December Storytellers: A Month of Books

Where have I been? On the prairie in the 1800s. Spending time with a watchmaker mouse. Lost in poetry. In upstate New York searching for clean water and air. These storytellers were my last of 2012, guiding me in my path finding my own American dream, reminding me of what I love: history, the beauty of the word, caretaking for the environment, home, and gratitude.

The Long Winter, Laura Ingalls Wilder, 50 cents, Housing Works Thrift Shop, New York City.

"Historians have written about that hard winter of 1881. It was worse than anybody remembered. I wrote about it too though not so much as a recorder of history as an observer of people and the people I knew on the prairie in those years would have given you a puzzled look if you called them heroes. They ventured into the unknown lands because that is where their hearts took them." - from Beyond the Prairie: The True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Laura says in Beyond the Prairie, "This is where I told myself I must remember. The feel of things, the scratch of wool on your skin, the sharp smell of a wood fire, the long stagnant afternoons when it seems nothing interest can ever happen."

Laura writes about the heavy undergarment her mother made her wear when she longed for cooler cotton, a blessed event when an unexpected blizzard comes, one of many that would plague De Smet, South Dakota. An old Indian comes in and warns the townspeople of seven months of blizzards, a true prophecy. Pa observes the animals making thicker, more supportive shelters. How often we can take our queues from the animal world.

"Few of us I think have an unmistakable moment to mark the end of childhood. There's just a change, subtle and bewildering, a time when we are suddenly strangers to ourselves until one day we discover the person we have become," Laura says in Beyond the Prairie. She finds herself blossoming from that childhood in her marvelous Little Town on the Prairie,  Laura Ingalls Wilder, 50 cents, Housing Works Thrift Shop, New York City. How I wished to spend a Friday evening at one of the literaries she described. I also remember the simple delights she mentions, like a rare orange at a birthday party for a classmate.

If I could invite five people, living or dead, to a dinner party, Laura Ingalls Wilder would make my list. Laura, how did you feel going from a girl on the prairie entertained by your pa's fiddle to seeing the expansion of the American West, two world wars, the Great Depression, the birth of the aviation industry, and the age of television? I so often feel overwhelmed by the fast moving change in our society, especially with technology. I feel lost in conversations about apps and excitement over devices. Did Laura ever feel overwhelmed by change?

Leave Your Sleep, by Natalie Merchant and Barbara McClintock, free, the library. A beautifully illustrated book for children young and those just young-at-heart, this is an adaption of Merchant's tour-de-force Leave Your Sleep double album she created a few years ago, making songs out of 18th and 19th American and British poems. I've been a long-time fan of Natalie Merchant's works and consider her to be a sonic poet anyway.

Merchant talks about being a latecomer to poetry. I too feel like I've arrived late for the party, but I'm glad Ms. Merchant has helped open the door. "A poet transports you to a place where you can experience what they saw, what they felt, what they smelled, what they touched."

And thankfully, someone talking about aging gracefully.

Merchant writes in the introduction,

"This collection of songs represents the long conversation I had with my daughter during the first six years of her life. It documents our word-of-mouth tradition in the poems, stories, and the songs that I found to delight and teach her...I tried to show her that her speech could be the most delightful toy in her possession and that her mother tongue is rich with musical rhythms and rhymes. With these poems, I gave her parables with lessons on human nature and bits of nonsense to challenge the natural order of things and to sharpen her wit. Poetry speaks of so much: longing and sadness, joy and beauty, hope and disillusionment. These are the things that make a childhood, that time when we wake up to the great wonders and small terrors of our world. Poets are our soft-spoken clairvoyants. But poetry on the page can be difficult to penetrate; sometimes it needs to be heard."

Time to Smell the Roses by Michael Hoeye, $3.98, Better World Books. Watchmaker mouse Hermux Tantamoq is back with another wonderful adventure, this time in the battle over fragrance.  Rose is one of my favorite fragrances, and after reading this book I have new meaning when I spray on my thrifted bottle of Tea Rose perfume from the Perfumer's Workshop. I thought of this book when reading a New York Times article on celebrity fragrances and made me wonder why everyone needs to be an industry now.

Returning here too is the deliciously wonderful love-to-hate Tucka Mertslin, the neighbor of Hermux and the cosmetics tycoon who would never age gracefully. Think Nellie Oleson in mouse form. I love the underlying commentary here about the beauty industry. At one point, fame-, power- and money-obsessed Tucka finds herself reviewing a lesson she once learned:

"Wealth is the key to happiness.
People are the key to wealth.
Envy is the key to people."

But isn't that so much what lines pockets? Envy and emulation of others by the masses driving profits?

Hoeye's books are captivating, page turners with amusing commentary on our society. I adore the gratitude letters Hermux pens to the universe. Hoeye has created characters who will stay with me always. Read his books and I dare you not to be charmed.

Brindle 24, by J.J. Brown, a gift from the author, a friend of mine.

“Promising volcanic change of plot.
Where will this lead us, I'm scared of the storm.
The outsiders are gathering.” – The Outsiders, R.E.M.

I thought of Michael Stipe's words in the R.E.M. song after finishing this novel. The outsiders here are the oil companies with their promise of good jobs and cleaner energy. In the area of public trust, how high do you hold these companies?

This is a environmental cautionary tale of what happens to the people, plants, and animals effected by hydraulic fracturing - fracking - which is part of the process to extract natural gas in the fictional town of Brindle in upstate New York. The story takes place over 24 hours, but what happens because of fracking will long outlive any of us. Brown presents the science here in a very digestible way. I was never that interested in science as a student. Brown's writing made me wish I had been, but it's never too late to learn. This book is about fracking, but more than that it's about family, community, the value of clean air and water, connection to our land and each other and about being caretakers to our earth. I don't understand how environmentalists get marginalized by society. A clean ecosystem is in all of our interests.

I kept feeling the spirit of the great American conservationist John Muir who said to "Leave your legacy for the earth." Sharing some favorite passages here.

"The ancient trees are the deep earth's language for speaking to the universe. The earth communicates through trees to the animals and to the birds living above - and to the very heavens. The trees draw the earth's water up from the ground. Then breathing, they return it to the air for the clouds and the blessed rain that falls to begin the cycle anew. She thinks of the thin layer of living things as a fragile space between earth's molten rock core and the frozen outer universe of stars. The thin layer is like her own life here - precious, finite."

"So much for land ownership, Henry thinks; it's a modern myth.  You can buy and sell rights to use the land; you can't actually own it. He tries to remember who said, the land doesn't belong to you, you belong to the land; the author was certainly Native American, but he can't pin down the source."

"He remembers what the spiritual visionary, Wallace Black Elk, a Lakota said – man's scratching of the earth causes diseases like cancer. He meant the mining and drilling for coal, gas, oil, uranium. The scratching brings up the things deep in the earth that should have stayed down there. Henry shudders."

Simply put, "We had paradise. We threw it away."

Check out the Brindle 24 site, including the News section. Until I read this book, I had no idea doctors were stifled by gag orders over racking chemicals. Read more here. So much for freedom of speech.
 

If Brindle 24 becomes a film, I think Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi should play as the ending credits roll.

I've been reading more than I ever have in my life and feel better for it. I'd rather live in a world obsessed with books read (or just knowledge gained) than pounds shed which seems to be a national fixation every January.

My favorite storytellers in 2012 were: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith; Vector: A Modern Love Story and Brindle 24 by J.J. Brown; Rules of Civility by Amor Towles; Mandy and The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Edwards Andrews; Confessions of a Prairie Bitch by Allison Arngrim; Let the Hurricane Roar by Rose Wilder Lane, the Little House books (On the Banks of Plum Creek, The Long Winter, Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and all of Michael Hoeye's Hermux Tantamoq adventure books: Time Stops for No Mouse, The Sands of Time, No Time Like Show Time and Time to Smell the Roses.

Please feel free to share your thoughts on these storytellers or your favorites.

These Were My California Storytellers

"Western time now," Laura Ingalls Wilder noted in her letter to husband Almanzo when changing time zones on her train route from her home in Missouri as she documented the journey to visit daughter Rose in San Francisco where the Pan-Pacific International Exhibition was held in 1915. Laura's collection of letters was published in West from Home. Western time it did feel like as well on out honeymoon trip to California. Not just a change in hours but a change in pace, attitude, historical backgrounds shaping our identities and social differences.

Laura, whose Little House series was yet to come, struggled with how often she used the word beautiful in her letters to describe what she saw. Beautiful was a word that I would think of often. During her visit, the city was transformed from the 1906 earthquake and resulting fires that would destroy much of a city that seemed built overnight by the gold rush. Still, there were haunts of the past. Margot Patterson Doss writes in the introduction, "There were occasional vacant lots enclosed by wrought iron fences. In some were marble steps, leading up into thin air. Inez Irwin described them as "a little like meeting a ghost in a crowded street." I felt like I met a lot of ghosts here too.

Natalie Merchant, the upstate New York singer songwriter. Gold Rush Brides, her song with 10,000 Maniacs was with me, but I thought of her observations in "San Andreas Fault," from her first solo album Tigerlily in the context of the dreams the West offered but Mother Nature's harsh realities. I thought of San Francisco, a city built by the riches of gold, destroyed by fire, elemental forces at play.

"San Andreas Fault moved its fingers through the ground.
Earth divided, plates collided, such an awful sound.
San Andreas fault moved its fingers through the ground.
Terra cotta shattered, and the walls came tumbling down.
Oh promise land, what a wicked ground.
Build a dream, tear it down."

With our poorly battered East Coast still reeling from Hurricane Sandy, the duality of nature - its awe-inspiring, nurturing, giving side and its vengeful side - is on my mind. Steve and I lost an old oak tree, but consider ourselves lucky. Still, I think of how the Earth gives, but the Earth takes away.



Naturalist, conservationist, environmentalist, author, an American treasure, the great John Muir, who I knew far too little about until watching Ken Burns' extraordinary series on the National Parks: America's Best Idea, said,

"I only went out for a walk,
and finally concluded to stay out till sundown,
for going out, I found, was really going in."

Much about this trip was indeed about going out, and going in. Going out in Muir Woods not far from the city limits of San Francisco.

The first caretakers, a sign here in Yosemite National Park reminds me .While on this trip, the first presidential and vice presidential debate were held. The environment hasn't gotten a lot of attention, although I'll never understand why clean air, water and soil would ever take a back burner. Where our resources are concerned, I just hear a lot about taking. I liked a quote I read from Robert Redford in a book, "Yosemite Meditations,"

"I think the environment should be put in the category of national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise, what is there to defend?"

Seeds of Hope: The California Gold Rush Diary of Susanna Fairchild, by Kristiana Gregory, part of the Dear America series. While this diary was fictional, it gave a fascinating context of true events. Susanna talks of a bear and bull fight at the camps, fights which did take place. An interesting story in the historical notes section,

"The bull and bear fights that took place in early California provided jargon for Wall Street that is still used today. When the animals were brought into the ring, the bear was tethered to a chain. It would dig a hole several inches deep and lie down. From this hole, it would fight, either in prone or sitting position. The bull would stand. Thus, in America's financial centers, a bull market means stocks are going up, and a bear market means stocks are going down." 

At the local bookshop in the gold rush town of Columbia, I picked up A Columbia Diary, the real life diary of Clementine Brainard. I've read a few fictional diaries but this is the first actual diary I read. Clementine wrote in the first entry on October 19, 1853 of her intentions to keep journey during her sea journey but didn't. I brought a diary with me and had romantic notions of keeping it during my trip, and alas was too exhausted to write in it. I consider my blog a bit of a diary, one I haven't felt like writing in as much lately.

Clementine writes, "Do I ever have any thoughts that are worth being transferred to paper? I must be a singular individual.if I do not."

I'm so glad Clementine documented her thoughts, even though yes it feel voyeuristic to read them. Spoiler here if you want to read it yourself.  She writes of her husband's frequent ill health, speaks often about mail deliveries but doesn't elaborate much about what's in the letters, talks often about her faith, and speaks matter-of-factly when talking about death (maybe unsurprisingly seeing how common early death was). She bears her first child with barely any mention before and after of this event. Clementine's husband dies at 30 years of age and she remarries and has six more children, four of whom die in infancy. Walking around an old cemetery in Columbia, one cannot help but think of the hard lives people led and the progresses we made in medical care.

Alice Waters, who founded a national movement for local foods. Julia Child's story has been in my life a lot the last year or two, but what about Alice? Steve and I are still talking about the meal we savored in Berkeley, California at the cafe of Chez Panisse. On many meals on our trip here, we felt like someone just went to their back garden and whipped us up a feast.

Some weren't allowed to tell their stories. Banned books are displayed here at City Lights bookstore in San Francisco. Freedom of speech?

Always on road trips, unexpected storytellers find me, like favorite childhood storyteller Charles Schultz, who has a museum dedicated to him in Santa Rosa. At nearly 37 years of age, I still look forward each year to A Charlie Brown Christmas, and the soundtrack is one of my favorite holiday albums. The visit to the museum was my most charming stop, and how often can one go into a cafe and say with excitement, "One Peppermint Patty hot chocolate, please!" I'm sure somewhere Linus, this Halloween night, is waiting in a patch for the Great Pumpkin, and Mr. Schultz is smiling down on him.

A Letter on The Lives of Women and Girls (Flagged: Urgent)

Dear readers,

I'm writing this to you in letter format, inspired by a letter written in a film.

In the charming Audrey Hepburn classic Sabrina, a young chauffeur's daughter, obsessed with puppy love over the wealthy, handsome David played by William Holden, is sent to Paris to cooking school for a year. At the end of that year, she is much changed. She writes to her father,

"It is late at night and someone across the way is playing La Vie en Rose. It is the French way of saying I'm looking through the world through rose colored glasses and it says everything I feel...I've learned how to live. How to be in the world and of the world. And not just stand aside and watch. And I will never ever again run away from life or love either."

Of the world and in the world. How many women are watching their lives go by as they watch others live it? Will anyone look back at their life and think, I'm so glad I spent so much time watching Teresa Giudace on the Real Housewives of New Jersey!

Consuming unhealthy food is bad for our bodies, but consuming all of this "entertainment" is bad for our soul and minds. If you clutter your mind with gossip and toxic energy, gossip and toxic energy is what comes out of people.

I've talked before about "Endangered American Species: Language and Conversation," but so often conversation among women involves talking about mindless television and judging and belittling others.

When the actress Drew Barrymore was still married to Tom Green, Howard Stern insulted Green at a fundraiser saying how scary it must be for her to sleep with him. I loved how Drew replied,

"I just don't even go to the mean kids' area in that playground."

I wish people, especially women, wouldn't go there either. In the film Jane Austin Book Club, Emily Blunt's character has a mini-meltdown when she sees an old high school rival flirting with her husband at her mother's funeral. Her husband reassures her it was nothing and that high school is over, and she cried out, high school is never over! Sometimes, I think she's half right. Maybe because I was bullied as a teenager I'm more sensitive to this even as an adult, but I wish people didn't making gossip a sport.

I also wish women would get as passionate about more important things than what happened on the most recent Mob Wives (who cares times ten thousand). Our mothers, grandmothers and those before them fought through all these social justice movements - for this? To spend valuable leisure time sitting on our couches watching Kim Kardashian (net worth $35 million). It's not a drug, but this garbage (no other word for it) is numbing people to reality.

In the film the 11th Hour, psychologist James Hillman says, "We numb our senses from morning till night. Whether it's with noise, or loud music or light at night so nobody sees the beauty and if we've lost the feeling of the beauty of the world then we are looking for substitutes."

I want to explore the beauty of the world. Enjoy the seasonal produce at a local farm. Watch the geese swim and the dogs bask in the joy of the moment at the park. Or if I spend time watching television, I'd rather be in the company of Ginger Rogers or Audrey Hepburn, not some Botox-filled housewife.

Like Tori Amos talked about becoming a mother drew out wanting to mother her own true mother - the Earth - I don't understand why so many women don't think or seem to care about issues like clean water, air, soil and food or connect their actions to these things. These are not issues Democrats should care about - they are human rights issues. More important on many a woman's radar: is she swimsuit ready for the beach? I loved how my writer friend Jennifer put it,

"We'll all be standing on a bare Earth in our bikinis."

We complain about why gas isn't cheaper, instead of wondering what the pollution the SUVs so many in suburbia drive is doing to their kids air. We brag about our cheap finds at H&M, but don't ask, who made this? Why is it so cheap? We say we value education, but brag about possessions, not knowledge. We'll spend so much putting on makeup, doing our hair, getting a nice outfit on and then for lunch, "Let me microwave a factory farmed chicken with pesticide laden veggies which will be exposed to all the plastics while it's heating up, which I'll eat while working at my desk."

Many put vanity first. In this article (the subject matter of an eight year old getting Botox was a hoax) financial reporter Kathy Kristof bemoans,

"In 25 years of financial reporting, I can't count the number of women who have told me that they couldn't afford to save, but they could afford weekly manicures, expensive make-up, shoes, clothing and purses because that was an investment in their future.

That kind of thinking has resulted in a stark reality: 80% of the people living in poverty when they're old are women. That's not just because we continue to earn less, on average, than men. It's because women spend a fortune trying to be beautiful...Millions of women will spend hundreds of dollars every week getting eyebrows waxed, hair tinted, nails wrapped — and seek the perfect handbag for a party — but say they don't have the wherewithal to invest $100 a month in a mutual fund.

Girls, if you want to be beautiful, I'll give you a tip. What makes you pretty is confidence. You get confidence from being kind, responsible and successful — not from having the perfect handbag and nails. I assure you that properly arched eyebrows and fewer wrinkles will not help you look gorgeous when you’re old and destitute."

I can't say enough how extremely disappointed I am in the culture for girls (and boys right now). Everywhere - everywhere, young children are glossy eyed staring at their hand held devices. Isn't it sweet how the makers manufacture these all sparkly and shiny like toys. Did you know Toys r Us is going to start selling Kindles, eager to add yet another gadget in your child's life?

At a movie recently in Westwood, New Jersey, almost every young girl in the 12-14 age range had a fancy bag with a Blackberry. Mothers - what does a 13 year old need a Coach bag for? Some girls as appeared to be as young as eight had hand bags and phones. Am I the only person who feels like they are in Invasion of the Body Snatchers? This is Bergen County, New Jersey. Please chime in and tell me if you are witnessing this too, and teachers, I'd love to hear from you too.

Instead of being outraged marketers are getting to our girls younger and younger to groom the next generation of consumers, some parents seem to be writing a blank check to them. Here you go Verizon, Blackberry, UGG, Coach, here's my kid's soul!

Instead of a device, why don't we put in girls' hands a paintbrush, a piece of athletic equipment, a gardening tool, a microscope, or book (a real book)? Why don't we teach girls pleasure in a logo bag is fleeting, but knowledge lasts a lifetime.

Katy Perry has a new hit song Last Friday Night. Her great Friday night includes all these things:
getting so drunk after doing multiple shots
posting their photos online, oh well we're screwed!
having a menage a trois
the law being after her (since she can't remember why, could it be offing a few innocent motorists on the road?)
maxing out her credit cards (was it buying her perfume?)

A creepy TGIF-chant follows, and can't wait to do that all again next Friday night!

This is the summer anthem for our youth post-The Great Recession? I don't think alcohol abuse and credit card debt is something to be singing about in a sugary-sweet sounding song. What ended up online, sexually explicit images? Happening every day. Jennifer told me her daughters witnessed some very young girls singing this on the street. Katy Perry, how do you feel about that? Too busy counting your money? Much like a song about not wanting to go to rehab by another female pop singer sounded bad at the time and even worse in retrospect, should young girls be singing joyfully about self-destructive behavior?

Jennifer she says corporations put music on the radio they want the public to mimic. Who wrote this song, the credit card companies, Mark Zuckerberg and some liquor companies?

Young girls want to be 13 going on 30, and women want to go backwards (see my "Younger - Better? More Valued? Says Who?") post. Why can't we embrace where we are in life?

Singer Natalie Merchant, while promoting her work of sonic poetry Leave Your Sleep, talked about wanting to mature gracefully. She has a daughter, and I was so thrilled to hear her - or anyone - talk about aging gracefully and the concept of maturity.

She is one of my longtime favorite singers for her love of history and beauty of the word, caring for the environment and many social causes. She has no perfume to sell, only her art. I loved how she celebrated the diversity of women when she did the video for Wonder from her Tigerlily album. We need better role models, ones that lift us up, not bring us down. She's been one of mine.



Sincerely,
Catherine

Memorial Day: It's Not About a Sale

Today, this Memorial Day, I've been thinking about Louis, Phil and the rest of the nearly unbelievable stories I read in Laura Hillenbrand's World War II epic, Unbroken. When my mother told me about a story of fallen heroes in our local paper, she said couldn't believe how young they looked, a sentiment I always feel when I see the sailors in town for Fleet Week in New York City. I remembered Owen Meany's reflection in John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, set partly in the Vietnam era, that children fight our wars. And I thought of the English poet Charles Causley's Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience, one of the poems Natalie Merchant brought to sonic life on Leave Your Sleep, where a young boy begs a sailor bound for war,

'Sailor O sailor
Will you bring me
If I give you my penny
And my apricot tree

The sailor promises to bring presents back from the sea. Three long summers go by, and when the ship returns,

All round her wake
The seabirds cried
And flew in and out
Of the hole in her side

The sailor is not on the war-torn ship. His fate is implied, and when a sailor's shipmate tries to give him the gifts, the disillusioned child asks why he's brought him children's toys (so coveted just three years earlier in youth) and where the sailor is. How to answer that question to a child.

While I completely appreciate and understand how overworked Americans are and we need coveted rest and family time at the beach, barbecues, and parks, I'm a little saddened to think our fallen veterans are not getting at the very least some moments of respect and recognition. The most deplorable thing is that it's turned into another sale day for retailers. Salute our war dead: go buy a new television or summer dress made by underpaid labor in China, 25 percent off!

I like to attend a Memorial Day parade to cheer on local veterans and other heroes: police, volunteer fire and ambulance personal. This year, I went to one in Dumont, New Jersey. It was an extremely muggy morning, but at times when I feel discomfort, I think now of Louis and Phil floating in that raft in the Pacific fighting off sharks after their search plane went down and think, stop feeling sorry for yourself!

Historic reenacters remind us of those who scarified for our freedom from England and later to keep our nation unified. Just down the street is an old church with a cemetery where some laid to rest fought for the Revolution.

I wish for peace for future generations. If that's a childish wish, so be it.

"Life was cheap in war," said Martin Cohn, an ordnance officer in Oahu in Hillenbrand's Unbroken. Let's not ever consider life to be cheap, and to not forget the sacrifices.

Share Art: Indian Names

A Native American dugout canoe that was on display at the Steuben House in River Edge, New Jersey, thanks to the Bergen County Historical Society. George Washington watches over it, in a room he stayed in while headquartered with the army. With a new nation begun, an ancient civilization would soon be forgotten, or perhaps, seemingly just erased.

"Our injustice and hard-hearted policy with regard to the original owners of the soil has seemed to me one of our greatest national sins," Lydia Huntley Sigourney lamented. A singer from upstate New York, Natalie Merchant (the former lead singer of 10,000 Maniacs), transformed poems into sonic shape for Leave Your Sleep. One of them (on the double album) was Indian Names by Sigourney, "who was once the most popular American female writer of the nineteenth century, with an astounding seven thousand articles and eighty books published in her lifetime [born 1791, died 1865]", according to Merchant. Isn't it amazing how household names fall into obscurity? Merchant has talked about the project being about the past pulling her back and her pulling the past forward. On my own path, including the writing process, I very much relate to those sentiments.

"In 1822, at a time when most good Christian women in New England joined the temperance movement or advocated for the rights of slaves, Siguorney paid tribute to the Native Americans in an epic poem, 180 pages in length, Traits of the Aborigines of America," Merchant writes.

Artifacts from the past remain at exhibits, but think of how many names are of Indian descent. Lydia reminds us their spirit is very much with us, and rightfully so as the namesake of the lands, rivers, and mountains they revered and protected.

Reflect on these haunting words, in the moving poem (watch a live version of Merchant here).

Ye shall say they all have passed away,
That noble race and brave,
That their light canoes have vanished
From off the crested wave.

That 'mid the forests where they roamed
There rings no hunter's shout;
But their name is on your waters,
Ye may not wash it out.

'Tis where Ontario's billow
Like Ocean's surge is curled;
Where strong Niagara's thunders wake
The echo of the world;

Where red Missouri bringeth
Rich tributes from the west,
And Rappahannock sweetly sleeps
On green Virginia's breast.

Ye say, their cone-like cabins,
That clustered o'er the vale,
Have fled away like withered leaves
Before the autumn gale:

But their memory lives on in your hills,
Their baptism on your shore;
Your everlasting rivers speak
Their dialect of yore.

Old Massachusetts wears it
Within her lordly crown,
And broad Ohio bears it
'mid all her young renown;

Connecticut hath wreathed it
Where her quiet foliage waves,
And bold Kentucky breathed it hoarse
Through all her ancient caves.

Wachuset hides its lingering voice
Within its rocky heart,
And Alleghany graves its tone
Throughout his lofty chart:

Monadnock on his forehead hoar
Doth seal the sacred trust;
Your mountains build their monument,
Though ye destroy their dust

Learn more about Lydia Huntley Sigourney.

Learn more about Natalie Merchant's Leave Your Sleep, including a video on the project, which has very much stirred my own newfound interest in learning about poetry.