Merry Christmas!

The Dew wants to wish all it's readers, authors and publishing houses a very...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

Thank you for another great year!

Runners are a different breed of folk altogether

Runners are a different breed of folk altogether

CELIA RIVENBARK

I've always admired runners for their dedication to the sport, rising in the early morning to jog for miles for their cardiovascular health and overall fitness.

My own precious Duh-hubby is a runner, getting up in the dark every morning to gallop through our neighborhood for 40 minutes, taking great care not to wake me on his way out the door.

I prefer to watch fitness from a distance, say, a nice outdoor cafe, where I can smile encouragingly at passing triathlon participants whilst wiping chocolate croissant glaze off my mouth.

"See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya" runs cheerfully on a loop through my brain, though this is born of laziness and sloth, and I realize that Runners Are Better People.

I have several close friends who have run marathons, a word which is actually derived from two Swahili words: "mara" which means "to die a horrible death" and "thon" which means "for a stupid T-shirt."

Look it up.

They squirt little packets of brown gel into their mouths every few miles for protein boosts.

I'll join them as soon as they can condense that to tiny little lasagna casseroles.

They speak of endorphins released and something called "runner's high," which just seems like so much trouble. Wouldn't it be easier to just sit around and sip some yummy Firefly sweet tea? That works for me, and you don't even sweat.

Nearly everyone I know runs, either in the morning or at night after work.

I know because now that it gets dark earlier, I almost hit a few of them while I'm trying to back my car out of the driveway.

I wish they'd move.

But you know who I really admire? The Arizona jogger who, just last week, was attacked by a rabid fox and ran a mile with the animal's jaws clamped onto her arm. She told deputies that she was jogging along a trail when a fox leapt out and bit her leg. So she calmly grabbed the fox by the neck and kept running.

Wearing the fox wrapped around her like it was one of those glassy-eyed fur stoles elderly church ladies used to wear, the jogger determined to take the fox with her to have it tested for rabies.

She jogged the last mile back to her car, pried him off, tossed him in the trunk and drove to the hospital.

Now, I don't know about y'all, but if I'm out for a jog and a rabid animal latches onto me, there will be no need for testing on account of I WILL HAVE ALREADY DROPPED DEAD.

The World's Bravest Woman is now receiving rabies shots, as is the poor animal control officer who got bit while trying to remove it from the car.

I believe we can all agree on one thing: Running can kill you.

Pass the croissants.

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Original Post on Sat, Nov. 15, 2008
ONLINE | For past columns, go to MyrtleBeachOnline.com.
Contact CELIA RIVENBARK at celiariven@aol.com or visit www.celiarivenbark.com.

Amaranthine

I remember my mother working in the garden, wearing a wide brim straw hat with silk flowers attached to a grosgrain ribbon wrapped around the band, as if it were a fancy belt worn on a party dress. She changed the ribbons and flowers to match the blouses she made; she was a great seamstress. I always thought it was peculiar how she primped before working in the yard, but she told me, “That’s when folks tend to stop by, when they see you out in the yard.” So, she fixed her makeup and hair like she was going to church, put on a cheerful button down and clean pressed jeans. She had an assortment of garden gloves, of course. They had to match her ensemble.

Every few days, she would dead-head: pinch the blooms off stems to encourage new growth. She’d toss the decapitated blossoms in a bucket. I looked down at them piled on the bottom like tiny hats old ladies wore to church. You know the kind; some are frilly and pink, others have feathers and toile, some even have sequins. These flowers were like that: each a little different from the other with an individual sense of style--symbols of formality, celebration, and praise. It seemed a shame to pluck them in all their glory.

Mama appreciated delicate things. She collected antique broaches and mourning pins, even the “dead-heads”, in her own way. She pressed the flowers between pages of poetry and chapters of the Bible. We always had a stack of Bibles and poetry books. She thought there was no greater gift to give than the word. If a person already had a Bible, then she’d give them a book of poems. Either way, they got the word.

I’d help mark her favorite poems and scripture with a painted-face pansy, sweet scented rose, or sometimes an amaranthine (a.k.a. - bleeding heart columbine, often used at funerals. The word amaranthine means everlasting beauty, unfading.) We’d place the flowers close to the spine, making sure the petals were flat, and we’d close the book slowly, the way Mama closed my door at night while listening to me say my bedside prayers. And like that thin stream of light from the crack she’d leave in the door, the bump the bloom left in the book--helped you find your way.

In winter, we’d make pictures with our dried pressed flowers, still as vibrant as the day they were picked. We arranged them on fabric backgrounds and framed them behind glass. I liked to make kaleidoscope style creations, but Mama always made portraits. She claimed people’s faces were like flowers and using flowers to create faces was a great way to show people how they should see themselves. Her pictures always sold out at craft shows and county fairs. I was proud of her and her flower heads and have several of her portraits hanging in my home this very day.

When Mama died, Daddy let me pick out her burial dress. I chose a formal lavender gown with beaded floral design; lavender was her favorite color. When the funeral home director fluffed the satin pillow behind her head, I thought she might wake up--she looked like she was sleeping in the white casket Daddy picked out, the one with the roses painted on the side. Mama’s best friend did her hair and make-up; she knew just how to fix it and I was glad she was dolled up for the wake, the way she would have done it herself, if she could have. A lot of people stopped by to see her. I placed a small Bible (filled with amaranthine and roses to mark her favorite scriptures) in her pretty stiff hands and said a special prayer. Being a child, I didn’t realize how young she truly was--plucked in all her glory at age thirty-one. I’ll always remember Mama young and beautiful--amaranthine.

When I turned thirty-one, I had a biopsy. The whole time I laid on the table while the doctor did what he needed to do, tears streamed down my face. The doctor asked if I wanted to do the procedure another day, but I said no. I knew it was necessary, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Mama and how cancer had taken her away. I was eight years old when she died; I thought I was over my grieving. The tears I shed on the examining table were different from the ones I had shed as a girl. These were tears of understanding for how she must have felt, having a young daughter to leave behind. I had not been blessed with a child of my own and for the first time; I was grateful and relieved to be barren.

Waiting for the results from the lab was torture. It took about a week. One fateful Friday afternoon, my husband brought in the mail and I opened the letter from pathology with trembling fingers. I sighed and whispered the most magical word ever created: benign, then fell face forward on the quilt Mama had made, fingering scraps from her garden blouses, remembering her smell, wearing one of her mourning pins, and wept. My husband laid his body over mine, pressing himself against me, until I was flat against the mattress--like a flower in a book, with head turned to the side. He poured words into my ear--words of love and scripture, poetry, and future. In the space between his face and mine, we said our prayers together and I learned what it feels like to become--amaranthine, in the eyes of someone who loves you.

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Bio:
Paula Ray is a musician from Wilmington, North Carolina. When she isn't teaching, performing, or composing music, she enjoys engaging in her new found passion: writing. Paula's poems and stories appear or are forthcoming in: Word Riot, Pequin, Mad Swirl, Up the Staircase, MicroHorror, and All Things Girl.

musicalpencil.blogspot.com

A Slower Pace

These days everyone is in a hurry; a tizzy, if you will. In my business, journalism, there are so few of us doing so much that it seems incumbent upon me to hurry, get the job done and move on to the next project.

It’s a mistake.

I have to slow down. I cannot be in such a hurry. I cannot rush my life, lest I miss the details.

The beauty is in the details; you know? Those little moments which shine in that instant when you’re probably not paying attention because, well, you’re in a hurry to get the job done.

I awoke early one morning recently. I am not the earliest of risers, yet I was awake after a weekend of being ill. Of course, being ill is usually my cue that I’ve been in too much of a hurry. It’s also my cure, forcing me to slow down and nurse myself back to health.

So I awakened and the house was quiet. The sun had barely made itself known, a sheath of light frost glistening atop the hood of my old red pickup truck.

I brewed a cup of coffee and, determined not to wake the rest of the house, sat at the kitchen table with a book. It was a book of poetry, Robert Frost. There’s little that starts a day off at such a pleasant pace than Frost’s prose describing walks in the woods, or snowy evenings when a man is stranded at the home of a friend.

And so I sat there reading Frost and my mind slowed to a reasonable pace. Words no longer hurried through my brain like a frantic rush-hour expressway, telling me that I have this to do, or that. And I took notice of the world around me.

Taking notice of the world around me is paramount to what I do; write. I cannot successfully convey to you the thoughts of others, the trends of the world, the concerns or the missives unless I have taken that deep, satisfying breath that sets me on a slower pace, allowing me to see for myself, through contemplative eyes, that there is a grand patchwork quilt out there, prime for the picking of someone who makes his way through the day with words.

Later in the morning I walked to work. My old truck is intuitive and knows when I need to walk. Her radiator busted once more, so I strolled the mile in the cool morning air, the sun coming down on me just enough to warm my shoulders.

It was an uneventful walk, saying hello to this person and that. Yet it meant more to me, perhaps, than the quicker drive with the radio blaring nothing but commercials that crowd my thinking.

And then here, at my desk, I run across so much more than the lists I have left for myself, telling me I’d best be in a hurry. Don’t waste time, you know, because there is so much on your plate.

And I slow down long enough to see so much more than the list and things unfold; words like these that gush from my mind, through my fingertips to a piece of virtual paper on a screen.

No, I cannot be in such a hurry, because although there is much to do, there is far too much to miss. And if I miss something, I’m really not doing my job anyhow; I’m just in a tizzy, missing the details of my life.

------------------
By Robert Kelly-Goss
Albemarle Life Editor
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Original Article HERE

The Crow

He looks down at me with pearl black eyes
And all I hear him say
Is caw, caw, caw,
As if saying you're not one of our kind
Then flies away on jet black wings
As if he has judged me in his black suit.
His friends tag along too,
As if I'm something of a bad news.

Danny P. Barbare
barbaredaniel@yahoo.com

DAYS I WILL NEVER FORGET

As the Christmas season draws near each year, I never fail to remember one particular year that shaped my life forever. The date was December 7, 1941. Late that Sunday afternoon I was in my bedroom dressing for the evening services at the First Baptist Church in Oxford, Mississippi. Suddenly the soft music from the radio was interrupted by an agitated-sounding voice announcing that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. I went into the kitchen where my mother was preparing supper and asked, "Mama, what is Pearl Harbor?"

"I think," she replied, "that Pearl Harbor is a place somewhere in the Hawaiian Islands. Why?"

"The radio just said that the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor!"

"Are you sure?" she asked.

We spent the rest of that night huddled around the radio trying to find out more information about the attack. We never got to church. A lot of other things were changed for my family that day. Almost immediately I said goodbye to the "boys"-my brothers-who left home to join forces with the 82nd Airborne, the 1st Marine Air Wing, and the 101st Airborne. We lost them for four years and considered ourselves very lucky when a V-Mail arrived from one of them, a tissue-thin page with holes excised where the censors cut out material they considered a security risk. My fondest memory of these V-Mails were the irreverent, nonsensical ones I received from one of the boys-I can still remember his serial number (34981872) which was required for his address.

We were inundated with leaflets containing blackout instructions on how to make our houses air-raid proof with neighbors assigned the duties of air-raid wardens, and the cold winter night when our warden pounded on the door to inform us that he could see the glow from the fire in the fireplace. We had to extinguish the fire, and the next day we had to have a cover installed over the chimney. We were given leaflets at school showing silhouettes of Japanese and German aircraft so that if we spotted an enemy plane we could identify it and report it to authorities. Of course this never happened, but we were prepared!

We were taught to be very patriotic. Each week we took our precious pennies to school and purchased Victory Stamps which were collected and exchanged when we had enough for War Bonds. Each student was encouraged to plant a Victory Garden in the back yard to supplement the family's food. This was no small item since many food items were dedicated to the war effort. I remember that we had "meatless days", "sweetless days", and "wheatless days." Ration books were issued to each member of the family and coupons were required to purchase many items including meat, sugar, gasoline, soap, and leather goods (I still have my personal ration book dated 1942. It has only two coupons missing since money was required for the purchases, and money was also very scarce). At any given time I had one pair of "good" leather shoes reserved for school and church. As soon as I got home each day, I had to change into sandals made from pressed cardboard which required no ration coupons. These were sufficient but, as I found out the hard way, a trip into the yard in the morning dew caused them to melt and one turn too many with the key on my roller skates pulled the soles off them!

Many hours were spent by the family around the radio hoping for news from my brothers. We knew that the 1st Marine Air Wing was fighting in the South Pacific and that the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were in the European Theater of War, and we prayed fervently for victory in each battle and for the safety of the boys. Although there was a draft in those days, my brothers were all volunteers, and we knew they were fighting for a cause, for our freedom.

The days finally arrived when, one by one, my brothers walked up the driveway. They had come home, all in one piece; the boys who had gone to war returned as mature men. They had done their duty for America, they had fought their war, and they had kept our country free. Over sixty years have passed since then, and I was, and still am, proud of them and proud to be an American.

_________________________________
Written by: Bettye Galloway
bgalloway@watervalley.net

Born, reared, and educated in Oxford, Lafayette County, Mississippi; retired
from Mississippi state service (primarily the University of Mississippi) and
as executive vice president of a drug testing laboratory.

Granny’s Apron

Both my grannies wore an apron. Usually made from a feed sack, sometimes from cotton that she got from a bolt at Grace Gibbs store. Granny Hunter wore her apron tied around the waist. Granny Doshey wore the kind that had a top part with a strap that went around her neck and also tied at the waist. The apron had a pocket where her handkerchief was kept. I’ve had many a tear wiped with the hankerchief, my face washed with a dab of water on the tip and scrubbed. I remember the tears being wiped away and everything that hurt a child was also wiped away.

Granny’s old apron was used every day, wiping the flour from her hands as she made the morning biscuits, holding the handle of a hot pot she lifted off the wood cook stove, or wrapped around the stove eye lifter as she added more wood to the cookstove.. She wiped the sweat with the bottom of her apron as she worked day after day in the field, it held her “gatherings” as she walked around the farm. Eggs from the henhouse, apples from the old tree above the barn, walnuts from the tree next to the rock wall in back of the house. We’d walk out to the garden and granny would gather the vegetables for supper. We’d grabble a few new potatoes, fresh corn, tomatoes and an onion. All placed in a special place in her old apron. She would sit in the old rocking chair and string beans, letting the strings fall into the cup of the old apron.

Granny and I loved to go to the woods in back of the house and gather roots, leaves and herbs for her pharmacy of cures that she kept in jars in the attic. When we got back to the house and put the treasures away, we would sit on the porch and she would get out her box of Garrett Snuff which she kept in her apron pocket. The smell of branch mint, beech leaves and bitterroot mixed together with Garretts Snuff and horehound candy strike a memory in my mind of simpler times, quiet times and times when an apron was the mainstay of women’s wardrobe.

The print of “Granny’s Hands” by Jill Pritchett (Kilihill@mtnart.com) takes me back to my granny, her apron, her beautiful hands and the times gone by.

Judy Ricker