Yogurt Pie

It is as bad as it sounds. It was maybe in 1979 or 1980 in Knoxville, Tennessee.

My sister, Keely, who was eleven or twelve, contracted mono that summer. We think it was due to her swimming nonstop at Dean Hill Pool, where the UT football coaches got a break in membership dues. We always got a swimming pool membership with each of Dad’s football teams.

I remember in Ames, Iowa, Mom used to say, "We need to go eat up our minimum!" Our minimum was $15.00 a month at the Ames Golf and Country Club.

I shot my only birdie in golf at Dean Hill in Knoxville in the days that I was trying to be the next Nancy Lopez and played on the boys golf team at Knoxville Catholic. My dad wanted that for me - to be Nancy Lopez - my golf game truly interested him in a way nothing about me had before. And it wasn't personal - the only thing a football coach can really focus on is football and maybe his own golf game in the month of June before two-a-day starts.

Anyway, Keely was so sick and not hungry at all for anything, and it was strange to see her so unwell. She was an easy-going sunny kid who was always eager to play, and she didn't want to play anymore. She didn't even have the energy argue with Casey, who was a year older, and bossed her around.

Mom called them, "The Bickersons."

But that summer, Keely only liked drinking pineapple juice from a can, so Mom bought huge cans of pineapple juice from Winn Dixie.

It was also the first time any of us had been sick for longer than a few days. We children back then had no allergies, and we didn't need braces, and we could disappear for hours on end walking our giant black lab, Clancy, in the woods and nobody thought a thing about it.

We were feral children told to be back by dark. Clancy, our dog, was also our brother, who patiently wore ballet or football costumes, depending on who was dressing him up.

We fought a lot as kids - who gets to dress up Clancy? Whose turn is it to clean the kitchen?

Then Keely got mono, which meant we had to learn to be sympathetic.

What?

We weren't used to being sympathetic. We were told "toughen up!" But when one of us got sick, Mom was always gentle and kind - if we proved we had a fever.

Then crack open the ginger ale and saltine crackers and television on the couch. It was great! Andmaybe penicillin if it was strep, but we'd got a shot and as Mom recently said, "You kids would be back on the court by nightfall after the shot."

Anyway, yogurt pie that hot green summer in Knoxville.

Somehow, I found this recipe for a fresh summer dessert. It was so simple, and there would be no more swimming for Keely whose glands were swollen with mono. Maybe the recipe was in Ladies Home Journal. Maybe it was in Red Book? Maybe it was in McCalls? Those were all the magazines Mom read, and, maybe that is where I discovered a recipe for yogurt pie.

Here is the recipe. Two cups of flavored yogurt - blueberry, raspberry, strawberry - you choose. And then either a cup or two of Cool Whip. Mix it together into this kind of pink or purple lava and pour it into a graham cracker crust ready-baked pie shell.

Then chill for an hour if you want. (Sometimes we couldn't wait.) And voila! It was so good and so creamy and sweet and so easy that we made it everyday for Keely who lay pale and wan on the couch or in her bedroom. It was how we could be sympathetic.

"Make your sister yogurt pie and give her a glass of pineapple juice." It was a miracle.

And we all got to eat too. We ate it everyday. Day after day.

"Mom, we need to make yogurt pies! Go to Winn Dixie!"

And Mom would always get the ingredients because Keely had mono. Mom told us she was going to be sick for six to eight weeks. Unheard of!

But by the end of week two, Keely did not want anymore yogurt pie.

None of us did.

It was a short-lived enthusiastic attempt at a new recipe that we gorged ourselves on and then couldn't bear the sight of anymore. As for Keely and her mono? Mom says she willed herself to get better, and she was well in about three weeks.

But I remember her dark room in the early days of mono and the yogurt pies, and sometimes, I pretended Keely was Beth March, or maybe, Mary Ingalls, who goes blind in "Little House on the Prairie." And I was taking care of her giving her yogurt pie and pineapple juice and reading her THE SECRET GARDEN or A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN or LITTLE WOMEN.

None of us got sick that summer.

"Don't drink after your sister!"

We didn't but I even taught the boys how to make yogurt pie and we'd serve it to her in bed like she was a little princess, and it felt like we were doing good in the world - caring for the sick.

Yellow Mountain

It was the summer of 1987 and we were living and teaching English in China. There are five holy mountains in China, and we climbed a few of them.

Mount Tai - https://www.chinahighlights.com/mount-tai/

We definitely climbed Mount Tai in the spring - and the legend was if you climbed the 10,000 steps you would live to be 100. On Mount Tai, we saw a museum of strange things - siamese twin fetuses pickled in jars and other oddities. I remember ancient women whose feet had clearly been bound, climbing in groups to the top, and the men who carried vegetables up the 10,000 steps every day had calf muscles like ledges.

We also climbed Yellow Mountain in the summer - there are five peaks on Yellow Mountain, straight up and straight straight down, and we climbed four out of the five.

I remember a long-legged man in our group who began to tremble after too many steps downward, and he had to lie down to ease the muscle cramping.

It rained nonstop.

And in all the rain, I grew sick on Yellow Mountain, so much so, that we needed to leave and buy tickets to Shanghai and get back to civilization. One of our students, Lu Zhong Hai, was also traveling with us, and he had asked us for an English name, so I offered,  "Duffy," my brother's name, and he liked it.

I was homesick, and I liked being able to say my. brother’s name all the way over in China.

Chinese Duffy or Lu Zhong Hai led us up and down Yellow Mountain and he would say things like, "Prepare for the miracle" when the clouds would begin to part to allow a glimpse of sun to shine on us as he read to from the guide book.

“Prepare for the miracle, my friends.”

Then I got sick, so we decided to leave. The ticket booth area was crowded that day with impatient travelers. Kiffen asked for tickets to Shanghai, and the ticket lady, nodded, and prepared them.

Then Kiffen showed the woman his teacher ID and government ID, which meant we could buy our tickets with Chinese money and not FEC - in those long ago days, FEC could be NOT exchanged into dollars, but Chinese money - Yuan - could only be spent in China. We had just a few American Express Travelers' cheques left, and we were paid in Yuan, not FEC.

Each month, I received 700 Yuan, and Kiffen received 600 Yuan, in thick rolls of bills. I had an MFA in Playwriting and he had a BA in Psychology, which was why there was a slight difference.

But that day, when the ticket counter lady saw our teacher Yuan money and not the FEC cash, she spoke sharply in Chinese something to the effect of - "No more tickets to Shanghai. All gone! No, no, no! Sold out!"

I was sitting on the floor of this station, feverish and only mildly interested in the escalating drama, which felt like a liquid dream.

Kiffen began to argue with her. "You were about to sell me tickets to Shanghai!"

"No more, sold out. No tickets to Shanghai. Next!"

I have a very even tempered husband. who really finds the good in everyone, but he did not find the good in everyone that day - not with the ticket lady who refused to sell us tickets to Shanghai.

The fight blew up fast and the ticket window was so small, you could only fit your hand through, but Kiffen's rage was so enormous that I could actually see him shrinking and flying through the tiny ticket window for justice.

By then a crowd had gathered to watch the storm.

He could even see the tickets to Shanghai she had prepared, and he wanted to grab them fast.

But what really happened in the end was that she threw tickets at him to another town, not Shangahai, but a little hamlet kind of along the way, and then SLAM, BAAM - She shut the window entirely.

CLOSED CLOSED CLOSED.

Nobody could buy anymore tickets that afternoon. Maybe they only closed for lunch, but it felt permanent and final.

The crowd dispersed, muttering and resigned, and we made our way to the train station with Lu Zhong Hai. I didn't care. I was so sick nothing mattered.

But somehow Kiffen had bought us soft sleeper, so I could rest. I climbed into the bunk and slept and felt like I was on the edge of the world about to fall off somewhere near Yellow Mountain.

Later, I learned he and Lu Zhong Hai (Duffy) went off to get beers. It was all such a long time ago. Lu Zhong Hai ended up at Nottingham to study. Where is he now?  Does he remember the wild ticket rage and the slamming of windows, the crowd yelling and then dispersing on Yellow Mountain?

It was our first year of marriage, the year of the rabbit.

The Little Red Coat

This is the story of Norah and the little red coat. Many years ago, Keith Allan, a filmmaker, needed a kid in his horror short called "The Big Bed.

Basically, a tiny child gets attacked by a psycho pillow and wins.

It lasts all of a minute or maybe two.

Keith is an old family friend, and we love him. He and my sister, Keely, went to Florida State together, and Keith became our friend over the years. Or maybe Keith and Keely met in Seattle? It’s all blurring together.

For payment, Keith gave Norah this little red coat with furry polka-dot trim on the cuffs and collar. She loved it and pranced around in it immediately before the shoot.

But the filming needed to begin as it was already getting late on a Monday night - a school night. But Keith had said it wouldn't take long, and that Flannery and Lucy could help with props and lighting etc.

A family affair of filmmaking.

So the night we arrived, Flannery and Lucy walked little sister, Norah, into Keith’s apartment, while I parked the car.

The actor playing Norah's mother said to them, "Oh, are you the parents?"

I did not hear this, but Lucy was fuming when I arrived and whispered to me, "I knew I looked like a
teen mom."

"What are you talking about?"

“The lady wanted to know if WE WERE THE PARENTS? GROSS?”

I worked with teen moms then and Lucy didn't want to be a teenager with a baby, so I assured her she did NOT look like Norah’s mother, but she was still upset.

And Norah only cared about the coat and modeled it for us. Flannery was excited to help with the filmmaking.

Anyway, the filming lasted for hours, and around midnight, Norah was exhausted. We were all exhausted.

But as I said, Keith was a family friend - still, it was getting late and Norah decided she was done.

She folded her arms, scrunched up her face, and curled up on the bed, refusing to do one more take with the
psycho pillow.

She scowled and said, "I hate this. Let's go home, Mama."

I could see Keith's frustration and feel the tension in the room, but nothing could tempt her to begin filming again - no bribing, no pleading.

We all tried, but it was over.

Please Norah, come on, Norah!!! Norah!

Then Keith said it. It was one of things where you can't believe what you've just heard.

He said in a low mean voice, "Norah, do you want to keep the coat?"

Even the grip and the actress playing Norah's mother gasped.

Norah glared at Keith but she didn't cry. She wanted that little red coat.

The very next shot was a wrap and we were done.

We drove home through Silver Lake, and she wore her little red coat strapped in her carseat.

Kiffen met us at the car and carried her inside to bed.

Now that little red coat hangs on the wall in Birmingham. She wore it until she couldn't wear it anymore.

"The Big Bed" won some award for horror. I can't believe I found the link but here it is.

***
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxCdOr1e1ww&list=UUXTojkwMjs393N8GqhJjsiQ&fbclid=IwAR1SFpKbTb-DkUNtTHLdwYg_EVPhjqkxjj5mSBPKZ3cY4ybctl5dafMG_F4

And here is Keith Allan too.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0019969/

The Storm of April 27, 2011

It was our first year in Alabama. 

Well, my second year, Norah's first as a sixth grader at Homewood Middle 
School. 

The warnings came fast and furious from a man they call James Spann - a 
godlike weatherman around here who rolls up his sleeves the worse things 
get and wears trademark suspenders. (I later read he didn't believe in 
climate change but has possibly since changed his mind?) 

We were living in an apartment overrun with cockroaches. It was a horror 
show. The bug man used to knock on the door and yell, "Bug man, Bug man!" 

I'd practically yank him inside and cry, "Do something!" 

I still can't believe we lived there, but we only stayed a year and then 
escaped to the little home were we live now. 

"Now ma'am," the bug man would say. "They don't want to be in here anymore 
than you want them, and I know ladies are sensitive but your baseboards 
could be cleaner is all I'm saying." 

He wore a kind space-age Jetson's backpack of bug killer and sprayed 
randomly about the apartment and told stories of his momma, his sister, his 
daughter, his wife, his ex-wife, and the ladies at the Baptist Church who 
had recently taught him to crochet - and did I want one of his crocheted 
purses? 

One time he said, "You know what the saddest thing is? An ugly girl. Or a 
girl who thinks she's ugly. Hell, I'm ugly, and it don't matter, but it 
matters for a girl. And I hate to say it but it's a fact. Ain't nothing 
sadder than an ugly girl." 

He would spin tales and I couldn't quit listening. 

As the tornado spun toward Birmingham from Tuscaloosa that day, James Spann 
yelled at us all to get into our safe spaces. I put Norah and Olive in the 
bathtub with blankets and a helmet. 

And then it was over - just like that - the sky no longer an eerie yellow 
with slashes of green and purple. 

We were lucky. 

Some of my students were not so lucky. One's uncle lost his legs when a 
garage collapsed. 

Another's trailer up in Walker County "cracked in two like an egg" she 
wrote in her essay about the storm. 

Of course, there was also snow-pocalypse, when Birmingham shut down in an 
ice-storm, but that's another story. 

A storm for another day. 

Mangoes on the Sabbath

I am doing something called “40/days40writes” created by my friend and wonderful editor, Robin Rauzi, which is basically 40 days of writing sparks. It’s a wonderful to get the ideas churning into stories.

https://40days40writes.com/

It began yesterday, so I’m going to post whatever may come of it here on this blog.

Yesterday’s prompt was “Waiting Room,” and it turned into “Mangoes on the Sabbath.”

“Mangoes on the Sabbath”

My living room is a waiting room where I wait for the text or the call or the high five to say all is well or not in these crazy days of waiting.

But in another time in a distant faraway place, the waiting room was a doctor's office in LA on Sunset Boulevard, and I was already in the exam room. A three-year-old sat beside me, waiting to hear the baby's heartbeat. I let her cuddle up next to me on the exam table.

The doctor rushed in ready to get the show on the road.

I was feeling so good - not sick at all - strong.

What a good baby, I thought, at 12 weeks along or so.

But the doctor couldn't find the heartbeat. "Oh well. These machines are silly," the doctor said, and she breezily went off to get a better machine.

We waited, this three-year-old and me, who asked, "Mama, is the baby in your tummy sick?"

A tiny ice cube melted in my heart.

The doctor showed up with the ultrasound machine and soon it was over.

The baby, or the bean - because it looked like a lima bean - flipped up on the screen like a dead fish and floated down like the softest feather.

I knew. We all knew. The waiting was over.

But here is what I recall. We walked outside, this three-year-old and me, and we came upon a woman selling mangoes. It was blisteringly hot on Sunset Boulevard that Friday.

"You want the mango?" the woman asked.

The three-year-old tugged at me - Mamamamamamamamama mango!

I nodded and bought some, and we sat down on the pavement by the mango cart and we ate slice after juicy sweet slice. Who knew mango could taste so good?

Later, we tried to explain how the baby in Mama's tummy went away, and our young son asked, "Maybe it's in your leg? Did you check?" He poked at my calf. No, not there...

A few years later, when I did get pregnant again with our third child, our boy looked at my calves again during the long, hot 1998 Dodgers' summer and me well into my second trimester, and he said, "Mama, you have Mark McGwire calves! That is awesome."

The baby came in December, just before Christmas, and her big brother and sister welcomed her home.

Now, I wait in my living room in Alabama, 2000 miles away from another living room in Los Angeles, where my husband waits with our son as we try to navigate this new life of waiting in our homes.

Once upon a time, I tried to write a short story, and called "Mangoes on the Sabbath" because after the mangoes with my little girl, I had to go into the hospital for D & C.

My roommate was a Hasidic woman with a brain tumor, who couldn't turn on the light or order food because it was Friday, the Sabbath, but I was so grateful to her, because I didn't have to think about what I'd lost by turning off the light or circling tuna for lunch.

Daylight Savings conversation with my roommate, lunch with a stranger, and Tony Orlando and Dawn

Note: My roommate is my daughter, Norah, who moved home this year to save money for England. We live in Birmingham, Alabama much of the year and in LA during the summers.

***

A conversation on the changing of the clocks and time and farmers…

“Tonight is daylight savings. We change the clocks.”

“Oh, it’s on a Saturday this year?”

“It’s always on a Saturday night/Sunday morning.”

“Well, how would I know that?”

“Because they wouldn’t have daylight savings on a weekday in the middle of the week when people have to go to work..”

“Well, my birthday has been on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and in fact, my birthday has been on every day of the week, so how should I know when daylight savings is. It could be any day of the week to celebrate daylight savings.”

“We don’t celebrate it. We just do it. How can you not know this?”

“What do you mean how can I not know this? Why would I know this?”

“Because it’s always been on a Saturday night/Sunday so people can sleep in or catch up or whatever.”

“Oh.”

“So we lose an hour this weekend. Spring forward, fall back.”

“You know what? They shouldn’t have daylight savings at all. It’s for farmers. They should cancel it once for and all.”

“You know what? I completely agree.”

***

But I kind of love that she didn’t know. How many more times will she not know something that is just a given of random adult life? Her first day in Alabama (I had lived here a year before she joined me at the age of eleven) my friend Nancy arranged for her to meet a girl her own age for lunch.

I said, “I’m taking you to Zoe’s in Homewood to meet a girl named, Eleanor, for lunch.”

Norah said, “Why would I have lunch with someone I don’t even know or have never even met?”

I said, “Because that’s what you do. You have lunch with a new person once in a while, and once in a while, you become friends.”

She and Eleanor hit it off immediately and had a sleepover that night at Eleanor’s house. They decided they were soulmates and birthday twins. Eleanor’s birthday was December 21st and Norah’s December 23rd, and weirdly, Nancy, the matchmaker’s birthday was December 22nd.

The next day, after the sleepover, Eleanor’s brother, whom they called “Brother” when to the Piggly-Wiggly to get them donuts. Later, Norah told her sister, Lucy, “Yeah, I stayed the night with Eleanor and Brother went to the Pig to get donuts.”

Alarmed, Lucy said, “Put Mom on. Who is Brother? What is the Pig?”

Those were the early days in Alabama.

***

Throwback song of the week that somehow popped into my addled head as it was my father’s 85th birthday on Thursday. He’s confused these days longing to coach the defensive secondary for the Dallas Cowboys and eager to get to work and often talks of his travels to Virginia. He hasn’t left San Diego since 2017 except for a trip to LA.

It’s our new normal, but he knows all the players in his NFL coloring books and the teams they played for. He wants me to contact the NFL for him and write more NFL coloring books.

I play along, and it’s why I am moving back to LA in May to teach at UAB online this fall and be closer to my parents this coming year and live with my husband again after ten years of this back and forth life.

Knock Three Times

“Knock Three Times” was one of my father’s favorite songs, and I can still see him playing the A side of the 45 record on our old Yamaha stereo. We kids danced with him knocking “three times” and “twice on the pipes" in Ames, Iowa where he was coaching for the Iowa State Cyclones or sometimes he and Mom danced on the shag rug and we watched. Last Christmas, while discussing this memory, my sister said, “That is the weirdest song. Can you imagine? Something sooo creepy about a guy knocking on the pipes or the ceiling for a date.” And this of course made me laugh, but my sister always makes me laugh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT5ms2Nvpco

Hello Leap Year - Hello New Blog

This is my first new blog post in this space on a Saturday night, February 29, 2020 - Leap Year.

I’ve posted an Irish cottage from Malin Head, Donegal where my great grandmother, Kate McLaughlin is from and where I took my husband, Kiffen, in 2016, to visit my dear cousin, Sally Tolland and her daughter Bex. Kiffen was far braver than I navigating the skinny roads and challenging round-abouts from Dublin to Donegal. (I couldn’t look.) He did get a “wee knick” on the bumper, which he fixed with red nail polish (varnish in Ireland) and “Scratch-off” from a mechanic in Donegal.

Anyway, Kate’s mother, Katherine, saved the egg money from the egg man and bought a ticket to America to visit her adult children who had left Ireland. When was this? Tricia Kelly, family historian, would know approximately the year. (And Tricia is the reason I found beautiful Cousin Maureen “Mo” O’Sullivan, sister of my heart, and Sally is another sister of my heart too.)

Naturally, Katherine McLaughlin couldn’t tell her husband, Joseph, who would have forbid such an epic journey. She must saved the egg money for years to buy a ticket to sail to America. He only saw her sailing out of the harbor of Malin Head as he was fishing. The day she sailed away, she left her two youngest daughters, Kate and Sarah, behind and her husband - “himself” shouting at the departing boat, “Katherine, come back! Katherine, come back!”

Katherine eventually came back but not until after she had visited her children in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington DC. How did she navigate it all?

It was many years later her daughter, Kate McLaughlin, immigrated and became Kate Madden or “Mama Dear” - a woman who hated to have her picture taken and was always dashing out of photos - a blur. My father said Mama Dear was a terrible cook - the worst - and tried to make linguini and clam sauce after being inspired by the Italian family up the street, only she used sardines and the wrong noodles.

Her husband, Daddy Dear, shouted, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph” and would have none of it.

***

My first blog, Live Journal, was many moons ago, and I picked the name “Mountain Mist,” which sounds like a soft drink. I made some wonderful friends on Live Journal and used it a lot to share pictures of the Smoky Mountains when I was writing the Maggie Valley novels.

Norah was chasing fairies in those years, Lucy was throwing shot-put (and painting and taking pictures like she still does today) and Flannery was in a band called The Flypaper Cartel.

Later I wound up with two blogs on Wordpress, the most recent at this link: https://kerrymaddensabbatical.wordpress.com/author/kerrylucynorah/, and there are a slew of stories and pictures, but Wordpress has gotten so fussy, and I really wanted a blog attached to my website.

So here we go…from now on I’ll be blogging once a week in this space, created by my magical daughter, Lucy.

I also have a magical daughter, Norah, and when I was telling the visiting writer, Chris Abani, about the girls and then about my son, he smiled and said, “But your son is surely no less magical than your daughters,” and naturally, I burst into tears.

For it is true, Flannery is no less magical than Lucy and Norah.

But that’s another story.

As the director of a creative writing program, one is expected to drive visiting authors around, and it can be so embarrassing to burst into tears in front of them, which has only happened with Chris Abani, a magical poet himself - though there have been other adventures.

Natashia Deon and I got rear-ended while I was driving to her hotel, and the culprit who hit us sped away, and Natashia said, “Look at him go. Wow. Who does that?” (He did, apparently.)

I took Maude Schuyler Clay and her husband, Langdon, to The Glass Menagerie, unexpectedly and very recently, but how I could turn down the chance to see Tennessee Williams with a fifth generation Mississippian? UAB’s Theatre Department did an amazing job and revamped the play with an all-black cast set in the Harlem Renaissance, capturing this Mississippi playwright’s story of his sister, Rose. I fell in love with Tennessee Williams in college and played Blanche in my roommate’s white filmy graduation dress and filled a Jack Daniels’ bottle with tea to swig in the Humanities Building.

My mother’s own memories of Mississippi are as dramatic as ever - she wept as a young mother in the 1960s when my Dad accepted a graduate assistant coaching job at Mississippi State and took her out of Florida. After my Mississippi babysitter, Loisteen, quit, Mom took me to school with her in Brooksville, where a saint named, Bessie Kay, worked in the lunch room, drove the school bus, and babysat me while Mom taught.

Can you imagine? I cannot imagine.

The other night, I read Ann Fisher-Wirth’s poems to my husband on Face-Time to California, and he loved them. Ann and Maude just left on Thursday after a week of visiting five universities around Birmingham - Montevallo, Samford, Birmingham Southern, Miles, and UAB. They got to sit in the Bear Bryant booth at the Bright Star after their visit to Miles College. The students loved them.

If Lauren Slaughter (Editor of Nelle and a dear friend) hadn’t suggested we go to the CD Wright Conference in Arkansas in 2018, I never would have met Ann or Maude and learned about their beautiful book, Mississippi, of photography and poetry.

https://poetry.arizona.edu/blog/mississippi-ann-fisher-wirth-maude-schuyler-clay

In the earlier years of visiting writers, Norah and I took the poet, Kim Addonizio, to a place called OVEN BIRD in Birmingham with faculty and students, and Norah wanted to try the “meat candle,” which naturally grossed out Kim, a vegetarian.

A few days later, the master of all office managers, Karen, asked me if I had bought myself a candle at dinner on the reimbursement tab from dinner.

Last year, Jean Guerrero, also a vegetarian, wanted fish, so I cooked salmon for her at my house and wrapped it in foil before driving to pick her up, since that party was at Shelly Cato’s house, and Taco Mama was on the menu.

It’s all the details one has to keep straight, and it’s not my strength.

Allen Gee, of all the visiting writers, was one of the most generous (they have all been incredibly generous) and he insisted on meeting with five graduate students, reading their work in advance and then having coffee with them individually to talk to them about their stories. He set me on a serious path of asking the visiting authors to connect with students on a deeper level.

Which is why Ann and Maude did a Master Class with poets and photographers and there will be an installation in March, and the students will be mirroring a little of what Ann and Maude accomplished in their collaboration.

But enough. So many stories. I can’t even remember all of them. The students adored Derrick Harriell, and he told hilarious stories of finding himself in Mississippi from Detroit. His wife, like my mother, wept, too, on the move to the Deep South.

The students have loved all the visiting writers, and I have too. I miss them when they go, and I wish they could hang around a while.

Anyway, it’s Leap Year and it’s time to start a new blog.

I’ve lived for a decade away from my husband, and it’s becoming untenable.

But that’s another story.

Here is Kate McLaughlin of Malin Head, who became Kate Madden, in the years before she didn’t mind having her picture taken.