Seen in church on Sunday: A man wearing a blue-and-white seersucker suit. It looked good on him, too.

Heard in church: If you have a belly-button, you have a mother.

At the art store: Brad and Angelina probably are not stopping by here for lunch today.

At drinks on Friday: I heard Brad & Angelina bought the place on Section Street, down from Page & Palette.

Seen at Ed's Shed: Coleslaw and crackers served  as an appetizer.

Heard at the photo shoot: I'm going to come by that writers cottage. I want to know if it's true that you write in the buff.

What I haven't seen: blue jeans. eyebrow studs. nose studs. tongue rings. people wearing black.

Number of Books Joyce Meyer actually did sell in town: 700

Comment from one of her handlers: Look at that rock on her finger

Weather: Always good, except when its storming.

Best place to get turnip greens: Ed's Shed

Best iced tea: Julwyns.

Time my Pilates class starts on Monday: 9 a.m.

Time to take the Tylenol: 8:30 a.m.

What I'm reading: Mockingbird. With the Old Breed. A Place Called Wiregrass. Looking for God.

What I'm writing: Chapter 14.

Big News: Sister Linda is flying in later this month.

Quote from her: I will miss my bed, my own cooking.

Solution: You can cook while you're here. I won't stop you. I certainly won't be cooking for you.

After some wandering around I found some of the images that Sledge talks about in his book. Here's a looky see:

I love the expressions on these girls. One died at a year. The other at 4, I think. I'm not sure but it may have been Typhoid fever. A trip through Magnolia on Mothers Day is a sobering reminder of how many mothers spent their Mothers Days grieving for children dead and gone.

Sadly I think this may be a mirror of what my thighs look like from behind. I love the feet though. The way one foot is crossed behind the other. And the broken wing. That's the kind of angel I'll be -- the one with the broken wing. Wonder where do angels go to heal theri broken wings?

I loved this vision of the angel writing in her own book.

Loved so dearly, lost so early. Such was the inscription on this grieving mother, for her little Rubie. If you look closely the stains look like tears.

There is a song on a CD I bought, a prayer of sorts, for an old angel. One who knows their way around heaven. One like this old gal I suppose. That's the sort of angel I need. One that commands attention.

There is a story in Exodus about how friends came alongside Moses and helped lift his hands to the heaven after his arms grew weary in prayer. As long as Moses prayed with his arms outstretched the Israelites won the battle. But with the noonday sun beating down on his bald head and the force of gravity draining the blood from his arms, Moses grew weary, and his arms began to weaken. Then his good buddies came alongside him to help.

Exodus 17: 12 When Moses' hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up—one on one side, one on the other—so that his hands remained steady till sunset.

I love that story because it teaches us the humanity of ourselves and of others. Recently another such  event took place in the dusty college town of Ellensburg, Wash. Tyler Lobe, a student I taught last quarter, sent me the link, and a photo of himself with the friends in this story.

http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/video/videopage?&brand=null&videoId=3380875&n8pe6c=2

At Ed's Shed with John Sledge, and Roy Hoffman.

I just got back from taking Jackson (the black lab) for a walk. Jackson is a sweet dog, great disposition but left to his own vices, he would sleep all day long. If this dog got any more docile, he'd be comatose. So I'm trying to walk him a couple of miles a day.

Today we headed down to the pier where I met a lady who just moved here from Coco Beach, Florida. While we were visiting she got three phone calls -- "Sorry, it's my stockbroker," she said.

I never had a stockbroker. I wouldn't have a clue what to do with one. The only kind of stock we have in Eastern Oregon walks on four legs. Cattle. Horses. Dogs. That's the kind of stock I'm used to.

The kind that requires a shovel.

And some steel-toed boots.

I heard on NPR yesterday that a bunch of Wall Street folks could find themselves without a job soon. They said jobs in the financial market are sparse given the price of food and gasoline.

I understand that for many people, the kind of people who have stockbrokers, the 1980s were very good years. Time of growth. Not for me and Tim. I mean they were good years, but they were hard years too. Years when we didn't make enough $$ to pay a car payment, buy gasoline (when it was cheap) and had to rely on federal food programs to help feed our children.

We did what we could to scrap by. If it hadn't been for Tim's folks and my mother, it would have been a much more difficult time. They shared what they had -- which wasn't all that much.

To be honest, when we married we were pretty clueless about the finanical aspects of raising a family. We got by. With some grace and help from loved ones and strangers.

Now there would have been those who said we got what we deserved. Getting married during our senior year of college. Having too many babies too soon. We should have been smarter. Made our fortunes then raised a family. Only see, it never occurred to either us to be about making a fortune. Neither of us had grown up in households where people stockpiled money. Tim's parents, missionaries, gave away anything extra they had. My mama just did what she could to get by. They didn't have money to save for college -- ours or our children. They struggled to pay their own bills. Jus the same as Tim and I were doing.

It's the way of the millions of Americans. This getting by mentality.

Since those early years of marriage, I have rarely felt as though Tim and I or our children lacked for anything. We've traveled. We've eaten well -- too well at times. We've had the money to fix cars, and houses and put shoes on the kids. We didn't pay for their college education. I mean we started to, but then I quit that job and well, we just couldn't. But they got through college and all are gainfully employed, or working on being gainfully employed. I hate that they have loans they have to pay back but they are managing. Nobody is going hungry. Yet.

In other words, I feel very, very blessed. Not that God loves me more. Just that I'm thankful to Him for what we do have.  

Which is why this morning I was thinking I ought to get on a plane on fly to Myanmar. If only I could get into the country. I was in New Orleans 4 months after Katrina hit. I saw the devastation. It remains even to this day. It's awful. And it's awful to realize that here in the US of A we have abandoned our own people. If not for the churches and aid organizations that have come alone to assist the people of New Orleans, the situation would be so much worse.

I spoke to a woman last week whose son and daughter lost everything in Katrina. Everything but their lives. She told me she stood in the rubble of her son's home and wept at all he'd lost. "But we were thankful that nobody lost their lives."

It makes you put life into perspective, she added. Standing admist the rubble.

But, of course, hundreds did lose their lives in the midst of Katrina. And thousands more lost their lifestyles.

I sat at the pier this morning, trying to imagine what it must be like in Myranmar, where 25,000 maybe more have lost their lives. Hermiston is a town of 15,000. I try to imagine an entire city being wiped out. I recall the devastation that I saw at Fort Jackson and in the Ninth Ward and I mean it looked like something out of a end-time flick, so to think of 25,000 people killed and 40,000 homeless, well I just can't get my mind around that.

When I got back home, I read the following in the NYT:

My dance card has been very full lately. Saturday night, i was invited out to Winston & Ann Groom's house to meet some of their friends. Ann's mama was there. i loved her name -- Millicent Wren -- She goes by Wren. "Just like the bird," she said. Joining us was an elegant  sculptor from South America and a lovely gal who had been married to Winston's cousin. And the family dog -- a furry little thing that layed at the edge of the pool and watched the golfers just beyond it. i didn't have time to visit with everyone. Winston did share a bit about his time in Vietnam, but I had a 1,000 more questions to ask about that time. He also divulged his fertilizer secret -- cricket poop. i'm serious. He has bags of it in the garage. His daughter swears it chirps.

Today was hectic. We had a photo shoot out at Water Hole Branch for a magazine spread. Doug Crandall and the lovely Nancy drove in from Atlanta for it. Tito Perdue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tito_Perdue) and his wife Judy  came from Montgomery area. The Mayor, Everett Capps, was there. Along with Suzie and Joe, and Frank Turner Hallon, whose book (April Pains) is being made into a movie starring Cybil Shepherd, and gosh who all else? Oh, yeah, Sonny Brewer, the fella behind Southern Writers Reading.

okay, forget this. joe and suzie's dog jumped on my laptop and knocked off the shift key to trying to capitalize just is slowing me down, so you'll have to deal with this lower case stuff.

like i was saying, it was hectic. there was this beautifully restored ford truck that we all climbed into to shoot the magazine spread, only i can't show you those pictures for fear of incurring the wrath of the magazine and the fire-spitting miz shari who orchestrated the entire affair. she's good at it but boy i'm telling you what, she could led marines into battle with a whistle.

today is also the year anniversary date of gordon wofford's brain bled. he called me this morning. i told him it was really remarkable how fer he's come in the past year. we weren't sure he'd ever leave the hospital and today he was out messing in that beloved garden of his. he doesn't remember most of what happened that day or the subsquent weeks he spent in the hospital. but we both agreed that we were thankful he's doing as well as he is today. he can't recall all the words he used to know, but he hasn't forgotten any of his stories. it's just more difficult to draw them out now. gordon ought to be made the mascot for the manchus. he really knows how to keep up the fire.

miz shelby asked me this morning how i got to be such a celebrity -- hob-nobbing with authors and artists and posing for photo shoots. i explained to her that it's a lot less glamorous than it sounds. and to prove my point, on tuesday nights a writers group meets at the center to critique one another's work. i sat in the first time but have been too busy to join them since. i did visit with the lot at the close of tonight's gathering. i was standing in the doorway, chatting with a couple of the fellas when another reached up from where he was sitting on the stoop and handed me his wine glass. i looked at him cockeyed, like what am i supposed to do with this, thinking of course that he would get the message that hey buddy i ain't the maid around this joint. but instead he continued to hold the glass out to me until he finally said hey this is your wine glass. i took it while the other two men stood by, mortified as me.

yeah. like i said being a celebrity ain't my thing. i look more like the hired help than i do a writer of merit. you can take the girl out of the trailer park but you can't take the trailer park out of the girl, i reckon.

Doug and Nancy at the photo shoot.

tito perdue, doug crandall, joe formichella

hillbilly feet. doug crandall cradles joe's right foot, deformed by a bad bunion. joe cuts the sides of his shoes to accomodate the bone growth. he won't have it removed, however, because he says it doesn't hurt.

the mayor of water hole branch's dirt devil.

I drove up to Monroeville, Alabama on Thursday. Monroeville is home to Harper Lee. Alabama Southern was hosting the Alabama Writers Symposium. Patti Callahan Henry and Michael Morris were on the agenda. If you haven't read these authors, you should. Henry has been compared to Anne River Siddons and Michael has been compared to Harper Lee -- both are natural storytellers. More importantly, they are good, good people, and lawd, they are funny.

We ate pork for lunch, catfish for dinner. Patti & I threatened to heckle Michael from the front row, as he read from A Place Called Wireglass. Here's a tidbit that you won't find out from reading the book -- Miz Claudia's name was lifted from Lady Bird Johnson. Michael said it's her real name.

Kate Campbell, then took to the stage with her guitar: http://www.katecampbell.com/bio.html

Kate is very unassuming. Not a glamour girl. But I bought her Sing Me Out CD and it is so pure and the stories in the song captivating.

A superstar of sorts did follow  -- Beth Neilsen Chapman

http://bethnielsenchapman.blogspot.com/ 

You know the hit song This Kiss? Chapman wrote it. Chapman has a dramatic personal story that includes the death of a husband due to cancer, and her own struggle with cancer. But what left Morris, Henry and me slack-jawed was her insights about creativity. Here are a couple of her remarks that I wrote down:

"Loving someone is a creative art."

"We need to be an instrument for the arts to come into the world."

"Divine intervention is always looking for the place to show up next."

"Place your fears into the glove compartment. You keep them confined that way."

"Anything that involves expectation is coming from the thinking side of your brain, not the creating side."

Chapman is a person who has turned the discordant notes of life into beautiful harmony.

Patti introduced me to Ace Atkins, author of the hit Wicked City. And to one of my personal favorites -- Daniel Wallace, who wrote Big Fish. Don't know what happened to Ace but here's the group of us...

Morris, Chapman, Henry. Wallace and the poppy-clad, me.

Chapman on stage.

Listening to all that was pleasurable enough but after the catfish dinner Patti, Michael and I had tickets to the To  Kill A Mockingbird production on the square. The town puts on the play only for a short time period every May. It starts outside but then moves into the courtroom inside the courthouse. It looks exactly the same as when Gregory Peck filmed it. Patti and I sat behind the prosecutor's table, while Michael was pegged as a juror -- all men, all white. The choir sang out from the balcony. Scout and Jim and Dill called out their lines right above our heads.

The actors did a superb job. It was humbling to be in Monroeville, listening to Harper's words, thinking was an incredible talent she was, what courage she displayed in writing such a story, at such a time. Not a wasted word in the entire book. If you've not read the biography on Harper Lee, Mockingbird., do. Michael says it is really excellent. I plan to get a copy.

It is good as a writer to be reminded of how powerful the word can be -- how it can transcend time and place, from generation to generation. The townfolk say that Harper has had a stroke. That's she's in a home and not doing well. It occurred to me yesterday that as hard as we work, all of us, at whatever our jobs may be, in the end it comes down to that. A stroke. A fall. A heart attack. A cancer.

What matters most is how we use our time, our gifts, our efforts to create something that will transcend time and place, and carry a message from one generation to the next -- the way Harper Lee has done.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz7jGDG8fM8&NR=1