Umbrella conversation

Our conversation floats
under a yellow umbrella,
words rising in a mild wind.
July hot, and light warm sweat
traces our backs, chests, temples.
Your hand moves away.
We talk in slight murmurs,
soft tones; I watch droplets
slide down our glasses
in iced condensation.
You look away and ask,
when will it turn cool.

This poem is submitted for One Shot Wednesday hosted by One Stop Poetry. To see more submitted poems, please visit the site. The links will be live at 4 p.m. Central time today.

Photograph: Straw Umbrella on Beach by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

The Calgary DI's "Where"

What you notice first are the faces.

The faces are young and old, male and female, of all races. They are smiling, thoughtful, angry, discouraged, exuberant, sad, excited, laughing, concerned.

In other words, they’re normal. And that’s what catches your attention.

Then you read their stories, and you realize the faces are normal because the people are normal.

The people are us.

The Calgary Drop In and Rehab Centre, simply known as “TheDI,” has produced a book called Where: 50 Words, 50 Photos, 50 Stories, to recognize 50 years of serving the Calgary community. The DI provides a place for the homeless, but to call people “homeless” misses the point entirely and turns real individuals, with histories, personalities, hopes and dreams, into objects. They are not objects. They are people.

Like the rest of us.

Where is a masterful compilation of photographs, stories, poems, log entries about life at The DI. You meet both staff and clients. You learn about The DI’s history, and how it started as a conversation between a rabbi and a priest. Now, in one 48-hour time period, the DI housed 2,200 clients and served more than 5,000 meals and snacks. It has a medical department. It deals with a variety of people at all stages of their lives. It networks with police, mental health agencies, city government and volunteer organizations.

And it blesses people – those who are helped and those who help. It’s a toss-up as to who receives the greater blessing.

Each entry in the book is built around one word, like thrive, healing, lost, enjoyment and laughter. Each entry has a text and a photograph, and a log entry or short factual statement like “the DI spends $50,000 on coffee every year. It’s worth it.” The combination of these structural elements is powerful, moving and convicting.

Some of the texts are written by staff and volunteers and some by the clients themselves. Surprised that a homeless person can write? Don’t be. They can paint, sing, tell jokes, do computer work, organize, coordinate, fix broken stuff, read great novels, debate philosophies and politics, think, invent, create and manage. They’re just like us because they are us. In Where, that reality comes across again and again.

Tragedy and heartbreak happen at the DI, but so do comedy and happy endings. A story about a man who lost his home and his daughter was filmed and posted on the DI web site. He had not seen her since was 3. Now 30 and with children of her own, she finds the video. And her father.

Then there’s the story of Terry Pettigrew. I first started reading about terry on Louise Gallagher’s blog, Recover Your Joy. Terry was in his 50s and dying of cancer. He hadn’t seen his brother since he was 8. You can watch a video about Terry here, and read the story in Maclean’s Magazine here.

Louise is the communicators director for The DI and the editor of Where, with Jordan Hamilton serving as co-editor. Both contributed several of the articles. The photographs were taken by Christian Plus Nathan, a photography company (and couple) in Calgary. The staff and clients of The DI are the stories.

And while Where is a book about people in Calgary, Alberta, it is a book about people anywhere.

Related:

A video of the book launch for Where is on YouTube.

More information about the book can be found here.

A Dickens Duet

A Tale with a Twist

A movie set, perhaps,
of alleyways; the balconies
touch in close conversation.
Fagin is about, somewhere.
The lights are right,
the camera rolls
when the child appears
in all his green innocence.
His name might be Oliver.

Great Expectations

Pip peers silently
into the dining room
and of course the first thing
he sees is that moldy,
moldering wedding cake,
crumbling in abandonment,
accented with green mold
instead of leafed frosting
to accompany frosted roses.
Miss Havisham wanders
dressed in faded stains,
dreaming of empire.

Both poems are submitted for One Shot Sunday hosted by One Stop Poetry. To see other submitted poems and an interview with photographer Neil Alexander, please visit the site.

Photographs by Neil Alexander. Used with permission or One Stop Poetry.

Saturday Good Reads

So what happens when you find a letter you wrote to your older adult self when you were a teenager? Or you go rock climbing? And what lessons can be taught to your son when there’s a power failure on the farm? What do you say to a nephew who was driving the car in a terrible car accident?

A video series on the English language – wonderful photographs – and even a short story. All this an more was online this past week.

Prose

“Lost Causes” by J of India at Neither Use Nor Ornament.

“Push Back” by Louise Gallagher at Recover Your Joy.

“Jean Janzen” by D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

“Now, When I Was Just a Little Boy” by Greg Sullivan at Sippican Cottage.

“Independence” by Bill Grandi at Cycleguy’s Spin.

“Towns to Visit – New Orleans” by Travis Young at Life Changes, Do We?

“It’s All Music” and “A Letter to Me” by Billy Coffey at What I Learned Today.

“Even the best intentions fall short” by Michelle DeRusha for the Lincoln Journal-Star.

“Intentional Community” by Milton Brasher-Cunningham at Don’t Eat Alone.

“When it seems like just another day” by Duane Scott for Bibledude.

“Rock Climbing in September” by Michael Dodaro at Lyrical Arts.

“The Importance of Family: What He Gives in the Dark” by Ann Voskamp at A Holy Experience.

“A letter to my heart-sick nephew” by Jennifer Dukes-Lee at Getting Down with Jesus.

"I'm not God, and I'm sick of trying" by Jason Stasyszen at Connecting to Impact.

Poetry

“How can anyone be arrogant when” by Monica Sharman at Know-Love-Obey God.

“Windblown” by Melissa Campbell at Sweet Water Blue Sky.

“After-Effects of Fire” by Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

“Everyone’s Frozen” by Michael Perkins at Untitled.

“Us, Unvorsum” by Arron Palmer.

"Baptism" by B.K. McKenzie at Signed...BKM.

Short Stories

“Neighbors” by Jeremy Shipp for The Barcelona Review.

Paintings and Photographs

“You Call That a Cat?” via Abraham Piper.

“Sanctuary – Sunset” by Jason Stasyszen at Connecting to Impact.

“By Any Other Name” by Susan Etole at Just…A Moment.

“Sunset at Laity Lodge” by Nathan Roberts, via his father, Mark Roberts.

“Rain in the Orchard” by Randall David Tipton at Painter’s process.

“All This, All His” by Michelle DeRusha at Graceful.

"Landscape - Morning Sea" by Kelly Sauer.

Videos
“Take 10 for the English Language” via Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

Photograph: Flower by Nancy Rosback. Used with permission.

Art Alley

Twilight time.
I wander into this gallery,
see, and just as I step inside
I pause, mid-stride:
Art Alley by Bonnie,
Artist's Personal Collection.
The patrons before me
are so captivated
they’ve become
one with the paintings,
flesh and muscle and bone
and tissue flattened
into canvas pigments,
digital brush strokes,
creation’s DNA.
I think that’s weird,
twilight zone at twilight time,
but I pause too lo--.

This poem is submitted for Friday Poetically with Brian Miller at One Stop Poetry. To see other poems, please visit the site.

Digital Image by Bonnie at Original Art Studio. Used with permission for One Stop Poetry.

Travis Thrasher's "Gravestone"

Travis Thrasher has written a number of novels, in a number of genres – romance, suspense, contemporary adult and (borderline) horror. Last year, he started a four-part Young Adult series with Solitary. The second novel in the series is the recently published Gravestone, and I devoured it, and on Kindle, no less – the first book I’ve read on Kindle.

Chris Buckley is a high school junior living in Solitary, North Carolina, having moved with his mother from Chicago following his parents’ divorce. Solitary is a strange town, and the longer Chris is there, the stranger it gets. In Solitary, he has what he thinks are the typical new-kid-at-school experiences – the bullies, the looks, the giggles. He meets and falls in love with a girl named Jocelyn. Gradually he comes to understand that nothing is what it seems in Solitary. Nothing. And instead of small-town life, Chris finds evil. And evil finds Jocelyn.

In Gravestone, Jocelyn is gone, mourned and missed by Chris. And the evil is growing more intense. His alcoholic mother claims to be threatened – by people in their own house. One of Jocelyn’s friends and her family move away, suddenly. Another friend comes to understand what has happened to Jocelyn, and tries to help Chris. And there’s the pastor of the town’s big church, whose wife isn’t seen any more and who – as far as Chris is concerned – radiates evil.

It’s not all bad. Chris goes to work for an elderly woman named Iris who operates a remote inn, and she's completely different. He meets a girl named Kelsey in his art class, whose family is refreshingly normal. And the son of his missing Uncle Robert finds him, and wants to help him.

Part of Gravestone is Chris having interior conversations with himself, much like any teenager would, except most teenagers don’t have these kinds of experiences to live through. The novel is fast-paced and action-packed, and the story itself is riveting. Best of all, Thrasher is a fine writer. The creepy characters have just enough humanity in them to avoid stereotypes, while the good characters have their flaws and failings. And the novel keeps packing a punch and never stops.

Gravestone may be aimed at the Young Adult market, but this older adult was wowed by a great story.

Related:

My review of Solitary.

Travis Thrasher's web site.

Learning in Times of Whitespace

As I’ve mentioned before, I threw my back out a couple of weeks ago while working in the garden. I’ve done it before – but this has really been taking a while to heal. It’s better (thank you for the prayers) but it’s still not 100 percent. I can tie my shoes by myself now, though.

When it’s difficult to move around, doing normal things like getting in and out of a car or rising from a chair (not to mention washing your feet in the shower – you should have seen that contortion, uh, no, maybe you shouldn’t), you become acutely aware of your body and movement. You learn to do things in different ways; yes, I’ve actually closed the car door from the inside of the car with the end of a cane.

Biking is out right now, but I can take walks. I’m doing physical therapy (that poem on Tuesday was not something I made up) and I’m doing exercises at home. I also read a book called Healing Back Pain by Dr. John Sarno that tells me I need to have arguments with my brain. He may well be right.

So things I normally do, things I don’t even think about, are beyond my capabilities. So it’s a kind of “whitespace time,” waiting for things to return to normal so I can get back to taking everything for granted.

I’ve learned something, though.

I don’t begrudge the accommodations made for disabled people. They need those wide parking spaces near the entrances of stores. They need sidewalks that slope to the street. They need ramps to get into buildings. The American Disabilities Act may drive a lot of businesses, governments and other organizations crazy in its implementation, but until you’re disabled yourself, you don’t realize how important access is. You don’t even think about it.

Yes, people survived and made do for centuries without the ADA, but those simple accommodations mean the difference between “close to normal” and “something less than close to normal.” Yes, laws like this can and will be taken to ridiculous extremes, but they’re still important and needed.

So for a few days I was allowed to park in the visitors’ parking lot at work, and it meant a short walk and – best of all – no stairs to get to my office. I didn’t even consider the stairs I had to climb from the regular parking lot to my office (some 55 steps distributed among four flights of stairs). I learned to appreciate a computer bag with wheels, even if it looked dorky – I could easily take my computer home (we’re required to do that) with having to inconvenience someone to carry it for me.

There was an unexpected benefit, too. I can’t sit for very long in a meeting, so I explain to people and then stand. Perhaps it was my imagination, but meetings became shorter. You should try it sometime, even without throwing your back out.


This week at Faith Barista, Bonnie Gray is talking about whitespace – and what you learn when you find yourself in life’s whitespace. To see more posts, please visit Faith Barista.