Lulu

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  Lulu longed to talk more than any dog I’ve ever known. She watched carefully and would look me in the eyes and make this low guttural sound. I realized she was trying to talk. It reminded me of when I was a kid and tried to imitate foreign accents. I didn’t know the words, but I would talk gibberish and strive to get the sound right.

Over time, when Lulu needed to talk, I would just sit and have a chat with her. She’d make her sounds and I would respond. She tilted her head to the side and listened and when I stopped, she’d make her sounds again. It was usually a very serious discussion. When she was satisfied, she’d lean over and lick my hand or jump down and lick a toe if I was barefoot, wag her tail, and move on to the next thing.

Lulu was my mother’s dog, but I have been with her almost nonstop for the past three and a half years – and frequently for five years before that. We had to let her go Wednesday night. Her vet, who assured us her practice didn’t do this service for other patients, brought her home. Mother held her for a while and then I held her, sitting in her favorite chair with her favorite stuffed toys and people she loved and who loved her around – Mom, me, and the vet, who had come to love her, too.  I talked to Lulu through two final injections about the squirrels she’d chase, the crows she’d run away from the bird feeders, and what a good girl she was. And she was.

She had her eyes focused on me and they did not close when she went on to the next thing. It was peaceful. It was horrible.

She was a happy, active chihuahua until ten days before she died. One morning, she had an accident in the house and when I was cleaning it up I saw that it was mostly blood. She went to the vet who tested her, said it was treatable, and began treatment. A few days later, Lulu was recovering nicely. On the morning of the day we were going to bring her home, she had a stroke. They say strokes in dogs are rare but that some make a full or at least partial recovery. We got a couple of promising daily reports and then Lulu began to decline. By Wednesday, the vet decided it was time. And it was.

Chihuahuas get a bad rap and I used to be guilty. I worked with a director once, a short guy with a bad attitude who yapped constantly. I nicknamed him “Chihuahua.” I regret that and apologize to the entire Chihuahua community. Lulu would yap when she got excited, usually when she was happy about something, but most of the time she was quiet. Once, Mother almost fell and a visiting neighbor jumped up to help her; Lulu misunderstood what was happening and made a mad and excitable dash for the neighbor. I appreciated that Lulu was coming to the aid of her person but the neighbor, a cat lady, never returned. And I will never disparage another chihuahua – the three that my parents have had – Pepe, Clover, and Lulu – were fine, smart, and noble creatures.

If Lulu heard lightning, or if it rained hard, she would wander around the house until she found a haven, usually in a closet or bedroom. She never sat and ate a meal. She would nibble delicately throughout the day. If she was going out or for a walk, she would grab a few bites of kibble in her mouth, delicately place them on the floor, and eat them one by one. She had a keen sense of smell and would roam the backyard, following the scent of creatures who had wandered through – a rabbit, a raccoon, an opossum, a runaway ferret one time, a tortoise, the neighborhood cat who taunted her from the fence post. She knew there was a chipmunk who lived under the storage shed in the backyard and never went out without sniffing at the place where the chipmunk burrowed under. On walks, she would stop and sniff anything with a scent. The jasmine at a mailbox down the street was a particular favorite.

She was a bit of a snob with other dogs, especially other small ones, but she developed the occasional crush on big dogs that lived in the neighborhood. She had raised a litter of puppies not long before she came to live with Mother. We always suspected that she missed her puppies, especially the one they called “P.J.” that had stayed with her until she was given to Mom. One day, on a neighborhood walk, she spotted a chihuahua puppy in a yard and pulled on her leash until I took her over. She gently nuzzled and licked that puppy for several minutes. I had a hard time getting her to leave it. I suspect she was remembering her own lost pups.

Lulu hated me at first. She would have nothing to do with me. In her mind, she thought I was the person who took her away from her people and puppy. She wouldn’t let me near and would bark fiercely if I approached. Somewhere along the way, she decided I was okay, and we were close from then on. She was an intuitive girl. If voices were raised, even if it wasn’t in anger, she would quietly leave the room and seek shelter in a cozy corner; I suspected that might have been a holdover from her previous owners. When I was down or upset, she seemed to always know and would climb up and lay her head in my lap and stroke my hand with her paw.

She’s gone now and Mom is already talking about getting another dog. I’d prefer to give it a break for a while, but it’s her house. Lulu came to think of it as Lulu’s house.

And it was.

Lulu and the Tortoise

Notes under the August Sky

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I learned something this week that I never imagined before. What is referred to as “ground clutter” in weather radar is often, this time of year, showing migrating birds at night. I wasn’t sure I heard correctly so I looked it up. I found several reports from all over that attributed the radar images to millions of migrating birds flying toward the Gulf of Mexico in the dark of night. In fact, I learned that the other ground clutter can be filtered out to give an accurate view of the birds. A few nights ago, the night sky was filled. Further research found evidence of mass early-season avian immigration throughout the eastern United States. For me, it was one of those who knew? moments.

No matter how I try, the Spring plantings that I took such pride in “look like August” after the harsh heat of July and August. Plants that once bloomed prolifically look a little spare, the petunias (which I never really cared for to begin with) are faded and leggy. Even the Peggy Martin “Katrina” rose looked like it might die a few days ago; it’s springing fresh leaves again and might still manage a fall bloom. The lantana soldiers on but didn’t flower quite as much in the hottest heat; that’s okay, since I like the citrusy fragrance of lantana leaves even more than the flowers. I still have a hard time believing that lantana is an invasive species elsewhere. The hibiscus, a slow starter, seems to flourish in the heat.

The three pottings on the front porch don’t miss a beat unless I miss a watering. The sweet potato vines are swallowing that corner. I planned to prune it back but my mom likes it “as is” so I leave it alone. The volunteer caladium in one of those pots enhances the sweet potato vine and begonia sharing space. I used to explain that it was a happy accident but now I just smile and thank passersby for the compliment. I probably couldn’t repeat that accidental planting next year if I tried.

After much pruning, weeding, and sweet talk, the ageless wild rose in the backyard, taken from a cutting of my grandfather’s “mother” plant years ago, looked grim but  pushed out a couple of blooms recently and looks like it might live to bloom another year. Another cutting from that mother plant flourished in the backyard of my house in north Alabama. When I sold the house to move back to Birmingham, I left a note for the incoming residents explaining the long history of that rose in hopes that they would keep it there and alive, but I doubt they did.

We’re going through a faux fall for a few days here. The temperatures are unseasonably moderate and humidity is down. These portents of fall are a break from brutal heat, but I’m already regretting the shorter days.

The quality of the “light in August” into September has long fascinated me. I don’t remember which came first – my notice of the August sunlight or my reading of the Faulkner novel that gave it a name. It’s a clear sky, often adorned by what I call “biblical clouds” – the fluffy pure white piles of cloud sitting majestically in the vivid sky. I started calling them “biblical clouds” because they remind me of the skies in the illustrations of Renaissance paintings that always seemed to be in those large family Bibles that were once sold door-to-door. The light, the shadows, the breeze all work together to create an otherworldly feel. It’s not there all the time, but when it happens, it stops me in my tracks and often creates magnificent sunsets.

Remember in elementary school when we would stick balls of cotton on a skyscape to represent clouds? Looking at these clouds, I’ve figured out why I never got my desired effect — why it just looked like a cotton ball plopped down on a piece of paper. Now, if I were back in elementary school, I think I’d  shred the cotton ball a little and carefully spread it across the sky …  Yeah, that would work.

Today’s Sunset from Shades Mountain

“Bloodied, Gloriously Fecund Land”

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New Yorker staff writer Alexis Okeowo, who was raised in Montgomery, Alabama, has just published Blessings and Disasters: A Story of Alabama. “Many Alabamians seem tired of being told who they are and what they want,” she writes. She tells stories of a wide range of Alabamians , their challenges, and their triumphs.

I had the great pleasure of reviewing Blessings and Disasters for Alabama Writers’ Forum. I enthusiastically recommend it as a portrait of our nation at a pivotal moment. Here’s the review:

Blessings and Disasters

Book Review: Robert Bailey’s political thriller, The Boomerang

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Robert Bailey’s new thriller, The Boomerang, raises issues that the reader may think about long after the book is over. But it is also a fun read with an imaginative plot and surprises on every page. The stakes are high, the plot is sobering, and the thrills are plenty. 

I recently reviewed The Boomerang for Alabama Writers’ Forum.

The Boomerang

A Native’s New Orleans

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“She may not have seen it all, but she’s seen a lot of it,” I say in my review of Brooke Champagne’s Nola Face. Champagne, an Ecuadorian-French-Sicilian-American, is from New Orleans and explores her eventful life beyond the streetcar lines and tourism districts of her colorful home. My full review for Alabama Writers’ Forum is here:

Nola Face

Notes on a Century of Gatsby

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The university where I taught was hosting a mini-symposium about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby in conjunction with the local library and the National Endowment for the Arts. I was the moderator and had gathered the participants for a planning session before the event. At some point in the conversation, I casually stated that I thought the Twenties would have been an exciting time to be alive.

There was a moment, and then one of the professors muttered, “As long as you were white.” Another chimed in, “… and a man.”

I was chastened and kept my mouth shut. However, some of my favorite writers were publishing in the 1920s – William Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, etc. George Gershwin was composing. The Harlem Renaissance highlighted the talents of Hughes and Hurston and so many others. The New Yorker magazine was founded, and modern art was bursting forth. Speaking strictly for myself, I still think it would have been an inspiring time to be alive (if only one could maneuver a way to exit prior to the Great Depression).

And in 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was published. I try to stop myself from writing about my ritual of reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby on every Summer Solstice. But since much commotion heralded the centennial of that enduring novel in April of this year, I need to address my ritual once more. It began in high school when we were assigned Gatsby in an American lit class. I think that’s a good age to read the book for the first time – a time when adult thoughts are edging out the preoccupations of childhood and adolescence, when many are just getting an inkling of what romantic love might be all about. Cynicism hasn’t yet taken hold.

In the book, Daisy muses that she always looks forward to the longest day of the year and then forgets it when it comes. “We ought to plan something,” her friend Jordan dreamily says. For some reason – mainly because I always looked for the longest day of the year and then forgot about it until it was past – I thought I should plan to read The Great Gatsby on the longest day of the year.

And so I did. I am prone to such plans and then letting them slide away, but I have stuck to the reading Gatsby thing. By my calculations – I might have missed a year somewhere along the way – I have read Gatsby annually, and on the same day, for over half of the hundred years since its publication.

Over the years, it never gets old; there’s always a new moment or turn of phrase to discover. I look forward to the Summer Solstice just because I know I will be revisiting the Eggs of Long Island. As I grow older, Gatsby grows in meaning and grace. Over time, my waning tolerance for the arrogance and wealth of Tom and Daisy Buchanan has decreased and James Gatz of North Dakota has begun to look increasingly foolish and naïve in his quixotic quest. I understand how careless Jordan Baker could inspire a fleeting adolescent crush in any number of grown men. (When Tom is in the middle of one of his racist rants, Jordan breezily shuts him down with “We’re all white here.”)  I feel sorry for the Wilsons – Myrtle and George – and think that we all have known marriages like theirs, one way or the other. And now, when I read the book, I think They’re all so young.

But of all of them, it is Nick Carraway, the narrator, whose voice I most enjoy visiting once a year. I sort of trust him when he says he is one of the “few honest people that I have ever known,” although anyone who would say that about himself is already suspect (it’s kind of like declaring yourself a “stable genius”).

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I underline passages in books, although I have always done it sparingly, like a standing ovation. Each time I read Gatsby I linger over lines and passages I underlined in past summers. Sometimes it makes perfect sense; other times, I think Why did that catch my attention? Occasionally, it takes me right to a certain place in my life and I know what prompted those words to grab me at that specific time. At one point in the book, Nick realizes that it is his thirtieth birthday and the “portentous, menacing road of a new decade. … the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair.” I can tell you exactly when I underlined that passage. I have gone through several paperbacks of The Great Gatsby since my ritual began. I keep them even after they fall apart and are replaced. One remaining copy was damaged after it was thrown up into the air to avoid an incoming wave on a beach somewhere. It avoided the surge, but not the saltwater.

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On those first readings of The Great Gatsby, I was not aware of Fitzgerald’s Alabama connections. Zelda Sayre was a new name to me. It was only after Fitzgerald’s daughter, Scottie, came to speak to my sophomore lit class, that I began to realize the significance of Alabama in the Fitzgerald biography. It was while he was stationed in Montgomery that Scott and Zelda met. Later, in 1931 and 1932, when they briefly rented a house in Montgomery’s Cloverdale neighborhood, Zelda worked on her novel, Save Me the Waltz, and Scott wrote part of Tender Is the Night. Their daughter, Scottie Fitzgerald Lanahan, moved to Alabama around the time she spoke to my class. She became active in social advocacy and politics in Alabama later in life, partially to atone for some of the Jim Crow legislation of her prominent politician grandfather, and spent her final years in her mother’s hometown.

Anyone familiar with Fitzgerald’s story will recognize the influence of Zelda on Scott’s writing, and especially in his creation of Daisy Buchanan in Gatsby. Zelda famously said, “Mr. Fitzgerald — I believe that is how he spells his name — seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.”

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One of Andy Kaufman’s most frustrating stunts was when he decided to read The Great Gatsby to an audience. He would start reading in a sonorous voice and he would not stop. Audiences would catcall and scream for him to stop and he would taunt them, threatening that if they did not quieten down, he would stop reading. They would persist, but he would not stop. Eventually, after his reading had taken the audience beyond the breaking point, he told them if they did not stop, he would have to play the recording he brought. As the audience pleads for him to play the recording, he finally puts down the book and cues up the record – a recording of Andy Kaufman reading The Great Gatsby.

It’s a brilliant piece and, in its building tension and absurdity, there is an underlying truth. The Great Gatsby is so beautifully written, the words are so crisp and precise, that I always want to read passages aloud just to hear the words. Kaufman picked up on that urge and his madcap stunt shows just how outrageous and cloyingly precious it is to force people to listen.

Kaufman’s stunt aside, the theatre ensemble called Elevator Repair Service won massive acclaim and made its reputation with a production called Gatz in which The Great Gatsby is performed, word for word, from start to finish. Set in a drab office, a bored office worker pulls out a copy of Gatsby and begins to read it aloud. The other workers begin to recite the text – in its entirety – and play the various characters, all in their office setting. The performance lasted eight hours including two short breaks, an intermission, and a dinner break. It was a hit and has been toured and revived by Elevator Repair Service several times since its 1999 premiere. It probably sounds like torture to many — as torturous as that Kaufman bit  — but, given the opportunity, I would happily sit through Gatz.

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There is one passage in Gatsby that I always ponder; it never ceases to intrigue me and is one of many moments that feeds my deep affection for the story. It comes at the end of Chapter VI after Gatsby opens up to Nick about his Daisy obsession. Nick notes that despite Gatsby’s

… appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something – an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s … But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.

That moment passes; it’s not referenced again. No other writer has so effectively captured that moment of something “on the tip of the tongue” that is almost there and disappears, never to return. I am not sure that any other writer has tried.

The Volunteer

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My mother’s father, Leonard Harbison, was raised on a farm with a dozen siblings, was a farmer when he started to raise his own family, and eventually moved to Birmingham with my grandmother and their three children to take a factory job. Wherever they went, Leonard’s yard was the envy of the street. He would have plots in bloom and would occasionally dig out another plot to fill up as needed. Common houseplants would find their way to grow and flourish in the outdoor setting. A poinsettia, gifted for Christmas, would be put in the ground and live as a leafy green plant for years.

Occasionally, when I would examine Granddaddy’s garden, I would spot an interesting plant and ask what it was. Sometimes he would respond, “Oh, that’s a volunteer – it just showed up.” Ever since those days, “volunteer” has been my favorite gardening term.

I don’t get to use it much. My “gardening,” such as it is, is generally confined to small pockets – humble expanses of lawn, balconies, porches, patios, containers. There’s not much room for volunteers in such controlled environments. In these spare spaces, the occasional surprise is a cause for delight. A couple of years ago, the volunteers were a pair of birds that decided to nest in one of the containers. We made do, the birds made do, and finally the nest had served its purpose and the container went back to normal maintenance.

Mom’s house has a small sitting area at the front door – to call it a porch would be generous. Most of the attention goes to the flower bed around the crape myrtle but we usually spruce up the porch with a few containers at various levels. This spring, I did three containers featuring begonias with sweet potato vines and creeping jenny for added flow and interest. I’m “right pleased” with it, to use a term my grandfather might have used. It’s not ostentatious, but it adds a fresh pop. We’ll keep it watered and it should look pretty good through the summer.

Last week, I was bringing groceries in through the front door and was stopped by a volunteer in one of the pots. I put down the bags and saw that it was a caladium making its way through the begonia growth. I had been caught in my hastiness: When I was planting this year’s plants in the pot, I only replaced the top layer of soil. A caladium from last year was left behind and had burst forth. The large leaf’s green and scarlet color scheme was a bright addition to the planned foliage it invaded. I had to take a photo of the embellishment that made my original plan so much better and more eye-catching.

Since then, more caladium leaves have emerged and a routine planting has yielded daily surprises. It’s the little things that get us through the day. Let’s hear it for the volunteers.

Rose of Sharon

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I take mental refuge in watching nature, even just the plot of land where I spend the bulk of my time these days – halfway up the western slope of Shades Mountain, just below Bluff Park, eight miles from my own house which is mostly fending for itself in terms of outdoor maintenance. I’m grateful for the HOA to keep the grass cut on my own home front.

At different points in the year, certain flora gets my attention. This week, it has been the rose of Sharon tree that has drawn the bulk of my notice. It started as a twig soon after my parents moved to this house almost sixteen years ago. Mom asked her friend Margaret, at Brown’s Nursery in Tuscaloosa, for a suggestion of a flowering plant to place in a backyard location; the twig was her response. Margaret didn’t tell her what it was.

Back in Birmingham, Mom told Dad she’d like it planted in a place where it would be visible from the street – if it ever grew that tall. He chose a spot visible from the front gate and from the back door and the large window in the breakfast nook. Before too long, it grew tall and spread wide and the fuchsia flowers, which began to burst forth a couple of weeks ago, are visible from the street and fill the windows in that door and nook with magnificence. It’s hard not to smile when the blinds are opened in the morning and that abundance hits.

I didn’t limb up the rose of Sharon last year and the last time Joseph, the man who keeps my mother’s lawn mown, was here, he had a hard time getting under and around the tree, its branches hanging low due to the weight of hundreds of blooms and buds and recent heavy rains. He asked if he should prune or did I want to handle it. I enjoy pruning and the rose of Sharon had been on my to-do list since late-winter.

The next day, I worked my way around the tree, pruning the obstacles to passage and trying to retain the tree’s natural integrity, while preserving as many low buds as possible. The results are pleasing, I think.

Rose of Sharon is the common hibiscus (Hibiscus syriacus), also known as “althea.” I have always preferred to call hibiscus “rose of Sharon” due to its evocative literary use in the Old Testament, especially in Song of Solomon, and its Christian adaptation as a symbol for beauty, grace, and love. John Steinbeck memorably creates the character named Rose of Sharon Joad (“Rosasharn”) in The Grapes of Wrath and the plant is referenced in other literature.

But I do not always view the backyard tree with such lofty significance. It has become a spectacular harbinger of the summer. From the moment in early spring when the tree begins to leaf and the buds begin to pop forth, the anticipation of that first flower mounts until, one sunny morning, a flower appears. From that point, more flowers arrive – quickly, vividly, profusely – and the tree itself buzzes with the sound of bees busily at work. Most years, a nest is tucked away in the upper branches. Always, the perching of birds, especially the cardinals, adds a bold splash of color to the already gaudy mix.

I had thought this essay might lead to a life lesson. Perhaps not. Just this: Spring has sprung and summer awaits. Savor the moment.

 

 

 

The Price of Complicity

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ICE agents seized graduate student Alireza Doroudi, an Iranian national pursuing a PhD in mechanical engineering at the University of Alabama, from his home near the university in March 2025. There was no apparent reason for his arrest and the university was cooperative with his oppressors. This opinion piece by Brian Lyman for the Montgomery Advertiser pretty well sums up the issues raised by the University of Alabama’s complicit response to this crisis. In  light of the resistance by Harvard University to the executive branch’s overreach, the Doroudi event is an even larger embarrassment for “the Capstone.”

Be sure to read the Lyman article here:

https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/opinion/contributors/2025/05/26/welcome-to-the-university-of-alabama-hope-some-of-you-have-an-attorney-brian-lyman/83786155007/