Rivanna Writer

An Uncivil Discourse

2011-08-18T00:52:00.000-07:00

I along with two other former members of Charlottesville City Council held a press conference to raise the issue of paying attention to consequences of decisions and specifically to address our concerns about the fiscal implications of reversing the Council position about building the Meadowcreek Parkway. We were greeted by a group opposing the Parkway, several of whom kept interrupting and shouting as I tried to read our statement. I feel very sad about the lack of civil discourse, especially since many of these same people have been friends of mine and have been quite vocal (without interruptions) in speaking their minds on this and other issues. Below I print what I tried to say over their shouts.

As you can see, most of us are former City officials. All of us have been deeply involved in the life of this city over several decades.

We are here -- in advance of the City Council firehouse primary on Saturday -- because we know from experience that City Council members make important decisions that have consequences on our lives and pocketbooks.

Some in the council campaign have raised the issue of reversing the decision on constructing the Meadowcreek parkway.

Regardless of one’s personal stance on the Meadowcreek Parkway, the City Council has made and reaffirmed its decision to build the road. In fact, the County has completed its portion.

Yet City Council candidates who have announced they would reverse this decision have yet to discuss the financial implications of not building the roadway.

Those here today have varying opinions about the wisdom, the alignment and other specifics of the parkway. It is one thing to have a personal opinion. It is another when those opinions get translated into decisions, for decisions – unlike opinions -- have consequences.

What would be the consequences for the citizens of Charlottesville if the decision on building the Parkway were reversed?

A major consequence is $13.4 million.

Thus far, this amount of taxpayer funds -- $13.4 million -- has been spent for preliminary engineering and right of way for the Parkway and the Interchange.

Reversing the city’s stance and removal of the road from the City’s Transportation Plan would result in the city being required, by statute, to repay $13.4 million in taxpayer dollars to the state and federal governments. The VDOT Board may waive this requirement, which seems highly unlikely under today’s shortfalls in transportation dollars. Decisions likely would be reviewed on an individual basis.

The reimbursement requirement is part of VDOT's standard agreement with cities who request urban transportation projects. It is included in Charlottesville's agreement with VDOT about the MCP. The General Assembly placed this mandate in the state code in order to protect state taxpayers from arbitrary decision-making when a project is requested, millions of public dollars are spent on planning and right-of-way, and then it is cancelled. Yes, the project can be cancelled, but not at the expense of other transportation projects that might have been funded with this money. The locality is held responsible for refunding the money. We know of one city Alexandria which repaid $1 million dollars for a cancelled project.

Another consequence is that if the City were to balk at this repayment, the Virginia Department of Transportation could withhold funds from the City in the amount of this reimbursement, thus putting off for years, if not decades, other important City projects such as Hillsdale Drive, Belmont Bridge and Ramp Improvements at 29/250 interchange.

Yes, decisions have consequences.

We here care about our city and we believe the candidates do also. We know from experience that our citizens care about Charlottesville AND her fiscal condition.

Yet, it is clear – when one is elected to Council, individual views, if translated into action, have consequences. We believe the voters would want to know how the candidates would deal with these consequences. Where would they find the money to reimburse the millions in state and federal tax dollars that have been spent at the city's request on planning, engineering and right-of-way for the MCP and the interchange? How could they justify a request for the CTB to waive the requirement to repay $13.4 million

All signs are that, in the present fiscal situation and with the severe shortage of transportation funds, the state would indeed require repayment of these funds, either from the city's general fund or from transportation allocations for future projects.

Thus, we urge all candidates to clarify any statements that they have made reversing the decision on the Meadowcreek Parkway.

Likewise, we urge all citizens voting in Saturday’s primary (or in the absentee voting on Thursday evening) to be aware of and think about the fiscal consequences of reversing previous parkway decisions, and to ask this question of their candidates: "Where will Charlottesville find approximately $13.4 million to reimburse VDOT for cancelling the project?" (That, incidentally, is about $788 per city household.)

Thank you. We are glad to take questions as a group, and we refer you also to the VDOT District office. We do have a handout citing the Virginia statute that deals with repayment.

Project MCINTIRE ROAD EXTENDED- 2 LANES
Scope of Work NEW CONSTRUCTION
Description FROM: ROUTE 250 BYPASS AT MCINTIRE ROAD TO: MELBOURNE ROAD INTERSECTION
Prelim. Eng. (PE) $3,700 Complete
Right of Way (RW) $0 N/A

Project RTE 250 BYPASS - CONSTRUCT INTERCHANGE
Scope of Work RECONSTRUCTION
Description AT MCINTIRE ROAD/MEADOW CREEK PARKWAY (0.5000 MI)
Prelim. Eng. (PE) $3,871 Complete
Right of Way (RW) $5,867 Complete

Total PE and ROW for MRE and Interchange $13.438 million

Charlottesville 2010 census stats 2005-2009 # Charlottesville Households = 17,037. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/51/51540.html
$13,438,000 reimbursement/17,037 households = $788.75 per household

Virginia Festival of the Book 2011

2011-03-23T11:52:00.000-07:00

Last week was the wonderful Virginia Festival of the Book, an event I’ve been attending ever since it began in the 1990s. Like Charlottesville’s patron patriot Thomas Jefferson, I could not live without books. As usual far more panels were planned than I could possibly attend. But I did hear two of my favorite journalists – Jim Lehrer of PBS News Hour and Scott Simon of NPR’s Weekend Edition. Next to books, NPR and PBS are my favorite media outlets.

Of course, Jim Lehrer was a big hit. Very funny as he gave the Trailways Bus call "Witchita, Kansas City, Albuquerque," etc. demonstrating that no matter how famous a person may become, he never forgets his first job. Lehrer is of course well known for his journalism, interviews and moderation of the presidential debates. But he has also written 20 books during the time of his very high powered career. (He says it just takes sitting in the chair, but when asked later, how he finds the time, given his high powered career, he reported writing every morning for an hour or two at the studio before the rest of the staff arrives.)

Scott Simon was not talking news or politics. He has written a couple of other books, including the novel, Windy City, but his most recent book is about his family’s adoption of two Chinese girls. He was very emotional and broke up several times as he talked about his daughters.

But in addition to these blockbuster appearances, I heard other really good and interesting writers. (I must note that I did promise myself that I would refrain from purchasing books during the Festival since I still have many from last year that I have not read.)

My number one choice of workshops focused on two Americans who played roles in China during the late 19th - mid-20th Century. Lynne Joiner has written Honorable Survivor: Mao's China, McCarthy's America and the Persecution of John S. Service and Lawrence Kaplan, Homer Lea: American Soldier of Fortune.

John Service grew up in China in the 20s and 30s where his father had established a YMCA in the southern area. After college, he returned to China in the diplomatic service and spent his career during the Second World War trying to get cooperation between Mao and the Communists and Chang Kai-Chek and the Nationalists. He entreated the Roosevelt Administration to open communications with the Communists as he forsee their winning the Revolution. After the War, as the cold war began, Senator Joseph McCarthy began to identify Service as one of the Communists in the State Department. After being dismissed, Service sued and eventually prevailed with the U.S. Supreme Court deciding unanimously that there were no valid reasons for his dismissal.

Homer Lea was another interesting character who entered the Chinese scene in the
1890s. He was an American, a hunchback who studied about American military history and offered himself as an expert to the Chinese. It is remarkable that the Chinese believed he had the expertise, but as we can see in the nascent revolutions in the Middle East, often revolutionaries are simply hungry to get any help they can.

Later that day, I attended a panel of three National Book Award Winners that was moderated by another NBA winner, Henry Wiencek (who won for The Hairstons). John Casey talked about Spartina, and he won the award while he was on his own self-financed book tour. Jaimy Gordon won for Lord of Misrule, a story of a racetrack. She had written short stories but was mostly published in academic journals so didn’t expect the book to go far. Kathryn Erskine won for her book, Mockingbird, which was published as a young adult book (largely because the protagonist is a 10 year old), but it appears to tell a gripping story of the girl, who has Asberger's, dealing with the aftermath of a middle school shooting in which her brother is killed.

I went to another panel which was billed as “Reading Group Choices” and in fact some of the authors attend book groups either in person or by Skype or other electronic means. Myla Goldberg, author of Bee Season, talked about The False Friend, which in particular attracted my attention since the story focuses on the memory of the protagonist about her role in an event, and finding that no one else remembers the event that way.

Tatjana Soli talked about her novel of the Vietnam about a group of journalists, including a woman reporter, unusual for the 70s, in The Lotus Eaters. The Nobodies Album tells the story of a novelist mother coping with the twin worlds of her fiction and the grim reality of her son’s accusation as a murderer while William Cobb wrote about the quest of two people to understand their pasts in The Last Queen of the Gypsies.

Regardless of her novel, I want to know more about Ruth Pennebaker, author of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough, because she contributes to a blog named geezersisters.com. She was on a panel on “Novels about Family: Eat, Laugh, Love”, almost all of which seemed to have funny stories, a good thing when you’re talking about family.

The other writers were Kerry Reichs (her mother Kathy is the mystery writer whose fictional forensic investigator became the basis for the Bones series now so popular on TV). Kerry wrote Leaving Unknown, which tells the story of a young woman’s odyssey across America through all sorts of strange landscapes including Unknown, Arizona. Richard Morais, a former writer for Forbes Magazine, wrote The Hundred Foot Journey, the story of an Indian chef from Mumbai who comes to Paris to operate a restaurant and the myriad characters he meets along the way.

Martha in Lattimore

2009-05-16T09:39:00.000-07:00

I learned that Martha Mason, who spent over 60 years in an iron lung, died last weekend. Martha was a native of Lattimore, N.C., an author of a memoir entitled simply "Breath" and the subject of a documentary film. Thanks to my friend, Mariel, who knew Martha and who sent me her memoir, I met Martha a few years ago.
I regret I never wrote to tell her how wonderful her book was.
So I'll now tell anyone who wants to know.
What was remarkable was that Martha, although she lived this extraordinarily unusual life, had a sense of joy and an acceptance that helped her surpass the many limitations.
Her parents - as parents and caretakers - were remarkable, as were other caretakers over the years.
I remember the time when polio was a real threat. I was in second grade in Newport News, Va., and a classmate became infected. My mother commisserated with the girl's mother but also worried about whether or not I would become infected. The schools took precautions. We went to the doctors. But all you could do is hope and pray -- there were no cures, no vaccines against polio at the time. Our recently deceased president had lived his life with it.
Some, like Martha's brother, even died. Martha was not expected to live, but she did. For 60 more years until she was 71.
When Martha went to Wake Forest, her mother went with her, took notes for her in class, wrote assignments dictated by Martha. Martha made a life for herself with her parents, she made friends -- lots of them -- and had callers. Late in life, she went through the trauma of seeing her beloved mother descend into the dementia of Alzheimer's.
Somehow, Martha prevailed to write her story of defying the odds to live and breathe and create. Many of us live in self-imposed prisons. Martha's iron lung was a prison not of her making, but she showed how the human spirit can prevail.
Read Breath by Martha Mason.

Listen to the story about Martha on
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104032600

Beach Floating

2009-05-16T03:44:00.000-07:00

On Ocracoke Island, my mind floats.

Anticipating my week long sojourn on the Outer Banks, I think of all the activities I love to do and plan accordingly -- birdwatching, kayaking, fishing, walking on the beach, biking and eating, maybe trying parasailing or horseback riding.

Once I've crossed the sound from Hatteras, these plans quickly are pared down -- I use my bike to get around and I definitely look forward not only to the Crews Inn morning repast but other seafood feasts -- crab beignets at the Back Porch, fresh bluefish at the Atlantic Cafe, shrimp at Howard's Pub.

My type A personality recedes -- I enjoy long walks on the beach until I can see no other people, I read Alan Furst novels of World War II adventure and I nap every afternoon. Even though I arrived not particuarly stressed, my body now reminds me how good it feels to truly release and relax. As I walk or sit on the beach, my mind floats -- on the waves, in the clouds, across the ripples in the sand made by the water receding from the shore.

New definition for myself: reader, napper, sometime birder and beachcomber.

Without newspapers !

An inveterate newspaper reader, NPR and News Hour junkie, I usually incorporate the daily news into my Ocracoke regimen. Whether I was at a hotel, B&B or cottage, in the past, my morning ritual included a walk to one of the two stores or the coffee shop for a Virginian-Pilot, which combined national and Virginia headlines with North Carolina news.

This year, however, I forgot all about the newspapers, although for a moment on my final day, I thought a paper might be good for transition back to "real life. "

But-- nah -- there's still plenty of blue sky, sands and waves to contemplate for another day.

2009-05-15T05:57:00.000-07:00

Photos from Ocracoke

2009-05-14T05:51:00.000-07:00

Books I've Read

2009-04-07T18:58:00.000-07:00

Snow Day

2009-03-02T16:42:00.000-08:00

When I awoke this morning, snow was falling, the streets and sidewalks were covered and from my bed, I could see that the woods and nearby fields were deeply covered. The big flakes turned into smaller ones, and at last the snow stopped and the sky turned bright blue. I, on the other hand, lazed in bed, read magazines I had ignored for months and over the course of an hour slowly arose to greet the "snow day."
A day for several walks: Late morning, I took a spin in the cemetary past the graves marked "Graves," a redundancy my neighbor, Susie, noted, with the tombstones powdered. Despite the sun, it was very chilly with a brisk wind blowing across the largely open field. In one place, some animal had run in a large circle -- who was it and what was it doing? Not a cat, not a bird -- maybe a rabbit or a fox?
Mid-afternoon, I decided to walk beside the River. The path was littered with footprints but I saw few people along the way. Wind gusts blew me, I looked at the birds -- the red of cardinals against the white snow path, the white throated sparrows pecking at berries and skittering across the ground. Overhead, the snow on horizontal branches metamorphized into trunks whose whiteness came not from snow but from the peeling bark of the Sycamores lining the River.
In the distance I hear titmice and chicadees and juncos -- and the distinctive buzzing of a kingfisher looking for dinner. With my binoculars I come upon two bluebirds fluttering in the branches, the blue so velvety that it could break your heart.
But my quarry is in the river. For several days I have seen two mute swans among the Canada Geese that inhabit the Rivanna year round. In the past I've seen single swans on the Rivanna but never two at once. I always thought the swan I saw over the years was the same one, until I learned that they live for only a couple of years. So I must be seeing new swans each time.
Today, I see only one white swan. Aright, the swan with its curving graceful neck floats elegantly. But just as I settle into this notion of the swan, it ducks its head and kicks its butt in the air as it forages for dinner, and I am left with a comical cartoon-like view of the bird.
Still, my walk is quiet. The snow has melted on the some of the asphalt path, and I notice small mounds where the roots of the nearby trees are spreading out and pressing up through the man-made path.
An acquaintance died today. He had been as alive as these birds, as I am now, and then he was gone. He lived for a week as his family said goodbye.
I walk back up the hill. The neighborhood children are sledding down the hill in my yard, laughing and shouting.
It's a snow day.

RIVANNA IN THE WINTER

2009-02-15T18:35:00.001-08:00

Rivanna River, Charlottesville, Va. - Fall Is Here !

2008-10-22T02:53:00.001-07:00

Bird (and other Animal) Tales

2008-08-18T09:06:00.000-07:00

I’m not sure why I decided to eschew my beloved crew rowing this summer, for I rise just as early (5:30ish) to take early morning solitary bird walks. Mostly I walk in Riverview Cemetery adjacent to my neighborhood – a large field with shrubs, copses of trees and edged on the west by a strip of woods buffering the Rivanna River just above the Woolen Mills. I always have company on my many walks – mostly birds but also rabbits, a turtle, deer and several times foxes.

The birds abound: Usually I count easily 20 species in a half hour – a pair of young but primeval-looking pileated woodpeckers with their red crests and pinkish faces drilling into snags of dead trees at the top of a steep bank above the River. Bluebirds flitting about the cemetery. Red Shouldered and Broad Shouldered Hawks hassled by crows and other smaller birds as they settle in to look for their breakfast of mice or other small game. Eastern Pee Wees with a sing-song whinny, orange crested chipping sparrows bright and chirpy with the morning sun. One morning with the cacophony of sound and flitting of birds, I notice a large oval mass on the ground slowly moving from the woods toward the gravesites – a very large turtle about 12 - 15 inches in diameter – I'm not sure whether it's a snapping turtle or an especially large box turtle.

But the first time I noticed tails on my walk, I thought I was seeing a large cat. Yet the tail was unmistakable – gray and bushy – and the legs longer than those of either cats or dogs. And the first creature was followed by a second – two young red foxes gangly as human teenagers and just as curious. They crossed the cemetery road that was my pathway, gamboling down a hill from a small knoll where a family mausoleum and some of the oldest graves are located – underneath a large cypress tree.

The first fox and I froze and just peered at one another. I wondered if maybe he had never seen my species before. The second fox followed, oblivious to my presence, and the two crossed and slowly made their way across the field to the woods where they slunk out of sight.

A couple of days later, I saw the foxes again as they were chasing each other in the field next to the woods and then wrestling like puppies. This time, I made a wide circle around them to approach them from behind so that I could take their picture before they saw me. One had entered the woods, but the other saw me as I snapped – and while I got a fuzzy image, he quickly disappeared into the woods.

My hummingbird tale is even closer to home. For several years I’ve had a hummingbird feeder filled with sugar water in the front yard. However, the hummers also enjoy the butterfly weed that abounds in the sideyard between my house and my neighbor’s. Still, the hummingbird must like that sweet sugar water . . .

Several times I have forgotten to replenish the feeder with its sweet water. Each time, a hummingbird has flown up to the side yard window and hovered until he has gotten my attention – at which time I have replenished the feeder. The only time the hummers have appeared at that window is when the feeder is empty.

***

Recently at a Monticello Bird Club walk, the leader said he’d always heard that mockingbirds don’t sing in August. “Balderdash,” I thought, recalling how loud the mockers in the cemetery and my yard have been this summer. But I took note when I returned home (this on August 2). I’ve not heard a mockingbird sing since then although I continue to see them flutter about and chirp at each other noisily. Do the “dog days” affect the mockers also?

***

A birdbath sits in the center of my very sunny front yard. The other day, while I paused at my computer, I gazed out the study window and saw eight House Finches (small brown and rosy brown birds) splashing and cavorting in the bird bath. Just about this time, my daughter was leaving the house:

“Oh dear, what’s wrong with this cardinal,” she called out

The cardinal half lying on the path from the front door, his crest awry and his feathers seemingly matted was most decidedly bedraggled.

But then he up and flew away – the cardinal had succumbed to the pleasures of Birdie Spa and had gotten his elaborate headdress very very wet.

***

Maybe I will live to regret this statement: Deer remain my favorite four-legged creature.

One morning I saw a young buck crossing the cemetery grounds. He had only one antler, the other one probably already molted. In the early morning mist, this one-antlered deer strode mysteriously across the field like a modern day unicorn and then majestically disappeared into the woods.

Another day, as I returned from my walk, I looked into my neighbor’s backyard and saw a beautiful young doe. Staring at her also, with his back to me, was a small rabbit – the rabbit and the doe of the same golden brown in the early morning light.

I froze, the doe stood still, and the rabbit sat – as in contemplation. For those 10 seconds I felt at one with the animal world. . .

Memories of Bambi: my favorite movie when I was a very young child. I loved the animals cavorting with one another across species – Thumper the rabbit and Bambi the fawn for example.

Last summer, at Ivy Creek Nature Center, I saw a skunk chase a groundhog and I imagined the same kind of inter-species friendship. Of course, because it was a skunk, I was glad I was on the other side of the creek.

But usually the animals are not playing but preying.

Just before the sunrise, I spot a newcomer to the cemetery – a long legged heron – I’ve never seen any member of this species in that area although it is probably no more than 50-100 yards above the Rivanna, a likely spot for members of this family of birds.

I memorize the heron’s features – no real tail, stout beak, long neck, brownish feathers (probably an immature of some kind), when a third being emerged from the woods. The red fox . . . it goes after the bird, like the proverbial fox in a hen house, at which point of course the heron flies away.

The fox and I are left staring at one another. I am within 25 yards of him. Frozen to the spot, I silently count the seconds of our confrontation, thinking only briefly that should he approach, he was probably rabid. Not to worry – after 20 seconds, the fox slowly and regally turns and disappears back into the woods.

Returning home, I am greeted by a more domestic animal, my neighbor's cat, Ziggy, who likes to laze beneath my peonies and rose bushes in the garden. His total relaxation reminds me of all I love about the summer.

Here endeth my bird and other animal tales.

GORONWY OWEN: WELSH POET AND VIRGINIA PRIEST

2008-08-03T17:31:00.000-07:00

The website of New Brunswick County, Va. has information about Goronwy Owen a Welsh poet of the 18th century who immigrated to Virginia, taught at William and Mary and became the priest of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Lawrenceville, Virginia. Interestingly. my maternal Grandmother's grandmother was an Owens whose family also had immigrated from Wales.

If you are interested in Welsh poetry check out this site about this Virginia connection. http://www.tourbrunswick.org/goronwy_owen.htm

A Pilgrimage to Wales: A Beginning

2008-06-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

I look out the window of the passenger bus as the English landscape flashes by. Leaving Birmingham, we pass the Museum of the Motorcycle and then we’re almost in the countryside. But not quite: Large paneled trucks parked in fields serve as portable billboards. The only memorable message is one boasting: “Birmingham’s Rubbish: We love it.”

With Birmingham and the rubbish behind us, we move through English midlands west toward Wales. Flat lowlands with gentle rising hillocks dotted with copses of poplars and oaks. Fields and Fields of fluorescent yellow Rape Seed hedged by rows of yellow gorse and white blossomed hawthorne from fields of green grazed upon by herds of sheep – shorn and unshorn, lambs and ewes and rams, usually white but often mixed with brown and black sheep. In some fields, horses and cows also graze, and once I spy a large brown cow browsing the lower branch of a shady tree.

Slowly the hills get higher and the topography more rolling as we enter Wales where the pilgrimage is to begin.
Of course it already has begun – and depending on how you view the term pilgrimage, it can be a metaphor for life. From this perspective, my life pilgrimage is now in its 69^th year.
But in the usual sense, pilgrimage means a journey of moral significance often to a place of spiritual significance. Every major religion has these – Muslims journey to Mecca, Christians to Rome or the Holy Land, Jews to Jerusalem, even Buddhists – I am told – seek the important sites in the lives of the Buddha. When I was a child, I remember my Roman Catholic aunt, Jennie, journeying to Lourdes in France; I still have the rosary she brought me that contains a bit of holy water from the well there. And as a high schooler (and in College), I read Chaucer’s tales of Canterbury and the pilgrims that journeyed to the place Thomas a Becket had made holy.
In my case, the path has been made easier than those of earlier Christian pilgrims by modern transportation – a flight from Newark to Birmingham England followed by a chartered bus into Wales. I travel with 28 other pilgrims, all members of the Episcopal Church, mostly from the East Coast but including an Ohioan and two Californians.
As we move eastward, we spot the Malvern Hills, fields of white daisies and bluebells, even a red clay field reminiscent of the earth tones in my native Virginia. The valley grows narrower and the road also, as we cross the river moving closer to our evening stop near the ruins of Tintern Abbey. My first visit on this pilgrimage is the visit to this place: Tintern Abbey, which inspired Wordsworth some 250 years ago when he penned his reflections on time and memory.
The ruins are indeed all that remains of the memory of the monastery that once stood here. A grand but simple structure, as it first appears to me. Yet the more I explore it by foot, the more rooms I discover.

Behind the abbey, I make another discovery – an oak tree through which the late afternoon sun illuminates the transparent delicate leaves. I try with my camera to capture it, knowing that the photo will at best be a memento of what I experienced.

Like the pilgrims in Canterbury Tales, members of our group each have our own stories, and over the 10 days to come, I will learn a little bit more about some of them.
But we begin with simple introductions, picking up on a retired minister’s self-description as a “Virgin Pilgrim” the rest of us find a new part of our identity: a “returning pilgrim”, experienced pilgrims from other holy places, Virgin Pilgrims, and – my self-identification, an “almost Virgin.” (based on an Episcopal trip 20 years ago to Kenya).
Back in my hotel room, I get to know my roommate Julia from Georgia and guiltily unpack my suitcase while she speaks of hers lingering somewhere in the Newark Airport having missed the transfer from Atlanta to our trans-Atlantic flight.
The next day, I reluctantly leave beautiful Tintern for the first day of our journey to many holy places in Wales. I have been attracted to this trip, not only because it is in Wales and not only because it is a pilgrimage but also because the focus is celtic Christianity about which I have had a sense of kinship without much knowledge. In preparation for the trip, I read some books on the topic and immediately found the intellectual basis for my kinship: In my newfound personal theology, Celtic Christianity appealed to me because it focused on the innate goodness of humankind (as opposed to “original sin”) emphasizing the importance of finding the God within oneself and within all the aspects of the natural world (as opposed to getting direction from the authorities in Rome).
Many of the holy places we will visit are named for saints I’ve never heard of and yet they were real people who once lived. The first one we meet is an early Celtic saint, Issui, who was murdered near the spot where the bus stops on a country road; we enter a gate and walk uphill from the Nant Mair River along a farm path arriving first at St. Issui’s well, where we stop to pray and to dip our fingers into the water. I think about how many of these heretofore unknown saints have existed – before the church set criteria for sainthood, there were many ordinary people so recognized.
It reminds me of the second part of a passage from Ecclesiasticus that is read often around All Saints Day. It begins: “Let us now praise famous men,
and our fathers in their generations. The Lord apportioned to them great glory,
his majesty from the beginning. There were those who ruled in their kingdoms,
and were men renowned for their power . . . There are some of them who have left a name, so that men declare their praise.”
But – this is the part that reminds me of St. Issui and other men AND women -- “And there are some who have no memorial, who have perished as though they had not lived; they have become as though they had not been born, and so have their children after them. But these were men of mercy, whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten . . .”
St. Issui, I think, you may be forgotten but not this well which holds the memory of you. As we continue up the hill toward a 6^th Century Patrishow (Patricio) Church, through a woods and a meadow, I recall an old saw, which even though often said is not untrue: The Journey is more important than the destination.
Our encounters along this part of the journey include a large mother ewe shepherding her young lambs into a barn and out of harms way from us the pilgrims, we see more hedgerows, bluebells, buttercups and rose colored “fire “ an enormous red poppy in a farmhouse garden, more hawthorns and wild roses, holly trees and horse chestnuts with their multiple yellow spiked blossoms.

At the peak of the hill we arrive at the destination – a small medieval chapel of stone overlooking the valley below where we can see how far we’ve climbed.
We take a different, more direct but steeper way back to the bus across the fields and down the hill rather than the the longer switch-back road that brought us here. On the way down, I’m ahead of Julia but I hear a cry and look back. As she tells me later, her walk turned into a run she could not control and so she tumbled over. I see others assisting her. As she tells me later, her knee hurt but more important, she was shaken by the fall and her dignity was awry as well.

On the Way to Carreg Cenon, Wales View from Carreg Cenon

A Pilgrimage to Wales - Part II

2008-06-13T09:48:00.000-07:00

On Friday, I rose early and walked to the well of St. Non and the ruins of the cottage where St. David was reportedly born. On my way, I meandered onto another path and saw an unmistakable Male Pheasant, a golden and chestnut body with a very long tail, a green-black head with a scarlet face patch. Sitting in a field – as I later saw several other male pheasants doing the same – there is no effort at camouflage and so it’s no wonder they grace many a British dinner table. Several in our party had pheasant for dinner during the week and were surprised to discover a gun shot as part of the dish – the waiters were nonplussed, saying only that you would expect that, given they were shot.

That morning, though, I also heard thrushes singing, not exactly the same call as the American wood thrush with the same throaty flute-like tones; my bird book was uninstructive as to whom it might be. I also identified that day a Great Tit, which was somewhat reminiscent of our Carolina chickadee: A small bird (but the largest European Tit, hence the moniker “great”) it is gray olive with bluish wings, a longer tail than chickadees, a black head with white cheeks and a black bib and pale yellow belly – a very pretty bird.

St. Non’s and the nearby medieval chapel overlook St. Bride’s Bay and the Irish Sea It’s quiet here as I’m the only one outside this early morning. I appreciate my time alone for we’ll be on bus most of the day, visiting various places.

When I return to the Old Cross Hotel, I’m late for breakfast but I don’t mind a bit and getting only a bowl of fruit and a cup of coffee. We’ve been having huge English breakfasts here in St. David’s as at Tintern and when we arrive at Cricceth: eggs, toast, sausages, broiled tomatoes, much larger than I usually have. Lunch is usually sandwiches and soup at a pub or inn enroute to our various stops. I didn’t keep track of all the meals but was generally pleased with the quality of the food and the presentation – European cuisine has permeated even England, once known for its too-heavy and dour meat and potatoes. Still we have fish – trout and salmon – I eat lamb whenever I can get it, and one dish we try is cawl, a traditional Welsh stew of lamb, leeks and vegetables. The Old Cross’ version is a little bit more like a soup, but still tasty. Desserts are yummy – bread pudding, fruit crisp are two that stand out for me – traditional but prepared well.

On this day, we venture 25 miles northeast of St. David’s, on a hill that overlooks Fishguard Bay is Pentre Ifan (dated at more than 6000 BC, it means “the home of Ivan”). Three monoliths are covered by a large capstone, about 16 tons heavy. This apparently was a gravesite and the earth has moved away from it. We stood leaning against the uprights, feeling the sense of this holy place set as it was near an oak grove more than 8000 years ago. I understand what our guide Cintra means about the sense of the past being present. The stones feel like that.

As we experienced this very quiet and special spots, several fighter jets made separate passes over the plain we were on – A similar sound had broken our silence on Tuesday when we were going to St. Issui ‘s Well and Patricio Church – this time, the plane came back several times. Whether or not he was showing off for us, it made me think about the meaning of this – After their sounds recede, the silence is filled with birdsong – robins, thrush, bunting-like calls. Despite the human accomplishments and attempts to soar, I think that what endures here is the Earth and her smallest birds.

Pentre Ifan and the burial chamber we visit later in the week – Bryn Celli Ddu on Anglesey Island – remind me of Stone Henge Interestingly, after my return, I read that archeologists have recently found evidence that Stone Henge was a burial site, rather than a place of druid worship as had been commonly assumed. Interestingly, this area is in the Preseli Mountains, from which the bluestone used in Stone Henge supposedly originated – we have to ask – How and why did they move it several hundred miles away?

At lunch, we meet a 94 year old poet Eluned Phillips who writes in Welsh. She’s the first woman to win the National Eisteddfod competition twice and only the third woman in the history of the Eisteddfod, an annual competition between poets dating back to the vying of medieval bards in the court and revived in 1819 at Carmarthen Castle. Ms. Phillips has written a book entitled “The Reluctant Redhead” about her interesting life; but I love her poems which are written in Welsh but which she translates for us. For example, in “My Heritage” she describes a Welshman’s effort to “caress a meager living” and brings alive the landscape as she describes the “white buds of blackthorns.” She’s a poet I want to read. She turns out to be only the first hint of what I have to learn about Welsh poets.

On Sunday afternoon we had a poetry lecture by Saunders and Cynthia Davies, he a retired bishop and she a translator of Celtic poetry. We learned that Welsh poetry is the oldest literature in Europe and that there are three kinds of harmonies or rhymes in Welsh poetry: echoing harmony where the line rhymes with the end; criss cross harmony – I love a green olive grove; bridging I am pleased with my plums; sonorous: where asphodels and bluebells blow. Poetry is the harmony of cynghannedd peculiar to wales and involving intricate verse forms and a most sophisticated form of sound patterning within the 24 meter verse. The history of Welsh poetry has stretched through five periods: from the poets of the Warriors to those of the Princes (1100-1400) to the Noblemen (1330), an era grounded in Christianity and including such poets as David of Williams, a contemporary of Chaucer who extolled the sacredness of God’s creation: “the chalice of ectasy in these woods” and of the woodland mass: “It was read of birds, crove in the sweet woods.

In 18th century, the poetry spoke of more cultivated nature. Our speakers report that amost famous poet [whose name I wrote as "Gorontown" but can find nothing about now], who was both a priest and poet, migrated to Virginia and lived at a plantation near Lawrenceville where he is buried; this is a mystery I need to track down.

In the 20th Century, a number of poets emerge who write only in Welsh – T Jones, Thomas Williams, Allyn Coed, Saunders Lewis, Walden Williams, Gweneth Jones. In “Ascension Thursday” the line reads “the father kissing the son in the white dew.” “Yesterday I saw a daisy” compares the viewing of the daisies in the grass to looking at the constellation in the heavens; only an hour before we heard this, Judy Boyd had commented to me on the beauty of the daisies in the grass in the Dean’s garden. Another poet, Welden Williams, who was father of the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, describes God coming as “the outlaw . . . and the hunter . . .” These poets, explain the Davises, celebrate the sacramental aspect of language – God as artist and poet, “the chief bard of heaven seeks us to be words in his ode.” I believe this came from Mereid Hopwood, who has written A Welsh Pilgrim’s Manual.

After we ended lunch and said goodbye to poet Eluned, we were off to St. Brynach’s Church about whom a prayer says:

O holy Brynach, thou didst leave thy native Ireland
to seek God in Pembroke's solitude.
As thou dost now stand before Christ our God,
intercede with Him, we pray, that He may have mercy on us.

This 6th century saint was said to spend most of his time at a hermitage on this site praying and fasting; reportedly he was a kind of early St. Francis in that the wild animals were tamed by him. Nevern and St. David’s are among the oldest Christian sites in Great Britain, and the current church stands on the site of a much older chapel. We walk along a path from the road to a spring, where Harold almost slips on the wet rocks, and after prayers, we spend some quiet time walking and meditating. Here in the woods, interspersed with small meadows, one can sense the history here; in fact, it appears to me also a mythical place – the green somewhat greener, the plethora of ferns, garlicky aromatic Ramsoms with their white flowers and other moisture-loving plants – I am reminded of the Merlin myth and the way I always imagined the woods near his cave in Mary Stewart’s novels about Merlin and King Arthur. Everything is hyper green; I observe several b irds, the very round rose breasted robins (the shape is totally different from American robins) and a wren; again I hear thrushes of some kind – their flute like songs reverberating through the forest. In the churchyard are several yew trees; on one side is a place where red sap emerges; said to be a “bleeding yew” the story is that they will stop bleeding when there is a Welsh king or alternatively, when there is world peace.

Mid-afternoon we gather for communion in the church and then walk across the road to the church hall for tea and welsh cakes, softer and more moist than scones. We are served by the generous members of the parish who like so many others we have met at St. David’s have been more than generous in their welcoming and in sharing their culture, language and food with us. I experience a true sense of a greater communion of believers.

That night after dinner in St. David’s we experience a different side of the culture as eight of us embark to Haverford West to hear the Male Voice Choir rehearse. About 50 men of all ages, many well past 60, arrive around 7 from nearby businesses and farms. Over a hundred years old, the choir has had only nine directors, the ninth being the first woman director, Christine Schuerriel. Her accompanbist is Wendy. Christine, sitting in front of her music stand beats out the rhythm with her hand on her thigh or the stand as the men sing. “Okay gentlemen, right” she’d say, “let’s try that again.” They begin -- oddly enough for us who long to hear the Welsh songs -- with a medley of American Spirituals – “This Little Light of Mine,” “Amen” and “Shenandoah.” They follow with Welsh pieces, “The Peacemaker” and “Cambria,” the national anthem as well as an unknown choral piece -- “Nirvana”. Midway through they take a break, hold a business meeting and have a drawing for various items. At the end of the rehearsal they sing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” Their rendition reminded me why – when I was a youngster -- it was once one of my favorites. They did a lovely job, and it touched.me anew. One of my fellow pilgrims sang with them; he – who sings in a men’s choir in California – was thrilled to be part of the group for the evening. We joyously return to the Old Cross.

****

The flowers of Wales were less elusive than the birds, but not always. Usually I could describe them and then match them to something in my British flower book that I picked up in St. David’s. But the various hawthornes and blackthorns were lumped together – different people identified the white budded hedgerows differently – white hawthorn according to the innkeeper or was it “the white bud of blackthorn” ? ( poet Elunid Phillips) Since they’re akin to one another, I assumed we were probably seeing both at different times. Red Campion, a showy pink flower. Lots of foxglove growing wild and a pinkish flower that looked like milkweed but was described in my book as red valerian. Lots of delicate Bluebells – periwinkle bell like flowers nodding from a single stem. Purple Marsh Orchids. Lots of yellow – Gorse of course, thick low stubby bushes with thorns and bright yellow flowers and daisies with their hellow button centers. Buttercups much larger than those I’m used to in Virginia. Lovely delicate primroses with their soft wooly leaves. Yellow azalea, butter burr, red and purple dead nettle, and the wonderfully named “field mouse-ear”, rather large white flowers with small nibbles at the edge of each of the five petals. Often I picked a small sample of flowers to weave together into a nosegay. Back at the hotel, I would pop the nosegay into water, where they usually perked up and lasted for several days.

Generally the weather was most cooperative. Some days it was overcast, maybe with a few sprinkles. But only on Saturday did the weather really become a problem. This was the day for our Ramsey Island trip, disappointing because it poured raining, was cold and we could not, as planned, dock and walk on Ramsey Island. Our guide was not particularly helpful to people like me wanting assistance in spotting birds. HE was more of a tour guide of what he (and we supposedly) saw, without really seeing them. However, I did see razorbills, a shag (which looked like a cormorant with a mohawk), a skua. The guide saw a puffin but I wouldn’t claim I did.

By the end of our two hour boat ride, most people were drenched and cold; I was fortunately only the latter as my rain suit, pants and top, kept me dry enough. A long soak in the tub at the Old Cross was the first order of business on our return to the hotel.

Pilgrimage to Wales - Part III

2008-06-12T11:34:00.000-07:00

Sunday Julia and I walked to the 9:30 service at St. David’s Cathedral; Julia went to the Welsh service but I stayed in the main chapel for the regular service. It was an odd juxtaposition of medieval cathedral, modern praise music, and a “low-church” liturgy. But the people were very friendly and chatted us up afterward. Julia and I then went for a macchiato at a nearby café (along with a slice of dry fruit bread) and shopped a bit before returning to the church for lunch in the refectory with the dean, his wife, and a seminary student. After this, we had the lecture on poetry discussed in the previous posting.

The lecture was followed by a tea at “the Deanery” where the Dean of the Cathedral and his wife, a potter, live. There, I took a stroll in the lovely garden. I noticed again the lovely daisies in the grass – as the poet had written – like stars in the galaxy.

Alas, this was our last day in St. David’s but on to the next adventure -- a long drive to North Wales. After a Monday morning breakfast of porridge, I bid St. David’s goodbye as we began our journey to Aberstywyth. Along the way, I notice a new tree – locust- like fronds with drooping yellow blossoms. I soon learn that it’s a Laburnum; in my state capitol, Richmond, there’s a Laburnum Avenue, but I never recall seeing this tree. Later in the week, when we visit Bodnant Garden, I experience a tunnel of yellow laburnum.

But for now, as we journey northward, we see more woods in the fields but, often, in the background, the sea. The landscape has less craggy cliffs and more rolling hills. We get our first glimpse of the Snowdonia range, approximately the height of the Great Smokies, in N.C., or Old Rag Mountain in the Shenandoah, 3000-3600 feet above sea level. Of course, we are much closer to the sea level here than in Western North Carolina or the Virginia Blue Ridge. Unlike the forested Smokies and Blue Ridge, Snowdonia is above the tree line. Sir Edmund Hillary and his team trained here for their successful Everest climb. Harold tells us that usually Snowdonia is visible only about 20 days per year; I am excited that we are getting to see it. But even as we drive, the scene changes from a clear view to clouds coming in – in fact the clouds themselves are fantastic. What a beautiful place.

As we drive through the various towns, I enjoy seeing the signs in Welsh and English: “Hanoed”– warning the drivers that there are “Elderly” nearby; “Sgol” for “school” and so on.

Buttercups, Hawthorn and Gorse line the roadways but when we stop at the Conrad Hotel for tea, we view the most luscious yellow azaleas (later also prominent at the Bron Eifron Hotel in Criccieth and also at Bodnant Gardens) and pink rhododendron. Also at the Conrad Hotel, there is a great vegetable garden with a plant that looks a little like rhubarb but in a more gigantic form. My handy flower book identifies this as Butterbur and verifies our observation that the leaves resemble those of Rhubarb.

Leaving Conrad, we see windmills on the distant ridges. We pass the national library in Aberstywyth. There are also a string of Welsh castles along this way and we’ll visit one later. I see a circle of mountains to my right, then a familiar wisteria climbing a tree.
Cintra points out the patches of dark green growth on the mountains – Scotch Pines grown for paper, wood, pulp – but they are crowding out the native habitat and species.

In Maetynleth we begin to see more brick homes added to the stone and stucco ones we have observed thus far. Pretty soon, we begin to see lots of slate on the homes and in the fences. There are fences of slate with slabs upright and bound or woven together by wire.

The area looks a lot like Northern Pennsylvania – Johnstown, Troy, Canton – the mountains bow out on either side of the road.

We stop at Llechwedd Caverns for lunch and then an underground tour. It was a grim life for the workmen – 12- hours working in the dark 6 days a week for pittance pay. They dug the slate by hand drills – pure manual labor – hauled it out, then split and finished the slate into neat pieces for construction. Today, because machinery can reach the veins of slate, it’s all open pit mining. The area was covered in waste slate -- only a small portion can be recycled into usable materials. There’s a volunteer from the local bird club at the entrance to the facility and we chat with him during our lunch period. I buy two small bird pins – of a Kingfisher (which I’ve only heard but not seen in Wales) and the “Shag”, my discovery off Ramsey Island. While here I identify the British Goldfinch, which doesn’t look like the American species at all. But could it have been the “canary” in the Slate mine?

We stop briefly at Dolwyddelan Castle, racing uphill to climb the tower parapets and look at the views and then wandering back down past bubbling springs.

Our next stop is Betws-y-coed (pronounced Bett-oos ee Coid), which means Chapel in the Wood. It’s a touristy but cute town where we found St. Michael’s Church, built in the mid-19th century on an ancient site. The font dates to 1300; in the eaves of the small church we spy a wooden bier, used for funerals. Near the altar there is a stone effigy of Llewellyan, Prince of Wales in the 13th century before the English kings subdued the Welsh. The black plague of the 14th century wiped out the town but in the 19th century, people began to return to the area. During the Second World War, the town was the site for some of the preparatory schools when the English sent their children to be out of the way of the bombing of Britain.

We held a communion in this church, and it was here that I felt an incredible spiritual energy during the service, as though the floor, and I, on it, were rising upward. After the service, good women of the parish served us a high tea in the church – wonderful little cakes and sandwiches and, of course, tea or coffee. It was really quite charming.

It was a long day but we arrive at last at the Bron Eifron Country House Hotel in Criccieth. It is not at all like the funky Old Cross – more of an estate turned into an inn. Our room has a huge bathroom in which we could probably fit half of our group! This inn has absolutely lovely gardens so I enjoy my early mornings walking around looking at the flowers– the azaleas and rhododendron in particular – and listening to bird sounds.

Our first excursion from Criccieth is a bus trip to St. Cybi’s Well. (Pronounced “Cubby’s”, it makes me think of a Saint shaped like a teddy bear.) However, St. Cybi, I learn, was an 8th century monk from the Cornwall area who had traveled in the Irish Sea area and came to Wales through Anglesey Island from Ireland with some followers. He reportedly struck water with his staff; hence, he was a miracle worker. Although I don’t know how this particular well came to be associated with him, it is said to be able to cure many different things.

We made a pilgrim’s walk to the well, stopping at gates for prayers, reminding us of the first pilgrimage by Abraham and Sarah. We pray by the Ancient cross where we trace the cross in the stone and then cross ourselves. At the second station, a stone stile, we pray for inner and outer peace. Again, near the pasture, we pray for earth. My prayer is that we may all recognize our personal and collective responsibility for the earth.

At another stop we pray for the Church and indeed for all religions. Twice in our pilgrimage toward the well, planes roar overhead, reminding us of earlier intrusions at Patricio and Pentre Ifan: “The world is too much with us, late and soon . . . ”

Set in a field, St. Cybi’s is a beautiful little well set within a stone structure which contains an additional room where we hold a service for anyone who wishes receiving healing prayers from three of our clergy. At the well, we dip and wash our faces, and I, my arthritic knee, as well. .
I feel the need here to ask God to help me heal the emotional wounds I have borne over the years, and that I give over to God the emotional and psychological work I have done on myself, thereby affirming its spiritual dimension.
Entering the prayer area, Birk prays “God heal her wounds and let her know she is beloved,” and I feel a sense of relief flooding my heart. I think that perhaps this is my pilgrimage of healing and reconciliation.

Next we drive on to Pistyll Church, a tiny ancient church probably 15 x 40 feet. The church has been filled with rushes on the aisle floor and sweet smelling Hawthorne, bay and cedar in the font and altar. Traditionally, such services as this are held mid-summer when the first fruits are harvested. The Rev. Andrew Jones conducts the service in Welsh. This was such a sweet and lovely place to worship. Yet outside the door, modern machinery grades the land for housing development.

Again, Wordsworth: “The world is too much with us late and soon:”

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. -Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

From this lovely chapel, we drive a short distance to Nefyn and the Eglwys St. Llangwnnadl. According to legend, St. L. and his brothers were fathered by a man who failed to protect this the Llyn Peninsula by not repairing the sea wall so that a portion of it fell into the sea. Indeed, on mariners’ maps, there is a submerged peninsula, according to the church’s warden John Tierney. In the South Wall of the church, there is a stone reportedly from St. L.’s tomb on which a red cross is etched. The stone has been dated to 600 A.D. One of the pillars of the church in mid-chapel is dated 1520 around the time the north aisle of the church was added.

We drove further – this time to the tip of the peninsula at Aberdaron where we visited St. Hywyn’s (Hoh-ens), according to its priest Jim Cotter, the only St. Hywyns in the world. Jim warned us that he would not tell us about the features or the history of the church or stories of R.S. Thomas, the 20th century poet priest who was the rector during mid-20th century nor would he tell us the feats of St. Hywyn, all of which were featured in an informational booklet. Instead, he guided us into a deeper experience of the place and our pilgrimage. Each of us received a word – water, fire, earth, air, entranceway – and then spent 15 minutes or so sauntering (his word for truly observing) . We then regathered in groups, shared our impressions with each other and then with the larger group. It did not surprise me that the word given to me was “water” for it has been a central image in my life and my profession for the past 20 years (Ocracoke Island, the Rivanna River, water pollution work at SELC).

Some associations: water in and around us, the stuff of life, purifying resource, but also destructive 00 storms creating cliffs, battering and damaging the very church we’re in, water graves for those who sought cross over the seas. Jim points out that the pilgrim’s journey can be dangerous; even those traveling only a short way, as to Bardsey Island, often drowned. RS Thomas wrote: “Traveling the galley of the long drowning.” Other words and associations included Fire: flames contained as in a candle, transformative, lighting the way; Air: seen only by its effects, motion, aroma, seen and unseen, Christ suspended on the cross; earth – building, ashes to ashes, cliffs, fruits; doorways – entrances in our physical and spiritual being, the senses. All these are both outside us and also within us.

The deepening that occurred in these simple exercises made me hunger for more. Jim’s invitation to us to saunter more around the church or along the coast decided me – I would not travel up the hill to see Bardsey Island from the peak nor try the difficult trek to St. Mary’s well. Instead, I choose to walk along the coast. After tea and scones, I did just that – sauntering for an hour or so and then strolling back. There are so many animal paths that I understand fully how my friend Deborah lost her way on another part of the coastal path a few years ago requiring rescue by the Royal Air Force.

A herd of shorn sheep – mostly young or middle-aged lambs – were browsing the gorse on the side of the cliff. When they see me, they run ahead. I took a picture of the line of sheep preceding me. A little later, after they had scattered again and I had passed them, I looked behind me and they were following me. Pretty soon though they lost interest and I continued my saunter, looking at the flowers – corridors of pink Foxglove and rose Campion, yellow gorse and a myriad of tiny flowers, forget me nots, Bluebells, Buttercups and others – red grasses, daisies, yellow primrose, purple and red dead nettle. I saw Jackdaws and crows, gulls, chaffinches and a goldfinch, with bright red crown and black bib, magpies chattering as they fly out to sea.

I climbed steps from the beach, more steps descended in one cove and ascended again. When I strolled back past a ruined building on the cliffs to join the others at the Ty Newydd Hotel for drinks and dinner – This time I did note in my journal the food choice: an eggplant and goat cheese terrine with vegetables.

That night, we drove home in silence. Upon my arrival, I recounted some of the day to Julia who had chosen to stay in the hotel to recuperate from a cold.

Pilgrimage - Act IV: Sealing the Practice

2008-06-11T10:25:00.000-07:00

Sister Cintra at Bryn Celli Ddu

By the middle of the second week, the end of this trip was in sight. In my yoga class in America, we often do a final pose in which we seek to integrate what we’ve learned; my instructor calls it “sealing the practice”. Likewise, these final days of our journey reinforce what we had learned in the earlier days of our pilgrimage: During these last days we step back to prehistoric times at a burial site at Bryn Celli Ddu, at the ruins of Segontium, a Roman fort dating from the first century, in anointing ourselves from St. Seriol’s well dating from the sixth century holy, and visiting Caernarfon, the 13th century castle built by Edward I after conquering Wales.

Before heading off to Caernarfon and Segontium, Julia and I had walk into Criccieth to look around – Along the way, I noticed a monolith in a nearby field set just like the stones we had seen at Pentre Ifan – much of Wales is like that – you feel that everywhere is holy land.

Criccieth is a town catering both to the locals and to tourists. At one shop, I admire the photographs of landscape, thinking they were made by the shopkeeper, who accepted my compliments as if he were the artist; only later in Caernarfon did I see the same photos in another shop, obviously intended for tourists like me intent on taking a piece of Wales back home.

Segontium, the Roman fort, was occupied from 77 A.D. until the close of the 4th century. What remains are foundation ruins and a museum with artifacts. Set high on a hill, the fort overlooked the approaches from the river and the sea as well as Anglesey Island providing a strategic site to protect from the Irish.

Below the fort are remnants of a later era in the life of this much invaded country: the city of Caernarfon, which has grown up around the castle built in the 13th century by Edward I. The castle overlooks the Menai straits and the Isle of Anglesey. There, during our tour, a fascinating guide brought alive the period: As conqueror, Edward promised the Welsh that he would give them a prince who did not speak English and was born on Welsh soil; to the dismay of any Welsh who got their hopes up, Edward’s promise was fulfilled when his son, the future Edward II, was born there. Of course the baby didn’t speak at all and he was born on Welsh soil. Edward II thus became the first Prince of Wales, and ever since, the heir apparent to the English throne has been invested as the Prince of Wales. In the 1960s, Charles was so named, amid much pomp and circumstances at Caernarfon.

This is perhaps the most visited of all the castles in Wales. The day we were there, a mold was being made from one of the walls of the castle, reportedly for a film that will include a medieval castle. Today, the area enclosed by the castle walls is a beautiful green lawn cut by walks, but I could imagine how it must have been in medieval times, with animals roaming about, and people traipsing through the mud.This our final day of pilgrimage: driving past Caernarfon to Anglesey Island, we visit Bryn Celli Ddu Burial Chamber, a Neolithic burial site, dating to approximately 2,000 B.C. The setting is truly exquisite – in a meadow that we approach by walking down a country path. I could hear the thrush song and observed and heard Chaffinches, the Great Tit and several bramblings, finches whose markings resemble a cross between a Towhee and American Robin.

The site sign explains that there was a circle henge with a ditch built here first, but then the stone burial site and entranceway to the tomb were constructed with a mound over them.

Bryn Celli Ddu means literally “the mound in the dark grove,” but today, the mound and the grove are gone. Recently, it was discovered that as the sun rises, the midsummer solstice sun lights the entranceway to the tomb.

Leaving Bryn celli, we passed through the longest name Welsh town, perhaps the longest named place anywhere:
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwillantysiliogoggogoch. Literally, this means “The Church of Mary in the Hollow of White Hazel near the Fierce Whirlpool and the Church of Tysilio by the Red Cave.” Later in the evening, two of our fellow pilgrims vied to see who could say the name most accurately.

From Anglesey Island, we could look back at the coast of Wales around Bangor. Nearby is another Edwardian Castle at Beaumaris, built in concentric circles and a companion castle to Caernarfon.

On the way to Penmon Priory on Anglesey Island, we prayed

“Release in me the freedom of your spirit
that I may be bridled by nothing but love,
that I may be bridled only by love.”

This prayer was the theme for my visit at St. Seriol’s Eglwys [Church] where I spent time in the chapel and the holy well before “sauntering” (my favorite term after our experience at St. Hywyn’s in Aberdaron) in solitude on the adjacent grounds and then re-grouping for communion at the well.

St. Seriol was a 6th Century monk; he and St. Cybi used to meet on Anglesey Island – Interestingly, we had visited St. Cybi’s Well on the Llyn Peninsula earlier in the week. St Seriol’s well and meditation hut were said to have been constructed in his honor by monks after his death. According to the sign at the church: “The lower part of the well chamber and the nearby oval hut may go back to early Christian times, but the masonry above was rebuilt in the 18th century." There was also a dovecote and other out buildings as well as a pond where several coots were swimming. I also saw a Greylag Goose and several Canada geese along with black and white Martins.
I wandered through a small enclosed garden and then walked to a hilltop meadow, surrounded by ferns. I could view the water in the distance, the flowers, and listen to birds. I felt today a tremendous sadness about the loss of my friend Jerry, who had died a few months ago. I wept for him and for all he had meant to me.

“Bridled by nothing but love that I may be bridled only by love.”

At the same time, I felt a wonderful peace in this place, which was so still and beautiful. After an hour or so, we gathered for communion at the holy well, a beautiful ending to this lovely place. As I had done on other days, the few wildflowers I had gathered and tied into a nosegay were left in a cranny in the well house as my offering of thanks.

Here at St. Seriol’s, I feel the beginning of our leaving this beautiful place and the leaving of our pilgrimage.
****
Although I have written mostly about my experience of place, the people were also important, although it is hard to write about them. Each person played an important role in the journey and is distinct in my memory; yet, with some I learned important aspects about their lives while others I simply shared a moment of beauty or a prayer or meal together. Although we were strangers when we met, my roommate Julia and I formed an instantaneous sisterhood, and were able to laugh and share as though we had been friends for a long time. She is the person I will remember the most from this journey together.

The night we returned from Anglesey to Criccieth was our final evening time together. Collectively, we had written a journal with each day written by a different person. We each read aloud our day’s entry and thus relived each of our 9 days journey. After dinner, we enjoyed a talk and music by a local harper.

Early the next morning, we leave Criccieth and the Bron Eifion knowing that this day would end at an English hotel near the Manchester airport. But that doesn’t stop adventures along the way. In Conwy, I thought of the Conway family of Culpeper, Va., who for generations were linked through friendship with my family: sisters Jane Conway Nelson and Betty Conway Bell were contemporaries of my parents – and their children, Jane and Lewis Nelson and Dickie Bell, who had played with my brother and me as children. Conway is their ancestral home. However, I decide to visit Plas Mawr, a medieval home, which provides quite a nice audio tour and some fabulous views of the town and the castle as well as interesting insights into the medieval village.
Then it’s on to Bodnant Gardens, the place I’ve been yearning to see, where there will be lots of flowers and shrubs and trees but hopefully with identifying tags. I’m like a kid in a candy shop – my eyes are so much bigger than what I can actually take in – birds, flowers, all varieties of bushes and trees. One of the biggest attractions is the Laburnum Arch, where the trees’ flowering yellow branches wrap over a long arbor dripping yellow blossoms and filling the entire arbor with a spectacular yellow. But also there are other colorful flowers with wonderful Latin and English names: Butcher’s Broom (a shiny leafed lily with yellow/beige flowers); candelabra primula (yellow and pink primroses in showy stalks – like a candelabra), quercus petrea (a woodland oak related to English oak), betula pendula (I love the rhyme here of this weeping birch); ceonanathus, (a blue American Lilac). I swoon at azaleas in so many hues, including several varieties of the yellow we have so enjoyed in the Welsh countryside and swear that I will plant tall pink lupines in my home garden. The walks are lovely, with winding paths, and benches and streams with bridges The larger garden is divided into hundreds of smaller “rooms” of plantings.

As we are leaving I discover a lovely art store where I buy a three prints of water colors of Wales – one of a farm with the Snowdonia Mountains in the background, one of a small woodland waterfall and one of Menai Strait – lovely water colors to remind me of my pilgrimage to Wales 2008 and of the spiritual gifts I received here.

Flame Tree at Bron Eifon identified at Bodnant Gardens as a Gibraltar Azalea

As we are leaving I discover a lovely art store where I buy a three prints of water colors of Wales – one of a farm with the Snowdonia Mountains in the background, one of a small woodland waterfall and one of Menai Strait – lovely water colors to remind me of my pilgrimage to Wales 2008 and of the spiritual gifts I received here.

Now's the Time: Take Politics Out of Redistricting

2007-12-13T10:45:00.000-08:00

ESSAY BY KAY SLAUGHTER WVTF - NPR RADIO MAY 25, 2007

2007-06-10T12:21:00.000-07:00

http://www.wvtf.org/news_and_notes/index.php

JEEPERS CREEPERS: WHERE HAVE ALL THE PEEPERS GONE?

2007-06-10T12:07:00.001-07:00

Published April 12, 2007 in issue 0615 of the HooK.

By KAY SLAUGHTER kes1961@ntelos.net

Living in my home above the Rivanna River in the Woolen Mills neighborhood, I awaken these spring mornings to the sound of Canada geese honking and beating their wings on the water. A Carolina wren raucously declaims outside my window, and a red bellied woodpecker chortles in the maple tree next door. The cool air wafts through the window as I linger for a few more minutes under a warm comforter.

The Bradford pear in the front yard has fully blossomed with its white lacy pompoms. Beside the house, the buds are on the white lilacs, and the forsythia in the back yard spurts its yellow tendrils upward and outward.

It's spring, my favorite time of year.

But this year, something's missing.

I do not hear the insect-like trills, quacks, and hums of the spring peepers, tree frogs and other toads, forming the frog chorus, punctuated occasionally by the bass tones– ah-hah-rump-- of the bullfrog.

The absence of the peepers is palpable, the days empty without them. I miss these creatures so ancient and invisible at dusk or dawn, yet loud in their pronouncement of new life each spring.

In past years, during the grace days of early spring, these frogs emerged for a day or two of making music before they slunk back into the mud, leaf litter, trees and other places where they hibernate during the colder nights, emerging on the next warm day. By mid-March, over the last 14 years I've lived here, they sound off, as predictable a sign of spring as the forsythia and birdsong.

Concerned about their absence, I read about these amphibians and learn their proper names– spring peepers, green tree frogs, wood frogs, chorus frogs (now found only in Highland County). The scale for recording frog calls is: 0, no frog sounds; 1, individual calls; 2, overlapping calls, and 3, overlapping continuous and constant calls.

In the past, my neighborhood has been a 3! Now it's a big zero. Where are the spring peepers? Where are the tree frogs?

Nationwide, and worldwide, amphibians are declining precipitously due to a variety of causes– acid rain, increased ultraviolet radiation, global warming, and human forms of pollution, including development.

Closer to home, the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (VDGIF) is surveying the 26 species found in the Commonwealth because the amphibians act as "environmental indicators" for the health of our area. But also, I learn, these folks, like me, love frog song.

Amphibians, having a highly permeable skin and unique life cycle, are especially vulnerable to environmental change. As I learned in childhood, most toads and frogs lay their eggs in small pools and swamps where the eggs hatch into tadpoles, eventually becoming adult frogs or toads. The wet habitats they need are the very places we humans dry out to build more houses and backyards.

East and west, I get reports of spring peepers: My friend Judy has heard loud choruses on the Rivanna near Palmyra; a UVA herpetologist emails that he's hearing fewer peepers this year (but still some) near his home in White Hall.

A VDGIF biologist has heard frog song in the Culpeper region. He sends me to the agency's frog specialist who's surprised I've not heard peepers because he's heard lots of them over the past couple of weeks near Richmond and in the Coastal Plain.

"It's almost the end of their mating season," he says, "so peepers will begin to calm down, but wood frogs should start up soon."

I'm happy that the spring peepers are thriving in the Commonwealth and that other species may soon begin to commence their calls.

Still, I'm saddened by the silence on the Rivanna.

J.D., the biologist, consoles me with the thought that the dry weather and cold spells may be the culprit:

"Wait until after a rain storm, and then drive around to listen for the calls in other locations."

Maybe I will yet hear some frogs this year-- even on the Rivanna. But I worry. Where I live, frogs have inhabited the banks of the creeks and streams and wetlands adjacent to the Rivanna across from Pantops. The Department of Environmental Quality lists this portion of the Rivanna watershed as "impaired," polluted with bacteria. As pertinent to the frogs, aquatic life cannot survive in this water. DEQ is supposed to figure out how to decrease the pollution.

Development occurring on both sides of the Rivanna produces run-off, and in at least one instance, muddy runoff into the river killed mature trees on the banks.

Has this runoff eliminated the frogs' homes?

I cannot bear to think that these familiar sounds will go the way of the Bob White, who once whistled his name across the fields of Virginia's Piedmont. Nowadays, as the fields are reduced to lots for houses, shopping centers and roads, I seldom hear them anymore.

Are the frogs worth the extra cost to developers and businessmen to take extraordinary steps to prevent runoff? Are they worth requiring dog owners to carry out all waste? Are they worth the extra taxes we may have to pay government to ensure the laws are enforced?

For me, the answer is "yes."

I want to hear the frogs here on the Rivanna. I want my grandchildren and my great grandchildren to hear them. I want a healthy river and creeks and streams for children to wade in and find tadpoles and frogs.

And if the peepers and frogs come back to the Rivanna, with their trilling, brrrr-ming, quacking and ah-hah-rumping, I promise never, ever to take for granted their enchanted frog song.

2006-11-17T10:16:00.000-08:00

2006-11-17T08:26:00.000-08:00

Dear Geraldine Ferraro

2006-11-12T14:27:00.000-08:00

Issue #18.45 :: 11/07/2006 - 11/14/2006
Dear Geraldine Ferraro
Women and politics definitely mix
BY KAY SLAUGHTER

Last month, awaiting your appearance in Newcomb Hall Ballroom, I remembered another auditorium in San Francisco two decades ago. You were the Democratic candidate for vice president, the first woman to run on a major party’s national ticket.

In 1984, I had finished my first year at the law school at the University of Virginia—my first foray back to school after 22 years as a wife and a mother and multiple jobs. Thirty-three percent of my class was female, then an all-time high for the law school. That summer, I interned for Public Advocates, an environmental and social rights organization in San Francisco, and I was a delegate to the Democratic Convention.

About to be nominated as a candidate for vice president, you were a plainspoken New Yorker unashamed to tout women’s roles in politics. You paved the way for me and other women. Serving first as a district attorney and then in the U.S. Congress, you joked that your teenage children got rid of you during their adolescence.

1984 was also the year of Jessie Jackson’s debut as a politician and Gary Hart’s swan song. In 1984, future California Senator Dianne Feinstein was mayor of San Francisco. 1984 was also the year I also decided to run for office…someday.

At the ’84 convention, my favorite daily activity was the women’s caucus that met in the church auditorium. Our leaders were political luminaries: Ms magazine founder and editor Gloria Steinem, congresswomen Pat Schroeder, Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug—all pioneers and household names among Democratic women.

Do you remember the caucus, Geraldine?

The first day, Barbara Mikulski, Pat Schroeder and Barbara Skinner (of Washington, D.C.) spoke in turn for their candidates—Mondale, Hart and Jackson. When you appeared, you talked about the need to elect more women to office—to Congress and to the White House. In 2006 we still have not had a woman—or a person of color—even on the ticket since 1984.

Foreign policy was a concern in 1984 as in 2006. The convention debated and supported a “No First Strike policy,” 360 degrees from the current administration’s strategy of “pre-emptive” wars. You spoke against the United States’ deepening involvement in Central America, and there was quiet in the auditorium as we women contemplated sending our children into wars that could be avoided. The women were the conscience of the Democratic Party. I felt great being a woman in America and a woman in my party.

Do you remember the “open mic” sessions at the 1984 caucus? Woman after woman got up to speak. What I remember were their introductions.

“I’m a member of the County Board of Commissioners.”

“I’m running for the General Assembly.”

I began to believe that politics was a door not closed to me. By 1990, I was elected to City Council; in 1991, I ran for Congress in a conservative Republican district, but I thought I had a shot, given the disaffection with professional politicians in Congress. That was before the “Iraqi hit ad”: Following the first Gulf War, my opponent ran an ad that opened with a picture of a demonstration in front of the Capitol with a prominent sign reading “Victory to Iraq.” What can only be described as a mug shot of me was superimposed on a rally I never attended, thus depicting me as an ally of Saddam, while George Allen was a pal of the first George Bush.

At the University last month, I remembered the “good, bad and ugly” of politics—the issues, the campaigns, and the misleading ads, the latter currently in full force. You recounted: In 1984, no women served on the Supreme Court, no women were in the president’s cabinet and no women had been elected on a statewide level. Today, two women have served on the Supreme Court, 14 women in the U.S. Senate, 680 in state legislatures. Still, only 22 women have served on presidential cabinets and only 79 have been elected to statewide offices. Although women are a majority of the population, only 25 percent of those elected to state legislatures are female.

Encouraging younger women to step forward into politics is the purpose of UVA’s National Symposium on Women in Politics. A student asked what’s the first step for her generation to enter politics.

Do something for a cause you care about, you advised. See what matters and join forces with others and speak up.

“If you speak up,” you said, “you may not win, but you’ll have input on the decisions that matter.”

Thanks, Geraldine.

Kay Slaughter is an environmental attorney who has served as a city councilor and mayor of Charlottesville. She maintains a blog at http://rivannawriter.blogspot.com.

NEVER TALK TO STRANGERS

2006-09-01T09:01:00.000-07:00

This fall, as Virginia children start back to school, many ride school buses. Essayist Kay Slaughter remembers a time when most children walked to school and parents gave them very specific rules about what to do and not do.

When I started school, my mother’s number one safety rule was “never talk to strangers or take rides with them.” I knew only that strangers were people you don’t know. I also knew that if you talked to strangers or rode with them, you might be kidnapped. I didn’t understand exactly what happened once you were kidnapped, but I knew I didn’t want to find out.

I walked about seven blocks from Stuart Gardens, the apartments where we lived in Newport News, Va. to Magruder School where I was a first grader. Luckily, there were lots of children in my project to walk with. One who was in my grade was my favorite. His name was Danny.
One fall day, I am walking with Danny and two other girls and we are only about a block from home when a black car stops.

“Anybody want a ride?” asks the driver, rolling down his window. He was wearing a broad brimmed brown felt hat – just like my father’s.

I just look at the other kids. In the meantime, the man next to the driver gets out of the car; he’s wearing a raincoat and a hat like my father’s. He looks a little like a detective I’ve seen in the moving pictures. He smiles and pushes forward his seat so someone can get in the back where a third man sits.

Frozen to the spot, all I can do is shake my head no. One of the other girls says “No thank you.”

But Danny – Danny, our friend, looks at us, smiles, looks at the men and then runs – not walks – to get in the car. After letting him in back, the man pushes his seat back, gets in and closes the door with a thunk.

“Are you sure no one else wants a ride?” the driver asks again with his arm out the window.
This time I say “No” and the others chime in:

“Nope”

“No thanks.”

And they drive off.

“Oh, no, “I say. “Danny’s been kidnapped”

Sure enough about two blocks down the road, we see the car turning left rather than going straight to get to the school.

We reach the school a little later. No Danny in sight.

He’s been kidnapped, I think. He got in the car with strangers. He broke the rule. Danny’s gone for good.

I see my first grade teacher, Mrs. Hatcher, on the girls’ side of the playground. I go up to her and say in my most matter-of-fact voice, “Mrs. Hatcher, Danny won’t be here today; he’s been kidnapped.”

She laughs and says she doubts that he has been kidnapped. I don’t say anything more but I have a sinking feeling in my stomach. Well, where is he then?

The bell rings. We start up the steps to our classroom.

Lo and behold, there is Danny.

“Danny, “I say, “thank goodness you’re okay. I thought you’d been kidnapped by the strangers.”

“Oh, no, “he replies, “they aren’t strangers.”

He pauses: “That was my father’s carpool.”

Surprised, I mentally revise my mother’s rule:

Never talk to strangers. But remember first to find out if that stranger is your friend’s father.

(Read on WVTF Radio)

Rowing Madness

2006-08-29T19:14:00.000-07:00

By Kay Slaughter

We row through choppy water. Oars dip and rise with the waves. Water rocks the boat. Port to Starboard. Starboard to Port.

Eight women are rowing as hard as we can for about an hour an a half on a circular course around Wye Island on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, just off the Chesapeake Bay. At 12.4 miles, this regatta is a marathon compared to the sprints of rowing races. So we must focus especially on smooth, fluid technique, keeping the boat set straight, not listing to either side, dropping our eight oars into the water simultaneously and pushing off with our legs to move the boat efficiently.

When everything is in sync, I feel like part of a well-oiled machine. The boat seems to glide through the water as effortlessly as a swan. Eight years ago, I took up the sport because I loved the water, and crew looked beautiful —like a Thomas Eakins painting of a pair of rowers at rest. When I began my first sweep rowing class, I quickly learned how much work it actually takes. But I also discovered there is nothing like stroking a single oar in unison with seven other people.

Almost all the women in the boat today have spent as much time—or more—than I, training with a rowing club in our hometown of Charlottesville. But today’s Wye Island Regatta is the first time we have rowed together as a crew.

We range in age from 28 to 62…I’m the oldest. Although we’re a master’s boat (mostly older rowers), today we’re competing in the open division against all age categories. In the Wye Island Regatta’s format, each boat starts the race at a different time, with officials keeping account of the individual boat’s time. Although we’re racing the clock, we also hope to pass boats and not allow others to pass us. We want to win.

It’s a windy morning, and, from the start, waves rocking against our boat slow our progress, making synchronized rowing very difficult. Water splashes onto us and into the boat, sloshing in the hollow floor beneath the deck. Still, we press on.

In choppy water, I try to keep my stroke shallow. When working hard against the waves, it’s tempting to dig deep to force the boat forward. Yet the opposite is true: dip just below the surface, and the water will carry the boat.

The wind shifts, and we row through a stretch of calmer water. Here we “set” the boat so that it leans neither to port or starboard. We begin to find our rhythm. With oars clunking steadily in the oarlocks as we “feather” the blades parallel over the water, then square them to drop into the water. Pushing off with our legs and pulling the oar toward our chests. Eight women—rowing in one hard, singular pull.

Our movement is orchestrated by the coxswain, Audrey. Her tasks are to steer the boat and spur us to row well. She coaxes in a whisper, goads in yells, and for most of the trip, hers is the only voice echoing across the water.

Our rowing rate is 20 strokes a minute. We bring it up to 22 and then 24 strokes, and soon we sail past another boat of women rowers.

A few minutes later, however, we see another boat closing on us.

“Make ‘em work for it,” Audrey says.

The boat gains on us. Audrey is shouting. We’re rowing hard but they slip past .

“Did you hear the joke about the carrot that got run over by a truck?” Seat 3 rower, Roxy, calls out inbetween breaths.

“A wake coming toward us on starboard,” warns Audrey. “Just relax with it.”

“His other friend, also a carrot, went with him to the hospital,” Roxy continues in counterpoint to the cox’s call.

“Here it comes. Stay relaxed. Ride it out.”

“The doctor comes out and says I’ve got some good news and some bad news.”

“There, you’re through the rough stuff,” Audrey says in a reassuring voice.

“The good news is he’ll survive.”

“Put all your power in the first six inches of that stroke,” Audrey reminds us.

“The bad news is that he’ll be a vegetable.”
I exhale a chuckle. Meanwhile Audrey announces that we have less than four miles to go. We’re beyond the choppy waves now, heading toward home.

“Give it your all! The last 2000 meters! This is what you’ve been practicing for. All those early mornings at 5:30….This is what you’ve been waiting for.”

I drive harder—pushing off with legs and pulling the oar. Every fiber in my body burns. We’re into the final 1000 meters. We’re going all out: 28-30 strokes a minute. But with the wind, the waves, and the competition, we need to find something extra now. Moving beyond the pain, we hit the highest stroke ratings we can muster, and finally, we row past the finish buoys in just under 100 minutes.

We paddle slowly and gently for a few minutes to catch our breaths, then it’s oars down. I guzzle from my water bottle, the first drink since we started paddling almost two hours ago. Exhausted and dazed, we haul our boat onto shore.

When the final standings are announced, we’re disappointed but not surprised. In the past, we won this race but not today. Back home, I’ve got a Wye Island medal – a cloisonné blue heron on a disk -- tucked in a drawer beside my Third Grade bowling pin.

Moments later, someone brings out banana bread to share, and pretty soon the disappointment is replaced by hunger and thoughts of the seafood dinner on the way home.

I notice now that I’ve peeled off two layers of skin on the second fingers of both hands. Losing also hurts. But like the skin, I’ll slough that off as well. I try not to think about the next training session or the next regatta. Instead, I savor this island of people and boats, my teammates’ laughter, the wide expanse of water, and the sweet soft, comfort of the banana bread. I indulge in the sensations of the present moment.

Rowing does that to you.

When she’s not rowing with the Rivanna Rowing Club (www.rivannarowing.org), Kay Slaughter is a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville, Va. Kay wrote this article about the 2003 Wye Island Regatta but notes that the Rivanna 8 won its race in 2004.

sky over rivanna

2006-08-29T19:12:00.000-07:00

A Piedmont Homecoming

2006-08-27T16:47:00.000-07:00

(Broadcast Essay, WVTF – Roanoke, Va. (NPR) November 21, 2003 )
As we approach the holiday season with its family feasts, Charlottesville writer Kay Slaughter remembers a long ago homecoming in Virginia’s Piedmont.

Just beyond Warrenton, Daddy exclaims: “There’re the mountains. We’re almost home.” The Blue Ridge meant home to Daddy. . . and Mama too. It’s the 1940s, we live in the faraway land of Northern Virginia, my brother Jack and I don’t have Virginia accents like our parents. But we’re going home for the holidays.

A little further on, we drive into Culpeper, and I watch the buildings slide past: the pitched roof of the old brick courthouse, the steeple on St. Stephen's, the clock at the bank, Lewis' Drug Store and cater-cornered from it, Gayheart's Pharmacy. Past the movie theater and the long shaded porch of the stately brick Lord Culpeper Hotel, and we’re at Katherine’s street, at the house where she lives with her husband and their son, John. Katherine and Jennie are Daddy’s sisters, and they both married Thornton brothers.

As I crawl out of the back seat of the car, I smell the pungent woody scent of the boxwood hedge, standing like a sentinel along the brick walkway to the front door. More than 50 years later, the scent of boxwood still evokes Katherine’s presence as she throws open the door and reaches out her arms to embrace us.

Like the Virginia Piedmont, the landscape at Katherine’s mahogany dining room table also holds mountains – mountains of salty Virginia-cured ham next to hillocks of turkey, divided into juicy white and drier dark meat. And sitting in the rolling foothills is a mound of mashed potatoes accompanied by a gravy boat on a lake-like silver platter. Nearby, on the sideboard is the tomato aspic, a gelatin dish that I taste but never enjoy until I grow up.

There’s a clinking of ice filling the glasses and chattering of voices sounding like so many birds with Katherine's voice standing out like the cheery and raucous song of a cardinal: "Come on y'all, fill up your plates, we've got some eating to do...."

The grown-ups help themselves to the food and sit in the living room, white napkins in their laps, china plates balanced on their knees, while we children carry our bounty to a more secure spot on the wooden plank kitchen table. Later, when I finish eating, I will sit with the adults: I’m shy but I like to listen to the stories, the rhythms of their voices, and their teasing familiarity as they joke with one another.

Obeying Katherine’s command, I pile my plate with pink ham and white turkey, but I find room for mashed potatoes smothered with salty, peppery gravy that only hints of the bird from which it gets its flavor. I mix them together so that potatoes and gravy become, as often intoned at family weddings, united as one.
I nibble a few homemade "bread and butter" pickles, crisp cucumber coins tasting as sweet as sugar candy. I can still smell the hot rolls, as I unwrap the linen table napkin holding them within the silver bread dish. Each roll a fat oversized crescent with a seam down the middle. I pry one open, like an oyster, to insert homemade butter.

But best of all is the golden spoonbread, a custard‑like cornmeal casserole. As I spoon this delicious pudding into my mouth, I know that -- even though I live in Northern Virginia and don’t have a Southern accent -- here at Katherine's, at this family feast, I am home.

The Day After: Bush v. Gore December 2000

2006-08-27T16:38:00.000-07:00

The coincidence of my birthday and the date of oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court in George W. Bush v. Canvassing Board of Palm Beach County, Fla. spurred my imagination. I am an avid Gore partisan and active participant in the recent presidential campaign, and a member of the Supreme Court bar, which entitles me to a seat, as available, at Court. I had found the Florida Supreme Court's opinion a reasoned decision, and I supported the political decision to ask for a recount. I couldn't think of a better way to celebrate my birthday than to go to Washington for this historic occasion.

When I mentioned this at a Charlottesville Democratic post campaign meeting, fellow Democrat Alex Searls said she'd like to join me for the journey. That was all I needed - an enthusiastic co-conspirator.

We departed Thursday after work, and upon arrival, checked our bags at our bed and breakfast and then drove to Capitol Hill to check out the scene. Television camera lights lit up the front of the Supreme Court, police cars with flashing blue lights and security officers on foot were on every corner. There were two entrances - Maryland Avenue for the Bar and C Street for members of the public. Lining the walk on the public side of the Court was a corridor of humanity - young to middle age - warmly dressed on the freezing night and wrapped in blankets, lying on sleeping bags and beach chairs, sitting on the ground and the wall, standing, eating, talking, some with signs, some without.

After parking the car we walked back along the public line, and asked a security guard how many members of the public would get in - about 100, he replied. How many were in line? More than that, he said. We realized then that Alex wasn't going to get inside. As we walked over to check out the Lawyers entrance, where the Supreme Court Bar would line up, Alex remarked that she did not like being thwarted this way and that she was willing to spend the night to guarantee me a place in line. At 10 p.m. there were only three lawyers in line. Since Alex hadn't had anything to eat, we set out for Pennsylvania Avenue eateries with the idea that we would return to set Alex up for the night.

I had brought a portable camp chair and a blanket; Alex had another blanket. By the time we returned to the line at 11:30, four people were ahead of us. Alex settled into the chair with her blankets, and I set off for a snooze at the B&B.

When I returned by taxi at 4:30 a.m., the attorney line had grown to perhaps 30 or 40 people, some napping but most chatting about the case and what brought them here. People continued to arrive for the next several hours - approximately 50 would be admitted to the argument and another 50 to listen to an audio feed of the proceedings.

While the morning was still dark, there was activity and conversation 'on the line.' Number one in line was a Republican professional line sitter, who was holding a place for a lawyer.I became acquainted with my neighbors: Behind the line sitter was a dark haired, smiling and altogether pleasant Justice Department attorney whose husband had dropped her off the night before. There were several male attorneys: an elderly lawyer from Chicago, a staffer for the Federal Elections Commission, who was an agile 'celebrity' spotter; an attorney for the New York law firm Paul Weiss in town for depositions; counsel for the North Carolina legislature; a young African American attorney at Washington's prestigious Williams Connolly law firm. All were Democrats.Then, there was Marcia -- a government lawyer with the Federal Energy Commission, a self-proclaimed lifelong Republican who had not voted for either candidate in the presidential election but who professed she would never vote Republican again. Equipped with a sharp tongue, she was the line enforcer who ratted on the professional line sitter with the result that the 'client' attorney was kicked out of the line by security. As he was leaving his enviable number one spot, the attorney, who had filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Florida legislature, was accosted by a Jacksonville attorney one the line who challenged him: 'How can you represent the Florida legislature? Who authorized you to speak for the entire legislature?' (When asked a less political question, 'how much did the line sitter cost,' he responded wryly 'It's a service' and moved to the back of the line.) (According to Alex, Marcia had also turned her in as a line sitter but security and the rest of the line did not seek my ouster.) Always the enforcer, Marcia had also alerted security to another fellow, who had seemed harmless to me, but who she claimed was delusional. Indeed, later when he attempted to enter the building with us, the police stopped him and he claimed to have 'made special arrangements to get in.' Needless to say, he was stopped.Alex was photographing not only the attorney line but also the public line on the other side of the building and the emerging demonstrations on the plaza.

Inside the Court

As the pink blush of dawn peeked through the trees, we began to get ready for the doors to open. Security officers more frequently asked: are you members of the Supreme Court bar? Attorneys continued to arrive and looked surprised as they discovered we were the beginning, not the end, of the line. Finally, at about 7:30 we were escorted into the Maryland Avenue entrance of the building, passing our blankets, chairs and other evening accoutrements through the security machines and walking through the metal detector and having briefcases and pocketbooks searched again. We lined up again ('Keep your same order, please'), our names were checked in computers against the roster of Supreme Court Bar, and we received cards with our line number (I was number 5). Despite a later request to keep the numbered cards as souvenirs, we had to hand them over (no e-bay trading of Supreme Court memorabilia).
Another line up, this time, inside the building where we could flee briefly to the restrooms for morning ablutions prior to our appearance in the court. Despite our sartorial attire and elevated status as members of the Bar, a female guard with a commanding presence with a voice to match, periodically reminded us to straighten our line and lower our voices.

At about 9 a.m. we were escorted to another part of the building for another wait before going upstairs to check our bags and electronic devices (I was still carrying the folding chair, a large basket with 2 blankets, tennis shoes, leggings and socks). Finally, we were ushered to the courtroom, and like guests at a wedding, shown to our chairs.I was in the front row behind counsel tables and facing the elevated stage where the Court would sit. The room is elegantly furnished and impressive, yet its 200-240 seats make it a fairly intimate setting.
Perpendicular to but adjoining our seating area was the press - Nina Tottenberg of NPR, Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times, Bob Schieffer of CBS. Behind the seated press were illustrators who stood and sketched the scene throughout the proceedings; there were no cameras or television.

Across the room from the press were seated guests of the justices. Behind the bar were about 10-12 rows reserved for members of Congress and the public. The FEC lawyer and I picked out Senators Patrick Leahy, Orrin Hatch, Ted Kennedy, Fred Thompson, Carl Levin, former Senator Howard Baker, Gore emissary Warren Christopher, Gore Campaign Manager Bill Daley, the Gore children, and George Will. (I overheard a reporter remark rhetorically: 'How did George Will get a seat? By flashing his nazi arm band?' )When the Clerk announced Oyez, Oyez, Oyez - we rose to our feet and the justices walked in. Regardless of how you feel about specific members of the court, the institution provides an impressive and powerful image. I felt the thrill of observing firsthand the judicial branch's deliberations about this historic election.

The Argument
Although a seasoned litigator, Ted Olson, Counsel for George W. Bush, hardly had time to speak a few sentences before he was peppered with questions and observations from almost all the justices. They probed as to whether there was any reason for them to be involved: what was the federal question here? Olson claimed that the Florida Supreme Court substantially rewrote Florida election law in violation of a 1877 federal statute (enacted after the Tilden/Hayes debacle) instructing the states to determine the electoral process. He also argued that the Florida supreme court had violated Article II of the U.S. Constitution, which dictates the selection of electors by the State legislature. In short, he said the Florida court had changed Florida election law after the election.

Justice Ginsburg twice asked why the U.S. Supreme Court should not give due deference to the highest court of the state, regardless of whether or not they agreed with that court's decision. It was good to hear a defense of the Florida judicial system rather than the political bashing that the Republicans have been engaging in (to a certain extent, Olson was doing that, even though he protested otherwise).

Next up was a fairly pallid and repetitive advocate, Joseph Klock, representing the Florida Secretary of State (Ms. Harris), who despite Justice Scalia's persistent questioning about the federal angle stuck to his theme: the Florida Supreme Court changed state election law.
Soon it was time for the Gore side with Florida's Deputy Attorney General Paul F. Hancock arguing that the Florida Supreme Court exercised its equitable powers 'to get it right', and thereby resolving conflicting laws that both called for a recount and also set a certification date. Justices Kennedy and O'Connor questioned the dramatic change of the date and, along with Justice Scalia probed whether or not a manual recount was required, as the Florida Court had ascertained.

Finally came Lawrence Tribe, 'Professor Tribe' as the Court addressed him. He was an adroit presenter, admitting to the Court when he had not reached a conclusion about some obscure aspect of the law but conversing with the justices easily about the important issues. His metaphor for the election recount was the need to re-run film of a photo-finish in an athletic contest to determine the winner.

When the time was over - an hour and a half - the Chief Justice announced 'The case is submitted.' We rose for the Court's exit, and we began to make our way out of the courtroom. Encountering Judge Burton of Palm Beach County in the halls, I greeted him: 'we all know who you are' and thanked him for all his hard work. One of my lawyer friends said he could never tell whether the Judge was a Democrat or a Republican, and Burton replied 'Democrat.'
Waiting in yet another line to the cloakroom, I overheard an attorney remark he was a Washington lawyer who had spent time in Miami Dade as a Republican observer. He went to Florida to volunteer his legal expertise as an observer but he also found himself one of the Republican chanters.

After bidding my new found colleagues goodbye, I walked out the building into the cold day where a group of about 75-100 mostly African Americans carrying signs and banners were striding down Maryland Avenue chanting 'Every Vote Counts.'

Media and cameras (but not Alex) were everywhere. As I walked to the front plaza, I observed members of the Falun Gong performing their meditative exercises, African American veterans, vociferous chanters for 'No more Gore', a group of African Americans listening to a preacher exhorting them to honor the memory of WEB Dubois, Martin Luther King, John Brown, and Fannie Lou Hamer. And there were vendors selling t-shirts and gloves.

Helmeted police marched in a display of strength onto the Capitol grounds, people were chanting on both sides of the street. It was loud and boisterous, merchandising mixed with politics.
It was a great day for American democracy and the perfect birthday present for me" (Kay Slaughter, electronic mail, December 1, 2000).

First published on George Loper's wepage: www.Loper.org January 2000

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http://readthehook.com/stories/2004/01/07/essayBlackHolesIllusionOfH.html

Emily Couric

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http://readthehook.com/stories/2002/10/16/essayshyEmilyCouricOneYear.html

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http://www.readthehook.com/Stories/2004/04/08/ESSAY%20segregation.html