IF ONLY......

 

 From Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist

Yesterday, Sunday, November 22, 2020, was a day fit only for hellcats here in Central Ohio. Blustery, wet, gray—the day mirrored my mood from rising to retiring. “If only it had been such a day in Dallas fifty-seven years ago!” the nagging voice whirled like dervishes unchecked in my brain. “If only it had rained and President John F. Kennedy had been in a closed car rather than the open one…his beautiful head would have been shielded from Lee Harvey Oswald’s killer bullet.”

            In my long life I have lived through my wedding day; the birth of my son; the birth of my daughter; my children’s various illnesses; my divorce; the death of both of my parents and of my brother and of my sister; the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr and of Bobby Kennedy; the Vietnam War and violent domestic protests against it; 9/11; more surgeries than I can count on both hands; but no hours loom as starkly in my memory as those that opened at mid-day of Friday, November 22, 1963, the day my fellow Americans and I were struck dumb by the news that John F. Kennedy, our president, had been assassinated.   

            Basking in the unseasonably bright and warm day in Forest Hills, Queens, New York, my co-worker and I strolled leisurely from our lunch at a nearby café to our work in the credit department located on an upper floor of the towering Uni-Card building. We approached the crowd of loitering co-workers on the broad sidewalk fronting the building and then joined in the pitter-patter and joking so typical of New Yorkers at their ease. The lively drumbeat of chatter stopped abruptly when a man rushed out of the broad entrance of the building, his hand clutching a long white ribbon of tickertape that trailed in his wake, and his voice shouting, “THE PRESIDENT WAS SHOT! THE PRESIDENT WAS SHOT!” In the blink of an eye, a second man ran from the building. It was his duty to tell us that the president was dead, that the city was closing down as was the case across the country, and that we were dismissed to get to our homes as quickly and as efficiently as possible. The one detail missing from my memory is the means by which I made it to the one-bedroom apartment in Flushing, Queens, New York, in which my bridegroom and I had taken up residence only three months before. Perched on the floor of our living room, our noses only inches from our small black and white television, my husband and I watched nearly motionless, other than bathroom and kitchen breaks, the unfolding drama of the several days comprising JFK’s assassination: the tragic motorcade, the chaotic manhunt, Oswald’s frenzied apprehension, and then, the man in the scruffy fedora crashing through the mad crowd, raising his gun-yielding arm and shooting Oswald dead…right there on the TV screen…right before our stunned eyes—the blood-smeared pink suit, the vice-president’s swearing in, the flag-draped casket, the funeral procession with the riderless horse, the little son stepping forward and saluting his dead father.

            To my mind, that condensed period was unmatched in modern history, until now…this now when 250,000 Americans, doubtless most of whom have died needlessly of Covid-19 in a period of nine months; when we watched another assassination on our TV screens…right before our stunned eyes; when our streets erupted in protests; when a pitiless, remorseless, brutal, sitting President of the United States is trying his hardest to destroy our democracy. If only noon of January 20, 2021 were tomorrow.©

#11/22/1963, #John F. Kennedy, #JFK, #assassination, #Lee Harvey Oswald, #bloodstainedpinksuit, #Covid-19, #George Floyd, #1/20/2021, #Joe Biden, #POTUS

Books by Linda Lee Greene are available for purchase on Amazon.com.   

IMAGINARY FRIENDS

 

From Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist

 

As the opening days of December approach, I am helpless against the memory of this same time of year two years ago. My mind is cast back to Palm Harbor on the west coast of Florida where my kid sister Susan was coming to the end of her two-year battle with cancer. My sister Sherri and I were gathering our reserves of spiritual, emotional, and physical strength to fly to Florida from our family’s home base in Columbus, Ohio to spend what we understood would doubtless be Susan’s last days. As it turned out, Sherri and I were able to make our way to Susan and were with her through a good part of December and right up to her final moment three days before Christmas.

            Susan was many things. She was talented, smart, gentle, kind. And she was physically beautiful—a Greta Garbo lookalike as well a double to the famous Swedish-American actress in other ways. Like Garbo, Susan was shy and reclusive, qualities she fought against for the entirety of her life. And in important ways, she was triumphant over them. But even with that, Susan lived with a profound kind of loneliness that no actual friend was ever able to alleviate entirely, perhaps because she needed too much, or not enough. One of the most remarkable things about Susan was that she was a prolific writer of journals. In the days following her passing, the task fell to Sherri and me, along with our sister-in-law Dorothy and our nephew Leland to sort through Susan’s belongings and to determine their dispensation. Of course, we were aware of Susan’s hobby of journaling but were shocked to discover the extent of it. There were chests full of them; book shelves lined with them; journals dating to her teenage years. Susan was three months into her 63^rd year of life when she died.

            While I have turned to journaling during specific periods of extreme trauma and/or stress as a means of releasing the stress and getting a handle on my experiences, I have not found it useful or justifiable as a consistent practice. But yesterday, I saw it from an angle I hadn’t considered, and which makes sense to me for some people. I saw it as a way they can, and perhaps do, communicate with an imaginary friend. It solves for me the mystery of Susan’s attraction to it. I am convinced of it.

            I owe my new awareness to my friend, British author Carol Browne. Currently, I am reading her novel REALITY CHECK. The novel itself appears as a journal written by her protagonist, one Gillian Roth, a middle-aged woman who lives alone and works at a dull job. She has few friends and little excitement in her life. Her journal speaks to an imaginary friend. And not only that, but her house is full of other people whom she sees and with whom she interacts. The problem is that the people don’t actually exist. Or do they? With time, her surreal home life spirals out of control. Determined to find out the truth, Gillian undertakes an investigation into the nature of reality itself. The mystery lies in whether or not she finds an answer to her dilemma, or if it pushes her over the edge before she works out what is really going on.

            I find it a fascinating concept for a novel. It is capturing my attention and taking me away from the realities of Covid-19 for much needed breathers. I highly recommend REALITY CHECK to readers.©

                                                                                 

Purchase Link: https://www.amazon.com/Reality-Check-Carol-Browne-ebook/dp/B07XBND96W  

 

#Greta Garbo, #journaling, #Carol Browne, #REALITY CHECK, #Linda Lee Greene

SELF-SACRIFICE: THE GOLD OF HUMAN QUALITIES

 

 

From Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist

 

The clocks fell back on November 1^st, bringing down the sun well before 6 PM. Until next spring, the sun will slip out of sight even earlier with each passing day. Still and all, the days are very long—they are very long, because if we are sensible about the current status of the coronavirus pandemic, there is no place to go, and no one to see—isolation and loneliness stretch each day to gargantuan proportions.

            My days are anemic, my tasks pale gestures to a bygone era! I wash the clothes I wear, clothes that nobody but I ever see—I rearrange the toss pillows on my sofa to a prettier composition—but only for me now. Where are my children’s hugs—my girlfriend’s chatter across the square of card table—my sister’s arm around my shoulder? My stomach throws back at me almost anything I eat or drink. Things drive me to tears that didn’t before. My doctor has put me on an anti-anxiety medication. I will see a cardiologist next month to pin down what’s behind this wild pounding of my heart. But despite all this, the sun rises and sets on what I can only gratefully describe as my relative peace and comfort, for the reason that I get to stay home and out of the way of the virus, my money arrives automatically in my checking account by way of Social Security, and other than my local gas and electric providers and a few other creditors, I am financially responsible to no-one but me.

But the brave, self-sacrificing essential workers, the election poll workers, and persons submitted to the Covid-19 vaccine trials—those people don’t have my kind of built-in protections. I’d like to express my admiration and gratitude for them. I’d like to tell their story—their real, unapologetic, untouched-up story, about how it looks and feels and sounds inside their world. But anything that comes to my mind seems so unoriginal to me. I turn for help to my gurus who never fail to uncoil the knots in my writing voice. My search is rewarded by John Steinbeck in his book ONCE THERE WAS A WAR.[1]

In this slim book, first published in 1958, Steinbeck’s dispatches from battle fronts in World War II to the NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, are collected. He bedded down, ate, drank, talked with and listened to the soldiers and attached personnel. His essays brim with inside looks at the people rather than the fighting. They are human interest stories, essentially. This topic of self-sacrifice moved him, as well, I think, and he witnessed it aplenty over there, back then. The sense I get when reading it again is the universality, the timelessness, of this thing I call “the gold of human qualities.” Steinbeck’s stories could well be set in the now, in Covid-19 days.

In an essay titled NEWS FROM HOME…BOMBER STATION IN ENGLAND, JUNE 28, 1943—Steinbeck writes that after mess, he and the crew of [the American B-17F] MARY RUTH take a bus into town and end up at a noisy and crowded pub. The men are solemn. They are solemn all the time while awaiting orders for a bombing mission [the MARY RUTH along with the famed MEMPHIS BELLE and others, bombed German U-boat pens in Lorient, France]. A waist gunner in response to one of his comrades mentioning that he had seen a newspaper at the Red Cross in London, says, “It seems to me that we are afraid to announce our losses. It seems to me that the War Department is afraid that the country couldn’t take it. I never saw anything the country couldn’t take.”

The airman who saw the paper at the Red Cross, replies, “This paper I saw had some funny stuff in it. It seemed to think that the war was nearly over.”

“I wish the Jerries thought that,” the tail gunner says. “I wish you could get Goering’s yellow noses and them damned flak gunners convinced of that.” [The leading-edge of German planes was painted yellow to distinguish them from rival planes].

“…It seems to me that the folks at home are fighting one war and we’re fighting another one,” the waist gunner puts in. “They’ve got theirs nearly won and we’ve just got started on ours. I wish they’d get in the same war we’re in. I wish they’d print the casualties and tell them what it’s like…”

Another crewman says, “I read a very nice piece in a magazine about us. This piece says we’ve got nerves of steel. We never get scared. All we want in the world is just to fly all the time and get a crack at Jerry. I never heard anything so brave as us. I read it three or four times to try and convince myself that I ain’t scared.”

The conversation rolls on and on, and finally the first speaker says, “”But anyway…I wish they’d tell them at home that the war isn’t over and I wish they wouldn’t think we’re so brave. I don’t want to be so brave…”

Eventually, they head back outside. It is still daylight and before they pile onto the bus, each one raises his face to the sky. “Looks like it might be a clear day,” the radio man says. “That’s good for us and it’s good for them to get at us.”

…“I hope old Red Beard has got a bad cold,” the tail gunner muses. “I didn’t like the look in his eye the last time.” *(Red Beard is an enemy fighter pilot who comes so close that you can almost see his face).*Steinbeck’s note

Given the choice, they would rather romance pretty girls at the pub, or better still, ship out for home to Kenosha or Kalamazoo or South Bend. But they could do no other thing but their allotted duty, because they had obligations to their country, their family, their crew, their conscience. The way I see it, that’s the definition of self-sacrifice. It is the same today with the people who keep us afloat during Covid-19.©

                                                                           

  

Note from Linda Lee Greene…At the time I wrote my novel CRADLE OF THE SERPENT, I didn’t recognize that I was writing about self-sacrifice. I only understand that element of it now. While my novel is an award-winner, judging by a couple of its reviews, it is also controversial. Those reviewers were uncomfortable with its aspect of self-sacrifice. It makes me wonder if self-sacrifice is more palatable to some people when applied to large-scale, humanitarian efforts but less so when confined to individual concerns. WARNING: My novel isn’t about essential workers or World War II. If you are interested in finding out what it is about, my CRADLE OF THE SERPENT is available for purchase at goo.gl/i3UkAV.

 

Image: The Mary Ruth photographed from the Memphis Belle.

 

#EssentialWorkers, #John Steinbeck, #ONCE THERE WAS A WAR, #coronavirus, #pandemic, #Covid-19, #Mary Ruth, #Memphis Belle, #World War II, #CRADLE OF THE SERPENT, #Linda Lee Greene 

---

[1] ONCE THERE WAS A WAR, JOHN STEINBECK, PENGUIN BOOKS, 1958, p. 39 - 41

CARVED IN STONE

 

 

From Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist

 Count me among the millions of fans of PBS’s “Finding Your Roots,” a show based on unearthing the genealogy of celebrity guests. While its host, Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr. states that he is on a quest to “get into the DNA of American culture,” the mission statement of the program commits overall to satisfying our “basic drive to discover who we are and where we come from.”

On a spring day of 2019 my sister Sherri and I, along with our cousins Freda and Lisa, went in search of what we could discover of our roots as scribed on gravestones of the dearly departed of our shared bloodline. We visited four or five cemeteries peppered around our southern Ohio ancestral stomping grounds. Our great grandparents, great great grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins two and three times removed, their names and dates of birth and death on narrow slabs of stone as testament to their time on earth, were all that was left to recommend them to posterity. Hints to their experiences were indicated in dates spanning the American Civil War, the First World War, the 1918 flu pandemic, and other bracketed historical eras. At the end of the day, the four of us came away gladdened by the number of gravesites we found, but I for one was also saddened by the knowledge that I would likely never know anything more about my ancestral histories buried there. An old African proverb states that when a man dies, a library dies with him. The strength of that truism sweeps over me whenever I visit a cemetery and no more so than on that particular day.

            While doctors, clergy, educators and other professional sorts were scattered among my paternal ancestors several generations back, in the main, my mother’s people were simple, dirt-poor, country folk: farmers, laborers, and other blue-collar types. It is a good bet that like all marginalized people everywhere throughout time that a sizable number of them were the foot soldiers in the American Civil War, the infantry in the First World War, the hospital aides during the 1918 flu pandemic…the “essential workers” in Covid-19 terminology. However, I know firsthand of the hardships and sacrifices, as well as the good times that defined the lives of my kin during the Great Depression and World War II. It is a strong theme of GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS, my novel of historical fiction based on the true story of three generations of my family made ever more profound by the inclusion of transcriptions of actual letters they wrote to one another. One reviewer said of it, “This book reminded me of discovering an old chest in an attic, filled with the treasured pieces of a family's history. The walk through the years through the old letters between family members was like meeting old friends for the first time…”©

                                                                            

 

Purchase Link to GUARDIANS AND OTHER ANGELS: http://goo.gl/imUwKO.