 - Last login: 6 days agoJunebugn
- Becca is a 55 year old married woman from Huntsville, Alabama, USA.
- Likes 144 pages, 8 videos, 27 photos • 12 fans • Received 4 reviews
- Member since May 18, 2007
My husband and I drive our own semi all over the country. As such, we are part of one of the largest groups of free-thinkers, individualists, and just down right stubborn people in America. We have two sons, 29 and 20, and a grandson just turned 20 months. I'm writing a preteen novel and a series of poems for my grandson. Parts of these are posted here. I welcome all criticisms!
Favorites » Her Blog
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Sep 13, 2007 2:43pm
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Okay, Charlotte, I think that after being tagged by you for a meme, I am supposed to follow suit and list 8 random facts about me. It will be interesting to see what pops up!
1. I was a brown-eyed blonde as a child and thought that made me different and special. I looked for others like me.I have no clue why that was important, except that I was otherwise a very plain child. My two sons and my grandson are also brown-eyed blondes. As adults, our hair darkens.
2. My mother found, in researching our geneology, that, like Charlotte, I come from fascinating stock. I am a descendant of the "Potato Hole Woodsons" of Virginia in the late 1600's. Judith Woodson, mother of two boys, was alone in the cabin when the Indians attacked. She saved her sons by putting an iron pot over one and putting the other down the root cellar, or "potato hole". She then proceeded to deal severely and fatally with the braves coming down her chimney with a poker. Gotta love a woman like that!
3. I am still stubbornly married to the boy I fell in love with when I was just barely fifteen. I told my Daddy, "I'm gonna marry him," to which he replied that oh, no, I was so young, I'd fall in love dozens of times before I'd get married. "To which I replied,"Oh, no, sir, I can't do it but once!"
4. I love classic cars - the lines of them are beautiful. I want an MG TC or a classic roadster.
5. I was called a daydreamer in school - a really bad pejorative they throw on kids who hate to do the dull monkeywork and draw, write or read on their own instead. Later I realized that being a daydreamer saved my mind.
6. I have a pair of tap shoes in my closet and plans to learn how to make them sing.
7. I'd hate to think my "best years" are behind me.
8. I have a really hot temper when my buttons are pushed, even though I have this placid demeanor most of the time.
Thanks, Charlotte, that was fun!
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Sep 2, 2007 12:59pm
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This is so neat! Found this from a writing link from my friend. Talks about fractals and has lesson plans for teachers.
math.rice.edu/~lanius/frac/koch/koch.html [math.rice.edu/~lanius/frac/koch/koch.html]
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Sep 1, 2007 10:38pm
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Latest Terry poem - his Mom took him to live with her and her family in North Carolina. His Daddy is very sad, but we are trying to make the best of it.
Terry Goes to North Carolina
That last day you fell asleep, your little head
Just under my chin,
Warm baby-breath on my chest
Soft arms around my neck,
And I thought I would never be able to
Let you go when you awoke.
Thought, oh, I'll miss you so.
Prayed, God, keep him safe.
Cried, just a little,
So as not to wake you.
Then your Mama came to get you,
Her father took your car seat to his car,
Your Daddy carried you out, holding so tight.
Then he strapped you in and kissed your nose.
We watched the car carry you away.
Your Daddy clutched your little red sandals
That still held your baby footprints.
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Howstuffworks "Recipes Channel"
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Sep 1, 2007 2:30pm
1 review
vegetarian, food, healthy-eating, low-fat, diabetic-recipes
http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/healthy-recipes.htm
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Amazing to find recipes here, and good healthy ones at that!Has diabetic, vegetarian, low fat, etc.
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Sep 1, 2007 2:26pm
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Check this out! I love knowing how stuff works! And best of all, it has recipes!!!
howstuffworks.com/big.htm [howstuffworks.com/big.htm]
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Sep 1, 2007 2:07pm
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This is from Christopher Vogler's book, The Writer's Journey
"But take hope for writing is magic. Even the simplest act of writing is almost supernatural, on the borderline with telepathy. Just think: We can make a few abstract marks on a piece of paper in a certain order and someone a world away and a thousand years from now can know our deepest thoughts. The boundaries of space and time and even the limitations of death can be transcended....As writers we travel to other worlds not as mere daydreamers, but as shamans with the magic power to bottle up those worlds and bring them back in the form of stories for others to share. Our stories have the power to heal, to make the world new again, to give people metaphors by which they can better understand their own lives."
This is why we write.
Borrowed from wordstrumpet's blog!Thanks!!
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Aug 28, 2007 1:30pm
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Well, looks like I'm to be published! These people work fast, and are probably desperate for stories! The organization, for those of you who'd like to submit stories, is tobereadaloud.org [tobereadaloud.org] . They publish anthologies for high school and college students doing oral interpretations. Stories of 850-200 words that lend themselves to being read aloud, are what they need. Great lit it ain't, but it's a start, and I like the idea of my story being read by kids.
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Aug 24, 2007 2:05pm
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I just entered this story in a contest. I'm on a roll, or in this case, as it was a contest for Southern writers, a biscuit....
Summer's End
by
Rebecca Burke Allison
Before the fall of 1963, summers were simple. Jumped into joyously as the last school bell rang, they were run through, waded through and climbed through with a love of nature natural to Southern children. That was before the little girls died.
My bicycle was royal blue, a three speed that took me everywhere, warm wind rushing through my thin blonde hair. I liked to explore the new house construction going on in our Birmingham suburb. I'd ride the bike there, and come back with tiles and wood scraps and nails for my own construction.
I didn't need toys, other than my bike, my skates and the occasional ball. My friends and I made doll furniture from sticks and upholstered the sofas and chairs with the thick green moss that grew in the shady places under the trees. We made sand pies using magnolia leaves as plates, decorated with berries and twigs. We caught the tiny drop of nectar from the honeysuckle blossoms on our tongues when we pulled the stamen out - just - so. We wore necklaces and bracelets of clover blossoms strung together by piercing the stem of one flower with a fingernail and sticking the stem of the next through the hole, pulling it through till the flower held.
The big boys in the neighborhood built a fort in the woods, and hung a rope swing on the tall tree next to the tower. The most daring of the little kids would sneak out there with friends when the big boys were gone, up to the top of the tower, calling for the rope, and then step out into space like Tarzan. It was like breathing magic.
I had a favorite tree, of course, that grew little stunted apples and had a place for a little girl with a book to sit. To this day I like my apples green and warm.
I'd get home, and there in the kitchen was Bernice, the colored woman who did our ironing. My mama was a Tupperware dealer and ironing was just too much for her. Bernice came in once a week or so, when my mother could afford it - she worked on commission and the money wasn't steady. Setting up in the sunny kitchen, Bernice first sprinkled all the clothes and rolled them into little balls. Then she'd iron out each ball, the steam rising and sighing, rising and sighing, smelling like clean and starch.
Bernice never said much, but was kind to the little white girl who asked her once to braid the thin blonde hair so she could be an Indian. My hair was so short and fine that only Bernice, with fingers practiced from years of plaiting little girls' curly hair, could tame it into tiny braids that stuck out behind each ear like baby corn. I thought I was a fine Indian.
One day as I was riding in the back seat as my mother drove Bernice home, I told myself a joke and then repeated, "Snicker, snicker, snicker." My mother stopped the car and turned around, eyes blazing, and said, "We don't use that word, ever! How do you think that makes Bernice feel?" I was puzzled until I figured out what word she thought I'd said, then I reddened and told her I'd never said that word. Bernice sat silently as I stammered my denial, then said quietly, "That's OK, baby."
We let Bernice off in front of her house in one of the colored sections of Birmingham. Several children were playing in front, jacks or something. They were about my age, but I knew we'd never meet. The unspoken rules would prevent that.
Already they had closed the public swimming pools in Birmingham, just closed them and even filled one in with concrete, so that the Federal government could not make us swim with colored folk. I was mad about that, but my parents scraped money together to join the new Aquatic Club, a members-only white swimming pool. Somehow they got around the new integration rules by making it a private club.
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Aug 24, 2007 2:05pm
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My brother and I spent every minute there in the summers, and my mother joked that I got so brown that if it were not for my blonde hair, they'd make me ride in the back of the bus.
The rules meant that you never said ugly things about colored people, you never used that word. Soon they would be known as African-American or black, but then they were Negro or colored. The water fountains at the Woolworth's were duplicated, and you could still see the faded paint that said "Colored" on one, although they could now use either fountain. According to the rules, you could love your colored housemaid, who helped rear your children, but you never dated outside your race. My Mama said that was because your children would be persecuted for being mixed. She said colored babies were cuter than white ones, though.
As a Tupperware dealer, she held demonstration parties in peoples' homes, and often I'd go with her. Some white dealers wouldn't hold parties in colored homes, but Mama would. I got to play with their children then. I guess the rules were suspended or something. I liked the little girls with the beautiful names - Serita, Jacquanda, Tanisha - and wondered about their hair. How did their Mamas get those rows so straight, those plaits so tiny? Then I remembered Bernice's fingers pulling at my hair, and winced. These girls were brave, I decided, if they could endure that all the time. The oils used on their hair made them smell different, exotic. I looked back at the girls as we left, and knew I'd never see them again. It made me sad.
That fall the rules would change forever. On Sunday, September 15th, we got back from church and changed out of our Sunday clothes. Mama opened the oven to check on the ham she'd been cooking since before Sunday school, and took the lids off the vegetables that, Southern style, had been cooking for hours with some of the ham fat. She took the ham out and slid in the pan of cornbread. Most of the time the routine on Sundays was the same. Church, then Sunday dinner, then a nap, then a trip to the library in downtown Birmingham.
The phone rang. Mama answered it, and gasped.
"What? No! Who? They don't know?"
My father came into the kitchen then, concern on his face. "Who is it?"
"Becky, I'll call you back. Let me turn on the radio and TV. Yes. Thanks."
"My sister," Mama answered. "Someone blew up a Negro church. Downtown, 16th Street Baptist."
We did not go to the library that day, nor for many days afterward. We read the newspapers and listened to the news. We heard the names of the four young girls killed that day by the bomb set off right after their Sunday school. Addie Mae, Cynthia, Carole, and Denise. Their names sounded just like my classmates'. Not Negro made-up names. Mama had had a Tupperware party at Denise's Mama's house.
"Those are fine people," she said in the aftermath, when Denise's parents had spoken to the press. "I don't think I could be so forgiving if someone killed my little girl," she said, drawing me close. "Denise was just a little older than you."
After that the world was not as safe, not as certain. Colored people were not an alien race of exotic creatures who smelled funny, and lived somewhere else. They were families with little girls in white Sunday dresses, suddenly splattered with blood. Little girls my age.
I rode my bike that fall, suddenly cold in the new wind blowing through my hair.
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Aug 24, 2007 10:03am
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