Causes of the Revolution: A Poem

Last night when we arrived home from a weekend of camping, Connor and I had now idea that we would be up till 3 in the morning studying American history-- and liking it.

But that's what we did. Camping was a thrilling, though somewhat face-chapping affair, what with the wind and all. I'm glad I went, but after hiking 9 miles in two days I was happy to see home and my bed. The trip home took longer than usual because we had to make an extra stop at Walmart in DeQueen to find some brie. I had a sudden revelation on the trail between the Shady Lake dam and our campsite that I desperately needed to eat some brie. It sounded good to Connor, too, and Rebekah, who rode home with us. So we bought it and traveled on our merry way.

Bekah's parents were still at life group when we got home at 8:30, so we stood around in the kitchen eating brie and crackers and hummus and drinking earl grey to warm up. The house was freezing inside, and the cat was tearing around like some kind of dervish. I take it she was happy to see humans, but I think she was upset that we weren't the particular human she wanted-- Mattie Kate.

After collectively consuming six ounces of brie (my instincts were right. It was just the ticket) we drove Rebekah home to be reunited with her waiting family, who were overflowing with anticipation. Except Sarah, who is still at Shady Lake with the others.

Connor and I were tired out, not to mention grimy and greasy from camping. So we weren't exactly pumped about breaking out the textbook. I'd had the chance to at least make notes on the material beforehand, though, so we stood in the kitchen (it's the best room in the house-- everything exciting happens there) and shot questions at each other.

It got a little out of hand. The answers started rhyming. And then we were ad libbing, and before you could say "Boston Massacre," I was bending over the blank sheets of Mom's grocery pad, scribbling couplets of doggerel foolery and madly twisting my greasy hair while Connor spouted out more rhymes and slapped his thigh with the hilarity of it all. It helps that it was 1:00 in the morning and many ordinary things become hilarious at that time of day.

I thought I'd share the results of our efforts with the rest of the world, with an apology to any Brits and a disclaimer that it's hard to tell the truth when it has to rhyme, so we fudged a little on that. Poor King George got it hard, but then, you have to find someone to blame. Back then there were no presidents.

Causes of the Revolution

The Causes of the Revolution
Were not Helen of Troy, or air pollution
They were political factors, economic strifes,
Social troubles, (the stuff of life)
An unwillingness to compromise—
If you think it’s otherwise
Go ask Sam Adams, he’s the fellow
Who fanned the flame with his rhetorical bellows.

After Pontiac’s rebellion (trust me dears, he was a hellion)
King George issued the Royal Proclamation,
“I will squelch this budding nation!
No more moving farther west!
I’m the king, and I know best!”

With the fall of Salutary Neglect,
King George sat and did reflect
This was no little piece of cake
The health of his empire was at stake
The Sons of Liberty were about,
Committees of Correspondence were on the scout
Patrick Henry had assumed his stump
And Ole’ Sam Adams had put a goad in their rumps

After one too many mugs of beer
Those Liberty Boys weren’t thinkin’ too clear
They threw some snowballs at a guard
Gee, I guess some were a little hard
British regulars came out to spar
And some bloody idiot shouted, “Fahr!”
There was a massacre on the premises—
At least that’s what Paul reminisced

After that the Townshend Acts
Were declared to impose a tax
On glass and paper, tea and paint
(“What do I look like,”
Said King George, “a saint?”)

The colonists were up in arms
They donned some feathers and left their farms
They had a party on the sea
And ruined all King George’s tea.

King George declared the Coercive Acts
“Boston port closed till my tea is paid back!
Privileges limited, legislatures suspended,
By Goerge, we’ll have this government upended!”
So the colonists made a fuss
“We’ll have no more of your laws on us!”
They’d rather have been stabbed and died,
So this is how those boys replied,
With the Continental Congress of ‘74
(The British knew not what was in store)
Suffolk Resolves declared Acts impolite,
They drafted a Declaration of Grievances and Rights
They organized a boycott against British trade,
Then sent the militias off to raid

The Midnight Rider, Paul Revere,
Rode away (he is not here)
He rode with buddy William Dawes,
Who did not follow British laws
The minutemen were good old boys
Their guns were not just childrens’ toys
Their shots were heard around the world
And then Old Glory was unfurled!

By: Cassie and Connor Walters

This morning, we presented the poem to Mrs. Szafran, and she got a laugh. And all the way through the quiz we smirked with glee as little couplets ran through our heads, igniting our craniums for victory.

No Mommy in Morocco

Today I spent the time after government class while Connor was in computer class to attend some of those delightful little details such as finding someone to talk to about financial aid and registering for a CLEP test.

One of the major problems in trying to communicate with human beings is that it's hard to know the right questions to ask. If that isn't bad enough, when you think of the questions, you have to get up the nerve to ask them. Then you have to deal with the change in brain waves depending on the answer you get, which you sometimes can anticipate and sometimes haven't the foggiest idea of. Communication is a beast, I'm telling you.

There, I'm sounding like Junie B. Jones. What can I say? I like third graders.

But-- communication. Whenever I go to the financial aid desk, I try to pull up the questions from the files in my brain. Right now the files are full of messy details of money and transportation and scheduling and tests and homework and other peoples' tests and homework that I am assigning them. The files are chronically unorganized so it's hard to pull up the right questions. And when I think them up ahead of time and write them down, I always leave something out.

Or I stroll up to the desk and ask a question, only to be confronted with another scenario that requires me to think up and ask more questions. And the ladies behind the desk are nice enough, but they aren't prepared to sit there doing nothing while I shuffle through the mental files (besides, seeing as I'm the only one who can see the files, it probably looks a little more "mental" than that).

The result of all this is that I have to visit the F. A. office frequently as I think of questions. But bit by bit, it's coming along.

Today I was also registering for a CLEP test for English, trying to add a few more credit hours without all the time and cost. More information, more mental memos to attend more little details. I am my personal secretary.

On the way out of the Student Center, a red and white magazine caught my eye outside the international student office. It said "Study Abroad" in catchy red font, and I immediately sat down on the bench to take a look. I glanced quickly over Argentina and Mexico and Peru and Spain, lingering longer over Brussels and then landing on Morocco, where I stopped to stay a while.

Ahh. Sometimes I just want to jump up and grab a backpack, catch a bus to the airport, and fly far, far away. Not because I don't like it here. Just for an adventure. And Morocco has always grabbed my interest. It seems obscure. Mysterious. Exotic. Not a popular cruise destination, not the top pick of exchange students. The kind of place that makes me think of my favorite shade of blue. The kind of place that, while flying home standing in an infernal customs line at 3:00 in the morning you would casually be chatting with the person behind you and they'd ask "Where were you?" and you would modestly swallow the grin that is attacking you and say, "Morocco." All casual-like, you know.

Yes, I do a great deal of fantasizing. Don't worry, there is plenty to keep me firmly anchored to the ground. All those previously mentioned "little details," for instance. What do I think I'm going to do with a semester of Arabic, anyway? Or "Conflict Resolution?" (Ok, well I might be able to put that to good use.) As far as I can see, people don't usually take a semester of college courses for fun. They usually need to count for something.

Well, I will give this some thought. I think for now, it's here for a year or two at least. And of course I'm glad. I would probably miss my Mommy in Morocco.

Giving it a Try

A few weeks ago I got inspired and decided to submit an article to the local newspaper, just for kicks. I didn't tell anyone except Connor because I wanted to surprise the rest of my family. I was so giddy I could hardly contain myself. It's funny, the things that turn a person on. Road trips and freshly sharpened pencils. Sending an article to the newspaper.

I had figured newspaper editors were like publishing people on a smaller scale, and I expected a sort of disinterested, condescending aloofness. But when I talked to Ms. Ana Walker, who is over the Voices column of the Longview News Journal, I was surprised to find her kind, positive, enthusiastic, and very accessible. The whole experience was very encouraging to me.

Here is the article for those of you who don't get the paper. Or read the paper. I'm just now looking through it a few times a week. Ours was sopping wet from rain that morning, and I had to hint pretty strongly to get Dad to pry it open and check the insides. Of all mornings for the paper to be so drenched no one wanted to open it!

http://www.news-journal.com/search/content/news/opinion/stories/2009/10/09/10092009_voices_walters.html

I just had a little scuffle with Starbucks internet. Starbucks isn't my first choice of coffee shops, but here I am and I bought a gift card so that I could access the internet. Too bad I couldn't buy a side of brains with that.

I tried typing my card number in several times without any luck. Every time, ugly red words came up telling me my card wasn't activated. I went to the barista up front, who was really busy with other things and couldn't help me much. I went back and retyped the numbers. Twice. It was then I realized I'd been typing in the card number of the sample card on the screen-- not my card!

So now I am reveling in the light of my own shocking brilliance of mind, drinking an especially delicious hot chocolate.

My Words are Chewing on Themselves

I am sitting at Goodday Coffee+Book shop in Kilgore. I'm with Connor and we just finished classes at Kilgore for the day. He is in a chair nearby wrestling with a computer class assignment and talking to his laptop in an unfriendly way in short syllables.

I am lucky because major tests are over for now and I'm free to blog. At least I want to say I'm free to blog. My head is still imprisoned in a rut of the antithesis of creativity and when I start to write, sadness comes out. I don't want to write about sad things, because I figure I've done that enough. But how do you write from the heart on such an overcast day without sounding sad?

The sad things I feel but don't want to write about are like boxes in a room in a house I moved into a long time ago. I don't come into this room much and it hurts unpacking the boxes, but I am curious about their contents because I seem to remember some things in them that used to be displayed and enjoyed in the brighter parts of my house, and some time ago I packed them away out of sight. I miss them like a favorite book. Or a favorite tea cup.

This coffee shop is peaceful. The soft green on the walls is soothing, and so are the beautiful books that line the walls, books that look like they were chosen for expressly decorative purposes, but are actually for sale. On the wall over the table
where Connor and I often sit, there is a quote by T.S. Eliot that says "I have measured out my life in coffee spoons."

Connor thinks this is an awesome quote and so do I, although putting it up in a coffee shop is taking it grossly out of context, I would think. But poetry is subjective-- I suppose you can take it to mean anything you please, as long as you don't assume the author meant that as well.

My brother and I have been thinking about art and discussing it lately-- music for him, writing for me. Art is something that has to be shared, or it will ferment and burst out of you. That's why we have to listen to music in the car together, that's why I want to write a blog, that's why I am glad there is poetry on the walls of a coffee shop. It's why I wish more people took time to love beauty instead of trampling it. It's why I want to find more creative outlets. I don't know much about art, only that there's a part of me that hungers for beauty, and a part of me that was created to create.

After a long walk at the walking track a few days ago, and the conversation we had there, Connor and I agreed that what we are looking for in art is what is REAL. On my part, if I have to wake up to the ugliness of life, I need all the more to wake up to the beauty, because the beauty is the rope where we hang onto God. By beauty I don't just mean flowers. I mean everything that is good. A Weird Al song that makes me laugh my head off, walls painted green, Winnie the Pooh, rain outside the window, my sister's shimmering hair, sitting in the living room with friends talking about life...real life.

I didn't mean to write about this. It seems foolish to me somehow. Every time I write a word it turns and attacks the word behind it so that my sentences regularly get chewed to bits and I have to erase everything and start over. Even now they are salivating and growling and I see that I should post this blog before I lose my chance...

Triumph in the Hunt

Today I embarked on a journey to find and seize (lawfully) some of that stuff that has given humankind the most pleasure and botheration since the advent of the fig leaf: clothing.

I am like the guy in that one Sonic commercial-- my wallet creaks when I open it. I don't go shopping very often. It's not because I don't like nice clothes; I have plenty of good reasons for not shopping. I won't enumerate them now because many of you are familiar with them yourselves and it will only bore or depress you.

Well, today, I did go shopping, and today, I did buy clothes. After discovering four small rips in the back of my favorite and nearly only pair of jeans on Monday, I decided that was the limit. And today, because of unexpected events at our house which kept Dad from his usual grocery shopping, I got the groceries instead.

Before Walmart, however, I stopped at two other stores to hunt for jeans. Not only did I find jeans, I found shirts and a dress that all fit and I liked. I bought some of them. I had forgotten how to swipe my debit card. But I figured it out without too much trouble.

I could just keep my holey jeans. After I got a look at what was selling, I figured mine were pretty much in style. The difference is just where you put the holes, unfortunately. I don't care how stylish they are, when I get around to buying new jeans every eon or so, I'm not going to pay for holes. I can make them myself, thank you.

I went home to tell my family what I'd done. I had not warned them before hand, and I wondered if the shock might not be too great.

"Well good for you," Dad said, (Not the response of average Dads to average daughters.) "Do we need to put this on the record or something?" Mattie congratulated me warmly and said she I could tell she was proud of me.

And I-- well I'm downright proud of myself. It's not every day I go out on the hunt and return triumphant, clothed in the booty.