HAPPY 63rd BIRTHDAY MUFF

 Happy 63rd Birthday in heaven, a day late, beloved friend.

I still miss you and think of you all the freaking time, Muff.

I wish that you could see how many of our fellow Clarke grads have fared well in the world, among them Amy R, remember her? She used to dress up like you out of admiration and a desperate wish to be as popular and wise as you always were.

She's a theater teacher, and has been helping kids all over the US develop their inner acting geeks for decades!

Laura is doing well and Tracy Ann is an empty nester who has four adult sons and pretends she was a delicate and prim lady in college, LOL! Can you imagine?! I've also heard from Mary Rose that she has had a long and satisfying teaching career and Alice N teaches tech stuff to teenagers. Karen R is still married to Sarah Jo, and Sr Carol has dementia, while Ellen takes care of her and some other old profs from the college. Oh, and Janey has been a librarian for decades in Colorado, I believe, and I think she's retiring next year.

Meanwhile, my husband, the alcoholic, is dying of end-stage kidney disease and diabetes and a whole host of other health problems, not the least of which is that he often falls and breaks bones (due to his refusal to use a cane or a walker) and is often not in his right mind, where he doesn't know who he is or where he is, and he becomes incontinent and vituperative, especially towards me, who he likes to blame for all his troubles. So my role as caretaker has become envervating and horrific, and my life has gone downhill faster than a tray sled behind the cafeteria at Clarke on a snowy day. Since I'm disabled and haven't been able to work, I can't divorce him as I have nowhere to go and no money to establish myself (we live on his SSD, which he was granted but I was not). The only thing keeping me from complete despair is my 24 year old son and his live-in trans friend Sera, who helps out with Jim and laundry, and is a complete blessing to have around, as she's usually calm and unflappable...She calls me "Mom bunny" which makes me so happy.

So anyway, my life is something of a dumpster fire, but I appreciate that I had a long and satisfying career as a journalist, and that I was able to be a good mom to my son and his rag-tag group of delightful friends.

I think of you often, Muff, and I was just telling Sera the other day what a wonderful, giving, caring and kind person you were in life. I never would have made it through Clarke without your help and your wisdom.Thank you.

I am still keeping a book blog that has over 900 posts on it to date, of reviews and tidbits about books and movie adaptations. Due to the arthritis in my wrist and hands, I am thinking about quitting my book review blog after it reaches a thousand posts. But, who knows what the next couple of years will bring? 

Anyway, take care, and have fun on your special day.

LOVE YOU, amiga

DeAnn

Happy 61st Birthday, Dear Muff

 Happy 61st Birthday, my dear amiga! I wish you and I could chat today about getting old, about memories of our adventures at Clarke and in Ireland, and I wish we could plan another adventure in Scotland, or even just meeting up back in Iowa, where we could talk about our various family foibles.

You wouldn't believe how big and smart and handsome your godson Nick is! He's amazing, and I know you'd love talking to him and telling him tales out of school about his old mom, me. I'm sure he'd love meeting your grown nieces and nephews, too. They're all college age by now, too. 

I wish I'd have been able to keep some of the photos of you that I brought to your funeral, but your family wanted to keep them in rememberance, and I suppose that is more important than me having them to look at...but I've only got one photo left of you, and as I age, my memories get fuzzy, so I'm afraid I will lose memories of what you looked like at the Ren Fest in Wisconsin, or of you in Mary Fran at Clarke, holding court with great elan. 

I wish I'd gotten more time to see you at work in the Marshalltown Library, or having fun with your brothers or chatting with your wonderful Mum. She's still alive and kicking, and I find her strength astounding...but then, I'm amazed at the health and vitality of my own mom, who is nearing 85 and can still get around with just a cane for stability once in awhile. 

I often wonder what you'd look like now, with gray hair, or if you'd do what I do and color it every two to three weeks with a cheap box of burgundy hair color? Or would you have grown it back out, like you had it the first year of Clarke, when it was in two long braids down your back. Then you had it all cut off so your hair was in a pixie cut, and you looked great! But I remember that you kept your cut off braids and cried a bit over that first week when you looked at them. 

I'm in touch with some of our classmates from Clarke, and you'd be amazed at how much, and how little they've changed in the past 39 years. Mary Rose is still hilarious, with her dry and deadpan humor, and Alice N is still a delightful person who has been a teacher now for years. Tracy B married a wealthy guy and had four sons, who are graduating from college now. Laura lives in California, I think, and is still lovely. I wish you could come to the 40th reunion at homecoming next year, but I don't even know if I can make it, since I have a compromised immune system and with my asthma acting up, I can't afford to get COVID or a variant thereof. Since the theater dept has been shut down, Ellen and and Sr Carol don't teach anymore, but we all keep in touch online, sometimes via zoom chat rooms.

I still miss you so much. You'll always be alive in my memories and in my heart.

Happy 61st. 

Much love,

DeAnn

Happy 60th Birthday, Muff

 Happy 60th Birthday, my dear friend! 

I wish you were still here so that I could celebrate with you, even if it were only a phone call or Zoom or Facetime chat. 

Here's a link to a Neil Diamond song that I know that you loved (you loved Neil Diamond and Gordon Lightfoot, in addition to all the Irish bands like the Dubliners and Wolftones and Irish Rovers) called Cherry Cherry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlcuAsgc5-c

Oh how I still miss you, Muff. I miss your laughter and your sarcasm and your great wit and deep love of books and all things Irish.

I miss your wisdom and your generosity toward everyone but yourself. You were unsparing in your seeming hatred of your personality, your physicality and your talents, which were many and varied, but which you dismissed as being worthless, most of the time. I was so glad when you finally got your dream job at the Marshalltown library, where you could read to children and have a hand in dealing with your favorite section of literature, children's books. 

Today I was remembering the Saudi Arabian guys who invaded Clarke College in 82, I think it was, and brought a dead goat to Larry's kitchen, because he'd had the temerity to make a huge breakfast buffet to welcome them that included ham and bacon, and they ended up screaming "FILTHY PIG MEAT" and ululating in protest until Larry came to take it away. He wasn't aware that they had dietary restrictions as Muslims that were similar to that of Jewish people who keep kosher. So these Saudi guys went out in a fancy muscle car that they'd rented and hit a neighboring farmer's goat, killed it, tied it to the hood of their car and then dragged it into Larry's kitchen, and told him to fix up the goat meat for them. Muff, you were working in the kitchen on work study at the time, and you told me how this all went down with your natural storytelling ability that had me and everyone else in earshot howling with laughter. Poor Larry had no idea how to butcher a goat, but he promised them he'd see to it. He ended up burying that critter somewhere on the Clarke grounds. Then he went and bought some lamb and goat meat and fixed a stew for them. 

There were so many stories that you would tell of your time in Larry's kitchen, or your classes, or the theater. I never would have become a double major in theater and history if it weren't for you, Muff. You helped me remember my love of learning and acting and self discovery. I wish I could have persuaded you to stop smoking, but you loved your "coffin nails" as you called them, and you also loved to drink alcohol, especially the strong stuff like whiskey.

But I think back then we all thought we were immortal, that nothing could harm us out there in Dubuque. Even during our time at the St Giles Ren Fest, in Wisconsin, you were always there looking out for me as I made my goofy mistakes and you ensnared the heart of the MC of the whole faire. 

Thank you for being such a genuine friend during those years at Clarke and afterward, when I sorely needed your advice and counsel. 

I hope that you're enjoying some cake and Irish whiskey up there in heaven. God bless you.

BTW, I bet you'd be thrilled by our new Democratic president Joe Biden and our VP Kamala Harris. I know you'd have loved the Obamas, too. But I am glad you didn't have to live through the pandemic and quarantine...you would have hated it. But now that it's over, you would have been the first person to get back to work and get out there to start up your life again.

Happy 58th Birthday and Blessings for my Father

Happy 58th Birthday my friend, wherever you are! I hope that  you're sitting at God's right hand, helping others get acclimated to heaven.
While you are there, could you keep an eye out for my dad, Duane Semler? He's just passed, and I will admit that I felt that he'd be relieved to be rid of the pain that he was in and the suffering of losing his mind to dementia.
He was an optimist and a happy person, but he was also deeply proud of his mental acuity and his love of lifelong learning. He believed in education for everyone, especially to those who education could help raise from poverty or other dire circumstances. He was also very gullible and reminded a lot of people of Fred Flintstone in demeanor. I was certainly his Pebbles, his only daughter and I know he was proud of me for finishing my education with college and grad school.
I was able to tell him, via my high school friend Kim Weber's cell phone, that I loved him and that it was time to let go and begin his final journey. I sent the song "I Believe For Every Drop of Rain That Falls" sung my Elvis, to his funeral, along with the poem, below.

Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep. I am in a thousand winds that blow, I am the softly falling snow. I am the gentle showers of rain, I am the fields of ripening grain. I am in the morning hush, I am in the graceful rush Of beautiful birds in circling flight, I am the starshine of the night. I am in the flowers that bloom, I am in a quiet room. I am in the birds that sing, I am in each lovely thing. Do not stand at my grave and cry, I am not there. I do not die.

Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep by Mary Elizabeth Frye I think he would have appreciated this, and I know that he appreciated the poems and words that I read at your funeral, amiga. Today, I put your birthday salutations on my Facebook page, along with a link to the Dubliner's Whiskey in the Jar, a favorite song of yours, I know. So please look out after yourself and after my father today, and know that I love you both. Your loss and the loss of my dad have been devastating, but I want to believe that both of you are looking down on me and my family, and watching over us. Thank you.

Happy St Patrick's Day, One of Your Favorite Holidays

Here's a selection of poetry excerpts you would have loved, I think:
James Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake, 1939
“They lived and laughed and loved and left.”
Moya Cannon, from “Crannog,” The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume Two, 2010
“We don’t know what beads or blades
are held in the bog lake’s wet amber
but much of us longs to live in water
and we recognise this surfacing
of old homes of love and hurt.
A troubled bit of us is kin
to people who drew a circle in water,
loaded boats with stone,
and raised a dry island and a fort
with a whole lake for a moat.”
Frances Browne, from “A Parting Voice,” 1847
“I go as one that comes no more, yet go without regret;
The summers other memories store ’twere summer to forget;
I go without one parting word, one grasp of parting hand,
As to the wide air goes the bird—yet fare thee well, my land!”
Lady Jane Wilde, from “Destiny,” 1864
“There was a star that lit my life
It hath set to rise no more,
For Heaven, in mercy, withdrew the light
I fain would have knelt before.”
Oscar Wilde, from “Apologia,” 1881
“Ay! though the gorgèd asp of passion feed
On my boy’s heart, yet have I burst the bars,
Stood face to face with Beauty, known indeed
The Love which moves the Sun and all the stars!”
W.B. Yeats, from “Earth, Fire and Water,” 1893
“We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.”
Henrietta O’Neill, from “Ode to the Poppy,” 1792
“Hail, lovely blossom! — thou can’st ease,
The wretched victims of disease;
Can’st close those weary eyes, in a gentle sleep.
Which never open but to weep;
For, oh! thy potent charm,
Can agonizing pain disarm;
Expel imperious memory from her seat,
And bid the throbbing heart forget to beat.”
John Todhunter, from “The Banshee,” 1839
“And sometimes, when the moon
Brings tempest upon the deep,
And rous’d Atlantic thunders from his caverns in the west,
The wolfhound at her feet
Springs up with a mighty bay,
And chords of mystery sound from the wild harp at her side,
Strung from the heart of poets;
And she flies on the wings of tempest
Around her shuddering isle,
With gray hair streaming:
A meteor of evil omen,
The spectre of hope forlorn,
Keening, keening!”
Eileen Shanahan, from “The Three Children,” 1927
“The tigers of the world will spring,
The merchants of the world will buy.
And one will sell her eyes for gold,
And one will barter them for bread,
And one will watch their glory fade
Beside the looking-glass, unwed.”
John W. Sexton, Bog Asphodel, 2013
“Bog is the roof of the underworld,
where upside down the dead
walk with their feet shadowing the soles
of the living. Each step you take
you take onto the step of your dead self.”

Happy 56th Birthday, Amiga

For a few months, until I turn 57 in December, we are the same age. Muff used to laugh and say "You blaze the trail into next year, and I'll follow." I am doing my best to not forget anything about her, including her love of Irish music, and Gordon Lightfoot, and Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollop, Trinity by Leon Uris, Nick Adams Stories by Hemingway, Charles Dickens and Rumpole of the Bailey. She had no time for most "contemporary" popular fiction or music. She and I and Mary Karl formed a group in reaction to the invasiveness of popular culture called The Sea Hags. We had rules, regs and policies, too, and we'd cackle at those who fell prey to the easy slang and stupidity of what we saw as the cheap fast food of pop music and fiction. How I miss your wit and sarcasm, my fellow Sea Hag! I miss listening to your Gord's Gold album, and the Irish Rovers, and your loathing of all pasta. 
Today I am listening to Gordon Lightfoot in your honor. I am reading a memoir by an African American woman (you would have loved Shonda Rhimes, Muff) and I am eating potatoes for lunch (You loved potatoes almost as much as you hated macaroni). You were a true Gemini. Mercurial, intellectual, witty and wise. You never quite got the hang of romantic relationships, unfortunately, but I don't think you had a lot of role models in that respect. We both certainly had the dreaded "daddy issues," and I know that you and I struggled with self esteem at many points during our lives, battling feelings of worthlessness due in no small part to body size issues. Men were still drawn to you, though, in a way that they were never drawn to me, even at my thinnest. Your spark always shone so bright, a blind man could see it. 
To this day, I wish I had your brilliant mind, which made reading even the most complex texts seem like child's play. You're the only person I'd ever met who thought Thackeray was easy reading, a sort of dilettante of 19th century English literature. I barely made it through Vanity Fair with my brain intact.  One of the few things you didn't understand was science. I remember tutoring you in the basic biology class that we had freshman year at Clarke, and none of it made sense to you, so we tried going through it as if it were a novel, with a plot, and characters and the body being the setting. You made it through and returned the favor many times over the years, especially in the women's lit class that we had where we were supposed to read every feminist writer ever and journal about how that author impacted our life or our outlook/understanding of life. I was taking too many hours of classes, and I was unable to spend time reading so many thick tomes, so you loaned me your notes and we talked about Simone De Bouvoir and Tillie Olsen and Mary Daley.  You had 'voices' you'd made up for each of them, and we roared with laughter at the scenarios you'd make up about these long-dead women having tea, or drinking wine in Paris and tossing their lovers out on the street. 
I remember your tiny feet, and the fact that you insisted on wearing really cheap keds sneakers that would fall apart about a month after you got them, but you'd tape them up and wear them anyway. I tried to get you to wear boots, or sturdy shoes, but you refused, just as you refused to wear a coat, even in winter. You loved Irish whiskey, you hated the pretentiousness of wine and you thought beer was for bores. That didn't stop you and Monica from getting me drunk for the first time in my life on beer in the "onion" at Clarke freshman year, however. I gather I was quite entertaining. I don't remember a thing about that night after chugging that first pint.
I remember your "tin ear" and your gravely laugh. Your compassion for those less fortunate lead you to help and volunteer in so many ways. Your love of children that lead you to adopt a child in Africa and send a small amount of money every month to her until she was 18. For her 18th birthday, I remember how proud you were to send her some simple kitchen appliances and a bucket and washbasin, which she wrote to tell you were so very important for her to be able to cook her own food and clean up afterwards. You adopted an entire platoon of soldiers after 9/11, and you sent them individual letters every week. You read to the kids at the library, something that you loved doing so much it filled my heart to hear you exult about it. You volunteered at your local church, the one that you felt was for 'regular' people, not snobs, and you went to mass regularly, always saying a prayer for me and mine, though you didn't like to talk about it.  I still miss you, and I will always love you. Happy birthday in heaven.

You'd Be So Excited about Cubs in the World Series!

Muff, I can just imagine you tonight, sitting down in an easy chair in front of a TV set, with some popcorn watching your beloved Chicago Cubs playing game 7 of the World Series!

You once told me that your grandmother started you and your siblings watching the Chicago Cubs on TV when you were very young. Apparently, you sometimes had to hang out with your grandmother in order to get fed, and while there, she instilled a love of baseball in you that lasted your entire life.

Here's an article in the New York Times about tonight's game: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/02/sports/baseball/world-series-chicago-cubs.html?_r=0

You should know that my mother, who is also a baseball fan of many years, is watching the games in your memory, and cheering for the Cubs, just as she believes you would do.

She calls me after every game and says "Muff and I cheered the Cubs on to victory!" Though she's an atheist, she believes you are right there beside her in spirit, and I sincerely hope she's right. I can't see how telling an almost 80 year old woman otherwise would do any good. Mom has always been strong willed about her beliefs.

I imagine your brothers and sister are also watching the Chicago Cubs with great glee. The Cubs haven't been in the World Series for over 70 years. There are elderly women in the stands who never thought they'd see the Cubs in the series during their lifetime.

Dear God how I wish you were still alive to see this historic moment in baseball history. I know you would have been thrilled....beyond thrilled.

Just in a side note, WP Kinsella, author of Shoeless Joe and the Iowa Baseball Confederacy, and the movie Field of Dreams, which you LOVED, died a couple of months ago. He had been so ill from several diseases, among them diabetes, that he committed physician-assisted suicide, to be out of pain and at rest. I hope that you two have met in Heaven and are having a great time talking baseball and books. Remember that I got him to sign a book of short stories for you.

I hope the Cubbies win, my amiga. Even if they don't, I know you will have rooted for them from above, just as my mom and I are rooting for them from down here.

Much love to you, my friend. I miss you so very much.
PS. An update, THE CHICAGO CUBS WON THE WORLD SERIES!
Way to go, Chicago! Thanks for the assist from Heaven, my amiga!