APPALACHIAN HERITAGE: SPECIAL CHEROKEE ISSUE

The fall issue of APPALACHIAN HERITAGE
( www.berea.edu/appalachianheritage ) catches the eye right away. Sean Ross's Mask Dancers peer out from the page, as if ready to leap. Ross's paintings invigorate the interior pages where poems, stories, and essays, some translated from the Cherokee language, await the reader, reminding us that the Cherokee people still live in these mountains, painting, writing, telling stories, and passing down their culture as they have always done.



Novelist and poet Robert Conley, now at nearby Western Carolina University as the Sequoyah Distinguished Professor of Cherokee Studies, is the issue's featured author. Years ago I invited Mr. Conley, living at that time in Oklahoma, to be a part of the Visiting Writers Series that I then directed. Everyone liked him so much that we invited him back several times. Now he lives here!







The issue contains a poem by a former student of mine, Debora Kinsland Foerst, the amusing "Settin' Up."



Debora has had her poetry and prose published in The Raleigh News-Observer, Writers and Books on www.ncarts.org, Kakalak, and numerous other publications and anthologies.

And there's Mary Brown's recipe for apple stack cake! Preceded by her poem in both Cherokee and English.

MariJo Moore's poem closes out the issue.

MariJo (http://marijomoore.com/) presents Spirit Speaking Gatherings & Intuitive Consultations and resides in the mountains of western NC, where she is currently working on The Boy With A Tree Growing From His Ear & Other Stories.

Traditional Mysteries Remain Still
(Inspired by the painting “The Booger Dance Interrupted” by Sean J. Ross)

MariJo Moore © 2009


Rattle of old gourd seeds
keeping mysteries intact.
Red bandannas atop white sheets
floating in musical silence, impending beats of drum.

Masked dancers moving
among the senses of imitation,
feigning attacks,
pressing desires, causing women’s laughter.

Old ones draining shadows, gaining
strength from the young.
Young ones gathering wisdom, taking
experience from the old.

Interruption! Masked as righteousness
nevertheless, interruption
causing
cracks in the gourd rattles.

Seeds dispersing
falling onto dismembered grounds.
Going not to water,
germinating into silenced, soiled pauses.

Imitation no longer masked:
Cherokee see, Cherokee do, Cherokee “saved.”
Becoming simply stirrups
loosely attached to the saddles of plenty-costing religion.

But here, painted somewhere
in the darkest dawn of remembrance,
traditions continue and gourds mend.

Rattling of hidden seeds keep mysteries intact.
Colors imitating dance imitating
olden life.
Dance, Boogers, dance!

Note: The Booger Dance of the Eastern Cherokee is interpretive of the reactions to the greed of various invaders. By wearing masks that resemble the invaders, the dancers imitate their actions to lessen the seriousness of the intrusions. Once thought gone due to the Christian religion, the Booger Dance is now being reinstated.
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A fine Christmas surprise for family and friends would be a gift subscription to Appalachian Heritage.

POET OF THE WEEK: MICHAEL CHITWOOD

Michael Chitwood is a free-lance writer and a lecturer at the University of North Carolina. His poetry and fiction have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The New Republic, Threepenny Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Field, The Georgia Review and numerous other journals. Ohio Review Books has published two books of his poetry--Salt Works (1992) and Whet (1995). His third book, The Weave Room, was published by The University of Chicago Press in the Phoenix Poets series (1998). His collection of essays, Hitting Below the Bible Belt, was published by Down Home Press in 1998. Gospel Road Going, a collection of poems about his native Appalachia, was published in 2002 and was awarded the 2003 Roanoke-Chowan Prize for Poetry. In 2006, he published a collection of essays and short stories called Finishing Touches. His collection of poetry From Whence was released in March 2007 from Louisiana State University Press. Tupelo Press published his book Spill in October of 2007. Spill was named as a finalist for ForeWard magazine’s poetry book of the year and won the 2008 Roanoke-Chowan Prize.

The following poems are from Michael's collection published by LSU Press, From Whence.

At the Wilco with some Founding Fathers


Down the Havoline, Quaker State aisle
goes Jefferson, if his shirt can be believed.
The red stitching over the right pocket
proclaims this man to be a namesake
of the author of the Declaration of Independence
and if you can’t believe a man’s shirt
what are you going to believe?
Hamilton, what a strange coincidence,
doubts aloud that the cashier
cannot access the safe and Franklin,
spook me out, is eyeing the better wines
while recommending the Appalachian spring water.
It’s all here—White Rain hairstyling spray, tic tacs,
flashlights, corn chips and nation-makers.
And now Jefferson, who wanted to be remembered
for penning Virginia’s statute on religious freedom,
says a standing silent prayer over a chili dog
before taking a bite and heading out
through the calibrated doors, he’s nearly six feet I see,
into the republic of Friday morning

Basement Barber



Here were said the words men say.
The oil stove winked its slit black eye;
it knew they did not have their way.

A whitetail made for the edge of the page.
Vitalis came before the talc.
My father’s dark hair began to fade.

Barrelhead Thurman palmed my scalp,
knuckled my ear when he was done
just to hear a little boy yelp.

They rode, hats off, through years of lies
on bus seats the county junked,
out-fished, out-hunted the ones who’d died.

My father’s dark hair began to fade.
The oil stove winked its slit black eye.
It knew he did not have his way.

The dead grow long and beautiful hair.
They have said what they had to say
to stir that basement’s damp, sweet air.


Morning Walk, Holden Beach
for Tom Andrews

Ghost moon in the upper right-hand corner
where we used to write our names—

Is it quiet there, Tom,
adrift from your drift of ashes?

I strike out towards the rising sun,
your blank blue, your murmur in surf

to my right, dunes and salt-blasted beachfronts
to my left. I can still see

the scribblings sand crabs left
in their nightly scurry for the day’s discards.

This page, like all the others, will be erased
soon, but for now there’s a line or two.

The waves unscroll their best bond,
a finish like a mirror under the sandpipers.

You’d like that, I think, text as pure reflection,
no scuff of us to mar the brief recording.

There are no hills here to look to for help
though the ocean seems upgrade at the horizon.

I sing a little under my breath, as the saying goes—
old JT, Dylan, even that God-awful

song about West Virginia where your urn lies,
my honest friend, at Point Pleasant.

The sun’s up now, full, and gulls yuck
at their own stand-up. I smell coffee

and turn, my back to the sun’s hot yolk,
to head for home, following my shadow.

Men Throwing Bricks


The one on the ground lofts two at a time
with just the right lift for them to finish
their rise as the one on the scaffold turns
to accept them like a gift and place them
on the growing stack. They chime slightly
on the catch. You’d have to do this daily,
morning and afternoon, not to marvel.


The One Day



We were behind on the job
so waited out the rain in the pickup.
Because the backhoe would mire
he shouldered the four-foot pipe joints
and brought them to us in the ditch.
The red mud clutched and tugged at his boots
and Bill laughed at his “Swan Lake”
as he fought through, lurching and staggering
when the mud would suddenly let go.
But he kept them coming, lugging the red joints
to us and then slogging back for another
while we slid on the gasket and fit the pipes together.
You can see how, pushing like that, he wound up,
two years later, with the tiny plastic piping of IVs
feeding into both arms and the three drainage tubes
snaking from under the patch on his chest.
His skin was a shade away from being same as the sheet
when I saw him in the ICU,
and he couldn’t have lifted the drinking straw
on the bedside tray.
But that one day he brought two hundred yards of pipe
and even the red earth couldn’t stop him.

COLLOQUY IN BLACK AND WHITE by NANCY DILLINGHAM

Nancy Dillingham has a new book of poetry out from Catawba Publishers (www.catawbapublishing.com) titled Colloquy in Black and White. The poems are sometimes stark, always accessible. Nancy is a 6th generation Dillinghamm from Big Ivy in western North Carolina. She has published several books of poetry, as well as essays and articles. She lives in Asheville with her cat named Serendipity.

Nancy has been growing by leaps and bounds as a poet, and this new collection shows ample evidence of her growth. She is becoming a fearless poet, taking on subjects that might daunt others. She's a mountain woman who knows her landscape and its dark places well.

She can confront them, all the while singing the light and the love of place. She reads widely, she listens, she challenges herself, without losing the moorings that keep her steady as a poet and an inhabitant of these mountains. She will be at the Great Smoky Mountains Book Fair, and I hope that other festivals and reading series across the state will begin to take notice of her work.

Suite on Love

Sitting here
fifty years later
as you whisper me
happy birthday
and our younguns
sing around us
grown
with children of their own

I want to say
it is you
not the candles
on the cake
that takes my breath away

Too late coming to love
I made the usual blunders

A blush away from a baby
it was a tom-fool thing
for me to do
bringing you
country ham
cured sweet as honey
biscuits and gravy
stack cake

How could
I lie
with you
after you left me
for a roll
in the hay
with the first hussy
that gave you the eye?

Spitfire
you called me later
bleeding
like a stuck pig
where I struck
you with a piece
of stove wood
and you slapped me

Sitting here
as I think of all the pain
yours is the only music I hear
and I want to tell you
everything still seems the same
like the first time
clear as a bell

right as rain

Legacy

My aunt sat on her front porch
in a chair bottomed with strips of tires
slinging her crossed leg, dipping snuff

Your great-grandmother ruled
with an iron hand
and Grandpa was a rounder, she said

Double Dillinghams they were
cousins marrying cousins
Elbert and Mary

Owned land as far as the eye could see
all the way up to the Coleman Boundary

They say he courted her by bringing armfuls of flowers
picked by the roadside or out of other people's yards
traded his mule for a chestnut mare

Carried her around in a hand basket after they married
all the while making time with the hired help

The house stood right over there on the hill
where the graveyard is today--they gave the land

A smile threatened the corners of my aunt's wrinkled mouth
and a small rivulet of snuff ran down one side

After he died
Grandma didn't take to widow's weeds
said they didn't become her

She'd sit on the porch cooling Sunday afternoons in the summer
after cooking cut-off corn and baking soft butter biscuits
She'd throw back her head and cackle

I ought to have taken me a young lover
just to bedevil Elbert, she'd say

But he'd have dragged chains up and down the stairs at night
and, after my laying out, danced on my grave for spite

My aunt's face softened
A long time passed before she spoke again

We grandchildren would play on the porch
run the length of it back and forth
like fighting fire

or stand under the arbor eating pink grapes
clear as glass and sweet as honey
bees buzzing a halo over our heads

Sometimes when I look really hard
I can just see Grandma
coming over the ridge

her bright apron glowing
waving like a flag
calling me home

Signs

“Whenever you go looking for what’s lost, everything is a sign.”
Eudora Welty


I have not bled
this month, Mother
and I am afraid

Just yesterday
a bird flew into the living room
losing its way

I didn’t sleep a wink last night
A dog howled outside my window
and the clock didn’t strike

Must have been midnight
I saw Will’s first wife plain as day
standing over my bed

glistening with sweat
crying with no sound
holding her dead baby

all the while
Will sleeping quietly
beside me

I felt the same fear
I saw in her face
this time last year

You remember, don’t you, Mother?
You asked me to help with the birthing
It was my first time

You cut cotton strips
and bound her wrists
to the bedposts

I placed the small, round stick
you handed me
into her mouth

bathed her face
as you commanded her
to bear down

I remember most the silence
as I watched you wrap the baby—stillborn
in the same soft cloth

And I can never forget the look
in Will’s eyes at the funeral
when he finally raised them

and gazed at me
as if seeing me
for the first time

Tiny shivers
ran up and down my spine
and my whole body shook

as he took a sprig of white lilac
from his wife’s casket
and handed it to me

He’s out there now
on the front porch
drinking his coffee

staring over the valley
looking at rows and rows
of newly-planted fields

seeing the cattle
grazing on the hill
below the graveyard

the headstone visible still
in its rising up
and shining in the light



Daddy’s Girl


With a wink and a leer
her daddy holds
the cold open can of beer
tantalizingly near

tickling her nose
Through bow-like lips
eager as a baby bird
she sates her thirst

with a single sip
laughs a giggly
hiccupping laugh
then burps

Putting up one perfect hand
she catches a trickle of froth
as it bursts like broth
from her soft pink mouth

Dresses, Dreams and Beadwood Leaves, by Julia Taylor Ebel

Softcover: $8.95 (ISBN 978-1-932158-85-4)
Published by High Country Publishers/Ingalls Publishing Group
Publication date: January 2009
Available from Ingalls Publishing Group
828) 297-7127
sales@ingallspublishinggroup.com
www.ingallspublishinggroup.com





(Julia Ebel)

Julia Taylor Ebel celebrates nature, heritage and cultural history through stories and poetry. Her books include Orville Hicks: Mountain Stories, Mountain Roots; Addie Clawson: Appalachian Mail Carrier; Walking Ribbon, and most recently, Dresses, Dreams and Beadwood Leaves. The earlier three received North Carolina Society of Historians book awards. Over 50 of her nature poems are published in children’s magazines. Julia leads programs and workshops on keeping stories and on poetry. She lives in Jamestown, North Carolina, but a part of her heart is in the North Carolina mountains, where she finds inspiration for much of her writing.

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Rosa May wears dresses made from feed sacks, but her earthy knowledge of roots and herbs gives her hope of owning a store-bought dress and feeds her dream of wearing nurse’s white. Dresses, Dreams and Beadwood Leaves sets a girl’s journey to mold her own self esteem within the cultural history of the North Carolina mountains in the late 1940s, where root and herb gathering has offered many mountain people a way to meet both needs and dreams.

Dresses, Dreams and Beadwood Leaves includes delicate pencil sketches and end notes on root and herb gathering.

(from website: www.juliaebel.com

This description from Julia Ebel's website is only the beginning of a story told in verse that will entertain and move you. Rosa May works to gather beadwood leavees to make enough money to buy a "store-bought" dress. She learns some important lessons about growing up in the process.


NOT ENOUGH

In August,
roots and herbs
add up
but not enough
to buy a dress
and the shoes I need too.
So I choose.

I open the catalog
to the page
with the red plaid dress.
Mama measures me
and helps me
choose the right size.
“You’re getting to be
a young lady,”
she says.

Mama watches me
address the envelope
to Sears, Roebuck
and lick the stamp.

And she watches me skip
to the mailbox
with my order in hand.


WAITING

One week,
two weeks,
three weeks—
how long will it take
to get my package?
I watch each day
for the mail.


CELEBRATION

Daddy comes in
grinning.
“Got a good price on beans today.
Enough to buy flour,
sugar,
and cocoa powder.”

At supper,
we celebrate
with chocolate gravy
on biscuits.


THE PACKAGE

Just in time—
the package came,
wrapped in brown paper,
but the package held
no plaid dress,
bright as autumn trees.

I’d changed my mind
and ordered shoes
to wear with the dress
Mama and I made,
blue calico
with white buttons,
tucks,
and grosgrain ribbon trim—
prettier than the one
at Mr. Kelsey’s store.

Someday soon
I’ll order
that plaid dress.

Someday
I’ll wear white.




--------------------------

In Dresses, Dreams and Beadwood Leaves, Rosa May gathers beadwood (witch hazel) leaves to earn money. The following is from the book's end notes on herbs and herb gathering.


Witch Hazel
Beadwood
Hamamelis virginiana Linnaeus

Witch Hazel is a deciduous native shrub or small tree, growing 20 to 30 feet in height. Leaves are asymmetrical and shallowly lobed, 3 to 5 inches long. Witch Hazel grows commonly in moist, rich hardwood forests of Southern Appalachia, but its habitat extends through most of the eastern United States.

The term “beadwood” comes from the hard bead-like seed capsule. When dry, seeds explode from the capsule.

An extract from Witch Hazel leaves, bark, and twigs has long been used medicinally as a mild astringent.






from ROOT AND HERB GATHERING IN SOUTHERN APPALACHIA

The Mountain Environment

Traditional Home Uses of Roots and Herbs
For centuries, people have used native plants as food sources. People also have eased their pain and soothed illnesses with teas and salves made from roots and herbs. Mountain people knew these herbal remedies. They respected local “herb doctors,” who shared knowledge of plants’ healing powers. As trained doctors and modern medicine became more available in the mid 1900s, people used herbal remedies less.


Gathering
Many Appalachian people learned to recognize the native plants. They spoke of these plants with common names, like beadwood (witch hazel), life plant, and turkey corn. They gathered roots and herbs and passed along knowledge of wild plants to their children. By the age of six or seven, children could help with root and herb gathering.
Mountain people first gathered roots and herbs for personal use. Later, they sold these plant materials. Families bought school clothes and shoes for the children with profits from root and herb gathering. Native plants provided the primary income for some families. Money from the sale of roots and herbs not only bought clothing but also helped pay electrical bills and property taxes.