Homage

old and gray – tired and worn

many died – more were born

much was said – so little done

with the rising and setting of each sun.

farewell to thee with tears we say

and greet the new with laughter gay

so much could, should, would have done

alas, the year was gone and I’d just begun.

 

and so, I make firm resolution

to do much more by this new year’s conclusion.

© Perle Champion

 

Darkest Night Passed - Now which way do we go?

Longest night is behind us –Solstice celebrated. 

I lit a myriad of candles around the ladies on the hearth of my faux fireplace, nee altar.  I laid out a few fancy snacks on the coffee table: caviar, tapenade, mushroom pate, crackers and an iced bottle of champagne. 

I sat before the flames, sipped, and nibbled. I reflected on my 2010 with a pen upon my journal’s pages: reviewed my past, considered my present, and drafted my goals for 2011. I won’t finalize them until the new moon plus 1 - January 5^th.  
 
Just as people have planted by the phases of the moon, so I plant the seeds of my aspirations for 2011 for maximum growth. I consider myself an above ground crop best planted during a waxing moon.

The rough draft needs work, and I’ll hone it over the coming days. It’s a combination of goals and bucket list - Some are long range, some are short; some are serious and some not so serious.

With darkest night behind me, the almost imperceptible lengthening of days invigorates me.  It’s a heady feeling to visualize striding into the growing light and lengthening days of a new year knowing that each seed grows according to the care and attention I give it. 

I intend to tend this particular garden better than I did in 2010.


© Perle Champion

Star Light, Star Bright... – The Geminds are Coming

 I remember when I was a child in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Daddy was stationed on a radar site high up on the desert mesa.  I’d lie out on the lawn on warm summer nights, doing nothing, just looking up at the night sky.  Every night, the moon would rise and stroll from horizon to horizon; she would wax and wane; and when she was but a sliver in the sky, the stars would shine brilliant above me.

If I watched long enough, some nights I was gifted with a shooting star.  Someone told me it was not really a star, but it was a star to me.  I would send up a fervent wish for it to grant followed by the childish chant:  “Star light, star bright, I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight. 

I live in the city now, and stars cannot compete with the city smog and lights.  Still, I can see a bit of sky from my mom’s back yard in the suburbs that is not obliterated by the distant city lights.  I could sit for hours and just stare up at the sky.  The 14th, the Geminids are coming - so many shooting stars to wish upon.  

At its peak the Geminids can produce 60 shooting stars an hour or one every 30 seconds depending on your source, and peaks December 13–14.  Broken fragments from a pseudo asteroid-comet called 3200 Phaethon with a mysterious composition create the Geminids, which become more intense every year.  2010 is a good year to see the them as the moon won't be full enough to detract from the meteor shower visibility. 

So to all y’all out there, gather your wishes and go out after midnight when the moon has set and wish upon a shooting star or two or three or more Geminid shooting stars.

© Perle Champion

Fun Southern Read: Sweet Music on Moonlight Ridge

In Sweet Music on Moonlight Ridge, Ramey Channell doesn’t narrate as Lily Claire, she is Lily Claire.

For those of you who've had no children, and/or have forgotten what it's like to be one, buckle up. This is not a slow walk of a book. Lily Claire's breathless detailed telling of just about everything that happens in her small world is told as if it was the most important thing in all the world, and you should know it.

Channell steps into Lily Claire's very person and stays there throughout the entire book. You, the reader, are her confidant as she learns of ordinary heroes and ponders the serendipity of life. You are privy to the secret world of a childhood whose freedom few have known and many today would envy.

Around the mysterious map to an imagined treasure she and Willie T find in and unlikely place, she weaves her history and that of all the diverse and sometimes eccentric folks and topics that inform her world. All are treated with that light childish and non-judgmental matter-of-factness that is so refreshing and true to the nature of the very young.

There is no heavy hand here about the "Ku Kluxes'" quick-to-lynch mentality or the superstitious nature of rural peoples that make the white lies Willie T and Lily Clare tell necessary. It's just plain necessary to protect the slow one and the black one in their midst, who are the most likely scapegoats for a crime that was no crime at all.

Channell has the sure cadence of a storyteller that is not only simple, sincere, and to the point, but it's part of the music. Is there music on Moonlight Ridge? Yes, but it is not just played, sung, or spoken aloud. It exists in the steady pace of the story, the people, the laughter, the polysyllabic names, and the language.

Having lived in the South off and on for many years, I didn't need the handy glossary at the back of the book to tell me that "boocoos" means "lots." Just goes to show, that being raised in the South is useful. This book was not just boocoos of fun to read, it is a gentle reminder of my own idyllic summers when every day held the promise of adventure, just like Lily Claire's.

Reviewed by Perle Champion & Published in First Draft Reviews Online, Alabama Writers' Forum, November 2010

Other good reads I've reviewed:

Noah’s Wife by TK Thorne 

Coming Together by Joyce Norman

Prince of Frogtown by Rick Bragg