Mistress of Ephemera

A Conversation With War

2011-05-28T13:48:00.000-07:00

My country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty

World War II, you are personal. First foe. Now awkward friend? You thrive in this new century, I admit, to stop others from erupting like you once again. First a demon. Out of control. Hungry for lives not yours. You are not doing as fine a job at that as we expected you to in 1945. Keep trying. You are not just a stream of facts but an entity, undying now, born swiftly of the life flow of many near and dear as well as those unknown except by casualty. You are a spirit made whole and sustaining from the sacrifices of those who came to fight in your name. To clear it of the heartache blood for blood. And as each new energy, created by the Earthly passing of one of these aging champions finds its way to you, brought like a dandelion seed on the winds of its own rebirth, you edge always farther away from the darkness of heart that spawned you and closer to the light of truth that holds you as a beacon of countless wills, girded to set the going straight again.

Of thee I sing

My father and mother were born in February 1929, days apart, 10 miles apart, social worlds and cultures apart and true Depression babies. Each was no stranger to calamity, just a teenager when you knocked on their doors in Chicago, bearing an invitation that could not be RSVP’ed away. Several of Mom’s brothers and one sister brushed their hair and changed their clothes and left home with you. Why do I mention clothes to you? You changed how everyone looked, didn’t you? Military colors. Navy blue and camouflage. Wools and flannels. Yellow stars. Stripes and thin cotton. Dad’s half-brother, new buttons, new shoes, toe crampers.
My Uncle Bud, today in a nursing home, still fine in his late 80s, he chose Army green, and wore it to Italy. Dusted it off in Anzio. The dust followed him home, unshakeable.
Mom, well she put on work gloves and planted a Victory Garden, each vegetable grown, a breathing organic bullet against what had rocked her world. One day as she harvested her crop, she picked a carrot that had taken you into its own being, dividing into that ubiquitous V-shape, a Victory spurt of orange ferocity. A monumental harvest of hope. The photographer from the Chicago Daily News posed her holding that carrot just inches above a table, her teeth and lips bending back into that uncomfortable but proud smile. “This is for my family. This carrot will bring them home so they can dress in church finery or weekend dance clothes. This carrot on its own by my hand will win you.” Mom wearing her best for church garb listened one day to Margaret Bourke White, the war correspondent and photojournalist when she came to speak at my grandmother’s ladies group in Beverly Hills, Illinois. Her outfit had changed too. She was the first woman to wear it during your so-called Glory Days. Her cameras sought out the threads of others who could barely call what they wore clothes in the concentration camps of Europe. If lens glass could be permanently transformed by what was passing through it, hers was I am certain. Ghost glass. In 1946-1947, when dad wanted to go to the University of Michigan the returning veterans had their hard-earned claim on housing and other benefits—as was right. Caps and gowns, and oddly shaped freshmen beanies to replace helmets and battle ribbons. Dad suffered with the regret of that lost dream, unspeakable until years later because it was not right to complain in your presence. His life’s scope tilted. He loved music, built pipe organs and dabbled in the oh so 40s, 50s craft of writing, taking time-defeating outs to clean the type on his firsts, a Royal or two and later his IBM typewriter partner in unfinished crime. He met mom and RCA, attending a school where you could learn about this thing called television in Washington, D.C. All consuming, it would fire his inspiration and burn him up inside. On May 1, 1986, at just 56, only 41 years when you drew to a halt, he left old ambitions and regrets to the rest of us. Partly, I do blame you for that.

Land where my fathers died

My husband’s father left the U.S. to join the Royal Canadian Air Force prior to Dec. 7, 1941. He may have seen you coming. We never met. So I cannot know for sure. Edward Crickmer, who was on the shorter side, was sent to the U.S. Army Air Corp and the 15th Army Air Corps where he trained to be a ball-turret gunner in a B-17. Short guys fit those tiny spaces. On a mission over Germany, his plane was shot out from under him and he parachuted into enemy territory minus a flight boot, just not tight enough to cling to his foot and leg during that fall. He was captured and spent the rest of the war in various Stalags, the Nazi camps for military prisoners. Lots of uniform changes for Mr. Crickmer. Toward the end of the war, the Germans were moving him and other prisoners of war around from camp to camp, and the marches were horrific. He would tell his little son the stories, and the son can only recall now that that it was likely British tanks that liberated his father from the terrors of those ending days. A blanket his only warmth as the men trudged from holding spot to holding spot, wondering if they would have the energy to keep on walking. Like Robert Shaw’s character in the film, “Jaws,” Sam Quint, hating the last moments before help came, because to last so long and not make it was the most miserable kind of irony. But the tanks did come. In time, he got to come back to America where his family were miners in West Virginia, on the management side. Not him, he went underground and got his face dark with the soot of hard labor. A strike and illness thwarted his success in reclaiming a life that once included classes at Duke University in mathematics. He died way too young. Always hating black bread and potatoes. I definitely blame you for that. His son misses him so.

Land of the Pilgrims’ pride

His brothers also served. Harold was in the U.S. Marine Corps in the Pacific. Another brother, called Uncle Waddie, a nickname for Walter, (lots of Walters in the Crickmer family tree) was a tail gunner on a B-17 with the 8th Air Force. He survived all his missions. No prison camp. His life gave way to a more normal kind of playing out. A job. A house. Children who got to know him. Thank goodness. On the other side of my husband’s family, his mother’s brother, Frank Roberts, was in the U.S. Navy, enlisting before the start of the war. When his turn came for assignments after basic training, there were two ships that beckoned his way. In his class, every other person went to duty on a battleship, an assignment that would take them eventually to Pearl Harbor. Palms and ocean breezes. Paradise Navy style. Those men proudly shouted, “I got the Arizona.” Frank went to another ship. Uncle Harry, Frank’s brother, was a pharmacist’s mate in the U.S. Navy. Harold, Harry, Edward, and Frank are gone now. As are my father, Jean Paul Audet, and his brother Joe Rettich, who served in World War II and Korea. Joe told the funny war stories, of stolen jeeps and KP duty gone awry -- the kind that often turned up in issues of the Reader’s Digest. He died years later in the emergency room of a Kansas City hospital waiting, mostly unnoticed, to be treated for chest pains. It was a massive heart attack. Joe and my dad had just begun to reconnect after years of on again, off again brotherhood. They had different fathers and that made all the difference. My grandmother Gertrude asked for and received an annulment from the Catholic Church because she said Joe’s dad would not let her take her children, Joe, and my Aunt Eileen, my godmother, to Mass. They were older when she married again. That is why dad wasn’t old enough for you, but Joe was. He left dad when he was perhaps needed most, to go to war. Dad’s handsome older brother who would never really come back to him in the same way. Eileen, his sister, tall and elegant, flapped her way through the Twenties, never married and went to work in Chicago advertising. Cancer after cancer would make nests in her body and she died one day, like a war victim, while I was a college student. She had been too young when the soldiers left and too old when they returned. And when the time came for dad’s service, he did it as a member of the Illinois National Guard. He had been drafted both by the United States and Canada. My grandfather, Jean Hector, died a Canadian citizen and this meant that dad had the cross the border dilemma. Back then, they wouldn’t let him declare dual citizenship, which is tragic. So, he chose this side of the border and donned his Guard uniform with pride. Without the prestige of being a World War II veteran, he lacked the credentials and bona fides that made the generation right before him, golden. He always felt just a bit tarnished, I think, as a result.

From every mountainside

Both my mom’s brothers came home. Uncle Robert, my godfather, lost a recent battle to Alzheimer’s. He used his G.I. Bill to go to Northwestern University and study accounting. He got a job working for J. Edgar Hoover and the F.B.I. First in Detroit and later, Washington D.C. He had six children. Was a Knight of Columbus. A good Irishman. Uncle Bud, on the other hand, had seen darker days. The G.I. Bill was not band-aid enough for him. A picture of him back in Chicago from that time shows a wiry, de-muscled man. He seldom talked or talks about the war except with my older brother, Jim.
Jim, 58, a retired electrical engineer, understands you better than most. It is his knack to know you; he is one of the mid-Baby Boomers, the generation that made Revell models, started in 1945, a must-have item. As a child, Jim excelled at building these, including the U.S.S. Arizona and the U.S.S. Iowa. I learned about the makings of a ship from watching that building exercise/compulsion played out over and over while I was growing up. Later, I stood on the original and oh so much larger Iowa with Jim soon after the death of our father and that still sends chills up my spine when I contemplate the moment. I stood on the U.S.S. Alabama, too, this time with my mother one afternoon in Mobile. Outside, a gently curving and robust garden of roses highlighted the ship’s approach. How appropriate for my mother, the Victory Carrot woman, Rosemarie, who like, Robert, is fighting Alzheimer’s, to be greeted that day by a bounty of flowers that shared her name. She and I walked onto the ship together. I was pregnant that day. Not showing much, but more than enough for my mind to make the connection that the child inside me was mine, and you and others like you, were not going to have him or her. How bold we mothers are in your face. And others like you. How hard we try to keep our children safe from those that see you and others like you, as a means to their end.
Before the war, Bud was hitting effortlessly into the stratosphere of baseball immortality. He made it onto a major league farm team. You corrupted that dream. Upon his return, he would move to Albuquerque, New Mexico, with my grandmother and there he would find an outlet for his baseball in his spare time -- coaching children of the Pueblo nation. He lives today with his older sister, 91, in Delaware, one of the few now who remains, who changed for you. All around him, his fellow combatants are leaving. Dying. Like the chiming of bells, souls breaking free in a constant rain of infirmity.

Let freedom ring

As a child I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, a veterans' haven, knowing you were different, exceptional. War movies were my babysitter. I saw and imbibed the notion that the people who served in you had crossed into another plane of existence, that they had gone to sleep one night only to wake up the next day into a world where their personal contributions, all actions and activity, had an immediate and direct effect on everyone else. Whether it was the garden you grew or the grease you collected on the home front. Or the photographs you took of survivors watching liberating soldiers enter their living cemeteries. Margaret did that. It altered her. While she was taking pictures of those lost and found souls, my husband’s father Ed, was liberated, shy of a boot, and wholeness. Journalist Ernie Pyle walked with soldiers such as my Uncle Bud through Europe and it altered him. He gave his life to it, perhaps so Bud would not have to. Going to your Pacific Theatre when it was not required, except that he was honoring a commitment to those soldiers, those tropically trapped G.I. Joes who loved him from afar. Just one more trip and he could come home. Iwo Shima. Where was that? Edward R. Murrow, radioman and then, TV man, broke the airwaves of its virginity of war when he, like Margaret, tried to capture the horrors of what those death camps looked like when he arrived there. It altered him. Maybe he smoked a little more. Maybe he cared a lot more when he came back and wrestled with migrant needs and the political savagery run amuck of Joseph McCarthy. Maybe you did that, too. As a teenager, I religiously sought out these people, these journalists. Their war stories. I had to know.
People like to talk about your numbers. Your morbid resume. You demanded more lives than other of your brethren. Some estimate as much as 78 million. The Russians especially suffered. Perhaps 26.6 million people, approximately 13.7 percent of its total population. The genocide of Jews and Romas across all of Europe. The disruption and eradication of culture and family, home and hearth. Neighbor against neighbor. The disabled. The politically or behaviorally different. Shutting my eyes, I imagine an immediate loss of New York and Chicago and Los Angeles. Still not enough to match your toll of us. And yet, we continue to agonize and argue about what now to you must seem so ridiculously trivial.
So what do you mean after all? In this year, 2011,where death from war is all around us still? Why have we not benefited more from the sacrifices of all who are named here? Those ripples of your being are everywhere and it is now 66 years past your prime. Like the Big Bang theorists who strive to see that particular moment of creation, followers of your impact on our lives seek to reach into the origins of a conflict that decimated us of so much. Each of us lost a portion of our humanity during those years of you, either by being there or being born to those who were. That is not retrievable. That was given up never to be reclaimed as a reminder of our complicity in letting it happen. Payment was made and continues to be made, as one by one, the veterans of you pass away, memories intact. And perhaps, time and God-willing, Rapture or not, we who are left behind to ponder it will understand the lesson of you more in the days that come.

To honor: http://www.metmuseum.org/connections/doors

2011-03-30T10:25:00.000-07:00

Memoriam

2011-02-04T12:13:00.000-08:00

On Feb. 6, I will take a moment to remember the life of King George VI, father of Queen Elizabeth II, who died on this date. He is the featured subject of the recent film, The King's Speech, and I find a man who deserves remembering. Great Britain owes him more than they can ever repay.

Godspeed Commander Adams

2010-11-30T16:15:00.000-08:00

It blasted into my childhood with the force of a supernova. Science fiction film. There was my first love, Rod Taylor, in "The Time Machine," "Them," with its crawling gigantic ants, and "The Day the Earth Stood Still" where a man called Carpenter was more than a man -- he had come from a distant world to save the Earth.

Always, there was "Forbidden Planet." The 1956 MGM film starred the legendary Walter Pidgeon as Dr. Edward Morbius; Anne Francis as his daughter, Altaira; a robotic wonder to covet, Robby; and a charming and managerial space commander, J.J. Adams, played by a young Canadian, Leslie Nielsen.

Nielsen made the film work in so many ways. He was believable.

I suppose I watch this film at least two or three times a year. Maybe more. Each time with a new appreciation for the design of it, or the music, or the fascination with the film's ultimate message, that even the most gifted of civilizations is not immune from the disease called overconfidence. Now when I watch, I'll admit to giggling when Adams pulls out his communicator to talk to crewmen in the ship and there is a wire attached to it. I did not laugh as a 10-year-old. Then I was ready to hitch a ride on the United Planet Cruiser C57D in a stellar moment. Ready to swish my hand over a beamer that could send lead curtains flying down the windows of my space hideaway. Mesmorized by the sheer expanse of Krell technologies, the substance of my childhood in a way that other youngsters visioned Playdough and dolls. I knew if I put my mind to it that someday, I could do something just like that. I was certain of it. Take the mind-machine test and enlarge that cranium capacity. And survive like Morbius not die like the Doc.

Tonight, I see that Nielsen has died in Fort Lauderdale at age 84. He changed course in his cinematic career and let his humorous side lead him into other universes. I laughed at his Airplane role and of course, The Naked Gun series. For me, he will always be my favorite space hero, taking me along on a glorious journey through those ultimately final frontiers of space. I wish him well on this latest journey and look to see stars just a bit brighter in the sky from now on.

Niagara © 2010 Barbara Audet

2010-11-21T22:48:00.000-08:00

A Garden Underground

2010-10-19T21:25:00.000-07:00

I used to cry at the end of summer when the garden fell to its knees, the ruin of its gone to flower mantle like a cardiac arrest of rainbows. Each swollen, unpicked squash was a damnation of my insolence, each bending vine of bleeding tomatoes, cherry orbs with seeds at ready, so ready they burst the seam of the fruit, a wound that cut the skin and my eyes.

How easy it is to love a full expanse of ripe to be useful things. How hard it is to appreciate what has lost its saturation, that vibrancy of immediate collectibility. My favorite garden is of course a real garden. Right now, the sunflowers are heaving over in their faint of seed-building. That is not going to happen in October. They will crash to the ground soon. With no children for the future of their kind. I planted those too late. Realizing that people are like gardens has helped me to see my rectangular, almost, down for the count patch of whithering yellow-blossomed broccoli and last minute cucumbers as a true Keatsian place of beauty.

I have harvested. Spent hours in the kitchen with the canner on my 1960s-era stove, watching the pressure cooker annihilate and procreate. The jars of salsa and the jars of squash and the jars of pickles--never a known quality--are packed soldierlike in their pantry boxes, away from the sun for the first time. Blueberries were stalwarts this season and these are now unrecognizable in the freezer, a candidate for moonlit lights and candled suppers. When my garden is long underground, beneath the throes of winter's gardening expertise, I have these tip of my tongue memories.

So as I stand outside in the rains of autumn and look at the fading heads and spikes of green moving to a gray abandon, I smile.

Reggie, Get Ready

2010-10-19T21:10:00.000-07:00

October 19, 2010, 8:57 pm

Reggie.

Take one petite yet feisty Chicagoan with clear blue eyes and dark hair, and one Old English Sheepdog puppy with his baby coat of white and black fur, and what do you have? A perfect friendship. Rosie and Reggie. Dressed up for a day on the town: Rosemarie and Reginald.

My mother had this idea one day that it was time to get a dog. A shaggy kind of dog. My father, on the other hand, was not so enthusiastic about the plan. Shocking to all of us kids, Mom had her way. There must have been an otherworldly reason for that because Dad usually had his. She traveled to Laurel, Md., to pick out her dog, a purebred Old English. As the family story goes, one dog approached the car, sniffing out the caliber of the visitors, placing his paws on the side to swallow up the window's view. Facing all the family members in the car were camouflaged eyes and a black nose as round as a golfball. Reggie's brother. The size of dogs to come. Reggie was a pup, an infant after all. He was only tall enough to confront the car tire. His brother had the height of the car tackled when he stood on his back legs.

Reggie came home that day and found a spot to hollow out in the back yard and eight spots to carve out in the hearts of all of us who loved him dearly. He would win Dad over eventually sliding up in front of the floor-based air conditioner when Dad would work at the kitchen table. Reggie's was a gentle disposition, one that was grounded in a thoughtful understanding of the human condition. When Mom was suffering in any way, his instincts guided him to her and his head would cradle itself on her lap. At night, by her bedside you would see his fuzzy behemoth self on duty, on call, oh so ready if she needed him. He was her Galahad, her Lancelot of Canine Camelot. She loved that dog in a way that I cannot put into words. And I know he loved her in the same way.

He could be funny. After I had gotten a Keeshond puppy named King, the two became acquainted and for the most part good buddies. How could we not have made the immediate connection that the name Reginald means "king." They had the same name, though I am convinced that Reggie felt the multisyllabic character of his version gave him a leg up on his Dutch pal. They faced life, the better days and the harder days, with their own brand of resilience. I remember when life was not at its easiest my brother and I decided to take the two dogs for a ride and we headed to a small town on the Chesapeake Bay. Out we went to the shoreline and Reggie and King came with us. We started tossing a stick, not exactly a game they ever enjoyed. That type of activity was beneath them usually. This day we had a grand game of fetch. King was darting in and out of the water, content to let Reggie be the grand retriever. At one point the stick flew out in the Bay and before we knew it, Reggie bounded after it. Despite his bulk, he was fast. He got out to the stick and stood around with this fabulous look of triumph, stick in mouth and soaking wet. Then his face transformed with the speed of a Star Wars special effect. The stick never wobbled in his mouth; it had become an horizontal exclamation point -- as if Churchill himself were condemning us with a marbled look of utter indignation. I heard the look transformed in my head as, "I am sitting out here in the Bay with a stick in my mouth and you two are responsible." There is an old photo somewhere, maybe in storage, or lost to time, (my fault) that captured that moment of Reggie's declaration of disgust, for us and his own unfortunate leap into being just a dog. He sat there a while and then came back to the shore. For those who don't know it, when sheepdogs get wet, it is as if you have surrounded yourself with a basket of clammy damp almost moldy sweaters and the drive home that day was less than pleasantly fragrant. This time, his face was as bright and happy as any sheepdog can offer.

Reggie left us when severe arthritis deprived him of any quality of life. I was not there the day my brother took him to the vet for the last time. It was awful for him I know for I was dealing with poor King who had many of the genetic abnormalities that often plague his breed. Instead, I was with my King in the vet's office in Bay St. Louis, Ms., my arms supporting him, our eyes locked as his acknowledged mine, and the pain left his face and he died in my arms. I buried him in the backyard of the house in the Bay. That other Bay. Years later, after Katrina, my husband and I would seek out the old house and unlike the rest of our town, the house was fine and the gravesite for King-dog out in the back was exactly as I left it. The earth had settled in a depression over his grave and I knew it would always be there.

Two kings were gone. My mother had truly lost a noble champion. She had wanted to write a children's book where a woman and her Old English Sheepdog were together on life's adventure. He was gone too soon for adventuring that way. And now Mom is waiting for her next adventure. Her Alzheimer's is taking her from us. It has been an agonizingly slow process, for her and for us. She still, miraculously, is mentally present in her dwindling body, though that body will not allow her to speak to us clearly. Her four sons and two daughters, all Caesarian born to this world as a result of her strength, courage and four feet eleven inches of Irish-German don't mess with me attitude, are finding we understand her new language. One brother does a little dance and she smiles. One brother brings her a stuffed dog, a blue blanket and sits and watches a Notre Dame football game with her and when the fight song plays, she raises her arm and points to the screen. And she kisses him. One brother on kidney dialysis, her first born, comes to see her from the West Coast and on his knees before her, he leans into her and there is that light in her eyes. Her little boy is home. One daughter, of curly hair and a blessed beginning, brings her daughter to visit and together, they bring back to Mom her own gift of song. Music is the joy of her granddaughter and like my Mom, my niece loves to sing. You don't need to know about me because I am the archiver, the keeper of the family legend. One brother. What can I say. He loved Reggie with the same passion as Mom. He is the baby of the family but that is only because that is how you describe the last one born.

This past weekend, Mom greeted us from her hospital bed, but it is a bed that is in her own bedroom. That is because my youngest brother is her principal caregiver. He changes her and cleans her wounds. He feeds her and gives her the gift of continuity. Within the last few weeks, the diagnosis finally went terminal and now, there is hospice care and nurses. But there is always Chris. Chris who could throw a pretty good fetching stick and who places the giant stuffed Old English Sheepdog toy on a chair near her bed. He told us when nurses and aides first came into the room, they thought the dog was real. He assured them otherwise, but are they convinced? I am not so sure. Not eerily but nevertheless, spiritually, with an ode to C.S. Lewis, all of us when we admit it to ourselves feel Reggie's presence when we are near Mom and Chris.

We lost our father almost 25 years ago. He was 57. My Mom is 81 and never remarried. My parents' 60th wedding anniversary would be this coming Dec. 30 and somehow when Mom is ready for that last adventure, I have this marvelous feeling that my father will be there, an elegant Old English Sheepdog at his side, waiting to welcome her. I hope so.

The short short story competition on Red Room: Please Read

2010-10-14T13:09:00.000-07:00

I am a member of a wonderful writers' website called Red Room and the story that I posted here was written in response to a recent competition asking for writers to submit 1,000 word stories. The result was a generous outpouring of words from authors and members who deserve to have their work read by as many people as possible. The semi-finalists offer a bounty of beautiful prose for any interested lover of fine literature. Certainly their efforts are worth a few minutes of our time. I read each and every one and found something in each story that was enlightening, entertaining and emblematic of the talent of the writer. So I offer my story here but after you read this, head to Red Room (just Google it) and enjoy some of the finest short stories I have seen in quite a while.

It's A Living A Short Short Story

2010-10-14T13:02:00.000-07:00

She had always made her living sliding across the front seat of stupidly open cars, grabbing whatever she could and pawning the crazy assemblage of radios, GPS units, and cds. Her cache had grown in recent months to higher priced items such as jewelry and classy sunglasses—that was because she had walked to Ocean City, Maryland, and taken a vacation, her first. Now, she had a backpack full of unpawned wonders, shiny stuff, though the wallets and purses she had dumped, and of course, she made it a point, never to take drugs or alcohol. A person had to have some kind of ethics. Ok, she kept the money. No credit cards. These she cut up with a scissors she kept for that purpose and cheap protection. At 17, she was finger-tired, and for some reason, unexplainable because she had never felt it before, afraid that she was losing her nerve.

Losing your nerve was the worst. It meant she would do something just as dumb as the poor slob who had left their door unlocked just for her. She would get caught.

Vargana McIntosh left her overnight accommodation, a backyard chaise lounge near a large garage. There were no cars in the driveway and that usually meant an undisturbed night of sleep. She had awoken with cold feet as the weather had changed. Summer had burst away and fall had unhinged its humidity and unwelcome attention. Vargana was used to dealing with this temperament of time. Had been dealing with it since she was 13. Still, it was a suck situation. She was on the move. On the road, she looked up at the nearest green street sign and said out loud, to no one but herself, “Gone far, girl.” She didn’t like hitching but a teenage girl and a dog had helped her get out of Maryland and she was now in a high classy suburb of Northern New Jersey. Where lots of houses still had empty driveways even in early October. And she was hungry.

Hoisting her backpack onto one shoulder, she started walked down what she now knew was Maple Avenue and it took her into what looked like an old-fashioned mix of stores, restaurants and shops. A place that looked like bad times had passed it by. It had survived the death of downtowns.

She stopped for a moment and stared and an ache long ago tucked away deep in a part of her started to hurt. Vargana felt suddenly as if a speeding bus had knocked the breath out of her and the bus had rolled backwards just to make sure it had done the job smashing her to bits.

Fuck, what was this all about, she thought. And dropped to her butt on the corner of the road. Her shadow stretched out in front of her and then there was a second shadow. Instantly her instincts for survival sent a second surge of adrenalin to bombard her heart and she jumped to her feet.

“Are you all right,” called a voice to her, calm. Concerned. Threatening because caring people, like losing your nerve, were the worst.

“Naw, just, uh, getting my bearings,” Vargana said, turning in the direction of the voice. Direct eye contact was a devastatingly good strategy for spooking caring people.

“I’m not sure about that,” said the Guy. (She didn’t know his name. Guy is what always worked.)

“No, really, thanks guy. I’m good,” she said, eyeing him and then moving her gaze away, lifting her backpack to be busy and reaching in, taking out what she hoped were the most expensive looking sunglasses she “owned.”

What the Guy saw, was a young woman, with beautiful but shaggy long dark hair, green eyes that were circled by the brownish-blue rings of borderline malnutrition and clothes though competent to get you into McDonalds actually screamed homeless.

“Well, I walking into town and I hope you don’t mind if maybe I pick your brain a bit. Can we just walk for a while? See, I work a lot with teenagers in this town, kind of a social worker, and you remind me of one of the young people I am helping. Trying to help anyway. She is in a bad way at the moment. She lost her Dad. 911. She’s an only child. Money's not the issue or her Mom. Love’s all around if you know what I mean. Yet, Ashley, that’s her name, is lost. I shouldn’t tell you this but she attempted suicide last week. I am walking over to the hospital to see her. That building over there. She’s just about your age, maybe. 16?” he said, starting to walk with her side by side as they crossed the street.

“I’m 17, but yea, that sounds sad, real sad,” she said, pausing. “I had a friend once, best friend, you know, and she was like real close to her Mom and lost her, too. It really sucks for her, your friend I mean. How did she try to do it? … God, I’m sorry, you don’t have to tell me that shit,” Vargana said, violating one of her own basic rules. Keep quiet after the first exchange of words.

“No, I think I need to talk about it. I guess I failed her. Been trying to help her a long time.” the Guy replied, and then he was quiet.

She found herself just walking by his side. Neither said anything more to the other. Then he stopped. His motion ending caught her up fast. They were standing in front of doors – large glass doors and on the front of one was a stenciled “Outpatient Entrance.”

“Well, I’m here. Walking with you was nice,” the Guy said. Then he took a hand and ran it through his hair and sighed hard. “I know you don’t know me and this may seem strange. Would you come in with me and meet this young woman?”

Vargana grabbed the door handle.

“Sure.”

A Garden Underground

2010-10-14T12:56:00.000-07:00

How easy it is to love a full expanse of ripe to be useful things. How hard it is to appreciate what has lost its saturation, that vibrancy of immediate collectibility. My favorite garden is of course a real garden. Right now, the sunflowers are heaving over in their faint of seed-building. That is not going to happen in October. They will crash to the ground soon. With no children for the future of their kind. I planted those too late. Realizing that people are like gardens has helped me to see my rectangular, almost, gone for the count patch of whithering yellow-blossomed broccoli and last minute cucumbers as a true Keatsian place of beauty.

So as I stand outside in the rains of autumn and look at the fading heads and spikes of green moving to a gray abandon, I smile.

WIng Building

2010-05-07T11:42:00.000-07:00

May 6, 2010, 2:53 pm

SKY THOUGHTS

Have I learned to fly?

I wonder.

Throughout my life, there is no doubt that I have taken significant risks, often running pell-mell into whatever obstacle faced me.

Is that flight or
a headlong dash into darkness, my personal version of a game of hyper-charged pin the
tail of the donkey with real consequences?

Today, I admit I am wary of flight. Remembering Icarus, I suppose. I am a decent wing
builder but when it comes to strapping them on my back and heading toward the sun, my
feet develop a case of sticky sole syndrome. Writing. Painting. Getting that doctorate.
Heading to Europe to see the world from a bicycle. Quitting a job with no new job on the
horizon. Going off the grid.

Depression is my wing-spring buster. Taking true flight is no good unless you can sustain
the airborne euphoria long enough to see the benefits of the journey. My flights have
great take-offs. My life glides for a while, on a parallel to the surface of the earth, but
there is that awful moment, when, without getting anywhere near the sun, I panic that the
sun will be too much for me. That the light is too bright that high, and that I will go blind
mingling with those who have seen the success of the sky.

I plummet.
And the ground always hits me hard.

Falling intensely and ironically, with eyes wide open. And then, like a human Superball, I
bounce. And bounce. And rebound. And bizarrely put the wings on again. Decades of
ground-breaking tumbles and incredibly, exciting and frightening bounces.
Why? Why can’t I ever land on a cloud that has some kind of magic quality that would
allow me to float on high, for just a while. Long enough to say that I saw the heights of
my own humanity?
What would make a difference? Self-confidence? A never I care attitude that could put
the depression at bay—make the ability outshine my urgent need to decry that the ability
exists?
I have always wanted in a “Forbidden Planet” kind of way to “slip those surly bonds of
earth,” Magee’s way of describing his conception of flight. Journalist in space. Yep, that
would be me if they would take me. In a heartbeat. I am not afraid of physical adventure.
Mountains or undersea. Or riding in a rustic plane over a West Virginia countryside with
an aging pilot/poet who kept me entertained with his words Magee-like. That I can
handle.

Tell me I have talent. Tell me I should be doing more with my life and watch the
fall unfold. Watch the wall take the angles off my nose.

Touch the face of God. Is that possible for me in this earthly configuration of body and
soul? I would like to think that in some way I do that everyday, especially those days
when I am able to somehow master my own sense of inadequacy and look at what can
actually be accomplished. He is always leaning in my direction and dipping his face to
my fingers. I just need to learn to keep my wings flapping.

2010-03-29T22:32:00.000-07:00

This week I am working on chapters of my novel, The Legend of Baji. At the end of the week I will post some more sample chapters.

On the Act of Being Free

2010-03-26T09:18:00.001-07:00

February 10, 2010, 10:54 am (published first on my Red Room blog)

"It had become an universal and almost uncontroverted position in the several States, that the purposes of society do not require a surrender of all our rights to our ordinary governors; that there are certain portions of right not necessary to enable them to carry on an effective government, and which experience has nevertheless proved they will be constantly encroaching on, if submitted to them; that there are also certain fences which experience has proved peculiarly efficacious against wrong, and rarely obstructive of right, which yet the governing powers have ever shown a disposition to weaken and remove. Of the first kind, for instance, is freedom of religion; of the second, trial by jury, habeas corpus laws, free presses." --Thomas Jefferson to Noah Webster, 1790.

On the Act of Being Free

By Barbara Audet

Beginning with this statement by Jefferson to Webster, albeit taken out of its original context, is to say that freedom may be what is left when governments of any kind enact and enforce any body of law that is established to ensure an equitable living of the masses. It is the nature and the extent of that law, the environment of its framing and the weightiness of its enforcement, that pushes the remains of what freedom is "untethered," to freedom that is to some extent reasonably bound by the restrictions of life in an age post-cave. Looking cynically though for debate's sake, what if in the interests of safety, primarily, and in securing the economic advancement of a society, societal laws are heavily scaled to protect those less interested in the pursuit of personal freedoms, and more inclined to support the kinds of communal structures that encourage, ultimately and conversely, a more narrow understanding of civil rights? The debate then: Success for all is not good business? Less freedom is good business?

If this is the case, then is it foolish to argue that there is such an entity as freedom or even the potential for it for any of us today -- not from the moment of conception to our last moment in a physical sense on the planet? And yet, do we not all want this thing called freedom to be just as it is historically presented to us from childhood on? A life that seeks to move within freedom's cloak of protection is a life worth living, isn't it? Generally, and in the best possible of worlds, the moment of "birth as citizen" is not a moment to dread or fear. When a child is born, a citizen of a nation, the full import of its laws and the accompanying responsibilities to act within that legal structure are the child's immediate birthright, whether they choose them or not. Denying to accept citizenship at birth is not within an infant's ability. Nor in this world is it a viable alternative at any time thereafter unless another avenue for citizenship can be assessed and mutually selected. We call the process of that choice immigration and emigration and in the history of man, except for the melting pot phenomenon that was the United States of America in the 19th and 20th centuries, it is a process epitomized by frustration, penalty and often, condemnation. Why? Because one man's freedom has a worth more valuable to them then that of another?

Practically speaking, aren't we hard-pressed to see an instance where a life without fear has ever been the expected lot of men and women? And therefore, from the moment of birth, our freedom is questionable, no matter the body of laws that are designed to ensure it or state that we have it.

As we are bound by the legal constraints of our birth, so too are we bound by the economic constraints of our birth. A child who comes into this world with parents who are economically free is essentially more free than a child born to parents in poverty -- a labeling statement that many have argued to be so and many would argue heatedly is untrue. What is open to the child of economic freedom? Most particularly the right to education at the highest level and the right to fear no night or the pangs of an empty stomach. Powerful rights. Empowering rights. Without these rights, not even the philosophically purist perspective of freedom of thought can be argued to exist. The child born into poverty must when they reach an age where society says they may work, pay taxes to that society and work, or else be labeled even more severely as poor and non-contributing. No artist, he or she. The tax they pay must always be representative of a larger share of their peace of mind and relative ability to be free, no matter if that poor child should overcome all barriers and rise to a higher economic state. Conversely, the child of economic freedom has a sense of entitlement that looks to what they must contribute to society and often asks, why am I responsible for more, just because I have more to give. In the asking, these children have the capacity to become powerfully hopeful members of society who do reach out and make the joyful differences in the lives of those around them.

These questions form the basis of much of all of humanity's reasoning and search for forms of government that attempt to place the scales in a better balance for the rights of the individual and the rights of community. Tax to support the working of a government is a principle that allows in practice for a greater amount of freedom by all. But in this country, if a man owns a house they are likely to pay less tax then a man with no house to call his? How can this be so? The law makes this clear: As you become more economically sound, you are more free. It implies a rationality that places freedom more soundly on the side of those in society who have more. And that is what has placed the concept of "war for more" so soundly on the agenda of mankind. What then do we make of what is happening both psychologically and morally to our communities, local, regional, state and federal, that are also, like the individual, undergoing this intense onslaught of fear and uncertainty? A man on an icy slope once fallen has an enormous task to rise up from the ground and resecure his footing. If he uses his hands while on the ground to carve out a flat and even plain, he can stand again and look more clearly at which direction offers the safest direction. This man may also choose to slip slowly down the slope hoping that at some point, he will reach a clear spot where standing is also possible. A fellow traveler may reach down and offer assistance to the fallen man. It takes that hand sometimes no matter how strong or willing the fallen man is to bruise and tear his hands on the ice in an effort to stand again or how far they are willing to slide down the slope before they are not afraid to try standing again. In this nation, we have always done a good job of being that fellow traveler when it comes to reaching out and taking the hand of the fallen and restoring them to a free state of movement. To help someone means risking your freedom to walk away and leave the man on the ice to his own efforts. Not an easy choice, ever. But a choice easier to make by someone who has experienced the joy of freedom and does not want a fellow human being to live outside its comfort. Look at Haiti and the outpouring of legitimate, non-self-serving empathy and action to see this principle in action. Freedom must exist if it can be given away or shared.

As Jefferson dutifully points out, a government must and will establish a framework that embeds the requirements of citizenship irrevocably into the foundation of its creation, including an economic enforcement of what essentially is a legal demand of the extended hand. Our founding fathers were concerned with civil rights, to a larger extent, perhaps, than any others who had gone on the path to government building before them. In exchange for demanding a certain measure of service from its citizenry, it offered them, at that point in history, one of the greatest measures of personal freedom in return. The indigenous population, indentured servants and all those brought here as slaves were not so fortunate and were tendered no such offer as an immediate right. Freedom for all still was not within the frame of even the thinking of this group of profound and rather brave individuals.

Significant to that historic legislative journey, nevertheless, are the words, the pursuit of happiness. Freedom and happiness are irrevocably entwined. Here, I do not mean happiness in its traditional understanding. Happiness is in and of itself a right to peace of the mind. The absence of happiness for me is anger. And this conceptual understanding of emotion with respect to a political philosophy is directly related to our autonomy, our sense of self as it stands out in that sea of regemented civility. Delving deeper into this predicament of the emotional state of freedom I ask the following question. Who is more free or, if you choose, is neither free: the man or woman shipwrecked on an island that will support his/her basic needs of food, shelter and water, with no numbering system, no place in a computer, but who has no society with which to share their existence, or, the man or woman, homeless, living under a causeway, with debts to pay that follow them from their past life, but who has the potential to "rejoin" society if they so choose and society assists them, no matter the risks it poses to either. Of course, the scenario is somewhat ridiculous even to suggest as an "either/or." More people are homeless in our land than are castaways on islands. I could find, I am certain, countless numbers of individuals tomorrow, though, who would consider becoming "lost" on an island, if that place were "free" in the utopian style such an environment suggests, despite the isolation and despite the loss of civilization. I am certain less people would jump at the chance of being homeless because not only are they on the fringe of society, society has them marked. Going off the grid is the term we use to describe seeking freedom in its less than altruistic mode. It takes a certain amount of economic freedom though to even accomplish a theoretical leaving of society for the sake of self and personal freedom. If leaving society for self's sake is an example of the pursuit of a more "real" freedom, what does this say for the amount of freedom that is present in a strong state, that even has the highest stated principles of freedom at its core?

As a species, can we deny that we have laid wanton claim to much of what the Earth has to offer all of life on its surface, including the claim that we have a right to subjugate the freedom of others to our own. With so much at our fingertips, the desire, as Jefferson points out, of government to encroach and claim as much as possible is what has placed mankind at this pinnacle of climatic, environmental and financial collapse. If we as individuals resolve that it is only government that must look out for the rights of all, then collapse is inevitable. The American small town is the most visible victim of the advance of the Encroach Until Collapse method of government -- a method by the way that is not party specific. Surprisingly, in these suffering communities remains the strongest of intercommunal bonds, the unabashed concern for "neighbor." In this sense, we must consider freedom to have continuously evolved in this nation to include an essential and understood by nearly all community component. The laws and codes that bind and bond us only have true meaning in that we are willing to let them bind and bond in the best interest of community as opposed to the state. This explains our feeling for our Armed Forces or police or fire departments or anyone within a community who places their life in jeopardy for the sake of all.

The question to ponder then as we consider what is freedom, is, on the other side of the argument, what freedom is not. If the absence of happiness is anger, then the absence of freedom is fear. Franklin D. Roosevelt in a powerful and often quoted speech once told the American people that there was nothing to fear but fear itself. But in this statement, I think he put his finger on an even greater truth than the one he was attempting at that moment to describe. We do need to fear "Fear" itself. If we ask one another, "Are we more free or fearful?," what is the response? Today, that answer is more than likely, for many of us, "Fear." Fear of the next delivery of the mail and what it brings. Fear of the next phone call and what it brings. Fear of illness that cannot be treated because of the lack of resources. Fear of a system that penalizes the poor. Fear of fear itself because it robs you of your ability to take action which is symptomatic of a person's healthy sense of freedom.

Fear and anger. We know the outcome of that scenario, don't we? In the wake of the end of personal freedom is panic, inability to take action, loss of goals and the sense of the beauty of achievement, and in the end, resignation and defeat. A community defeated is a community that will take all comers and accept anyone or any set of principles that may offer a change. Here just insert any totalitarian or single-minded regime that has its own agenda for self-preservation.

The true right given to all of us so long ago by men and women of Jefferson's era is then, for me at least, the right to protect the right of freedom and the pursuit of a life that that is more happy in its progression than any other state of being. And that happiness, desired by the people, will ultimately secure their resolve to remain free above all else.

Spring

2010-03-22T22:38:00.000-07:00

SPRING
Photograph of an Alabama sky a few years ago.

Making Ends Meet: March Madnesses

2010-03-19T08:20:00.000-07:00

March Basketball. I am truly looking forward to watching some of the college madness as it unfolds. This season, it is an exceptionally, fast-paced, numbing diversion for me as I contemplate the personal conflicts and dilemmas associated with the tail-end of our long and potent winter. The snow and ice are going away and that is such a relief. In its wake, are the undone items, the debris of the season. The loose ends of ghastly fuel bills for example. Or the sheer heaviness of trying to break out of the gray doldrums that rob you of inspiration or excitement for the challenge of living. These associated pressures of the winter continue to weigh heavily on many who live here, emotionally and financially. There has been another suspected suicide at Cornell University, highlighting the struggles of young people there to fit in and make sense of their lives in this ever-changing, never-changing world. The university, sadly, tragically, has suffered this loss too much this year. The New York Times published an article recently concerning the number of self-inflicted deaths there. Ithaca College where I teach has not had this same kind of year, gratefully. Losing a student is too painful. Whether teacher or parent. One of my students, a young woman I taught and advised my first year at IC, died of heart failure as she was returning to London from a trip to Amsterdam. I miss talking to her -- she revived in me many of my own writer's goals, and I can only imagine what a wonderful future she would have had. One of the comments posted following the Times article recalled Northwestern University in the 1970s and the suicide rate then among students of engineering. I was there in the 1970s, as both a journalism and communication major, and it could definitely be a lonely, isolating experience. For some, oblivious to the suffering and fears of those who watched their tuition costs rise in that decade from $3400 to approximately $8000, those were not such baneful days. There were frat parties to go to and sororities to join. And a rock to paint on occasion. I did that and loved doing that. I also lost myself during those years participating in the activities of a college club that brought films to the campus. For so many students then, just as today, coping with the isolation of a pre-social media world, (which granted has its own fair share of isolating properties) and academic and monetary hurdles, every quarter brought one more superhero-like effort to pay the bills and to get those school-based ends to meet just one more time. There were many like me who were getting by school in the same way, paycheck to paycheck. One job, two jobs, three jobs. I remember one young woman who was living in a singles dorm, who was found dead in her vehicle. No one had noticed she was missing. I don't know why she chose to end her life, but she did. Another young friend of mine, Irena, who was not a Northwestern student, but who had parental connections to the university, was traveling one day into Chicago, and was attacked at the El station. Knifed. She bled to death, or close to it, on the platform, as I remember, with no one bothering to stop and see if she needed assistance. Her memorial was well attended. She and I had trained together for retail jobs at the small Goldblatt's store in Evanston. She was Garbo-like in her face and quite delicate and likely died because she was Russian, not street wise, and had money in her wallet and refused to give it to the attackers. At NU, in December 1979, I called a halt to my undergraduate juggernaut, at least for what I thought would be a year or so. Instead, I went to work for my father at a television station he had somehow managed to get started in Maryland. I became the station's first 6 and 11 news producer. The job gave me a purpose, no doubt, and a sense of contribution to the family as I had been away from them for so long and that was not good. Eventually, I did go back to school and finished my bachelor's degree at Salisbury University. Life brings ends to meet each other at funny junctures, no doubt of it. The March before my college graduation in 1984, my family's world was upside down again as my father was fighting a legal battle to save his interests in the station--which now everyone wanted and everyone outside the family did not want him to have. He would take his battle pro se to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, losing there but maintaining the hope of filing a personal appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. A recovering alcoholic, his heart muscle was not strong enough, and we would lose him in 1986 at age 56. This June, I will be 56 years of age, my father's age at the time of his death. How strange that is. A movie is set to open soon that features a group of characters who will travel back in time to that year courtesy of a magical hot tub, and that, frankly, is one film I think I will wait to see. It looks funny and sharp, but I am not ready to go back there just yet.
So instead, I will watch basketball and the smiles and anxious faces of yes, youngsters, as they travel the court or root from the sidelines. Here at least, the joys and sorrows of a win or a loss can be associated with the hug or the solace of a friend and classmate in real time. Ultimately, there will be one team that will smile all the way to the Final Four end. There will be tears and of course, disappointment with loss. What I find reassuring is that this kind of loss is one that we can recover from and learn from. It teaches us that there is another year and another opportunity to improve or change our circumstances. Life does not end with the end of a basketball game, win or lose. What then can be so overwhelmingly painful that it would prompt a young person to climb to the top of a bridge and leap toward rocks below? We need to do a better job of understanding this kind of desperation and despair. I think that for many of America's children, in some ways, their childhoods end at kindergarten. Maybe not even kindergarten. From first grade on, the concept of a college education is like Alice's trip down the rabbit hole, unimaginable except in a fantasy realm. In so many ways, it was for me. A blur down the hole and a climb back out again. And for those that make it into college, their own runaway train of complications can be insurmountable. March then is a good month to consider what madness is and how best to create more safeguards and places where instead of seeking ends, we seek those new beginnings.

What People Ought to Know

2010-02-22T20:48:00.000-08:00

Should the average college freshman and sophomore desiring to pursue a career in journalism know who Charles Lindbergh was? Or Lizzie Borden? Or the fact that trials relating to each of these individuals were media sensations? Am I out of line for thinking that "yes" is the right answer to this question? What is it about history and especially, media history, that students are just not finding of value these days?
Today as I asked students how many knew of the Lindbergh kidnapping and murder case, and the trial of Bruno Hauptmann, only one or two hands went up in the entire classroom. I could hardly believe it. Then I asked who knew about Lizzie Borden and that famous case. A similar response. I dared not ask about the Scopes Monkey trial or the Scottsboro Boys. To me, and from a journalistic standpoint, there is much to be gained from looking back at these events and how the media handled them. Of course, in defense of these students, we are looking at 75 years and longer with respect to Lindbergh and Borden. Nevertheless, the journalists and novelists who reported on the Lindbergh trial is a list with essentially no equal until World War II or 9/11.
Perhaps what was more distressing about today, was that my students looked back at me with that "why are you asking us such a dumb question look," and of course, wanted no part in any explanation or further discussion of the significance of either case.
How sad.
I also asked about what happened in San Francisco in 1906. No one knew. At this point, I just wanted to cry. I said what just happened in Haiti. "An earthquake." So, what do you think happened in San Francisco? "An earthquake?" "Yes."
For the record, this class of students is charming, generally good writers all and intelligent. But how did they get this far with such a narrow understanding?
I am not sure whether it is a lack of curiosity or of that fire in the belly for wanting to know as much as you can about everything that seems missing in this generation of college students or at least the ones at my school.
In another class, where students have an opportunity to work on a lengthy documentary about a subject of their choice, many students are choosing not to do anything of significance: read here, not choosing to pursue issues that hold at their core, some examination of a social justice issue. I screened part of the documentary "Born into Brothels," to showcase the kind of empowerment that can occur when you hand someone a camera, and frankly the response was lackluster.
The explanation? Too busy. Too close to graduation. Too busy looking for a job or an internship to be interested. Too concerned about finishing the project for a grade thank you very much. Am I asking too much when I look out into this bright and wonderful sea of faces to hope to see the next Margaret Bourke White or Ernie Pyle or John Hersey before me. There are potential candidates in the room, but, for whatever reason, I do not think the metamorphosis will occur within my time spent with them. The frustration factor for me is enormous, because I know if I could just break into that shell of defiance, I could hasten the birth of a journalist worthy of the title. I think to myself as students leave the screening, that it will come later, after some real world seasoning has dulled the student versus teacher hostility or after they have savored that first job in the trenches. There a boss who has the power of the paycheck or a co-worker with the power of peer intimidation will do the instructing with respect to a young reporter's lack of knowledge and commitment. Why not invest in that knowledge now, instead of then when so much more is on the line? That is the difference though between being age 18-20 and over 21.

Thanksgiving thoughts

2009-11-20T09:35:00.001-08:00

Students are heading home. The halls of Park are becoming quiet. You can hear the sounds of the heating system, the blowers humming once again. It is always a bit disconcerting when a building that lives so vibrantly through its occupants has these down times -- moments when the computer screens just reflect floating savers and the lights are turned low.
You have to like these moments of serenity as much as the moments of vibrancy.
Outside, the past night's rain has brought remaining leaves down from their perches. The sky light has a different color to it as well.
I don't know that I would call it peaceful. Because there is so much activity taking place among the animals in Central New York. Last minute gathering.
There is no turkey yet in my freezer. I have to travel south on a marathon run to visit my mother who is dying of Alzheimer's. To anyone feeling that pain this holiday, I pray for you and hope you will do the same for my family. I asked my students yesterday how many are dealing with this in one way or another and it was shocking how many hands went up.

October and how is that possible??

2009-10-28T10:28:00.000-07:00

I cannot believe life has been so complicated and chaotic that the last time I posted here was in August. The Rod Serling Conference at Ithaca was wonderful and I talked about Serling's Requiem for a Heavyweight and Mrs. Serling attended. George Clayton Johnson was our keynote speaker and he attended many of the events and he is a charming and erudite individual. That was just a few weeks ago.
Here on the hill, the trees are just past their color peak and today the rain is pouring down. The hunters are on the hill and that means I must watch the dogs carefully.
Students are working quite hard and it is time for advising once again, a laborious but fruitful part of being a professor.
My pumpkin (just one this year, belt-tightening accommodation) awaits its face.I have some thoughts but as usual it will just happen as I carve.
I am making a dress for a costume: go go girl from the 60's. The most atrocious shade of purple with an op art design. Now that will be something to see.
My art exhibit at CSMA was well-received and that is encouraging. All about faces. Hope they raised loads of money for the students who are musically or artistically inclined.
My book is moving along and I am sending out letters looking for a literary agent. Like all authors in the making, that may take time, but I am confident that Legend of Baji will be successful.
I learned this week that memorizing a soliloquy from Shakespeare is not so easy. You know the one that MacBeth makes just prior to offing Duncan. The "is this a dagger" and what I am going to do with it speech. It was fun practicing on the phone with my daughter as she worked tirelessly to get 50 extra points for an assignment at her school to capture to memory MacBeth's long passage with regard to murder most foul. She got her points. Proud moment.
I am going to make eclairs today from scratch in anticipation of tomorrow and class for my Introduction to Journalism students. They must write their own obituaries as part of my ode to Halloween assignment. Obit writing is good practice for disciplined and accurate reporting and every j-student on the planet experiences this at least once in a career I am certain.
My trick for these treats is the filling. I take pudding mix and just mix it with a pint of whipping cream. It's is great and works fabulously well. Light not heavy. Holds its shape. You heard it here.
Have an excellent Halloween. Watch "The Uninvited" with Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey. Or "Forbidden Planet," with Leslie Nielsen. Bake up some pumpkin seeds. Just rinse and soak in some salt and bake for a while and then broil.
And of course, it is not Halloween without caramel apples. Chicago has this so right.

Freshman Welcome

2009-08-24T10:05:00.000-07:00

In just two hours, the new journalism majors will meet us, their faculty. Among us are writers, editors, producers, academic scholars, magazine alums, and frankly, professionals with accumulated experience that can be tapped successfully by this younger generation -- if they make the effort to break the seal. To choose journalism in 2009 is a daring and dashing and often daunting proposition. It has the potential as a choice to wound hearts or to expand them in the way that Dr. Seuss expanded the heart of the Grinch. I like to think that for every freshman I meet today that in 20 years I will later have the chance, health-willing, to shake the hands of professionals who through their efforts, their gifts, their skills, will have changed the world for the better. How will they accomplish this? By staying true to a profession, a life's work, that never broke my heart but only gave it the means to grow so much larger every single day. Good luck IC Journalism Class of 2013. May '13 be your lucky number.

2009-08-04T19:02:00.000-07:00

A fine man, Donald O'Harra, formerly of Colchester, Il., one of the last of that breed known as rural newspaper owner/editor left this world at age 93 in March 2009. He was a privilege to know and a joy to claim as a friend. He will be missed

2009-07-07T11:25:00.000-07:00

2009-07-07T11:16:00.000-07:00

Picking Summer Cherries, Franken, & McNamara

2009-07-07T09:44:00.000-07:00

Good Day World.

Summer Cherries

Looking out my window as I type, the wild daisies, day lilies and ever-present pines are preparing for another thunderstorm. My skies are intermittent: light and dark. Rainbow weather. Earlier I beat the storm as I went out to collect the mail and noticed that the stone fruit tree in the wooded section of the "yard," the sweet cherry, was ripe and heavy with shiny beads of summer good. Taking the plastic bag off the morning newspaper, with one eye on the small beagle who was my assistant, I lunged into the high grass and began to gather cherries. There is an art to this archaic form of summer revelry. I have to stand on tiptoe to grasp the rough thin branches and tug them down to me, balancing my sack in my stronger right hand and picking moist and sticky cherries with my less reliable left. The smell is wonderful and the bees who are here in Upstate New York are willing to share their space with me. Some fruit must be left for the birds. Some fall to the ground for the snakes which I saw for the first time this summer only yesterday. One black and gray spiraling corn snake wiggled through the orange, yellow and red nasturtiums and I recognized him/her from last year. A reddish-orange counterpart warmed itself on the slate wall and we talked, Harry Potterish, about the year that had passed. It just stared at me and seemed to recall I took a picture of it a summer ago. It has grown a great deal and appeared to be ready to shed a skin. There are two non-poisonous varieties that live in my garden and they are welcome. You have to remember as you pick cherries that you are not alone. And as the bag gets fuller, you have to be less greedy. You must tell yourself that dropping a too full bag is such a fool's game. When you leave something for the rest of nature, the taste of a pie or a cobbler is oh so much better. Washed in the same plastic bag, poked free of its water by some subtle surgery, these cherries are cooling in the fridge, envious no doubt of their brethren in the sun, high above my height-challenged fingers.

Franken

Congratulations to Al Franken. The Senate will be a more lively place and if I must say so, living as I do not too far from Elmira and the land of Twain, I can liken this event to a what-if scenario that might have brought the master of mirth of his time to his own political bout back in the day. Humorists and satirists have a keen way of bringing intelligence to argument. Look at Jonathan Swift. Or my friend Twain. Or James Thurber. Or Will Rogers. In Franken's choice of new career, there is potential for the hard-edged whimsy of the humorist to bring a much required dose of observational and directional inquiry to this land when it is needed most.

McNamara

Not so mixed feelings compel me to comment on the death of Robert S. McNamara at age 93 yesterday. Nine decades plus was his time on the Earth. The struggle of this man and the war that invaded his nights of worried slumber is also dramatically tragic in much the same emotional way that those remembering the life of entertainer Michael Jackson today are heart wrestling. Historically, I do not need to recall McNamara's contributions or deletions to humanity's sculpture of deeds and misdeeds. Rather, let me recall one of the victims and heroes whose name is part of a less permanent sculpture in Washington, D.C. The Vietnam War Memorial. The Wall. His name, John Henry Beauchamp Jr., is carved into that structure. Perhaps he is happy about it. It was designed by a then-young architect, Maya Lin. John left ephemera in a worn and jungle-soaked footlocker that attested to his desire to become an architect himself. upon his return from the war. In the footlocker, hand-scribbled on a small notebook was a plan for a house he wanted to build back in Maryland. And other notes, letters, pieces of currency. Photographs. These are my property now, given to me by his mother. Handed to me in a small box, wrested from their footlocker entombment. I tried hard, ethically, journalistically, to deny the gift but she would not let me leave without them. They are in storage now. The first and only time I ever walked away with anything concrete as a reporter that meant something so powerful to someone.
According to published information, Jan C. Scruggs, founder and president of the Memorial Fund, told the press that The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first two American combat casualties of the Vietnam War with a ceremony and wreath laying at The Wall tomorrow, Wednesday, July 8, 2009, at 10:30 a.m. For those attending, please go to the panel that has John Henry's name and say a prayer for him. He was an only son and his parents who lived in Princess Anne, Maryland, were older in the 1980s. I wrote a story about him once when I was a reporter at a small daily newspaper on the Eastern Shore. With a face right out of "Summer of 42" or a beach movie of the 60s, he left so little in his brief mortal time but so much, to his family and of course, to me. His mother had called my newspaper asking if someone could do a story about him. For two decades he had been gone. Beauchamp, pronounced "beech-um," not "bo-cham," in my best French, died on March 16, 1966, just 10 days shy of his 20th birthday., which was March 26, 1946. He came into the world at the end of one war to end all wars and would leave it early in another. If I sound angry it is because I am. I see his face in my dreams and I have in a sense adopted him as a brother in spirit if not in just actual affection. He was the brother I did not have who was eight years older. Mr. McNamara had seven more decades -- perhaps too much time for his burdens of memory. The Beauchamps had John Henry for enormously less of that, a burst of childhood in which to gather memories enduringly long and poignant.

On television as I write, the ceremony honoring the life of Michael Jackson is ongoing. All the major networks are featuring it. Kennedy. Challenger. 9/11. Katrina. Jackson. The need of humanity to marshall its forces to understand its losses -- one life or many -- is striking and phenomenal. When Valentino died, the women of the world wept. When Jackson died, the Neverland in all of us, perhaps, it is necessary to weep again. Cherries, such as those I picked today, are the color of spilled blood. Picked fresh, they stain your hands and leave a mark that wears, not washes away. In that, I will draw this commentary to a close.

2009-07-06T09:00:00.000-07:00

2009-07-06T08:51:00.000-07:00

Mistress of Ephemera

A Conversation With War

To honor: http://www.metmuseum.org/connections/doors

Memoriam

Godspeed Commander Adams

Niagara © 2010 Barbara Audet

A Garden Underground

Reggie, Get Ready

The short short story competition on Red Room: Please Read

It's A Living A Short Short Story

A Garden Underground

WIng Building

On the Act of Being Free

Spring

Making Ends Meet: March Madnesses

What People Ought to Know

Thanksgiving thoughts

October and how is that possible??

Freshman Welcome

An Eternal Flame for Those Whose Names Are On the Wall © 2009 Barbara Audet

A May Moon for Michael Jackson ©2009 Barbara Audet

Picking Summer Cherries, Franken, & McNamara