Kathy Waller ~ Telling the Truth, Mainly

Crystal Barrow Waller, ca. 1991 Carry the scissors with the points down. Don’t run with a lollipop in your mouth. You’re grouchy when you don’t get your nap. Psst! Pull down your bathing suit. I’m cold, go put on a sweater. If you chase a cow, she’ll make buttermilk. Go get a bobby pin and get that hair out of your eyes, it’s driving me crazy. You didn’t really tell your teacher I said that about…

The Prairie Lea High School Melody Maids at the San Marcos Rotary Club meeting, December 1966 Kathy Waller Guest Shirley Hendricks Sherry Eby Kathy Pitts Sally Barber Patsy Kimball Sally Bagley White lines on the picture cover names that I restored in the list above. *** When I posted this photo several years ago, I dated it 1967, It was really 1966.

I should be picking up and tidying and making this place look, finally, Christmassy. But I don’t want to. So I’m thinking about a Ghost of Christmas Past. It was 1961. I had just turned ten. The Methodist Youth Fellowship was going caroling. In Fentress, the MYF was more a Methodist-Presbyterian-Baptist-Whatever Fellowship, and the Baptists came from Prairie Lea, two miles south. We weren’t just…

THE ROAD TO BETHLEHEM If as Herod, we fill our lives with things and again things; If we consider ourselves so important that we must fill Every moment of our lives with action; When will we have the time to make the long slow journey Across the burning desert as did the Magi; Or sit and watch the stars as did the shepherds; Or to brood over the coming of the Child as did Mary? For each one of us…

  On this winter solstice, Carie Juettner writes about the liminal, of blurring edges, of having a hand in both worlds, of being on the verge . . . of possibilities and potentials . . . Read  her Celebrating the Solstice & Embracing the Liminal.  

  Fibber McGee tells the filling station attendant to put 5 gallons of gasoline in the tank. It costs Fibber 91 cents.       *** “The Motorcycle Cop, the Judge, and Fibber.” Fibber McGee and Molly, April 16, 1935. Image produced by NBC., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

  One Saturday when I was twelve, my mother, brandishing a dust mop, flushed a mouse out of my Fibber McGee’s closet. My cat, Ashley, brought in as a consultant, caught the mouse, his first, and pranced toward me with his offering. I screamed and jumped onto the bed. Ashley dropped the mouse. The mouse ran back into the closet. Ashley spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on the windowsill,…

I and Pangur Bán, my cat ‘Tis a like task we are at; Hunting mice is his delight, Hunting words I sit all night. Better far than praise of men ‘Tis to sit with book and pen; Pangur bears me no ill-will, He, too, plies his simple skill. ‘Tis a merry thing to see At our tasks how glad are we, When at home we sit and find Entertainment to our mind. Oftentimes a mouse will stray In the hero Pangur’s…

Once upon a time, a long time ago, when I was a lot younger but still old enough to know better, someone decided I should teach a children’s Sunday school class. I don’t remember who came up with the idea, but I’m sure they knew I was a career co-dependent, constitutionally unable to say, No. Even when No would have been the sensible answer. Even when I knew, somewhere in the mists of my…

PHOTO PROMPT © Ted Strutz Word count: 100   “What’s that?” “What’s what?” “That wooden thingie.” “A flute case?” “Flute cases don’t have holes.” “Those look like holes you stick little thingies into.” “What kind of thingies?” “Little thingies. They’re called, like, widgets.” “But what’s the wooden thingie for?” “It looks like part of a game.” “We need one of those books. Like a backwards…

In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row,     That mark our place; and in the sky     The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,     Loved and were loved, and now we lie,         In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we…

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.. . . .  — Abraham Lincoln, Message to Congress, 1862  

  She is a soft-looking, middle-aged woman, whose bust and stomach are always holding a get-together. In the summer of 1982, while enrolled in a graduate seminar in contemporary women’s fiction, I happened across the above sentence. I was delighted. The description was so right. I didn’t have to memorize it. The image it evoked was vivid enough that the words, along with the author’s name, stayed…

  Bill Waller, ca. 1942 Today would have been my father’s 110th birthday. He left us suddenly, unexpectedly, when he was a youthful sixty-eight. I can’t envision him at 110. I know, though, that if he were here, his blue eyes would still twinkle, and he would still be quietly saying things to make us laugh,

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” The ON / ly THING / we HAVE / to FEAR / is FEAR / it SELF A perfect iambic hexameter line. If Shakespeare had written it in blank verse: The only thing we have to fear is fear Itself. The rhythm most natural to the English language. Repetition. Alliteration. Short, common words. Musical. Easily remembered. Poetry. “The only thing we have to fear is…

  Punctuation: all those boring things that prove you know how to write ~ The Room Upstairs                     Image by ELLE RITTER from Pixabay