Gabriele, our esteemed yoga instructor, asked the class what we’d been doing with the decade.

Faced with the week's internet reminders of 2010s’ earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, manmade disasters, epidemics, brutality, mass shootings, war and more war, my first thought was a 1977 lyric by the Bee Gees: “Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive.”

By accident of geography, none of 2010s’ tragic events destroyed my life or the life of my husband, Vince Mancuso, as they have devastated so many others. Both of us have experienced the loss of loved ones. We moved forward, steeled by our memories and gratitude. By instinct, we’ve managed to avert self-induced disasters.

Steps to Buying Time

“Stayin Alive” is classic rock we are likely to hear at the YMCA in 45-minutes of Silver Sneakers exercise, a weekly habit for half the 2010s. Then, too, doctors who insist on periodically checking “under the hood” do avert catastrophe, and Vince and I do fall into line, this thanks to health insurance.

Dodging Dubious Awards

So far, we dodged being named candidates for the Darwin Award, a mortifying distinction for, “improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it in a spectacular manner!”

• One 2019 Darwin Award went to the rhino poacher who snuck into an African preserve only to be trampled by an elephant and eaten by a lion.
• A more sobering 2018 cautionary tale: “Man suffers a fatal heart attack after getting his head stuck beneath an electric footrest at the cinema while retrieving his cellphone from the floor.” (Given our 2019 obsession with Tuesday $5 movies and bafflement in adjusting the theater’s recliners in the dark, I see how this could happen. Resolution: Bring flashlight on Tuesdays.)

Staying Positively Alive 

Aside from mindful yoga breathing, we’ve kept spirits lifted by exercising the muscle memory of a positive attitude - all rotten current-events to the contrary. We keep discovering friends of the road who share a zest for life and bring common sense, laughter, music, creativity and hope where they go.

Facing the Noun Dilemma

At this year’s St. Pete Festival of Reading at the University of South Florida, we heard humorist Dave Barry, for decades the country’s most widely syndicated columnist, confess a simple truth of aging. When Barry hit 70, he noticed word slippage. “The nouns are the first to go.”

How easy to relate, what with dinner conversations cloaked in mystery: “Remember the guy we met at that restaurant a while back when we were with what’s her name?”

Serving up nouns has become as common a courtesy in our house as passing the potatoes, except I’ve gone low carb this year; so it’s more like passing the riced cauliflower.

Feeling Energized in Nanoseconds

All too brief summer days up North with my granddaughter and grandson energize, especially when we swim together. I also was touched to see how tenderly the tween and teen welcomed home their first kitten. And, watching them for the first time venture into Manhattan, more than once shoved and elbowed into a packed city bus, was a study in nonchalance, experiences they later shrugged off as, “Cool.”

Going Boldly

Henry David Thoreau said, "Proceed confidently in the direction of your dreams and endeavor to live the life you imagine, and you will meet with a success unknown in common hours."

I found Thoreau 's words to be as true as warnings to beware of the world.

With this in mind, Vince and I boarded trains in foreign cities in the 2010s: Dublin, Cork, Paris, Barcelona, Perginon, Venice, Florence, Milan, the Alps and Copenhagen. Love those highspeed trains. Love the reflexes that kick in when entering crowded train stations in foreign cities swirling with a clockwork precision. I thank Grand Central Station, my first love, for honing those survival reflexes.

What started as dabbling in Caribbean cruises led to Atlantic crossings when our infinitesimal selves could reflect on our origins. A recent week on the East Coast of Florida led to more reflection, standing on the beach beside crashing waves as the pointed nudges of a warm wind mocked our attempts to balance in a yoga stance.

A Trifling We Go

Noticing how trifling we are to the waves and wind seemed essential to grasping we are here. “Here” is as wild and terrifying a reality as it is precious. Approaching the 2020s, we're "stayin," however long, in awe.

As Mentioned:

Gabriele Ulrike Stauf, Ph. D. and Registered Yoga Teacher

Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote telling lines in a love poem that could apply to all human relationships:

"I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

Composer Eric Whitacre is acclaimed for creating music performed by assembling the video clips of 5,000+ singers from around the world into virtual choirs. On November 9, he led The Florida Orchestra and The Master Chorale of Tampa Bay in three of his works.

For his Deep Field, the audience watched NASA footage as the group performed in what must be one of Whitacre's dreams. It was his musical interpretation of the Hubble Telescope's initial blurred view and the fix that made it possible for astrophysicists to discover 3,000 galaxies beyond our Milky Way.

Before the performance, Whitacre said he wrote Lux Arumque (commissioned by Master Chorale of Tampa Bay) in the year 2000, now, "a gift my younger self gave to my older self." More works followed, such as the animated Fly to Paradise. The five-minute choral performance ends with the names of his 5,000+ singers scrolling on the screen.

We Are Born Into More Than a Family

British TED Talk speaker and creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson PhD., author with Lou Aronica of The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything refers to finding "your tribe." That this musical tribe is possible on a global scale was unimaginable before the technological advances of a geek tribe. Such a tribe can be found anywhere creative minds are going about their business. 

I've encountered my tribe when, as a solitary writer, I collaborated with a magazine's art department about accompanying artwork and photos and, as a staff writer, I settled into a Gannett daily newsroom and on a Corporate Communications team, I found my contribution added to its synergy to conceptualize a project, and more recently, in Keep St. Pete Lit writers' workshops. In such places, I operate full throttle in what Robinson calls "being in your element.”   

Yeah, But What About ...

Level-headed realists argue it is cruel to encourage the young to develop their creativity only to have dreams dashed by an indifferent job market. True, the performing arts - music, theater, dance, film - do exact a toll on their adherents, and the world yawns. But, what a bleak existence this would be without the derring do of 5,000+ humans making orchestrated cell phone videos around the world.

And, creativity itself is fit for the tool belt of a working life: architecture, business, education, health care and the STEMs (science, technology, engineering and math). The future will hum with industries yet to be imagined. Since exposure to music, art, theater and literature opens minds to the creative process, children deserve to be immersed in it and assured their creativity is as valuable as the skills they acquire in academia. It will be in the world as it is - a matter of constant creation.

See Eric Whitacre Biography

Back home with a brief travelogue and a few observations to share.

                                                 *  *  *

My iMac perched on the desk in my daughter Lee and her partner Rick’s home office in the Hudson Valley region of New York. They had scooted their iMac over to accommodate me when they opened guest quarters for my visit with my husband, Vincent Mancuso, and our 13-year old cat.

Nature

As I started this blog in their nearly 100-year old house nestled in woodsy acres, I gazed out at a tangle of tree limbs crisscrossing each other in abandon. Nature being natural. Leaves rustled in trees around the property, more golden as time marched toward the end of our stay.

An electric company work crew arrived on their road to clip, chip and haul away branches dangling over wires, foiling the usual suspects from perpetrating a power outage with the first snow. Walking down the road beyond the crew, I waved to a woman as she corralled a toddler on a sloping lawn, and in the course of an hour, watched one car drive by.

Beneath the rustling leaves and cawing blue jaws, admiring the houses of weekenders from the Big Apple and of heirs to families who settled the area in the 1700s, I was delighted this is the environment my loved ones inhabit. Here they plant and pick a season’s bounty, spoil purring pets, hike the ridge called Shawangunk, bike a rail trail and pamper us.

We spent time with Connecticut kin who opted for a similarly bucolic existence. A lake on one end of their road served as the backdrop for impromptu children’s picnics. Deer ambled by, flicking white tails. A dairy farm on the opposite end of the road is equally peaceful. I would not be surprised if (like the internet video of a saxophonist performing for a herd of cows) my 13-year old grandson arrived at the farm with his sax one day to stir its slumbering music lovers.

Human Nature

A stay at our favorite New York cottage capped this 2019 country quiet, and it merged with our life among the masses – first at JFK and Copenhagen international airports, then Copenhagen train stations and then ports of a ship bound from Denmark to Norway, Scotland, Ireland, Nova Scotia and Brooklyn, NY, USA.

Humans on the move are something to behold, crisscrossing the planet. We utter a mixed-tape Babel of languages, play distinctive music, savor fragrant cuisines, don all manner of fashion. We tend to get along - as far as I observed. Nature being good nature, apparent when we joined an international crowd visiting Edinburgh Castle, high atop volcanic Castle Rock, a site first inhabited in the Iron Age and by Scottish monarchs across the centuries.

And, when we left the ship in Dublin to tour Powerscourt, one of the world's great gardens, the bark of a single redwood tree planted 200-years ago seemed as stunning a reminder of our Earth's beauty as a space station view of the planet.

Observations on a Storm Crossing

Aboard the Regal Princess, a ship as long as the Chrysler Building is tall and carrying nearly 5,000 international passengers and crew, we headed west across the Atlantic Ocean. The experienced captain set a course between two hurricanes, and, during one phase of the crossing, he ordered the ship's fog horn to blow every few minutes, a reminder of the perils of the sea. The captain also drew a packed audience to his lecture about navigating the North Atlantic using international forecast resources.

Swells rising around the huge ship proved to be a startling sight; yet passengers settled in to read or play trivia or board games; hit the gym or track, met for dinner and cocktails; filed into the theater to watch a show or a lounge to hear the classical trio or dance; and set the casino’s slot machines to pinging. They also got along.

Unprecedented Aberration

So, how do we account for the recent isolationist America rhetoric spewed in - of all places - the United Nations General Assembly? And how does any adult, let alone the leader of the free world, mock a teenage girl defending the science of a shared planet?

United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called this period of history an aberration. It's a departure from the norm created when some voters reportedly figured they'd, "Gave the other guy a chance." We awaken each day to face the latest "unprecedented" aberration from the other guy.

It's reported one-third of Americans read his tweets, 10,000+ official communications from a president, dense with lies and cruel remarks unbecoming his office. Two-thirds of us groan and ask what will it take for his wilting party to stand up for the country. We can see abandoning global allies is perilous and consequential. And, laughing off environmental alarms seems as reckless as charting a course into a hurricane with a joker in the wheelhouse.

Of course, September’s preposterous departure from reality is old news. What we hear now are his "jokes" that strain credulity. And threats of civil war if anyone dares to right this ship of state.

As Americans plan their 2019 Thanksgiving celebrations, they may just sigh, “Catch you in 2020.”

Dinah Shore, the singer who in 1953 first belted out See the USA in Your Chevrolet, might be dismayed. Driving through municipalities large and small in 2019, an aura of defeat pervades. There are few good jobs or promised infrastructure projects for those Main Streets. Faint hope enters here, and many hopeful depart. This is true for black and white residents. Still, those who stay in hometowns to work for change merit applause, not the low blows of tweets by an heir to a slumlord dynasty.

Our Legacy

President Abraham Lincoln in 1865 referred to “the sin of slavery,” and the route between Florida and New York remains a shame-laced chronicle of this country’s indifference to an historic wrong and our continued wrongheadedness.

Making stops to pump gas at new and bygone-era gas stations prove telling: The stations second as food markets for impoverished locals, reminding us that few shopping options exist save Walmart.

Our I-95 corridor trek normally occasions a night in Savannah, Georgia, with tourist dollars spent on a hotel, meals and souvenirs. But, such a visit in 2019 would suggest we're okay with the state’s scandalous voter tampering, suppression of black votes and misogynistic anti-choice laws. Not so.

The Road Traveled 

A pickup-truck looms in the rear view mirror like a spaceship in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the driver toys with bashing the tail end of our car. Finally, the high and mighty one surrenders to our speed-limit obstinacy and zooms past, flashing a confederate flag. Big and bad those rebels, state after state. How many Tiki torches rattle around truck beds for the next rally?

Deliverance Belligerence

On roads up North, even when we hang back from pickup trucks flaunting confederate flags, the drivers play out Deliverance games all the way up the Hudson River. Strutting with that flag - a symbol of slavery - and gigantic American flags equals yet another in-your-face way to “Own the liberals.” I forget what they hate about liberals. Latte-drinking? Kale eating? Oh, yeah, defending human rights.

Outright belligerence is not confined to former slave states. In July 2019, stores from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts reportedly stocked one thousand – yes, 1,000 “Feel Better Dolls,” i.e. rag dolls of little black kids - with instructions to slam the doll’s head against a wall to feel better. The manufacturer is based in Westchester County’s Verplank, NY.

We did this. We’re still doing this.

"With Malice Toward None"

It's well past time to honor President Lincoln’s call for action, “With malice toward none." In the current toxic environment, it seems a stretch. And, given the chill that meets appeals for those in need, let alone for reparations for slavery, who knows when we will proclaim the second part of Lincoln's vision: “With charity for all.”  Christmas, maybe? Now that people can say it's "Merry."

Reggie Morrisey

Note I: I'll see you in October.

Note II: The song lyrics of See the USA in Your Chevrolet

“I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”
Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five

The “present” seems to be gone before the word leaves our lips.  What do we make of what is ours in time - the dash between our not existing and being done with existing?

More than one sage suggested that continually deciding, “Now, I’m happy” and “Now, I’m happy” could stretch moments into relatively wide hours of wonder and contentment.  I think of experiences that were mine to keep, and they stretch across my life, summoned by a scent, sight, touch, taste or sound. Take the music in, Down to the Moon, a New Age album released in 1986 by jazz harpist Andreas Vollenweider.

When, in 1987, I took my 10-year old daughter on a July outing to the New York Aquarium at Coney Island, I turned on my Walkman for the album’s title song as we stood in the dark and faced an enormous tank where a female Beluga whale held court. As if suddenly aware of newcomers, the whale swam up to the glass separating her from us and smiled. As the whale rounded the tank in one sweeping passage after another. Vollenweider's music played. Giddy with pleasure, we smiled back, waved and pressed open palms against the glass, as close to cheering for such royalty as the laws of nature allowed.

Turns out, in the 34 years of her life, the enchanting Kathy the Beluga always smiled and interacted with visitors. In 2004, the New York Times ran the celebrity whale's obituary in which her keepers were quoted as calling her a queen. Millions of aquarium visitors experienced this delightful creature. When I hear Vollenweider’s music, I picture the whale smiling. Ever now, she is mine.

Given the mandate to "choose the contents" of our minds as Gerald Jampolsky wrote in the classic Love Is Letting Go Of Fear (now in its third edition), being selective in what occupies the mind is a decision that takes resolve. With the daily chaos reported in the news, summoning up and taking notice of a pleasant scent, sight, touch, taste or sound ushers in serenity.

One trauma specialist refers to this idea as parenting oneself.  It requires deliberate mindfulness for sensory timeouts, especially in the aftermath of trauma. This is healing work, replacing an upsetting thought with a keenly felt pleasant experience. Some July 4th celebrants might even recognize such a mental exercise as the simple "pursuit of happiness" prized in our Bill of Rights. 

Our dilemma as Americans is mindfulness of the upsetting state of incarcerated children whose families claim refugee status at our country's southern border. The New York Times reported in June "government lawyers in court argued that they should not have to provide soap or toothbrushes to children."

One rights advocate, in describing the stench at a Texas facility, said conditions were the worst she's seen in 12 years of inspections: “So many children are sick, they have the flu, and they’re not being properly treated,” said Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School. She observed guards for Customs and Border Protection "wearing full uniforms — including weapons — as well as face masks to protect themselves from the unsanitary conditions."

For incarcerated children, "the present: how wide it was, how deep it was" will forever prompt Pavlovian triggers to harken back a time capsule of terrible days and nights, not family outings. It will take tremendous resolve for them to move beyond the experience. Gazing up in a cage, there is the vision of guns in holsters and masked men who look down on them and fear getting sick. For officers ordered to contain the children in an emergency created by abhorrent policy and for those of us who abhor it, that image is ours to keep. 

Yet, we seem frozen in the silence of spectators observing a once-unthinkable current event. This is happening. But it appears to be a case of human-family crisis being met with, "They  asked for it." Even the release of humanitarian funds comes with non-humanitarian strings.  

So, what will move us beyond Executive Branch malfunction and Legislative Branch stalemate on immigration reform?  The correct answer is not silence.

How to help.

Contact your representatives

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”
by Anais Nin 

Since 2011, periodic emails have referenced “Our Wednesday, Your Thursday?” 

That year, after boarding a packed train in Cork, Ireland, we faced two recent arrivals to our car. Soon, we sat knee to knee with this Australian couple. Laughing about the tight quarters, I joked, “We are your new best friends.” But it was no joke; we remain friends across the globe all the way to 2019.

Shared Experiences

When we arrived in Killarney that September day, we  met with Gayl and Allan in a quiet corner of the International Hotel and shared an impromptu Happy Hour of cheese, crackers, grapes, chocolates and a bottle of wine.

Over the next three days, we experienced the sights and sounds of Southwest Ireland’s Ring of Kerry, watching a demonstration of whip-smart dogs herding sheep, shopping in the hamlet of Sneem and touring a castle and national park. At dinner between sets of raucous pub music, we shared more travel stories – they six months into an 10-month gala retirement trip around the Northern Hemisphere and we flying to Paris for a week's stay after Ireland.

The travel tales flowed into observations about life in the United States and Australia, about career to career, family to family. With they recently retired and another three years to my retirement, it was a case of work life was or will soon be over. Unknown territory, indeed. 

The Virtual Life 

Not a whole lot of difference between our work or world views, but 14 hours and an International Date Line between our days. Thanks to Skype and then FaceTime, we’ve stayed in touch; they having their next day’s breakfast juice, we checking in before the previous night’s dinner. The “best of times” and “worst of times” made their appointed rounds for each of us, episodes we could talk about frankly as friends.

In 2016, they could not join us when we set out for a fishing village in the south of France. Instead, we FaceTimed to hear about their travels around Asia.

In 2017, we toyed with the idea of meeting up for a Panama Canal cruise, but ship schedules and seasonal disparities (their winter, our summer) got in the way. Instead, we switched plans, leading to meeting in Hawaii in March 2018.

Another Hotel Lobby

Nearly seven years since Ireland, we met Gayl and Allan in the bustling lobby of Oahu’s Park Shore, a boutique hotel located by a city pier jutting into the Pacific where surfers and sunset dazzle and just across from city gardens, a zoo and Diamond Head.

On the first night at the hotel’s Japanese-owned restaurant, we gestured our way through ordering dinner. Another night, we hosted an ABC Market takeout dinner in our hotel room on the third-floor pool deck, the breezes balmy. Next, they hosted a dinner in their 18th-floor room overlooking the ocean and mountain, the balcony view stunning.

With rainbows rising above the spine of Oahu’s mountain range, we all sailed away from the shore to snorkel with sea turtles and a school of blue fish milling like extras on a movie set. Next, we rented a car for a drive to the North Shore and then toured somber Pearl Harbor before boarding a ship to cruise to Maui, Hilo and Kona on the Big Island and Kauai. Since our friends preferred touring volcanoes and we were drawn to tropical gardens, we took separate excursions, meeting at night for the ship’s entertainment or dance clubs.

To Meet Again

It was hard to say goodbye to these fun-loving people, and we thereafter commiserated on FaceTime. Trying on practical retirement masks, we said 2019 would be a quieter year, until it wasn’t. If all goes well, we’ll see Gayl and Allan in Fort Lauderdale in November before they take a Panama Canal cruise, We’ll have tales to tell about a second cruise from Copenhagen to New York.

For the November get together, I’ll suggest we drive 22 miles to Butterfly World, since we have something in common with its 20,000 flighty creatures who gather from all over the world, find life intoxicating and, in the cosmic scheme of things, don’t live very long.

Cruising by Hawaii's Kauai coast 4,000-foot mountain range - 2018

Riding a motorcoach by Ireland's Southwest Coast - 2011

They arrive as perfect strangers: Distressed by alien surroundings, they cry, wail and appeal to our humanity. It’s all “Feed me, cloth me, comfort me.” Such dependency can consume our attention for years. 

I owe the term “perfect stranger” to author Barbara Ehrenreich in describing her own newborn child in Living with a Wild God.

Newborns

I get the “perfect” part. Parents refer to their babies as perfect: moving, breathing, with 10 fingers and 10 toes.

Ehrenreich’s more clever, cautious observation: Our babies are strangers. We have no idea about their likes and dislikes; how much they’ll eat and whether it will only be certain foods; how they’ll feel in the clothes we buy; if they will be prone to ear aches or not readily fall asleep. Getting to know such facts can consume our attention for years.

It is painful to hear a grown man or woman recall no attempts by parents to make them feel comfortable, at home and wanted as children, even more upsetting to learn they had been physically or emotionally abused or left to survive on their own devices, as in Tara Westover's memoir Educated.  As we know too well from news reports, some parents do damage their young. But some people rise above awful family histories, determined not to pay misery forward.

Modern Adoption

Nicole Chung, author of the 2018 All You Can Ever Know, describes the unease of not having a family history beyond that of her adoptive parents. As a daughter of Korean immigrants to the Northwest, she grew up in a predominantly white, rural corner of Oregon where discrimination was rampant. The taunts belied her white parents' insistence she belonged. Nicole loved her parents but grieved about being "grafted onto a family tree" and ached to locate her biological-family's tree. Her reflections on becoming a mother and on learning family secrets make for an engrossing story of a perfect stranger.

Modern Complexities

Equally thought-provoking is the book Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity and Love. Author Dani Shapiro uncovered alarming, unintended consequences in the use of sperm donor programs. In keeping their involvement in a donor program a secret, her parents did not seem intent on deceiving her. They just wanted a baby. Yet, she was left to mourn the loss of a self-image as her acclaimed father's daughter. She tracked down likely sperm donors, revealing how intrusion into the lives of sperm donors introduces a host of awkward dilemmas. If Dani's donor's sperm was used in creating other babies, she has quite a few half siblings to track down. What to do with all of them is another story.

Heredity

The PBS series Finding Your Roots, hosted by Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., unearths the family histories of influential people, including tales of immigrants, asylum seekers and slaves. Prominent blacks and mixed-race guests have learned their ancestors were once slaves, some with families separated, some children of slave owners. It is rare to see a guest guided into his or her past who does not shed tears for the suffering of their enslaved ancestors. 

Recognizing life isn’t always easy, Sesame Street, in 50 years of enlightening children, little by little added segments about homeless children and children of jailed parents, adoptees, children with autism and other challenging mental or physical conditions. It may soon have to air segments for asylum seekers and former slaves, for children of sperm donors and surrogates.

The Ultimate "Us"

Such modern scenarios demand a change of assumptions and heart about who belongs here. Yet, half of America revolts from even thinking of the traumatized children separated from their families at the Mexican border. Swayed for decades by the cavalier policies of Ronnie Reagan and now Donny Trump, this group scoffs at paying a penny to make any strangers’ lives bearable or at assuming an “It Takes a Village” mentality when we are obviously members of a planet-sized village, and there’s no getting off it alive. Strangers meet too many stony faces here. 

In the poem, “Famous,” Naomi Shihab Nye writes: “I want to be famous to shuffling men / who smile while crossing streets, / sticky children in grocery lines, / famous as the one who smiled back.”

I’m with Naomi in acting as if honoring our shared humanity matters. 

Oh, and Happy Mother's Day, Stranger!

I have a grandson born on April 22, Earth Day, and a granddaughter born April 26. In between, I celebrate the birth of William Shakespeare on April 23.

For the lifetimes of my grandchildren, I wish "Much Ado About Nothing," though portends suggest ado, fuss, trouble, bother, upset, agitation, commotion, stir, confusion, tumult, disturbance, uproar and furor aplenty about this precious planet.

Other than writing comments to The New York Times and asides here, I'm left to accept that my grandchildren's planetary future is not in my hands; yet I must still help those scurrying to change course as the climate changes. Of the latter, it "ain't over yet." Not with Arctic drilling. Not with rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Not with turbines powering windmills, no matter what "they say."

Thank you, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Fund, and Audubon Society to name a few.

For this April, I share images of artwork by my late brother Ed Morrisey honoring earthlings of many ilk and poems meant to bring attention to the wonder I've experienced on our planet. Happy Earth Day!

Mother Mine
Canaan Valley, WV
Circa 1980

I heard a benign soliloquy
from assertive Mother Earth
as busy waters scrubbed 
against a washboard ripple of
Appalachian stone.

Her utterances never spent,
she persisted with gravity
through sun-flecked woods alone,
scouring a glacial slope
in puddles, twists and turns.

Bolder leaves fell in with her,
gliding to a stop at rocky pools.
Hemlocks leaned as I did,
callow fellows caught
and loath to stray.

Winds nudged to hint
of a larger world,
yet nothing rose above
her liquid voice.

An older woman,
assertive Mother Earth,
bent with grace
to her everyday chores.
A domestic in easy discourse.

And we,
seedlings
of this rich estate,
who would nestle
for a last chill nap,
daydreamed
upon a velvet lap,
and lingered.

With Headset on Winter,
One for the Birds
St. Petersburg, FL
February 1996

The cello swells,
High tide on Smacks Bayou.
Pelicans "carpe diem."
I dance in place.

Appearing to sit serene,
within I twirl,
I leap with grace.
Dove on a dock.
Nearly fifty...
that a shock.

Paul Winter's music soars.
Gulls in high time glide.
A flock of geese
takes lettered form
and low-key ducks
tip wings upon the water.

From afar I am a statue
in the sax and cello's wake.
But I dance their jig to life.
Flight does not elude me.

Within,
my hair twirls round.
Ruffles of a skirt
will never cease.

My heart beats
like the hummingbird.
The bored raven crows.
The egret has my number.
One with them,
I choose motion
over slumber.

Training to be
"an older" woman,
my foot taps.
I am still dancing.

Rising
Cedar Key, FL
2009

Cedar Key is the coast of nature.
Yes, nature prevails.
The tide rolls out
where mullets fly
and oysters rise in a
field of puffy bar.

A full-moon spring-tide takes
more than a foot of water down.
They say it takes an elephant gun
to down a braying air boat
as it thunders by.

Even black mangroves spring up here.
Like olive trees with their green berets.
Like Rosewood blacks who fled
the redneck terror of the Roaring Twenties.

Cedar Key plays home to migrant snowbirds.
Some in condos – with binoculars.
Some high stepping through stressed bars.

They dare not eat the oysters
for the poison rising up
inside the earthen shells.

To live and die by spring tides.
Slowly, the bar fades
and beds are made
as water rises.

Slowly, the church bell tolls,
worn as the creaky dock
where big boats wait their day.

As hogs rev their motors
outside Annie’s Café,
soon to cruise,
we ready our canoes.

Oh, Breath of Life
St. Petersburg, FL
June 21, 1996 

Oh, breath of life,
you take our breath away.
Tug the heart
while breaking night and day.
Blushing sky, hued parable afar.
Storied mounds of clouds
mask who we are.

Tropic June, a moist beatitude,
addresses tree and blossom,
man and dove.
While palms hold sway,
mere humans swoon with love
for arching rainbow,
crystal dome above.

Yes, atmosphere,
the pressures rise and fall.
Drops descend in seas
upon a street. 
Your chemistry is simple,
air to water, back to air,
nearly all we crave
to be complete.

Yet farther out,
we circle round ourselves.
Fending limits
natural life proposes.
Farther one day
three rings left behind,
we aim for space where
we can stick our noses.

Audio Options

Click the links below to hear recordings of a poem about a lunar eclipse and an ode to Shakespeare.

Eclipsed          

Happy Birthday, Bill Shakespeare

Note

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They're all around here - treasured works of art acquired over the years. Since I hadn't given thought to the artist’s gender when acquiring two and three-dimensional works of art, I was startled to realize how many pieces were created by women. 

In this Women's History Month, I draw your eye to the works that grace our lives, some found while living in New York, California and Florida and some in travels. What the artists really have in common is that their works stopped me in my tracks. Seems a common theme is, “I have something to say.” That is how these works speak to me. Women's pursuit of their own styles and voices is nothing short of NASTY. As I present these artists' works to you, where possible, you'll find links to sites that feature their work. I hope the images shown here do them justice.

Anna Lowther : We met in passing at a Westchester County, New York, outdoor art show in the 1980s as I explored her booth full of what for me seemed to be affordable oil paintings. Anyone might say, as a single mom and freelance writer, I should not have bought art that day. But, notice how well she painted the lace. I do every time I look at it.  

 Barbara & Joe Ott pottery

Barbara Ott left the corporate world to focus on her pottery and ceramic wall art in Clearwater, Florida. Her husband, Joel Ott, also discovered his passion for making pottery. They collaborated on the work shown here. Barbara's word has always been "Peace." It comes through in her art.  

Carmen Carmen Cruz teaches watercolor painting at The Morean Arts Center, St. Petersburg, Florida. We've never met, though I was drawn to this painting in the Morean's Gift Shop.  

Brooke Allison is a Master Pastelist of the Pastel Society of America and a prime mover and elder stateswoman of the Tampa Bay Pastel Society.  Just knowing she persevered for decades as an artist and promoted the art of pastels is an inspiration. 

 Brooke Allison, still life, pastel

Dorrie Rifkin: Friends with a house on the New Jersey Shore took us to an exhibit in the Victorian mansion that is home to the Ocean County Artist Guild. Here I came upon this reproduction of a watercolor of Grand Central Station that simply had to leave the state with me. The work captures the shimmering hustle of the place I’ve rushed many times. 

D.M. Weil:  During a summer stay in the Hudson Valley, we visited the studio and huge gallery of D.M Weil in in New Paltz, New York, and discovered a person who makes abstract paintings that delight my eye. 

Katherine Mathissen "Bliss"

Katherine Mathissen: The artist’s booth at a Gasparilla Festival of Arts is where I both cried when I saw this sublime statue and immediately christened it “Bliss.” She is good to have around as a reminder that a strong woman can go through hell. She does not stop to take pictures.

Kate Carney: Strolling through the historic St. Petersburg Coliseum for a Cool Art Show one July, I discovered Kate Carney, a Florida artist who grew up and studied art in England. Her seascapes and landscapes prompted an immediate internal dialogue, “Which one to buy.” Kate created an array of small paintings, mindful of average-sized wallet and wall space. 

Maggie Thomas, Camarilla, California artist and friend to my late brother Ed Morrisey painted him as he played his recorder. I treasure this reproduction as an example of Maggie’s unique style and testimony to their loving relationship.

M. Christiano,  Still Life in Red

Melissa Christiano: When Melissa had studio space in downtown St. Petersburg, her friendship with my husband, Vincent Mancuso, who also rented space there, led us all to hours of conversation about creativity. Her soft Southern accent, humor and talent endeared her to us. Her death at 42 was a blow to all who knew her. 

Rebecca Skelton is a gifted artist in many mediums. At her studio at ArtLofts over Florida CraftArt Gallery in St. Petersburg,  I was able to see works in progress and to acquire these paintings. Along with her husband photographer, Joe Walles, she is an appreciated artist and friend of the road

L. Schnakenberg oil

Lois Schnakenberg: I came upon this 50-year old oil painting in 2013 at an exhibit at Unframed Gallery in New Paltz, New York, and I spoke to the artist. She had spent her life teaching and creating art. This painting captures the beauty of the Hudson Valley, which draws rock climbers and hikers to venture way beyond the beaten path, just as Lois did.

S. William's original

Sandra Williams: This artist’s Fine Art America page attests to her love of wildlife. I was visiting her former Nature of Art Gallery in gulf-side Pass-a-Grille, Florida, when she hung this plein-air painting of a nearby alleyway where we often biked. It was love at first sight in the gallery and thereafter in our living room.  

S. Schorr pottery

Stephanie Schorr is a potter and owner of Craftsman House Gallery in St. Petersburg, who created one of my most playful works of pottery. The pinched nose of the mustached gent on the side of the piece makes me smile. Seems a good place to put him.

Wende Caporale graciously presented me with this pastel portrait of my eldest daughter whom Wende painted when, as a teenager, my daughter posed for week-long portrait classes led by Wende's husband, Daniel Greene. Both are acclaimed artists. What more can I say?

Martha Kemp's clay studies proved irresistible whenever I entered her studio in the late 1990s at the communal St. Pete Clay Company in the old railroad station on 20th Street South. The pale, saucy woman in the Adirondack chair seems to have stepped out of the water and is about to get a strapless tan. I call her "Girl Friend." The two ladies pictured seem of other eras as they assume a, "Not to be disturbed" pose. 

A popular clutter-freer, Marie Kondo, author of "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing" suggests, when determining what to keep and what to dispense from our lives, we hold an object in our hands to see if it sparks joy. When I conduct this experiment, all I feel is joy.

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