Wednesday, September 30, 2009

My poem Dream Ride

This is from a dream I had and woke up remembering
so I wrote it down, polished it up, and
here it is:




Dream Ride

There appeared a ring of fire.
Inside the fire was a field of sunflowers.
In each sunflower appeared the human face
of everyone I’ve loved who’s died.
I spoke my love to each one.

The fire died down to embers,
faces and flowers faded away.
In the red light a shape appeared,
a black horse with stars on her back.
She reared and spread her wings.

I crossed the embers on bare feet
and mounted that black angel horse.
I sat in the glow of stars on her back.
Again she reared and lifted from the grass.
Together we rose into the air.

We flew toward the gibbous crescent moon,
then orbited into its full light.
Ablaze in moonlight, we disappeared.
On earth many saw a falling star.
We rode on in Spirit form.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Prose that reads like Poetry



I paraphrased and titled this piece of Elizabeth Kubler Ross:



Our Purpose


Whether or not we understand fully who we are
or what happens when we die;
it is our purpose as human beings
to look within ourselves,
to find and build our individual
strength and understanding.


And then reach out to others,
with love, acceptance, and patient guidance;
in hope of what we may become together.


This one is another "Author Unkown" I found it in a 1961 edition of Friendship magazine put out by Ideals Publishing Company:



May Evening Find Me Gentle


Give me a few friends who will love me for who I am
or am not.
Keep ever burning before my wandering steps
the kindly light of hope.
And though age and infirmity overtake me
and I come not in sight of the castle of my dreams,
teach me still to be thankful for life
and time's old memories that are good and sweet.
And may the evening twilight find me gentle still.


Monday, September 28, 2009

I Am Sky poem written last night while trying to read

Clouds flow through me
day and night.
Stars shine in me
night and day.
I am Sky.
In the presence of water
I am sacred.
In the stillness of trees
I am in awe.
In the grace
of the godly Now,
I am.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

How did the cake come out?

Well, the one with 6 eggs and without 6 tsp. flavorings. Not so hot. Maybe literally. I don't think the 275 degree setting was hot enough. There was an air bubble under where I did the toothpick test, so it came out clean enough, but it wasn't really done all the way through. Now why couldn't I have just thrown all those cracked eggs out? Why add good cake flour and sugar first. Ah well.



The other cake, the one with the butterscotch sauce, that one came out good. The good people at Unity of the Huachucas liked it well enough to eat all but 4 pieces in the 9"x13" pan. John, who seldom eats sweets, had a good size piece when I got home and pronounced it, "Good." A man of very few words, my John.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

How Do I get Myself In These Situations?


I'm putting away the heavy whipped cream and butter that I bought at Safeway (for a sauce that goes with the chunky apple cake I baked yesterday for the potluck at church tomorrow) , so I have the refrigerator door open. While doing so, I decide to have a couple eggs for lunch so I open the egg shelf door.

That's when the cat decides he needs my attention. He starts to rub up against my ankles, which, since I am busy thinking about getting out the eggs, startles me, and yes, you guessed it, I drop the carton of eggs on the floor.

It was a carton of 18 and there were 12 left before the accident. 4 were lost to the not so clean floor and I wiped them up with a kitchen towel. At least that spot looks pretty clean now. As for the rest of the eggs, 6 were cracked and I saved them to a bowl, and 2, apparently thick-shelled eggs go back onto the egg shelf. Now I think to myself, I want to use these 6 eggs in the bowl, so I look up a cake recipe that uses 4 eggs and start making the cake.

Now I know I should have done the cups and spoons that were soaking in soapy water in the sink first, but, I didn't. I wanted to get the cake in the oven and over with before the day got warm. What I really wanted was to go lay back on the couch and read my book, but can't waste eggs and don't trust leaving them out of their shell for too long. So, I start the cake.

John comes in the kitchen and without checking if there were clean cups (out of my way) in the cupboard (there were), he reaches over my greased cake pan and grabs his black cup out of the sink of cold soapy water and trails the soapy water over my greased pan.

Thoughts of a solitary life in a remote place go through my head.

I whine to John, "Jahahn, you got soapy water in my greased pan!"

"Sorry."

Silence you could cut with a cake knife.

Finally, John comes over to check the damage and I tell him, "I'll live," and re-grease the pan. I continue with the cake ingredients, But, I forgot the flavorings it called for, all 6 tsp. full. And I put all 6 of the broken eggs into the batter. The recipe said to bake at 275 degrees for 1 hour 45 minutes. (odd, eh?)

We'll see how the cake comes out.







Friday, September 25, 2009

My Photos of Cochise County Fair Sept 24th

Here's the midway.
We didn't go in but turned left to
the exhibits and animals, like we always do. I'm almost ashamed to admit that neither John nor I spent one cent. The admission was free, being Senior Citizen's Day, and we didn't want anything.




I sat for an hour at least watching this cookware demonstration. It was beautiful stuff, excellently made, but,
when you see me spend 1,695.00 (sale price) for a set of 5 pans with lids, you'll know I've won the sweepstakes and the lottery too.






Hey, Arlene, here's the Quilt exhibit -






Inside the main exhibit hall.








and The Magician - the children loved him.

Obviously I'm Into Photographs So Here's Some More

In Warren, this looks like an Old Man of the Andes cactus. Tallest one I've ever seen in a private garden.


This looks like lavender to me, but
I don't really care. It sure is pretty.
It's in Warren again, yes.








This is a favorite garden of mine on W. Vista in Warren facing the park. The elderly gentleman there gets this vine going every year.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Local flora and fauna photos

Three photos taken Sept. 22, 2009 in the Bisbee neighborhood of Warren. Summer seems to be going out in a blaze of blooms. Crisp days, waning bugs, and what the heck is Halloween candy doing on the shelves so early? It sure won't be fresh by the end of October.







Monday, September 21, 2009

My First Job - Long Distance Telephone Operator for Ma Bell of Canada


Back in 1959/60, I was hired by the Bell Telephone Company of Canada as a long distance operator. I remember that the tests to be hired were extensive. They told me I qualified for either a long distance or information operator and asked me which I'd rather do. The pay was the same to start (not very much), so I picked what sounded like more diversity: long distance. I was never sorry. I liked the work.

This was before "Direct Dial", which some of you may not even remember. Local calls were automated by this time in Hamilton, Ontario, but all calls outside the city went through us. Each pair of cords handled a single route call. Complex calls to rural places like northern Quebec, had to go through other operators and sometimes involved more than one pair of chords. We looked up the destination in a route manual. There was one at each desk and was updated frequently. We dialed on a rotary dial, I doubt there was any other kind at that time.

There was a monitor knob that could be pulled back to listen, but we were firmly forbidden to use it except at prescribed times. The many rules were strictly enforced. In the year I worked there, I saw two girls fired on the spot; escorted out of the building. One was more or less lifted out of her chair by her dress collar and escorted to the elevator as the supervisor spoke strongly into her ear.

Our fifteen minute breaks were precisely recorded. The clerk at the door wrote down the minute and seconds that you left and returned to the work room. At your review you were told how many minutes and seconds you were 'tardy'. I remember an early review where I was told that I had been tardy for six minutes that month. I couldn't believe it since I was in the habit of arriving early. The supervisor told me that the six minutes had added up from coming back late from breaks.

You were given set phrases to use to respond to customers and you were not to deviate from them, period. I still remember the phrases we had to use, for example: "The line is busy, would you like me to try again later?" Busy calls were tried every ten minutes for one hour then the customer was called back and told: "That number is still busy, would you try our call again later, please."

I can still feel the headset we wore. It was so heavy that by the end of a shift it had imprinted my head, not my hair, my head. The back-combed hairstyles were squished down too, but one doesn't worry about that when the top of your skull has an indentation.

Pay phone calls were the most fun. At least, they were to me. Perhaps because of the service men who liked to flirt with operators. Some of the "escorted from the building gals" had been caught making dates with these fellas. Anyway, I never did; too scared to lose the job. A quarter made two bongs; a dime, two pings; a nickel, one ping. We timed these calls pretty closely so we could break in on the line and request the additional coins. The supervisors monitored us frequently.

When I left the job to accompany my family to California, I was taking classes to be a Training Supervisor; so I was up for promotion. In the next forty-four years I only had one other job that I liked as well and that was with AAA Arizona. I worked for them as an Auto Travel Counselor for over ten years. For that job I had lived my life to that point, it suited me so well.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Autobiography - The Early Years

First a poem I wrote back in April, 2000


Ice Boxes and Outhouses


I remember ice boxes, outhouses and getting water from the pump.
And the ice truck coming down our city street with my friends
Grabbing pieces of ice to suck, walking the hot tar road.
The indoor bathroom Andrew built at the bottom of the cellar stairs.


I remember a sunny summer day at the cottage in Brechin Beach
With the Arnetts and the Cowies gathered in laughter and play
As Catherine does the hula in a grass skirt and double cone top
That Jimmy brought back from the South Pacific after the War.

I remember on the lawn of our brick house on Tolton Street
The Kodak box camera with the accordion fold-out front
Taking pictures of uncles in their uniforms
Before they are hung up with cedar and moth balls forever.

I remember pinwheel cookies and homemade bread,
And running to the corner to meet Catherine as she got off the bus
From the cotton mill where in numbing noise she ran the machines
That wound the spools on hundreds of cones of string and thread.



Thursday, September 17, 2009

My first black eye


Well, I finally have a shiner.
This is the 48 hour stage.

Left eye. Daughter Sharon took the photo.
It's not much of a story, but it's the truth.

I was shopping in our local Safeway and needed some honey.

The one on the top shelf was on sale and I reached for it. I brushed the smaller one next to it and it fell, kerplunk, right on my cheek bone. Even though I've never had a black eye before, it felt like this was going to be one. I had a bottle of milk in the cart and put that on it while waiting in the checkout line.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

My friend Chuck Rucker's Eulogy to his cat Buffy



I took my friend Chuck's good words and condensed and re-wrote them somewhat. CB




My cat Buffy was blue-eyed, nineteen pounds, and just over eleven years of age. Yesterday, I had to have him put to sleep. That morning at 6:00AM he came up on my bed to wake me with a long soft purr. This was unusual since it is usually the province of my other cat, M.C. to wake me.

My wife said she’d seen Buffy stretched out on the shower floor in the wee hours. Buffy had also stopped some of his routines lately, like jumping up onto the sink for his combing, and lounging in my lap while we watched TV in the evening. He started drinking from his water dish in full recline position. A real sign that he was unwell was the urinating on the front door entry rug and a dry nose.

Buffy was a “second thought” cat. I had already agreed to take one of my employee’s litter; M.C. (which stands for Mexican Connection because he crossed the Mexican/U.S. border without papers). But a customer asked about posting a notice for a litter she was giving away that had blue eyes. Thus came wee blue-eyed Buffy to our house eleven years ago. His whole litter had been tossed out on the highway near the airport, so he had scaredy cat syndrome. Any noise would send him scurrying under our bed.
That bed was his sanctuary for years. Only recently did he like to lay by the sliding door of a sunny morning, as well as stand by my feet when I put on my shoes to start my day. The last few years he decided that the TV room was HIS. He would try to chase M.C. out.

He seldom meowed, but he had a pronounced vibrational purr.
I am sad today.
Goodbye my feline friend. I will miss you very much.
Chuck Rucker

Exerpt from Letters to My Younger Self = Eileen Fisher


Eileen Fisher is a financially successful clothing designer and entrepreneur. These are the last two paragraphs of her letter to herself in her early twenties, taken from the Book edited by Ellyn Spragins titled: "What I Know Now" (2006) . I highly recommend the book and the practice of writing a letter to one's younger self in light of what you've learned since you started struggling to become an adult.


"... take care to listen to yourself and shepherd all the pieces of who you are through to the future.

"Meditation has become the best way I know to listen to myself. ... I give you ... the words I often say when I begin to meditate: 'Stillness is the ground of being from which all else emerges. It is within and behind every breath, every thought, every action. It is my starting point, my resting place, the home base to which I can return again and again. In stillness I notice how time and space disappear. All there is, is the present moment and my willingness to listen - to allow the stillness to speak.'

"The stillness takes me into a realm of conscious awareness that transcends my identity as body or mind. Stillness offers an experience of being and a recognition that my being - my essence - is a part of all Being, all Essence.*


*from "Meditation and Rituals for Conscious Living" by Nancy J. Napier and Carolyn Tricomi

Monday, September 14, 2009

If You Can Believe


I took this sunset photo on my way to Unity Church for World Prayer Day Sept. 10th.
I love parables or stories. Here's one out of Spiritual Economics: the prosperity process by Eric Butterworth (borrowed from the church library)
pg.73 "In his classic work 'Wind, Sand, and Stars,' St. Exupery tells the story of a pilot who was downed in the rugged, snow-blocked region of the Andes. He trudged through the snow for days, only to find his way hopelessly blocked by a yawning crevice in the ice. He quickly concluded that he had three choices: (1) Give up and die of exposure; (2) Make an attempt to jump across the fissure, knowing full-well that it was impossible to do so; (3) Convince himself that he could jump across, and make an attempt out of the conviction.
When considered in this kind of logic, the choice was clear. So, he backed away a few yards, closed his eyes in a moment of inner communion, then, loudly shouting, 'I can! I can!' he ran and jumped, and barely reached safety on the other side. Trudging off down the mountain, he was finally found and saved.
Now, faith was no magic bridge. This was no miracle of God picking him up and depositing him bodily on the other side. What the man did was accomplished with his own concentrated mind and by special effort by his own muscles. But his believing attitude released a flow of energy from his own inner God-potential."
...
"No miracles are required. It is the way you have been created. You are a rich and creative spiritual being. You can never be less than this. You may frustrate your potential. You may identify with that which is less than what you can be. But within you now and always is the unborn possibility of a limitless experience of inner stability and outer treasure, and yours is the privilege of giving birth to it. And you will, if you can believe."

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Hypochondriac cartoonist writes to her younger self

New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast who grew up as "worried peas in a worried pod", here writes to her nine-year-old self:

"Roz,

You are not going to get leprosy. I promise. Or lockjaw. Again, I promise. Don't ask me how I know. I just do. Those nights you lie in bed feeling that your tongue is suddenly eight time bigger than normal, testing your jaw for stiffness, gulping down saliva repeatedly to gauge if you're having difficulty swallowing - they're over. YOU WILL NOT GET SICK.

I'm not one of those adults who think kids have the best lives. I knew how much the world's traps and dangers burden you. Ever since you learned that Helen Keller sensed the heat of an electrical fire by putting her hands against the wall, you occupy your idle minutes fretting about the wires behind the plaster. Ever since you read how Trixie Belden had to suck the venom out of her brother's foot, you've been keeping a watchful eye out for rattlesnakes on the occasions when you're forced to leave the safety of your family's Brooklyn apartment.

But you're going to be okay. Roz, here's the other thing I want you to know: Being an adult is better than being a kid. You're going to grow up - healthy and whole - and everything you're feeling now is going to be great material for your work."

Monday, September 7, 2009

Poem from December 1997


After the Storm


I go down to the dock
to hear the restful lapping
of waves so recently slapping.

Raging wind has raced into the future
and storm is a remembering.

Hear the insect voices humming.
See the crabs and minnows dart
beneath the willows drooping shelter.

Clouds have past
and left a dome of glass.

Sun does its glittering dance
across the peaceful water
into my eyes it's sparkling.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

A Few More Poems









Overhead and Underfoot July 2001


Overhead shifting clouds
metamorph their shapes, then dissipate.
Now the blue has clotted cream swirled through.

Underfoot the grass divides,
light green, bright and warm,
dark green, shady and cool.
Shadows creep toward me,
as earth moves away from the sun.

Between the sky and lawn,
we spend our hurried lives
unaware of changing light.
We live like film, single framed,
lost in our thoughts of things;
clinging to our pain.


Summer in the Park June 30, 2002


Prostrate in the arms of roots,
watching waving branch tips sway
like rippling wheat.

Curled 'round my head- a rooftop wreath,
as if shaved flat by tractor's blade,
hanging on, I'm anchored prone.

Ribcage clouds slash the sky.
Ahead, crows patrol the dappled grass.
Behind, children laugh and run in sun.

The pitch of freeway hums
like surf on sandy shores;
overhead a jet roars.

Mockingbird sings our focus
back to trees and birdsong twitter.
It's summer in the park.




Friday, September 4, 2009

Looking for a car-travel Companion

I'm looking for someone.
Someone who is healthy enough to travel - (eg. a 6,000 mile round trip in early summer or late spring of 2010)
Someone who can drive my '06 PT Cruiser part of the time on a trip like that (mostly daytime).
Someone who can afford to pay their half of the motel room (sharing a two double-bedded room) and half the gas.
Someone who likes my small dog, Petey, a Chihuahua, who will travel with us.
Someone with a passport. (to get in and out of Canada)
Someone who likes to talk about positive topics; who enjoys life and believes in a higher power.

I have the car, the insurance, the road service, the destination for the long trip to Canada.

See my profile on this blog for details on me.
my Gmail address: carolinbisbee@gmail.com

Thursday, September 3, 2009