hummingcrow: one squall voice » Whitmore

1955

cherylcolan — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 06:44:07 +0000

Inspired by Bekah Havens‘ highly personal, tortured-teen-girl and, well, plaid diary readings, but with no diary of my own at hand, I present you this week …

in 1955.

As written by my grandmother, Olive Jane Poe Whitmore.

I identify with Bekah’s journal entries. They could almost be mine. We graduated high school in the same year, Miss B and I. We began college the same year. We put ourselves through similar turmoil, and wrote about it with similar alternating sarcastic humor and raw emotion. Our choices were many and difficult.

Grandma lived in simpler times. There was never much question about her choices. She dated one guy before my grandpa, but married grandpa, who was the love of her life. She didn’t have sex before marriage. And her writing is more a record of inevitable events than a tortured exploration of possible life paths.

I find that really interesting.

Mohawk Mary

cherylcolan — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 03:31:50 +0000

I shot this video in June at my mom’s house in Clarkdale, Arizona. At the time, Mary had adopted this street as her home, and most residents happily welcomed her and fed her. Not too long ago, she disappeared. This area is full of predators who could have dragged her off and made a meal of her. There are foxes and coyotes who make regular appearances, but we know there are also mountain lions, hawks and eagles around. It was nice knowing Mary for a little while.

It’s probably not especially clear what’s going on in the video. My mom wants to attract Mary, but has no means to do so, so she goes next door and steals bird food from the neighbor’s porch. They come outside to see what’s going on and give Mary some bread so that she’ll come closer. You can hear some of the conversation. It’s just a little slice of small town life.

BScrabble

cherylcolan — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 05:41:13 +0000

My mom and I invented an enjoyable, quick-playing version of Scrabble (with apologies to Milton Bradley). If you hate the agonizing wait while your opponent tries to make a triple-word-scoring word out of a letter set with no consonants, you will love our version. If you can’t spell, you will love our version. If you are a born storyteller (or BS-er), you will love our version. We played it three or four times last weekend, and documented one of the games so we could share it with you. I think it took us about ten minutes to play all the available letters.

The rules are pretty simple:

You may not play any real words
Your fake words must be somewhat plausible
You must provide a pronunciation and definition for the words you play

Being good at BS makes BScrabble pretty fun, and being bad at BS makes it super fun! How can you not like our way?!

Bonus link for context: ze frank’s take on Scrabble

Grandma and Me

cherylcolan — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 08:18:03 +0000

This is my kickoff post for Videoblogging Week 2007. I’m posting a video I made two years ago, before I started vlogging. If Videoblogging Week had started any other day, I probably would have made something new. But on April 1, there is only one video I want to post.

April 1, 1903 was my grandmothers’ birthday. She used to call herself an April Fool. She lived to be 96 years old. After she died, it took me seven years to be able to tell this story. If you want to know what I’m made of, it’s all right here. If you listen, you’ll hear more than my words in my voice.

Happy Birthday, Grandma. I love you.