DeBlois Gallery Opening

Still Life

My friend Patricia is a painter. 

Waiting on Route 2 in Exeter for Triple A to come resuscitate her old car,

she sat in the sunny back seat and painted the yellow birches

in both watercolors and pastels.

It really is a blessing that Triple A is so slow

because the resulting painting is quite lovely.

Plein air painting is for the birds.

Painting while standing on one's feet for hours is literally numbing.

Georgia O'Keefe did it right.

And so does Patricia:

Front seat, back seat,

Getting down the bones of the landscape and filling it all in from the comfort of one's own car.

This really is as good as it gets.

RDB

December 4, 2016


*Artist is Patricia Szydlo

My Most Memorable Thanksgiving

A Rhode Island born and bred girl, I went far away for college in the big wide-open state of Montana.  I knew not a soul within 180 miles of Montana State University in Bozeman.  I didn't have a car, just feet, legs and a bicycle for locomotion.  My second year of college I moved off-campus and shared a basement apartment with a girl I'd never met in my life.  This turned out to be a good choice: Cathy Buck was very welcoming.

When Thanksgiving rolled around, Cathy invited me home with her to Geraldine, Montana.  It was a long ride in a big blue comfortable gas guzzler car.  It was 1977.  The ride itself took almost all day.  I don't remember much about the ride.  I don't recall the food we ate.  What I remember is our arrival at the Buck Ranch.  There was a large arch of a sign over the driveway that proclaimed 'Buck Ranch' at the top of it.  For all intents and purposes, the driveway was a road, about 1/4 to 1/2 mile long, deep in snow.  Cathy looked over at me and quietly said, "Hold on."  We flew over the top of the snow till we got to the house.  Her family welcomed us inside: 5 kids, 2 parents- like mine in number.

I slept in the same room with the 3 sisters and her brothers slept outside in the bunkhouse with the ranch hands.  The next day, Thanksgiving, we must have eaten.  It was grey. It was snowing.  I could see the butte out the kitchen window, an amazing geological outcropping.  After dinner the radio blared "Bad weather, icy conditions- stay home and stay safe."  The phone rang.  Next thing I know we're zooming off to Fort Benton to meet Cathy's cousins.  We played pool, drank beer, and shut down the bar.  Then we played crack the whip on the street in Fort Benton, Montana.

And that, Dear Reader, is my most memorable and wonderful Thanksgiving!

Early One Morning

Early one morning at Sunnyfield Farm in Middletown, Rhode Island, the cows were ready for milking.  Two farm hands were missing.  The other two men milked as many cows as they could.

It was still dark outside and it was autumn cool.  It was many decades ago and one of the farm hands was my step-grandfather, who told my father this story.  Both are gone now, so I am telling you the tale that happened so long ago.

If you tell a person that they cannot do something, they will always find a way.  The era of Prohibition made many men wealthy.  It was all about connections: knowing the able bodies, the empty barns, the source of the liquor, choosing the right boats, time and place for pick-up and delivery.

On an island as Middletown is on, one fellow would call the police, distracting them to the opposite end of the island, while the crime was being committed.  For whatever reason, the ploy did not work out this particular morning.  The delivery was intercepted just before landing at Third Beach boat ramp.

One man evaded the police by jumping out and swimming away in the dark, while the other man, who did not know how to swim, was apprehended and taken away in handcuffs to do time in jail.

The swimmer had not planned on being late for work.  He ran two and a half miles up the road, through the fields,  to Sunnyfield Farms, drenched to the bone, to milk his share of the cows.

It always pays to be able to swim.

RDB

November 17, 2016

Super Moon

The moon is a celebrity tonight.

larger than life,

closer to earth than in most of our lifetimes.

It rises up over Newport Hospital,

then majestically over Mrs. Williams' house,

like a huge honey lollipop in the sky.

We can't quite get our tongues around it

but we devour it with our eyes.

The next morning it's image is front and center,

above the fold of the Daily News.

The night after is even better:  I'm driving.

No, I'm moon-gazing. 

No, I'm driving. 

I'm driving across long narrow bridges spanning the Narragansett Bay,

the still-huge moon shining through transient cloudscape:

Peaking, hiding, beckoning with a half-smile like the Mona Lisa,

all while I've floated across the bridge at a slow steady speed.

Home safe, here is the moon next door, hovering over Mrs. Williams' house again.

RDB

November 15, 2016

Stains are Our Enemy

The laundry became my job at age 8 or 9.

Every other day, before or after school, I would pile clothes for 6 of us into the machine, using Tide, which promised that no stains would remain.

It was the mid-1960s.  Our clothes were all colors: handmade white blouses, a red corduroy jumper, and every color of the rainbow in between.  I never noticed that anything and everything began looking rose-colored.  Nor did anyone else in our house.

I did notice when the blood stain on the knee of my pants did not disappear in the wash.  I re-read the detergent box.  I had clearly followed instructions.  I tried again, washing them a second time.  The pants still sported the ugly stain.

I sat down and wrote a letter to the Tide people, letting them know that their product, which we had used for years for our large family, had failed me.

Several weeks later, when I came home from school, my mother showed me the large box addressed to me, filled with a year's supply of Tide detergent.  I don't remember if they sent an apology.  My mother was flabbergasted at the results of my silent effort.

My life of correspondence had begun!  My father gave me free reign to the postage stamps and my letters remained unedited.

RDB

November 14, 2016

Aunt Marion

Marion Dunlap Hardy

August 1913- August 1991

My Aunt Marion was born 3 years after her brother, Lawrence, in Madison, Wisconsin. 

Her first big achievement took place at age 5  in 1918: she survived a near-fatal case of meningitis.  Her rewards were life and a Schoenhut doll who she sewed clothes for and named Marion.  The doll Marion had a little blue woolen blanket with the initials MD on one corner.  A very sturdy Philadelphia-made doll, it looked like china but was made of unbreakable wood and had working joints. Like my aunt, the doll Marion was a survivor and designed for action.

My Uncle Larry told me that Marion was a tree climber and especially liked scaling a large tree in the city park near their home..  One day, while up in the tree, she made the mistake of looking down and froze.  Her mother, Florence, sent Lawrence out to find her.  Lawrence went home and reported her whereabouts and that it didn't look like she was coming down anytime soon.  Florence made a pan of fudge and sent Lawrence back to the park with it to entice Marion down.  It worked.

I don't really remember meeting my Aunt Marion until I was 8 or 9 years old.  I was dropped off for a few hours while my father taxied my oldest sister to Long Island.   Aunt Marion taught me how to sew, cutting out the material for a little handbag on the large rock in her basement in Stony Creek, Connecticut.  It was summertime and hot.  The cellar was delightfully cool.  My cousin Stephen spent a lot of time down there, too, on projects and reading Tolkien.  Stephen took me out sailing that day to the Thimble islands. 

A couple of years later, my father drove us from our home in Rhode Island to Marion's in Stony Creek, Connecticut for lunch.  I was guilty of tailing my aunt's every move: kitchen to dining room, dining room to kitchen, and so forth.  Everything about her fascinated me: from the green Dippitty-Doo hair gel in the bathroom to the Baked Alaska she mentioned during the meal.  I had never heard of a state going into the oven.

The next year, 1969, my aunt and her husband, my Uncle Edward, moved to Cambridge, England so Edward could take a new position.  Marion and I developed a steady blue air mail correspondence.  I visited 3 times.  She came back 3 times.  She traveled the world with Uncle Edward to places other people did not go back then:  Addis Ababa, Russia, Africa.  Edward was an important person in a tight-knit ecclesiastical world.  He knew 13 languages.  He helped Desmond Tutu learn one of them. 

And now I will tell you, that when Marion died in 1991, 10 years after Edward, I became the keeper of Marion the Schoenhut doll,  who will soon be 100 years old:  Marion the observer and chaperone in our home, one shoe on and one shoe off, still wearing the dress that Marion the girl made for her.

Rowena Dunlap Burke

November 8, 2016

Granddaddy Dunlap Poem

He's a pot belly guy,

Hair as white as snow,

His teeth like ivory,

And his blue eyes glow,

His funny sounding laugh,

And his lively booming voice,

And short stubby whiskers,

(And he's good-looking, too!)


-Rowena Dunlap, 1966

Granddaddy Dunlap Prose Piece

Each night I go to sleep under Granddaddy's blanket.

I carefully stitched his nametag back on a few years ago.

When I gaze at photos of him now, I address him as Fred.

He is my hero.

I know he had his secrets.

His favorite horse was named Rosie, after a young woman he knew in New Mexico.

Rosie, literally, was a work horse.

When he was just out of high school,

a man he knew in town asked him where he was going to college.

My grandfather replied, "My father said there is no money."

Mr. Lawrence, the banker, said, "Your father can afford to send you wherever you want."

My grandfather escaped a life of farm work and went to Cornell to study forestry.

I don't know that he ever went home again.

He did write to his mother regularly: from Cornell, the Black Forest, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Washington, D.C. and Missouri.

He met my grandmother, Florence Hallowell, on the boat to Europe.

She was to go stay with her Aunt Sara for 2 years in France.

My Aunt Marion told me that Florence did not hear from Frederick for 3 years, until he was finished working in the Black Forest. 

He went to Morais to see her and they were married in her home town of Chicago in 1906.

Their first child, Nathaniel, died after 1 day.  The doctor held the forceps too tightly around his skull.

In 1910, my uncle was born.  My grandparents named him Lawrence, after the good banker back in Ohio.

-Rowena Dunlap Burke

October 25, 2016

After Picnic at Deception Pass

I will beam myself out to see the panoramic sunset that my brother sent me.

The water looks oh so inviting.  

Deceptively so, it is deafeningly cold.

Now I am thinking about the food-  I am salivating

Just thinking about the morsels my brother ate.

Smoked salmon?  Eels?  Vinegar chips?

Yesterday I sewed a new linen dress, the hottest pink of the sunset.

I'll wear it when I go whooshing Westward 

In the Beam Machine.

Summer day

Summer eve

Summer dress

S'mores

Something's cooking

Wait for me

Gotta go eat!

           -Rowena
 August 2016

Moon Drone

Shoot for the moon

Shoot for the bridge

Shoot for the Sky,

Shoot for the ladies climbing out of the water

Onto the pier.

The google-eyed insect

Bearing down on us,

As the google-eyed men

Steer it over our heads,

Bearing down flirtatiously.

Moon drone, cool water, dog daze, moon drone.

We are not undone by a drone.


-Rowena Dunlap Burke

Kay's Hair

Kay had a routine:  once a month she went to the Vocational school and had her hair cut by a high school cosmetology student.  By age ninety, she kept it very simple, to go with her basic sweatshirt and jeans.

Kay had been a career teacher of lucky second graders, wife and helpmate to a veterinarian, who left her a widow twenty-five years earlier.  The leftover evidence of her former life was the stainless steel surgery table in the kitchen, used as a counter for creating sandwiches and such like.  Kay’s life was not without humor.

One day I swung by on my bike to visit Kay and find out the latest neighborhood news.  This day she regaled me with the recent day that she served as a final exam model for her cosmetology student.  Being extremely agreeable, Kay had said yes to the student, though she had no idea what it would entail and how long it would take.  It took a whole school day.  Kay had pin curls.  Kay had platinum hair.  Kay had red hair.  Every time she saw herself in the mirror, she had a new look.  It made her dizzy!  Finally, the student brought her back to being simply Kay.

That is the story of Kay’s hair.

Rowena

July 2016

The Rejected Shoes

The Rejected Shoes

When I was twelve years old, my Aunt Betty gave me a formal framed portrait of my father, taken by Bachrach Studios in Boston about 1940.  I have kept it on my bureau ever since.  In this photo, my father looks young and sultry, as I had never seen him look before.  I am the fifth child, born when he was nearly forty years old.  I remember him with wrinkles, so many wrinkles that he had to stretch the skin on his face to shave every morning.

One day when he was having coffee at my house, I brought out the photo to show him.  He was in his late eighties by this time.  He told me the photographer was looking for business and hoping for MIT students to order and pay for lots of prints.  This was my father’s only copy.  It was free.  He sent it home to his mother in Missouri.  He said the photographer asked him to lower his eyelids, which successfully gave the look of ‘bedroom eyes’.

Then my old wrinkled father told me a story:  He had to work whenever he could.  He took work on contract with New England Candy Company, next door to MIT, where they wanted the wafers to dry more quickly.  From his description, it sounded like he invented the microwave oven. 

However, the real story here is the consulting work he took in the shoe factory to improve the operation of equipment.  First, the owner showed him the room where the men worked making the soles.  Then he brought my father to the floor where the women worked on the uppers.  My father told me the room became very quiet and then a low but very audible whistle of admiration came from the factory women for a rare handsome and observant young man on the factory floor.

My father consulted with the shoe factory most of that summer.  At the end of the summer, the factory owner asked him what size shoes he wore.  “Eleven B.”, he told him. At this answer, the owner brought out a brand new pair of handmade shoes, made for and rejected by the bishop of Michigan.  The leather and workmanship were exquisite. 

The shoes were his parting gift to my father.  How my father loved those shoes!  Then he said, the bishop of Michigan was an antiSemitic radio host who did not deserve those shoes.

Richard Morris Dunlap 1940

Sonnet

It’s been

forty nine years

since Granddaddy gave me written

Instructions by post,

“You must write a sonnet.”

I was ten years old.

Now I promise to get on it.

The man from Missouri did not

coax or cajole me.

He simply died.

Two weeks before that 

he telephoned,

reciting to me the Ides of March.

I am still not off the hook

on this sonnet.

Get on it!

Rowena Dunlap Burke

July 2016

Caging the Impossible

Caging the Impossible

Bonnie and Clyde are two capybaras who, in May of this year, took a long and arduous journey from Texas to Toronto, for the sole purpose of mating with a capybara in Toronto’s zoo.
They, quite possibly, did not know the intent of their journey. All they knew is they wanted OUT, and out they got in Toronto and toured on their own for several weeks.
People claimed capybara sightings and sent in wondrously photoshopped capybaras relaxing in kidney shaped swimming pools.
By the end of June, the capybaras were finally reunited. That is the story as far as I know it now.

Caging the Impossible #2
On the Selection of Intimates

I took my annual excursion to the department store, allotting myself one hour only, to select a new brassiere. Wire or no wire? My brother the electrical engineer says bra wire can and has caused electrocution.
Straps? Strapless? Widgets in the back or the front? Black, beige, white, taupe, pink, teal, smurf blue or magenta? I am confronted with a mind boggling array of quick decisions here. Like speed dating, I try on thirty brassieres in thirty minutes. Still, no dice. How quickly can I remove a brassiere? I went home and fastidiously soaked and hand washed my two old brassieres and hung them up to dry over the kitchen sink. Back to intimates another day…meanwhile, I try to conduct a bit of consumer research on my aborted purchases at the library, but alas, brassieres have been blocked. Block the brassiere! Block the brassiere!

Rowena
July 2016

My Kitchen Workshop

Gilbert Stuart Birthplace & Museum: Rowena in her newly made ombre dress

Robe Alexander, the Flannel Robe I Made for My Nephew Alexander's College Graduation Present

Warm Orange Scarf~One Quarter Yard Wonder!

Snowing & Sewing: Little Green Flash of a Dress