Happy ALL MOTHERS DAY, you mothers and others.

This is a good day to recognize the truth of Tibetan Buddhism: that every being was at one time my own mother…your own mother. Hey! that means you were mine and I was yours.

Taking it into present time….you are mine and I am yours. We nurture, cultivate, and tend each other…mother each other…support, sustain one another.

For me, Mother’s Day renamed as All Mother’s Day becomes inclusive and a time to become interconnected, rather than sealed off in our nuclear units reading stord-bought cards.

We held an All Mother’s Day celebration in our family one year and the children loved the idea that they were mother’s, too. They made signs, created a show and passed our tickets, picked flowers.

Men and women…women in all relationships to children and others…all of us can be mothers today, on All Mothers Day!

Pop’s a newsmaker! At 92 he’s on a roll! On May 8, 2008 at 11:08PM Telegraph’s Stephanie Kiszczak posted her story “The write stuff: Writers’ Club co-founder speaks to students.” [See the Riehlife story in post below.]

Erwin A. Thompson with some of the younger musicians in his life

Now, Dan Brannan, Telegraph Executive Editor, has written a column featuring my father titled “Erwin Thompson gives a gift that will keep on giving” about his donation to the Alton educational sysem music program. In addition to honoring his gift and providing a good platform as a call to action for others to follow his example, it’s a darn good profile.

Click here to read article “The Write Stuff: Writers’ Club Co-Founder speaks to students” by Stephanie Kiszczak in The Telegraph online.

At the AHS Writers Club end of year celebration yesterday the past met the present and moved right on into the future.

Faculty, students, friends, family, and colleagues joined together to honor the literary legacy of Erwin A. Thompson. We met in the James M. Bailey Library at Alton Senior High School. This is the new version of the school both my father and I earned our high school diplomas from…some three decades apart.

Pop graduated in 1933, but the year before he and some friends co-founded the AHS creative writng club and their literary magazine “Wings” (now re-christened “The Calliope”). Sorting papers over the winter Pop found a 1934 version of “Wings” that came to us from my aunt’s estate and had received hard wear. In fact, the pages were so battered one could imagine a truck had run over them. Never the less, I took the document to our trusted copy shop where they resusitated it into a good-looking antique facsimile of the original.

Our original plan was to present this restored copy of “Wings” to the current creative writing club by hosting a tea at Evergreen Heights, my father’s homestead since boyhood—where he raised his children and where he still resides. This plan morphed into a reception at the high school coinciding with the end of the year celebration for the literary club and my father and myself as the honored guests.

Aaron Carroll and Liz Edwards (”The Calliope” editor) were the student hosts for the literary club readings. At the end of the program we exchanged the old and new versions of the magazine…a new “Calliope” for a 1934 facsimile of “Wings.” We also donated a copy of “Wings” to the AHS library and the Jersey County Historical Society (since Lois Locke was there and she’s keen on family relationships and geneology).

I named our presentation “Writing His world: From 1932 to Tomorrow” because 1932 marked the founding of the club and “tomorrow” because I doubt my father will ever quit writing.

We’d tried to find Charlotte Beiser, editor of and contributor to the 1934 issue we’d restored. Her writing in the periodical is extraordinary for a person of any age, but particularly for a yound woman of perhaps 17. We’d searched for her, for her relatives, and for classmates. We invited Verna Hoffman, a classmate of Charlotte’s, who, along with my father, is the only alumni of Randolph School still standing.

I loved the easy mix of generations. Sitting at the back table with my brother Gary Thompson, who’d driven down from Central Illinois for the day, were three older ladies, all star-bright octagenarians. These three women felt to me like The Three Graces: Genie Keller (a fine poet whose poem “Director” appeared on Riehlife), Lois Locke (an anchor of the Jersey County Historical Society), and Verna Hoffman (looking as radient as a prom queen).

Pop’s grandaughter’s family (husband and two great grandaughters) provided the lower end of the age range from 8 to 92. Our friend Patty Swain was there with her daughter Nicole and our other neighbor and cookie lady Susan Corey. My friend from the St. Louis Writers Guild—publisher, performer, and author–Annette Crymes drove over the water to gather with us.

Since it was VE Day Pop wanted me to make a little history quiz for the students. He wondered if any of the younger generation would know that May 8, 1945 was the day Germany surrendered to the Allied Troupes. (As it happened, my father passed through Reims, France, on the day the treath was signed but none of them knew the significance of the hub-bub until the following day.)

To completely introduce my father would have taken us until the cows came home. Arts Across Illinois rightly named him as a folk treasure. (Click here for audio/video clips of Pop reading his poem “Water Under the Bridge. If you listen closely, you’ll hear my sister Julia’s high clear voice singing in the background on one of the songs there.)

Pop is a composer, fiddler, squaredance caller, whittler, a lifelong author, and the master of connection (just as I was saying this, he was out working the crowd trying to coax the little girls to come join us up front but they were too shy).

I felt that the best way to introduce my father was to read my poem “Scribbler” from his section “Slim” in “Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary.” “Scribbler” tells the story of how Pop combined writing, fatherhood, and working for wages…and forever influenced my life as a writer.

Pop then gave his talk…standing the entire time, lightly supported with one hand on a chair.

The reception time was good social time. We’d brought a vase of mother’s lavendar irises from her garden so she could be there in spirit. She glowed for this type of thing and would be so proud of us all…and is so present in our lives in these small gestures of remembrance.

Ernest Dempsey, A Man of Letters

Ernest says:
I was amazed to see this new form and tried out a poem which captures the essence of my new poetry book Two Candles (coming out 1st June in Australia).

You’ll be hearing more about Ernest’ new book later in June. Now, his poem!—JGR

______________________

THE LIGHT FROM TWO CANDLES

When you place two candles side by side
The room is brighter and hope abounds
Shadows of uncertainty leave silently
Now there is another soothing presence
Enjoy the new light and new hope in your life

Enjoy the new light and new hope in your life
Now there is another soothing presence
Shadows of uncertainty leave silently
The room is brighter and hope abounds
When you place two candles side by side

Go to CBC News for full report.

“My daughter, who was 11 at the time, also loves Bessie’s books and was deeply influenced by living for two years in Botswana. One of my favorite expressions from there is Ke moto fela - “I’m just a person.”–Barbara Bamberg Scott (Read her impressive bio below.)

Botswana is a land-locked country in Southern Africa, the size of Texas. I lived and worked in Botswana for three years in the 1970s, first with Peace Corps (teaching Engligh as a Second Language and Literature in Maun Secondary School) and later with village development, literacy, and Popular Culture Projects (with my salary funded by British Quakers).

I met Barbara Bamberger Scott through JudyTart (who has appeared on Riehlife several times). Judy, knowing of our mutual connection with Botswana, suggested to each of us that we might enjoy reading Robyn Scott’s “Twenty Chickens for a Saddle: A Memoir of an African Childhood” set in Zimbabwe, one of Botswana’s neighbors.

Each of us wrote back independently of our love and admiration for Bessie Head (1937-1986) …as an African author of depth and craft whose work surely deserved to be better known in the United States. When I taught in Botswana “When Rainclouds Gather” was one of the set books for the examination that we studied in our curriculum. I became a fan. Thus it was that Barbara wrote this charming story of meeting Bessie in 1980 when she, her husband and daughter were volunteers for Quaker Peace and Service (a British organization).—JGR
___________________

MEETING BESSIE HEAD
by Barbara Bamberger Scott
copyright 2008

We were quite naive about Southern Africa. We had hoped to go to India, but wound up in Botswana. Our director introduced us to Vernon Gibberd who was Bessie’s model for the idealized volunteer in Serowe - Village of the Rain Wind, a book I had read before going to Botswana, in preparation. I had also read Head’s Maru.

Vernon was a Tarzan-like figure, very English, and his wife was equally attractive and Dutch. They had two older children and a new baby. I believe when they had only the first child, Bessie described them (perhaps with some jealousy as she seemed to have had a crush on Vernon) as “A man, a woman, and an ugly baby.” But there was nothing ugly about any of the family.

Vernon was exactly as advertised—he was a true Quaker, intelligent, aristocratic, could have been doing anything but chose to be in Africa digging wells and going slightly native. The day we drove up to Serowe from Mogoditshane, Vernon stomped around showing us various projects we had read about in Bessie’s book. We later got very sick with tick-bite fever from following him through the high grass.

That evening there was a meal and social gathering that included Bessie. She would have been about 50 then I think, and I found her fascinating. I had not gotten used to the odd accent of Southern Africa, and I knew little about what it meant to be “colored.” But she was easy to talk to, perhaps because I was complimenting her writing.

Like most writers (I have since learned, having become one) she did love to talk about what she’d written, and what strikes me as most memorable is what she said about Maru.

I told her sincerely that I believed the last sentence of the book was perfect.

People like the Batswana, who did not know that the wind of freedom had also reached people of the Masarwa tribe, were in for an unpleasant surpise becuase it would be no longer possible to treat Masarwa people in an inhuman way without getting killed yourself. (NYC: The McCall Publishing company, 1971)

She was delighted, and serious, as she told me that the whole book had been, from her viewpoint, written backward from that sentence.

I later read her short story collection and A Question of Power which seemed to me one of the best books ever written about a man’s domination over a woman, and a mental breakdown all rolled into one.

Considering how difficult it was to get around, we lived far from Serowe, and I never saw Bessie again. I think her books are magnificent, the lucid narratives of a person who lived her life in pain and sorrow in a strange land.

In our work I had a lot of contact with refugees. One, who had lived in four countries since he was forced to leave his home naked and fleeing from two armies, told us, “A refugee is a person whose heart has been broken.” I think that applied to Bessie.

_____________________________________________________

Speaking of Botswana

Botswana is the country.
Batswana are the collective citizens of the country.
Motswana is an individual citizen.
Setswana is the language of the Botswana.
_____________________________________________________

About Barbara Bamberger Scott

Barbara is a freelance writer, a Spanish interpreter, and a well-traveled person. She grew up with a small library of the Heritage books, and Les Miserables was one of the first “real” books I ever read, at about age 10. Barbara was a child actress. She writes songs!

Barbara has written the nonfiction book, Golden Thread, about the impact of an Indian spiritual master on a group of hippies in the late 60’s in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her second creative non-fiction tale is With It: A Year on the Carnival Trail. Her private company is called Barscoink, dedicated to using words to their best effect.

With Phyllis Silverman Ott-Toltz she co-authored Love Bade Me Welcome: The Life of Phyllis Ott.

You can read Barbara’s reviews at Curled Up with a Good Book and many other sites. Google her name to find her many online interviews. She is the principle editor for A Woman’s Write.

Here’s an example May gives (taken from an excerpt of a longer poem called “The Yuppie Dog Phenomenon”):

A chihuahua is in the library
dancing on his hind legs
yap yap yapping, yap yapping
behind me.
His owner gloats, stands beside me
with pride he yak, yak, yaks
on his cell phone.

On his cell phone
with pride he yak, yak, yaks.
His owner gloats, stands beside me,
behind me,
yap yap yapping, yap yapping.
Dancing on his hind legs,
a chihuahua is in the library.

May says: “It’s fun to vary the wording and line breaks to make it hold together better as a whole poem. Look for John Rowe’s site featuring his award-winning poem “Forever—An Old Man Considers His Hand,” which inspired me to get on this roll in the first place.”

If you want to try some out, send them to May at maygarsson@yahoo.com. It’s a great way to see a mirror image of your poems and see how they work in the opposite direction. It will be fun to see what people do. Publication is June 1st, so send them by May 15-20.

To the spirit of fun and creativity!

Second Love
by Erwin A. Thompson
For the second anniversary of Ruth’s death, May 1, 2006

My first love was like a pansy,

brought too soon from the greenhouse’ sheltering glass.

A late frost took its vicious toll.

That love was never meant to last.

My second love was like a native fern,

nestled gently in a forest glen.

God planted it a hundred years ago,

nobody knows just when.

It weathers out the ice and snow,

the chilling winds that sweep the country side.

It will be the symbol of our love

long after our mortal bodies die.

May first. May Day is a many-splendored thing with more official holiday designations than perhaps any other day of the year. I recall as a child weaving May Day wreaths from spirea branches cut from our bushes and hanging them on our neighbors door. I especially liked hanging my wreath on Aunt Grace’s door in the brown cottage.

As a woman living in Northern California, I celebrated May Day by dancing around a Maypole with other women in a secluded spot on Point Reyes.

Since May 1, 2006, though, this day has taken on another, deeper meaning. May first for me now mainly means the time my mother chose to pass from this earth. What a perfect time she chose to be the Queen of May…to culminate her lifetime graduate studies as a biology major.

Mother’s high school graduation photo

For many people this May 11th will be Mothers Day. For my father and me, it’s today. Today is not only Mothers Day, it is my mother’s day. We won’t be weaving funeral wreaths as grieving Romans did to appease Pluto, master of the Underworld. No, we’ll be stepping out. Most likely we’ll take an outing to Calhoun County to enjoy a day together in a place where my father and mother loved exploring and birding together…and perhaps have a country feast at Widman’s Hotel. Wherever we go, and whatever we do…Mother remains our Queen of the May.

Asa way of connecting more fully with us, you can read some of my poems for Mother on the sidebar under “Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary.” Just look for the section titled “Sweet Little Dove.” You’ll also find her life story there and a moving tribute my father spoke at her graveside service.

By taking this day stepping out together we honor mother’s memory and her place in our lives as she lives on in them, during the first two years following her change of destination. It is both our memorial to memory and our pilgrims’ cairn on the path to the continuing future my father and I now share.

I met William Dawson when I told a story at last year’s Sunflower Festival in Mountainaire, New Mexico. We shared supper on his simple terrace as we gazed across the desert leading up to the blue mountains. When I read his question about the poet’s role in village life, I think of PLATO’S REPUBLIC —JGR

SNOW BLINDNESS
by William T. Dawson
Dedicated to Viviane

The Poet gropes in the darkness for the switch knowing that the light that is sought lies within.

What use is The Poet? For all he/she knows how to do is paint pictures with words, words slapped on parchment like a carpenter nailing wooden pegs in a coffin.

The words become fewer and fewer in length until they finally disappear, and The Poet finds himself writing blank pages so deep in spirit that even spirit has a hard time deciphering their meaning.

The Poet is so dependent on his fellow man that he could easily put to work an entire city working in unison to the beat of his heart.

So what use is The Poet to a town, a village, a community of man? For he knows not how to do anything except decipher the meaning of life in words that fall on deafened ears. Yet, what good is a town, a village, a community of man without The Poet? For who else has the power to hold the vision of life and disperse it throughout.

The Poet gropes in the darkness for the mop to swab the milk spilled by mankind in their economic destruct fullness needed to feed their ego only to discover that he is only a pebble in an ocean of milk.

An ocean of milk soured by mankind that flows like an endless spring until Mother Earth steps in to reclaim the universe that is hers. Her domain ruled by laws far above mankind’s yet distinctively understood by The Poet.

For The Poet gropes for the words that will penetrate the hollowness of society’s entertainment only to discover that joy lies within, and he yearns to be returned to the warmth of the womb that first nurtured his soul and breathed life into his journey.

Life is a circle and the journey of The Poet is much like one walking in circles in a blizzard that is labeled Life….groping for this, groping for that, groping, groping until the snow like flag of surrender is finally draped over his coffin of sacredness.