Being Wise Twenty-Five

     Three pink cosmos blooms and a bud. Janet Wyatt 2020

Being Wise Twenty-Five July 25, 2021

Reading, reading. Human error. We

make so many. Around me, but at a

distance, desperate people are dying.

Our Covid returns, full force and

worse. I have my own disease and its

medicine. No more numbness, but I

forget more. I’m writing notes now

in my diary to keep track. I still write

poetry. I still make supper. I start the

wash. I make the grocery list. Two 

women say to call them if I need 

someone, if I fall and can’t get up. 

Two others come to help. Tim carries

my dishes after meals. I sometimes

drop my fork or knife. I begin to have

my real old age. Memory lapses, but

so far I catch and correct them. I

publish new poems on my blog. My

voice is quieter than once.. I let

others carry my activist burden. I’ll

observe and write. Let the poems do

more work. I’ll keep reading human

history, suffer human error. I’ve done

my share of loving, and I’ve been

loved, too passionately for it to last.

And yet it lasted. I’m satisfied. What

I felt those years, albeit the poems,

stays and stays, will never be lost. I’ve

suffered, yet known ecstatic heights.

One word is sometimes enough.

Being Wise Twenty-Four

Members of Chatham Citizens Against Coal Ash Dump celebrating a legal win in 2017. Final legal win in December 2020. By then we'd lost Johnsie Tipton, first on left, and John Cross, third on right, and Terica Luxton, not shown, to cancer.

Being Wise Twenty-Four July 18, 2021

Right now, in the wider world,

Hate thrives, our pandemic is

still alive and flourishing. Racism

rears its ugly head again, again!

All the tenets of democracy are

under attack. What happened

to the Bill of Rights and our

Constitution? Our Declaration

of Independence? We moved

from that beginning: our forefathers

first, and finally everyone; the

eighteen-year-olds, the former

slaves, the native nations, women,

and all white men achieved the

vote. Now white men, their

power threatened, try to take

our votes away. Shame, shame!

All our great religions urge us

to treat others as we would be

treated. As children we learn

to help each other. Kindness

wins friends. A helping hand

reveals the true value of our

fellows. Our Earth Itself suffers

from our carelessness, our greed.

We’re not being wise. We’re being

foolish. Will rainstorms, drought,

hurricanes, tornadoes, sea surges

teach us to be wiser? When roofs

are blown off or our temperature

rises beyond what we need to

live, will we listen and begin

to pay attention?

Being Wise Twenty-Three

    Judy Hogan and Mikhail Bazankov in Russia in 1992

Being Wise Twenty-Three July 11, 2021

When I sleep, my mind goes back

to my beginnings. 1981, when Cindy

Paris worked for the Durham County

Library and suggested a Humanities

grant, and so a Roadmap to Great

Literature came to exist because

I invented it, using Ezra Pound’s 

ABC of Reading. Because I was

a local publisher, I gathered more

students than we had places for, 

and the grant was emended to give

them room. I was tough. They were

to read all of The Iliad and The Odyssey,

all of Dante’s Inferno, Chaucer, Sappho,

Catullus. Then write from those

examples, and they did. Our meeting

place was the Stanford Warren library,

earlier the Black branch. Broken 

windows were repaired. Later they

put us at the big main library. I was

glad, but noticed fewer Black writers.

So I set up a class at the Warren

library, and the Black writers returned.

The Humnities Council kept funding

our classes, and I had a salary. Cindy

cheered me on as did others. even 

Mary Semans when I had been rejected

by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

She used her influence to tell them they

were wrong. My students were reading

the books. So then I got a two-year grant

and even an opportunity to write a

book about my Roadmap classes. 

I had no Ph.D., but I was considered a

Humanist because of my years at

U.C.-Berkeley studying the classics.

I brought in professors from UNC and

Duke to teach French, Spanish, modern

Greek literature. The book, Watering the

Roots in a Democracy, was published

by my Carolina Wren Press and sent

free to libraries. Cindy was glad for my

success. I gave a copy to the Mayor of

Kostroma when he visited Durham to sign

the Sister Cities Agreement between

Durham and Kostroma, Russia. And he gave

the book to the leader of the Kostroma Writers

Organization, Mikhael Bazankov, and he

proposed we do exchanges of our writers,

and we did.

Being Wise Twenty-Two

Coal Ash Bourne cover, drawing by Zachary Turner, published    

            July 1, 2021 by Judy Hogan, author

Being Wise Twenty-Two July 4, 2021

The fourth of July. Let freedom ring. 

Hold fast to our democracy. We have

new tyrants who would take it away.

Our rooster sends his defiant call

over the landscape of this small farm.

He is jubilant and ancient, both at once.

At the beginning of time he was a 

dinosaur, huge and scary. He still has

the feet, but his voice is his real

treasurre now. He won’t be silenced.

He watches our windows for the

tell-tale signs of light.Nor does

the Dawn escape his notice.