My Ideal Summer Hangout

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/gallery/2012/jun/07/shed-of-year-2012-in-pictures#/?picture=391162617&index=1

Barbarian Nurseries

The Barbarian Nurseries
By Hector Tobar
Reviewed by Rowena Burke

Araceli, a name which means alter of heaven or heavenly homemaker, is truly the star in this new and highly readable novel by Hector Tobar. Without Araceli's constant efforts and often invisible labor, the Torres-Thompson household would be a much less beautiful place. She prepares the meals and she cleans for this family of four. A former art student in Mexico City, she creates art out of found objects in her tiny backyard abode. And she has attitude. Even with the attitude, they keep her, because she is such a capable powerhouse.

When the Torres-Thompson family lets go the other two Mexican household help, Araceli takes on more and more childcare, which is not her forte at all. She becomes adept at it, though, and does her very most thoughtful best.

Most, she misses Pepe, the gardener, who had transformed the yard to a rainforest and kept it up, seemingly effortlessly. She will probably never see him again. The undocumented in the U.S. lead invisible lives until they do wrong.

To me, Scott Torres and Maureen Thompson, the parents in this saga, are half-people leading half-lives. They have worked hard to forget their financially impoverished backgrounds and they have erased Scotts' father, after one politically incorrect comment that offended Maureen.

This very contemporary sweeping novel has been keeping me up late at might and giving me owl eyes- it is that good! The reader may want to keep a Spanish dictionary nearby to keep up with some of the phrases, which are often very pointed and very humorous.

Hector Tobar documents the undocumented and I highly recommend this book!

http://www.hectortobar.com/

The Wedding Gift

Shortly after their wedding in 1934, Josie and Richard received a phone call from a button-hole relative in town named Hattie Chase.  Hattie asked if Richard had the truck available and could they come by soon for their wedding gift.  Josie hoped that Hattie and her husband, who had no children of their own, wanted to give them one of her antique bureaus or tables. She wished it so hard, she dreamed it at night.

The next day, after a full day of work on the farm, Richard and Josie got into the truck and rode into town, where Hattie presented them with a very pretty green and brown, gold-rimmed plate, which Josie always referred to afterwards as the dish that needed a truck!

Irene

When I was a small child

I thought the TV could watch me, too.

I watched the shows I had to see:

Batman, Bewitched, The Flintstones

Then I quickly shut it down. I did not

need background noise or communist eyes from behind the iron curtain seeing my every move.

I cannot sleep with little electric eyes in the room with me. I don't

call for complete blanketed darkness. It's

those little red and green eyes I don't

like sleeping near.

I glide through the kitchen in the night

amidst the little electric eyes. They

light my way to where I need to go-

I don't trip over anything. The coffee pot,

the stove top, the microwave: all eyes

are watching my way.

The hurricane knocked out the electricity

last Sunday. The eyes became unfriendly

black sockets. No coffee, no oatmeal.

I lit candles to read by and see my

way around in the dark. Out on the porch

in the solid darkness at 4 am, the stars in

the constellations lit up the night sky.

I opened the curtains and the shades wide

so the glittering sky would drift into my house.

They shined on my little black sewing machine

my friend Kay gave me after the last power

outage zapped the life out of my other machine.

This one I unplug when I leave the room.

I want it to sew forever. It is the family

jewel in my house. Kay is 90 and it was

her mother's back in California. I love this

little black Singer machine. The new machines

are white and ghost-like. This one is an

elegant little lady with staying power. The

man in the repair shop who looked it over for

me said it's the best, most tip-top featherweight

he's ever worked on. When I went

to pick it up, another lady tried to buy

it out from under me.

Irene came, Irene left. The little electric eyes

all came back on the next day. The stars

dimmed. Those communists were constantly lurking-


Rowena Dunlap Burke

September 5, 2011

Plea for Reconsideration

Public figures we are:

Tall and poised we stand,

Sentries of common and uncommon domiciles.

Although we have both passed the century mark,

We are strong, willing & eager

To live at least a century more.

We have no birth certificates at town hall,

No social security numbers,

Or drivers’ licences.

‘Lest you think we are passing the hat

At this holy time of year,

Fear not the bells of charity mongers!

All we ask is sun, rain and good drainage,

And at least another hundred years-

You see—I am an ash tree and my friend 2 streets away

Is a maple.

RDB

12/17/1995
published in ProJo South County section

Hundred Dollar Poem

Saga of Rowena: Feelin’ no pain O how’ll I ever sustain?

IwishIwishIwishIwerepartofthesky,

TherewouldbeNOBANKZ

No safeway cashiers robbing you blind so you can eat in winter,

No landlords aknockin’ at your door for dollars and cents,

My money has burnt a hole in my mattress…I am cold lonely and

Broke and all I have to sleep on is an ash heap.

Even my refrigerator it sings the blues for butter and eggs

I do not understand these people- these dentists and barbers and

Abortionists.

They take what you have and it is still not enough. They want

Your goddamned money, too.

But I have a heart of gold I’m told

Free of dollars and cents

O Don’t let me be your dollars and cents baby.

I am not a cash crop. You couldn’t buy me at a store.

(They chose me out of a hospital window, Sweetheart, and they

made sure to pick the only one with a rose tattoo)…

O I am but a crazy woman

I would jump out of planes if I could

I’d play my cello till the sky turned yellow

O I am a naked woman in the mountains…they’ve taken my

Body, now they want my soul

I’d go to Venus and Jupiter on my P.F. flyers. I’d wear silver

And pink, paint my body effervescent blue. For you.

I would keep 72 mutt dogs

And 99 beds of roses on my kitchen floor.

I would grow artichoke hearts in my oven at an even temperature

And have faucets that leaked lime daiquiris and green rivers

To the thirst wanton fields.

I would live inside a volcano at sea

And marry a fire swallower to take care of me…

Saga of Rowena: broke and lonely, eating the blues for her dinner…

-RD

Roxanne's Turtle

I rarely have a bad day on the job. Earlier this week I had a memorable great day: four children came in and one girl named Roxanne was their self-appointed spokesperson. They were on a mission. The construction foreman at a local home-building site put a turtle into their hands and asked them to take care of it. He’d found it under a log. They wanted to identify it and learn how to take care of it. They quickly identified it as a box turtle from the pictures in a book I pulled for them. They were without their library cards and with grubby hands, so I printed off box turtle care instructions from a reliable internet site. Roxanne scanned over it, and then read it aloud to the group. I asked them, it they possibly could, to bring the turtle by so I could see it, as I love turtles.

Lo and behold, several hours later, one of the children came running in and asked me to come out and see: they had followed the instructions to a T. The handsome box turtle was in a large nearly clear plastic crate with two inches of dirt, a few nicely placed rocks and several raspberries. And, he was happily munching on one of the raspberries!
A small crowd wrapped itself around the turtle in keen admiration. One gentleman named Mr. Guy, explained how, in his Native American culture, the 13 big sections of the turtle’s shell represent the 13 months of their calendar year, and that the 28 small sections encompassing the bottom edge of the shell represent the days of the month.
The turtle was a beautiful one: it had bright yellow markings and was a full-sized specimen, about six inches long and three-and-a half inches high. I hoped the children would release it before too long and a few days later, when they came in, they told me they had and it ventured off into a nearby field.

The whole event happened so quickly that it never occurred to me to take a photograph. However, I have a wonderful memory of those children, the handsome turtle, and Mr. Guy.