Note to Self

There is, I keep reminding myself, absolutely no point in engaging the chronically stupid low lifes who post things like righteous demands for proof that the president elect is a racist. I might just as well engage a brick wall.

I also find I have no patience for friends who enjoy telling me – oh, so righteously - it's time we come together, in effect, advising me to get over it.

You do not just get over the death of your country.

Charles Dickens wrote “I hope that truth and real love are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.”

I hope so too but I'm not holding my breath. Not while there are white supremacists in the cabinet and advising the president. Not while so called evangelical christians preaching hate are at the president's elbow. Not while the rich are whispering in his ear and the less fortunate are dying off.

I believe the country will survive the next four years.

I hope it will be intact and that we will be able to salvage some small amount of grace, civility,

courage and honesty.

I pray it will be enough to repair and build on.

But this I know to an absolute certainty: Things will never be the same again. We will never be the same again. Something in this country died this month and something truly ugly was exposed.

It was there all the time but we weren't paying attention.

Billy Wilson's Wife

Just after the last hymn but before the benediction, a shotgun blast rattled the stained glass windows and shocked the entire congregation of the Baptist Church awake and upright.

“Lord a'mighty,” my startled grandmother exclaimed, “What the hell was that?”

Several confused seconds passed and then all heads turned toward the sound of the front doors as they jerked open and one of the Albright twins stumbled in.

“She shot him!” the boy yelled, “Billy Wilson's wife done shot his leg off! He needs the doc!”

Doc McDonald, who never as much collected his mail without his medical bag, was already on his feet and making his way past the stunned crowd. Rowena, still in her choir robe and looking uncharacteristically anxious, met him on the church steps and together they hurried across the dirt road to the doc's house. What the congregation had heard was Billy Wilson's wife's second shot, an alert fired harmlessly into the air after she'd blown his kneecap apart with the first and then thoughtfully thrown his wayward carcass into the back of a hay wagon and driven him to the doc's.

“From the looks of the back of that wagon, reckon she didn't break no speed limits,” Uncle Willie observed dryly to my grandmother, “Pretty slick he ain't dead.”

Nana just shrugged. She had no love lost for the likes of Billy Wilson, an unrepentant gambler, hard drinker and public womanizer. Billy's shortcomings and the state of his marriage had been staples of island gossip for years. If you counted the two common law wives who had come before, this was his third attempt but my grandmother was old school and cared about the legal details so she considered it his first.

“Either way, it ain't much of a track record,” she had been heard to say, “But I reckon this time he just mighta met his match.”

Common law or legal, this wife was an entirely different kettle of fish, the village said. She was a sturdy and practical-minded Newfoundlander, a yard wider and a full head taller than her new husband. The bloom was off her rose, so folks said, but she could cook and clean circles around any one of the island women, manage money like a miserly banker and take down a stag at 400 yards. She ran a tight ship, as it were, and the general opinion was that if Billy Wilson could be brought to heel, this was the woman to do it and if she couldn't....well, it was bound to be a good show.

“I don't b'lieve I'd bet a'gin her,” Uncle Willie remarked to Nana the first morning Billy found himself waking up in the wood box with two black eyes and wearing only his longjohns. The story made the rounds with impressive speed and for a time Billy seemed to be convinced to mend his ways but then he got whiskey'd up for the Queen's Birthday and woke in the woodbox again, this time buck naked and broken jaw'd with a garter snake curled around his ankles.

“Boy r'ared up like a streak o' lightning,” Uncle Willie reported, “Cracked his skull so hard on the roof of that woodbox, it took a dozen stitches to close and Doc says it's a wonder he didn't give hisself a concussion.”

“They's folks who cain't help but bein' slow learners,” Nana said with an distinctly uncharitable smile, “Mebbe he oughta be thankin' his lucky stars for bein' hardheaded.”

Doc McDonald managed to save Billy's life and, most likely, his marriage that Sunday morning but not even the specialists in Halifax could save his knee. They wired and patched it back together so's he could walk - after a fashion, at least - but his wandering ways ended once and for all and the village was sorry, but not too sorry. The old Billy wasn't much missed and the new one, the one who walked crookedly and learned to live with pain, turned his life around.

Billy Wilson's wife, a hale and hearty Newfoundlander, believed in hard work, fidelity, abstinence from alcohol and dice halls, and the persuasive power of a 12 gage. And, of course, happy endings.

All Rise

The courtroom was chilly and crowded with a diversified array of plaintiffs and defendants. Evictions were heard first, a long line of real estate owners and agents against a longer line of renters and their families. Each and every cause was failure to pay rent, some for as little as 30 days, one for as long as 14 months. The witnesses were sworn, the judge read each complaint as if it were a shopping list, judgements were passionlessly delivered. Two were dismissed, one was continued, all the rest were swiftly and routinely ruled on in favor of the plaintiffs. I felt my muscles and mind falling asleep with the boredom of it.

Somewhere around the 30^th case, I began to nod off and Michael had to give me a sharp poke in the ribs. A sturdy black woman was at the bar, railing incoherently about the unfairness of the system and begging for more time. The judge heard her out until she ran out of breath and dramatics then listlessly explained why none of what she'd said made the slightest difference and gave her the standard 24 hours to be moved out or face physical dispossession by the marshals. She screeched, she wailed and she protested until His Honor raised a hand to her and nodded to the bailiffs who escorted her out. This brief tirade was the only flash of color to be had in the drab, uninspired courtroom. If Lady Justice is indeed blind, the law she serves is wretchedly sterile and monotonous, often as far from real life as you can possibly get.

Eventually, Michael's case was ruled on, more or less in his favor as the judge decreed that a settlement agreement could go forward. His lady lawyer assures him he should see settlement money in the near future. Like all lawyers, she brims with assurances, knowing I suspect, that any money Michael actually sees is far more likely to go toward her fees than anything else.

Justice and the law don't appear to be on speaking terms these days and the truth, it would seem, barely gets past the door.

Sidewalk Songs

He was standing alone at the bus stop, an old man in dusty clothes and a fedora with a broken brim, two-handedly leaning on a cane and staring at nothing in particular.

From across the street and without the aid of my glasses, he was mostly in soft focus, a song and dance man waiting for the music to start. He was slightly hunched over and planted solidly with the cane directly in front of him with his ankles crossed at right angles, one casually behind the other. Even the fedora had a jaunty tilt to it and though his face was mostly in shadow and looked like corrugated cardboard from what I could see, I knew he was smiling.

The sky, already darkening in the late afternoon, was getting even darker with the storm closing in, when the clouds unexpectedly parted and a shaft of sunlight, narrow at the top and wider at the bottom - much like a solo stage light, I thought - appeared and clearly illuminated him. I was still fumbling for my glasses but even without them, I could see him look up briefly and raise two fingers to the fedora in a smart salute to the sky.

A city bus wheezed and rumbled its way up the street and I lost sight of the old man. When it pulled away though, he was still there and this time he was clutching a violin case - grainy black, dented in places - and not unlike its owner, lightly covered in road dust. I watched him make his way to the advertise-here bench, open the handles and lay the case at his feet then gently tuck the instrument under his chin and begin to play. The music floated like smoke over water,

the notes briefly hugging each other and then drifting apart. There was a slow, sweet melancholy in the sound and it wasn't long before a few curious onlookers became a crowd and the crowd became an audience. Mothers with young children in tow came from the convenience store across the street, the mail truck pulled to the curb, the 3^rd floor windows of the nursing school were thrown open and filled with the smiling faces of the young students. Even a pair of competing teen skateboarders careened onto the pavement behind the bench and flew to a grating, abrupt and terrifying stop. Just witnessing their daredevil antics jarred my bones to the core but the spectators were not distracted and the old man with the violin was undaunted. He played the final chorus of The Tennessee Waltz and everyone, skateboarders included, applauded.

A Good Night for Chili

About this time each year, our northwest Louisiana weather turns a tad schizophrenic. Bright, clear mornings, crisp as burnt toast give way to hot and muggy afternoons then early dark brings back the autumn chill.

Most people I know stand on principle and absolutely refuse to turn on their heat until at least November. Not me. I slip into flannels and kick that heat up without a single second thought. The dogs are ecstatic with the temperature change and the newly breathable air but I'm too old and broke down to be cold so damn the electric bill, full speed ahead. Let the leaves fall where they may, it's a good night for chili.

October always brings memories of New England, some welcome, most not. My mother and brothers thrived on the cold while my daddy and I bundled up and worried we might never be warm again. There were constant and quite fierce fights over the setting on the thermostat. My mother seemed to believe that 65 was more than warm enough while my daddy and I thought anything less than 75 was uncivilized. We heated with oil then, as did most everyone we knew, and the cost was enough to make you shiver but it was reliable as rain. Even the damp, drafty basement where I practiced piano was tolerable. Nana's house, on the other hand, for all its sprawl and open spaces, was always toasty downstairs although she kept the upstairs cooler for sleeping. In all those years - except for the hurricane - I can't remember a single time the heat failed.

October was also the best time for Sunday drives. My daddy would pack us into the back of the old station wagon and head north, sometimes all the way to Maine, just to watch the leaves showing off their Halloween colors. Sometimes I thought maybe he was a little homesick for Nova Scotia but mostly I thought he just wanted a break from my mother. She never saw any value to our Sunday wanderings or maybe she just liked the freedom to drink in peace. I didn't much care one way or another. Weekends without school got on all our nerves, especially when we were younger and there was no place to run.

Here in the south, the leaves fall and clutter up the sidewalks and streets with sickly shades of yellow and orange. There's no brilliance to their death, just a sad reminder of the cold and dark to come.

I open a can of chili, wrap up these creaky old bones and settle in. There's still no place to run.

Lucy

My first instinct was to say no, find someone else to photograph a dying dog. But I didn't and once I meet her, it only takes a few minutes to understand how wrong it would've been to say no.

Lucy's four footed siblings greet me with the unbridled joyfulness of well loved and well cared for animals who have never met a stranger. They're all wet noses, frantically wagging tails and trusting eyes. Her human family is more reserved. They both smile and say hello but there's a wariness in their eyes, a hint of suspicion. Lucy herself, a young pit bull, lies quietly on a quilt at their feet. She's a shy and slow moving girl and I sense the camera slung around my neck is making her apprehensive so I slide it to one side and kneel down beside her. She watches me with her big brown eyes and sighs. She's an innocent, made weary by the cancer and in her final days. We spend several minutes becoming friends.

All five of them live in a rusty van they keep parked on the outskirts of a campground just past the interstate. They're here for the daily meal that social services provides the homeless - today it's red beans and rice with salad, iced tea and cornbread - and if the hot water holds out, a shower and maybe a change of clothes. I'm here to photograph Lucy. My friends in the outreach program tell me she isn't likely to survive more than another few days and it's impossible to be in the middle of all this poverty and heartbreak and not want to break down and cry.

We make our way - slowly, to accommodate Lucy - outside where the late afternoon light is at its kindest. At the family's suggestion, I shoot Lucy first so she can get out of the heat and back to her quilt. For a precious few minutes, I worry about background and focus and her expression and am actually able to forget about the cancer. It's easier than I thought and when we move on to the hound dog and the feisty little Jack Russell mix, the mood lightens considerably.

The pictures are a success and I'm grateful and honored I was asked to take them.

Life is what you celebrate. All of it. Even the end ~ Joann Harris