Cherokee Presentation at FPL

The library had a full house this Wednesday evening for Larry Pearl’s excellent presentation on the early life of the Cherokee people. Larry provided fascinating instruction on many of the key events in Cherokee and Native American history such as the Iroquois Confederacy, Sequoyah and the Cherokee language, and the Golden Age of the Cherokees, to name just a few. Larry also demonstrated his knowledge and ability with the Cherokee language. Along with an excellent PowerPoint presentation, Larry had two tables full of Cherokee art, instruments, weaponry, and research materials. During and after the Q & A session, many lively discussions ensued with audience members sharing stories and memories.

The Super Hero by Barbara Ann Carle

Barbara Carle is a published essayist and poet and is a featured reader at Friendswood Public Library's Essay Readings on Wednesday, February 29th at 7pm. Also read Carle's The Red Shoes.

The Super Hero

By Barbara Ann Carle

My oldest son Scott was an archer.  He had a large collection of bows that he purchased on our trips to the flea market in Canton, Texas.  He would often practice in the back yard and of course, whatever Scott was, his younger brother Glen had to be too.  And once Glen decided he wanted to do something he could be quite persistent.  Pretty soon all we heard was “Can I try? Can I try?” Scott began searching for a bow that Glen could handle.  When he found the right size; he began teaching Glen and Glen’s best friend Bob archery. 

Over the next year both boys got pretty good.  That fall Scott took Glen to the Renaissance Festival in Magnolia, Texas.  Scott said three men in their twenties were playing the archery game and they were really bad.  They obviously didn’t know the first thing about archery.  Glen decided he wanted to try.  The three men began to laugh at the little kid trying to shoot an arrow.  With a fair amount of pride, Scott laughed when he described the scene.  “I stood off to one side.  Glen walked up, put down his money and took the proper position.  He pulled back the bow in perfect form and scored three out of three shots.  Those older guys were stunned.” 

One afternoon Scott came to me and said “Mom I think I have a problem.  Glen and Bob came up to my room today and told me they think it’s time I started fighting crime.  They want me to become a Super Hero.  They want me to buy green tights and a green shirt and Hgo out at night with my bow and arrows to catch bad guys.  I tried telling them that I couldn’t do that but they’re convinced I can.  I don’t know what to do.”  Scott was eighteen then and Glen was eight. 

Scott and I had a good laugh.  The thought of him running around Nassau Bay in green tights with a bow and a quiver of arrows on his back was just too funny.  “You have to admit, it’s rather flattering that they’re convinced you can be a crime fighter.”   I couldn’t help adding “Come to think of it, you do look good in green.” 

Poor Scott really was between a rock and a hard place.  Glen idolized his big brother and thought he could do anything.  “I don’t want to hurt their feelings but they just won’t take no for an answer” Scott said.   “Don’t worry, I’ll talk to Glen.” 

The next day when Glen came home from school I sat him down and said “So Scott told me you have a plan.  You want him to become a crime fighter.” 

The enthusiasm that lit his face showed me just what I was up against. 

“Yeah, he’s a great archer, Mom.  He can go out after dark and look for bad guys.”

“Well, honey you know he can’t go around arresting people, he’s not a police officer.  The police department wouldn’t want him doing that.”

“There are bad guys out there, right?  You’re a police officer Mom and you go after bad guys all the time.”

“Well yes, but that’s my job and it’s what I’ve been trained to do.  Police officers don’t want citizens running around trying to catch criminals.  That’s what we’re paid to do.”

“So we won’t tell them.  You, Bob and I can keep it a secret.”
“But what if Scott gets hurt?”

            “He won’t get hurt, he’s too good.  You should see him Mom he never misses.”

“I know he’s good but what if the bad guys have a gun?” I asked.

“Oh he’s really fast Mom.  He wouldn’t get hurt.  So will you make his outfit Mom?  He needs green tights and a green shirt, maybe a hat too.  He could be like the Green Hornet.”

I was getting nowhere fast.  I knew Scott was a good archer but I doubted he was faster than a speeding bullet.

“You know Scott is really busy, going to school and working.  He has lots of things he needs to do.”

“That’s why Bob and I will help.  Will you make us outfits too, just like Scott’s?  And then when Scott’s busy, Bob and I can take over.”

“I don’t think Bob’s Mom would let him become a crime fighter” I replied.

“She will if you talk to her, I know you can convince her.”

      I found myself face to face with a major case of hero worship.  How could I maintain the image Glen had of his brother but talk some sense into him. 

“You know Scott starts college in two months, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And you know college is really hard, right?”  He nodded his eight year old head.  “Well he couldn’t possibly do his homework, study and work while being a crime fighter, could he?  And you know how much he’s looking forward to going to college.  We wouldn’t want him to fail, would we?” 

I could see his blue eyes cloud with a look of deep disappointment.  I got a dejected “No”. 

Shoulders slumped, he turned and walked away.  At the last minute, just before going through the doorway, he spun around smiling and shouted “That’s OK, Mom.  He can do it on his summer vacation.”

©Copyright – Barbara Ann Carle, 2010

Library Lines Redux: Volume 4 Issue 10, 2006

Gangly Noir by Matthew Riley

I first saw her through the window of Webster Bicycle Shop. She was leaning gracefully, not unlike, yet wholly different from her inferior replicas. I was 12 and she was a silver and red Rebel BMX racing bike and she shone like the sun. She was all I longed for during the summer between seventh and eigth grade. To quench this longing, I took a summer custodial job at my school in hopes of saving enough money to rescue her from layaway prison. We rode out together, number 13 displayed proudly on her handlebar’s number plate. Throughout the remaining summer days, we bonded over tabletop jumps and high-speed berm collisions. Time and again I lifted her out of the mud smiling through a grimace. Bruised shins and bent spokes only made us stronger. And then she went away. 

How many minutes I stood staring at the spot in the garage where she should have been I do not know. Time’s weight crushed me and I fell without knowing the fall. Days of confused moping ensued and then finally the righteous anger pointing the way to my resurrection. Four of my buddies were over later that day and we set up shop at the scene of the crime. We were the Mystery Gang with five too many Shaggys’, but between us we knew most every creep hiding behind most every hedge and curtain in the hood. Dog walkers were no longer walking dogs but answering a few questions about what they might have seen on the night of the last full moon. Sam covered the 7-11 beat, Mike down by the creek, Yatu and Torren had the north side and my nose kept twitching south of the link. For me, this was real. For my buddies, it was just a fun way to burn the last week of summer.  

Just as my time was running out, we had a break. A friend of a friend knew a guy who had just gotten busted for running a bicycle chop shop out of his parents’ garage. We were there in minutes and to my luck the garage doors were open. The first thing I saw was her number 13 partially visible behind a multitude of bikes and bike parts. As I got a closer look I could see that her handlebars were on a Mongoose frame. Then I spotted her forks embarrassingly clutching a yellow Tuff Wheel. Her frame was sporting a host of Huffy and Redline products. This was a mongrel lot all bent and betrayed. Unsure of my next move, I bought time by pacing the street in front of his house. Then I saw him coming out through the kitchen door into the darkish garage. He was two or three years my senior and thirty or more pound heavier, but my anger was beginning to grow starting in two small, clinched fists. Before I knew what I was doing I was standing in front of the open garage listening with him to the words falling staccato from my mouth, “That’s my bike. There, and there, and there, and over there.” I could see that he had been crying and before he could turn his head back around from where I had been pointing, his tears began to flow again; "Please don’t say anything. I’m already in huge trouble and I’ll have your bike fixed and back to you by tomorrow.” I had no reason to forgive him or believe him, but I did and he came through. Although, she never did feel like she took the berms quite as smooth or caught the same kind of air as before. As time passed, my interest in BMX waned and my fret over her lost capabilities diminished to forgetfulness. In my late teens, I gave her away to someone nearly as enthralled with her as I was then.

4 poems by graphic designer and poet Glynn Monroe Irby

Glynn Monroe Irby lives in Brazoria, County, Texas. He carries a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from the University of Texas, Austin, including earlier studies at the University of Houston, the Brazosport College, and Edinburgh University, Scotland, with subsequent graduate studies in architecture at the

University of Houston.  Irby is the graphic designer and co-author of the book, 3 Savanna Blue, the graphic and cover designer of many other books, and has displayed and marketed photographic and poetic art for homes and offices. As a writer, Irby has been published in both the Houston and Austin poetry festival anthologies as well as Sol Magazine, Borderlands Texas Poetry Review, The Spiky Palm, Galaxy Journal, Curbside Review, Poetz e-zine (New York), HIP, and others; Irby has been an invited poet to many reading venues in Texas, is a member of the Galveston Poets’ Roundtable, the Circle Way Poets, the Poetry Society of Texas, the Gulf Coast Poets, and was selected in 2006 as one of the “Bards of the Bayou.”  For many years, Irby has been a manager, buyer, and professional interior planner in his family-run furniture and design business.

Look for Glynn Irby to be a reader at the FPL Poetry Series reading on Wednesday, July 18th at 7pm.  The Friendswood Public Library carries 3 Savanna Blue. Ask for assistance at the reference desk.

Tall Grasses

Can you hear that sound

of tall grasses in the wind,

that sound of decades-hay

before the final shocks are made?

Listen to the whirling overhead

of golden crowns in the sky,

the sound of grain heads

yielding their seeds into the frantic air.

Listen to the sound of shadowy things

harbored inside the bramble,

and that bursting sound of cracking

through unyielded early stems.

Listen to the raging of change

through my soul,

the sound of breaking cane

and the shattering of my secret places

as you clearly pierce the last

of my perimeter reeds

onto the outer boundaries

of my dispersing reservoirs.

Glynn Monroe Irby

White and Grey Dominiques

               — from my father’s farm stories

When night comes, some chickens

go to the woodhouse, others fly

to branches of the apple tree.

Now and then after midnight,

the sly weasel with razor teeth,

quiet on the balls of his feet,

sneaks up along the creek,

slips under the hawthorn hedge,

and climbs the bountiful chicken tree,

takes his pick among resting hens.

Each morning when leaves

are wet with dew and I start

my long walk to the schoolroom,

I watch for blood feathers

in the clover bed.

Glynn Monroe Irby

Sailing Together

Steering our chalk-white catamaran

toward rising constellations,

we slip through the scattered sea

beneath a patterned sky,

leaving the sun in our wake.

Sailing in line with moon-tides,

cross-grain to ghostly grey passages

of young pelagic jaegers, we attend

to combinations of changing

currents and wind direction.

We listen for the cry of laughing gulls

or the whisper of a shore break

as we delight in the exuberance

of blood pressing through our veins,

engage in an echo of emotion,

experience the chorus of heaven,

and the thundering voice of God

in the sudden electric storm-rage

before morning.

Glynn Monroe Irby

Knowing the Tides

She advances straight

into my channel access,

then recedes through

the swelling sluice

toward the open sea

once again.

Still in the morning

her fresh water-beads

collect on the dew-lips

of my over-edging grasses

before slipping back

into the stream.

She’ll then ascend

into the anvil clouds

to flash violently back

into the dark waters

of the open ocean

once again.

Glynn Monroe Irby

More poems by Glynn Monroe Irby:

Picking Figs Before the Birds Come

Geophysical Survey
Shooting Gar 
Pipe Yards

Video Poem by Glynn Irby
Eating the Heart 
 

Cherokee History, Culture and Language at Friendswood Public Library

Larry Pearl, a resident of League City, was born in Oklahoma and is a descendant of the Cherokee people. He will be giving a presentation that will cover many aspects of early Cherokee life. He will share his knowledge about this important part of our American history and demonstrate how European and Cherokee cultures were influenced and developed over centuries of contact. This will be a fun and entertaining evening for all.

Wednesday, January 25th at 7pm in the Friendswood Public Library Activity Room.

3 poems by author, artist, and poet Dodie Meeks

Dodie Messer Meeks has poetry in a couple of hundred journals and literary magazines and several anthologies. The Arts Alliance Center of Clear Lake published an illustrated collection of her work, entitled, “When I Got Dressed Again.” She is currently illustrating a children’s book of poetry for the publishers of The Lyric, which she describes as “the only poetry publisher older than I am, which is pretty amazing.”

The Friendswood Public Library carries a copy of Dodie's When I Got Dressed Again. See the Reference desk for assistance.



MARY, MARY

Outside the window of my room

Big creamy plates of bloom

Keep spilling charcoal seeds.

The bees are slurping out there, dazed,

In two hundred proof magnolia

couched in leathery leaves. 

All up and down the block

The neighbors’ lawns

Are clipped formica neat

But my garden

That they can hardly stand

Is all elbows and knees. 

Salvia slavering down the walk

Ivy shinnying up the stalks

Of three kinds of anemone

Rioting as anemone can

Each stem erupting into ten.

That hospital gift gardenia 

We gave a decent burial

Is pop-corned over with bloom

Enough for a funeral or two

Crowding a candelabra of lilies

Budded so aching tight

It hurts to look. 

Those roses that you sent

Claw through whatever this is,

With veins of tattered blue

On international orange.

And I know I never put in

This goofy garlic patch. 

That sad, young, wandering priest

We let sleep on our sofa for a spell

Was a fussy eater. These might be

From the kernels he threw out.

It’s taking on the mint.

Well. You know mint. 

Smells like a candy cane

Has the soul of a virus.

They said to contain it

But don’t tell me

What to do with my darn mint.

So here’s a carpet of that. 

Too thick to get a grip on

But for a leaf or two, for tea.

And here come some caladium

Unfurling burgundy veined with green.

The brass section. Aren’t they

Supposed to come back small? 

Where you are, in London,

Crocuses peek through snow.

In Holland the tulips are marching along

Row on proper row.

Like ads for laundry soap.

But they have that purple scent. 

It’s illegal to let poppies grow

In Greece. But they do, anyway,

Their hairy stems

Claw up through rock

Gasping for a breath of mist.

Boy. It’s moist here all the time.

I can stand in the middle of my house

And feel my garden buzz and seethe

Like mother, yanking on a sequined blouse

To wear to church. Saying whee.

 Whoop de doo, Jim. Whoop de doo.

 It’s just the gypsy in me.

Dodie Meeks

ATAVISM 

We are grown unaccustomed now to trees.

They lean above and breathe a trailing mist

that slides in on all sides. They sway and list.

We urban dwellers stand and stare at these 

as the Apaches did. They neared this mound

and signaled for silence. Quivering, intent

the shadowy riders listened, quickly bent,

slid down, and made their way around. 

They saw the shape embedded in this stone.

We are grown unaccustomed now to these

contrivances of seed, these symmetries

of bark and darkened overlapping cone. 

Was it some sudden silence shimmering

in rotted leaf and spears of splintered light

flickered the green gold sun as cold as night?

Or some large eye, half-open, glimmering?

Dodie Meeks

Advice for the Bride

Dear little ladies with dear little voices

Have ended upended on ant teeming slopes

Or, after a tiff, have been dropped from a cliff,

Or dangled forlornly on slow-turning ropes.

Girls who must have the last word every argument

Have eaten their words in a dank dungeon keep

Or languished in stocks or been fed glowing rocks

Or watched cablevision and given up sleep.

Ladies with tongues far less acid than mine is

Gurgled on guillotines, writhed on the rack.

All that I have to fear—tell me I’m lucky, dear—

Is the dank certainty. He won’t be back.

All my proud sisterhood, swearing you will be good,

Wishing indeed you could be still as stone.

Raise your arm. Make a fist. Swear to remember this:

Grammatical errors are best left alone.

All my proud sisterhood, knowing too well you should

Be ever so careful to leave it unsaid.

No matter what you hear always remember, dear,

Never correct a man’s grammar in bed.

Dodie Meeks

 

 

Other poems and illus. by Dodie Meeks:

 

 

Every Day, Every Day

Riding with G'Ma Dodie

Scarcely Any

 

 

4 poems by teacher, poet, and naturalist Richard Peake

Richard Peake in an African village in
Sierra Leone on a birding safari.

A native Virginian, Richard Peake became a Texas resident after retiring from the University of Virginia’s College at Wise. He published early poems in Impetus alongside John Ciardi and in The Georgia Review. Collections of his poetry include Wings Across… and Poems for Terence published by Vision Press, which also included poems of his in A Gathering at the Forks. He published Birds and Other Beasts in 2007. A member of The Poetry Society of Texas he has recently published in Avocet, Asinine Poetry, Boundless 2010 and 2011, Nature Croons, Ides of March, Raven Images, Skive, Sol Magazine, Shine Journal (one nominated for the Pushcart Prize), The Book of the Year PST 2010, 2011, and 2012,  The Road Not Taken, The Texas Poetry Calendar 2012, and elsewhere. A life-long naturalist, a father and grandfather, he teaches birds, Shakespeare, and writing in OLLi.

Richard Peake has been a featured poet at Friendswood Public Library poetry readings and we look forward to having him back in early 2013.

Electric Wings for Ars Poetica  

Like arctic terns in flight

from pole to pole

or swallows speeding to new nests

or metallic birds

that outpace the speed of sound

words grow wings

to fly around the world

as we let our thoughts migrate. 

For sad or happy thoughts

there is no transport like a poem

to speed emotions forth.

Across barriers of land or sea,

a poet’s words

can bring us serious things

or just a clever jest

to lift the poet’s wit with wings. 

With the speed of wireless phones

or the internet

words fly faster than terns or swallows

or sound-barrier-breaking planes

So let my poem

ascend on electric wings

to speed my praise

of a time to honor poetry.  

published in The Book of the Year 2010

My Cousins’ Fledermaus 

Their ID erred dismally.

I’m sure they didn’t know tequila can’t exist

without bats flying like night moths

to pollinate agave plants. And being only five

I was just as ignorant of the good bats do.

My aunt and cousins, confused by the German,

treated the poor flying creature

as if it were a mouse they dreaded

and might have stood on chairs to avoid

unaware that bats gobble night-flying insects,

not Mississippi women afraid of mice.

For them the flying mammal wandering in that night

brought dangers from a dark, bloody world

to tangle in their flowing locks

and suck their luscious virginal blood.

My cousins wielded weapons against this flying fury

whose fangs appeared ten inches long

to them, though to the young boy

hiding under a convenient table

the bat seemed fangless, distraught, befuddled

by the lights and by the brooms

belaboring it in awkward pursuit of its frantic flight—

a beast thought at the very least to carry rabies

from the haunts of vampires.

Screams and commands and deadly swipes

filled the room with eager mayhem

as bloodlust born of fear prevailed.

The flying mouse could not escape into the night.

Amazon warriors soon displayed to me its limp,

lifeless body—exulting in their victory

over the dark forces of the summer night. 

published in Raven Images, Nov., 2010

I Favor Three-toed Sloths

          for Theodore Roethke

Volcano watching, ungainly two-toed sloth

fell out of a scenic too-slender tree,

broke limbs, narrowly missing me—

clambered, slipperied back up with baleful wroth.

Clumsy two-toed, too-inquisitive sloths—

less careful how they climb and doze

than clever species with three toes—

should try pledging visitors troth.

Canny three-toed sloths know slow

moving. You might deem them smug

as they give branches a hug,

ex-as-per-at-ing-ly slow they move from high to low.

You jump and yell and try to wake them

but deep in sleep slowly they go

swaying in the breeze by their three toes

unheedful of your stratagems— 

they blink—you know they know they know.

published in Asinine Poetry, Feb., 2010

No Meals, No Songs

Unnatural landscapes breed no song,

provide little food for nestlings.

Like blue gum forests in strange lands

yards of aliens yield no songsters.

Insects loiter in native plants

not aliens they cannot digest.

Where no caterpillars devour

live trees and bushes, no birds sing.

Exotic herbs planted for show

live free of bug bites and cocoons,

free of warblers and tanagers

who find no insects to digest.

published in Nature Croons, Apr., 2011

 

 

More poems by Richard Peake:

 

Finding Hidden Beauty

Rock Dusk

They Couldn't Wait

Hello, Winter