Crochet

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I’ve been crocheting a lot recently. I like to keep my hands busy. It is almost a spiritual practice. It is surely a creative practice. My mother taught me and her mother taught her. I can usually look at some item that is crocheted and figure out how to do it. Although, I will admit, I don’t often try to tackle complex projects. Lately, I’ve been working on little creatures – animals or dolls.

This little bunny is the first that I created without a pattern. I hope to improve with practice. I sent it off to my nephew and his wife who just had a baby girl. The first grandchild for my brother, and my first great niece! I haven’t met her yet, but I hope to soon. And I hope this is the first of many.

Crochet is one of my mainstay activities, like reading and journaling, since I was a child. What follows is a poem that I composed many years ago to express what it means to me.

I Crochet

When I was a toddler I watched my grandmother crochet 
while I listened to the stories she told, 
the stories I can no longer recall, 
because I was more fascinated by those dancing fingers so fast, so fluid.

Now, I crochet to remember the day
my grandmother handed me the battered little cardboard box
that held her handiwork, scraps and samples, 
tiny steel hooks and balls of cotton thread. 

The box that she’d kept in the China closet, where she stored 
the fancy plates and glasses that only came out on special occasions,
with the embroidered linens and tablecloths, 
and dozens of carefully laundered crocheted doilies, stiff with starch–
this box was her legacy to me.

I crochet to stave off the loneliness, now that they are gone
my mother and my grandmother, the aunts who taught me, 
chain stitch, single, double, triple,
patterns growing exponentially from my hands now.

I crochet to have them here with me, 
to cross over into the past, to be with all the women
who taught my grandmother 
to take up the yarn on the hook, loop over, pull through,
they spread their warmth across the Atlantic, 
the ones whose names I’ll never know 
because my grandmother left them all behind in Sicily, 
all the aunts, the mothers, and grandmothers,
who stitched their love into blankets and bedspreads.

I crochet as they did to dissolve the tears, 
when it seems that everything 
has come unraveled, the hook, the yarn,
the loop, the chain, I only have to follow 
the pattern in the sample, 
remember the stitches, continue the motion,
gather the courage, 
generate the warmth, the simple beauty,
and all they knew to keep on going.

Winter poems – Early 2024

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January 1

Delaware National Seashore – Winter Horizon from the Highway
Sky striated blue through gray
pierced by dry dark pines,
sun’s light slowly pushing through.

January 8

After a poem by Rumi
The bud inside the heart rolls open
slow spiral of possibility.
I wish I could hold still
the flower at its fullest.

January 15

Before Snow
No snow yet, it may come still
anticipation
lingers. Cold quiet blanket.

Weekend Escape

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It’s very cold here in the Villas, New Jersey, as I write this in a rented cottage not far from the bay beach. My weekend escape from the city.

2023’s Thanksgiving was fairly uneventful. I was not paying attention to the news of the day. In the morning I walked around with Pepper up to Market Street and back toward Rittenhouse Square as the parade wound down. On the sidewalks, just a few stragglers, mostly parents with young children. As we walked I felt grateful for the fact that I could escape to the outdoors, away from the music booming from my downstairs neighbor’s apartment.  

Here, the only sounds that trickle into the cottage are from outdoors, a tiny bird scratching at the leaves under a small evergreen, the whistling of the cold wind, a few cars driving past. For me, this is luxury. 

I drove down yesterday, the day after Thanksgiving, to visit the natural setting where I spent many days and nights when I was younger.  My friend’s stepdad would give us his saltbox house for a few days. The girlfriends spent days on the beach after pancake breakfast at Uncle Bill’s then at the bars at night getting up to whatever and whoever we’d run into in Cape May. Sometimes we would drive out to Sunset Beach on dark nights after dinner and just watch the sky. 

I try to visit Sunset Beach as often as I can. It’s become a kind of sacred space for me. The grittiness of the pale, pebbly sand. Looking out toward the glittery ocean there’s the sunken ruin of the concrete ship. Behind me, the crunch of tires as visitors in cars move in and out of the parking lot, the shops selling souvenir tees and sweatshirts and the usual shoretown trinkets and the famous Cape May Diamonds, that traveled here from the Delaware River. Visitors can search the beach for them or buy them in the Sunset Beach Gift shop. 

But, it’s the sky that hits me; in any kind of weather, at any time of day. Here is a photo just about 1 hour before sunset on Friday, November 24, 2023.

Photo of Sunset Beach, an hour before sunset.

Grateful in Philly

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Coming down from the Phillies and Red October wasn’t easy this time around. My friend Patti said it’s because last season we didn’t expect them to make it to the World Series. This year, I was so confident in the team I came to love. I grew up in the neighborhood down the street from the big arenas. When the Flyers were an expansion team, my brother and I sat with friends of our family in a box between the teams, right on the ice! In the 1970’s I ran up and down cement steps at the Spectrum as an usherette in a silly, polyester, pink “hot pants” outfit. Thankfully, I could find no photos of it on the internet. For a brief time, I did the same at Vet Stadium, in a different but just as silly outfit. That job may be why I’ve got bad knees now, but that was also when I became a fan of Philly sports. I’ll admit that I haven’t always followed closely, but when the teams are winning I am all aboard. 

I had looked to the Phils as the one bright spot in a present with disheartening hardships and struggles with violence at home and abroad. While this season was a let-down, I am grateful for the ride. 

Thank you Phillies.

Gratitude is trendy. I usually prefer to buck the trends, but I am all in on this one. Last week I visited the rooftop bar of the Bok Building before it closed for the year (Bok Bar). My first and certainly not last time there since moving back to Philadelphia. What a beautiful view!

View of Philadelphia at night from the Bok Building

Thank you Philly skyline.

I took a walk today, heading North from my building, hoping to boost my mood. It worked. The weather was Fall-perfect after a record-breaking hot spell. Nearing the parkway, passing the wonderful Franklin Institute building, I reminded myself that I haven’t visited in a few years. (Gotta get back there! The Heart! The Planetarium! Thank you Ben Franklin!) I passed kids playing in a tiny playground just across from the former School District of Philadelphia building where I had a summer job as a high school student. I was really fortunate to have had opportunities like that as a kid. But, the spot where I had to stop and savor was Logan Square. Swann Fountain, in all its glory! The square actually has a somewhat gruesome history; written about at the Billy Penn WHYY website. Its beauty, however, cannot be denied.

Swann fountain Logan Square Philadelphia

Grateful in Philly.

N.B. When I provide links it is to share what I believe is good writing or other works of art worthy of the time it takes to read and view. It is also to give credit for the purposes of authorship and to support organizations and their causes, as well as small businesses, especially those that are women- and minority-owned.

Imagine a Good Day

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This week, as the news of the world continues to explode with more violent conflict and division, it is difficult to stave off feelings of despondency and gloom. I want to do something, but it’s difficult to know what “I” can do to counter the situation. 

Every morning after walking my dog, Pepper, I check email and read or listen to the news while she has her breakfast. This morning, my favorite blogger, Maria Popova, re-posted a piece from her archives about autumn, my favorite season. I share that here, because the post and its references to the writings of Collette, another personal favorite, has given me something to grasp onto.

The weather has seeded our earliest myths, inspired some of our greatest art, and even affects the way we think. In our divisive culture, where sharped-edged differences continue to fragment our unity, it is often the sole common ground for people bound by time and place — as we move through the seasons, we weather the whims of the weather together.

Marginalian

The weather, yes, most certainly. In the elevator in and out of my building, chatting about the weather is usually the go-to for passing the time between the ground and 3rd floor where I get off. And, autumn is my favorite season. The end of oppressive heat and the beginning of a rousing, inspirational chill, not to mention, a reason to wear comfy sweatshirts and sweaters.

But for me, in my everyday life, it is art and literature and music and, to some degree, team sports that help me stay hopeful. Yesterday was a good day. Perfect weather for being outdoors. Pepper and I had an event at UArts,  where she was the therapy dog for students at their first Wellness Wednesday of the semester. Bringing comfort to young prospective artists is one way that I can contribute. I don’t know who said it first, but I believe that Art is one of the few things left for me that is worth doing in some way, shape, or form. 

After leaving the student center, Pepper and I wandered around the city. I picked up some lunch and ate it at Seger Dog Park at 10th and Rodman Streets while Pepper sniffed around and played with the other dogs. We left there to walk west of Broad, then sat for a while at a fountain in the square where South Street intersects with Grays Ferry Avenue. It was late afternoon, so a few moms with small children, just out of pre-school, enjoyed frozen yogurt from Igloo. Pepper and a dog up for adoption, from the nearby Doggie Style and Saved Me Rescue, got free pumpkin yogurt pup cups. On the way home we stopped at Pure, a dog-friendly plant store, then at our favorite bar to watch the first few innings of the Phillies game. (They played a great, high-scoring game winning 10-2!)

Over the course of the day I encountered no negativity and had very pleasant interactions and conversations with people in Philadelphia, many of whom I’ve never met before. It gives me hope for humanity. And yet, I almost feel guilty when I have such a good day, while others are suffering.

I think of John Lennon, whose birthday was just a few days ago, October 9. I think of the song and the album Imagine from the early 1970’s to counter the suffering in late 2023. I try not to cry. On the John Lennon website, Anthony De Curtis, coincidentally local to Philadelphia, writes about the song.

… “Imagine,” too, is not merely a pastel vision of a utopian world. It is a challenge and a responsibility, a sentiment akin to Mahatma Gandhi’s statement that “We need to be the change we wish to see in the world.”

John Lennon. Gimme Some Truth.

I am a little person pushing 70 trying to maintain a smile while walking around the city with my little old dog Pepper, who gives joy to people wearing her Phillies shirt, receiving pets, and licking hands. I hope we are being the change.

N.B. When I provide links it is to share what I believe is good writing or other works of art worthy of the time it takes to read and view. It is also to give credit for the purposes of authorship and to support organizations and their causes, as well as small businesses, especially those that are women- and minority-owned.

Haves and Have-nots

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In 2007, the Pew Research Center published a report titled A Nation of “Haves” and “Have-Nots”? The sub-heading reads, “Far more Americans now see their country as sharply divided along economic lines.” In 2023, it appears that this perception hasn’t changed much, especially in the city of Philadelphia. There is so much I love about my city, a city rich in beauty and culture, that also takes pride in its grit and edginess. So when people who live here engage in vandalism and looting, I feel it personally.

After a peaceful protest regarding the dismissal of charges against a Philadelphia police officer’s killing of an individual at a car stop, a social media influencer incited a night of looting in center city Philadelphia and beyond. https://www.inquirer.com/ 

That same night, just before the looting, I was on my way to a theater performance when the busdriver announced that he had to detour because of a protest at City Hall. I made my way to the theater on time and saw a wonderful production. 

Later that night when the Uber driver dropped us off, two blocks away from where Tuesday night’s rampage took place, there was no evidence of it. Once home, I turned on the news and learned 1) the Phillies clinched a place in the playoffs (YAY!) and 2) stores on Walnut Street had been broken into and looters left a path of destruction and disarray. 

Walking my dog along Walnut Street on Wednesday morning, the sidewalk was cleaned up and activity was pretty much back to normal. However, the aftermath was on people’s minds. They peered into the entrance of the Apple Store, usually a wide open glass wall, now curtained off by two large swathes of black and white.  At the pet store on 17th, a young woman customer, who lives across from the Apple Store, said she heard a loud rumbling with yelling; she watched from her window as the looters barreled over Walnut from the Footlocker to the Apple Store. The store clerk said she’d checked the store camera and could see some of it. She talked about the spread of the looting up to Aramingo Avenue near where her godfather lives. When something extraordinary happens, it’s natural to reflect and to want to talk about it. Where was I? What was I doing when? 

Outside of the ransacked stores there were news reporters seeking person-on-the-street reactions. The Lululemon store was dark. Looking closer I saw that clothing was strewn all over the floor and two young black men were posted as sentries sat on the mounds of merchandise. These young men could be around the same age as the looters. I chatted for a bit with my friend’s daughter, a 6ABC news reporter who was stationed outside Lululemon. A passer-by wanted to talk to her but she deflected him deftly. She said this happens all the time. Everybody has an opinion, and I’m sure she knows how to choose whose opinions would be newsworthy.

But, for the most part, all was back to normal: people on their phones rushed to their destinations amidst dog walkers, joggers, gym rats, parents or nannies with strollers, Hare Krishna chanters danced at the northeast corner of Rittenhouse Square and a man with mismatched shoes and socks shouted obscenities at them from across the street. 

I am writing about it in an effort to process and understand why an explosion of destruction often follows the expression of feelings of injustice and loss. In the news and on social media, the looting got more coverage than the protest. Opinions vary widely. Why feel sorry for the Apple Store? But, what about the retail workers losing pay? What a blow to small businesses in the city still trying to recover from the pandemic. It’s not safe anywhere in the city! I’m moving to the suburbs! 

To my mind the most comprehensive well-considered opinion is Larry Platt’s piece in The Citizen. Platt takes a broader view and reminds us that incidents like this are part of a much larger problem.

But let’s widen our lens even further. There’s plenty of evidence . . . that civic disorder is viral in nature. Citizenship is, after all, a social compact. We live together voluntarily, and when messages get sent time and again that our once agreed-upon rules no longer apply, or that they only apply to some, we know what happens: The compact breaks. We get anarchy. We get nihilism. We get streets that feel unsafe, even if crime rates are coming down.

LARRY PLATT
SEP. 29, 2023

To that I will add my opinion. I think the culture of acquiring and accumulating “stuff” that stokes our feelings of status has much to do with it. People want stuff. They want clothing and shoes, computers and phones, jewelry, shiny showy stuff, the stuff that says high social status, smacks of power and respect. Whether it is earned or stolen doesn’t matter. It fills up the feelings of emptiness and staves off feelings of resentment. Maybe, for a little while. The harm is obvious, moreso for the businesses like Nat’s Beauty Supply whose owner saved for years to open and hopes to continue (link to the gofundme). It does nothing for the injustice and grief suffered by those who lose a child, a sibling or a friend to mayhem and gun violence.

Remembering 9/11

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Last night I watched an episode of 60 Minutes that focused on the firefighters in New York City on the day of the awful events that has come to be known as 9/11. Whenever I hear stories of that day, I feel it in my chest; I feel tears welling up. I don’t know anyone who perished or survived. I do remember my own experience of it…where I was, who I spoke to, watching the TV screen in horror. 60 Minutes spotlighted a firefighter who by chance was not sent into the Twin Towers that day, but her close colleague and mentor did go and lost his life. The concern she expressed was that 9/11 would become just a page in a history book. 

Today, my news feed highlights memorial events for 9/11 of 22 years ago. Some facts noted by CBS News:

  • Nearly 3,000 people were killed after four planes were hijacked by attackers from the Al Qaeda terrorist group.
  • Two planes flew into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in New York. One plane was flown into the Pentagon. 
  • Another aircraft crashed into an open field in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back — the only plane that didn’t reach its intended destination.

These are some of the facts, cold and stark, that were compiled about that day. But like other momentous events that occurred during my lifetime, JFK’s assassination, the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003, most everyone who was around that day in the U.S. has their own story. I was at my job at a small private university. I’ve written my story of that day. Even though it’s a very small, relatively personal story, I wanted to set it down in writing as my way of never forgetting, of mourning. 

When I was teaching I always brought the events from 9/11 into the classroom. I felt it was part of my responsibility as a teacher. I’d ask what they knew about that day. Of course, in the early 2000’s, the students I taught were in middle or high school when 9/11 occurred. But by 2020, the first-year college students in my classes were barely toddlers in 2001. The event would have been less immediate for them. Their stories would be different. I felt it was important that they acknowledged not just what happened, but how they understood it, what they made of it. I shared what the poet Lucille Clifton made of that event in her suite of poems written during that week called “september song in 7 days.” Her poems are multi-leveled, from the public to the personal and back. The lesson was also about how events become history. I hoped that the students would see that history is more than just remote facts and dates. I invited them to question everything they’ve learned as “history,” likely presented as fact, may not necessarily be the “truth.” The students were to select one of the poems from the grouping to use as a starting point to write their own “story” in any genre.  

In her piece memorializing Lucille Clifton in the New Yorker, Elizabeth Alexander stated, “No matter how elaborate the words they use, poets strive to tell elemental truths. As Clifton often reminded her acolytes, “truth and facts are two different things.” 

Thunder and lighting and our world
Is another place   no day
Will ever be the same   no blood

Untouched
They know this storm in otherwheres
israel   ireland   palestine
but God has blessed America
we sing

and God has blessed America
to learn that no one   is exempt
the world is one   all fear
is one   all life   all death
all one

Lucille Clifton understood that responsibility to remember and tell the truth.

Labor Day, 2023

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September 4, 2023

I have this thing where I don’t want to make anyone else labor on Labor Day. Of course, that’s impossible. Someone has to be working at hospitals for in-patients and emergencies, at power plants so that the world doesn’t heat up too much or go about their lives by candlelight. Many more of us just gotta work on this holiday. 

This morning I got an early start walking the dog; our front desk manager at the building where I live is working and Z is picking up trash from the sidewalk. On 21st Street people carried their coffees from local cafes, the Center City District cleaner smiled at me as I guided Pepper away from his sidewalk sweeper on the way to Rittenhouse Square. On the way back to my building I passed two young men hauling large, heavy garbage bins out of a restaurant on Sansom Street; they dumped the bins into a truck that I could smell from a block away. An Uber dropped off a guy at the upscale fitness center a little further down the block. Thanks to all of you, especially those who have to lug that smelly heavy stuff!

Anthony Aveni’s Book of the Year (Free Library of Philadelphia) notes that Labor Day is “exclusively American.” The book discusses the holiday’s history, initiated with a union-sponsored parade in New York City on September 5, 1882. According to Aveni, “ten thousand (workers) left their jobs and paraded up Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue from 14th to 42nd Street, ending the day with a picnic, a dance, and fireworks.” That day a union leader gave a spirited speech. Eventually, the holiday was made an official national holiday by Congress in 1894. This year President Biden came to Philly for our city’s Labor Day parade, a celebration not much different from NYC’s in the 19th century.

Aveni’s chapter opens with the Walt Whitman poem, I Hear America Singing, the best tribute for this day and to those who deserve to be recognized:

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

Dark Bars and Dog Parks

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(a list poem, non-sequential, over 5 decades)

TastyKakes and stray kittens
Cuddling Bunny Boy
Cece beans and meatballs
Grandmom Gentile’s lap
Learning to crochet

Tea with a drop of whiskey
Tomatoes and purple pansies
6th and Fitzwater
Grandmom Pitts’ turkey
Milk shakes at Schwartzies

Gray sky and rowhouses
New Jersey malls
The back seat escape
Disco balls and stingers
Down the shore

Twilight and whistling winds
Irish actors, English sailors
Tequila night at the Opus
Rock stars and poets
William Butler Yeats

Thunder
Alto sopranos
Rhythm and blues
Sonny and Cher
Prince and Aretha

Earth, Wind, and Fire
Prometheus
Cezanne and the Bathers
Yin and yang
Rosey and Rufus

North Beach and Bloomsbury
Point Reyes seashore
The East Village
Cape May Point
The Delaware, the Schuylkill, the Wissahickon

Dark bars and dog parks.

Linda M. Pizzi

For the moment

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It’s been quite awhile since I have visited and posted on this blog that I created six years ago. A lot has happened in that time, most notably an attack on the Capitol by a president who couldn’t accept a peaceful transition of power and a world-wide pandemic with its attendant economic and social repercussions.

On a more personal note, I retired from my job. More than a job, it was the career I’d been searching for since graduating from college. Fifty or so years ago when I was in college, I’d settled on English as a major; most everyone asked if I would become a teacher. It seemed that most everyone in my purview, at least, thought that was the only path for an English major. I would usually answer “No,” just because I didn’t want to do what everyone else expected, not because I had any other particular ambitions. I had a vague ambition of becoming a writer, but hardly a clue as to how to go about that. I know now that I never really possessed the level of ambition I came to recognize in the writers I admired. 

As it turned out, after lots of twists and turns, I ended up in Education and I loved being a teacher. Despite my initial resistance as a somewhat rebellious young adult, I have been teaching in some capacity for close to thirty-five years. 

Ambition – 1) a strong desire to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work. 2) desire and determination to achieve success. New Oxford American Dictionary. 

I did work hard at it when I returned to graduate school as a forty-year old. Maybe it just took longer for me to become ambitious. It took losing my parents in my early thirties to awaken the desire to do something worthwhile with my life. It took a lot of false starts to become a “successful” writer, whatever that is. I don’t think I’ve ever had the strong desire and determination to be successful enough to make some kind of living from writing. Though I did teach writing and always wanted to do that well. I think I DID do that well. It took coming to terms with the bouts of depression I had been through since childhood; that took a few good therapists, the right prescription, and a deeper understanding of a practice of meditation. It also took a series of unfortunate choices in my search for a life partner; a search I gave up sometime in my fifties. But, that’s another story altogether. 

So, now that I am retired I can return to this blog, among other things. Those “things” can be anything. It’s odd that the message sent to young people, particularly in this country, is typically some form of “You can do and be a success at anything you want.” Odd because that message, while well-intentioned, carries more weight than is apparent on the surface. It opens up so very many questions. What DO I want to do? What does it mean to be a success? How do I achieve that success? These are questions I saw early on. Since I couldn’t really answer them definitively for myself, I decided I was simply not ambitious enough. 

I’m beginning to think that this might be a uniquely American problem. “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” is loaded with possibilities, but so open for interpretation, the phrase can also be the source of frustration for any American who feels unsatisfied with their lot in life. Again, that is a whole other line of thought to pursue some other time.

For me, now that I can have the liberty to do anything I want with my life, now that I have achieved retirement, one thing I can “do” is blog. Which is something that didn’t even exist when I had those vague thoughts of becoming a success as a writer. Is one simple blog, among millions, when AI can churn out a post in seconds, enough? For the moment, for me, it is.