Remarkable Markers 2

What if I were to tell you that, when no one is looking, invisible spirits spin a large globe made of solid rock in a cemetery? Well, that is one of the explanations for the restless sphere in Marion Cemetery!

Author Eleanor Y. Stewart and the Sphere of the Spirits

In Marion, Ohio

Yes, the granite ball honoring the family of Charles Merchant in Marion, Ohio slowly spins in an erratic pattern on its base without ever becoming scratched. Others have attempted to explain the movements of the globe; see especially http://www.graveaddiction.com/marion.html. The conclusion that spirits are at work appeals to my Irish DNA.

On an Authors’ Day Out not long after Halloween some years ago, writer (and my dear friend) Eleanor Y. Stewart and I visited the cemetery after a day of research on the topics of Huber and Leader, manufacturers of agricultural steam engines in Marion. We had toured the Marion County Historical Society’s Heritage Hall Museum with its Wyandot Popcorn Museum featuring lovely popcorn wagons and its main exhibits including Prince Imperial, a long-maned horse stuffed by the same taxidermist that stuffed Jumbo the Elephant for P. T. Barnum. A wonderful hot lunch on a cold day had been our pleasure at the Warehouse, a depot specializing in Italian fare. Eleanor and I could hardly wait to see the famous ball! It exceeded our expectations.

The late afternoon had grown so overcast and cold that Eleanor and I were the only visitors to the section of the cemetery where the Merchants’ Ball stands (and revolves). Although we were alone, we felt as if someone were watching us. Occasionally, we glanced over our shoulders to survey the stones surrounding us in the gathering gloom. Were we sensing, uhm, entities?

In her poem entitled “The Graves of the Flowers,” Hoosier poet Louisa Chitwood (1832–1855) wrote, “Upon no stone is carved the name / Of April’s children fair; / They perished when the sky was bright, / And gentle was the air. / To the soft kisses of the breeze / They held half trembling up / Full many a small transparent urn / And honey-ladened cup.” When she was only 23, Louisa died; Walt Whitman published his first edition of Leaves of Grass in the same year. Perhaps Louisa would have taken her place in the new poetry, had she lived; after all, she left a cache of a thousand poems when she died.

As the November dusk began tilting into night, Eleanor and I shivered, scurried to my car, and drove away from the cemetery with its urns and cups and invisible hands reaching toward a cold globe.

Summer Gardening 4

Awaiting the arrival of snow peas for my dinner table, I had plenty of time to pull the occasional crabgrass from the largely open expanse of soil that had been my wonderful garden earlier in the year. The peas were an experiment to discover whether or not seeds planted in July could produce a harvest in August or September. I considered what I could do with the stalks of the sunflowers after birds had harvested their seeds, and I watched for more bush beans to appear.

More Produce Rolling In on July 11th of 2016

Meanwhile, I noted that walking on the dormant grass of the lawn, a tawny tan in August, sounded much like striding on the frosted grass of earliest spring: crunch, crunch, crunch with each step.

On a special day, I observed a large Zebra Swallowtail gracefully sailing among the flowers. Its silvery stripes imparted elegance to its form. Where I live, the Black Swallowtails are the most numerous; the Eastern Tiger Swallowtails, the second most numerous. I seldom spot a Spicebush Swallowtail, but I may be mistaking them for Black Swallowtails. The Tigers are my immediate topic. They are energetic, as if they might be coffee lovers having imbibed a bit too much caffeine. They rapidly flit from blossom to blossom before darting way toward the tops of the trees. The Zebra Swallowtail was much more serene. Its smooth movements made the tranquility of the scene all the more noticeable. The Zebra was in harmony with its surroundings, and, as I was part of its environment, I was in tune with it. I watched and watched until it floated away.

Empty Spaces in My Garden After Removal of Carrots

I realized just how pleased I was to have tried a second season of gardening, even if circumstances had reduced my crop to only one vegetable: snow peas. In the extreme heat and humidity of summer, I was given time to keep my garden spot entirely free of weeds and to watch a Zebra Swallowtail hovering above the petals of sweet flowers.

The metamorphosis of the butterfly never fails to inspire my sense of awe. The same creature that is a larva during one phase of its existence becomes a pilot capable of exquisite flight in another chapter of its life. What would it be like if we were to reach a certain age when we would go to sleep for a time, after which we would awaken with wings to lift us lightly into the air? Perhaps our lifetimes are the preparation for that flight. My friend Mary, whose story served to initiate my blogging, often said she was earning her wings.

A Cat Among My Squash Plants

I stood near my garden and asked if the individual human life indeed extends beyond the grave, and, at that moment, a cicada alighted on my nose and chattered before dashing off. I laughed aloud! Walt Whitman’s lines rushed into my recollection: “Ya-honk [the wild gander] says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation … I listening close, / Find its purpose … .” Chee-chee-chee the cicada said like an invitation to me. I recalled a passage from Chuang Tsu: “A cicada and a young dove laugh at Peng, saying, ‘When we try hard we can reach the trees … .’”* Summer gardening welcomed me to experience far more than I would have thought possible.

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*Chuang Tsu Inner Chapters: A New Translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English (New York: Vintage, 1974).

My Summer in a Garden: Wonder and Reality

I am astonished that I am weeding and watering my garden. From the time I was little until the time I went away to college, my mother insisted that I work in the garden, and I did not look forward to the tedious labor: especially the task of pulling tiny weeds from rows of tiny carrots! Only in my adulthood—after many years of university education and university teaching—have I returned to growing vegetables, and I can hardly get enough of the good feeling that working in the earth invokes for me.

On May 24th, Plants Defining Rows in My Garden

So I stride forth of an early morning, hoe in hand, sprinkling buckets nearby, and survey the dominion of beets and squash. I will become them; they, me. After all, we are what we eat. When I look closely at the beans forming like slow-motion balloons, I am seeing the future cells of my body. Oh, and did I mention I use no insecticide, herbicide, or fungicide on my vegetables? I am afraid that they must face life without such protections. When their matter mixes with mine and becomes me after lunch or dinner, they bring with them no harmful chemicals to inflict illness or disease on me.

On June 5th, Weeds Overtaking My Garden

In “A Song of the Rolling Earth,” Walt Whitman wrote that “the substantial words are in the ground and sea, / They are in the air, they are in you.” He suggested that the words I am using now are feeble and pale in comparison to the strong and vibrant “words” on which they are modeled. Whitman continued, “Human bodies are words,” more substantial than the words I am forming here. Whitman said, “Air, soil, water, fire—those are words, / I myself am a word with them—my qualities interpenetrate with theirs” even as I was just saying about becoming what I have for dinner. Leave it to Whitman to use the metaphor of words, themselves metaphors, to signify the most profound meanings and the most fundamental communication!

On June 5th, My Garden After Meticulous Hoeing

For gardening is meaningful communication with the earth. Each glistening pebble I find in the rows attests to vast geological processes that have brought us together in this instant. Every dancing butterfly I glimpse above the flowers speaks about miraculous biological changes that have transformed caterpillars into fluttering splashes of vivid color. All the stems and leaves around me give voice to rock, water, sun, and wind.

And the baby rabbit I discover watching me is a triumph of living art! My artistic ability is not equal to the challenge of making a twitching rabbit. Yet the universe knows how to create such intricate lives!

When I walk into my garden each day, I am prepared for amazement. Wonders surround me, and I stand sampling the fresh air in their midst. Even as I reflect on the spiritual tonic that gardening has become for me, I must confront realities. My cucumbers are not doing well. They appear to be wilting, even with abundant rainfall. As I have seen no cucumber beetles, I am unable to diagnose the cause of the problem. Animals continue to sample the plants, even eating the tops off one or two sunflowers; the critters have been most devastating to the beans, it seems.

Garden After Rain on June 12: A Few Wonderful Plants

Even though I have gardened for enough years to recognize that all my gardens are similar, I also acknowledge that different years bring different gardens. This year, I will focus my appreciation on a few plants and not spread my gratitude over multitudes crowded into sprawling rows. Why not? Because many seeds did not sprout. Gaps are everywhere and probably will not fill in even when the plants are mature.

Despite my poor yields, I have already been enjoying mustard greens in fresh salads. The mesclun seeds that I planted included five varieties: Beet Bull’s Blood, Spinach Bloomsdale Long Standing, Lettuce Black Seeded Simpson, Lettuce Red Salad Bowl, and Mustard Tendergreen. The mustard predominated, with a few of the green lettuce leaves in between. I find no trace of the beets, the spinach, or the red lettuce. The mustard leaves have what I would describe as a spicy note. Adding the mustard to mixed salad that I have bought at the grocery store has brightened lots of lunches. Recently, I noticed that the mustard leaves are beginning to toughen and become bitter, but I can see that other vegetables will soon be ready to harvest.

So, this year, Whitman might say that my patch of earth is singing simple songs, not grand oratorios as in past summers. I am learning that simplicity can be the proverbial spice of life.

My Sacred Places: Walt Whitman's House in Camden, New Jersey

Writing my dissertation about the poetry of Walt Whitman coincided with the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship games in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As I played clarinet in the Indiana University Pep Band and had nine years of seniority in the famed Marching Hundred, I was entitled to a trip to the City of Brotherly Love. I planned to visit Whitman’s house in nearby Camden, New Jersey, on the day in between the first and second matches.

On March 30, 1981, my trumpet-playing friend Ken and I took the subway to Camden and found Whitman’s house. There, we met Eleanor Ray, the caretaker and docent. As my dissertation was nearly finished, I had enough knowledge about Whitman to verify that Eleanor knew her stuff! To this day, I think of her as one of the foremost experts on Whitman. She had grown up in Camden, had seen a want ad listing the caretaker job, had applied, and had been chosen. Eleanor told us she felt she was under obligation to learn as much about Whitman as she could. She definitely fulfilled her promise!

My Friend Ken Walking Away from the Walt Whitman House

(Painted Light Gray) in Camden, New Jersey, in 1981

We slowly toured the small shotgun house. Many of Whitman’s belongings were on view; seeing Whitman’s effects made me feel that he was peering over my shoulder. I thought I might glance at his rocking chair and catch him rocking!

The great biographer Justin Kaplan had published his life of Whitman the previous year. Eleanor told us she and Kaplan had lengthy conversations about the poet. As Kaplan was most interested in examining Whitman’s environments to discern the ways in which Whitman constructed a public persona consistent with the high aims of his literary art, Kaplan had come to a significant location when he visited Camden, Whitman’s final home (the only house he ever owned) and his burial place. While we stood in Whitman’s front room, I sensed that I was standing where many famous writers, past and present, had stood.

After our tour, Eleanor, Ken, and I lingered on the sidewalk in front of Whitman’s house. A drizzling mist was falling, and the sky was leaden. I had the notion to step up on the block that Whitman used to step up into his buggy. No sooner was I atop the slab than lines from Whitman’s poem “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” flashed into the forefront of my mind. Whitman had written the poem in honor of slain President Abraham Lincoln. Suddenly, Eleanor asked, “Do you feel that change in the atmosphere? Something bad is happening somewhere.” I admitted I had the disquieting sensation that an evil act was occurring. Feeling vulnerable, I quickly dismounted from the stone. Eleanor explained that, ever since she had worked at the Whitman house, her extrasensory perception had been in harmony with the poet’s psyche. On that occasion, she seemed almost a reincarnation of the author of Leaves of Grass.

Ken and I journeyed back to our hotel in Philly. We had plenty of time to don our pep band uniforms. We were surprised to find our fellow band members glued to the television sets in their rooms. “Haven’t you heard?” they asked. “Someone just tried to assassinate President Reagan.” The TV reporters solemnly repeated the facts about the assassination attempt, which had occurred precisely when Eleanor had said, “Something bad is happening somewhere.” Most fortunately, President Reagan survived and reportedly felt he should be especially mindful of his actions because a Merciful Providence had spared him.

The band boarded the bus for the Spectrum. The NCAA had decided to delay the game. Everyone waited, including then sportscaster Bryant Gumbel, who engaged in friendly conversation with band members. The crowd quietly awaited news of President Ronald Reagan’s condition. Eventually, the voice over the loudspeakers announced that the President was recovering and that he had urged the NCAA to start the games, saying he would rather be in Philadelphia. I had been in the Spectrum when IU won the NCAA championship in 1976, and I was there in 1981 when, late at night, the Hoosiers beat Dean Smith’s North Carolina Tar Heels 63 to 50.