boston strong

Over the weekend, I went back into Boston for the first time since the marathon explosions and was able to see the roadside memorial people have set up to show their love and support to the people whose lives have been changed forever.

These types of grief gardens have always had a powerful pull on me, as much of street art is renown for its irony and postmodern chic. But in contrast, roadside memorials—those small landscapes of candles and crosses, windmills and wildflowers—offer the passerby a spontaneous, collaborative, and often beautiful human artifact.

Here are some of the scenes I was able to witness there that day:

much love,

hedgie

new england writers

We have been in the area of Boston for about two weeks now and Addie has already peed on Emily Dickinson's front lawn, pooped in Mark Twain's backyard, and then later pooped and peed on the campus of Harvard. She has no respect for the written word.

And Jr likes to just poop everywhere.

But unlike my pets, I'm hoping you actually care about this kind of stuff, so here are some things that I learned while stalking writers.

--Stalking Target 1: Emily Dickinson

Her house in Massachusetts

The family owned 19 copies of the King James version of the Bible.

She lived in this house for the majority of her life, but she briefly lived in a different house a little bit away during her teen years before moving back here. In that other house, her bedroom window opened up to a view of the cemetery. 

This tree was here when she was alive.

Emily Dickinson and I are the same height.

Shortly after relieving herself.

Our guide did not mention this, but I remember it from when I came here as a kid: due to her highly religious family, many of her poems can be sung to the tune of hymns. The guide referred to it as the "Hallelujah Chorus". But her poems can also be sung to the Gilligan's Island theme song.

Addie really does not trust Robert Frost.

--Stalking Target 2: Dr. Seuss

A sculpture garden dedicated to his works in Massachusetts

Since this memorial garden's location does not have any connection to Dr. Seuss' life, all I learned here was that parents apparently cannot read signs.

Unless it's part of a photo op, in which case they will stand right in front of it to block it from anyone else nearby waiting to take a photo and take 20 minutes to read a children's book.

--Stalking Target 3: Mark Twain

His home during the highest point of his career in Connecticut

In the library, there are a set of objects going across the mantle above the fireplace. Samuel would tell a new story every night to his daughters using each object as a part of the story, always starting on the right with a painting of a cat wearing a ruff (how great is that?) and ending on the left with a painting of a young woman that his daughters named Emmeline. Emmeline went on to be a character in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Also shortly after relieving herself.

On the third floor of the house, there is a room that was designed to be a guest bedroom. However, not many people slept in there, so it became the room where his daughters stored live, wild squirrels to keep as pets.

On Samuel Clemen's actual bed, the pillows are propped up at a steep angle. People in this time slept sitting up because, according to our guide, "Victorians are weird".

And this exists!

much love,
hedgie

i swear i actually write sometimes

I promise, I actually do. Things have been extra crazy lately with Nick's job training. But I am working on stuff. Here's a rough draft of something that I'm stuck stuck on. It started out as one of the flash fictions inspired by Bonnie's ten list, but I'm over 400 words already and don't know when it's going to end. It might still be flash fiction, but I don't know yet.

Anyway:

For a year, after my uncle had lost his job, he lived in a tent in our backyard. Every morning over bowls of soggy cereal, he would tell us about all the animals he heard and saw.  He would hear mosquitoes, owls, and coyotes during the night until the sprinklers sloshed him awake. He never had kids of his own, so his yarns lacked the whimsy and ridiculous details that we craved from stories. His voice would drone on to remark on every detail of two cats fighting and then seemingly finding a way to settle their differences as it lasted for no longer than three minutes. Then there was a time that he snuck into the house to go to the bathroom and as he was zipping himself back into his tent, he saw the silhouette of a possum on the backyard fence before it scurried back into the night. 

That summer, Jenny and I decided that we wanted to become either archeologists or bathtubs when we grew up, and we spent most of our time in the backyard while Uncle Andy pulled weeds as a favor to our mother. Armed with plastic shovels and paintbrushes stolen from our dried and stained watercolor paints, Jenny and I searched for dinosaur bones and ancient burial grounds. Jenny would wrench a stone from the dirt before gently attempting to brush the dust off it.

“What do you think it is?” she asked me breathlessly.

            I narrowed my eyes in the bright sunlight. “That is a dinosaur egg.”

            Jenny cupped it carefully in her hands. “We have to keep it warm so it can hatch,” she said urgently. She was about to walk back into the house when she noticed something in the hole where the egg used to be.  

            There were bones. They looked like pieces of burned popcorn, but hard and flat in weird places.

            “Probably just chicken bones.” I said, but I wasn’t so sure. “Maybe a caveman cooked food here a long time ago.”

            Jenny plucked a few of the bones from the hole and carried them to Uncle Andy. She dropped them into to the flowerbed he was squatted near.

            “What’s this?” He asked. He picked one up and examined it carefully. “Looks like part of a spine.” He looked at it for a little bit longer and then he suddenly let go of it. He turned on his knees to look at us, wiping his hands quickly on his thighs. “That is a human bone,” he declared. 

much love,
hedgie

in sickness and in health essay

Several years ago, I had two essays printed in daily devotional books that are all about being a Christian in college. My first published one was about an incident freshman year of college when one of my roommates got very drunk and I had to learn how to deal with people who held different values than I did in a loving way. My second published essay was about working at the YMCA and trying to create peace between large groups of children that had different beliefs. But I wrote two essays for the second book. My other one got rejected as it dealt with the controversial subject of same-sex marriage. Due to recent events, this subject has been on my mind once more.

Without any further ado, here is my rejected essay on that complicated area, In Sickness and In Health.

[[Trying to pitch this essay to a few places. To be returned at a later date.]]

much love,
hedgie