-Eugene Baldwin's – The Genehouse Chronicles

November 18, 2012

My motto and the motto of the Civil Rights people I worked with was protest prayerfully and patriotically. We abhorred violence. I cannot recall a single instance when one of our group showed lack of discipline and fought. The brain is the most powerful organ for change, not the fist. The N.A.A.C. P., the Y.W.C.A and the A.M.E. church emphasized that belief and led the good intellectual fight for racial justice.

I lived my early life in two cities, East St. Louis and Alton. By far, East St. Louis had the superior education system. Younger people might have a difficult time believing that.  It is not for me to judge, but some would say that the East St. Louis of the present came to its sad state by whites moving assets to Belleville and depleting resources of a once proud city.

My father Joseph took the family to live in Alton during the race riot of 1917 in East St. Louis. Over a hundred blacks were killed, including several lynchings.  Father returned there alone. He and my mother separated, but it was amicable, not like today. Continue reading →

October 18, 2012

Crow brought a girlfriend to the porch this morning. He hopped up below the window sill and she followed suit. She saw the cat and jumped down and wailed. But Crow kept cawing in short bursts (“It’s a cat, dear, but it’s trapped behind that see-through thing. It can’t get you.”) and M’lady finally relented.

Crow fetched acorns and dropped them at her feet. He refused to eat until she had her fill. At one point they touched beaks. It would be so easy to anthropomorphize this behavior. The beak touching may have been signing. Continue reading →

March 31, 2012

Peepers and bullfrogs singing Rite of Spring

Two barred owls, dark-draped wings, stealth bombers of the wood

A blue swallowtail, ten Common blues and a checkerspot: butterflies warming

One flowering tree, delicate white petals shivery like ladies’ skirts in a  breeze

Thirty-seven redheaded woodpeckers, grunt-grunt, hammer strut

Twelve pileated woodpeckers, the drilling knock-knock-knocking on heaven’s trees

Three does watching me, twitching lacy tails

Two red-tail hawks shrieking, “Get away from here!”

A fat groundhog waddling, its belly dragging mud

Forty-three pelicans, gleaming white in the sun, floating downstream on FatherRiver

Six waterfalls etching the limestone east to west, master carvers, water music

A snowy egret fishing without a license

Nuthatches, black-capped sparrows, olive-hued goldfinches:

Birdsong anthems  and the chorus is

Wildnesswildnesswildness