Category: Entertainment

Brookfield ZooRunRun 2019

It’s five-thirty on a Sunday morning. I woke before my alarm, pre-heated the oven, and showered before feeding the cats. In fact, the oven beeps to tell me it hit three-fifty as I walk back into the kitchen surrounded by the offended felines. I grab the tray of sausage biscuits – prepped the night before – from the fridge, shove them in the oven, and move towards the cat food.

It’s six-twenty when we hit the road, ten minutes earlier than planned. We drive towards a brilliant sunrise, but don’t take a photo because we know a phone camera from a moving vehicle won’t do it justice.

The packet pick-up runs until seven-thirty; we arrive just after seven. We park in our preferred area, the Lions section, and pick up our t-shirts and race bibs. There are people warming up in the parking lot as we drive in, but many others haven’t arrived yet. We change into our race shirts and drop our original shirts in the car before walking into the zoo itself.

I do my morning hip stretches on the floor of the Discovery Center, then we visit the promotional tables. If we had just picked up the Off the Eaten Path samples, I would have shoved them in my DuPage Medical Group ladybug bag. But Nicor Gas has energy saving kits for current customers, and I do actually want to replace my showerhead… so we walk back out to the car because the bag has gotten heavy.  We skip the spin a wheel opportunities at the Cane’s and White Sox booths; I’m not a fan of either and the lines were long.

If you’ve entered Brookfield Zoo through the North Gate, you know it’s an extensive walk just to get from the gate to the parking lot. It was seven-thirty-five by this point, still most of an hour until the race started, and the theoretically closed packet pick-up has a huge line.  We visit the bathroom and move towards the line-up, stopping at one booth we missed before.  At this point, constant motion is key, so we’re fidgeting and semi-dancing to the music blaring over the speakers.  Eventually, we move into the corral for the 12 minutes per mile and up group, the next to last group to start, just before the people with strollers.

Ten minutes after the official start time, our corral launches through the arch, bib sensors recording our individual starts.  We start at a jog to get out of the crowd, then slow to a fast walk around the curve.  We hold that fast walk in the light rain until the final stretch, as we come around the corner by the snow leopards and start to run the final leg.  We’re both jogging until she sees me pull ahead; she sprints forward and I get stuck behind a stroller, grinning as she beats me to the finish line by at least ten seconds.  We both accept the proffered water, banana, and Kind bar, and eventually decide that the line is too long for exact times; my watch says we walked the course in about fifty minutes.

It’s early enough that the zoo is largely deserted, so we head to Wild Encounters to meet the goats, wallabies, and parakeets.  After all, part of the point of participating in the ZooRunRun is that we like the zoo. 

Indoor trees filled with parakeets in a variety of colors.

Stepping back(ish) in history

Last weekend was our annual excursion to the Bristol Renaissance Faire, just across the border in Wisconsin.  As with past visits, we always try to catch something classic and something new.  This year, we started the day with a delightful performance titled “How Not To Die”.  As we did not in fact die during it, I consider it to be a successful show.  Tucked away at the small Military Encampment stage, this was an educational show – with audience participation – about medical knowledge in 1574.  Blood and amputations were included. 

Calzone, iced creme crepe, shrimp and vegetable tempuraWe then went in search of food, and I realize that I haven’t discussed the food options at Faire before.  There is a plethora of period inappropriate (fortunately) food available in an ever-expanding selection.  The most traditional options at Bristol are the turkey legs (massive!) and the garlic mushrooms (delicious!), along with a tasty cup of sassafras.  We had none of those on this trip.  Well, except for the sassafras.  There is literally something for everyone – between us, we ate iced creme crepes, shrimp and vegetable tempura, calzone, and some beef jerky.  There are specialty coffee stands and an assortment of refreshing cold items – gelato, ice cream in various forms, along with cold beverages of alcoholic and non-alcoholic varieties. 

After we ate, we headed to Dirk & Guido’s second show of the day; it’s always a delightful experience.  After a bit of shopping, we split into two groups for repeat experiences: Cirque du Sewer and Adam Crack’s Fire Whip show.  Cirque du Sewer now features three cats that participate at will (really, at their will… they were not entirely cooperative this time), along with the rats and human stars of the show.  Adam Crack taught an audience member to use a whip and let her swing it at his head.

Last weekend was cosplay weekend at Faire, which is why we saw Boba Fett (in a kilt), Ghostbusters, and even a weeping angel.  There’s a different theme every weekend, which can be found on the Faire’s Facebook page. 

Crime for the Connoisseur

In sorting through Dad’s stuff, we discovered a couple items he had written for a college magazine he helped produce at King’s College in Newcastle, titled The Modern Languages Magazine.  This article, titled Crime for the Connoisseur, was published in Vol. 1. No. 1 in Dec. 1946, along with other authors’ works in English, Spanish, French, and German.  If I reflexively switch to American spelling, please forgive me; I will try to retain the original, but sometimes my fingers are faster than my brain.

Modern Languages Magazine title and staff listIt seems almost incredible that for the last fifty years a vast horde of novelists has been scrubbing away at the detective story, racking its brains in trying to think up new themes, and especially new methods of killing the victim.  The trouble is, that hardly any of them since Conan Doyle have realised that a murder is not at all necessary; that it is, in fact, distinctly out of date.  After all, the whole of our modern society depends on people doing what is polite, and convenient to others.  And it is not at all convenient to cause a major disruption of other people’s lives by entangling them in a murder.  Not is it polite to drag the police away from their normal business to investigate murders, and then to allow some unauthorized stranger to dismiss them as blunderers, and solve the case himself.

It is really high time that the murder-manglers woke up to this: murder is quite outdated.  What is more, as a theme it is beginning to look sorely bedraggled.

Then there is the problem of the detective.  From the professional to the inconspicuous ordinary citizen, from the police to the armchair variety, all have been tried.  Somebody has even written a story in which the detective is the murderer; but that required another detective to catch him.  But not one of these plot-mincers ever thought of a detective story in which the crime was never discovered, was never even mentioned, and which there was no detective at all.  Yes, it exists – in Shakespeare’s “Much Ado about Nothing”.

You are thunderstruck!  But I see, you have been brought up in the modern tradition; for the normal reader of detective stories never finds out the criminal by any means other than guesswork.  And he does not try – he knows quite well that he is expected not to solve the problem; for the solution will be there, sure enough, in the last chapter.  Shakespeare credits you with more intelligence: for in his story it is the public – yes, you and I – who are the detectives.  Beware! – he exerts all his genius to lead you astray with a crime that never existed; and he leaves only one clue.  Mind you, that one clue is not one of these paltry modern details – stopped clocks, or remains of Turkish cigarettes in the ash-tray – it really gapes at you.

The general plot is that Claudio, a demobbed army officer, is engaged to be married next day to Hero, the local city governor’s daughter.  But along comes Don John – a really low type – and takes Claudio at midnight to watch Hero billing and cooing with some other man at her bedroom window.  So next morning in church, Claudio breaks off the engagement, and tells Hero why: she shows a decided tendency to swoon (Note this – ‘Tis important!)  Meanwhile the stooge hired by Don John to do the  midnight wooing act got drunk on his wages, and in telling one of his pals that at the window was not Hero, but her maid, whom he was calling “Hero”, he was overheard by the local Peelers, who arrested him forthwith.  And so Don John made himself scarce, and Claudio proceeded to wed Hero.  Another troubled romance ended happily.

But you and I, being the intelligent readers whom Shakespeare’s ghost has so long awaited, will immediately ask: if Hero’s maid was love-making at Hero’s bedroom window, where, pray, was Hero all the while?  Doing her knitting – at midnight, when she was expected to be in bed?  Chatting with one of the maids? – none of the maids came forward next day to admit any conversation with her.  Well, then, I regret to say that we must presume she was loitering with a man.  You noticed that, when accused in the church next morning, she fainted.  This was first taken as proof of her guilt in the affair at the window, later as proof of her innocence.  Both were wrong: she fainted because she realised that whoever was at her window – her maid, as it turned out – knew quite well that she was not in bed at that time.  A deadly fear chilled her to the marrow: whoever it was might choose to reveal this fact, then the truth would emerge, that she had been dilly-dallying with….

Yes, inspector, I think I know my man: do you?

But I should hate to interfere with your enjoyment of the play by telling you before you read it: that would be most impolite, and not at all convenient.

Carving jade in Antigua, Guatemala

In Antigua, Guatemala, there are several jade shops; the oldest are Jade Maya and Casa del Jade. Both offer a selection of jewelry and carvings, as well as history of Mesoamerican jade use. Both guarantee the authenticity of their jade, which refers to jadeite and nephrite; the Chinese word for jade also includes soapstone, which is a softer stone, without a crystalline structure. Jade Maya has several copies of a massive book listing the last century or so of birthdays and the Mayan Nahual, or astrological sign, for each. Nearby flip cards display the symbol associated with each sign, with pertinent information including the animal. (Mine’s an armadillo.) Casa del Jade has a smaller display; both have assorted items engraved with the Nahual symbols.  Both stores sell coffee and provide samples.

2-hour workshop every day! What can I create? necklace, bracelet, magnet, keychain. $49/Q392 *ask about our special pricesIn January, Casa de Jade opened a small section in their shop offering jade carving lessons.  The basic two-hour lesson gives participants the opportunity to select a piece of jade from a variety of colors (lavender, black, and light blue are only available in jadeite; the jade found in China is nephrite). A couple pencil scratches later, your stone is ready to shape in a scary-looking saw that uses diamond dust to cut the jade. Our instructor placed her fingers on the running blade – without a problem, as it’s specially designed for rock. When you have the basic shape cut, another machine is used to refine the shape by smoothing the edges and adding curves as desired. (The saw only does straight lines.)

Of the two hour lesson, getting to the refined shape might be twenty to thirty minutes. The next hour or more – black jade being the most difficult – will be spent polishing the stone using a progression of different sandpaper. Every step from the saw through polishing involves water, so we all wore stylish Casa del Jade aprons, and had towels handy for drying our stones (and ourselves).

The first round of polishing was the longest, trying to remove any visible scratches, particularly where cutting may have roughed up the stone a bit. The next three were progressively shorter, and eventually followed by shining the stone with a blend of diamond dust and water against leather. The black jade piece was waxed to make the engraving (coming right afterwards) stand out. 

The space holds four participants; three of us wanted engravings on our pieces and spent an extended amount of time drawing our designs on the stones with pens, then erasing bits with a wet wipe until it was perfected. We each opted to have the expert – our instructor – do the actual engraving with an engraving tool.  We were the last lesson of the day, so nobody objected when it ran a bit past the two hour mark.

Transition from raw jade pieces (one black, one light blue) to finished stones, the black one with engraving of Black Panther's necklace.The standard choices for the two-hour lesson are a pendant, keychain, bracelet, or magnet. The instructor worked with each participant to determine which stones needed holes and drilled those before the final round of polishing, then threated the pieces with a synthetic plastic at the end. The one magnet in the group was affixed with a mix from two tubes after engraving, with a warning that one of the tubes smelled like fish. 

We agreed that it was well worth the experience; the time it took to carve the jade was well spent, and were both happy with the pieces we made.  The instructor is fluent in English, so don’t worry if your Spanish isn’t up to understanding instructions. 

Brick Safari at Brookfield Zoo

Summer has arrived in Chicagoland, and with it comes a special exhibit at Brookfield Zoo’s – the Brick Safari!  Truth be told, there are always special exhibits at Brookfield, more so in the summer when they make good use of their outdoor space.  But the Brick Safari features life-size animals made out of Lego, which puts it near and dear to my geeky heart.

Three life-size Lego animals: a giraffe, a pair of parrots on a perch, and a dolphin balancing above the Lego waterThe seriously geeky Lego fan will not be disappointed with these figures.  Not only are they life-size, but information is provided about the statues stating how many bricks were used to build each one, and how much it weighs.  Animal lovers will be delighted by the information provided on each of the animals, including where to find them if any reside at Brookfield Zoo.

Some of the figures ask you to guess the weight or number of bricks; some simply tell you, along with the number of hours they took to build.  The penguin parents ask you to look for their chicks who are placed further along in the exhibit.  For example, the Emperor penguin took 6,900 bricks and 49 hours to build, and weighs 143 pounds; the Rockhopper penguin weighs in at a mere 55 pounds with 3,200 bricks, but took 101 hours to build.

To add to the local fun, The Morton Arboretum also has a Lego exhibit this summer… time to explore!

Thoughts on Underworld

I recently re-watched the 2003 movie Underworld, which features werewolves and vampires in a centuries-old dispute.  I recall seeing it before, probably around when it was released, but re-watched it and then the next two movies (which were new to me).  I thought Underworld: Rise of the Lycans was the best of the three;  I haven’t watched Blood Wars yet.   That said, I found that Underworld required… commentary.  To be fair, I rated Evolution about the same, but I was already past the commentary stage by then.  (There are spoilers.)

The opening fight of Underworld has the main character running in a trench coat, which always seems terribly impractical.  I suppose it’s better than running with a trench coat and having a sword hidden in there.  Beyond the whole running in a trench coat thing, it bugs me that all they did to define the vampires was attire them as goths… they didn’t look that pale and didn’t seem particularly interested in dining… blood was reserved for combat.

Their combat tactics sucked.  Both sides shot like stormtroopers.  (And died like redshirts, which, frankly, serves them right for shooting custom-designed bullets like stormtroopers.)  The vampires failed to work as cohesive units, paused at really stupid points to stare one direction so somebody could attack them from another, and generally didn’t behave like they’d been fighting these battles as a team for centuries.  And who stands around waiting for their opponent to finish transforming into a better fighter?  Well, maybe a Paladin… but we’re talking about vampire combatants here, patiently waiting on a shapeshifting werewolf.

The plot twists were pretty obvious in that Craven was, well, craven, and Viktor wasn’t anything resembling a good guy.  So really, it was a poorly scripted adventure where the gamemaster had to fudge a few rolls and hand out obvious plot points to make sure the players won.  Throw in a few instances of the gamemaster being super descriptive about physical changes, like Viktor waking up, probably because they needed to drag out the game that day because they had prepared the stats for a combat session.

Both vampires and werewolves are supposed to have improved hearing and speed, yet are capable of sneaking up on each other and letting a mere human get away at several points.  Either nobody put points into Awareness, or all the players repeatedly botched their rolls.

In other words, it was basically an entertaining movie that would certainly be worthy of an MST3K take on it, or a movie night with friends and drinks.

Papa’s Gift (part 5)

Presidential assassination attempt foiled

BREAKING NEWS: A Gifted assassin is foiled after conjuring a weapon from his tablet.  Additional details forthcoming.

When Papa heard that the President was coming to Springfield, he decided we should go see him speak.  It was an election year, but the President was at the end of his second term, so his speeches were mostly about how to get through this worldwide event.  He still plugged his party, of course, but his main focus was reassuring people that the country would not fall apart.

Well, except for Texas, but they hadn’t actually seceded.  Some guy who could cause earthquakes travelled the border between Texas and its neighboring states and split Texas off from the rest of the country.  The tabloids, which were a real source of news now, said he had almost finished when a hungry dragon swooped down and stopped him.

Anyways, Papa called up a friend who was organizing local security and got us on the list for a pair of tickets.  He sent in our information for the background checks and told me that we’d have great seats. Since it was during summer vacation, we decided to arrive a day early and visit Lincoln’s New Salem, the Lincoln Museum, and Lincoln’s Home.  We were pretty wiped out by the time we got to the hotel that night, so we came straight back after dinner and went to sleep.

After breakfast, we walked over to the Convention Center and lined up with the people who had tickets after passing through the first security screening.  There were a lot of other people crowding around trying to catch a glimpse of the President when he arrived, but they didn’t need to go through security again.

We were almost to the second checkpoint when I heard a scuffle behind us.  As I turned, I saw several security guys hauling away a couple of people from between the two checkpoints.  I heard a lady behind me say “All clear,” which is when I realized there was a security person standing right near us.  She looked at Papa and smiled. “Good to see you again, Henry.” Papa smiled and waved slightly, then she turned away to watch the President’s car arriving.  People started to crowd in to get a better spot, pushing those of us in the line.

As the President stepped out of his car, a guy pushed between Papa and me.  He said “Excuse me” in a polite tone as he moved through, but I also heard “You’re blocking my shot,” and that was in an angry voice.  I looked up, puzzled because I couldn’t see a camera, but then I realized he was carrying an iPad.  ‘Of course,’ I thought, ‘he must be using the iPad’s camera.’ But as I watched, he reached his hand into the tablet.  

“Papa!” I yelled, and he turned to look as the guy pulled a pistol out of the iPad’s screen.  Papa reacted immediately, moving toward the assassin and shouting “Security! Gun!” I spun to look for Papa’s friend, who I saw pushing through people to get to us, and as I turned back I heard a gunshot.  Papa fell to the ground just before his friend and another security guard tackled the guy with the gun.

I rushed over to Papa and saw a lot of blood on the ground around him.  Another security guard called for a medic, but Papa looked at me and said, “I’m sorry, Evie, I’d stay if I could.”  He grasped my hand as I started to cry, and I shook my head at him, but couldn’t find anything to say. Papa’s friend came and sat on the ground by me as the medic worked to stop the bleeding, but Papa’s eyes glazed over and he stopped looking at me.

Everything around me seemed to slow down at that moment.  I saw the medic sit back with a defeated look on his face, and I heard his friend sob beside me, just once.  

And then Papa stood up.

Except he didn’t, really.  His body stayed on the ground, but a transparent version of Papa stood back up.  He knelt down in front of me, reaching out to touch my hair, but his hand passed right through me.  “Evie, I’m not ready to leave you.” His friend gasped and I knew I wasn’t the only one seeing him.

Aunt Mary came and picked us up.  Papa can’t drive anymore; he has to focus really hard to touch anything.  But he can walk through walls, and he can be completely invisible when he wants, so we figure it balances out.  He attended his own funeral, when we put his body into the ground by Momma’s, and he stood at my side when the President thanked us for stopping the assassin.  Papa tells anybody who will listen that I’m his Gift, and that he’s the luckiest father ever, dead or alive.

Papa’s Gift (part 4)

Godzilla terrorizes Greater St. Louis

A monster resembling Hollywood’s Godzilla attacked motorists in Illinois, damaging roads and structures, before disappearing into the Mississippi River just short of St. Louis.  Experts at Cahokia Mounds State Park are evaluating the damage Godzilla caused at this World Heritage Site.

Do you realize that there’s a novelization of almost every blockbuster movie to come out of Hollywood recently?  As it turns out, a few people in the area have abilities similar to those from InkHeart (a fabulous story, but please, don’t read it out loud unless you’re sure that’s not your Gift), and some of them were inclined to read out loud.  They’re less likely to do so now. People are also more cautious in using the phrase, “I wish…,” since for some people, that triggers their ability… even if they’re not the ones saying it!

But before we realized this, Edwardsville and its surrounding area had already seen Godzilla, Kat Kong (yes, really!  that guy who wrote all the Captain Underpants books wrote this one), and Puff the Magic Dragon.  That last one was pretty sweet, but even a friendly dragon is not suited for city living.  I gave him directions to Hanalei Bay; I hope he’s happy there.

Godzilla was anything but friendly.

It was the last week of school, so nobody was really paying attention in class anyways when the ground started shaking.  Thinking it was an earthquake – weird, but not unheard of here – our teachers rushed us outside. The ground kept shaking, but it was an on and off thing, kind of what you’d expect if a two hundred foot reptile (of sorts) is walking your way.

Everybody was looking around, trying to figure out what was going on, when somebody from another class shouted out, “Is that a dinosaur?”

It was still pretty far off at that point, but one of the teachers pulled out his camera with a zoom lens and got a better look just as we all heard a distant skreeeonk sound.  Everybody’s eyes opened wide at that sound, and the teacher with the camera said, in a fairly calm voice, “I think that’s Godzilla.”  What he really meant was, “Oh hell, that’s Godzilla!“, but he did try not to let that come through in his voice.

My teacher, Mrs. Parson, had her cell phone out as soon as he said it and called 911.  The local dispatch had the teachers take us back into the classroom to hide. We heard police sirens in the distance as we rushed back into the building, and then the tornado siren sounded, covering most noises other than the occasional skreeeeonk.  We stayed there, listening anxiously to a collection of sirens, explosions, and eventually a furious roar before the earth finally stopped shaking.

I learned later that the police had cobbled together a hasty barricade and buzzed Godzilla with crop dusters to distract him until military planes arrived.  The barricade only worked through a combination of Gifts – several telekinetics helped lift trucks and construction material to make it taller, and some people, including Moira Anderson, extended their shields around it as a group until help arrived.  Even the Air Force fighters didn’t hurt him much, but they did turn him away from Edwardsville. He lumbered over towards St. Louis, causing quite the panic there before disappearing into the river instead.

Kat Kong showed up a few days later, but wasn’t nearly as scary when you compared the two.  For starters, he’s way smaller than Godzilla. And by then, Papa knew which local people had Gifts and he called up a conjurer as soon as he heard about Kat Kong.  A conjurer is someone who can summon something, either by reading it from a book, or wishing for it, or even by pulling it out of a computer. (We didn’t know about that last one at the time.)  Jimmy Mitchell could read items out of books and he brought his World Records book with him when Papa called. They went out together with a couple other squad cars to find Kat Kong, and Jimmy pulled the world’s largest ball of yarn out of his record book.  One of the telekinetics moved it around to keep the giant cat entertained until the army guys got out here to capture it.

Yeah, I said capture.  Not only were there animal rights groups protesting when creatures of any type were killed, but the government had started running tests on any abnormal life forms that were generated with Gifts.  I sure hope Puff made it to Hawaii without getting captured.

At dinner the night that Kat Kong was captured, Aunt Mary looked at Papa for quite a while, and then finally said, “Goodness, Henry, I’m surprised you haven’t shown a Gift yet, what with all the crises you’re dealing with.”

“Nonsense, Mary, there are plenty of Gifted who are helping,” he said, “and Evie has always been my Gift.”

My heart melted, just a little, and I rushed over to hug him.

Papa’s Gift (part 3)

Paranormal fights reported across the world

Reports have been trickling in from across the globe about fights involving super-human abilities.  Governments are struggling to address the situation while their representatives discuss it at an emergency United Nations session.

We were one of the lucky cities.  Preacher Markham’s sermon was the only deliberate violence we saw as people’s abilities became apparent.  He spent a few days at the hospital recovering; the officer outside his door had a bucket of water and a Super Soaker in addition to his normal gear.  When he recovered, physically that is, he was escorted to the town line in his car and reminded that Preacher Anderson’s decision not to press charges was conditional on him never returning to our town.  

After the fire had been handled, I was one of several people who provided statements to the police.  My statement detailed what we all saw and heard, and reminded the officer that our church is unquestionably a no cell phone zone.  Preacher Anderson is steadfast in her belief that cell phones play no meaningful part in our worship and must remain at home or in the car.  At the time, nobody in town had manifested any telepathic abilities, much less over a distance, so my run to the station was appreciated.

When our fight came, it was political.  While the world governments debated a course of action, Papa and the mayor scheduled an emergency city meeting with three days notice.  Everybody in town was invited, so it was held at City Park instead of trying to squeeze everybody into one building or another. Fortunately, the weather cooperated.

By that point, I had told Papa what I left out of my official statement, how I heard extra meaning to what the preacher had said.  We decided that I would sit near the front at the city meeting and listen to everybody who spoke. I took notes and would nod or shake my head so Papa could see whether they meant what they were saying.  By the end of the night, Papa and Mayor Bramley had the city convinced that we needed to work with these abilities as Gifts and adjust our day-to-day behavior to include them. We even adjusted our class schedules at school to include practice time for anybody who needed it for their Gifts.  It took the nearby college campus a bit longer to do that, which may be what caused some of our other problems. But I’ll get to that shortly.

This was all at the local level, of course.  The state government waffled, and then let the federal government start a registration process for Gifts.  Papa and the mayor fought that all the way up to the Supreme Court. They won in the end, though a few years after the Registration Rules were passed, with the registration process being declared unconstitutional.  It helped, of course, that half the justices were known to have special abilities; some of the others may have had more subtle ones, like mine.

Our peaceful existence was rare; many cities had fighting not just because of the gifted, but between people who sought any excuse to fight.  The police couldn’t keep up in the bigger cities, and people started fleeing to what they called the ‘more rustic’ living. As if their cell phones and internet access didn’t work here just as well.  When new people moved into town, Papa and I would welcome them with a plate of Aunt Mary’s cookies and a conversation. Papa didn’t really care if people lied about why they moved to town, as long as they had good intentions, so mostly they settled in happily.

And then the monsters arrived.

Papa’s Gift (part 2)

Visiting preacher sets church on fire

A visiting preacher in the Midwest set the church on fire during his sermon, landing himself and five others in the hospital.

Sunday started out like most others.  While Papa was frying up some bacon and eggs, Aunt Mary stepped out to check on the garden like she did every morning in growing season.  This was the only gardening she didn’t wear her gloves for, checking the dirt to see if we needed to water each morning. If the dirt was dry, we’d pull a bucket of water from the rain barrel or hose, and water each planting spot, marked neatly by a popsicle stick that had the seed name written with green Sharpie.

I stood by as Aunt Mary set her hand down on the dirt like she did every other day, ready to fill the bucket since it hadn’t rained in a few days.  Aunt Mary touched the ground without really looking, and turned to nod at me, signaling to me that we needed water. As I watched, seeds that we had planted just the day before started to sprout and I gasped, dropping the bucket to point at the bed she was touching.  Aunt Mary looked down and recoiled and we could actually see the moment when the sprouts stopped growing.

“Well, I’ll be darned!”  That’s the closest Aunt Mary ever comes to swearing, and even that doesn’t happen often.  “Step over here, Evie, let’s see what happens when you touch it.”

I did as she said, leaving the bucket where I’d dropped it, and reached down into the garden bed.  Nothing happened. She set her hand back on and the sprouts expanded as we watched. When she pulled her hand away, they stopped.

“Henry,” she called through the open window, “I think you should see this!”

Papa rushed right out from the kitchen to see, and watched the plants growing as Aunt Mary touched the dirt, then stopped again as she pulled her hand away.  He scratched his hair, which he does sometimes when he’s thinking. “I’ve never seen anything like it. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you had those seeds in the ground two weeks ago.”

We just stood there for a few minutes looking at our garden until Papa said we’d better get through breakfast before church time.  Papa was actually going to work, but Aunt Mary would drop me off at Momma’s church before heading to the Catholic church nearby. Momma had worked in the church office until she got really sick, and she still found the energy to go to that church every Sunday until the end, so the people there were like family to me.  Aunt Mary said that suited her just fine, as it gave her some alone time with God at her church.

I sat with my friend Charlotte and her parents at just the right spot in church.  We weren’t too far forward, so Preacher Markham, who was visiting, didn’t have clear eye contact with us.  But we weren’t too far back either, where Preacher Anderson sat on the rare occasion that she turned her pulpit to a visitor.  She was sweet as could be outside of worship, but heaven forbid she spot you talking during a guest’s sermon. “It reflects poorly on our community,” she’d say the next week, at the start of her sermon.  “We’re more polite than that.”

I wasn’t really listening at the beginning of his sermon, just enough to note that he had planned one sermon, but was talking about something different.  I was thinking about the garden and Aunt Mary, but Preacher Markham was getting louder as he spoke, sounding very upset. I tuned in as he opened the Bible and read, “And there will be signs in the sun and moon and stars….”  He paused and looked around the church.  “Did we not see these very signs two nights ago?  The powers of the heavens will be shaken.“

There were some murmurs running through the church, and when I looked back, Preacher Anderson was standing, but still hesitating to interrupt her guest.  I wondered what I had missed in his sermon so far.

“And what of these powers people suddenly claim to have?”  He flipped quickly through the Bible, perhaps a bit careless in his haste, as he searched for another passage.  “Such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.  These are surely the end of days, we must not let ourselves be led astray by these works of Satan!”

Then I heard, for the first time, an underlying speech.  The real meaning to his words, if you want to call it that.  I zoned out on the preacher’s words for a minute and listened as he spoke instead about his fear and confusion, in a state just short of panic.  I was pulled back to reality as Preacher Anderson strode to the front, her calming voice attempting to override the panic he was creating with the words everybody else was hearing.

And then a laugh rang through the church.  Bobby Anderson, our preacher’s nephew, stepped into the aisle toward his aunt.  As he stumbled on his unsteady feet, three paper butterflies, in colors remarkably similar to our church bulletin, fluttered around his head, swooping in and out of his reach.

Preacher Markham gasped, pointed at little Bobby and proclaimed, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!”  And again I heard a second sentence, simultaneously emerging from the preacher, this time shrieking, “Burn the witch!”

I started to moved towards Bobby as flames leapt from Preacher Markham’s hand toward him.  Bobby’s mother, Moira, threw herself in front of the flames, which bounced off of her and ignited the paper butterflies.  They spun out of control, each one landing on books or paper and spreading fire from there.

I heard a crash as some of the men from town tackled the visiting preacher, stopping the stream of flames spewing from his hand.  Preacher Anderson turned to me and said, “Evie, your father!” I heard the underlying, “Get help!” in her exclamation, though I didn’t need it to understand her meaning.  I bolted for the door and out toward Main Street, shedding my fancy Sunday shoes as I ran, making record time to the nearby police station. As I crashed through the door, I shouted out, “Church!  On fire!” while I gasped for breath.