Giving Our Gifts Makes Us Rich

GIFTS VII. June 15, 2014

The daily commerce of our lives–“sugar for sugar and salt for salt,” as the blues singers say–proceeds at its own constant level, but a gift revives the soul.  When we are moved by art, we are grateful that the artist lived, grateful that he labored in the service of his gifts.
–The Gift, Lewis Hyde

How hard it is to live in present time,
relish the moment after the hens are put
to bed, and the night sky breathes its 
blessing down on our heads.  Each
day may feel familiar, but it has never
come before, and out there somewhere,
in the minds and hearts of other people,
messages are forming.  Yesterday, 
when I took copies of Bertha’s writing
and my own about her to her son, 
his smile was beatific.  How glad I
am that Bertha hugged me that Valentine’s
Day in the post office twelve years ago.
We became friends.  Today we bury
her, but her gift keeps moving, and so
does mine.  I praise Kathleen I scarcely
know for her big gift, and I can tell
it lifts her spirit.  Edith helps me find
who the people are in my grandmother’s
diary kept in China a hundred years ago.
She says she has to get back to her 
own work, but she keeps helping me.
If I could save this village from the
fracking companies about to descend
and ruin our land, homes, lives, I
would.  I chip away, and I can tell
I edge some people closer to 
comprehending the harm with which
we are threatened.  Every one of us
is fragile, and yet some of us are
tough, too.  So little we control,
but if we give our gifts as best 
we can, we all grow rich.

What Are My Gifts?

My orchid in 2012 with one bloom stalk.  It is beginning its blooming now and has 20 bloom stalks.  It likes its present site in my window near the computer.

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GIFTS I.  Easter Sunday, April 20, 2014

The only essential is this: the gift must always move.–Lewis Hyde

I describe myself as gifted, but what
are my gifts?  First, my Deep Self
guides me.  I follow, even when
bewildered.  My words resonate 
with a power given to me, and I 
must give them away.  Some people 
brush past me, look the other way, 
even castigate me behind my back, 
fearing my power, which I scarcely
notice.  I’m seeing what’s there 
and speaking out.  When my mind 
gets foggy and I’m discouraged,
something mysterious breaks through.
Suddenly the yellow green leaves
in the awakening woods are 
illumined by morning sun, a gift
that dissipates the fog.  Or I meet
a woman who knows who I am,
and her words rush out.  “I want 
to take a class with you, even 
a chicken workshop.  I want to
write.”  I hand her my supper tray
to hold while I dig out a pen and 
write down her email on a paper
napkin.  She knows what I give.  
Parents, grandparents, wise 
teachers, and elders have given
to me, and I have used those
gifts well.  I’ve written books, 
shared how I think and live.  
Sometimes it feels like no one 
notices, but then someone holds 
my new book up and calls it 
“fascinating.”  I must give my
gifts away as fast as I can while 
I have breath.  I see people
more accurately now, see them 
whole, tragic flaws and all.
I see myself as others see me.
Some shy away as if afraid
to be scorched by my inner 
sun which keeps burning
in my being’s core.

Coal Ash Problem in Central North Carolina

Coal Ash Problem in Central North Carolina

Here in Lee County and Chatham County in central North Carolina, we have been put in harm’s way by Duke Energy, the only public electric utility company now in our state and the largest one in the nation.  After their merger with Progress Energy, they inherited or already owned 130 coal ash ponds, unlined, near coal-burning electric plants all over the state, all of them by rivers which also provide water for those in the area.  The problem is a state-wide problem, but we here in Chatham and Lee have been chosen to receive, in old clay pit mines from brick making, 20 million tons of the total of 150 million tons of coal ash that the state is now requiring Duke to clean up.

There is no doubt that Duke Energy has a lot of power and influence.  They are the Goliath in this battle, and we citizens of two counties which get our water from the Cape Fear River, are the David with our slingshot.  Furthermore, Chatham’s own coal ash ponds near the old Cape Fear Steam plant are also leaking into the river.  In fact last spring Duke was fined by our Dept of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) for pumping coal ash water directly into the stream that fed the river.  Some of the state’s riverkeepers photographed them from the air.  Our particular 5 Cape Fear coal ash ponds are in trouble, too, because the dam holding the coal ash ponds back from the river is breaking.

As David we here in Chatham/Lee have been busy.  I have for years believed that public opinion could change things, though sometimes it’s slow.  Since Duke unveiled its scheme to haul coal ash by truck and rail from the Riverbend plant near Charlotte and the Sutton plant near Wilmington last November, our Chatham and Lee County commissioners have both voted resolutions to stop any coal ash coming into our counties.  The state law allows Duke to bypass the will of local jurisdictions, but our local governments are fighting alongside the citizens.  

We have organized into two citizen groups, one in Moncure, which is the village nearest the site in Brickhaven where the dump is planned, and the other is in Lee County, along Colon Rd, and recently the Lee county group, called Environmental Lee, met in a church on Colon Road, and drew a large audience.  Yesterday they also held a march in downtown Sanford to call attention to the plight of Lee County people.  We are writing letters, putting up signs, getting the word out to our fellow citizens.  Newspaper and TV reporters from Durham, Charlotte, Fayetteville, Raleigh, and even Los Angeles have been interviewing citizens in our counties.  

Our Chatham County commissioners invited Duke and Charah, the company Duke has hired to carry out the dumping, to speak to them about their plans.  To hear them speak, you would think coal ash was harmless.  We, however, have learned to be skeptical.  Duke staff even denied last May that they had deliberately pumped coal ash pond water into the river.  They called it “normal maintenance.” 

Coal ash is hazardous and toxic, even though a recent EPA ruling said that it could be treated like ordinary landfill garbage.  We know better.  Coal ash contains arsenic, chromium, selenium mercury and lead.  It can also be radioactive.  It has been a year since the bad coal ash spill into the Dan River last Ground-Hog Day. 70 miles of the Dan River were polluted by about 80,000 tons of coal ash. DENR now considers the river safe for drinking water and fishing, but local people deny this.  There is much less wild life in that area.  For more information on the overall coal ash picture, check out: wral.com/uncertainty-clouds-coal-ash-picture-one-year-after-spill/14407943/ 

A Coal Ash Commission has been appointed to oversee the proper disposal of coal ash, and Duke has until 2029 to do it all.  The Commission, however, in response to our citizen letters claims that it has no power with Duke Energy’s current plan.  Simply capping the coal ash ponds on site is not acceptable, according to Frank Holleman, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. [See WRAL article above]. 

The likelihood is that the toxic ash has already seeped into the ground water.  The ash shouldn’t be moved.  Yet Duke plans to move it.  The Blue Ridge Legal Defense Fund (BREDL) recommends that turning coal ash into salt stone and storing it in large concrete bunkers on site is the safest way.  BREDL also learned that there are nearly 100 active and inactive clay mines all over North Carolina.  They have also released a story that Anson County may be another county target to coal ash from Riverbend and Sutton, if Chatham and Lee don’t work out.  See their website for these stories: www.bredl.org

Coal ash is a nation-wide problem, neglected for decades.  Duke Energy likes to see itself as a good neighbor and often makes charitable contributions.  Meantime they keep raising their rates, and the coal ash cleanup will be passed along to their customers, those who survive this toxic plan.  When I spoke on Jan 20, the day that the Duke and Charah officials came to our county’s commissioner meeting on their plan, I pointed out that we no longer trust Duke Energy, as its employees don’t tell us the truth. Even the big honchos who came to the Chatham County Commissioners meeting January 20, are, in my opinion, suspect. They focused on trains, but it will be awhile before a train spur can be built.  The first news was that there would be 120-140 trucks a day.  As I live on a road that is main route to and from the Brickhaven and Corinth Roads parts of the county and also a connecting road via Highway #1 to Colon Road in Lee County, I’m not thrilled at the idea that these trucks will be flying in clouds of coal ash dust down my road in Moncure.  

Back on December 15, 2014, I spoke to our Chatham Commissioners:
 ***
My name is Judy Hogan and I speak to you to ask you to do all you can to stop the coal ash dumping in Brickhaven near Moncure. 

I consider the two main issues of our time being, first, to take care of our planet Earth and not to pollute it so badly that we destroy the only home we have.  Second, we human beings need to learn to see all other people who share our planet village as equally human, so that we never reduce any group to being sub-human or unimportant.  If we can learn these two things, then we may save our human race and our only possible place to live in this universe of ours. 

At present the American justice system has allowed a major flaw, which flies in the face of the American Constitution for it is allowing corporations to be treated as single human beings.  For these corporations we are sub-human.  They are focused on their profits and so they feel free to create waste, which harms human beings as fracking does, and as coal-burning does, and then dispose of that waste in such a way that we real human beings will suffer soil, air, and water pollution and the health and life expectancy effects of that.

Our North Carolina Legislature is allowing our only public utility company, Duke Energy, to dump its dangerous coal ash wherever it wishes without consulting the local jurisdictions, our towns, and counties.  All they need is a permit from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).  Duke plans to bring up to 20 million tons of coal ash from the Charlotte and Wilmington areas by truck and rail to dump in the Moncure (Brickhaven) and Sanford Colon Rd. areas.  They further have the gall to say it won’t hurt us. 

We have learned that these corporate “people” lie whenever it suits them.  I personally heard the lies when their illegal behavior had already been documented last spring.  The Duke staff told me that the coal ash flowing into our water source in the Cape Fear River was below the Sanford water intake, when in reality it was above it. An aerial map documents this. We citizens appreciate whatever our BOC can do.  We need you.  Judy Hogan, Moncure 919-545-9932 judyhogan@mindspring.com

Note: the Commissioners already had a resolution to ban coal ash on their agenda, and they passed it that day, December 15, unanimously.  JH

Chatham website:  http://nocoalash-chathamconc.org

Environmental Lee website:  http://www.environmentalee.org/.

***

Susan Broili's Review of This River: An Epic Love Poem

Cover of Judy Hogan's new book This River, an epic love poem.

Susan Broili’s review of This River published January 18, 2015 

http://www.heraldsun.com/lifestyles/x761903450/REVIEW-This-River-an-epic-love-poem


REVIEW: “This River, an epic love poem”
SUSAN BROILI, Special to The Herald-Sun


***
Judy Hogan’s book-length poem “This River, an epic love poem” takes readers on a journey anchored on the Haw River in Alamance County but not limited to that place. The real sojourn takes place in the poet’s heart, soul and imagination.

“This River” speaks to the transformative power of love both on a universal level throughout time and also on an individual level, specific to this poet and time, more than 20 years ago, when her story takes place.

Told in 30 related poems, this story’s narrative drive courses through this work like a river at flood stage. There’s suspense as she awaits the arrival of the Russian man she had met a year earlier in Kostroma, Russia. He had invited her there to work on a series of writers’ exchanges between Durham, and Kostroma, Durham’s Sister City. At one point, his arrival for his first U.S. visit is just four months away, and then, only two days. Just how this ends, however, won’t be revealed here so as not to spoil the story for new readers.

Suffice it to say that most of the time, the poet feels confident in the love between her and this man. But sometimes she has doubts. Poem 19 begins with a litany of signs of certainty she finds in the natural world such as “the cottonwood seedling that has rooted itself in a cracked rock.” When doubts surface, she remembers another sign, the sweet gum’s “stars” she finally saw last night. This reminds her “to pay attention. That’s easy enough and you do know how.”

Hogan has been proving her ability for keen observation up to this point and continues to do so. Her descriptions bring the Haw River environment to life, puts us there to smell the clean-scented though muddy water and see the wildlife that comes near her as she sits, day after day, on the rock near the beaver dam in Saxapahaw as she writes — except when it rains. Within a few feet of her, geese swim, fish leap, large turtles surface to glance her way. This spell she casts is magical and comes from her strong sense of wonder, kindled by her close attention to this place.

Metaphors abound, the most basic being the river as the current of feelings between her and this man. The river also stands for feeling at one with him. Both know rivers — he the Volga that flows through his city. Both rivers eventually reach the sea. “We are hinged by ocean,” she writes. Finally, she identifies herself with the river. “I am a river. I must do what the river does, move on and on. I must love my banks.”

This work also testifies to Hogan’s fierce dedication to the practice of her gift for writing — a daily practice for more than 40 years that has resulted in a large body of work: journals, poetry, non-fiction, fiction.

Publications include books of poetry as well as two mysteries.

In “This River,” she writes of what it takes to keep writing: “It means giving close attention, making an extra effort every single day.” This means making choices. “We must choose carefully every day, balance within ourselves and within the day our needs, the needs of others, our most urgent tasks, and what we will let flow past us, never to return.”

Her example and this advice could also inspire others to express their own voices, their unique gifts, while they still can, for the river of time stops for no one.

AUTHOR READINGS

Judy Hogan will read from “This River, an epic love poem,” at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 21 (also featuring poet Jaki Shelton Green) at the Regulator Bookshop, 720 Ninth St., Durham.  

At 7 p.m. Jan. 27 she'll read at Durham's South Regional Library, 4505 S. Alston Ave. This library reading is sponsored by the Durham County Library Foundation.

On March 11, Wed, 7 PM, Judy will read again with Jaki Shelton Green at the Chatham Community Library in Pittsboro.

On April 1, Wed, 6 PM, she will read at the Wayne County Library in Goldsboro, with a two-hour workshop on publishing to follow.

On April 9, Thursday, 7 PM, Judy will read with Shelby Stephenson at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill.  Both Jaki Shelton Green and Shelby Stephenson are recent inductees into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame.  JH

***

Photo: Submitted/Courtesy of Judy Hogan
Judy Hogan with feathered friend. (Special to The Herald-Sun/Mark Schmerling)
Submitted/Courtesy of Judy Hogan

***
The publisher of This River: An Epic Love Poem is Wild Embers Press of Ashland, Oregon, under their Watersongs imprint.  The book design is by Antoinette Nora Claypoole, editor.

The artwork on the cover is by Sergei Rumyantsev.

The interior artwork is by Mikhail Bazankov.

Remembering Our Treasures

This is Judy and her son Tim in Albuquerque, 2007.  

This blog is my first one posted with my new computer.  Thanks to Doug Williams, I'm moving into the future, if slowly.  I have Windows 7 and Word Perfect 7, up from Windows XP and Word Perfect 4.  I found my old files and I learned how to create and save new ones.  I still feel somewhat bewildered, but here's a poem I found.  I hope you enjoy it.  Back in June I was struggling with what to do with my life if fracking came near me.  Now it's coal ash dumping threatening, but I think I'll be able to stay here.  I work toward that goal every day.  Here's a poem from my long poem Gifts, which I'm still writing. JH

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GIFTS V. June 1, 2014

The art that matters to us–which moves the heart, or revives the soul, or delights the senses, or offers courage for living ... that work is received by us as a gift is received.  The Gift, Lewis Hyde

Sometimes the soul labors–never in vain.
We could try to forget, block out the bad 
news, bury ourselves in oblivion, but that 
never did work for human beings.  
The way we are made demands that we
see.  If we close our eyes and stop our
ears, we suffer the torments of the
damned.  If we step out into the light,
even if we are the only ones who see
where the light is, we suffer but not
without meaning, not without joy.
I am afraid of so much change.  I built
a life I love, worked out a balance of
writing and learning work and outside
engagement with garden, orchard, hens;
the wild birds, the increasingly 
unpredictable seasons.  I still grow
food, the orchard trees, vines, bushes 
will bend their branches down with
fruit.  The weeds I’ve fed the hens
keep them productive.  The weeded
carrots and beets flourish now.  I
don’t want to leave this bounty, but 
if air, earth and water are poisoned?
Then I must.  I have words streaming
forth.  My life must stand behind them,
else I help no one and lose my very Self.

Review: Show Me the Gold by Carolyn Mulford

Show Me the Gold.  Carolyn Mulford.  Five Star/Cengage, New York, San Francisco, Chicago.  ISBN: 978-4329-2990-2. Hardcover $25.95.  304 pp.  Release Date, December 17, 2014. Available in bookstores: January 7, 2015. 

In her third Phoenix Smith mystery Carolyn Mulford sends her acting Vandiver County sheriff Annalynn Keyser, with Phoenix as her backup, to an abandoned farmhouse in a neighboring county where a group of Cleveland bank robbers is holed up with assault rifles.  In the ensuing gun battle, one robber is killed, and youngest one is wounded.  Two men seem to have escaped.  Sheriff Towson has only an interracial couple helping him, the woman cop being pregnant, hence the plea to Annalynn to bring help.  

Phoenix’s dog Achilles, by his behavior, warns Phoenix, Annalynn, Towson, and his deputies not to enter the house.  Phoenix guesses the doors are booby-trapped with explosives. The FBI is already involved because it’s a bank robbery.  The loot includes some valuable gold coins.  Even though Phoenix tries to keep a low profile as to her former CIA undercover work, she is suspected by the FBI of having the gold or knowing where it is.  The remaining identified robber, Roscoe Cantree, has served a prison sentence, and also suspects that Phoenix knows where the gold is.

Each of the threesome of women featured in the series, Annalynn, Connie Diamante, and Phoenix are going through personal changes. The town’s newspaper editor, Vernon Kann, wants Annalynn to run for the House of Representatives and step down from being sheriff. Connie, whose musical talent is normally providing little income, is directing a production of the musical Oklahoma at the local Laycock Community College, and Phoenix is having to decide whether she wants to become seriously involved with Stuart, who works with the Drug Enforcement Administration.  Stuart’s mother was Phoenix’s high school math teacher and is all for the couple getting serious, but Phoenix is “gun shy” of such a commitment.

The dog Achilles continues to add a wonderful human tone to these novels, as do the various minor small town and rural characters, like the Greek widow of the former shoe store owner, Mrs. Tesopolis. Phoenix gradually becomes more a part of this town where she grew up.  She helps Connie with the musical auditions and rehearsals and also Annalynn, who is investigating whether Mrs. Tesopolis is suffering elder abuse at the hands of her daughter and son-in-law.

Although she is still tough and capable of handling very dangerous situations, Phoenix is relaxing and taking her guard down more often.  She still manages to be one step ahead of the law enforcement officers, including the FBI man, in any given situation,.  Annalynn wants to keep her out of danger, an impossible goal, given Phoenix’s training and background.

This is a fast read, but I like the slower scenes best, where we learn more about the characters.  Each book in the series reveals more about the trio of women.  Fortunately novel four is already in the works from Five Star for 2015.

***

Carolyn Mulford decided to become a writer while attending a one-room school near Kirksville, MO.  After earning a B.A. in English from Truman State and an M.A. in Journalism at the University of Missouri, she received a different kind of education as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ethiopia.  She worked as a magazine editor in Vienna, Austria, and Washington, D.C. and then became a free-lance writer and editor.  She changed her focus to fiction with her return to Missouri.  Her first novel, The Feedsack Dress, was honored as Missouri's great read at the 2009 National Book Festival.  Her first mystery novels, Show Me the Murder and Show Me the Deadly Deer, came out in 2013.  She blogs about her writing on her website, http://www.carolynmulford.com

The Gift of the Muse

This was my blooming Christmas cactus in the kitchen window, 2011.  Now there are two, thanks to David and Connie

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GIFTS IV.  May 25, 2014



Inspiration from outside one’s self is like the heat in the oven.  It makes passable Bath buns.  But inspiration from within is like a volcano.  It changes the face of the world.  Alan Bradley in The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag.

We also rightly speak of intuition or inspiration as a gift.  As the artist works, some portion of his creation is bestowed upon him.  The Gift.  Lewis Hyde.

Volcano isn’t the image I’d have chosen.  
It’s more like a silent companion.  You 
forget it’s there until it begins humming, 
and you can’t write the words fast enough.
I have compared it to metal heating up
so that it becomes pliable; to a musical
flow when the tune gallops.  It’s always
a surprise even when it has happened
many times before.  Unpredictable even
if you do create rituals to encourage it to
visit once again.  Then, afterwards,
hard to believe.  Is what I’ve written true?
Do I think this?  Yet I’ve never known
that deeper place whence words spring
freely into my mind to lie.  I have to
run to keep up with my own revelations.
Not a bad thing.  I didn’t want life to
be easy.  I wanted to leave some mark,
some words valued when I’m no longer
here, some gift that others want to keep.
The new young teller at my bank 
tells me she liked the poem I left.  
This, too, I never expected.  She
read how my Deep Self guides me, 
and I follow even when bewildered.
Those words didn’t roll off her.  They
soaked in.  A gift to me.  People
don’t tell me all they feel, but I do
receive back new gifts when I give
my gifts away.