Ruth Anne Latta

1347 words (c) Ruth Latta 2022                                             The Elephant in the Room “Hello-o! I’m back!” Jacy was sticking a gummed marker on a significant passage in Far from the Madding Crowd when the voice pierced her consciousness. Damn! “Hello-o!”        It came again. Honestly, the woman should get a job yodelling in the Swiss Alps.  Where was Barry?  They’d agreed that he would take his mother out for the afternoon, to the art gallery, while Sheba was having her afternoon nap and Jacy was stealing an hour to work on another chapter of her thesis. She waited. Perhaps Barry was on his way in and could continue to play host to his mother.  There was also a faint chance that Sheba would be too deep in sleep to be roused by her grandmother’s voice, though it was shrill enough to wake the dead.  Mrs. Maclenahan had been a teacher, and Barry told Jacy, confidentially, that he’d been embarrassed because she’d been known in the school as “Screech” Maclenahan, or

    "The elephant in the room is Thomas Hardy," is a quote from Nick Hornby's novel, Just Like You , (Viking, 2020) which I am reading. Like most of Hornby's  novels, it is funny and insightful about the human condition.     The novel centres on Lucy, the principal of an elementary school in a disadvantaged part of London (England). She is in her early forties, separated, the mother of two school aged boys, and in  love with a man half her age who is juggling several different jobs to make ends meet.  At one stage in their relationship, the man, Joseph,  finds a girlfriend, Hanna, who seems on the surface to be more suited to him. Still, he intends to go to a country cottage in Thomas Hardy country to meet up with the school principal and her two sons, and because he doesn't clarify the nature of his relationship with Lucy, the girlfriend invites herself along.  En route, he divulges that he has been having an affair with Lucy.     Lucy is a kind person, skilled i

      This card was sent to me by a friend who is a retired social worker and a native of Newfoundland and Labrador from the days when it was a British colony.  The picture is from a painting by Wilfred Grenville (1865-1940) a British medical missionary who went there to help the fishing communities and the indigenous people.  His mission created schools, small hospitals and co-ops, and was  a friend of my friend's father.  Although my friend has lived in various places in Canada, she still values her Newfoundland heritage.

               My sister, who died on June 1, 2022,  liked a poem which my mother taught to us when we were little - "The Swing", by Robert Louis Stevenson, from "A Child's Garden of Verses."  Our childhood swing consisted of two tall poles and a cross-beam which held two sturdy ropes that ended in a wooden seat. Cutting the trees for these poles, auguring out the holes and getting them securely planted in the earth must have been a big job for our father, working alone; indeed, perhaps most fathers were too busy, as I don't remember any of our classmates having a swing.  A short distance from the back door, it was close to the flowerbed where roses and phlox grew.                 When I was six and she was three,  I used to push her on the swing, and was always cautious not to make her go too high in case she fell off.  As she grew, of course, she didn't need my help.           When we soared into the air we could see down the hill where the cattle dran

My poem, "In My Heart," was published in Verse Afire , the bi-annual publication of the Ontario Poetry Society, January 2023.  The theme was "Portrait Poems."                                   In My Heart      "I've been busier than a one-armed paper hanger,"  said my old friend, Lillian. Who'd have thought that  life in a retirement residence would be so hectic? First laundry to put away, then choir rehearsal, then the minister came to call.      "They should be put in a paper bag and shaken," she'd say, exasperated by someone unreasonable.      "I never thought I'd make new friends  at this stage of my life," she told me. "What a happy surprise, meeting you two!"                     We printed her poetry chapbooks and joined her for afternoon tea whenever she asked. She taught me a lot about life and prepared me for growing old. When she was on the home stretch she said, "You won't miss me. "You

  Beauty in the Beast , by Emily-Jane Hills Orford, (Tell-Tale Publishing, 2022) is a compelling novel full of surprises. In a way, it retells  the ancient tale, “Beauty and the Beast,” but it does more than that. Orford’s story is certainly about a young woman trying to find a place in the world, but it is also about the pitfalls of genetic engineering, the kinship between humans and animals, and the value of appreciating the animal world. The folk story, “Beauty and the Beast,” is a “Father Knows Best” tale that originated in the days of arranged marriages.  In medieval Europe, families advanced economically and socially through the matches fathers made for their daughters.  If a young woman found her future husband unattractive, her reluctance to marry him was usually overridden.  The folktale persuaded girls that even the ugliest, most repulsive man may have inner beauty and should not be rejected for his looks. In Orford’s novel, the central character, “Priya”, (“dear” or “b

I wrote this story a few years ago for an art and lit project at the Cornwall Public Library. Writers were given a photo of a painting and asked to write a story about it. Later, my story was published by Polar Expressions . It’s a good winter story FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD . by Ruth Latta      Blanquo’s  stomach rumbles as he sits on a lichen-covered rock staring into the distance. As his white fur ruffles in the breeze, he wishes he were out on a sea ice platform, stalking a succulent seal. But the ice receded too soon this spring and won’t be strong until mid-November.  Seals are delicious, nutritious, but wily; they don’t hang around on land waiting to be caught. He and his friends are hungry; their skins look too big for them. If only a whale carcass would wash up on shore! A thousand pound bear cannot live on fish alone. And how will the mothers build up enough fat stores this fall to see them through hibernation and childbirth?  Fortunately, there’s another food source, thou

 © Ruth Latta, 2020, 2022 MRS. SANTA When Tess hears the train whistle behind her in the mall she jumps and turns. It’s a train all right, a child-size one. The driver, in a conductor’s uniform with holly in his cap, guides the sleek, black locomotive past the shoppers. It’s a disguised garden tractor but it keeps its secret well. Children’s faces, and an occasional adult’s, as well, beam from the two brightly painted cars and red caboose.   The train makes its way around the food court where Tess is heading for coffee. Though still unnerved by the way it crept up on her, she thinks it’s awfully cute.  If Leo, Jax and Lacey lived near, she’d bribe them to go on it with her, but her grandchildren live half a continent away and except for seven year old Lacey, are a bit too old for kiddy rides. Sipping her coffee, she hears the whistle again, in the distance, but coming closer. The train is retracing its route instead of circling through the mall in a circle. A man at a nearby

  A portion of John Donne's sermon at St Paul's Church, London, England, for the evening of Christmas Day, 1624. God made sun and moon to distinguish seasons, and day, and night, and we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their seasons. But God hath made no decree to distinguish the seasons of his mercies. In paradise, the fruits were ripe the first minute, and in heaven it is always Autumn, his mercies are ever in their maturity. We ask panem quotidianum, our daily bread, and God never says you should have come yesterday, he never says you must again tomorrow, but today if you will hear his voice, today he will hear you. If some king of the earth have so large an extent of dominion, in North, and South, as that he hath Winter and Summer together in his dominions, so large an extent East and West, as that he hath day and night together in his dominions, much more hath God mercy and judgment together: He brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; he can bri