Baseball and Broccoli

by Gail Balentine

One of my favorite things about New England is that we have four seasons. Our routines are by necessity varied and so with each season we develop rituals. Summer is a time to be more relaxed, travel if possible, spend time with family and friends, enjoy. Fall brings cooler weather, deeper colors, reflections, and sends us back to school, work or projects. Winter has wonderful holidays and a slower pace due to ice, snow and cold.

Ah, but spring? Spring is in a class of its own. After the long frosty winter, spring brings the return of energy, renewed hopes, walks outside, new beginnings, and the emerald green of grass and leaves.

To my daughter, spring specifically means two things: gardens and baseball. Which is more important? Hard to say. They are both long-time loves through winning and losing seasons, abundant crops and less spectacular produce. The end result of both is important, yes, but for her participation is life-enhancing.

She tolerates the cold of February by making a holiday out of when, outside of Fenway Park on Van Ness Street, the Boston Red Sox’ equipment truck gets loaded and departs for Fort Myers, Fla. She’s always part of the competition for tickets and her brother snags a game for her each year. Sweatshirt and baseball caps for the home team will be dusted off and schedules worked around important games.

Along with baseball fever comes garden fervor. Out comes her garden notebook and she reviews notes on what she grew last year, draws on graph paper what space she will need this year, and orders her seeds. It’s a family affair. She and her husband tour the back yard with a critical eye toward what needs repair and replacement. He and their son will do that work, as well as build shelves inside to hold starter plants and grow lights.

As spring evolves into summer, broccoli, tomatoes, peppers, green beans, strawberries, peas, radishes, asparagus, herbs and flowers will be harvested. Strawberry jam will be made in June, pickles in July. She generously shares produce and lets nothing go to waste – including what seems to be huge amounts of zucchini that she swears come off only one or two plants.

Come fall, it is time to enter vegetables in competition at the Topsfield Fair, put the garden to bed, and look forward to the World Series. As the Red Sox wield their champion bats, my daughter gives them her award-winning green thumbs up!

                                                                                 

Who Knew

by Terri McFadden

The admissions scandal that rocked the college and university world last week has stayed with me. Rather surprising given the rapidly changing, mostly awful, news we scroll through daily.

But I think this story resonated because I had no idea that I’m not living a happy, successful life. Nor, apparently are my children, and most of my friends and colleagues. This is because we’re told that only people who go to elite colleges can truly become successful. And the corollary is that only successful, rich people are really happy.

Not being a person who uses bad words, I won’t write what I’d like to. Just let me say this is one of the most absurd notions I’ve run into recently. Apparently though the rich and famous and not so famous who bribed, lied and cheated to get their children into elite schools think this way. Judging from opinion pieces I’ve read, they aren’t the only ones.

The minister at my church often says “Do we believe this to be true?” Do we, as Americans, truly believe that only those who attend elite colleges will be successful? Indeed, do we, as Americans, believe that only college educated people can be successful? Do we, as Americans, believe that only the rich are happy?

For me every question above is a resounding no! Certainly, I don’t reject education. Far from it. I love learning and spend a great deal of my time studying and reading on many topics from history to science to religion. I even attended, for a time, an elite university because I worked there and took classes practically for free. I loved it. But the best (and hardest) class I ever took, I took at my alma mater, Salem State – not from the “Best University in the World”.

For most of the people I know success is measured not in net worth and not in the schools attended. Instead, it is measured by the quality of relationships, the quality of and pride in the work you do, the esteem that others have for you and the esteem in which you hold the people in your life. The good that you do for others.

Looking out into our world through the lens of news and social media that seem to shape so much of what we see, I sometimes wonder how those people – those rich and famous who think it is okay to lie and to cheat and to steal to get what they want – how can they live with themselves? Sometimes I actually feel sorry for them, so completely have they missed living a successful life.

I want to tell them a secret: You only have one life to live. Live it with honor!

Musings on a Cold February Morn

by Lauraine Alberetti Lombara

The sun is brightly streaming in my bedroom window on a very cold winter day as I awaken in my cozy warm bed. I think I would like to spend a little more time in this pleasurable nest before I get up to start another day. My mind is flitting about, jumping from one thought to another.

I have a loving family, all well and happy; a comfortable home, full of food and all else I need...maybe too much. As I linger on my blessings, I become acutely aware that I am thinking of the song, “Don’t worry, be happy”.  I like to think I am usually a happy person but it bothers me that these lyrics sound too good to be true as it can be difficult to carry out.

I would be happier envisioning more peace in this world-real lasting peace, not the tentative, off and on kind.  So many countries, led by dictators, autocrats, selfish, greedy, obscene leaders with no regard for their native lands nor their citizens and others living there is a cause for fear and anxiety.  Families are dying of disease, poverty, climate change disasters, violent crimes, not to mention wars all over our planet...even in our modern advanced democracies.

Respect for people and Mother Earth is an afterthought or blip on our communal screen.  Aware we seem to be, committed to action, not so much. Are we becoming a world of “I want” and not of “I care?” Or is it possible for future generations to have a safe, clean, healthy, habitable, peaceful world?

My pleasant awakening seems to be going into a pitfall so I shall switch gears.  I start to pray. Dear Lord above, you give me so much and I am most thankful, but as usual I will ask for more.

Help me and others to give of ourselves and help those in need as we practice acts of kindness, patience and love. Then, maybe, we can start a peaceful, fulfilling revolution, one by one, step by step.

O happy day! Let the sun shine bright and guide us to bring light.

Stone Warm

by Gail Balentine

She bought it because a gargoyle’s face, while ugly to some, was a collection of character lines etched by the chisel of experience to her. Similar creatures have observed men and their habits for centuries. They did double duty on towering churches like Notre Dame in Paris. They scared off evil spirits and acted as downspouts for rainwater.

         She placed it on that small, empty table on her porch right beside the front door and smiled at the idea of scaring off evil spirits and maybe a salesman or two. Added bonuses were that the stone did not need to be watered, did not complain of the heat or cold, and provided a unique conversation piece. What more could one ask of a small statue?

         Somehow, though, as the months passed and it sat there, listening when she groaned about the weather or muttered about dragging her tired butt off to work, the stone seemed to absorb warmth. Then, at the end of one particularly grueling work day, she retrieved the mail, looked down at the statue, and began talking to it. “Let’s see - two ads, two bills and the 27th L.L. Bean catalog so far this year. What do you think of that, eh?” She paused for a response - maybe a raspy chuckle? - but even when she got nothing back she noticed that her step was a little lighter as she went into the house.

         It went along like this until one day when she and her mother were sitting on the front steps and her mother suggested it was time to get rid of “that ugly little rock”. She started to respond but quickly stopped, suddenly realizing that her gargoyle had, somewhere along the way, gone from an “it” to a “friend” in her mind. She wasn’t sure when or how it had happened but she felt it. She hugged her mother and said: “He’s with me and he’s staying.” Her mother recognized the tone and said no more. To make up for the gaffe, that winter a knitted scarf for the creature appeared and they both laughed as she tied it around his oddly shaped neck.

         These days, as she talks to him on her way in and out of the house, she also pats his head. For outdoor parties she highlights him by placing a lantern containing a lit candle beside him; and when the weather turns bad she moves him back a little or brings him inside for protection.

         Her little scarf-draped stone man who quietly sits and listens but never questions, complains, or demands provides a quiet, pleasant moment in her busy life. What more could one ask of a friend?

*****

English Class

by Terri McFadden

The English language is marvelous to behold. The vocabulary, at perhaps 750,000 words, is the largest of any language. Although its root Anglo-Saxon is firmly Germanic, Latin, French, Spanish, Old Norse and ancient Greek all have contributed to its development. Much of the change from Anglo-Saxon to Old English in the early centuries came from war and conquest. The Viking invasions of England in the 9^th century simplified and merged Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon, as fighting changed to settlement. In 1066 the Normans brought their version of French to “Angle-land”, becoming the language of the upper classes. We have beef from the French boeuf to talk about the food on the table. We don’t say we eat cow, for that was an English word for the animal on the hoof – lower class labor versus upper class dining. These distinctions would have been obvious centuries ago. Time has blunted and blurred and we simply accept vocabulary and usage.

Conquests of a different sort can be seen as technology advances and in turn changes how we speak. The rapid changes are obvious to those of us born in the mid-twentieth century. Although we still ‘dial’ to make a phone call, rotary dials are long-gone. People still read the paper in the morning, even if they are looking at a screen. Many words have come into the language in the past 50 years, as a result of the quick change of technology – video, internet and e-mail are all relatively new additions to the language.

The rapid addition of words is nothing new for English. Five hundred years ago a similar technological revolution changed how we speak. Over time these changes have become obscure. It’s fascinating to see how words used in printing became integral to English.

The European invention of the printing press transformed western societies. (Moveable type was invented in Asia many years earlier.) Prior to Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of moveable metal type, few books were published. Those that were published were written for scholars and generally in Latin. After 1440, printing presses spread rapidly all over Europe, enabling the mass production of books and other written material. The press encouraged the use of native languages, pushed middle class education and the ability to read.

What is fascinating is how the language of the printing press itself became part of spoken and written English. The wooden frame that held moveable type is a phrase, from a Greek word meaning speech. Eventually the word became used to mean a brief expression containing a single idea. If you’re clever enough you can quoin (coin) a phrase. The quoin was a metal device that tightened the phrase in place. Completed sentences were put into a chase. When it was time to print, it was time to cut to the chase – which in time came to mean get to the point. The printer hoped to make a good impression on the paper, and we hope our first impression is a good one. The synonyms, stereotype and cliché, are printer’s terms from English and French. They refer to frequently used phrases kept at the printer’s disposal so that he didn’t have to keep setting them in type. They came to be used to depict conventional, rather than creative, ideas. Mind your p’s and q’s is quaint term that was a staple of child rearing for generations. The term came to mean be on your best behavior or be careful of what you do, because in the printer’s tray the ‘p’ and the ‘q’ were next to each other, look alike and were easy to mix up.

Technology today is changing our world as fast or faster than the world of the 15^th century. We can only imagine what today’s words will come to mean as our amazing language absorbs and redefines, just as it has done for all its history.

Calling All Writers

We are now accepting submissions to our weekly blog!

Guidelines

Genre: Fiction, Poetry, Memoir, Essay

Length: 600 words or less

Send to: winterstreetwriters5@gmail.com

Submissions must be sent in the body of an email or attached as a word document. 

We are accepting original and unpublished work, however,

 copyright and publications rights will remain with the writer.

Should your piece be selected you will be contacted and given a date for publication.

All pieces published to our blog will become part of our archives.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Journey to Journaling

by Beth Alexander Walsh

I wasn’t much of a journal or diary person when I was younger. My writing as a child consisted mostly of poetry and stories. I think I steered clear of journaling mostly out of fear that someone else would read my thoughts. What would my mother think after stumbling upon my secrets? Would my older brother relentlessly tease me about my musings or even worse share with his friends? My fear of course was unwarranted. My thoughts as a child were innocent, and I wish I had put them to paper as evidence of my perspective back then. My teenage years were full of rebellion and mistakes and my mother would have been apoplectic had she been able to read all about the shenanigans I pulled with my friends. Still I wish I had written about that time in my life and the feeling of fearless invincibility one day to be followed by unrelenting doubt the next. Later as an adult I would journal in fits and starts, never really committing to the process, mimicking unfulfilled New Year’s resolutions. I even purchased a five- year journal where I had to complete one line per day only to have weeks (and sometimes months) of blank pages. Any notebook I had after that was filled with random thoughts and ideas.

Last year I stumbled upon Bullet Journals on the internet and purchased my first book. I bought the necessary pens, stickers and stencils to make it fun and appeal to both the writer and crafter in me. I have been active in journaling ever since and have started my second book in the new year. My bullet journal is a combination daily calendar and task manager. Every month starts with a page that contains something positive done and something to be grateful for each day. I have a page keeping track of all the books and authors I have read with a reading goal of thirty books for 2019. I have pages with dream destinations, restaurants to try, goals for the year and 30-minute jobs around the house that I can proudly cross off when completed. There are lists for holiday parties, gifts and vacations that I can refer back to. My day to day calendar consists mostly of to do lists, but also becomes the place where I paste concert tickets, stickers and post cards of places I have been. I, of course, have a large section that I use for writing ideas and another for our Winter Street Writers group. At the end of every month, I take a moment to reflect on those pages to be grateful for all the positive things that have happened and maybe learn from the not so positive. Preparing my journal for the next month opens up new possibilities. What will be written in all those blank spaces? In essence my bullet journal has become the book of Beth; a place that is only for and about me. It has been a great tool for accomplishment but more importantly a chance at self-reflection.