Words Carry Us with Betty MacDonald hosts Mike Jurkovic, Friday, April 10, 7 PM.

Read about Mike Jurkovic and Betty MacDonald below the ticket information.

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Mike Jurkovic

Mike Jurkovic 2025-2027 Ulster County Poet Laureate. Published globally. Little reportable income. Collections: Circling Planes (Bushwhack Books, 2026). Buckshot Reckoning, mooncussers, AmericanMental, (Luchador Press 2023, 2022, 2020); haiku collections Monet’s Bamboo (CAPS Press, 2025)

Blue Fan Whirring (Nirala Press, 2018) 2016 Pushcart nominee. President Calling All Poets Series. Co-chair of the Music Fan Film Series, Rosendale Theatre, Rosendale, NY. CD reviews online All About Jazz and lightwoodpress.com Host of NuJazzXcursions, bi-weekly Mondays, 9-11a WVKR-FM 91.3 Vassar College.

He loves Emily most of all.

Betty MacDonald

Writer/actor Betty MacDonald contributed to the writing of and performed in TMI’s What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting. Her essay “Before Roe v. Wade” appears in the anthology Get Out of My Crotch! Her work is included in the anthologies 80 Things to Do When You Turn 80, Open House, Better With Age, and Lightwood, an online magazine. Betty presented her essay “First Love,” at the Cell Theatre in New York City and at Vassar College. Videos of her essays “First Love”, “Daughter of Twins”, “Not Jewish Enough”, and “I’m Not a Woman of My Age!” are available at WritersRead.org. Betty’s essay,“First Love” is included in WritersRead’s recently released anthology Well Said Well Read.

Betty hosts Words Carry Us, a livestream presentation of readings and interviews from Green Kill in Kingston, NY. Words Carry Us videos are available online at YouTube.com.

Following her early career as radio personality Tiny Lee, Betty became a travel industry correspondent. Presently, she finds travel exhausting and prefers staying home in New York’s Hudson Valley. For close to 40 years, storytelling has influenced her work as a performer with Community Playback Theatre.

All My Monsters are Dead or Why I Love Being Old, Betty’s book of poems and essays is available from Codhill Press. Also available at The Golden Notebook, Woodstock, NY, Oblong Books, Rhinebeck, NY, The Blue Heron, High Falls, NY, and The Gift Shop at Mohonk Mountain House.

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On the occasion of his birthday, I forgive my father. In forgiving him, I forgive his parents for treating him harshly, belittling his talent, ignoring his dreams while rationing out slivers of dazzling love. I know it was dazzling because when it was reflected on me, I was blinded by it. I forgive his grandparents and their grandparents, I forgive them all, for their mean stifling ways handed down through the ages from one generation to the next.

Forgiveness liberates my breath. Forgiveness overcomes the barrier of hate and hurt lodged in my heart.

Once committed, forgiveness soothes the wound, eases the injury. It’s a perilous journey but in the end, Forgiving is less painful than holding on.

That time he said he would break my spirit he was just showing off to his friend. He wasn’t even angry,

At four-years-old I didn’t even know what my spirit was, but pictured it shattered like an old-fashioned phonograph record or cracked so you can put it on the turntable, but it won’t play right.

I forgive him for all those times he was too scary and rough. all those times he said upsetting humiliating things not out of anger but out of habit. I don’t think he knew how damaging his words were.

And all those times out of anger, pain and spite, he withheld his love.

And all those times he touched me and talked about me inappropriately, mirroring how he had been treated by his parents and siblings. Forgiving him, loosens my grip on the hard meanness turned in on itself, our family birthright.

Only then, I remember his tears as my daughter and I said goodbye after our last visit.

Only then I remember his holding me when I was little, his face close to mine, his arms, his breath, his tenderness. I know how much he loved me and I so loved him.

Until he hugs too tight, pretends to drop me, plays too rough, finds me unlovable.

Forgiving him, relieves the devastating hurt.

And only then am I able to forgive myself for all the times I’ve been too brusque, too rough, too uncaring, too withholding.

Only then am I able to forgive myself for all the times I’ve wounded my beloveds.

Grief

Ten years ago, when my daughter called, the two words she said didn’t go together.

“Angus died.”

I could see both words separate onto their own life rafts drifting atop my consciousness, avoiding connection. Like two amoebae unable to join each other. They swirled slowly, caught in a sluggish whirlpool.

“Died,” she said.

Not passed, not is gone.

She used the word that was most clear. Not even the passive, is dead, but the active form with the most inactive meaning.

“Died,” as if she had confronted her own disbelief sufficiently to be able to tell me.

In an effort to make sense of it, I think, “does she mean Angus, her father,” for whom my son was named. I experience a flashback remembering the call ten years earlier informing me the father of my children had died.

But this is now…

Slowly, the dreadful message sinks in to take its place alongside the truths that define me. “My parents are dead. My brother is dead. I have two children. Now I have one.”

As if I were sipping from a glass half full, I wait for the next phrase: “but they fixed it. We thought he was dead but there was a mistake. He died, but he’s okay this time.”

It didn’t happen. All day long and into the next, every time I hear the front door open,

I think it’s him.

“There’s been a mistake,” he would say.

“It’s not over. I’m not dead!”

“I am here.”

He believes in magic, so do I.

“Angus died,” my daughter’s voice connects.

With the energy of this realization a giant apple corer focused on my chest makes contact and carves out a hole in my heart. A hole so deep and hollow I fear I will disappear into it and slide through it into the molten center of the earth to be lost forever. A great reverberating howl of every loss, through every age going back to Eve, to every grieving parent who has lost a child in the forever history of the world, so raw it cuts a vibration into the universe. It comes through me. Using my lungs and throat, the sound erupts from my being. The atmosphere is disturbed with loss. Leaves fall from the trees, the animals run away, birds are silent.

I am broken.

My baby, my precious.

His birth astonished me;

this perfect being born of my imperfection,

his beauty

his brilliance,

his deep abiding soul.

Five years before, he had written his daughter’s name on a scrap of paper.

“It’s the first time I’ve named one of them,”

speaking of his five offspring.

Fiona Sorcha Moon,

he had written,

a poem of a name.

He loved words,

the music of them.

The way they felt in his mouth.

When he was nine and ten,

he sang with me in the car.

We improvised

as I drove

through the rural Helderberg Hills

where we lived.

His sweet, preadolescent voice rising and falling…

winding around…

dancing with mine.

“You know,” he said.

“You know when you’re singing,

and the pictures come?”

We haven’t sung in a long time.

But that bond is forever.

The loss so fierce,

it stuns me.

I could lose my way.

The carved out hollow in my heart softens.

It beckons.

How easy to give in to its siren call of despair.

Despair is familiar to me.

As a young mother cut off from the support of my family,

I came close to falling senselessly into morass.

It dragged along behind me,

holding me back until

finally threatened with permanent erosion of my wits.

I faced it down.

With all of my strength,

I pushed away from the brink

of dull depression,

of colorless half-life.

I’m familiar with the rocky climb from that pit

with knees, hands and heart cut and bleeding.

It’s not worth the letting go.

Recovery is impossibly hard.

It leaves permanent marks.

Every day I have to choose.

Every day I have to resist giving in.

Every day I have to decide to live.

Every day.

Please don’t tell me you don’t know what to say.

There is nothing to say.

Don’t tell me,

“How hard it must be.”

or you can’t imagine how it feels.

I want to add irascibly,

“It feels like hell!”

But I don’t want to return your kindness

with unfeeling words.

There is no need for you to feel this pain.

Your feeling it won’t lessen it for me.

My pain is so great

I only partially feel it myself.

If I allowed myself to feel the full bore of it,

I would lose my mind.

I am the one who doesn’t know what to say.

A loud splash!

The shadow of a huge bird rises from the pond.

I don’t see the bird.

Just the shadow…

Noisily, I swing open the porch door

startling hawk from its hiding place,

blue heron stalks in the shallows.

With two predators in sight

and who knows what snakes and snapping turtles out there,

waiting for their lunch to swim by.

The fish are clearly in jeopardy.

I didn’t think of naming the fish

until the grandkids insisted.

“What’s the name of that one?

and that one?”

Gill, Jade, and Syd named the biggest one

Summer Morning Bright Sunshine Big Fish.

We call her Goldie.

After that each name was like a lasso

encircling each fish,

drawing it closer,

attaching it to me.

I called the tri-colored one Flag,

the bright orange one Creamsicle

Spot, white and black

like Dick and Jane’s dog

in first grade readers of my childhood.

There’s Schiaparelli after the famous designer.

Black scales against brilliant yellow

reflect the sequined Hollywood gowns of the 40s and 50s.

My granddaughter Wren named the little one Tangerine.

When Tangerine survived her first winter,

I thought she might be enchanted.

The pond is rife with peril for one so small and brightly hued,

Even in this school of intensely colored Koi.

I looked for the little fish all week.

If Tangerine is gone, I’ll weep for her

relieving some of my tears

for the loss of my son.

Tears for the missing fish

ease some of the pressure of my grief,

dilute it,

gives it a break, somehow.

A friend refers to my loss as fresh.

Fresh is for flowers, coffee,

or snotty kids, and yeah, wounds.

fresh implies my heartache will fade, disappear.

I hold tight to my grief,

I don’t want it to go away.

It’s what I have left of my beloved.

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Startled, he unfurled his sail-like wings

and rose from where he stalked the grassy bank.

“Hey!” I yelled.

The blue heron took off flying low across the pond.

“You!”

It’s hard to know what words to use.

when a wild bird of prey

no matter how astonishingly beautiful,

is eyeing beloved koi.

The truth is he may be focusing

on the frogs

which are smaller than the fish,

and have fewer sharp edges.

After a two-year hiatus

frogs have returned,

I’ve missed their splashing as I approach,

and their night song.

A turtle, resembling a clump of dirt

or a good-size rock,

the very opposite of the elegant bird,

appears in the shallow water

among the feeding fish.

Mud and grass cling to its shell.

The featureless head reaches out

gulping fish pellets,

each gulp, a tiny splash.

Standing defiantly on the opposite bank,

like a crane on an ancient Chinese scroll.

The heron,

expert at hiding,

takes one haughty step

behind a leafy branch.

“I can still see you!”

Or is that a patch of dappled sunlight?

Photo: Jasper MacDonald

I am the daughter of twins.

Doris gave me life and raised me. Her twin sister, Minerva, adopted me after my mother died. I was sixty-three. Minerva was ninety-one.

The twins didn’t look or sound alike, but they said a lot of the same things. Because mom was the more mellow of the two, when Minerva spoke, it was like having an actor with a bad attitude read my mom’s lines.

Doris had gotten married first and had a baby, my brother, Sam. Then Minerva married and gave birth to David. The score was even, but not for long. When the doctor told Minerva she couldn’t have more children, she became resentful and directed her anger not at my mother, for outdoing her by having a daughter, but at me, for being that daughter. She never liked me. The feeling was mutual.

My mother died at seventy-nine. A month later, Minerva's fifty-three-year-old son David died. The loss of the two most important people in her life crushed Minerva. I was grieving as well but concerned that with the loss of her son, Minerva had no reach into the future. Ignoring the bad feelings between us, I become her caretaker and that of Uncle Sam, her disabled husband. I traveled regularly from my home in the Hudson Valley to northern New Jersey to take care of their needs.

A few years later Minerva informed me she intended to adopt me. I was to meet her and Alan, her lawyer, at the courthouse in Hackensack. When I asked why, she said, “It’s Alan’s idea.” No further explanation was forthcoming.

The adoption was straightforward and unsentimental. The formalities were concise and the judge cordial. As we left the judge’s chambers, Alan, by way of celebration, said to Minerva, “Now you have a daughter!”

As negative as ever, Minerva replied, “But she won’t listen to me.”

She never divulged the reason for the adoption which may have been to ensure my access to her if, in failing health, she was hospitalized. Ultimately, it didn’t matter.

Despite how challenging our relationship was, I put up with her unpleasantness because there was no other family member who could step in. Without me, she and Uncle Sam would have been utterly alone.

Minerva remained active well into her eighties. She swam at the Y and continued to drive until she made an unfortunate left turn into oncoming traffic, totaling her car and her confidence. After that, I drove her to doctors’ appointments and wherever else she needed to go.

One day when I arrived, she excitedly showed me a silky shawl she had painstakingly adorned with long fringe that floated gracefully as she pretended to twirl around the room. The gift of creativity had momentarily awakened a long dormant girlish glee in her. As a young woman, she had been an actress in local theater and designed her own clothes. It was a privilege for me to glimpse what had been.

Minerva was an unusual combination of generosity and meanness. She replaced my car when it broke down and propped up my finances when my freelance work slowed. At the same time, she continued to find fault with me. In all the years I was her caretaker, only once near the end of her life did she say, “I don’t know how I would manage without you!”

Gratefully, I thanked her. “Well,” she said, “If I’d known it meant so much to you, I would have told you sooner.” She never mentioned it again.

Minerva died in her ninety-fifth year on Valentine’s Day, on the second day of the first vacation I’d taken in twenty years.

I flew back from Florida and made arrangements for my adopted mother.

WritersRead scheduled a March 16, 2020 reading of Daughter of Twins.

at the Ossie Davis Theater. COVID canceled it.

When Daddy wasn’t at his desk on the old-fashioned balcony overseeing the customers and salespeople in the family store, he was out on Hull Street talking with the other shopkeepers, an activity which was considered goofing off by my hardworking mother, and grandmother and my chronically dissatisfied uncle. They didn’t get it that this genial reaching out gave him a sense of himself as a worthwhile person, fulfilled his need for companionship and informed his ability to be a good and creative provider. It was from his cohorts he got the goods on where to get the juiciest peaches, the sweetest corn, and the excellent sides of beef he bought directly from the farmer. He was amiable. He liked to talk. 

People liked to talk with him.  

 Meyer’s Dry Goods Store carried men’s, women’s and children’s clothing, shoes, and hats, fabric, yarn and sewing notions. At closing time my mom, would rouse me from where I was waiting in the three-chair shoe department drawing on discarded shoeboxes to pass the time, and send me to Onesti’s Grill to find my father. Scooting down to the end of the block on my mission, I pushed open the heavy door of  door of the small restaurant and was engulfed in the delicious aroma of Southern Cooking. As I slid into the dark wooden booth next to Dad, he slid half of his fried oyster sandwich over to me and ordered a second one for us to share. 

I learned to eat oysters to please him. Seated on high stools at the oyster bar at Ruge’s Hotel in downtown Richmond, Dad and I stuffed ourselves with the bounty of the nearby Chesapeake Bay as fast as the white jacketed server behind the counter could expertly open them.  

At first, I only pretended to like them raw to get his approval, but it didn’t take long for me to cultivate a fondness for the sweet briny taste of the ocean.  

When we each had eaten a dozen oysters on the half shell, another dozen was opened and plopped into a battered saucepan. Adding a splash of milk and a generous slab of butter, the saucepan was held under a live steam jet just long enough to melt the butter and heat the milk but not long enough to overcook the oysters, preserving their tenderness. Poured into white crockery bowls... it was the food of the gods!

Some Saturday nights after closing the store Dad would arrive home with a bushel basket of steamed hard-shell crabs pulled out of the bay a couple hours before. I was hardly old enough to sit up on my own when he taught me how to open a crab properly, discard the “dead man,” (the part you weren’t supposed to eat) and consume the delicacy within. Along with this culinary delight, I basked in his approval. 

Daddy liked to cook but never in the kitchen. In preparation for the annual fall reunion of my mother’s cousins from North Carolina,  he began at dawn tending a huge black iron pot hanging over an outdoor fire filled with corn, okra, tomatoes, lima beans, and chicken for his famous Brunswick Stew.  Red faced from the heat he stirred the giant pot with a boat oar.  

Although the recipe for Brunswick Stew handed down by generations of southern cooks typically calls for it, he never added squirrel.  

In a family that had long since dropped the dietary laws, and despite his having been born and raised in an area that is the essence of the Old South, he was after all the son of Russian Jews. He never added squirrel … he considered too country.  

I wish my mother

had lived

until I found my true voice.

But

it was her death

that released it

and

allowed my voice to emerge.

Am I a clone of my mother?

Does my very existence

stifle

the true voices of my children?

Will they speak more freely

when I die?

Will that make dying

worth it?

Only after her death

did I find the words

to bridge the void

between us.

After she died,

I gained the patience to say words

and let them be,

without pushing

or getting frozen with guilt,

and fear,

and guilt and guilt,

eventually not caring.

I grieved

at not finding the words

while she was living.

I would have said:

STOP comparing me to others.

DROP your scrim of disappointment.

ALLOW yourself to see me.

Her passing set free my pent up-ness.

If she had lived another 20 years,

until she was 99,

Would I have found my words?

Did she have to die for me

to become patient and articulate?

Will I have to die

for my children to be free?

Will that make dying worth it?

“Mom, You Already Told Me That!”

My friend Jean quoted her frustrated offspring.

Commiserating, I secretly counted my lucky stars.

I’m grateful I live alone,

With no one to remind me

how often I repeat myself,

or remind me I’m losing it, forgetting things,

or offering help when I don’t need help,

or think I don’t need help.

My kids are grown dealing with the frustrations of their own kids.

Most of my friends are more or less contemporaries,

they don’t mind if I tell them something more than once.

They’ve probably forgotten anyway

and are happy to hear it again.

I wasn’t aware of it until I broke a bone in my right hand that my left hand is something of a princess. A kind, helpful princess but a princess, nevertheless, available to assist my dependable workhorse right hand when necessary.

Unlike my right hand, Princess Lefty is never fully in charge of any activity. Princess Lefty unaccustomed to taking on the simplest jobs is awkward and useless when comes to unscrewing jar tops, turning doorknobs, or rotating a key in the ignition to start the car. My right hand with a splint on my third and fourth fingers, demoted to helper tries to assist but frequently screws up. The splint sticks out awkwardly and knocks into the windshield wiper control, accidentally turning the wipers on when I’m trying to start the car.

Princess Lefty the better looking of my two hands would be more comfortable lying on a velvet pillow being admired and photographed, rather than engaging in useful activities. Princess Lefty complains achingly about having to do so much. My right hand, the injured one (xray pictured above) is stoic and hardly ever complains.

Dialogue with Angus

There seemed to be a hopeless gulf between us. My words lobbed back dropping meaninglessly around me.

“I can’t do this,” I declare in frustration,

“You’re too good at this. I’m no match for you.”

“We’re doing it,” he says triumphantly.

“I’m proud of us.”

“You don’t hear me, you don’t listen,” I hold back tears.

“I do listen,” he hugs me.

His grown-up arms encircle me.

Looking into his eyes,

I see into him,

as clearly as when he was a child,

Back when we were each other’s first choice.

A loud splash!

The shadow of a huge bird rises from the pond.

I don’t see the bird.

Just the shadow…

Noisily, I swing open the porch door

startling hawk from its hiding place,

blue heron stalks in the shallows.

With two predators in sight

and who knows what snakes and snapping turtles out there,

waiting for their lunch to swim by.

The fish are clearly in jeopardy.

I didn’t think of naming the fish

until the grandkids insisted.

“What’s the name of that one?

and that one?”

Gill, Jade, and Syd named the biggest one

Summer Morning Bright Sunshine Big Fish.

We call her Goldie.

After that each name was like a lasso

encircling each fish,

drawing it closer,

attaching it to me.

I called the tri-colored one Flag,

the bright orange one Creamsicle

Spot, white and black

like Dick and Jane’s dog

in first grade readers of my childhood.

There’s Schiaparelli after the famous designer.

Black scales against brilliant yellow

reflect the sequined Hollywood gowns of the 40s and 50s.

My granddaughter Wren named the little one Tangerine.

When Tangerine survived her first winter,

I thought she might be enchanted.

The pond is rife with peril for one so small and brightly hued,

Even in this school of intensely colored Koi.

I looked for the little fish all week.

If Tangerine is gone, I’ll weep for her

relieving some of my tears

for the loss of my son.

Tears for the missing fish

ease some of the pressure of my grief,

dilute it,

gives it a break, somehow.

A friend refers to my loss as fresh.

Fresh is for flowers, coffee,

or snotty kids, and yeah, wounds.

fresh implies my heartache will fade, disappear.

I hold tight to my grief,

I don’t want it to go away.

It’s what I have left of my beloved.

Share

I turned off 9W onto the road where I live. There in the tall grass at the edge of the woods, three or was it four, baby turkeys. Wild turkeys inhabit the woods on my road all the way down to the river occasionally taking over the road entirely. While I wait they parade along the pavement crossing to the other side, walking purposefully, reminding me to not hurry.

But these were not wild turkeys, these were somebody’s babies. At the side of the road, I checked the remaining muffin and the half croissant in the Bread Alone bag. The bakery made a mistake on my lunch order and had filled my bag with extra pastry to make amends. As I stepped out of the car, the little creatures rushed toward me fearlessly. They gobbled up the pastry I scattered on the ground and looked at me expectantly as if they were accustomed to being cared for by humans. I’m guessing a gate had been left open, and they had wandered off.

Should I pick them up and try to find their owner? If no one claimed them, what would I do with three or four baby turkeys? I’m a terrible caretaker, lacking the natural human impulse to rescue little animals. I doubted my ability to save them. I’m barely able to save myself.

Should I carry them to my house, a quarter mile down the road where these same woods are swarming with foxes, coyote, raccoons, hawks, and owls? Surely a predator would break in and carry them off from whatever shelter I manage to provide for them.

Their fate would be the same if I left them here.

“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?

Are you cooking for all your grandkids?”

That question!

Would my answer make Thanksgiving holier for you?

Feeling picked at,

judged,

I am tempted to issue in my warning voice:

“Why do you want to know?

Are your own plans so odious,

you need to focus on mine?”

Instead I settle on the more mysterious,

“I don’t celebrate that holiday!”

This works best if I affect a slight mid-eastern accent.

My answer disturbs her.

Has she insulted me or my religion?

She stops cold.

She thinks but does not say,

“What kind of extreme un-American religion would it be

that frowns on the eating of Thanksgiving dinner?”

I stifle and don’t say,

“None of your damn business.”

But I toss it back.

“Are you having blah blah with your whole family?”

Then having opened that can of worms,

I’m obliged to listen to her recitation of who came,

and who had to go to the other in-laws,

and at the last minute

a whole bunch of cousins she hadn’t seen in twenty years arrived from New Jersey

and had to stay in a hotel.

Her voice drops into her sad… life isn’t as good as I expected… range.

Sometimes when asked I explain I only observe Succoth the holy day of celebrating

the bounty by consuming it while getting buzzed on kosher wine in a little shelter in

the backyard…

open to the stars.

Upon moving into my house in 1999 I found a spot in the downstairs hall for the wooden trunk. Twenty-five by fifteen inches, it’s a little over a foot deep and rests on two-inch wooden feet. Two thin metal bands encircle the trunk for strength. An iron handle is affixed to each end. Finished with a heavy iron lock, it was constructed in Lithuania in the 1880s when that country was part of Russia. When Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881, his death was blamed on the Jews; the pogroms of 1882 followed. The hated May Laws enacted by his son Tsar Alexander III ended the somewhat lax limitations on the Jewish population restricting where Jews could live and how many would be allowed to attend school.

Jewish men who had previously been barred from serving in the Russian army were now being conscripted for twenty-five years. Induction in the Russian army was considered a death sentence. My great-grandfather and namesake Itzhak Beryl (Isaac Bernard) prohibited from tending the orchard he loved outside the Pale and in fear of being drafted, hastily gathered what resources he could. Before he began his exodus from the country of his birth, he constructed the trunk for Sarah, his sixteen-year-old pregnant wife.  When Sarah followed her husband to the new world, with their now two-year-old daughter Yetta, the trunk made up the bulk of their luggage. Most of the small interior was allotted to a family treasure, the elaborate brass samovar Sarah and Isaac had received as a wedding present. As far back as I can remember the samovar was displayed in an honored place in my grandma Yetta’s home.

In the 1950s my mother dug the trunk out of the attic where it had been stored since my grandmother’s passing, and had it cleaned and preserved with polyurethane. Today the trunk is a testament to the late nineteenth century migration of Jews from Eastern Europe, as well as a testament to the restoration projects of the fifties. 

The trunk held afghans crocheted by my other grandmother until a few years ago when moths were detected. Now proud but empty it sits in the sunlit downstairs hall that serves as a winter greenhouse for my plants.

My niece has the samovar.