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Posts Tagged ‘storytelling’

the significance of the offer

Posted in Inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 12, 2026| 3 Comments »

They almost made me cry, these two young men. We were their last stop for the day to pick up junk. I knew from an earlier phone call that they had already had a very full day. But as one of them went through the company schpeil, he added, “And if there’s anything else you need our help with just let us know.”

I looked up at him, “Are you sure?”

“Uhm, yes, that’s why we’re here. To help.”

I nodded. “Okay, next to my husband’s side of the bed, there’s a pole he uses to help with transfers that relies on tension between the floor and ceiling. It became loose and fell. When you’re done can you two put it back up?”

Without skipping a bit, they nodded.

And that’s what they did.

As I led them up the stairs, I said, “You know, the older I get the more I am willing to accept help when the offer is made. And sometimes I don’t even wait for the offer before requesting it.”

They laughed.

After acknowledging their presence, Steve napped in the bed as they worked. One of them nodded sagely. “I used to work in elder care, ” he said. “This is just fine.”

The two of them went to work using language that is not part of my repertoire about tension and how to insert screwdrivers at the base and turn to tighten . . . and after noticing the apparent look on my face one of the fellows looked around and saw Steve’s in-door woodworking area.

He said, “Uhm, if it’s okay for me to go in there and find a screwdriver I can do it for you.” I went in and picked up a screwdriver. “Will this work?”

He nodded.

Yes, I gave them a tip and good review but mostly what they left me with was a lighter spirit. A genuine offer made and genuine follow through.

And as they left, I heard those usual soft words and so I shouted to the men as they made their way down the stairs, “Steve says thank you!”

And they replied, “You’re welcome, Steve!”

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9 years ago …

Posted in Inspiration, tagged , , , , , , on January 6, 2026| 1 Comment »

story of my art – shakespeare and the joy of being

Hard to believe it was nine years ago that Mr. Langosy allowed me to share the story of his art. What a remarkable man and such a pleasure to have known him and his family. Donald Langosy passed away this week and what a legacy he leaves behind. An active artist until the end, his last exhibit, The Journey of Eduardo Gunkla, is currently on display at the Multicultural Arts Center in Cambridge, MA, until January 9th. A virtual gallery is also accessible online. https://multiculturalartscenter.org/eduardo-gunkla/

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just words

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 12, 2025| 8 Comments »

A new restaurant has opened not far from where I work. I paused in my journey this morning to peer at the menu from afar. Words rang out. “Hey, Nigger. This is where people walk.” Startled I turned toward the voice to see a young white man striding past. Now I’d seen him earlier in the morning. He was clearly strung out on something so there was no need to say anything in return. But as I returned to work I was startled that the words of a junkie, someone clearly in need of some help of some sort, could touch me so. Probably doesn’t help that I am currently immersed in historical research about the profiling and imprisonment of free Black seaman in the antebellum south.

Nor does it help that as Steve and I continue to make our way in this world that people continually, immediately, assume that I am either the paid home health aid or the overnight caregiver. And so then the onus is on me to calmly explain that I am his wife. The onus. I know of a lovely older Black woman in an interracial relationship and she shared that in the retirement community where they reside she always carries her resident card to prove she belongs there and is not “just” a visiting care giver.

We live in a time of unprecedented whitewashing where people in power are trying to normalize outright racism and bigotry and even more so foment deep and abiding ignorance about this nation’s past let alone its present. People are not questioning their assumptions. Race does matter regardless of what a super rich and powerful white minority are trying to assert.

Just some Sunday musings … best get back to my research so that that forgotten story can be shared soon.

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let’s end with … as a child in bangalore

Posted in Inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on March 11, 2025| Leave a Comment »

When my father was reassigned to Vienna we had to say good-bye to all of our friends. We had a party with my school friends. I “planned” it but my Ayah did all the work. The Ayah took care of me and my sister and made sure we weren’t stolen. She tucked me in bed at night, and chased the animals out. She got me up each morning. She was dark of skin with long dark hair. She would get me out of trouble and keep me safe. If I broke something, like a nice glass or cup, she often took the blame for me. 

Hadi was the butler and oversaw the house and whole compound. He reported to my father. He was kind and gentle. One day I decided to cook a steak. I had to cook something. I was in the kitchen. I don’t remember why. He watched as I cooked the steak guiding me. When I thought it was done he said no but I didn’t listen. I insisted on eating it and it made me sick.

Let’s end with the Maharajah. My first impression of him was that he was fat. I mean he was a very big man to a small boy. My dad took me to work at the library that was located in Coorg. And that’s where I think I first saw him. He and my dad and I took a walk around his place. I wouldn’t call it a palace. Big compound is closer. The animals were loose in the compound. There was an elephant, gray, probably a male but I don’t know for sure. Probably a giraffe. He hunted. He shot a mother tiger and captured the cubs. There was a batch of those that I saw and played with. Four of them. They were very small. They would fit in my hands if I held them now. I think I told you they were white but they weren’t white solidly through. I don’t remember what year that was but I saw him more than once. I know he met with Queen Elizabeth in 1961 as she toured India. I remember seeing her driving in a convertible. I was looking down from the roof of the library. 

I can’t think of these times as unusual. It was simply my childhood. We moved on to Vienna for a few years. I joined the Boy Scouts, an international troop, and received an award for knot tying. I had weak ankles and a doctor their prescribed ice skating. My mother taught me some fancy ballroom dances and my father tried to teach me guitar. There I was introduced to sachertorte. It is still one of my favorite desserts. Like I said, simply my childhood.


Photo Sources:

Horne Family Album

https://archive.org/details/propix.275036712

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as a child in bangalore 2

Posted in Guest Contributor, Inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 8, 2025| 6 Comments »

In Steve’s own words …

In Bangalore, I used to walk to the local Indian school, St. Anthony’s Boy’s School. Sometimes I took a rickshaw. The driver would be peddling on the street and I would wave him down. It was cheap and I had enough pocket money. I thought school was thorough and complete meaning subjects were covered thoroughly and completely without any gaps or holes. But when I went on to a British school in Bangalore I discovered there were holes in what I had been taught. It didn’t matter. I just loved learning and reading. Given that my father ran a library there were plenty of books at my disposal. My parents were open to me reading anything. There were no PTA (parent teacher association) meetings. No judgements. My father probably gave me the most books on all sorts of subjects. 

The dachshund would meet me when I walked home from school. My general routine after returning home was to put on outdoor clothes and go climb a tree. There were not so many other kids around. Sometimes a few. We lived on Richmond Road, a street with lots of bungalows. White people generally lived in these bungalows, mostly Brits. They worked for the state I guess maybe civil servants.

after first communion

My dad had a jeep as part of his job. On Sundays we would drive to mass at the Catholic church. I remember the building as spacious. Sometimes he would drive me to the library where he worked. That seemed spacious to me too. Everything seemed spacious to me back then. Even our bungalow.

I remember the bungalow had a veranda. I remember lots of plants on ours planted by the gardener and by my dad as well. My father liked to garden growing all kinds of plants edible and not. I remember everything from African violets to basil. 

In addition to the dachshund and siamese cat, he owned parakeets. About four or five blue parakeets in a green cage. He also kept fish in a standard fish bowl. They were just plain old fish not very interesting to me. He also kept two horses. He loved animals. He’d grown up on a farm in Nebraska. 

I fell from a mango tree and my dad looked at my arm and decided it was broken and took me to the doctor. I also fell while climbing a wall. A piece of the wall broke off in my hand and that’s how I fell. A stranger, an Indian man,  picked me up and took me up to the house. Broke my arm that time too catching myself with my hand and elbow beneath me. But aside from events like this I felt safe and happy in Bangalore.

I enjoyed the food. My first glass of water there I drank not realizing there were peppercorns in the glass. Overall the food was not spicy. We had a cook. He would make me fried chicken. When my father was entertaining he would take over the kitchen. He greatly enjoyed cooking. From him I learned how to make pesto. He was a good cook. 

My younger sister had been born in Italy. My mother had her hands full with me, a baby and my father and all our animals. She was very beautiful and always smelled nice. Like flowers.

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as a child in bangalore

Posted in Guest Contributor, Inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on March 5, 2025| 5 Comments »

In Steve’s own words:

We were there from 1957 to 1962. My father worked as a librarian for the U.S. State Department. I was five years old when we arrived and I could still speak Italian from his previous post in Genoa, Italy. I had great pets in India. My father had a dachshund. A long skinny regular sized dachshund not a miniature. He also had a Siamese cat that he had brought from Italy. In addition I had a young mongoose. His name was Mongi. My father purchased him from a snake charmer. I most remember how he used to run up the sleeve of my shirt. I first saw him when the snake charmer came to visit our bungalow. He took him out of a bag and put him on the ground. He ran up to the snake and sniffed. The snake had come out of the bushes around our place. I think it was a cobra. The mongoose ignored the snake for a bit and sniffed all of the hands and feets he could find before returning to the snake. The snake charmer held a bag open and the mongoose ran back inside. The snake charmer picked up the snake very carefully and placed the snake in a different bag. The snake charmer, who probably saw my face filled with delight, made my father an offer. In exchange for a 5 rupee note, maybe about a $1, my father bought me the mongoose.

sitting on the steps of the bungalow book in hand

Over time I had more than one mongoose though only one at a time. The first Mongi got too used to people and got too close to someone cutting grass with a sickle and was killed. The snake charmers visited the house once a week and they always had a mongoose for sale. I remember my father reading Kipling’s Riki Tiki Tavi to me. In the end I think I had two or three mongoose before we left India for the U.S. before embarking for Austria. They were all killed by the sickle because the men wielding the sickle sat in the grass looking very inviting and the mongoose would get too close. The last Mongi I had to leave  behind because he was not allowed to enter the U.S. I felt like he was being unfairly blamed for killing chickens when he’d never killed a chicken in his life.

They are about as big as a gray squirrel. Our Siamese cat liked to carry them around in its mouth and treated them like kittens. The dachshund also liked to pick them up and carry them around by the waist. The trio got along fine even when a new Mongi appeared. They liked to sleep together and with me. When the Ayah put me to bed, she covered my bed with mosquito netting. The mongoose would wait and unstuff the net where it was tucked underneath the mattress and slip into bed with me. We kept him fed fairly well with leftovers from the table and bits of chicken. They could come and go as they pleased in and out of the house and into any bedroom. My mother thought me and my father were nuts but she bore with it. The family gardeners liked them because they killed the snakes that the gardeners chanced upon.

My mother had a harder time dealing with the goats. They weren’t pets. They were more of a nuisance. We kept a few in the compound. They were kept for their meat and had free range to wander wherever liked. I rarely messed with them because they would butt fiercely with their heads. Sometimes they wandered into the house. They’d walk right through the screen door by butting the screen out. They usually made their way to the couch and fell asleep. I think they thought they were people.

The most common animal I saw in India were monkeys. There were several mango trees in the compound. The monkeys infested the trees. Rheesus monkeys. They made a chittering sound. They ate the mangoes and also threw them to the ground. I liked to climb the mango trees to pick mangoes and just eat them fresh. I still like the taste of fresh mangoes.

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Musings … Winter in 1700s South Carolina and more

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 12, 2023| Leave a Comment »

There is no description of Winter but somehow I assume Winter is female. She was likely from Angola or possibly Gambia. Many of the enslaved to South Carolina at this time were from those regions. The same is likely true for King, Dido, Bell, Judge, Coaster, York and the nine other individuals along with Winter who were bequeathed to Mary Cochran Smith by her husband James Smith of Charleston, South Carolina. If they were bought from a single “parcel” that is unclear. If they were named by the Smiths or by the captors who first enslaved them is unclear.

There is only so much one can glean from the newspaper advertisements.

Carpenter, Ajax, Hercules, Thunder, Drummer, Soldier and Sailor who together ran away from Royal Governor Boone were new to the Carolina colony, unable to speak English, but based on their names had some inherent skills.

Uriah Edwards placed ads for two months in The South Carolina Gazette seeking the return of his “new Negro girl named Juno about 14 or 15 years of age.” Did he reclaim his property after that time or did he simply stop placing advertisements?

Phebe was a thin spare woman when she ran away from Joseph Wragg. She’d lived in Charles Town aka Charleston since she was sixteen years old because the advertisement stated that she was 36 years old and was well known around town as a washer woman for the past twenty years.

Virtue ran away from Titus Bateman along with a two-year old child. I wonder the name the of the child.

Edward Morris threatened prosecution of anyone harboring his Negro boy Shadwell.

Peter Roberts sought the return of his Eboe man named Primus. And further along the page of the same 1735 newspaper, Joseph Wragg and Company, the trading enterprise of Joseph Wragg and his brother Samuel, advertised “To be sold on Wednesday the 2nd day of July next … a choice parcel of slaves, imported in the ship Dove, Richard Fothergill Commander, directly from Angola.” And if you switch to the Slave Voyages Database you can see that the Dove commanded by Fothergill boarded 290 enslaved Africans of whom 248 survived for sale in Charleston.

When did these 248 people receive their new names?

The South-Carolina Gazette a few months later reported held in jail awaiting return to their enslavers two men both named Primus, a boy named Cesar and an Ebo girl who could not speak English and therefore had no known name. And in that same paper an ad reads “to be sold on the 24th of September a parcel of choice Negroes imported in the Happy Couple … Hill Master directly from the coast of Guiney by Jos. Wragg and Co.” The database shows that ship commanded by Captain Hill disembarked 141 souls.

London merchants Joseph and Samuel Wragg were the largest slave traders in Charleston during the early 1700s. They sat on various Royal councils. They did so well in promoting emigration to the new colony that they and later some of their descendants were granted tens of thousands of acres of land. During the 1730s 20,000 slaves were imported to Charleston, SC, most from Angola and more than a third brought in by Joseph Wragg and Company.

As recorded in transcribed Great Britain Colonial Records, in a report for the King of England about the numbers of enslaved Africans imported to the Carolina Colony at Charleston between May 30, 1721 to September 29, 1726, in July the ship Ruby docked with 112 people on board. Of that number Joseph Wragg received 24 men and women and 3 boys and girls. In September the ship Cape Coast disembarked 126 with Wragg receiving 112 men and women and 3 boys and girls. Other local trading houses received the rest. The South Carolina Gazette was started in 1732 I believe so I can find no newspaper advertisements about how these men, women and children were sold.

Or what names were thrust upon them.

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the long walk revisited

Posted in Inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 14, 2022| 3 Comments »

I don’t remember writing the story in 2012 or so. What I do remember is that early on in our relationship I might say to Steve as we hiked, “Ah, we’ve come to a fork in the road. Which one do we take?” And his response was always something to the effect, “If there’s a fork in the road, pick it up.” Not so helpful a reply in the moment but more helpful creatively than I ever imagined. The seeds were planted so when one day a little girl asked me to make up a story about a stone in my rock collection … well, the following story somehow evolved. https://www.creativity-portal.com/articles/cynthia-staples/long-walk.html

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petunias

Posted in Inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on June 5, 2022| 1 Comment »

petunias in the garden

I photographed the petunias in the garden today but I don’t have any petunia stories except that my mother used to plant them in the raised beds my father built for her in Virginia. Beds maybe 1′ or 2′ by 4′ or 5′. Nothing fancy. Plants purchased from the farmers market in downtown Lynchburg. Straightforward colors of red, purple and white come to mind. Although I do remember in later years when I returned home after college the selections had expanded and there were striped and maybe spotted petunias in the beds. As a child, in the early evening hours when the sun (and therefore heat) was low, I remember my mom and I would go out and pick the dead flowers to encourage new growth. It came across as something calming for my mother. My dad’s domain was the vegetable garden. The flowers were my mother’s and I think she cherished it.

Even after I moved from home I often managed to garden though I was not drawn to petunias. I have a growing fondness for them and an appreciation of how they fill in a container and complement other plants. As a child I didn’t appreciate them at all except as an opportunity to stick my hands in the dirt to help plant them and an opportunity to hang out with my mom as she took care of them. I was completely clueless as she included me in this process of caretaking and nurturing. I’m still not great at it with petunias. I try to find new varieties that need no deadheading. I seek out colors that complement the “main” plants I have growing in a container. And yet as seasons continue to pass I find myself planting more of those things from my childhood that I took for granted like petunias, scarlet sage and sweet william. Spring is near done and summer approaches. We’ll see what growing opportunities, prompted by the past or by the current moment, present themselves.

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life

Posted in Inspiration, tagged , , , , , , on April 22, 2022| 2 Comments »

Usually, in the morning, I let … I mean that I empower … Steve to roll out of bed, make coffee and cook me, I mean us, eggs over easy. Always one egg on one piece of toast and maybe some fruit on the side. Kind of spartan but it works. But in recent times I noticed the number of eggs in the fridge were diminishing at a faster rate. Now Steve’s tai chi instructor Jon makes occasional house visits because it can be a bit of a trek for Steve to make it to the dojo. Jon can come in the mornings usually after I’ve left for work. One day I called home to ask Steve if Jon had shown up. He said, “Yes. I cooked him breakfast.” I did a double take. “Aren’t we paying him to come over and give you a workout?” “Yes, but I asked if he was hungry and he said yes and so …”

Now what I remember from ages ago, after Steve’s surgeries and he could appear and was indeed pooped all of the time, is that for a visit with company customers he pulled together (without me being present as sous chef) an amazing fruit and cheese grazing platter BEFORE they all went out to dinner and THEN returned to our place for a nightcap that he orchestrated. He was in heaven. When I described this scene to his PCP she nodded sagely and said, “Some people are energized by being hospitable.”

And so this morning as I raced out of bed (alarms didn’t go off) and raced about to make coffee and check the egg situation … well, there were three eggs. I knew Jon was coming by for class. If Steve and I had one each that would leave just one for Jon. So I put the container back in the fridge and decided we were having smoked salmon and cream cheese on toast. Steve, without even knowing the egg situation, said that would be just fine.

When I returned home, I looked in the fridge. One egg in the case. I asked Steve, who was in another room, and already knowing the answer, “Did you fix Jon breakfast?” “Yes,” he shouted back. “He said thank you before we went outside to practice with the kendo sword.” 

I smiled and closed the refrigerator door. Gotta buy some more eggs this weekend.

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