, such a place never existed. Yet it did and still does in my memory. This morning I saw this picture posted by my Lakeside friend, Charlotte Donaldson, of freshly shelled peas and snap beans, and I was transported back in time to my Aunt Janis’s farm in Poplar Creek, MS. That was a simpler time, much like Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegone. Kids never back-talked, and when we told to come and shell some peas, we did it. Bushels and bushels of them sitting on the porch, shelling and talking. Purple hull peas stained my fingers purple, and I hated when the butter beans came in; they seemed the hardest to shell and made my fingers sore. And if someone stopped by, seeing folks gathered on the porch, they were given a big bowl too and joined the conversation and shelling. There was a predictable urgency to farming back then. The fields had been plowed, made ready for planting, and at just the right time, the seeds went into the soil. And then the waiting fo