Povey Prattle

My beloved friend Dr. Grace Sawyer Jones sent me a copy of the book "Aaron Douglas and Alta Sawyer Douglas - Love Letters from the Harlem Renaissance" (Wisdom House Books 2008).   Perhaps because I live  in a "white bubble"  I had never heard of Aaron Douglas - a key figure of the Harlem Renaissance.  The love of Aaron's life was Alta Sawyer.  She was the aunt of Grace Sawyer Jones.   Jones, with her sisters Linda, Constance, Cyrene and Mariama, came together to have the love letters between Aaron and Alta published in the above book.   The letters reveal a passionate  (in every sense of the word) relationship.   Aaron (know as "Doug") and Alta were High School friends in Topeka, Kansas who later drifted apart.  Alta married a handsome young law student, but after eighteen months she know that she had made a mistake.   "Doug" and Alta re-kindled their friendship and had a clandesti...

If the tales my parents, aunts, and uncles told were true, one of the greatest hardships of war time life in the United Kingdom was the shortage of tea.  Clearly the importation of tea-leaves from India, Ceylon  (and maybe Kenya) was low on the list of priorities for a war time Government.   Very little at that time could cheer the embattled spirits of U.K. folks other than a good "cuppa char".   By the time I was old enough to drink a cup of weak tea  (probably in about 1948 when I was four years old -  we Brits start the tea habit at a young age) , the tea shortage was over.   But then there was coffee.  It may be that the wealthier middle and upper classes had coffee beans to grind, but for we working class plebs coffee came in a liquid essence, bottled under the name "Camp Coffee".  It was concocted by the Patterson Co of Paisley, Scotland.   There was a rival brand known as "Bev", but my family was loyal to "Camp". ...

At the heart of my native city Bristol, right next to the old in-town docks, is an area which folks such as my parents and grand parents would often call "The Tramways". They would say "I am going down "The Tramways".   They called it thus because it was the centre for the pre-WWII trams in Bristol.         My generation referred to this part of Bristol by the much less evocative name as "The Centre",  all the trams having been destroyed/removed during and after World War II    The Centre as I remember it from my youthful days.   I was down the Tramways in one of my ODD DREAMS  last night .    In that dream I was there with  my g/f  of the mid 1970's (A. B.) She told me that she would not marry me as she had become engaged to marry another man.  This dream made me wistfully sad, even as I knew that I would have been a horrible husb...

.......  and I want it!     "If only"  thinks Adelaide, "if only I could go out there"  

The big fat red bandage , which was placed on my left leg by the P.A.  at my Dermatologist's Office yesterday, transformed itself into a garter as I slept last night;  thus revealing the brutal (Dermatologist inflicted) wound which it was meant to cover.   Yesterday   First thing this morning.      ****************************************************************************************************** Tee Hee        

  The other week when I was at Trader Joes I bought a bottle of sherry  (I was to have an Englishwoman to lunch at my home that day and I thought that she'd like a wee snifter before lunch.  She did -  but she opted or a Bloody Mary!)   Anyway, I was careless in the manner I placed the Sherry in my cart, and it fell to the ground.  Within seconds four very affable staff members arrived at the scene of the crime and cleaned up the mess.  I suspect that they are familiar with aging klutzes.   When I got to the check out, the equally affable Clerk said  (with a twinkle in her eyes)  "you know, there are other ways of drawing attention to yourself!"   Little did she know .  Today my Dermatologist excised a mean looking lump on my leg (it will be biopsied).   The "wound" could have been covered with a Band-Aid, but the P.A. wrapped my leg in this gorgeous bandage. ...

Extracted from the blog "Seven Whole Days" by the Revd. Scott Gunn, a Priest in the Episcopal Church who heads up the "Forward Movement" in Cincinnati, Ohio.     Follow me, whenever you get done with more pressing matters. If you can, try not to sin any more. Please take your mat and walk, if you get a chance. Anyone who would be my disciple must love your family first, because that’s what really counts, and please fit your commitments to me around your prior family obligations. First, go and sell some of what you have, for instance last-year’s fashions, to a vintage shop, and then follow me. Whenever two or three are gathered, I will be there, so long as you’ve organized yourselves into a committee with a recording secretary. Repent, or at least think about it for a second, for the kingdom of God has come near, to hug you. I’m going to tell you a story about sheep and goats, but what I want you to notice is how cuddly both the goat...