The Madness of King George

George III was King of England on July 4, 1776. He is the one referred to in 

The Madness of King George, a fine film based on a play by the 

same title. 

George III is well-known in children's history books as "the mad king who 

lost America." 

He habitually talked until the foam ran out of his mouth. Sometimes he

had convulsions, and his pages had to sit on him to keep him safe on

the floor. 

He may have suffered from porphyria, symptoms of which included blue 

urine and mental changes such as anxiety, confusion, hallucinations, 

disorientation, or paranoia. According to the king's medical records, he

also was given gentian, a plant with deep blue flowers and possible side 

effect of blue urine.

Still, there is no record that Mad King George ever incarcerated children.

First Daze

On the seventy-fifth anniversary of D-Day, I will be 75. Happy Birthday to me. 

Some things I remember. Still, I forget the name of the star of my all-time favorite movie, just when I am trying to recall it in a conversation. It is not an easy name to forget: foreign and exotic as a Bedouin Sheikh. I just can not find it in the daze of my mind. He had a very nice wife, that actress whose father was so famous in silent films, but he fell in love anyway with another beautiful actress as well. You remember the movie. I am sure you have seen it. Usually I can repeat its name, just not right this minute. 

These must be the first days of dementia. First daze. As long as I can joke about Alzheimer's, Old Timers Disease, I must not have it. If I can remember the apostrophe. 

My Cardiologist keeps after me to take a particular Rx that everyone believes will reduce my risk of heart attack, but it may increase my risk of memory loss. Even the pharmacy sheet says so. 

How will I know, when the time comes that I can not remember anything? Like I never knew it. It never happened. I never was. 

Thanksgiving 1978

Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Sill, Thanksgiving memories range from misbehaving relatives to overeaten feasts.  Probably my most memorable Thanksgiving was 1978, We lived in Brussels, Belgium, where I worked for the U.S. Department of State.  Of course, Belgium did not celebrate American Thanksgiving, but my employer took an official four-day weekend holiday, for which I rented a gites, a cabin in the woods, in the Ardennes, an easy family drive 40 miles south of Brussels.

Thursday morning, my wife Annette, three teenage children, Ward, John , and Heidi, and I hopped a train in Dinant, rode several miles up the Lesse River Valley, and rendezvoused with kayak outfitters for a float back down river.  Chatteaux lined the high river banks.  The weather was sunny but chilly.  The ride back to Dinant by kayak took hours.  It was easy to get wet.

                                                                                                   

A sign across the river about two-thirds of the way back warned: “Barrage Dangereuse.”   We grew attentive.  We discovered a concrete barrier, over which the river spilled, with a 90 degree drop of about a five feet.  I directed everyone to pull onto the bank, from which we could portage the kayaks beyond the drop.  I stood below the barrier, shouting instructions.  This went well enough, until I reached for my daughter’s hand, urging her, “Be Careful.”  My foot slipped on a slick rock, and down I went into the cold water.  Everybody laughed but me. 

When we arrived in Dinant again, everyone was cold, wet, and in need of a bathroom break.  We had parked our car, a big Ford station wagon, in the lot at the train station.  Back inside the big Ford, we cranked up the heater to full blast, and at least one of us reflexively pissed our already wet trousers.

After changing into dry clothes at the cabin in the woods, we had our Thanksgiving Dinner at a restaurant in downtown Dinant that specialized in wild game.  Frog legs, rabbit, boar, venison, plus a platter of a variety of pickles and cheeses. 

Afterwards, we returned to the cabin, turned on the television.  On the news was dramatic and incomprehensible reporting so beyond  belief that those of us who thought we had some ability to understand the French language were embarrassed that nothing on the television made any sense.  However, the problem was not language, only incomprehensible reality.  What they were reporting on the French television was the Jonestown Murder/Suicide Massacre in Guyana Nov. 18, 1978, the previous weekend.

Annette Powell Cotter b. 8/11/40

I celebrated 40 birthdays with Annette on August 11 in Atlanta, Ga., Cairo, Egypt, Brussels,Belgium, Poolesville, Md., and Nashville, Tn.

Happy Birthday to you.

Happy Birthday to you.

Happy Birthday, dear Annette.

Happy Birthday to you.    

It's a Sin to Mock a Mockingbird, Opus 2

 (Spoiler alert: If you're planning on reading one of the three million copies of GO SET A WATCHMAN already printed by its publisher, you may want to save this blog for afterwards, as it could possibly be at odds with your enjoyment of a historic best-seller. Fair warning.)

Based solely on reading TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (more than once, more than half a century ago), I thought Scout might have grown up to be a pretty decent writer.  Instead, she migrated  to New York City, where she lived for several years before returning to south Alabama at age 26 to marry a high school beau she had not seen in five years and perhaps serve as nursemaid to her 72 year old father, the much beloved Atticus Finch.  She immediately catches them in the act of attending not a topless bar or whore house but a White Citizens Council meeting. 

Are you believing this yet?  Me neither. 


Jacket photo from GO SET A WATCHMAN

The best parts of  Harper Lee’s GO SET A WATCHMAN are those, not nearly enough, in which she conjures up her childhood pals, all known fondly from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, charming Winnie the Pooh version of growing up in the Jim Crow south, if you were white.  Tempting as it is, it is not easy to write from the point view of children.  Many have tried.  Most fail.  Harper Lee has a flair for it. 

Mark Twain is the gold standard for writing in the voice of a child, such as Huckleberry Finn: “You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.”

Twain could be a merciless critic. In "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses,"
http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/rissetto/offense.html:  “Cooper’s art has some defects.  In one place in “Deerslayer,” and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115.  It breaks the record.”

I have not totaled the literary offenses in GO SET A WATCHMAN, but they are numerous and pervasive.  For TO KILL MOCKINGBIRD, a skilled editor held Harper Lee’s hand through several rewrites and revisions.  Jonathan Miller details in the July 12, 2015 New York Times “The Invisible Hand Behind Harper Lee’s TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.”  Throughout GO SET A WATCHMAN, shallow intellectual argument, even unedited notes, appear more regularly than fiction.  It is easy to imagine the original submission of Ms. Lee’s manuscript evoking a response such as, “Focus on the youngsters.  Forget the rest.”  To her credit, she did.

GO SET A WATCHMAN is published by HarperCollins, a subsidiary of News Corp., Rupert Murdoch, owner and master.  Prominent among media properties of News Corp. is Fox News, purveyors of, well, don't get me started, but I am certainly suspicious when their media products include apologia such as in GO SET A WATCHMAN, historical distortions, and blatant states-rights, every man for himself conservatism.  If a soft and sweet liberal icon is besmirched in the process, oh, happy day at News Corp.  

It's a Sin to Mock a Mockingbird

 (This article appears in the current issue of The Republic --The Republic of East Alabama Artists; Republic for short)

By William Cotter

One personality quiz game on the internet invites the fantasy: What famous character from literature are you?

My wife of  40 years had earned two degrees in English from Georgia State University in Atlanta.  What could be more fun than being a famous character? When she answered all the questions, her fictional alter-ego was identified as Scout from To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee of Monroeville, Alabama.  I took the same quiz.  Nothing up my sleeve, no wagering or side bets allowed. Who was I?  Atticus Finch, Scout’s father.

.

Indeed my wife’s father had been venerated and beloved, the second of four consecutive generations of South Alabama lawyers, the most recent of which had named a daughter Harper, as also had actor Gregory Peck, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of Atticus Finch in the movie version of To Kill a Mockingbird. 

​

A. C. Lee, Harper Lee's father, was a Monroeville, Alabama, lawyer, newspaper publisher, and state legislator.

Gregory Peck won an Oscar for his performance as Atticus Finch in the movie version of To Kill a Mockingbird. Peck and Harper Lee became friends, and he named his daughter Harper.     

                                                                                    

Harper Lee’s novel has sold more than a million copies every year since its publication in 1960, ranking it on the all-time best-seller list along with The Bible and Gone With the Wind, thanks partly to its success with high school English teachers and their students interested in justice and injustice.  Still, without explanation and little comment, Harper Lee has published nothing since, until the recent announcement that a sequel will be released this summer entitled Go Set A Watchman.  All the more unexpected because Harper Lee is now 89 years old, mostly blind, profoundly deaf, and minimally communicative in a Monroeville nursing home. 

For many years, Harper Lee’s sister Alice looked after legal matters.  A lawyer, like their daddy, Alice lived to be 100.  At one time, they had been hoodwinked into signing away copyrights for To Kill a Mockingbird.  Then a lawsuit was filed and ultimately settled but terms undisclosed.  Who is looking after Harper Lee’s interest at this time, now that sister Alice has died? 

The publisher of Go Set A Watchman says the manuscript was discovered attached to a file copy of the original manuscript of To Kill a Mockingbird.  Does that make it at best discarded remnants, chaff separated from the wheat, sweepings piled in a corner and now hailed as long-lost by the mill owners?

Monroeville has been designated the literary capital of Alabama by the state legislature, surprise experts on the subject but with the certain knowledge that Harper Lee and Truman Capote were childhood pals, two years apart in age, and next-door neighbors on Alabama Ave., barely a hopscotch from the Monroe County courthouse, where they stowed away in the balcony like Becky Thatcher and Tom Sawyer to watch trials instead of going to the movies.  

 

​

Mel's Dairy Dream now occupies the lot on Alabama Ave., where Nelle Harper Lee and Truman Capote, childhood pals, played hopscotch.  The stone wall remnant is on the property where Capote lived with his old maid aunts.

​

Half a century without a sequel to Harper Lee's classic To Kill A Mockingbird, this summer Go Set A Watchman appears miraculously, though she is blind, deaf, and minimally communicative at age 89 in a Monroeville nursing home

The historic courthouse has been preserved beautifully and thoughtfully as a museum worthy of Harper Lee’s literary legacy.  The Monroeville Chamber of Commerce estimates 30,000 visitors a year, about equal to the permanent population of the county.  In the spring, live performances of To Kill a Mockingbird are scheduled for the courthouse, and the Alabama Writers’ Symposium nearby culminates in the Harper Lee Award for some gifted writer.  These events are well attended.  All the hotel rooms in Monroeville were booked up solid, when I tried to make reservations.  I stayed in Evergreen, 22 miles away, at the same exit of I-65. 

Some citizens of Evergreen declared they believed the publication of Go Set A Watchman, the sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, is “a hoax.”  However, a loyal fan from far off Post Falls, Idaho wrote to me, “I had just watched the movie again (after many years) a few weeks before this became known…that there was a sequel.  I’m sorry the same actors won’t be available for a movie—but I can read the sequel and imagine them.”

The friendship between Nelle Harper Lee and Truman Capote survived into adulthood, after each had moved to New York.  Ms. Lee accompanied Capote to Kansas to research the gruesome family-murder that was the subject of his non-fiction book In Cold Blood.  Capote enjoyed literary success years before To Kill A Mockingbird appeared.  Almost from the beginning, whispers could be heard that perhaps Capote had a hand in the writing of To Kill A Mockingbird.  No specifics.  No denials.  No introductions to publishers, no good advice.  Just a smash hit book, followed by over half a century of silence.

On the cover of  the first edition of To Kill a Mockingbird, Capote quipped, “Someone rare has written this very fine first novel, a writer with the liveliest sense of life, and the warmest, most authentic sense of humor.”  Who would say such a thing, if he were talking about himself?

Harper Lee once said Truman Capote had “landed from Mars.”

Birthdays and Beyond

I gave myself a birthday present, a roll top secretary, not a person but a small writing desk.  I took some cast offs to the Goodwill and was irresistibly attracted by the desk, in great condition, needing only a little wax on the wood slides for the drawers, maybe a touch up here and there on the exterior stain.

My age now is three score and eleven.  The things that you’re liable to read in The Bible.  Borrowed time.  Overtime.  If I had ever suspected for a minute I might live this long, I would have considered taking better care of myself.

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” – Mark Twain.

We are all made of the same stuff as the rest of the universe, the vast spaces, the stars, including the ones you can still see, even though they are no longer there.  Human life selects from the Periodic Table, which is not a piece of furniture.  One from column A, another from column B, column C, etc, like choices from a foreign and incomprehensible menu.   

According to Wikipedia, “Almost 99% of the mass of the human body is made up of six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. Only about 0.85% is composed of another five elements: potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine, and magnesium. All are necessary to life.”

Wikipedia does not guess at the composition of the human soul, whether electrolytes or restless atoms, always seeking to rearrange themselves and spread the news.   Or love, like party balloons filled with the noble gas helium, lifted to the ceiling or beyond.  

Lady Macbeth

After Shakespeare wrote MACBETH,  maybe there was not much else left to say about ambition, power, guilt, lust. Then along comes Giuseppe Verdi. Now Anna Netrebko.    

Verdi's MACBETH opened the 2014-15 season of the Metropolitan Opera's Live in HD, its ninth of high definition broadcasts to 2,000 movie theaters in 69 countries.

The first encore of the season is scheduled for Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. local time.

Diva Netrebko's Lady Macbeth:

"...a sensation at the Metropolitan Opera, winning roars from audiences...and rave reviews." -- New York Times.

"The smoky, covered timbre, expanded to full-throttle volume, and the piercing, steel-edged top were perfect for this single-minded character, driven by an ambition that stops at nothing." -- Wall Street Journal.

"One of the greatest triumphs in Met history." -- Bloomberg.

"What Netrebko lacks in subtlety, she makes up for in bosom." -- Cotterpen.  

The reminder of the season:

MoMozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro

M

October 18, 2014, 12:55 pm ET. Encore: Wed., Oct. 22, 2014, 6:30 p.m.

Met Music Director James Levine conducts a spirited new production of Mozart’s masterpiece, directed by Richard Eyre, who sets the action of this classic domestic comedy in an 18th-century manor house in Seville during the 1930s. Dashing bass-baritone Ildar Abdrazakov leads the cast in the title role of the clever servant, opposite Marlis Petersen as his bride, Susanna, Peter Mattei as the philandering Count they work for, Amanda Majeski as the long-suffering Countess, and Isabel Leonard as the libidinous pageboy Cherubino.

Approximate running time 3:50

 

Bizet’s Carmen

November 1, 2014, 12:55 pm ET. Encore: Wed., Nov. 5, 2014, 6:30 p.m.

Richard Eyre’s mesmerizing production of Bizet’s steamy melodrama returns with mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili singing her signature role of the ill-fated gypsy temptress. Aleksandrs Antonenko plays her desperate lover, the soldier Don José, and Ildar Abdrazakov is the swaggering bullfighter, Escamillo, who comes between them. Pablo Heras-Casado conducts the irresistible score, which features one beloved and instantly recognizable melody after another.

Approximate running time 3:40

Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia

November 22, 2014, 12:55 pm ET. Encore: Wed., Nov. 26, 6:30 p.m.

The Met’s effervescent production of Rossini’s classic comedy—featuring some of the most instantly recognizable melodies in all of opera—stars Isabel Leonard as the feisty Rosina, Lawrence Brownlee as her conspiring flame, and Christopher Maltman as the endlessly resourceful and charming barber, himself. Michele Mariotti conducts the vivid and tuneful score.

Approximate running time 3:25

Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

December 13, 2014, 12 pm ET. Encore: Wed., Dec. 17, 6:30 p.m.

James Levine returns to one of his signature Wagner works conducting this epic comedy—back at the Met for the first time in eight years—about a group of Renaissance “master singers” whose song contest unites a city. Michael Volle, Johan Botha, and Annette Dasch lead the superb international cast in this charming and magisterial celebration of the power of music and art.

Approximate running time 6:00

Lehár’s The Merry Widow—New Production

January 17, 2015, 12:55 pm ET. Encore: Wed, Jan 21, 6:30 p.m.

The great Renée Fleming stars as the beguiling femme fatale who captivates all Paris in Lehár’s enchanting operetta, seen in a new staging by Broadway virtuoso director and choreographer Susan Stroman and her design team of Julian Crouch and costume designer William Ivey Long, creating an art-nouveau setting that climaxes with singing and dancing grisettes at the legendary Maxim’s. Nathan Gunn co-stars as Danilo and Kelli O’Hara is Valencienne. Andrew Davis conducts.

Approximate running time 3:00

Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann

January 31, 2015, 12:55 pm ET. Encore: Wed., Feb. 4, 6:30 p.m.

The magnetic tenor Vittorio Grigolo takes on the tortured poet and unwitting adventurer of the title of Offenbach’s operatic masterpiece, in the Met’s wild, kaleidoscopic production. Hibla Gerzmava, Erin Morley, and Christine Rice sing the three heroines—each an idealized embodiment of some aspect of Hoffmann’s desire. Thomas Hampson portrays the shadowy Four Villains, and Yves Abel conducts.

Approximate running time 3:45

Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta /
Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle—New Production

February 14, 2015, 12:30 pm ET. Encore: Wed., Feb. 18, 6:30 p.m.

On the heels of her triumphant Met performances in Eugene Onegin, soprano Anna Netrebko takes on another Tchaikovsky heroine in the first opera of this intriguing double bill, consisting of an enchanting fairy tale (Iolanta) followed by an erotic psychological thriller (Duke Bluebeard’s Castle). Netrebko stars as the beautiful blind girl who experiences love for the first time in Iolanta, while Nadja Michael is the unwitting victim of the diabolical Bluebeard, played by Mikhail Petrenko. Both operas are directed by Mariusz Trelinski, who was inspired by classic noir films of the 1940s. Iolanta also stars Piotr Beczala, and Valery Gergiev conducts both operas.

Approximate running time 3:40

Rossini’s La Donna del Lago—Met Premiere

March 14, 2015, 12:55 pm ET. Encore: Wed., March 18, 6:30 p.m.

Bel canto superstars Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Flórez join forces for this Rossini showcase of vocal virtuosity, set in the medieval Scottish highlands and based on a beloved novel by Sir Walter Scott. DiDonato is the “lady of the lake” of the title, and Flórez is the king who relentlessly pursues her, their vocal fireworks embellishing the romantic plot in this Met premiere production conducted by Michele Mariotti.

Approximate running time 3:30

Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana /
Leoncavallo's Pagliacci—New Production

April 25, 2015, 12:30 pm ET, Encore Wed, Apr. 29, 6:30 p.m.

Opera’s most enduring tragic double bill. Marcelo Álvarez  playing the dual tenor roles of Turiddu in Cavalleria Rusticana and Canio in Pagliacci.bbb Eva-Maria Westbroek (Cav) and Patricia Racette (Pag) sing the unlucky heroines, and Met Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi is on the podium.

Approximate running time 3:30

Out Where God Is

Joshua Thompson, grandson of my sister Ouida, took this wonderful photograph of the old growth forest nave in Seward Park, Seattle, Washington, where we scattered some of my wife Annette's ashes on her birthday, which is Joshua's birthday as well.  I chose this sight, because it reminded me of a song Annette had written years ago, when we lived in Nashville, and she was a staff writer for Polygram Music.

Out Where God Is
By Annette Cotter

My daddy was a born again bible reading Christian.
Problem was that Sunday was his one day off a week.
So daddy explained to Mama even Jesus loved his fishing.
And me and him would hold an early service at the creek.

Out where God is, where the meadow lark
Proclaims the living word.
Out where God is
Where the spirit whispers in the grass
And sings in every bird.
Out where God is....Out where God is.

Joshua's girlfriend Amy flew in from Panama City to surprise him on his birthday.   Charlotte, Joshua, Amy, and I scattered ashes in the eternal forest.  We offered readings from poems and songs, even sang some. 

Excerpts:.


Mary
By Patty Griffin

  Mary you're covered in roses, you're covered in ashes

You're covered in rain
You're covered in babies, you're covered in slashes
You're covered in wilderness, you're covered in stains....

Mary she moves behind me
She leaves her fingerprints everywhere
Everytime the snow drifts, everytime the sand shifts
Even when the night lifts, she's always there....

Long Afternoon at the Edge of Little Sister Pond
By Mary Oliver

As for life, 
I'm humbled, 
I'm without words
sufficient to say

how it has been hard as flint, 
and soft as a spring pond, 
both of these
and over and over, 

and long pale afternoons besides, 
and so many mysteries
beautiful as eggs in a nest, 
still unhatched ....

There is hardly time to think about

stopping, and lying down at last
to the long afterlife, to the tenderness
yet to come, when
time will brim over the singular pond, and become forever....

END OF DAYS
By Marge Piercy

always with cats, the end
comes creeping over the two of you—
she stops eating, his back legs
no longer support him, she leans
to your hand ....
 

Then there is the long weepy
trip to the vets, the carrier no
longer necessary, the last time
in your lap. The injection is quick.
Simply they stop breathing
in your arms. You bring them
home to bury in the flower garden,
planting a bush over a deep grave.

That is how I would like to cease,
held in a lover’s arms and quickly
fading to black like an old fashioned
movie embrace....

I want someone who loves me
there, not a doctor with forty patients
and his morality to keep me sort
of, kind of alive....


We read these in the forest, Out Where God Is.

 

Charlotte Cassady, daughter of Annette's sister Pat, sang the great southern classic, "Will the Circle be Unbroken," a beautiful interpretation, with her dedication: "This song is for the woman who taught me to sing it and to believe that the human spirit trumps all else."  Charlotte explained, "When  I was 12 or 13 years old, Aunt Annette began teaching me to play the guitar.  I had to learn to read chords.  While she and Bill and Mama visited in the living room, I sat in the back bedroom with the Takamine guitar Annette had picked out for me and practiced from a songbook she gave me.  The first song I learned was "Banks of the Ohio."  I called Aunt Annette back there to the back bedroom to hear it.  I played one or two stanzas and, before I even finished, Aunt Annette ran out into the livingroom and yelled, "goddamn, Pat, Charlotte can sing.  She's got a good voice.  She has a sense of the song."  From then on I felt confident about this.  I was sure Aunt Annette was saying this because she believed it to be true, and so I believed it to.  And all my life, singing would be a source of pleasure and uninhibited expression for me."  

 

After scattering Annette's ashes, Joshua, Amy, Charlotte, and I sang together, "Happy Birthday to you.  Happy Birthday to you.  Happy Birthday, dear Annette.  Happy Birthday to you."

 

 

Pursuit of Happiness

I fired up the grill for my Fourth of July cookout.  Ground lamb patties, turnips, Portobello mushrooms.  Maybe that is what you’re having, too.  Maybe not.

The Declaration of Independence, which we celebrate:

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--

It does not say, “pursuit of hamburgers and hot dogs.”  It says, whatever floats your boat.  Is this a great country, or what?

Among the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.  Each became Secretary of State, then President of The United States.  They were lifelong friends, sometimes political rivals.  Estranged for years, they reconciled before their deaths, within hours of each other in 1826, on July 4.  Jefferson is often quoted on his deathbed asking, “Is it the Fourth yet?”

Benjamin Franklin collaborated with them as the committee that wrote The Declaration of Independence.  Jefferson “ought to appear at the head of this business," they agreed.  “Reason first: you are a Virginian….Reason second: I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular.  You are very much otherwise.  Reason third: You can write ten times better than I can,” Adams said to Jefferson.

The 56 signatures on the Declaration of Independence:

   Button Gwinnett
   Lyman Hall
   George Walton
   William Hooper
   Joseph Hewes
   John Penn
   Edward Rutledge
   Thomas Heyward, Jr.
   Thomas Lynch, Jr.
   Arthur Middleton
   John Hancock
   Samuel Chase
   William Paca
   Thomas Stone
   Charles Carroll
   George Wythe
   Richard Henry Lee
   Thomas Jefferson
   Benjamin Harrison
   Thomas Nelson, Jr.
   Francis Lightfoot Lee
   Carter Braxton
   Robert Morris
   Benjamin Rush
   Benjamin Franklin
   John Morton
   George Clymer
   James Smith
   George Taylor
   James Wilson
   George Ross
   Caesar Rodney
   George Read
   Thomas McKean
   William Floyd
   Philip Livingston
   Francis Lewis
   Lewis Morris
   Richard Stockton
   John Witherspoon
   Francis Hopkinson
   John Hart
   Abraham Clark
   Josiah Bartlett
   William Whipple
   Samuel Adams
   John Adams
   Robert Treat Paine
   Elbridge Gerry
   Stephen Hopkins
   William Ellery
   Roger Sherman
   Samuel Huntington
   William Williams
   Oliver Wolcott
   Matthew Thornton

The Founding Fathers,

Who would all hang together, or surely they would hang separately.

Fragile as a Butterfly’s Wings

My wife of 40 years died four days after my 70^th birthday.  Maybe I am old enough so that I can almost stand it.  Almost.  Still, it is the worse thing that has ever happened to me, so far.  She had lung cancer. “Winstons taste good, like a cigarette should.”  Fifty years of them will kill you, not necessarily before your time but painfully, slowly, with mixed memories of a cigarette and a cup of coffee, or while studying for an exam, or after something pleasurable. An addiction from the devil. 

In hindsight, I missed my two best chances to die by surprise, no long-suffering before the inevitable, bitter end, for anyone, family or self.  I was in a meningitis coma for weeks eight years ago, two years ago,  a heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery.  In death, surprise is the way to go.

I learned how to write an obituary when I was barely 18 years old working for The Atlanta Jourrnal.  I did not know anything about death, had no first hand experience with it.   Every obituary begins with the who, what, when, where of basic journalism.  Add some biographical information.  Let the facts and circumstances speak for themselves.  Everybody dies.  As the real Hank Williams said, “you’ll never get out of this world alive.”

Annette Powell Cotter died Tuesday at home in Pine Lake, Ga.  She was 73. Born in Andalusia, Alabama, of a dynasty of lawyers, she graduated from Andalusia High School, attended Florida State University briefly, Huntingdon College longer, and then graduated from Georgia State University, where she also earned an M.A. in English.

She was the first editor of CREATIVE LOAFING.  As anyone knows who ever sat at her table, she was a skilled, talented, and creative chef.  

She was a poet and songwriter and lived for many years in Nashville, Tn., where she was a staff writer for Polygram Music.  Songs of hers were recorded by George Strait, Pam Tillis, Colin Raye, Linda Davis and other country artists.

She is survived by her husband, William Cotter; sister, Pat Cassidy; brother, Ab Powell; son, Chauncey Ward Hall, III; daughter, Heidi Carroll; niece, Charlotte Cassidy; grandchildren, Shannon Hall and Chance Hall; as well as beloved step-grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, the family believes Annette would be pleased with contributions in her memory to any local shelter, support, and rescue of children and other defenseless animals.

In her final days, Annette experienced spasms, morphine hallucinations, conversations in which I could hear only one side.  She lifted her head off her arms long enough to say, “I thought I would run into your momma and daddy” (both long dead).  “I may have been in the wrong place.”

I said. “Look for Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings.  That’s the right place.”  She actually laughed.

Why Argue?

I try not to argue with people who:

--Know less about the subject than I do.

--Vote against everything I vote for.

--Have not lived long enough.

--Do not know the difference between a fact and a wish.

--Need to watch horror movies to experience fear.

--Are still learning the basics.

--Have more money than I do.

--Have less money than I do.

--Are taking mind-altering substances.

--Should be taking mind-altering substances.

--Have not read a book since school let out.

--Do not have children, pets, or other dependents.

--Won’t eat something they can not spell.

Who else is there?

Sevastopol on the Black Sea

I have traveled outside the United States just enough to have little or no excuse for ignorance of world geography and history.  My first ride on the Paris Metro from Gare de L’Est or perhaps Gare du Nord en route to Left Bank destinations Boulevard St. Michel, Saint-Germain des-pres, or Jardin du Luxembourg, the Metro station with the un-Francophonic name of Sebastopol caught my attention.  In those days, “the library” was still where I went to look up information in the World Book Encyclopedia and the World Atlas.  No Wikipedia.  No Mapquest. No Map Crow to tell you the distance between Sevastopol and Sochi (which few Americans ever heard of before the recent Winter Olympics from Russia) is 315 miles via the Black Sea or its northern coast.

The Russian Black Sea Fleet makes its home in Sevastopol, the strategic port of Crimea, sometimes considered the Ukraine, sometimes not.  Russian Prince Grigory Potemkin built not a village but a naval fortress at the harbor for Czarina Catherine the Great and named it Sevastopol in 1784, half a decade before George Washington became President of the United States, four decades before James Monroe’s State of the Union address articulated to Congress the doctrine that interference by European states in the Americas would be considered hostile acts against the United States.  According to the Putin Doctrine of 2014, NATO, the EU, and the U.S. are not welcome on the northern shores of the Black Sea.

The Black Sea, about 168,500 square miles, connects to the Mediterranean via the Aegean Sea through the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles.  Sometimes. Water flows in and out of the Black Sea from both directions.  Levels can reach lows that interrupt navigation all the way to the Mediterranean and turn the Black Sea into a lake, albeit twice the size of The Great Lakes of North America, Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, which cover an area of 94,250 square miles along the U.S./Canada border, and the Atlantic Ocean can almost always be reached through the St. Lawrence Seaway. 

Back in the U.S.S.R. days, Nikita Krushchev, well-known champion of democracy, liberty, and self-determination, transferred the Crimea to the Ukraine in 1954.

Je Ne Regrette Rien

“La vie en rose” were the first words I ever heard in the French language.  It was love at first hearing.  Those were lyrics of a song, but to me words in the French language are always musical.  The word for “song” in French: chanson.

I turned 21 in France, courtesy of the U.S. Army.  I should have taken more advantage of the opportunity.  Years later, I lived in Belgium, a bi-lingual country because of tight quarters with its neighbors, France and Holland.  By then, I had a family.  We took a weekend, the American Thanksgiving holiday, and rented a cabin in the Ardennes and kayaked a few miles of the Lesse River past les chateaux high on the banks to Dinant.  Afterwards we feasted at a restaurant offering  lapin, caille, canard, cuisses de grenouille.  When we returned to the cabin, we watched stunned and puzzled at the reports on French television of the cyanide laced Kool Aid suicides in Jonestown, Guyana, that day.  Serious doubt plunged our language skills to to the level of failure, because we could not comprehend the acts about which we thought we were hearing.

I will be 70 years old my next birthday.  Maybe.  At 62, I was hospitalized with meningitis and in a coma for three weeks.  I suspect that is as close as anyone gets to dying, then can tell about it.  I am telling you, it was painless and trouble free for me.  For my loved ones who had to watch and wait, it was not.  Since then, I have also had quadruple bypass heart surgery.  If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself. 

“La vie en rose.”  Non, ce n’est pas.  Of course.

Parents sometimes get to bury their children.  It is not supposed to work that way, but even the expected sequence of events is not much better, “Hush, little baby.  Don’t you cry.  You know your mama’s bound to die.”

Songs are poems, with music.  The oldest poems were all songs.  Oh, how I love poets and songwriters.

Edith Paif, chanteuse, made “La vie en rose” famous worldwide.  Her style was charismatic, brave, ironic. 

Long Afternoon at the Edge of Little Sister Pond
By Mary Oliver

As for life, 
I'm humbled, 
I'm without words
sufficient to say

how it has been hard as flint, 
and soft as a spring pond, 
both of these
and over and over, 

and long pale afternoons besides, 
and so many mysteries
beautiful as eggs in a nest, 
still unhatched

though warm and watched over
by something I have never seen— 
a tree angel, perhaps,
or a ghost of holiness. 

Every day I walk out into the world
to be dazzled, then to be reflective.
It suffices, it is all comfort—
along with human love,

dog love, water love, little-serpent love,
sunburst love, or love for that smallest of birds
flying among the scarlet flowers.
There is hardly time to think about

stopping, and lying down at last
to the long afterlife, to the tenderness
yet to come, when
time will brim over the singular pond, and become forever,

and we will pretend to melt away into the leaves.
As for death,
I can't wait to be the hummingbird,
can you?

Foreign Service Memorial

The American Foreign Service Association maintains a memorial at the west end of the diplomatic lobby, the C Street entrance to the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C.  On plaques are the names of Foreign Service personnel who have lost their lives in the line of duty.  The latest listed include Ambassador Chris Stevens and his telecommunications officer Sean Smith: “Terrorist Attack – Libya 2012,” say the inscriptions.  Secretary of State was Hillary Clinton.  President was Barack Obama. 

The first name on the memorial is that of Revolutionary War patriot William Palfrey, lost at sea in 1780 on his way to France to serve as consul-general, by unanimous appointment of the Second Continental Congress, of which John Hancock was president.  The American Foreign Service at that time consisted mainly of John Jay, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. 

AFSA currently lists 244 names from deaths in 64 foreign countries and at sea.  Assassinations, embassy bombings, yellow fever, cholera have claimed lives of Foreign Service personnel, those who work at embassies, consulates, and missions worldwide, some locations lovely and/or exotic, some not. 

Earliest victim of violence appears to have been Harris E. Fudger, murdered in Bogata, Colombia, 1825.  Secretary of State was Henry Clay of Kentucky.  President was John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State for the previous President (James Monroe) and son of the second President of the United States (John Adams).

Many Foreign Service civilians died in Vietnam, along with 58,000+ military.  Secretaries of State included Dean Rusk, William Rogers, and Henry Kissinger, Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.

The suicide bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, 1983, killed 63 people, many of their names engraved on the AFSA memorial.  Secretary of State was George Shultz.  President was Ronald Reagan.

U.S. Foreign Service Officer David Foy was specifically targeted in an attack on the consulate compound in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2006, the third in the same number of years.  President George Bush was scheduled to visit in two days.  Condolezza Rice was Secretary of State