Ercel Eaton Archives

Flavor of the Month

If you’ve been watching television at all you’ve been learning another language. Have you noticed this?

One hears, for instance, to “Is the worst election year for the Republicans in the history of our state,” from different location. If I’ve heard that phrase once I’ve listened to it a hundred times. And from dozens of news announcers, male and female, using the same words.

Living through as many presidential elections as I have in my eight decades, I cast my recollection lines along the past years to try and reel in some scenes of other candidates and their nicknames and phrases that became attached to their races.

Some of the candidates have nicknames, others “hidden’ first names; not that it makes much difference, but pundits like to repeat them often. Another oft-heard two-word news bit is “Flip-flop.” Still another, someone trying to cover all bases in one mouthful: “Its within the realm of possibility although not likely.”

With more than half a dozen Republicans clawing their way toward the primaries, a lot of mud fills various air pathways. They wonder if so and so can “Make the sale.”

And some of those sales include the “Flavor of the month.”

I am making a decision here and now. No matter how much they beg and plead, I will not run for president!

I would have to learn what it means to have “Boots on the ground in Iowa,” not to mention come up with a suitable nickname. I have none.

Watching the pundits talk about “Building a firewall against So-and-so,” and over and over I hear certain hopefuls are “surging,” others “collapsing,” according to polls, polls, polls and more polls. I don’t like polls.

I like to make up my own mind, not mimic what some other folks are doing. But the most mentioned group I’ve heard through the long, unbearable process is a group close to my heart. Plenty others agree. The group is the “Middle Class.”

I hoped the elected person, be it Republican or Democrat, does not forget that group.

Follytics

I’m waiting for President Obama’s annual State of the Union address; he’s scheduled at 9p.m. I feel a great deal of sympathy for him these days. After all, the battle is numerically skewed in favor of the GOP (which I can only think stands for Grumpy Old Persons.)

Politics, which has come to sound more like “follytics,” has always carried taints of mudslinging and lying and a great stretching of facts. For instance, one TV talk show host said the GOP candidates (those left in the race) tell so many falsehoods about the President they make him out to be a fictional person so they will be able to aim more nasty slings and lies at him.

Although more than half a dozen candidates of the other party promised to shove the President out of office at the beginning of the contest,  I always want to refer to President Barak  leader of “America, this great country.”  Both the country and its head deserve respect from all the citizens. 

If I began to list all the ugly things broadcast in this race, I’d run out of space quickly; besides I don’t feel comfortable using the kind of language they let loose in the radio and television air. 

I long for office-holders who can be described with these three words: “decent, honest and compassionate.” At the very beginning of this conflagration, I was talking to my eldest brother, a dedicated Republican, on the phone.

“What?” I whined, “is happening to our nation?”

He’s a wonderful man, as are all my five brothers. “I’ll give you a one-word answer,” he replied. “Greed.” That word has reverberated through the roller-coaster ride of all the weeks leading up to this point, just before the Florida votes are to be cast.

It’s almost time for the President to arrive; Gabrielle Giffords is entering the crowd to a standing ovation. She looks lovely.

What I wish for at this moment is that something, ANYTHING, can be done to make all sides work together for this embattled government.

Obama takes a while to hug and shake hands and kiss his way down the long, long aisle to the lectern. John Boehner introduces him calling it “ distinct honor and a privilege.”

I must turn now to the television to listen to our President.  I call listening to him an "honor and a privilege."

One-liners

I keep seeing a Mark Twain quote flash on the TV screen when I’m just surfing around.

“The more I get to know people,” he said. “The better I like my dog.”

I liked that. It made me recall a few weeks ago when my two daughters and a 13-year-old granddaughter were going about an hour’s ride away to have a birthday luncheon for the 13-year-old.

All the way the new teenager regaled us with one-liners she had collected in a notebook. We laughed until we could hardly breathe by the time we reached our destination.

Take Garrison Keillor and listen to his tales of Lake Wobegon: “It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon,” he’ll begin, then continue with: “It was cold this week and windy.”

Now there’s nothing profound in that thought but I felt the need to keep on reading, knowing there was better thoughts to come.

Among the collections I’ve gathered over the years I’ve come across so many that apply to today’s politics. For instance, “Don’t burn your bridges, you’ll be surprised how many times you’ll have to cross the same river.’’ Well, yeah! Some of them are wet to the kneecaps already and just in the beginning of a presidential race.

Was it Harry Truman who said: “If you can’t cook, don’t go in the kitchen?” I take that quote so literally I haven’t turned the stove on in years.

A couple more could help some of the voter-cravers if they took them seriously: “Never swap your integrity for money, power or fame!”  “When declaring your rights don’t forget your responsibilities.”

Martin Luther King Jr.: “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

May Sarton whom I have read over and over, went on writing after becoming ill. This saddened me: “In the country of pain we are each alone,” she wrote.

In the pages of Dorothy Parker’s “What Fresh Hell is This?” I learned how stinging was her wit, how painful were some of her words toward the society in which she lived. Certainly she hobnobbed with some of the most well-known writers of her time.

Speaking of “time,” one quote from a friend of my mother’s I’ll always remember. He lived alone in the southeastern Kentucky countryside. A curving driveway welcomed a driver to his home. Rushing out to greet the visitor, he would exclaim “Get down and rest your saddle!!” The phrase remains in my head to this day as an  extremely friendly hello.

I can’t leave Winston Churchill out of this. It wouldn’t be right. Here is one of his quotes:

“What is the use of living if not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?”

Could I list this recalling of thoughts and quotes among my strivings for a better world?

Good Spots

Some days reading the headlines is almost more than I can bear. Fatal shootings in schools, for instance.  Children are so precious, the pain reaches quickly toward   those losing their lives, and too, to the troubled one with the firearm.

Television brings us instantly terror and pain from all over our planet. Into our hearts and minds come scenes of wars, starving populations, natural disasters.

So we try to cope. And we clutch at scraps of good news if we can find them. One headline noted that North Korea with its new leader, is suspending nuclear work in exchange for food. I find that good news.

The words from Sen. Olympia Snowe as she retired her from her post in the Republican party. An Associated Press story said her action “highlights the great paradox in American politics.”

I am not the only voter in this country, I’m sure, who is saddened and discouraged at the see-sawing of our law-makers. One yearns for honest, decent politicians to replace these who line up like unmovable soldiers on either side, never giving in.

I have long admired Snowe along with others to take a stand when they are sick and tired with what’s going on.

When we look back upon our childhood times, they seem delightful. For me, mountains loomed close by so that I could take off alone and climb to the top, checking wild animal dens, birds’ nests and small trails just wide enough for my feet.

Atop one hill that rose behind our dwelling was a huge stone out-cropping. If I traveled around the high reaches of the hill, I could step up a couple of rock ledges and find myself on a very high stone floor.

Far below a silver ribbon of Polls Creek glittered in my line of sight. I remember those little trips to the mountaintop.

But you know, we had no television, no radio, barely a newspaper to bring us news from around the world. This is one reason we could exist in quiet peace, close with our families. The travails of the earth did not encroach because we had no access to the technology that brings it all to us now.

Those memories remain one of the good spots where I can turn to when I choose. And around us these days are starlit people who spend their lives doing good things

Many things make life sweeter.

Spending Time to Dig

Before the news people were finished with their reporting on the United States

Supreme Court’s ruling on President Obama’s Health Care law, a commercial blasting the Supreme Court’s action flipped onto the television.

If there ever was a time when this country’s journalists needed to be at the forefront of reporting the news succinctly and fairly, it is now. I am 82 years old. Recently, I’ve had a personal depression looking at the fighting among the so-called leaders of the land.

I have developed a practice of turning the channel as soon as the hard newscast ends—that way I don’t have to listen to the dog fights and cat fights. If I move away I from all the partisanship I get to make up my own mind.  The action of the Court encouraged me. It seems to me we certainly need three functioning branches of government for Democracy to work.

Reading Daniel Schorr’s book, “Come to Think of It,” let more light in on our dilemma as we try to make sense of where we are. Schorr was National Public Radio’s Senior News Analyst and as such his reporting included a global span of historic events.

“Journalism has been called a first rough draft of history,” he wrote in the book’s introduction.  Leaf through its pages and watch dates fly by as he kept up with the passage of time.  Some of the last articles in the book are dated in 2007.  See?

I spent my career years trying to fill the journalist’s quest for truth and not always succeeding. Nowadays, since as a retiree I’ve slipped into the middle class category we hear so much about on the news. Technology has made it possible for ordinary people like me to gather news. Unfortunately, we must continually do a lot of thinking and get used to researching on our own for the kernel of truth floating around out there somewhere. (Daniel Schorr said being on the radio allowed him to “do more thinking and less running around” ) to gather news.

US Citizens, especially those who have only one lonely vote to speak for them, must  spend a larger and larger amount of their time digging for what, in their heart of hearts, they feel is the best for our county.

October Follytics

A stubborn string running through both the Democratic and Republican 2012 political conventions made me think perhaps I can still qualify to run for the highest office in the land.

Of course I’m kidding.  Well, maybe half kidding. What convention participants seemed to be doing was trying to find out who had grown up in the poorest conditions; or interview supporters who were at the bottom end of the economic scale.

I must have been four or five years old when I began doing farm work, climbing many steps upward on an Appalachian slope, making my way to a starting point in our family’s cornfield.

When you could count to three you could make your way around the curving cornrows where only three of the slender green stalks should be left in each hill. It was called “thinning corn.”

At that wee age it seemed as though it took days to climb that hill, and the sun got hotter as the day grew older.

However, stop right here. I am not going to fall into the common “sad pit” and continue to tell what a poverty-stricken life I led.  From that early time in my life all I ever wanted to do was write my thoughts.  Growing up in a poverty stricken time as well as a poverty stricken place was not in my young mind.

Much later, when I began to earn my living by writing, I made a firm decision that I would only tell the good parts about that wonderfully beautiful hilly place where I spent my childhood.

Our country was dropping to The Great Depression when I was born (1929). Our family didn’t notice the lack of funds. We grew our own food, canned vegetables, raised chickens, turkeys, and swine and caught wild animals for our meats, cattle for milki

And my hardworking parents had 13 children, most of them delivered by a midwife. One died at 14 months old. And the rest of the children, now parents, grandparents and great-grandparents are still here.

What I remember about those Depression times was several of us children, putting on our homemade plays in the warmth of the front room fireplace for our parents to watch; also among my delightful memories is snow cream, made from freshly fallen snow sweetened with molasses (if we had run out of war-rationed sugar); and riding full-throttle on a hand made sled down the slope continued on from the back of our house, at our front porch.

We had fun. Going to a one-roomed schoolhouse heated with an iron stove in the center that room. A galvanized water bucket and drinking cups we fashioned out of writing paper was how the kids fought off thirst.

In high school, because the bus didn’t come up the curving, rough road under construction by the WPA, we hitched early-morning rides with miners on their way to their workday. At Wooten the school bus picked us up to go to Leslie County High School at Hyden, Ky.

I could go on and on. There were, indeed, hardships adults had to bear, but as parents always do, they tried to see that the next generation would have a better life.

I am not sure being poor qualifies one for high political office, but one thing I believe, IT DOES NOT DISQUALIFY anyone. 

Mountains

The Embrace Fall

One of the first sounds greeting me when I awoke this morning was a TV statement that some spotty frost had arrived last night. A shock, I tell you. I’m still panting from the hot summer.

Yet, one must stop and check the calendar. Behold! Autumn is near – just a few days hence and it will begin its sweeping color-changing glory. Also, I happened across a quote from Elizabeth Lawrence: “Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn.”

Well, yes!! October arrives every year with its gifts of gold, red, rusty burgundy, orange and fuzzy shades of all these colors.

“If the Lord whispered in your secret heart that you had but one month to live, and let you pick the month, which would you choose?” wrote widely-read columnist Hal Boyle many years ago. The he answered his own question: “I’d choose October.”

Well, so would I.  And if they wanted to know my favorite tree during that month I’d say firmly the Sweet gum. Be alert now, for autumn slips in quietly: First a small embarrassment of red blush among the maples, then the sweet gums blurt out a burgundy branch or two, emphasizing nearby yellow leaves.

I always stop, stare and marvel as fall creeps over the countryside, spreading like a spilled rainbow across what was recently a green landscape.

Remember Walter Winchell? I ran across an ancient, yellowed scrap of newsprint containing this: “Autumn has a quality of richness and joy that communicates itself to everything it touches. It embraces people as well as products of the soil. . .”

From the time I was little, growing up amid the tall mountains of southeastern Kentucky, I loved the “embrace” of fall. Because a tall slope, into which my father had constructed a sturdy stone home for his family, led to what seemed like a spire into the sky to a child, I could climb alone to the top.

What fun to find a pile of multi-colored leaves gathered at the base of a sweet gum. And that special tree was even more delightful because its branches grew close to each other so even a small child could climb and climb.

This year I hope to see my 83^rd October, and, though I am no longer near those tall slopes, I know these days where each sweet gum in my neighborhood stands.

Humans strive with worries, hurts and a thousand little things, but it is time to slow down, to think about October and soak up enough beauty to last another year. There’ll be enough to last.

Trust me.

Mountains in May

A few feet from my kitchen widow a pink  rhododendron swells its buds toward the sky as though  in a race to paint this month a color designed to lift spirits everywhere.

This month has more than this wondrous earth-cleaning renewal by nature’s rainbow coloring of each leaf, bud, tree and sky.

May, where I grew up in the southern Appalachians, brought in house-cleaning time, just in time to chime in with nature’s colorful hallelujahs. While the mountains rose to greet the morning sun, fog crept up the hills, revealing soft pink and white redbuds and dogwood trees.

We washed featherbeds, quilts, lots of quilts, pillows, sheets and pillow cases. Curtains. Everything must be clean, washed like the tall slopes now greening and blooming with the hues of spring.

Gardens began their summer growth, shooting up with every warm day. Wild violets winked in the woods and tender may apple shoots spread white above green leaves.

I loved May. And when the housework was finished, I was delighted to climb upward to the top of the mountain that pitched downward to the back side of our house.

Somehow the patchwork of the quilts reminded me of the differences in tree and bush colors along the slopes as they dipped and climbed across undulating mountainsides.

Bending over a huge washtub into which a flat, corrugated metal board caught the soil from shirts and slacks and overalls. Later, all were pinned with clothespins along a strong rope fastened between two posts,

Nowadays, machines do almost everything to clean the clothes – leaving only a few wrinkles to be whisked away by some marvelous concoction added to the drying cycle.

Homemade lye soap formed the foamy cleanser that added to the board in order to whip away any soil left in garments.

Still, my favorite part of May was hiking to the mountain top where I could find a small declivity in the hillside where I could curl up a fall asleep for a short, tender nap.

That was lovely, warm and sunlit and filled with dreams the color of hills.

Mountain Games: A Conversation with Emma and Ella

 Some time ago I interviewed a couple of little girls: Twins, Ella and Emma,  third graders. They were preparing a presentation on “Life in the Appalachian Mountains a Long Time Ago.”

I was used to asking the questions, not answering them. “What kind of games did you play when you were little?” they wanted to know. Now “when I was little” covers a lot of time. I had to get the old gray matter in gear.

All of a sudden a quiet, sparkly pool of water appeared in my mind. I could also feel the presence of two of my brothers with me by the still water of a creek which had spilled into a pool just below my father’s mill dam he had constructed so he could grind corn into meal.

Along the far side of the water about six snakes’ heads rose three or four inches out of the glistening surface.

“We had a lot of fun throwing rocks at snakes’ heads,” I told Emma and Ella. Their chins dropped. “Wow,” they said at the same time.  “Did you kill them?” I told them “No, the snakes ducked their heads back under the water and we couldn’t hit them. They were much quicker than we.”

“Ooooh,” they said, their voices as sweet as the sound of soft ripples on the water.  That’s a bonus of a phone conversation with little ones. I was allowed to speak briefly to their younger sister, Anna, whose words sounded like tinkling bells.

I had a good time asking and answering questions.

My brothers and I invented our own games, carving out slingshot weapons; using small stones as our bullets, just the way we had used bigger ones to battle water-snakes.

I asked: “What would your games be if you didn’t have a television?” I asked them.

“Mostly,” Emma replied, “We read. I like to read.” I just had to get the next question, what books? “Harry Potter, Emma told me. And there are the movies, too.”

I agreed whole-heartedly with her choice, as I did with Ella: “I like to draw,” her twin chimed in.

Then their younger sister Anna wanted to talk. Other family members included a still younger sibling, Avva, who never came to the phone; and there were parents, Chris and Carrie, and grandparents, Paul and Sharon.

I may start a new way of writing stories – get a small, low chair and interview only the wee ones.

Another thing, you can learn a lot from children; everything is fresh.

The Ring

Since my husband’s death nearly five years ago, I have gathered some treasured items that belonged to him; some mementoes of his military service, degrees, certificates and a small snapshot of him and our two daughters still clings to the refrigerator door.

One missing item remaining in my memory carries with it a tiny sliver of hope that it could someday resurface: his high school class ring from Lily High School in Lily, Ky.

Because the history of that ring is so precious, I will repeat below an article I wrote about it all some years ago.

Jumping with a splash into the rocky swimming hole, the young man realized immediately his class ring had slipped off his finger.  Devastated, he began a next-to-impossible task of searching the muddy creek bottom.

Formed by a sheet of cascading water flowing over the edge of a 12-feet-high stone ledge, the pool, when undisturbed, sparkled clear between sloping, tree-covered hills. No road came near the place, so on a hot summer day the recent high school graduate and his friends found fun in the walk down the shady, forested slope.

On the other side of the creek a sheer, rocky cliff was home to tenacious cedars and maples springing from cracks in the rocky cliff. It was an incredibly lovely, isolated spot, but to the youngsters it was simply the best swimming hole around.

In spite of the hopelessness he felt in his endeavor, the boy dove downward. It was shortly after he had received the ring and it was his most prized possession for a lot of reasons. But, strangely enough, he found it as his hands clawed among the mud and rocks at the creek bottom.

After that he never wore his ring again to the swimming hole. The way he got his class ring at a time when the family was getting by on almost no income was this.

His indomitable mother had ideas. She contacted a neighbor who had lots and lots of quilts to warm the beds of her big family.

The neighbor was glad to contract with her for getting her quilts cleaned. For days and days the young man’s mother washed the covers the old-fashioned way, on a washboard. Even laundering one quilt at a time was a heavy task; you had to pull the heavy wetness up an down on corrugated metal, stopping intermittently to rub a cake of homemade soap along the twisted cloth.

Her son was amazed when he learned he would, after all, get a class ring. Years later the little school gave way to school consolidations. But still another mishap smote the ring. The tiny “L” (for Lily) fell off. Another search of the area miraculously turned it up and a trip to the jewelry resulted in its reattachment.

But that is not the end of the story. John George Eaton married, moved to Fairfield, Ohio where he spent his working years at the General Motors Fisher Body plant, took care of his family and retired.

One Sunday while the family was at church, a thief broke into a bedroom window, ripped a pillowcase from and gathered up some small items from throughout our rooms; including my late husband’s class ring.

I may be nuts, but I still cling to that sliver of hope that someone, sometime may think it over and return the ring.

Ropes of Diamonds

Just now, as I write, the United States Air Force Spirit swoops overhead as thousands of Rose Parade watchers look skyward to catch a glimpse of the marvel of flight engineering.

Quietly, at my house, hours moved across from 2011 to 2012. All it is could be told in a few numbers at the top of the page. But of course as one of my sisters called the next day to ask if I had made my New Year’s “revolutions,” I was forced to look backward a bit.

Much of the time these days I feel as though I am inextricably caught in and ever increasing tangle of technology. Quickly, with a flip of some long forgotten memory color in my brain, comes a snow-covered slope; and my brothers and I deep into building a sled with runners to slide like the wind down of one of the slopes. (We could, perhaps have been finished much faster with the aid of a few electric saws and drills.)

If the mountain people who tucked their lives into the isolation of hills and hollows of the Appalachians nearly a century ago knew anything, they knew how to “make do.”

A red-hot iron poker, left a required amount of time half buried in the fireplace embers served well to burn perfectly round holes in the front and back ends of sled runners we had hewn to a slick, curving surface on their bottom. Dowels, fastened into those holes, helped form the sled’s foundation.

Relishing the icy wind in our faces, we’d ride down the hill as fast as we could without falling off.

All around, on snowy days, the mountains offered up their special brand of beauty. One of my memories keeps fresh a scene created by a quick overnight freeze on the heels of an evening rain. A glittering, shimmering, fairy land  greeted us that next morning.

Coated with ice, every tiny limb and branch from the mountaintop down to the creek sparkled like ropes of diamonds, dazzling the eyes. A thousand differently-shaped jewels flung beautiful bounties into the morning air.

Later, cold to the bone we’d rush back inside to gather around the open fire, feeling the warmth chase the ice, melting frozen jeans from around the ankles. Lunch of soup beans (pintos) and hot, buttered corn bread completed the warm-ups.

Every season held its special treat for the eyes and hearts. And the stone fireplace lining held heat in such comforting measures, one could hardly keep from taking a cozy little nap

No technology needed.

Mountain Christmas

“Black Friday,” seems to have become a permanent part of our language along with “Cyber Monday” and the sadness of learning of pepper spray and fistfights at shopping spots.

But still, in spite of pervasive interest in the purchase of “things,” for this season, there lies at its core hosts of memories of other Christmases.

 “Hey,” said a retired consultant when asked about childhood. “We always had a tree. Trees didn’t cost anything.”  He paused to gaze into space. “It doesn’t take money to have a nice holiday.”

I like to recall my own early holidays. Warmth and tenderness come first to the front of my memory of those early days of mine. Open fireplaces glowing from the fuel of sawed logs, the thumping of a churn dasher moving up and down producing fat mounds of fresh butter.

Tree decorations, fashioned of strips of paper glued into chain forms, stars cut from cardboard and covered with foil. As this took place the excitement grew. We knew for sure Santa Claus was keeping tabs on kids who were good. He sent birds to spy on us.

Surely, as the time of Dec.25 grows nearer, softness steals into the air, a caring, and gentleness creeps into conversations.

Of course the criers of crass commercialism sometimes, perhaps don’t stop to think down below the surface. There they could grasp at the truth that givers gain as much as receivers and more.

Even back in my childhood, six or seven decades ago, delight lingers at the warmth and loveliness of those days. Our family lived in a stone house built by my father who cut building blocks himself, cementing them into a square home intersected by walls forming four good-sized rooms.

Dozing into slumber those Eves, we were lulled by fire-flickers on the walls and I recall always losing the battle to stay awake until the red-coated man slipped down the chimney.

Wakened by our father stirring embers into flames the next morning we all rushed into the main room to gather around the warmth and look into stockings. It didn’t matter that our gifts included a small amount of candy, an orange or maybe a small handmade toy, we were as thrilled as though we had gotten piles of silver and gold.

And there it all stays in our memories, silent and sweet to this day.

“Hey, Boo!”

You know how it is, a sentence or a phrase gets dropped into the conversation going on inside a family. Suddenly, it catches on, gets repeated; then becomes a part of that family’s language. From then on.

One such little quip happened in my family. To this day it is used as a greeting, or the announcement of a surprise, or other reason.

Of course, the scene pops up in most folks’ heads upon hearing it. The movie is “Too Kill A Mockingbird,” the youngster uttering the two words is nine-year-old Scout, daughter of the town lawyer, Atticus Finch.

We’ve forgotten almost by now that it took author Harper Lee a long time to get the book published. Goodness knows how much influence her brilliant words had on the turmoil rocking this country about the time “To Kill A Mockingbird” hit the sales stands. This happened in the midst of prejudice, hatred, obsession, cruelty and division.

A few days ago I got my hands on a television documentary about the writing of that amazing book. Interviews with Lee, her older sister, editors, marketers, a dozen or so famous authors and more—everyone from Oprah and Roseanne Cash to Tom Brokaw.

In the story a young black man is charged with raping a white woman. I read the book long before I saw the movie, but I still chilled at the huge shadow of Boo Radley as he moved across the porch of the house where he lived in self-imposed isolation.

In all those years (the book came out in the early 1960s) millions of Lee’s books continued to sell. Andrew Young said he refused to read the book at first because he had seen it all in his real life—“I felt there was too much horror in my own life, to absorb any more.”

But he was later to tell an interviewer the book “gave us hope that justice would prevail.”

This little documentary traces the story, from the book and the movie, as the little town of Monroeville, Ala, caught in the raging fires of segregation, watched in fascination as the trial took place. As Scout and her brother passed the Radley house again and again, each time trembling with fear, they still ached to see and talk to the mysterious neighbor.

Touching heartstrings with sadness and stress, two scenes particularly stood out, it seems to me: The one where Atticus tries to explain to his young children why he was defending a black man, (although the documentary and the movie used a much rougher word as it was in those days in the South) the meaning slapped across the face of the audience like a horse whip.

Sadness follows the story through to its end and the young innocent man was declared guilty and killed. Many of the documentary interviewees tried to explain why Lee never attempted another novel. It did, all agreed, have a major influence on our country.

One friend remarked: “She came on stage, sang her song, played her solo, and walked off forever.”

“We may live eventually in a world where this prejudice is unimaginable,” said another who talked freely for the documentary, “but we are not there yet.”

We need more books and movies. 

John Muir

Some years ago I became the owner of a 1000-page book: “John Muir - His Life and Letters and Other Writings.”

What a blessing to the reading public who are lovers of nature that Muir had a kind of magic way with words, a burning passion to learn and explore and record the earth about him.Over the years I have gone again and again to those pages, opening at various points in the writer’s journey.   Biographers, friends and admirers contributed to the some half a dozen separate books contained in this omnibus. Many of the stories read like a journal, kept minute by minute as he climbed towering mountains, once with a sheep herder and more than two thousand sheep.

I am constantly enchanted by his accounts of rolling fields of wild flowers, towering Sequoias, the sparkling tumble of streams of rushing, bubbling water cascading downward.Among all the letters, diaries, biographical material and accounts of world travel in the Muir book, one of my favorite pages is about the wonders of the magnificent Sequoia trees. The page illustrates so well his intense feelings.

“Do behold the King in his glory. King Sequoia! Behold! Behold! Seems all I can say. Sometime ago I left all for Sequoia and have been and am at his feet, fasting and praying for light, for is he not the greatest light in the woods? In the world?”

“Where are such columns of sunshine, tangible, accessible, terrestrialised? Well may I fast, not from bread, but from business, book-making, duty-going, and other trifles, and great is my reward already, for the manly, treely sacrifice. . .I am in the woods, woods, woods and they are in me-ee-ee. . . “(Here I find myself putting music to his words. It’s as though he cannot hold in his joy.)

“I never before knew the virtue of Sequoia juice. Seen with sunbeams in it, it’s color is the most royal of all royal purples. No wonder the Indians instinctively drink it for they know not what. I wish I were so drunk and Sequoical that I could preach the green brown woods, descending from this divine wilderness. . .like John the Baptist, crying ‘Repent, for the Kingdom of Sequoia is at hand.’ ”

Muir spent time with his family, but he never stopped roaming the earth, gathering unknown specimens of plants, marveling at the skies, the clouds, measuring glaciers, taking sleds across endless icy miles.