The past several days have been oppressively hot and humid, with temps in the nineties and the air so thick you could practically see what you were breathing should you have to go outside. It was good this morning to wake up to find the temperature some ten degrees cooler, the humidity somewhat less heavy and a lovely breeze blowing with just a faint hint of rain chill in it. Lord knows where it comes from--unless it's carried from the worrisome flooding rains in the Midwest; we've had only scattered thunderstorms bearing scant rain the past couple of weeks in the knobs.

The wind though makes it a good day to hang out laundry. My clothesline is on the east side of the house, a few feet from a gigantic weeping willow. This morning as I hung out shorts and tank tops and tee shirts the willow and the wind sang a soft duet; good balm for the soul.

As the day wears on tall clouds are starting to pile up in a ring around us; the meteorologists around are calling for a sixty percent chance of rain tomorrow. We can certainly use the rain, but I'm gonna leave my clothes on the line as long as I can, letting the sun bleach the whites and all of them absorb the soft scents of hay and flowers. I've always loved the smell of line dried wash. I could call it a link back to the old days of my ancestors, but it's more than that; it's a simple sensuous pleasure.



Later, dears. Fair thee well.

Also presently in bloom is the humble cow parsnip, also known as Queen Anne's Lace. Purists will argue that this royal name should only be applied to flowers with a spot of red in the very center. In legend, Queen Anne of England (1665-1714; reigned 1702-1714) was said to have been tatting lace one day when she pricked her finger with the sharp little instrument she was using, drawing blood and leaving a single red drop on the lace. Loyal and romantic subjects in America, seeing this lovely lacy flower, some with red spots at the blossom's very heart, named it in the queen's honor.

When I was a little girl attending Bible schools (a summer church activity, usually held on weeknights), one of my teachers taught us a way to cause Queen Anne's Lace to change color. She would cut off the stems at a good length, and we would set them overnight in cups of water mixed with food coloring. I seem to remember my favorites were blue, but by judicious mixing of the food coloring you could make any number of exotic colors. Miss Annabelle--that was her name; an elderly lady, long widowed, her children grown and moved away--was a memorable character for many reasons, but when I see Queen Anne's Lace I always remember her--and smile.

And until next time fair thee well.

Today these are in bloom. In our area they run through a whole range of pinks, from a soft champagne to Day-Glo. The most interesting shade is a sort of orangy-pink, like salmon. Native to Central and South America, these probably came here to our humid subtropical zone as an exotic and sort of went wild; they're more common on roadsides and in hedgerows than in yards.

Later! Fair thee well.

Twenty-nine years ago today, we lost an American icon: John Wayne died of cancer at the age of seventy-two.



He had a name and a birthplace one would not expect from a man who became such an icon of western movies: he was born Marion Robert Morrison on May 26, 1907, in Winterset, Iowa. His parents took the somewhat eccentric step of changing his middle name from Robert to Michael when they decided to name their next son Robert. He acquired the nickname Duke from a family pet, and always preferred Duke to any other name, birth name or screen name.

He got his first work in movies in the waning days of the silent era through the influence of the great cowboy star Tom Mix. Once talkies came in, one studio he worked for tried to make him into a "Saturday cowboy" in the Gene Autry-Roy Rogers-Rex Allen mode; fortunately for the genre, Wayne could not sing, although he did have one of the most distinctive speaking voices of any actor living or dead.

His first major film was 1939's STAGECOACH, in which he worked under the direction of John Ford. All in all the pair would make over twenty pictures together, including the brilliant 1962 western THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (still my favorite John Wayne film). He also made a number of war films, but I (and many others) still prefer his westerns.



In 1964, Wayne was stricken with cancer. There has been some speculation that the disease may have been linked to his 1958 film THE CONQUEROR. Not only was this an improbable role (he played the medieval Mongol tyrant Genghis Khan); more sinisterly, sand for the desert background of the film was trucked in from White Sands, site of nuclear testing. In the quarter century following the filming, ninety-one of the 220 people involved in the production were diagnosed with cancer. Wayne and fellow film legends Susan Hayward and Dick Powell eventually lost their lives to the disease.

Wayne fought off the cancer that time, and in 1969 played the role that brought him his first and only Oscar: the one-eyed US marshal Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn in TRUE GRIT. (In his Oscar acceptance speech, Wayne said that if he'd known it would bring him this honor, he'd have put on the eyepatch thirty years ago.) He would reprise the role in 1975's ROOSTER COGBURN, in which his costar was Katharine Hepburn and the story was essentially a western version of her 1951 film THE AFRICAN QUEEN. Hepburn wrote glowingly of the experience in her autobiography.



Wayne made his last film in 1976. His cancer had come back by then, and ironically, in THE SHOOTIST, he played an aging gunfighter dying of cancer.

Wayne died on June 11, 1979.

He was in his later years a controversial figure, largely because of his politics (we'd call him a neocon now). But he was a man who stuck to his guns--pun intended--although the sort of unquestioning patriotism he practiced is not much in favor nowadays.

He wanted his tombstone to bear a Spanish phrase that translated, roughly, as "Strong, ugly and with dignity." It's actually adorned by something else entirely, but that phrase does have a great resonance, for no man ever dominated the screen with the laconic authority of John Wayne.

A better epitaph for him might have been the last line of the aforementioned THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE: "When a legend becomes a fact, print the legend."

Rest in peace, Duke.

And until next time, fair thee well.

After a two week wait, I finally got my results back from my mammogram. All's well. Thanks again to the Susan G. Komen Foundation.