Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

September 4, 2007

Publishers Favourite Sites:

Rosanne Catalano

http://www.rosannecatalano.net/

Michael Smith

http://subs.zinester.com/86758/

Barbara Weymouth

penwormprayerwarriors-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Helen Dowd

www.occupytillicome.com

Dean Perchick

http://symzonia.blogspot.com

Today’s Announcements

Happy Birthday Dave McCurley: davemcc@cox.net

Today’s Stories

~**~**~

Kitten in the Woodpile

Earla Jean Hollon

Because of getting on in years, I decided several years ago, that as our beloved pets passed on, we would not acquire new fur and/or feathered friends.  For five years were down to only cat in our little zoo, and that was Tyler, a rescued Siamese mix, nearing 19 years.  My husband had for some time been making comments concerning acquiring a kitten, but I was firm in my decision “No more kittens/cats, puppies/dogs or birds.”  However, a small white and gray kitten had other ideas. 

One spring day I heard my parakeets that live in an outdoor aviary, shrieking in alarm.  This was something they rarely did so I ran into the back yard to see what was wrong, and to my surprise a scrawny little white and gray kitten was on top of the roof of the aviary. 

Immediately upon my appearance the kitten jumped off the aviary roof, fled around the side of the house and was out of sight.  The next day while looking out the kitchen window I saw the kitten sunning himself on top of a wood pile that my husband had not yet hauled to the trash.  I told my husband that I had seen the kitten again, and he replied that he had seen the kitten several times and that he was living inside of the wood pile. 

Sure enough, that very evening I saw the kitten squeeze inside of the wood.  I warned my husband “Do not feed that kitten, if we don’t feed him, he will go away.”  My husband looked at me as if I had gone nuts, as I am the one that is always feeding every animal and/or bird that comes into our yard. 

I was determined not to feed that kitten, and I didn’t; not for seven long days, during which time I saw the kitten numerous times, observing how tiny he was and worrying about what he was eating in order to survive.  If we walked outside though, the kitten magically disappeared.  After seven days my resistance was gone.  I placed a bowl of cat food on top of the wood pile. 

The next day the food was still there.  I placed fresh cat food in the bowl, but it did not get eaten either.  The third evening the food was gone.  My next step was to bring food to the kitten and get him to eat it while I stood close by watching.  At first he would hide inside of the wood pile meowing, clearly wanting the food but too scared to eat it while I was there.  Gradually, after a few days he would crawl from out of the wood pile and greet me as I brought him food. 

I went to the pet store and bought a small carpeted scratching post with a cat bed on top, a litter box and some cat toys.  I placed the scratching post and litter box in our green house that at the time was lacking a door.  From our kitchen window I could see the kitten go inside the greenhouse and could tell that he was sleeping in the cat bed and using the kitty litter box.  In the evenings I sat on the deck playing with the cat toys. 

After a few days the kitten cautiously began playing with me and the toys but still was not allowing me to touch him.  Finally, after a month, I could pet him, stroke him, rub his belly and hold him in my arms for a few seconds.  After six weeks of gaining his trust, I was able to place him inside a cat carrier and take him to the veterinarian for shots and neutering. 

Five years later the kitten has grown into a plump little cat, weighing 14 lbs, and is named Paddy.  While Paddy prefers to stay outside most of the time, he slips into the house through the dog doors several times a day for food and affection. 

Although, sadly, we had to have Tyler put down a few short months after Paddy came to live with us, Paddy has our three dogs for companions and he loves them without reservation and they love him back.  We often find Paddy curled up sleeping with one of the dogs in their dog beds; and sometimes I wake up at night to find him sleeping in bed with us, which always gives me a little thrill.  I am so glad that Paddy chose to live in our woodpile. 

Earla Jean Hollon

ehollon@fulbright.com

~**~**~

 Hope

PeggyAnn Doak

    I have been thinking a lot.  And a few good people helped me to come to a realization about what appears to be miracles. So I want to tell you about another piece of my life.

    Please do not get caught up in the editing.  I never edit first time out.  That keeps me from throwing the baby out with the bath water.  I have taken Ed Nudelman's advice....slow down.  I am an intuit.  I will explain in due time, or I may not.

     I know that I have written about not finishing tenth grade.  Also most know I spent a good amount of my years as a drunk and an addict.  Before that I had had little nurturing after the age of six, and life was as close to Hell as it could be without being there literally.

     After I got clean and sober, I also made a handful of friends who believed deeply in me.  I was not exactly comfortable with that, but, hey, I figured they were better for my health.  I had decided to go to college to get an associates degree, and as I have said before, I was asked to leave the two year college and to go to the University of Maine in Orono.  Now here is where it becomes stranger than strange.

      I had a dream one night of a brick building with double wooden doors that I wanted to get into. It was not a bad dream; in fact it was a hopeful dream.  I simply needed to get inside that building and I was with some other women who were doing the same.  Walking around and around the building, trying the door, looking for a way to climb through a window and all the other things one would do to try to get inside a locked building.  I woke up never learning what was in there or why I wanted in.

       I had caught the attention of a few professors concerning my writing and acting and also my studies in all I did.  I wrote in one article that I did not know what the pentagon was.  I didn't.  I had a friend later on who would say, 'what is so interesting about Peg, is she hasn't a clue and doesn't know she hasn't a clue,'   even though I was a blood product of a 'good' family, my growing up years and some sturdy gaps.

        I am sure that some of you are aware of Smith College.  I know I mention it a lot, but I also know that because it is not a men's college, people aren't always aware of certain schools.  I know I wasn't.  However, during my time as a college student in Maine, I had befriended a Zen Community of artists;  writers, musicians, sculpturists and more.  Many of these people were world renown.  I was clueless as to why they liked me, but I went with it.  I remember sitting at the Grande Theatre in Ellsworth, Maine listening to the Zen Master himself play a sonata with another Master of music on piano.  I don't remember the piece; I really never listened to classical music because it gave me a headache.  So there I was sitting between two women, an international sculpturist, and a writer (one of whom had discovered my ability to write).  I felt really cool sitting between fame and fame, watching fame. 

The Zen Master had been a concert Pianist at Carnegie hall before WWII.  During the war he was in the far east, and due to his brilliance was able to cordon off the ideology of the Japanese and war from their Zen Buddhist Traditions.   Thus following the war, he stayed in Japan for several years studying Zen, eventually earning the honour of Master.  When he came back to the states he created a community and eventually also created a classical music group focusing on Opera.

       But the day that I was listening to the two pianos, something happened deep inside of me.  And I began to cry.  Tears were nonstop, like two streams coming from a deep well in my being.  I kept saying very lightly so as not to disturb anyone, "Don't leave me. Don't let me go," over and over like a mantra.  Oh I felt it; a deeply rooted connection to the arts that I didn't have an inkling about.  I literally cried for forty five minutes, and got cleaned up just before the lights came on.  However, how could it not be noticeable?  Yet no one said anything, and we all went back to the farm to eat.

      I also had a role in college, my first acting role in theatre, in a musical.  I had never been in a play.  I had never seen a play.  But I would watch films and sometimes I would become frustrated because I knew in my heart that I could do better.  I didn't know actually, I felt it.

       The play was a Russian musical translated into English.  I do believe that Walter the Master had brought the play in, and one of the members of the community was the musical director.  I fell in love with him, but this is not a love story, so I will continue with the topic.  I got the lead; a young Russian girl who feared that nuclear bombs and energy vaults were going to destroy the world, and she sang about wanting to live.   I sang about wanting to live.  Though I felt that I wanted to die, rather than have anyone hear me sing.  I had been teased endlessly as a kid about my horse laugh and man's voice.  I also was not allowed to play a musical instrument.  I had begun playing the organ by ear, but my stepfather brought that to a halt.

        Allan, the director of music encouraged me and before long I was standing in front of the other players, on the stage, and I began to sing, "I want to live."   Well, one woman broke down in tears and ran from the room.  Great!  I scared the hell out of her with my froggy sounds.  But then she came back in, still crying.  She apologized for running like that, but that my voice touched her so deeply she was taken by surprise.  There was a consensus.  So there I was,  first a writer and now a singer.  And it turned out, quite an actress.  But it didn't stop there.  Everything I did, I aced.

      I remembered the fellow who had overseen my GED testing.  I had taken the test when I was still drinking and drugging.  It also was the first version of the GED test that had to be scrapped because less than fifty percent of graduating high school students could pass it.  Well, I did pass it.  I had a 97% in science, which said basically that I was in the top 3% of students graduating high school along with those taking the GED testing.  I was baffled.  I had also done algebra and types of math I had never taken before.  The man wanted to put me through a four day intelligence testing process.  However I ducked any opportunity for him to talk me into it.  I felt that surely there was a fluke in the testing results, and I had no intention of losing my GED diploma.

    I began to win exclusive rewards at the university and was in the top four percent of the entire school.  There as a party on campus in my honour along with a couple of other geeks who had been inducted into the Phi Beta Phi Honour society that included all academic disciplines.  All I remember was that my son and I got a great free supper, and I was bummed that I didn't get a chance to do a speech, as I had become quite a ham, and loved to adlib.

     After time my friends at the Zen Community and friends in Belfast began to push me to attend a different college.  They said that I had out grown UMO.  I sorta felt what they were saying, basically because feminism had not hit the theatre department, and one day I asked why we didn't study any women playwrights and I was told, that that was because there were not any good ones. 

      Smith College was on everyone's minds who were close to me.  With no idea what Smith College represented, I sorta sat on the idea.  When I began asking about the school I was told "Oh wow that is a REEEEALLLY hard school to get into!"  One time I was in the Theatre director's office picking out my next semester classes, when I asked him what he was ooohing and awwing over.  He said, 'the Yale fiscal year’s moneys for their theatre department.  But don't worry, you won't be going there."  He wouldn't even tell me the amount of funding they got.  I left his office with, 'there are no good women playwrites, and you won't be going to yale.'

       So here comes the part with divine justice attached to it.  I received the Boston Globe from someone, for me to look over the program that Smith College had for non traditional students who had had their schooling interrupted.  I did not know that they did not mean high school.  Nor did they mean UMO.  They were talking about students who had started at Smith and left for various reasons, or the same from schools such as Harvard, Yale, Vasser etc.  But I didn't know nor did I care who they were choosing.  The impetus that got me going was that Walter Nowick, the Zen Master of Surry, Maine also had a full featured story in the same paper at the exact same time.  Open the page, and one page Smith College, the other page Zen Master. That was a sign to me, bright and clear.  I applied to Smith College.  All I knew was that it was a women's college, and that they would help with relocation and would allow mothers or working women to take less classes per semester  than the traditional students, but we all had to finish with the same amount of credits - same classes, same expectations.

       I got all my information like transcripts etc. sent to Smith.  Using a number two pencil I filled out the admittance form, including the essay, which later I found, that scribbling my essay of intent with a pencil was a big faux pas.  Women paid thousands to have essays done for them.  How was I to know that I was applying for one of the most prestigious schools worldwide? 

      After all was done but the waiting for an interview, I went back to living my life as it was.  I mentioned at times about my application at Smith, but I stopped after a while, because I kept getting, "OOOOHHHHH, that is a veeerrry difficult school to get into.  Don't be disappointed."

      I won't I said, and I felt that.  I had turned it over to the director of all life.  My interview came, and I showed up in a skirt and barn boots.  The interviewer appeared bored, and she asked me certain questions.  She also said that they did not read the essays before they met the students so they would not be coloured in judgment on way or the other.  I sat there, kind of embarrassed then that I had on barn boots and a skirt.  After she'd finished with the questions, she opened my transcript pages with my entire academic past.  I suppose my GED was in there also.  Then she kept looking at the folder, then at me, then at the folder and back at me.  I was a bit baffled and she seemed to be a whole lot baffled.  Finally she blurted out, "Did you know that you are this smart?!"  It was said almost as an accusation, like I'd been playing with her or something. 

      I answered truthfully, "Um, ah, I, well, guess so, maybe, could be, I really don't know."

      I was accepted.

      Then of course back home I heard, 'That is a really hard school!  It's tough!  You won't be getting all A's down there....blah de blah."

      The one moment I will never forget.  I had to get a certificate of health for my son for transfer to their school system.  The pediatrician had always treated me with disdain.  He never looked me in the eyes. His wife made sure that the town I was in when I was pregnant with my son, would not give me any financial help.  I was basically the dregs of society to him.  He was a good pediatrician and that was the only reason I took my son to him.  On that day, he was his usual, half listening, avoiding eye contact.  I told him I was moving to go to college.  He asked where was I moving to, and I said 'Northampton, MA" and he said, to do what, and I said again, 'to go to college. I am transferring,'  'Oh, what college,'   'Smith College."

         I swear to you that the man looked as though he had been hit by lightening.  His head snapped up and he said, "Northampton, Massachusetts!"  

           "That's what I said."

            "I thought you meant, Northampton, New Hampshire or....something."

             I just sat there not saying a word, though a Cheshire cat grin was beginning to find the corner of my mouth.  He kept looking at me, then at his feet, and back at me.  Finally he eeked out, "How did you do that?"   Now it must be remembered here that this man had had me put in the state hospital for a suicide attempt and drug addiction.  And now the scales were falling from his eyes.

           "I guess I am smart." 

           He started telling me that he dated a Smith woman once, didn't last, but he would go up there from Yale...and also that his mother studied theatre but not at Smith.  I looked at him and I thought, "Good Lord the man is groveling."  Then I thought. "There is a God!"

            I went to the theatre department at UMO and said to the director of theatre that I wouldn't be back.  When he asked why, I said, "Why, I'm going to Smith!" and I walked out.

           Once on Smith Campus, as I sat in their beautiful gardens, and next to Paradise Pond, I kept getting this weird feeling that the campus security were going to notice me and escort me off the property.  That feeling lasted for most of my time there.

             Maybe up until one day I was walking along a similar path that I would take between classes, but I seemed to be more aware that day, or something.  Because suddenly I stopped and found myself staring at the brick building in my dreams.  The one I was trying to get into.  It was the old sports building that had been renovated into the Smith Archives.  And guess who is in the Archives now as one exceptional student along with her writings and her Magna Cum Laude status?   This is what I need to remember when I hear the oooooh that is so hard.  The world is not all that it seems to everyone.  I am an intuit.  If I used my head I would not have made it out of the womb.  Instead I feel my way along.  Gotta shut my ears to the nay sayers.  Dreams happen all the time.  And I didn't even know Smith was my Dream.  But somebody sure did.

Peggy Ann Doak

pdoak333@peoplepc.com

~**~**~

Storytime Tapestry Angels

Angels on earth, they exist they are out there.  Angels come in all ages, shapes and sizes, civil status, and religion.  Their nature is love and their purpose is giving to the less fortunate of this world.  Storytime Tapestry angels are no exception.  These angels are loyal members who have contributed to the upkeep of Storytime Tapestry newsletter so that Storytime Tapestry can continue come to your email box 350 days of the year.

Here is our Storytime Tapestry Angels: Also, I would like to thank those of you who chose to be a silent angel and gave an anonymous donation to keep Storytime Tapestry up and running.

Clara Westerfer, Mark Crider, Rosanne Catalano, Paula Booher, Kay Seefeldt, Mariane Holbrook, Mary Ellen Grisham, Louise Nomani, Sharon Bryant, Angela Walker, Hart and Helen Dowd, Keith Ready, Ginger Morgenstern, Ellie Braun-Haley, Surinder Jandu, Bob Shaw, Carol Meeks, Charlotte Hilliard, Maria Keller