A Candle for E. Ryan Edmonds & “Drinking Song for Ryan” (Poem)

Posted on November 13, 2013 by Leslie Schultz

Ryan on Thanksgiving Day in Bayfield, WI 1991

I had a very different plan for today’s post, until Monday, when the national holiday (Veteran’s Day) focused on remembrance caused me think and think about my departed friend, Ryan. I met Ryan in 1988 when we both worked for the Guthrie Theater’s development office. Often she would join Tim and me for a Saints baseball game or for dinner (several times Thanksgiving dinner), and she and I would discuss books, go for walks, and work on free-lance projects together.

Leslie & Tim, Thanksgiving Day, Little Sand Bay, WI 1991 (photo by Ryan Edmonds)

She moved away to Washington D.C., then contracted early onset Alzheimer’s disease in her early fifties, and died two years ago. This year, I wanted to share a little of her spirit and zest for life with you.

(All the photos of objects are things that Ryan brought into our lives.)

Ryan’s Friend, Will

Ryan contained a wonderful mix of seemingly contradictory qualities. On the one hand, she might be the most introverted person I’ve met, and yet she expressed a theatrical flair few can claim. Ryan knew sadness and self-doubt, but she exuded joie de vivre and bonhomie. She was quiet but also quite a riveting story-teller. She loved high tea– and baseball. (Her cat, adopted as a wee kitten while she was a student at Bryn Mawr College, was named Thurman after famed Yankees catcher Thurman Munson). Animals sensed her gentleness and gravitated to her, but Ryan had a sharp and witty tongue. She had a fierce intellect, an encyclopedic knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays (indeed, of theater in general, of many categories of genre fiction, of baseball and other arcane areas of knowledge!) but she could be dreamy often. Ryan had a strong work ethic and great efficiency and professionalism, but she never–I mean, never–forgot what it was to be a kid.

Ryan on Thanksgiving Day, Bayfield, WI 1991

When I think of Ryan, I think of places and things she loved: her apartment with walls lined floor to ceiling with books; the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden, the Malt Shop Restaurant (both in Minneapolis) and Madeline Island in the Apostle Island archipelago near Bayfield, WI; the green leather gloves she splurged on–gauntlets, really, suitable for a stylish lady falconer a thousand years ago; Häagen-Dazs ice cream and Dove Bars; a glass box of ticket stubs from plays and other events; stacks and stacks of books; her beautiful calligraphy and collection of writing implements; her precision with grammar and punctuation, and her innate sense of style. Of all the days to exit this world, it is suitable that Ryan would do so on 11.11.11.

Ryan’s Gift

Because of Ryan, I have:
walked around Lake of the Isles swinging antique wooden Indian clubs that belonged to her grand-aunt; call William Shakespeare “Will” to his face (that would be the cloth face of the puppet magnet on the door of our refrigerator, a gift from Ryan); learned to identify the distinctive peaty flavor of Knockando single malt Scotch whiskey and the clear pleasure of Toad Hollow champagne; read every word of one of her boxed sets of hardcover The Lord of the Rings series (which she then gave me); discovered the pleasures of the mix-tape, back when audio tape was a real thing rather than a metaphor; become a fan of regency romances after reading hers, and of peerless work by Margaret Mahy (The Great Piratical Rumbustification and many others), Caroline Stevermer (A College of Magics and many others); learned to celebrate our annual national holiday, “Talk Like a Pirate Day”; laughed myself silly the first time I read her perfect Shakespearian sonnet titled “To My Bed” on the pleasures of sleeping rather than socializing; attended a Fourth Street Fantasy Convention to hear a panel discussion on establishing the laws of magic; and practiced turning out such tiny delicacies as Hapenny Treats.

Below is the recipe I still follow (in gluten-free form) in Ryan’s hand.

Ryan’s Recipe for Hapenny Treats in Her Hand

Ryan was a cherished correspondent. She also understood, as few have, my fascination with the sculptures of white lions. (She understood they held for me a triple resonance: that of my all white, half-Siamese cat, Alpine; the echo of Shirley Jackson’s novel, The Haunting of Hill House; and the sheer delight in the names of the New York Library Lions: Patience and Fortitude.)

Below are a small sample of the cards she sent over the years.

After Julia arrived in our world, Ryan picked up on her wavelength right away. Ryan couldn’t visit frequently, but her visits were occasions. Julia remembers sitting on the porch with Ryan, coloring with the rainbow of Sharpie markers Ryan had brought, then playing with the finger puppets, also her gift. Ryan told Julia how, when she was a little girl, a neighbor had given her a nickname she liked: Ryan the Lion. After that, of course, all letters to her were addressed that way.

One day, she joined us in a painting project is still part of our daily life. I had happened on a church rummage sale and bought two things of which Ryan approved: an almost complete set of Trixie Beldon books and a box of unfinished wooden blocks. Since I had lots of brushes and acrylic paints–and it was a fine summer day–a group of us sat down to embellish them. Ryan was a natural and brought great gusto to our project. The transformation of plain wood to mini, moveable stage flats was magical.

Original Blocks

After Painting Day with Ryan and Caroline

Some of the Blocks in Our Kitchen

And anyone who knows Julia well knows that she has been inseparable from Pig, who came from Ryan. Never has a Pig been so loved. (The photograph below was taken fully ten years ago, in November of 2003.)

Pig is now a constant, well-travelled companion. Well-styled always (currently sporting a new “body suit” of terrycloth to protect his delicate innards), Pig was the star of a special “Pig Style” issue of Julia’s publication The Winona Times, designed to amuse Ryan from afar. In 2012, Ryan’s sister wrote to Julia, telling her that Ryan had two smaller versions of Pig that she kept on her desk. George and Annette now keep Pig company (no doubt regaling him with stories of Ryan. Maybe, in exchange, Pig shows George and Annette his recent stitches, Lyndon Johnson-style?)

It is hard to say goodbye to this irreplaceable friend…and, by now, you’ve cottoned on to how impossible it is. Ryan had many, many friends, and we were very lucky to be part of her circle. As friends do, Ryan wove her vitality into the very fabric of our lives. She is indelible in us.

To close, in this “elegy season” (in the immortal words of poet Richard Wilbur), I wanted to do something small for my great-souled friend. I have never written a drinking song before, but somehow that seemed the right form to express Ryan’s joy in the sheer fun of living. So, as I sip my cup of raspberry leaf tea, wishing I could strum a Celtic harp, I offer this.

Drinking Song (for E. Ryan Edmonds)

So here’s to our Ryan!
Under cloud-tumbled skies,
let’s lift our full glasses
to her Irish eyes.

Let’s think of her stories,
her piratical flair,
those green leather gauntlets
in her book-lined lair,

her box full of tickets,
and the love in her heart
for a well-burnished sentence:
the essence of art.

Sing Ryan the Lion
a song of good cheer!
We miss her each day but
we still hold her near.

11.12.13 (Ryan would have enjoyed this date, too!)

Ryan in 2009 (photo by Caroline Stevermer)

Ryan’s Calligraphy

November Wet Leaves: Photos by Karla Schultz & Leslie Schultz; “Wet Leaves Song” (Poem)

Posted on November 6, 2013 by Leslie Schultz

Smokey Mountains National Park (Karla Schultz)

Now that it is November, there are only a few dwindling weeks remaining to enjoy fall foliage. Maybe we only have days–we had our first snow overnight. Winter has its own beauty–I might even take a photo or two!–but I do find myself reluctant to say farewell to the leaves this year. Accordingly, as the rains and snows set in, I am finding beauty in the wet leaves close to the ground. There is a certain glossy and poignant appeal to wet leaves, and I am encouraged to look more closely at the structure of each one.

My sister, Karla, a wonderfully skillful photographer of all things in nature, agreed to let me post some of her pictures of wet leaves this week (and in the months ahead, there will be more of Karla’s photography.) Below, I include a new poem inspired by these November leaves and a couple of photos of my own. May you find a few bright, deciduous treasures to bring inside!

Magnolia Planation, South Carolina (Karla Schultz)

Savannah River National Wildlife Refuge (Karla Schultz)

Smokey Mountains National Park (Karla Schultz)

Wet Leaves Song

Spring rains, autumn rains—
Leaves and raindrops fall—
Light through windowpanes
Changes. That is all.

First leaves, red and gold,
So tiny and new,
Become green and bold,
Lasting summer through.

And then the bright green
Vanishes, all too soon.
Winds grown chill and keen
Under a frosty moon.

Old leaves, shimmerings—
Orange, gold, and red—
Dance windy skimmerings,
Though clouds press down like lead.

Leaves will fall as rain falls,
But these wet leaves shine.
Their fragile beauty calls
To me, and becomes mine.

Leslie Schultz

Below are a few more photos (these that I took in Northfield this week).

Thank you for reading this! If you think of someone else who might enjoy it, please forward it to them. And, if you are not already a subscriber, I invite you to subscribe to the Wednesday posts I am sending out each week–it’s easy, free, and I won’t share your address!

Spooky Fun: Images of Halloween & a Cauldron of Poems: “Beware”, “Doppelganger”, and “Driving to Appleton”

Posted on October 30, 2013 by Leslie Schultz

Halloween is a great time for harvesting pumpkins and reflections, taking stock, and just getting silly. Hope you like the grab-bag below of images, insights, and poems below! (For images of a special dog and a special cat, scroll all the way down!)

In the photo above, what’s scarier? The silhouette of the witch on her broom, posted on the blinds, or the images flickering on the television inside? Your guess is a good as mine but I’m going for the televised images.

When I was in second grade, my best friend and I used to race home from school to see the latest episode of the (now cult classic) television show, Dark Shadows. For those who don’t know or remember, the opening credits are layered over waves crashing at the base of a cliff on the Maine coast, atop which sits a spooky house. The voice-over (a ghost? a warning?) says eerily, haltingly, “My name … is Victoria Winters…” We’d hear that and be off to be deliciously spooked for half an hour. Who knew what would turn up? Vampires? Witches or warlocks? Werewolves? Ghosts? It was all fog and suggestion, a jumble of plot lines we’d try to untangle. Anything might pop out of the closet or the crypt. (A side note: last year, curious to find out what I would think of them now, I rented a few of the early episodes from Netflix. They were hilarious! And my daughter says that the disco dancing–in which actors keep both feet planted in place–is truly scary.)

Back then, my taste for narrative leaned toward the gothic more than it does now, though I still enjoy the atmosphere in a poem like “Maude” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, or “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allen Poe. Back then, I read Ripley’s Believe it or Not as well as Little House in the Big Woods, but when it came to Halloween costumes, I always wanted to be a beautiful gypsy or a fashionable witch, never anything scary or gory. I didn’t think then about how fashion itself can be scary. (High heels? Belly piercings? You see my point.) Then, in college, my first roommate arrived with a subscription to Vogue magazine. During the fall of freshman year, I wrote this poem:

Beware

Vampires are in vogue
this season. See them draped in fur,
gaunt, lurking
in the birches, mad-eyed, or
haunting
smoky restaurants, hungering
for that gleaming
suck of fame.

Later still, encountering the idea in literature of the “doppleganger” or double, I thought about how much of what can truly scare us is what we sometimes see in the mirror: our own worst self looking back at us through our thoughts and actions. There’s always that gap between how we want to be (and be perceived) and what we manage to achieve. Now, that’s scary stuff, kids!

DOPPELGANGER

He is here again, the bad twin,
the other, the feared-but-known.
Where are his eyes? His nose is gone.
All that remains is the grin.

I think he is trying to get in.
The birds have fallen silent.
And then I know. And groan.
He rises from my very bone.

Nonetheless we disavow the doppelganger. We do our best to close that gap between actual and ideal, try not to sag in our intentions to be our best visions of ourselves, to smile, to play (even) through the pain of disillusionment that is just part of the human experience. And it’s funny for me to realize that Halloween, with its traditional juxtaposition of tricks and treats, masks and monsters, ghouls and glitter means more to me each year. Below, a final salute to Halloween in one more poem and several more photographs.

DRIVING TO APPLETON

Pumpkins sleep close to houses.
Evening light covers them with gold.
These farmhouse windows are lit but cold.
Grey barns settle on their stones.
Everywhere sheaves lean
Toward their centers.
Great rolls of hay seem to lumber.
Winter is coming, but now
The culverts are purple with thistles,
The cattle are plump,
And there, in the hollow,
A rusted harrow rests.

The woods beyond
Are full of gossips.
When the moon washes over
The tops of birches,
They’ll ride to the cut fields
To glean
And mend their brooms.

Leslie Schultz

Above, rowan berries: traditional specific against witches–unknown whether it has any effect on gossips.

In Praise of Glorious Autumn Leaves & “Housecat” (Poem for Alpine)

Posted on October 23, 2013 by Leslie Schultz

Every year, I am dazzled by the colors of the leaves as they turn and fall. Above are pink and green leaves in the Garden of Quiet Listening, a Japanese garden on the Carleton College campus, just a few blocks from my house. Every year, I want to hang onto these colors, to bring them inside, to keep them in some way past their expiration date. Here are a few attempts:

Many years ago, when it was brought home to me that all mammals don’t perceive color in the same way that humans tend to, I tried to imagine the world from the point of view of my cat, Alpine. Below is her baby picture, taken the first day I met her.

Some of you might remember Alpine. She used to spend lots of time on window ledges (and couches, too).

Alpine Undignified

Alpine has also inspired lines in several poems over the years, including the whole of this poem.

HOUSECAT

Alpine’s down is filling in
Between her summer fur and skin.
Crouched low on a window ledge,
She watches leaves desert the hedge.
She cannot see their orange and red;
Does Alpine mourn the autumn dead?
Not she; she yawns at the setting sun,
As much to say an evening’s done
As to convey an unconcern —
For whether seasons stay or turn.

Leslie Schultz (1982)

Alpine with Patience and Fortitude (New York Library Lions)

Here is Alpine the literary cat, overlooking Gulliver’s Travels, Vanity Fair, and (maybe?) Jane Eyre, colorful volumes held upright by scaled down copies of the famous New York Library Lions, Patience and Fortitude. Regarding color vision, it seems that the jury is still out on which colors cats can see. (If you are curious, here is an interesting link to an NBC News story.) All I know for certain is that I wouldn’t exchange my human color perception for anything, not even feline grace.

Have you seen any polka-dotted leaves this year?

Signature2 Thank you for reading this! If you think of someone else who might enjoy it, please forward it to them. And, if you are not already a subscriber, I invite you to subscribe to the Wednesday posts I am sending out each week–it’s easy, free, and I won’t share your address!

Waxings and Wanings & An Elegy for Autumn: “Compass II” (Poem)

Posted on October 16, 2013 by Leslie Schultz

Mississippi River, Looking North From 46th Street Bridge, Minneapolis

As the days shorten and darken, it’s natural to turn contemplative, to wonder if what have we done is of lasting value. Other mammals, like squirrels, feel the need to hurry their accomplishments toward a finish line. And yet, it is a new start, too. This is the time of the traditional Celtic celebration of the new year. I think that is the mood I feel with a new school season starting: a tallying up, a reckoning, a sense of “Okay…now what?” as I look ahead.

This week, as the leaves approach their most firey, I was able to take some photos of the Mississippi shoreline, view the scamperings and hear the scoldings of the squirrels, sigh with relief over a finally-repaired roof, and sigh with satisfaction over a well-stocked freezer full of organic farm produce. Now I am eyeing that stack of books–biographies of Jane Austen and Dorothy and William Wordsworth, Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, Brunetti’s Cookbook (for vegetables with a Venetian twist), and a mystery I have been meaning to read for ten years, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, which I found at a Little Free Library location recently.

As I type this, the rain that has been threatening all day has begun to dampen the pavement but I am basking in the glow of images of the past: albino squirrels in Northfield and Minneapolis, the blue bottle tree on Orchard Street, the contrast between the Cannon and the great Mississippi into which it flows. Time for the season’s first cup of hot cocoa and good book!

COMPASS II

More than a flock of geese veeing their way south,
one industrious squirrel, its piston-mouth
dropping walnut shells like sharp metal filings,
and acidic turns in walnut leaves’ stylings
(their change from deepest green to lemony yellow-gold)
leaves me bone-deep certain that the year is old;
makes me wonder if the harvest is enough
and then ponder if the winter will be rough,
if the Christmas season will hold any cheer
or if implacable blue shadows draw near.

Autumn is rich in harvest and imagery,
its coppers and golds rusting towards elegy.
My lone hope is to refine this sinking mood,
to render polished words from bleak attitude,
and strike, on the anvil used by all the bards,
something more lasting than those keen, tanic shards.

Leslie Schultz

Cannon River, Looking South From Second Street Bridge, Northfield

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Poems & Stories From the Heart

Author Archives: Leslie Schultz

A Candle for E. Ryan Edmonds & “Drinking Song for Ryan” (Poem)

November Wet Leaves: Photos by Karla Schultz & Leslie Schultz; “Wet Leaves Song” (Poem)

Spooky Fun: Images of Halloween & a Cauldron of Poems: “Beware”, “Doppelganger”, and “Driving to Appleton”

In Praise of Glorious Autumn Leaves & “Housecat” (Poem for Alpine)

Waxings and Wanings & An Elegy for Autumn: “Compass II” (Poem)

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