Contributions by Nola Garrett

Vicarious Gardening

By | Nola Garrett, Prose

  Cuttings Sticks-in-a-drowse droop over sugary loam, Their intricate stem-fur dries; But still the delicate slips keep coaxing up water; The small cells bulge; One nub of growth Nudges a sand-crumb loose, Pokes through a musty sheath Its pale tendrilous horn. from Theodore Roethke’s COLLECTED POEMS, 1948 Besides giving up my pinball machine, the hardest …

Memorable Porridges

By | Nola Garrett, Poetics, Prose

  I have a low pleasure threshold.  I suppose another way to say this would be that I’m easily amused, as if I were living my life as a playful cat.  This winter I’ve especially enjoyed watching falling snow here from the condo’s windows when the air currents surrounding this building caused the flakes to …

Dyeing

By | Nola Garrett, Poetics, Prose

1. I never saw my grandmother twice with the same colored hair. Instead of the world, she traveled the spectrum— Tahitian Brown, Romanian Gold, Irish Red— without even the pretense of reclaiming tints once hers. I was so embarrassed, my teenaged self was mortified. My grandmother after years of misdagnosis died. Rather than her liver, …

Weeble Christmas, 1973

By | Prose

Since Pittsburgh’s Light up Night (the beginning of Christmas shopping season) began in mid-November, from my condo’s windows each evening I can see Point State Park’s stylized versions of huge white-lit snowflakes and blue-lit Christmas trees. I suppose the blue-lit trees are meant to be a secular compromise or maybe a nod to both Hanukkah …

Book Review: Written on Water: Writings about the Allegheny River and The Allegheny River: Watershed of the Nation

By | Book Review, Nature, Nola Garrett, Prose

Written on Water: Writings about the Allegheny River, Edited by Helen Ruggieri & Linda Underhill, Mayapple Press, 2013, $19.95. The Allegheny River: Watershed of the Nation, Photographs by Jim Schafer, Text by Mike Sajna, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992, $90.00. Every morning from my condo’s dining room window, the Allegheny River looks different. Not …

Condo

By | Nola Garrett, Prose

It was a Tuesday morning, my favorite day of the week because it’s so ordinary. Not yet dressed, I was eating my breakfast, reading the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette when I noticed a couple of thick cords drop past my corner window. Window washer I thought and returned to another bite of toast, another front page article. …

Still Cooking

By | Nola Garrett, Prose

I live in downtown Pittsburgh alone. And, the two questions I’m asked nearly every day are “Where do you grocery shop?” & “What do you eat?” Always in that order. I don’t know if Manhattan or Tampa Bay single residents get these questions often, but I do know that Pittsburghers believe eating, family, and neighborhood …

How Ralph Vaughn Williams Saved My Life

By | Nola Garrett, Prose, Reviews: Performing Arts

Driving my 2010 orange Honda Fit, I was on my way to the University of Tampa’s inaugural concert of their new pipe organ. I was stopped for the red light at the six lane intersection of Sunset and McMullan Booth Road. I had just slipped in my new CD of Williams “Fantasia on a Theme …