Onager Editions

BEING HUMAN

2012-02-15T12:14:00.000-08:00

an anthology

Twelve authors and fifteen stories on the nature of being human and the human character in both the natural environment and human-made world constitute this stimulating book. The stories are engaging, memorable, contemplative, and even humorous. While we have constructed, over thousands of years, a vast cathedral of scintillating, rational humanity, we can be primal and shadowy with visceral emotions – and so this collection admirably demonstrates. There are many difficult questions posed in the book. Why do we kill certain creatures while nurturing others? When do we draw the line between protecting our property and letting other creatures live and thrive? What drives people to kill others to protect their land? Many of these stories explore the lines cast under the surface of creation, characters looking for a nibble of understanding to make better sense of their place in an evolving world.

CONTRIBUTORS: Stephen Poleskie, Arthur Powers, Lisa M. Sita, Andrea Vojtko, Jeff Vande Zande, James K. Zimmerman, Anne Whitehouse, Janyce Stefan-Cole, Patty Somlo, Rivka Keren, Kelly Wantuch, Larry Eby

FOREWORD: Ian S. Maloney, Ph.D.

Published by: Editions Bibliotekos

http://www.ebibliotekos.com/

publisher@ebibliotekos.com

Available at bookstores or online

WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

2012-02-01T17:57:00.000-08:00

Wisława Szymborska died on 1 February 2012 in Poland. She was one of Poland's greatest poets and won the Nobel Prize for Poetry in 1996. Showing great strength in times of trouble, she survived the Nazis and the Communists and lived to tell about it with clarity, honesty, humor, and charm. She will be remembered.

Here is one of her poems as a tribute.

ON DEATH, WITHOUT EXAGGERATION

It can't take a joke,
find a star, make a bridge.
It knows nothing about weaving, mining, farming,
building ships, or baking cakes.

In our planning for tomorrow,
it has the final word,
which is always beside the point.

It can't even get the things done
that are part of its trade:
dig a grave,
make a coffin,
clean up after itself.

Preoccupied with killing,
it does the job awkwardly,
without system or skill.
As though each of us were its first kill.

Oh, it has its triumphs,
but look at its countless defeats,
missed blows,
and repeat attempts!

Sometimes it isn't strong enough
to swat a fly from the air.
Many are the caterpillars
that have outcrawled it.

All those bulbs, pods,
tentacles, fins, tracheae,
nuptial plumage, and winter fur
show that it has fallen behind
with its halfhearted work.

Ill will won't help
and even our lending a hand with wars and coups d'etat
is so far not enough.

Hearts beat inside eggs.
Babies' skeletons grow.
Seeds, hard at work, sprout their first tiny pair of leaves
and sometimes even tall trees fall away.

Whoever claims that it's omnipotent
is himself living proof
that it's not.

There's no life
that couldn't be immortal
if only for a moment.

Death
always arrives by that very moment too late.

In vain it tugs at the knob
of the invisible door.
As far as you've come
can't be undone.

* * *

Below is a link to an interview conducted by John Guzlowski with Michal Rusinek, a poet and translator, who served as Ms. Szymborska's secretary. Although it only speaks briefly about Ms. Szymborska the interview offers insight in to her personality.

http://writingpolishdiaspora.blogspot.com/2012/02/interview-with-michal-rusinek-wislawa.html

* * *

Happy New Year

2012-01-31T19:01:00.000-08:00

Happy and Peaceful New Year from Polish Art Critic Szymon Bojko

THE FIX IS IN: a collection of poetry

2012-01-30T18:07:00.000-08:00

TISH PEARLMAN, the host of the award-winning weekly public radio program “Out of Bounds” is also a poet. Her first chapbook “The Fix Is In” has been published by Finishing Line Press. This is a very personal collection that focuses on her 2009 open heart surgery experience. Two of the poems in her collection will also be appearing in the 2011 edition of “The Healing Muse.”

Dr. Diedre Nielson, who teaches at SUNY Upstate Medical University and edits “The Healing Muse” says of Pearlman's book of poems: “The Fix Is In” is not for the faint of heart; these are bold, passionate, and sometimes angry poems that describe the speaker's attempt to reclaim health and mind after a "routine" medical procedure goes wrong. Images of light and dark, fire and water transcend their usual metaphors and become their own doubles. A poem from the book “Vertigo” appears below:

Vertigo

I dodged the darkness

by the light of the

light

and the measurement

of breath

comes like a wave in a

wave

in a mist

Is it a song?

Is the breath voicing

a hymn

to the power

of being fully a dream

in a dream within a

dream I sing I sing

and am tossed within

a swirling darkening darkness

as the stars by the light of the light

awaken

and bring me home

***

Tish Pearlman is a writer, broadcast journalist and activist originally from Manhattan Beach, California. She is currently the creator, host, and producer of the award-winning public radio interview show “Out of Bounds.” The program airs on NPR affiliates WEOS-FM and WSKG-FM in central New York as well as an affiliate in Wisconsin

For more information or to contact her, please visit her website:

www.outofboundsradioshow.com

To order book:

http://www.amazon.com/Fix-Tish-Pearlman/dp/1599248069/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327978584&sr=8-1

FRANCIUM

2011-12-23T17:45:00.000-08:00

Jeanne Mackin

an essay

Nature is always mysterious and secret in her use of means; and art is always likest her when it is most inexplicable. That execution which is least comprehensible and which therefore defies imitation, other qualities being supposed alike, is the best.

Ruskin

FRANCIUM IS A METAL SO RARE we can only guess at its color. With a half-life of twenty-two minutes and a melting point so low this metal would be liquid at room temperature, it is an element of dream time. Scientists speculate that at any given moment less than thirty grams of it exist on the entire planet. It is measured in atoms, not cupfuls, and even the atoms are measured in thousands, not billions. They have to be trapped in laser beams in a magnetic field, briefly floating like snow flakes in the glow of a street light and then melting back into a great unknown. Francium is so rare that we don’t even have a use for it. We will live our lives without ever seeing this metal, without experiencing its catastrophically brief existence.

There was a boy once, like that. By accident, though there may be no such thing, we sat next to each other in a pub in Boston, listening to revolutionary songs of a different country. I saw him from the corner of my eye, never looking straight on, his black hair and white skin, the kind of coloring you often find in people who recite from memory lines from Yeats. We drank brown foamy beer and drew codes in the sawdust floor with the toes of our boots. He was with his friends, I with mine. Yet we knew we were together. His arm slowly, inevitably curled around my waist, under my coat, where no one could see it, but I could feel it. We didn’t look at each other. We hadn’t spoken a word to each other, yet we belonged to each other. This is not a true story, you see. It is a story of unstable elements, of unknowable colors, of rare metals and all that we cannot see of existence, all that cannot be imitated. It is a story of solitude and rarity.

The door opens. A cold wind blows into the pub, and the codes in the sawdust of the floor are wiped away by the draft. We shiver and grow aware, leave behind the dream time. His arm snakes away back into its private Eden but it leaves behind this memory of a boy and a cold night and that knowledge of rarity, of immeasurability. The memory lasts longer than the moment and that is how we know we are, and have been.

We exist in a single moment surrounded by before and after, and when the boy who is and always will be a stranger removes his arm from around the waist of the girl who is a stranger, the moment changes, before and after changes. We measure such moments by atoms of the unexpected, not cupfuls of what is known. And sometimes the atoms of the unexpected create larger memories than those cupfuls of what we know. What is the half-life of such a moment, that decades later I am still trying to measure its atoms?

***

JEANNE MACKIN is the author of five novels and numerous stories and essays. She is also the author of three mysteries published under the name Anna Maclean. Her novels have also been published in England and Japan. She has worked as a journalist and as a science writer at Cornell University where she received a number of national awards. She has taught writing at Ithaca College, and is presently on the MFA Creative Writing faculty at Goddard College.

A HOT SUMMER DAY

2011-12-08T17:13:00.000-08:00

SASHA THURMOND

a short story

Make a plan. O.K. . . . Do many farm chores. It was 100 degree temperature with a heat index factor of 112 degrees. Mighty hot and humid, but I had many plans for this steamy, South Carolina summertime day. First I bought 40 bales of hay and grain for my horse. Then, I unloaded all of them into my barn. I was on a roll. Forget the fact that I had a back operation and an entire new hip installed after I broke mine.

I had just gotten a new rim and tire for my tractor, so I would mow the lawn. Yeah . . . it was working like a charm. Then suddenly the tractor "bites dirt." What the heck happened ?" I wondered . . . I was cockeyed. The new rim and tire was rolling away on it's own destiny. Curses! But no grass was going to grow under my feet! I got back into my truck with the wayward tire and dented new rim, and backed up my truck to head back to the tire store.

But, something jolted and slammed me abruptly forward. I had backed into a tree. I was getting a tad irritated at this point. I live alone, and had no one to vent to except for my many pets, and they thought I was just "Me being Me!" So, what to do next ? Check out the damage. The back end of my tailgate was badly dented, and I could not open the tailgate. As I was yanking it with all my might, the handle came off in my hand, and I landed hard on my butt!

So...I grabbed a sledge hammer and whack-whack-whack!!!!! It just dented my tail gate more, but it felt good at the time. I fancied that this was how Lizzy Borden felt whacking her family. This alarmed me. I'm a pacifist. What to do next ? I thought in desperation. Suddenly, it hit me. I decided to take things to the dump. Make my load in life lighter. I hurled clothes, pictures, all sorts of things I came upon I randomly, with feverish abandon, I threw it all in my truck till it was piled high, and merrily off I went to the local dump. Another thing that felt good while I was doing it. So . . . I did two more dump trips, and fleetingly thought of calling it a day. But NOOOOOOOOO not I.

Suddenly my attention hit upon my chickens in their coop. I felt sorry for them being cooped up all the time. I wanted them to be free during the day time, and safe in their kennel at night, though, their enclosure was very large and roomy for them. My first dog down here would not hurt a flea, and the baby chicks used to nestle right upon him. I knew that my next two dogs didn't have his same temperament , but I thought I could ease them into it. I mean, the chicken's enclosure was right next to the dog's kennel, they were neighbors. So, I put leashes on both my dogs, and let the rooster and two hens out of their compound.

BLAM! Both dogs lunged forward "like a speeding bullet," I fell face forward in the sand, and each dog chased the rooster and one hen into the woods. "Not a good idea," I tell myself. So I was horrified when both dogs returned with their dead prizes. I scooped up both chickens, threw them in my truck, and raced over to my neighbors who also had chickens, and they often ate them, as well as eating their eggs. I told them what had happened, and wouldn't they like to dress and eat my dead chickens ? At least I could do some gesture that would make some goodness out of my big, manic blunder. But no such luck. They would not eat them because they were bruised where my dogs bit into them."So don't eat the bruised part, give it to your dogs." I suggested.

But they wouldn't relent, and instead asked me if I was all right, because my fervent nature was concerning them. "Oh yes, I am just fine. . .but better if I could start my day all over again!!!!" So off I went with great regret, and took my chickens to the dump where my dogs would never find them. All sorts of strange things get dumped into containers -- even people. Sketchy pasts are not good to live with.

I was winding down, but not much. I have often thought that being Catholic would be a good thing -- just go to the priest after committing a sin or indiscretion, and be forgiven, and told to say a few Hail Mary's then back to the races. Not being Catholic, I went to the hospital to talk with someone . . . a safety net for myself. I know to do this. If I am "in a tizzy," chill, or do my art. That is a positive way to get centered again. When I am feeling manic, everything is a great idea, but don't act upon it!!!!!

Remember the rooster?!!!!!!!!!!! Remember that "this too shall pass?" "The best made plans can go asunder," and "I am not alone." So, when back in sorts, I drove home. I wondered what happened to my big, white hen, "Guenivere." She was unaccounted for. The dogs probably found her after I was gone. I had her the longest, and she laid a big, brown egg daily.

My dogs ran to greet me. They probably thought I had more chicken goodies. The chicken kennel door was ajar, and I saw something white high on a perch inside. Goodness gracious . . . it was my big white hen "Guenivere"!!!!!!!! A force of nature returned her to me. I didn't question it . . . I just went with it. It was a joyous note after a long, hard, emotional day. It was the "silver lining." Life could be good. I knew that I would sleep tonight.

***

Sasha Thurmond is a graduate of Cornell University's MFA program in Printmaking. She lives on a farm in South Carolina where she raises animals, rides her horse, makes prints and writes stories. The image accompanying this story is one of her works, which she makes using a computer program and hand drawing. She is also an avid blogger and maintains several blogs under various titles.

Editions Bibliotekos: Preparing Another Book Launch

2011-11-26T18:06:00.000-08:00

Editions Bibliotekos: Preparing Another Book Launch: The human factor. What is that? The phrase is used by one of the many people who answered our call for fiction for a nature-themed anthol...

AIRS & VOICES, a book of poetry

2011-09-26T17:42:00.000-07:00

Paula Bonnell

My personal lawyer is also a writer of crime thrillers. I can deal with that, most people need a day job, and he finds his material in his cases. Now here comes Paula Bonnell, a practicing lawyer who writes poetry. So where to start? I tried reading these poems as if I did not know that they were written by someone with “esquire” after their name. Then I remembered that Wallace Stevens was also a lawyer, albeit a corporate one.

Ms. Bonnell’s book of poems, “Airs & Voices” was the winner of the 2006 John Ciardi Prize for poetry. Juror Mark Jarman writes in the forward that Paula Bronnell’s voice “is fresh and original. Though the poet never labors to be significant, even the slightest poem lingers in memory.” And Maxine Kumin adds: “Bonnell’s voice is low key but full of quirky insights.”

The more I read these poems, the less I knew about Ms. Bronnell, or perhaps the more. Was I struggling too hard to find the lawyer behind each one. Is there a virtue in separating ones work from ones art—or is it a sin? And so I came to the poem “Evidence.” Now here comes a good bit of disclosure, I thought, but alas it was only about a curious woodpecker. I personally was taken by the strangeness of the imagery in this and other poems.

The book is filled with many “quirky insights” mixed with questions to ponder, such as these words from “The Faraway Nearby”:

I could live in the next life

If only I could get to it.

To quote Paula Bonnell from an interview she gave to Heather Clark: “We live in the present—or do we? How much space does ‘the present’ occupy between ‘then’ and ‘when’”? Reading Ms. Bonnell’s book may put us closer to finding out.

AIRS & VOICES

ISBN 978-1-886157-62-0-0, 74 pages, trade paperback, $13.95

BkMk Press, University of Missouri-Kansas City

www.umkc.edu/bkmk

***

LIGHTNING AND ASHES

2011-07-29T18:21:00.000-07:00

A Collection of Poems

by John Guzlowski

WHAT MORE CAN ONE SAY about this collection of poems than has not already been said by the Polish poet and Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz. “In [Guzlowski’s] poems the land of his parents and the work camps are always present, although at the same time they are only part of his poetic repertoire. [T]here are a lot of completely different poems . . . free of the burden of the past. This slim volume even astonished me with its doubleness. The first part summons precisely the camp images from the life of the author’s parents, who were treated by the Nazis like beasts of burden. Their awkward language, because they were both half-literate, was for the Nazi’s a language of mules. The second part reveals an enormous ability for grasping reality at some distance.”

In Lightning and Ashes Guzlowski takes on his father’s vision, through his own eyes, to recreate a past that he has not known, and then uses his father’s eyes to recreate a youth that he has lived. In this way he becomes both the actor and the audience in a drama of his own creation. The poems cause us to speculate how the author’s family might have live had WWII not happened, and then relates, unforgettably, what actually did happen, and its effects on the family long after the war was over.

Although the death camps in WWII may seem as an unlikely topic for poetry, and perhaps a matter that has been too much explored, Guzlowski’s sensitive, yet strong use of the language brings a new dimension to the subject. These poems remind us we should not forget that human suffering is universal. What went on in these camps in the 1940s still goes on today; brought on by the same reasons of race, religion and economic differences.

And my father will shovel

in terror and think of the words

he will not say: Sirs, we are all

brothers, and if this war ever ends,

please, never tell your children

what you’ve done to me today.

I must admit that I rarely read a book of poetry completely, more often skipping to individual poems that catch my fancy, but Lightning and Ashes was an exception. I do not hesitate to give this collection my highest recommendation.

~Pearson Oldmitz

STEEL TOE BOOKS

Western Kentucky University

$12.00, 86 Pages ISBN 978-0-9743264-5-0

http://Lightning-and-Ashes.blogspot.com/

***

Louisa May Alcott as a Detective

2011-06-11T19:40:00.001-07:00

This is a reissue, in trade paperback, of a book originally published in 2004. Upon rereading the book I see that my original opinion has not changed, in fact I enjoyed the book even more the second time around when, knowing the plot, I could concentrate on the author's rich prose style. The new format makes the book even easier to read, and the new cover design is more appealing than the previous one. The publisher is still Penguin but the book is now out under the Obsidian imprint. Alison Lurie writing in the The New York Review of Books calls it: "A historically accurate and entertaining mystery series." The two other volumes will be reissued in the coming months.

A new sleuth has arrived on the scene, the author Louisa May Alcott. Ms. Alcott was known to have written a few thrillers herself when not writing things like "Little Women." Anna Maclean has gone back and recreated this aspect of Louisa's life with amazing fidelity; however Ms. Alcott does not just write mysteries, but also solves them.

Written with the precision and skill of her historical novels, Jean Mackin creates a minor masterpiece in her debut as Anna Maclean, mystery writer. The plot winds itself in and around pre-Civil War Boston with the beauty and complexity of a Medieval tapestry. The story is entangled with numerous characters functioning on many levels, often seeming to contradict themselves, leading us down many blind alleys. I must admit I could not put this book down. Just when I thought I had figured out who the guilty party was I discovered some new reason why they did not do it. The ending is quite a surprise. If you are looking for an entertaining historical mystery, and value good writing, I give this book my highest recommendation.

ISBN 978-0-451-23324-0 $14.00 U.S. 16.50 CAN. 319 pages

COLORS: Passages through Art, Asia, and Nature

2011-05-16T19:03:00.000-07:00

A Review
_____________________________________________________________________

Sarah Sutro’s book, COLORS: Passages through Art, Asia, and Nature, can perhaps be described by Bill McKibben’s words from the preface: “This book is quite literally about local color—about where color came from, or came from before it was synthesized and globalized in the same manner as food and music and pretty much everything else. When that happened much of the meaning drained out of color, just as it drained out of everything else.” However, the book also is about much more.

COLORS is about the life of an artist, and how art grows inside of a person. It is about how an artist can see art in the most insignificant of things, and how, once that art has been discovered, it must be brought out, despite all obstacles set in front of its creation.

In this book we learn of the author’s, who is also a visual artist, quest for beauty and truth in Nature. Sarah Sutro is an “artist’s artist,” as well as a teacher, a wife and mother, an intrepid traveler, and a cancer survivor. In her travels to many places exotic and mundane, all described in the book, Sarah is always looking, and learning, and making art. Hers is a pure and precious cultural quest, producing work that reaches a wide audience.

COLORS is a fine book, well written and filled with interesting stories, history, memories, observations, morals, and recipes for dyes as well as food. If you have never thought about why things are certain colors, or how this affects your life, you should read this book.

Highly Recommended

BLUE ASIA PRESS
N. Adams, MA (

USA

)
Paperback, 129 pages, ISBN: 9781456373337

AND YOUR BIRD CAN SING

2011-05-05T18:45:00.000-07:00

A 1966 VILLAGE VOICE listing describes Stephen Poleskie’s The Bird Film as “allegorical slapstick.” That’s half right. While the comical chaos of the film certainly is slapstick, it’s hard to find much in the way of allegory, and this is to the film’s credit.

The Bird Film opens with an American flag, then a figure in binoculars and a funny hat (the “birdwatcher”) rises into the shot. The political viewer, aware that this film was made in a famously turbulent era, might be tempted to begin reading allegorically at this point, but would find that reading stunted, probably less than a minute later when the birdwatcher is attacked by an actor in a bear mask, who is in turn attacked by the Indian, who wears a box on his head that is painted in the “exotic” colors you might expect one of any number of cartoon Indians to wear. Instead of allegory, The Bird Film gives us something much more valuable: a short work made by young artists who are clearly enjoying experimentation with the form

The Bird Film is an 18 minute chase scene. Troublesome narrative components such as plot and character are left out, though to say that the chase simply serves to move the film forward wouldn’t be true. There is a certain order being followed here. After all, the film begins with a birdwatcher, who chases after the bird (played by Warhol superstar Deborah Lee). A bear chases the birdwatcher. An Indian chases the bear. As it turns out, the birdwatcher, the bear, and the Indian, all end up chasing the bird.

Scenes range from an imaginary environment constructed in a Manhattan loft to a creek, where the bird lady performs interpretive dance in the water, to a pretty pasture that was the farm of Elaine de Kooning (the film’s associate producer).

Deborah Lee plays the bird with the aloof grace of a dancer performing for no one but herself. She pauses from time to time to pose and reflect. As a director, Poleskie indulges himself by letting Lee poetically extend her arms, bend her legs, and arch her back, imbuing the short with a dream-like quality to break up the slapstick of the chase.

Watching The Bird Film once through, you enjoy it for its levity, strangeness, and photographic beauty. A second time through, you begin to notice things you didn’t notice the first time around. A man in a wheelbarrow reads a Daily News with the headline, “Gangs Raid 2 Subway Trains.” The next time we see him, about 20 seconds later, he is reading a New York Post with the headline, “Break In Miss.” Go ahead and watch it a third time. Your enjoyment is likely to increase with each viewing, but if you want to find out what it all means, you may want to take your business elsewhere. The Bird Film is a celebration more than it is a statement.

My favorite scene in The Bird Film occurs at about the 13 minute mark. After dodging the birdwatcher, the bear, and the Indian, the bird pauses on a rock to pose before a spring. The soundtrack at this point turns from hectic chase scene instrumentation to ethereal vocals. Deborah Lee turns to the camera, smiles, and lifts her arms in a gesture that says “Is this what I’m supposed to be doing?” In the same way the newspaper headlines hint at a world somewhere on the outside, Lee’s gesture, a shot that would have been edited out of a more “serious” film, speaks to the youthful chaos and joy that beats at this work’s center.

Stephen Poleskie, director and writer of The Bird Film (1966), is an Ithaca based artist, writer, and photographer. His artwork is in the collections of numerous museums, including the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Tate Gallery in London. His writing has appeared in journals such as American Writing and Essays & Fictions, and he has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Poleskie wrote and directed The Bird Film. The Bird Film will be showing this Friday, May 6, at Arcades Project. The film will be looped continually throughout the night.

David Nelson Pollock is a founder of Arcades Project and a co-founding editor of Essays & Fictions.

Tagged as: Arcades Project, Bird Film, David Nelson Pollock, Stephen Poleskie, The Commons

ACORN'S CARD: a review

2011-04-30T19:05:00.000-07:00

____________________________________________________________________

ACORN'S CARD is a novella and two accompanying short stories. In the title novella an AWOL soldier returns to the downstairs after thirty-three years of hiding in his mother’s attic to find the old woman dead. But what should he do with her body? He can’t just call an undertaker—he is supposed to have died years ago. And how will he provide for himself, as his mother has left little money in the house? By chance a pre-approved credit card application arrives in the mail. John Acorn fills it out and a card is issued to him. Now he can buy whatever he wants, with no thought of how he will pay when the statement comes. He decides to buy a used hearse and drive his mother to the cemetery and bury her. But first John will take his mother on a ride, during which he finds the world considerably changed from what he remembered it to be. Meanwhile, the hearse has a plan of its own. You will be surprised by the ending of this strange and fascinating story.

In the first of the short stories an immigrant plumber bribes a policeman into not giving him a traffic ticket with a loaf of bread; while in the other a plastic garbage bag flies around the sky looking for a new beginning.

Poleskie’s plots are brilliantly conceived and original. He is a skillful writer with a brilliant sense of the language, at times probing, yet glorious and magical, much in the manner of Bruno Schulz. If you prefer your reading a bit out of the ordinary, and you still understand what a metaphor is, Acorn’s Card is an excellent choice.

Highly Recommended

Acorn’s Card

Onager Editions, 2011, ISBN 978 -1- 60047 – 558 – 0

Paperback, 125 pages, $12.00 USD

http://www.amazon.com/Acorns-Card-Stephen-Poleskie/dp/1600475582/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1304216133&sr=1-1

HAYWIRE: a review

2011-04-04T18:40:00.000-07:00

Having grown up in northeastern Pennsylvania, in a time before "bullying" had become a hot topic for TV talk show hosts, I can relate to the plight of the narrator of Thaddeus Rutkowski's latest novel HAYWIRE. Back then to be different: shorter, smarter, reads books, makes art, and doesn't play sports, was a good reason to be beaten up, or have your head split with a rock. Rutkowski's hero has all of the above, plus he is biracial The boy grows up, despite a repressive father, and gets on with his life in this witty and sometimes sad novel.

Written in a deadpan manner, the reader is pulled along at a fast pace. Alison Lurie has called Rutkowski, "one of the most original writers in America today. Author Ned Vizzini says: "HAYWIRE aims high and succeeds brilliantly. Fine writing and hilarity were to be expected -- what surprises is the underlying message of hope in a unforgiving world."

At times giddy and slightly surrealistic, HAYWIRE is highly moralistic, providing us with a look at the recent past, while posing questions about the future. This can clearly be seen in the books last paragraph: On my way up the mountain, I find that the slope is not only steep, it's vertical. There's a steel ladder I can hold on to, but even when I'm holding on, I'm afraid of falling. I look for a place to rest, a flat area where I can get off the ladder. But I don't see any ledges wide enough to stand on. Moving sideways would lead to empty air. So I keep climbing.

Highly Recommended
~Sidney Grayling

HAYWIRE Thaddeus Rutkowski Starcherone Books, Buffalo, NY, ISBN 978-0-9842133-1-3 298 pages, USD $18.00

PRISM

2011-02-27T12:42:00.000-08:00

JEANNE MACKIN

Wherever chiaroscuro enters, colour must lose some of its brilliancy. There is no shade in a rainbow, nor in an opal, nor in a piece of mother-of-pearl

– John Ruskin

LIGHT CAN BE SLOWED DOWN, can be made to reconsider its own path, its own desire for velocity. When light passes through glass, moving from thin air to that other more substantial material, it slows and makes a slight detour we call refraction. Refraction is matter’s way of saying: “Let’s rethink this.” Shine light through a diamond and it slows its speed by almost half because of the density of the crystal. If you lived inside a diamond, you would be twenty-five when your peers were fifty; you would live twice as long, and twice as slowly.

That Thanksgiving Day it was warm, and humid, so after dinner we went outside, full of a strange energy. In the western sky over the new-growth forest, we saw a triple rainbow. A double happens once in a while, but there were three in the sky that day after the storm, one inside the other, and we looked at them, knowing we would never see such a thing again, no matter how long we lived. The rarity of it locked us into silence; we grappled with the event the way medievalists must have contended with comets or halos around the moon, with wonder and fear as well. Wonder and fear refract our direction, bend it into new paths. The wonder takes hold of us and says “I have caught you. The fear says “I am going to change you whether you wish it or not. From now on, up will be down, and inside will be outside.” But wonder cannot last. Colors fade, especially in a rainbow.

After matter emerged from chaos, the first miracle was the creation of light, and with light came time. With time, came shadows. When the triple rainbow began to fade, we came to ourselves, the way sleepers awake, slowly and with confusion. We went back indoors carrying new desires with us and I wished I had seen the triple rainbow when I was a child, not a grown up. I think somehow things would have been different. I cleared the table of our dirtied dishes and glasses and the vase of yellow garden mums.

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Author’s biography

JEANNE MACKIN is the author of several novels and has published short fiction and creative nonfiction in journals and periodicals including American Letters and Commentary and SNReview. She was the recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the American Antiquarian Society and is an award-winning journalist. She teaches creative writing in the MFA Program at Goddard College in Vermont.

“Prism” is an excerpt from a text to accompany photographs by artist Steve Poleskie. The text and photo exhibit, titled “Light and Shadow” will be exhibited at Bright Hill Literary Center in Treadwell, New York, in June 2011.

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2010-04-09T17:45:00.000-07:00

Did Lindberg Have a Secret Copilot?

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A Review

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In his latest novel, “Vigilia’s Tempest,” author Stephen Poleskie confronts history as it has been written by posing the question: What if Charles Lindbergh had a secret copilot with him to keep him from falling asleep on his famous flight from New York to Paris, and what if the man who flew with him was still alive? If he could be found, what would he tell us? And why has he kept hidden all these years? Poleskie, an aviator himself, constructs this complicated and perplexing story with a virtuoso display of practical expertise, compassion, and poetic vibrancy.

When John Vigilia, a well-known American stunt pilot, and university professor, lands at an abandoned air base in Canada to avoid a thunderstorm he meets a strange old man named Caliban who tells him the story of his twin brother, Ariel, who as a young boy flew with Charles Lindbergh as his secret copilot on his famous solo trans-Atlantic flight. The copilot was supposedly picked up in Nova Scotia and dropped off on a beach in Ireland, while Lindberg went on to Paris, and to fame, alone. Seeking a diversion after his wife’s sudden death, John Vigilia travels to Europe to explore the truth behind the Lindbergh story he had heard. Unexpectedly, John finds himself in the middle of a decades-old international intrigue. Has John discovered the conspiracy of the century, or is it just the old man’s hoax? And why is John Vigilia now being followed everywhere, and has had an attempt made on his life? One might be tempted to call “Vigilia’s Tempest” a “literary thriller.”

Poleskie takes Vigilia through a series of adventures in Ireland, Rome, Como, and Munich, before finally allowing him to catch up with the alleged copilot, Ariel Angelucci, in Locarno, Switzerland. Ariel reveals that he was indeed in the airplane with Lindbergh when he flew across the Atlantic. Not sure if he believes Ariel’s story, Vigilia takes the man up for a flight in a biplane to see if he really knows how to fly. The old man wants to do some “stunts,” but has a heart attack at the top of a loop, jamming the controls and causing John to crash.

John Vigilia wakes up confined in a private clinic on an island in the Lago Maggiore. He is told that, despite what he believes, there was no one in the airplane with him when he crashed. When his injuries heal, but he is not released, John realizes that he is being held prisoner at the clinic because of what he now knows.

Does Vigilia ever get off the island? I am not going to spoil it by telling you. Suffice it to say that he has a few more adventures, and even a love affair, yet to go before the end of the book. The conclusion is both tragic and uplifting, as are all Poleskie’s endings, confirming the author’s strong sense of the continuity of life.

Poleskie, who writes with a rich and full vocabulary, in the manner of such European authors as Bruno Schulz and Witold Gombrowicz, and with the dark praise of obscurity and failure found in Fernando Pessoa, also manages a tip of the hat to William Shakespeare. “Vigilia’s Tempest” is filled with numerous storms, an island, and character names and chapter quotes from Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest.” At 500 pages this is the longest of Poleskie’s novels to date, but the plot’s many characters and interesting twists will keep the reader engrossed until the very end, and then even wanting more.

Sidney Grayling

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Trafford Publishing, Victoria, BC, 2010, ISBN: 978-1-4269-2946

To view the video trailer click link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY5eCVRnDw0

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Available from www.Amazon.com

LISE LEMELAND Artist and Aerobat

2010-03-10T16:49:00.000-08:00

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Why aerobatics? Leonardo Da Vinci once wrote: “When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” The decision to take a biplane ride two years ago was a spontaneous one, but the decision to pursue flying was very deliberate. Upon my first taste of flight in a small aircraft, I knew there was a potential subject that needed to be explored. Every flight from that first day forward has confirmed this belief, and I have committed myself in every respect to this unusual form of research.

The research process began with flight training: hours in the plane, learning all stick and rudder aspects of flying; hours studying written materials, written, oral and flight tests. The inspirational biplane flight, also an aerobatic ride, led me to experience upset-training, spin-training, and aerobatic training first hand.

Now, in addition to being a licensed pilot, I have learned to fly loops, rolls and spins (among other variations); I can also fly inverted. I can achieve the disorienting perspectives that originally inspired me, and doing so is more mind-boggling than I ever imagined.

And suddenly, it dawns on me that I am an artist/aerobat. I am not one during the week and the other on the weekend; I am both, all of the time. The artist’s eyes filter everything I see when I fly, recording images and memories of the senses, both visual and physiological. The aerobat in me, who knows flying from the inside, brings the information to the studio. The artist translates the language of flight into form. And I realize I would never have made this work without becoming a pilot; and now that I am a pilot I will never see the world—or my work-- in the same way.

I consider myself an ambitious person, and have always tried to embrace my passions fully and without fear. In just two years, while maintaining a full-time teaching career, my studio practice and a family of three children (as a single mother until recently), I got my pilot’s license. I began aerobatic training while still a student-- even though it was initially suggested I wait until I got my license. In August 2009 I was awarded a highly competitive national scholarship for aerobatics, called the Douglas Yost Memorial Scholarship. A month later, I went to my first aerobatic competition and, placing 4th, won the Best 1st-Time Sportsman award. I was the first woman—ever-- on the Boston Chapter 35 Aerobatic Team, and one of two women in a field of 50 competitors at the contest.

The collision of art and aerobatics is something I believe in. I am devoting my life and my art to it, embracing the risks, both in my studio and in the air.

Statement

You haven't seen a tree until you've seen its shadow from the sky. ~Amelia Earhart

I have had a longstanding fascination with pattern and the decorative arts from other cultures, and this interest in pattern has been the core of my work for years. Ornament appeals to me, both as form and as subject. I have looked to many sources for pattern, in particular carpets, embroidery, textiles and lace. I originally chose lace as an image due to its association with femininity and decoration, its explicit ornamental quality, and its open and delicate character. Lace embraces the beautiful, the extravagant, and the intricate. In my more recent work, lace has reinvented its identity; it is a sign for clouds, symbolizing their whiteness and their veiled layers. The patterned field becomes a metaphor for both the invisible layers of atmosphere in our sky, and the dense layers of foliage on land.

Previously, my work addressed pattern and decoration as its subject. My world was literally turned upside-down the day I took my first aerobatic flight in the summer of 2007. From that moment on, I knew I needed to learn how to fly an airplane, After a lot of flying and studying, I got my pilot’s license and began doing aerobatic training.

Post-flying, pattern and decoration have become just one of my visual languages. The thematic shift in my work to aerobatics shifted the form, and I found that the symmetry is not always important. One of the biggest shifts this year came with the entrance of the horizon line in my paintings. Using the horizon has allowed me to orient the viewer, giving a cockpit view or an aerial view. Runways are distorted, and upside down. Small, dotted aerobatic airplanes execute snap rolls, hammerheads, spins, and loops through the paintings. There are also references to the aerobatic box, an imaginary 3,000 square foot cube of air that is suspended over the ground and in which all aerobatic maneuvers must be executed in competition aerobatics.

Flying aerobatics is a sensory thrill, but it is physically taxing. In defiance of gravity, the G-forces affect a pilot physically. In the stomach, the range is from butterflies to nausea, to being utterly sick. Other gravity-induced sensations are cranial pressure, severe G-headache, seeing stars and graying out during flight (a precursor to blacking out). Visually, aerobatics provides stunning new perspectives that literally upset everything that one might take for granted: the horizon can turn around a wingtip or an airplane’s nose with mesmerizing grace. I strive to express these physiological experiences through the paintings.

I use aeronautical maps, called sectionals in the work and their function is similar to patterning, except that they also impart specific information. Most of the maps I use are of the places I have flown frequently. The function of the maps is also to orient the viewer and to give information about the land below.

Patterns, layers, and color are still the foundations upon which these paintings are constructed. By combining and recontextualizing various images: lace, maps, airplanes and aerobatic diagrams, my intent is to generate new meaning. At its heart, this work is about embracing the thrill and majesty of flight. It celebrates extreme flying with visual splendor: it is the reflection of the experience.

Lise Lemeland, 2009

Lise Lemeland's work will be on exhibit at the 222E41Gallery in New York City unti April 9

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http://www.liselemeland.com/

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"Aileron Roll" Acrylic, 2009

Review: Order of Protection: Nino Lama

2009-12-12T18:34:00.000-08:00

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In a perfect world there would be no need for lawyers; they could all retire and write books. But where would that leave the pretend lawyers who are now best-selling authors? perhaps in a fresh and crowded field. Nino Lama is a real lawyer, a trial lawyer, not just deeds, wills, and divorces. He has won landmark decisions, and had his life threatened more than a few times. And he writes books; vivid and accurate novels based on actual cases he has handled, and people he has known.

In his latest novel, “Order of Protection,” Nino’s father and son team of Vince and Mike DiMarco are plunged into a double mystery. When a longtime friend is served a order of protection, barring him any contact with his wife and children, the law firm also becomes entwined in his domestic life, a hell-hole full of adultery, addiction, embezzlement, and alcoholism. While on the other side of town, Vince’s trusted airplane mechanic is involved in a Federal investigation when a small plane he worked on crashes and its two passengers are killed.

Everyone in town seems to have their own opinion of what is going on as the two cases apparently become related; leaving Vince and Mike caught in the middle, and faced with the difficult task of getting to the bottom of things while trying to protect their clients.

As with Lama’s first two books in the Vince DiMarco series this book is fast-paced and well written and will keep you engaged, and guessing, right up until the very end. I do not hesitate to give it my highest recommendation.

Sidney Grayling

GRATER LIFE; More Than a Collection of Stories

2009-03-22T18:54:00.000-07:00

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Stephen Poleskie’s latest work of fiction Grater Life is a complex and original book. Written in what could probably be labeled the novel-in-stories format, it is neither a novel, nor a collection of stories. A more accurate description would be a “novel about stories.”

The book has three narrators; the patient, Janus; the visitor, John; and an omniscient narrator who sets the scene, and provides comment and background. In the event you think this might make for a difficult read, quite the opposite is true. This book readily flows along, carried forward by the author’s eloquent and descriptive prose style. The reader eagerly moves from story to story, each one introduced by a dialog between the patient and visitor. Poleskie writes with a rich and full vocabulary, in the manner of such European authors as Bruno Schulz and Witold Gombrowicz, and with the dark praise of obscurity and failure found in Fernando Pessoa.

The story plots themselves are complex and varied, with names like; Scamming, The King of Jingles, A Six Veil Dance, and Whoopee Loot Bag. The stories are told over twelve months, in twelve chapters, and with a final chapter identified only by an ampersand. As they are revealed the stories provide us with an understanding of the storytellers themselves. We learn how the patient acquired the AIDS virus he is dying from, and how the visitor lost his wife to another women. We learn of lives destroyed by circumstances beyond ones control, and how these lives were put back together, only to be lost again. And we learn how two men antagonistic at first, believing they are complete opposites, can come to love one another, realizing that they are not so different after all.

Grater Life is a daring and irreverent book that deserves to be read by a wide audience. This reviewer does not hesitate to give it his highest recommendation.

Sidney Grayling

Wasteland Press, 2009, ISBN: 978-1-60047-291-6, 261 pages, paperback, $18.95

http://www.stephenpoleskie.com/

THE WATERING HOLE -a review

2008-08-06T18:16:00.000-07:00

Her marriage to her favorite college professor a failure, Misha Gaffney, a ticket agent for Air England, applies, and is accepted into their Airport Managers Training Program. She is one of the first two women ever to be allowed into the course. When she moves to London for her training British male chauvinism rears its ugly head and she is tormented by her fellow students and faculty members alike, not only because she is a woman, but also because she is an American. She finds some allies, but encounters similar resentments on her training postings in places like Bombay, Nairobi, Sri Lanka, and Johannesburg. Torn between her career, her friends, and the possibility of another marriage, Misha Gaffney struggles to find herself, and to become the first woman to complete Air England's prestigious management training program.

The Watering Hole is a beautifully-crafted tale of a young woman looking for home, place, and belonging. Written with an insider's knowledge of the airline industry, and set in many exotic locals, this book reveals the grit and the glory of what goes on beyond the check-in counter and out on the tarmac. Dealing with the workings of the aviation world of the 1970's and early 1980's you may find some of the details disturbing, but the book is well worth reading. And it does end on an up note. OE gives this book its highest recommendation.

Sidney Grayling

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The Watering Hole by Beth H Evans and Elayne C Nicholas

Publisher: PenWorks Publishers (May 28, 2008)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0976857553

ISBN-13: 978-0976857556

Tags: The Watering Hole, aviation books, Pen Works Publishers

ONIONS

2008-06-03T19:05:00.000-07:00

by Anthony DiRenzo

"Life is an onion. You can't peel it without tears."

~~Sicilian proverb

From "Tears and Onions"

Located between Syracuse and Utica, Canastota, New York once produced most of the onions in the Northeast, but its legendary mucklands, primarily cultivated by Sicilian immigrants and their children, are not a natural phenomenon. Like almost everything else in Onion Town, the rich soil is a product of the Erie Canal, which transformed Canastota, incorporated in 1835, from a backwards hamlet to a prosperous town with four railroad lines and factories that manufactured cut glass, coaster and dump wagons, and steerable sleds. In fact, when the village was first settled in 1810, the mucklands didn’t even exist. They were submerged under an enormous swamp stretching three miles north of the village, a Stygian tangle of trees, roots, and mud that flooded so often the settlers were obliged to build their first houses on stilts. A year later, a plank path was built through the swamp to connect Canastota to Oneida Lake, followed by an Indian trail, but the Oneidas avoided the area unless the season was very dry.

Although some early Canastotans had the foresight to see agricultural potential in this slough, canal engineers made that dream a reality. Gentleman venturers with a classical bent, they tackled the problem with the methodicalness of a Frontinius. In 1850, Douglas Ditch was cut between the swamp and Oneida Lake and twice extended in 1867 and 1875 to form a line between Sullivan and Lenox townships. Twelve years later, State Highway Commissioner Charles Foster decided that the whole area should be drained and converted into productive farm land, a project more ambitious than the Emperor Claudius’s draining of the FucineLake. After winning the skeptical town’s approval, he began constructing what was to become Onion Town Road.

The incentive to cultivate the land, however, was spurred by the depression of 1893. After the local economy collapsed, Canastotans sought other ways to make money, so they sluiced, cleared, and tilled the bog north of the village, between Main Street and SouthBay, and constructed houses and barns. The work was backbreaking and frustrating, so it is no surprise they had put if off for fifty years.

Since horses were helpless in the swampy land, ditches had to be dug almost entirely by hand. Thick patches of trees, small bushes, and tangled roots still remained, and stumps had to dynamited. Even then, many patches had poor drainage, and during the wet season, some crops were always under water. The first muck farmers were Americans, who would not stay the course. The work seemed dirty and a degrading, a comedown from the village’s recent glory days. But for the Italian immigrants who succeeded them, working the muck was like clearing the Promised Land.

First came the Genovese. Domenico and Assumpta Cervasco moved to the village in 1886. They operated a peanut stand on the banks of Erie off the Peterboro Street bridge and convinced friends and relatives to join them. The Sicilians arrived a decade later. As manual laborers for the LehighValley, WestShore, and New York Central Railroads, they dead-ended in Canastota and had nowhere else to go. They lived in abandoned railroad cars on the edge of town and foraged for dandelion greens. Factory work was scarce because of the depression. Fortunately, the newcomers’ arrival coincided with the village’s push to cultivate the mucklands.

While the Sicilians recognized this opportunity, they were reluctant to embrace it. Most had abandoned agriculture, having become thoroughly disillusioned with the soil. “Who tends the earth tends his grave,” they said. Back in Sicily, they had not been contadini, peasants who owned and worked their own fields and vineyards, or fittivali, tenant farmers, or even mezzadri, sharecroppers, but cafone, unskilled farm hands and migrant pickers. The equivalent of white trash, they had lost all love for the land. It was the ancient curse of Sicily.

Twenty-five centuries of colonialism had transformed Ceres’ island from the garden of the Mediterranean, where even the keenest blood hounds would lose a scent because of the abundant flowers and herbs, into a lunar rock. The Carthaginians, to punish the Sicilians for their loyalty to the Greeks, burned wheat fields and sowed salt in the earth. The Romans, who conquered the Carthaginians, overworked the soil to feed their gluttony. The Arabs, their successors, introduced irrigation and citrus farming but also brought goats, which munched their way through the greenery. The Normans, who expelled the Arabs, deforested the island to create their fleets and composed chivalric epics while the topsoil washed away. The Spanish, who kept the best fields for themselves, were worthless, irresponsible landlords, but the Bourbons, at least, would not tax livestock, produce, and draft animals. After the revolution, however, the new Italian government taxed all three, wrecking Sicily’s agriculture and sparking the Fasci riots of the 1880's. In the wake of this chaos, Sicilian peasants were faced with a stark choice: emigration or starvation. Little wonder, then, that most of Canastota’s newest arrivals had sworn off farming.

But the vast mucklands seduced them. They were a return to the Golden Age. Never before had the Sicilians seen such miraculous soil. Black, rich, moist. Anything could grow in it: cabbage, chicory, celery; above all, onions. The onions tantalized them. Back in the Old Country, the man who owned an onion patch was a king. What were the glories of Segesta and Agrigento, those Grecian temples and peristyles, compared to a fertile onion patch? This attitude still prevails in Sicily, where as recently as 1975 an outraged farmer near Palazzalo Acreìde defaced a priceless Attic frieze on his property because tourists and archeologists would trample his onions to see it.

The Americani had their priorities straight. No ruins, just onions. And such onions! As big as your fist. Hell, bigger than the head of your first born! The Canastotans were rightly proud of them and gave them the sonorous names of race horses: Bronze Fiesta, Ebenezer, Golden Beauty, Southport White Globe. A carillon of bulbs in a paradise of onions! And if the Americani, with their haphazard, heavy-handed methods, could work such miracles, what might the Sicilians do, with their thousand tried-and-true, subtle techniques of coaxing crops from the dust? They gladly became sharecroppers in the American onion fields. . .

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Anthony DiRenzo is an Associate Professor of Writing in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY.

Tags: Anthony DiRenzo, onions, food writing,

THE THIRD CANDIDATE - Excerpt One

2008-05-20T17:40:00.000-07:00

For over six months now there have not been any of those sensational stories in the media speculating on his whereabouts, or the varied reasons for his disappearance. If you recall, John S______ went missing on the very night he won election to the United States Congress. Despite the massive search that was conducted for him, not a trace of what may have happened to John has ever been found, or if it has it has not been revealed to the public.

I was, according to the New York City police, the last person to see John before he vanished. Although I was interviewed by their detectives, who dragged me out of my workplace on the next day and treated me with suspicion, no one has been in touch with me since then. My reluctance to tell what I believe to be the full truth behind John S______’s bizarre story could possibly be attributed to my bewilderment at what I have learned. Or should I more accurately say my fear, and a shade of helplessness, at what might happen to me because of what I now know.

I have transcribed most of the material you are about to read from text I found saved on a computer flash drive apparently left behind by John himself. Although I do appear as a character in the story, near the very end, I was by and large only an incidental bystander. No accumulation of words can adequately convey my wonder at what has supposedly happened. All that I can do is to begin, straightforwardly, and hope to communicate my message, without the reader thinking I have winked my eye. The time these events take place in is the recent past, or perhaps in the near future.

John S______ was born and grew up in a small, former coal-mining town in northeastern Pennsylvania, a forlorn place of fallen-down collieries, culm banks, abandoned strip mines, boarded over storefronts, and empty houses. His hometown, by coincidence, lay in the same valley that held the birthplace of John’s boyhood hero; a Hollywood film star recently deceased. This actor fraught, or perhaps blessed, with an extremely hard face, had achieved great fame, and fortune, from his portrayal of tough-talking bad guys in grade B Western movies. John had been not so much impressed by the actor’s reputation as by his origin, having paid little attention to the man’s career until he learned where the cowboy actor hailed from. This knowledge had given John hope that he too might someday act his way out of this depressed, and lackluster area that he lived in.

“So what’s so big about playing a cattle rustler in a movie?”

“But Dad, the man was born in this valley . . . who else from around here has ever amounted to anything?”

“There are a lot of important people that were born in this very town.”

“Like who?”

“What about your Uncle Eddie. . . .”

“What about him?”

“He was a bomber pilot in the war.”

“And got shot down . . . and taken prisoner.”

“But he escaped.”

“Then came home only to spend the rest of his life driving a school bus.”

“So he’s got his name on a memorial in front of the town firehouse, doesn’t he? That’s pretty famous . . . at least for around here.”

This conversation with his father was as John wrote it down. Just why he includedit in his notes I am not exactly sure. He did not record that his father ever wrote him anything, like a letter perhaps. Of course, John lived at home for the first twenty-six years of his life, so his father would have had no need to write him. But they did not correspond when John lived in New York City either, or at least John never mentioned any letters in the material I later found.

Throughout most of his school years, planning to follow in his actor hero’s footsteps, John applied himself rather casually to his studies. Instead, he devoted his time and energy to the stage. By the age of nine, he had set up a theater in the basement of his parent’s home, where young John starred in plays he had written, produced, and directed. Unfortunately, this venue was quickly shut down by his parents when they discovered he had convinced a young girl from his third grade class to dance naked for one of his productions.

As John’s performances in his high school plays displayed considerable potential, his drama teacher suggested he might try out with the local amateur theatrical group, who needed a young boy for a role in a play they were putting on. Dressed in what he considered his most sophisticated clothes, and wearing his Sunday shoes, John S______ walked the three miles to their theater in town to save bus fare. The summer heat did not dissuade him as he strode confidently over the War Hero’s Bridge, imagining how he would strut before his high school classmates when he announced he had been selected for a major role in a production by the regionally famous “Valley Players.”

“And so who is this handsome young fellow? And what does he want?

“My name is John S______, and I’m here to audition for a part in your next play.”

“And I’m Jake Hemlock, the director of this theater. . . .”

“Pleased to meet you Mr. Hemlock.”

“I see you’re from the other side of the river. . . .”

“Yes. How did you know that?”

“By the way you’re dressed.”

John’s face flushed. He heard a faint titter from the three other boys who were sitting there, apparently also waiting to read for the part.

“Dressed?”

“And the way you speak. . . .”

“The way I speak?”

More laughter came from the other boys, this time louder and not suppressed.

“Never mind them. Let’s start with you. Here’s the script. Turn to page 27, at the top, you are Guy, I’ll be your father, George.”

“I’ve got it.”

“Okay, then come over here and sit on my lap.”

“Sit on your lap? I’m a little old for that. . . .”

“Yes, but you’re playing a young boy, a bit younger than you must actually be, however, that will be all right . . . and you’re sitting on your father’s lap just talking to him.”

“Okay. . . .”

John began to read. Hemlock had his free hand on John’s knee, gently stroking it. He could feel a warm lump under his bottom side growing larger and harder. John jumped up.

“What’s the matter? You were doing fine. . . .”

“I don’t think I want a part in this play,” John announced. “I’m going home.”

What would John tell his friends about why he didn’t get a part in the play? On his way back across the bridge John thought about the reasons he could give. He had never told anyone he was coming to this audition. Or did he? Wait! That’s it; he said to himself suddenly coming up with an idea; he was too old. It wouldn’t even be untrue, John rationalized. The director had said the character was much younger than he was. At that young age John had not yet learned to lie.

Having barely achieved the minimum grade average in high school, John found the only institution of higher learning that would accept him was the nearby community college. Not that John S______ was dumb, or lazy, he had just been very preoccupied with theater. It was also a matter of money. His father, though never well off, was too proud to allow his son to, as he put it, “beg for financial aid.” He could afford to pay for his son’s education if the boy lived at home, and worked in an automobile repair shop after classes and on Saturdays.

Being around rough, working people made John suspect intellectuals. Devoting one’s life to abstract ideas seemed wasteful to him. He respected the men he worked with in the automobile shop for their practical knowledge and common sense even though they tended to curse and swear too much for his liking. Often the butt of his co-worker’s jokes because he was a “Joe-college,” John usually took his breaks, and ate his lunch from the paper bag he brought it in, sitting alone in a quiet corner of the paint shop.

Despite a total lack of interest in his studies, John managed to graduate from college within the allotted four years, albeit without distinction, but with a strong local reputation as an actor. He had starred in the college theater group’s plays, and even earned bit parts in a small summer stock theater in the nearby mountains that sometimes featured professional talent from New York.

After graduation, when no other employment prospects presented themselves, John’s father, who ran his own used car lot, offered him a job. This secretly had been the man’s plan all along. The father, also named John, hoped that his son would eventually take over the business when he became too old to manage it.

The elder John had opened his lot with money he received as a settlement from a mine accident that had cost him both his legs. Although he was now a cripple who got around in a wheelchair, he was happy he did not to have to go down into the pits anymore. But then there were few mines still in operation by that time, and he probably would have been out of work anyway. John’s father went to church regularly, and thanked God for his good fortune.

Unfortunately his used car lot was not one of the valley’s premier operations. It had the unenviable reputation of selling the shabbiest vehicles in the area, ratted out clunkers that other dealers at the automobile auctions would not even bother to place a bid on. A wash job was about all these cars got before being placed out for sale.

And so young John began what he hoped was his temporary life.

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The Third Candidate

by Stephen Poleskie

http://www.amazon.com/Third-Candidate-Stephen-Poleskie/dp/1600472095/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211395963&sr=1-2

BOOK BURNING

2008-04-26T18:03:00.000-07:00

UNESCO Admits Destroying 100,000 Books

IT'S NOT 1938, and we are not talking about the Nazis, and the books were not actually burned, rather they were pulped, but the result was the same. The books are gone. According to an article in THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY dated 18.04.08 an inquiry has been launched into why UNESCO paid to pulp nearly 100,000 books.

The destruction occurred between 2004 and 2005, when UNESCO's overflowing book storage warehouses in Paris were relocated to Brussels. Rather than pay the cost of moving 94,500 books UNESCO officials ordered all copies destroyed.

Nino Munoz Gomez, director of UNESCO's Bureau Chief of Public Information and chief of the publications division, claims that at least half of the volumes were outdated and contained obsolete data. While the auditors did acknowledge that some of the publications were out of date others "on historical or purely literary themes were not at all affected by obsolescence." It concluded that a "solution other than destruction" should have been considered, "such as free distribution to libraries."

Munoz Gomez, who assumed his post in April 2005 and was chief of the publishing section for nine months while the book destruction was taking place, said that he did not learn of it until 2006, when a new employee showed him thousands of dollars of bills charged for the pulping. He claimed that while he had authorized the payment of these bills, he did not realize the magnitude of the operation. When he became aware of what was going Munoz Gomez attempted to halt the pulping, but by then there were no more books left to destroy.

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Tags: Book Burning, UNESCO

King For A Minute

2007-12-28T18:22:00.000-08:00

Thaddeus Rutkowski

KING FOR A MINUTE

Thaddeus Rutkowski

"Are you the oldest in our house?" she asks.

"Yes," I say.

"When you're the oldest in the house," she says, "you're like a king."

I look around our place. It doesn't look much like a castle or palace. There are no throne rooms in which to conduct business, no slotted windows through which to shoot arrows from crossbows, no suits of armor with which to protect ourselves in battle, no chapel in which to pray for our souls.

"What does that mean ?" I ask.

"When you're the king, you can get mad and say bad words. When you're not the king, you'll get a time out."

"How do you know about kings?" I ask

"Henry the Eight was a king."

"What did he do as a king?"

"He told the beautiful women they had to die."

"Am I like that?"

"You're more like a teenager. You didn't grow as much as a king."

"Do I look like a teenager? Is my hair too long?"

"Yes."

I realize then that our castle is close to the shop of an artisan who cuts hair. I don't need to send a messenger, pick up a broad ax or saddle a steed. I can just walk and get a trim.

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Thaddeus Rutkowski's second book, Tetched: A Novel in Fractals, was published recently by Behler Publications in California. His first novel, Roughhouse (Kaya Press), was a finalist for an Asian American Literary Award. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and daughter.

You can find Thaddeus's web site at www.thaddeusrutkowski.com.

Tags: Thaddeus Rutkowski

CRAZY JOE

2007-12-21T17:49:00.000-08:00

a short story by

Jeanne Mackin

We weren’t scared of much, but Crazy Joe scared us.

We rough, small-town kids, a gang of six, all the same age, could chase each other with oozing blood suckers, put flashlights under our chins and tell ghost stories at midnight, ride bicycles down steep hills, hands overhead, not on the handles. But when Crazy Joe moved to the neighborhood we huddled in a quiet circle, aware of an unpleasant new sensation: fear of the unknown. But then, what is fear, if not
awareness of the unfamiliar?

Crazy Joe wore a torn, faded military jacket, a peeling leather helmet with goggles, and boots of no lingering color, held together with ragged cloth. His scanty hair, visible at the back of his head and the sides where the helmet did not reach, was gray and lank. Everything about him seemed gray and shrunken, as if he were a nighttime creature ill at ease in the light. His eyes were the grayest thing of all, and they never seemed to focus on anything, least of all us.

“Don’t go near him,” my brother ordered. He was older and not part of the gang of six.

“Why?” I resented orders from one born just a year before myself, but knew he was right.

Crazy Joe inhabited the thin edge of the known, the place where you don’t want to step off of. He wasn’t part of our known world of pretty mothers who slept precisely on bouffant hairdos that never stirred, of home-from-the-war fathers who drank martinis at dinner and built rec rooms in the basement of their new ranch houses, then later converted those rec rooms to home bars, and then to bomb shelters...just in case.

Crazy Joe lived in his own world, cut off from our reality, amputated from us by thesurgery of his madness: he came out of his sister’s gray ranch house every morning at seven-thirty and without so much as a quisling glance at the sky would charge up the graveled hill that was our street, running as quickly as his thin, uncertain legs could carry him. As he ran, arms held askew in front rather than swinging at his side, he would screech incomprehensible things at enemies we couldn’tsee. At the top of the hill he would stop, catch his breath, then run screeching back down. He repeated this crazed charge dozens of times, stopping only when his breath was so ragged it exploded from his lungs in broken gasps. Exhausted, he would retreat to the lilac bush in his sister’s front yard and crouch there, waiting. He would still be there, gray and gasping, when we came home from school in the afternoon. We crossed to the other side of the street rather than pass directly in front of that lilac bush.

Buddy O Brien, born during the war rather than after and so older than us, said that Crazy Joe’s clothes were from the Great War, the war before. Buddy was a history enthusiast and knew such things. Crazy Joe, he said, was a war vet, just like our dads.

“Is not!” we screamed, horrified at that dangerous connection. Our fathers did not screech up and down the hill or crouch under bushes. Our fathers, if they spoke of the war at all, spoke quietly, made light of it, turning it into the stuff of Saturday night cocktail hours.

“He’s a war vet,” Buddy insisted, changing our world forever.

My brother and Buddy made eye contact; Buddy blinked first. My brother didn’t like him, thought he was weird to want to hang out with kids younger than he was, even to just talk war talk.

After Buddy’s history lesson, the gang went on the offensive. When Crazy Joe came out of his house in the morning we waited in ambush across the street. “Crazy Joe! Crazy Joe, come get us!” we taunted, braced to run. He giggled, saluted, and then began his tour of duty, up and down the hill, screeching, arms cocked under the weight of an invisible bayonet.

We tired of the game and grew into other distractions. I don’t know when Crazy Joe stopped waiting under that bush. When I was twelve the hill was paved into a real town street, with layers of gravel and tar smoothed over the rutted dirt of our bicycle paths; one morning I realized that Crazy Joe no longer defended that area.

But sometimes, freed from his real presence, I could imagine his history, his private story of madness. I borrowed some of Buddy’s books and learned new vocabulary: trenches, mustard gas, voulez-vous, foot-rot, Sarajevo, Verdun, shell-shock; I could imagine burning lungs, sleeping in water filled trenches, bayoneting blue-eyed Germans.

Crazy Joe disappeared from the hill, but took up residence in my memory, becoming the soldier who survived the war, who came home, who brought his never-ending war with him.

My brother did not survive Viet Nam, although he never really went there. Forty years after my last encounter with Crazy Joe I sit in my brother’s new ranch house in Florida, trying to celebrate Christmas. The remnants of a family who have gathered more for funerals than weddings, we have migrated to this warm place where snow never falls. It is past midnight and my sister-in-law, niece and husband are asleep
in their beds. My brother, father and I, insomniacs, wilt and yawn in front of the television. Christmas tree lights compete with the neon glare of the large screen.

My father thumbs through a year-old issue of National Geographic. I shuffle the cards for another round of solitaire. My brother rewinds the tape in the VCR and begins to watch “A Christmas Carol” for the third time that day. Dickens’ story is one
of regret, and what is regret if not needing to live the past again and again? My brother especially likes the part where the ghost of Christmas past shakes his chains at Scrooge and menaces him with what might have been. There is a half-empty tumbler of whiskey in my brother’s hand.

My brother drinks too much. If I were still the seven year old child who taunted Crazy Joe I would use other words to describe my brother, but because I am older and have learned to fear the knife-edge of truth, I merely say, “My brother drinks too much.”
We don’t speak often. Once a year we hug and say ‘Be well, take care, be happy.” And between those well wishes there is much silence. A long time ago, I lost him. We lost each other. Our childhood closeness disappeared as surely as Crazy Joe had - it just wasn’t there one day.

On the screen, Scrooge trembles and screeches in high-pitched horror. I lose another round of solitaire. My father picks up a different issue of National Geographic and yawns again. When the movie ends, the VCR switches itself off and a tv movie fills the screen. It is a war movie, filled with images of John Wayne aiming his rifle, carrying a
wounded buddy on his shoulder, enjoying intimate if prickly conversations with a pretty nurse.

My brother’s eyes are fixed on the screen. He has seen this movie more times than he has seen “A Christmas Carol,” and it holds him spellbound. He pours another glass of whiskey.

My father throws down the magazine and clears his throat. “It wasn’t like that,” he says, glaring at John Wayne. “It wasn’t like that,” says my father who, fifty years later, still rarely speaks of his war. “We weren’t grown men doing brave things,” he says. “We were scared little boys doing what we were told we had to do.”He gets up and disappears down the dark hall, dragging his left leg a little from the stroke. I
hear him in the bathroom, gargling.

My brother is not a war vet. When the other eighteen and nineteen and twenty year olds of the town were going off to Viet Nam, he was left behind. His National Guard regiment went. He did not. My mother did that. She performed miracles for her son, her only son. I do not know what officials she talked to, what words she used that other mothers did not, but she kept him home, kept him out of Nam.

Naive about war, I had always assumed he had been pleased about this, happy to have been spared the napalm, the rat cages, the loud speakers blaring Rolling Stones into a blackened jungle, the drugs that helped the soldiers through another day. But when I look at my brother, there are tears in his eyes.

“I should have been there,” he says. His words are slurred, his eyes
still fixed on John Wayne.

“Where?” I ask, confused.

“In Nam. My best buddies died there. I should have gone with them.”

“So you could die, too?” I say. It is what my mother would have said.

The powerless of the words numb me. The wall between us grows thicker. We no longer share a common language, when survival to one person looks like guilt to another. I have no words to understand his pain. We retrofit the past to give it an innocence it never possessed. I am, even at this moment, romanticizing my memories of my brother, in my mind’s eye the light falls more gently on his stricken face than it did in reality at that moment. But my other self who still lives in that moment does not know this. I am part of the dream, not yet the dreamer, so I look at my brother whose eyes are red with longing for a war that excluded him. I say the only thing that comes to mind. “Remember Crazy Joe?”

He grins at me. “Good old Crazy Joe,” he says.

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Jeanne Mackin is the author of several historical novels including The Sweet By and By and The Frenchwoman. She teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Goddard College. You can find out more about her books on her web site http://www.jeannemackin.com/.

Crazy Joe is copyrighted 2006 by Jeanne Mackin

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Tags: Jeanne Mackin, Vietnam War

THE RIGGI

2007-11-28T17:31:00.000-08:00

a short story

Stephen Poleskie

WE LIVED IN THE third floor apartment because my father had been left the building by his mother, and we could rent out the second floor for more money to pay the mortgage. The store on the ground floor, which had been my father’s mother’s bar until she died, and her third husband ran off with whatever money was in the bank, was rented to Mickey the barber.

From the window of the bedroom I shared with my Uncle Edward, I could see the coal mine just across Grove Street. The breaker had a tower made of iron beams, with two massive wheels on top. Steel cables went around these wheels, and when they turned a cage was lowered into the mineshaft. If I got up early enough, I could watch the miners go down. In the summer I saw them come up, their faces blackened from coal dust. In the winter the miners never came up before dark, so all I ever saw was the bobbing glow from the lanterns on their helmets as they wended their way home through the snow.

The two rear windows in our kitchen had a view of our small yard, in the center of which stood the tiny spruce tree my father had planted the day I was born. I would come back years later to find it higher than the house; and still later gone, cut down by the new owners to make way for a clothesline. A picket fence separated one side of the yard from the sidewalk and street. The back border was formed by a row of chicken coops and a garage. A wire fence ran down the other side, dividing us from the people next door. Their house was as tall as ours, so I could see nothing out that way but a wall. As work at the mine was slow, most of the bars on Grove Street had closed, the one underneath the neighbors being one of the few remaining. Its sign, which was lit up at night, cast a red glow on the walls my bedroom. In the morning huge trucks would come by and wake me up with a great racket, as they unloaded huge barrels of beer that were rolled down a ramp into the bar’s cold cellar.

Mostly, I stayed in my room all day and watched the activity on Grove Street out the window. I don’t remember going down to the street much until I was at least three years old, although I must have. I had long hair, which my mother set in curls. People who didn’t know me used to say: “Oh what a beautiful girl!” Then my sister was born, and I was changed back into a boy. I had my hair cut downstairs at Mickey’s. I remember crying because I was afraid it was going to hurt. My mother said: “If you don’t stop crying, I am going to give you to the riggi.”

I don’t know why he was called “the riggi,” or even if this is the correct spelling. I do remember he had a horse and wagon. His gray mare was the first large animal I had ever seen, except for the mules they took down into the mine that never came back up until they died. I saw them bringing a mule out once. It was lying on a cart. I asked my uncle if the mule was sick. “No, it’s dead,” he said. At the time I didn’t understand what he meant, and he didn’t explain. In my inchoate mind I could not yet distinguish the difference between what is from what is not.

My mother was always threatening to “give me to the riggi,” if I didn’t do something or other; go to sleep, eat my dinner, wash my hands. This made me feel especially worthless, as everything else she didn’t want she “sold” to the riggi; rusty pots and pans, broken sewing machines, anything that had outlived its usefulness. Was I not even worth as much as my mother’s junk? I wondered. Now my father, who had never been home much anyway, had gone off to fight in the war, leaving me here with mother, and my baby sister, who always cried to get everything she wanted given to her.

Before my mother began her threats I had waited in excitement for the riggi to appear, listening to the bellow of his horn as he made his way down Grove Street. Warm days found me hanging out my window, hoping to catch a glimpse of the treasures he had stowed inhis cart. On those infrequent days when mother, or the lady from downstairs, would rush out with some small item to sell and the riggi would stop on our corner, my eyes would enjoy a special treat as they inventoried the contents of the rickety cart.

Now I no longer waited for the riggi with pleasure but with fear. Was today the day he would come for me? Had my mother made some secret pact with the gnarled old man to take me away as a punishment for something she perceived I had done wrong? At the first sound of his horn I interrupted my play and took flight, diving under the spruce trees, then crawling behind the peonies.

Small bugs circled my blinking eyelids as I peered through the picket fence. The riggi’s once cheerful horn had become a mournful dirge, a sound I remembered from my Aunt Beatrice’s funeral, the day I learned what “to be dead” meant. The horse and wagon was in front of our house now, but I wouldn't see the riggi until he passed the corner. I squatted lower in the flowers, making sure I had a clear path to the chicken coop. I planned my escape; run across the open yard, jump onto the water barrel, scramble on the coop, then over the garage roof, and get away by the back alley. My grandma lived at the end of the alley. She baked me cookies when I went to visit her, and would never allow me to be taken away by the riggi.

I could see him now. The old man had stopped on the corner and was just sitting silently on his wagon, waiting. My heart was pounding with horror. I had never seen the riggi’s eyes look so beady, so full of evil. He took out a red handkerchief: was this the signal? I prepared to flee. But my mother did not come down. The old man blew his nose in the handkerchief, and then put it back in his pocket.

“Giddy up!” he growled, giving his horse a crack with the reins.

Still crouched in my hiding place, I felt a sense of relief come over me. I listened to the bellow of his horn, and the clip-clop of hoofs, as the riggi slowly disappeared down Grove Street.

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Stephen Poleskie is an artist and writer. His artworks are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Tate Gallery in London, among others. He has published numerous short stories, and his biographical novel on the Civil War Balloonist T. S. C. Lowe is forthcoming from Frederic C. Beil, Publisher in 2006. Twelve of Poleskie's short stories have been published as pamphlets by OnagerEditions.

The Riggi is from a collection of stories called Leaving Grove Street. The Riggi is copyrighted by Stephen Poleskie 2006.

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Tags: StephenPoleskie, short stories, Pennsylvania, coal mines,

TRUE CHAMPIONS

2007-10-28T17:46:00.000-07:00

a short story

S. Francis Pringle

RRRRRROOOOaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Yes, this was the year the Springboks won the Rugby Union World Cup. Lifting his glass, a rugby enthusiast in a Capetown pub expressed the nation’s view: “Damn, and we bloody well could have won it all in ’87 and ’91 . . . if they would have let our team play. Just because a country tries to keep its niggers in their proper place is no reason to ban their teams from competition. The bloody niggers never give a damn for the game anyway; they all want to be footballers, or the uppity ones try a go at cricket.” The 60,000 plus fans in the stadium did give a damn, however.

RRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOaaaaaaaaaaaRRRRRRRR!

The loudspeakers blared the home teams national anthem during injury breaks.

Wearing a Springbok’s captain’s shirt, the head of state visited the home team’s dressing room just before the match began and exhorted: “This game is not just in pursuit of victory, but a national crusade.”

Overhead, a jumbo jet from the national airline circled the stadium at rooftop height, a giant-sized good luck message to the Springboks lettered on the underside of its wing.

RRRRRRROOOOOOAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

Standing in the shade of the shanty house he shared with his mother and grandparents, Mulo squinted at the huge airplane banking low in the bright sky, its wing tips seeming to almost touch the ground. There was writing on the underside of the wing. He could see it clearly, but did not know what it said. Although Mulo was nine years old, he could not read. He had never been to school, not even for one day.

“Momma . . . why is the great airplane flying so near to the ground?”

His mother did not know, nor did anyone else among the groups of people who had come out of their jerry-built shacks to watch.

Mulo loved airplanes. Three years ago Mulo had seen the place where they came to “walk on the land” when he had gone in a truck with his mother to try to find his father. The man had disappeared after being arrested for participating in a demonstration. The boy had been more excited at seeing the airplanes than distressed by the thought of what might have happened to his father. But, he had only been six years old then. Mulo asked his mother if he would ever be able to go up in an airplane.

Squeezing his hand as the truck bounced along, Murlo’s mother had replied: “Someday, maybe. . . .” She had inquired once, in secret, about the price of airplane tickets. This was when she planned to run away from her husband – who beat her regularly – and live with her sister in England. She knew now that, unfortunately, the price of even the shortest flight onan airliner was more than she earned in a year.

RRRRROOOOOAAARRR . . . rrroooaarr. . . .

Down in the stadium, the whine from the jumbo jet’s four Pratt and Whitney turbofans drowned out even the crowd’s noise.

The Springbok’s opponents, New Zealand’s All Blacks – who were neither all black, nor all from New Zealand – took the aerial diversion distorting the sporting nature of the contest stoically. They also chose not to make an issue of, nor publicize, the fact that 18 members of their team, including 10 starters, suffered food poisoning after a lunch at their hotel two days earlier.

RRRRoooooooaaaaarroooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrr. . . .

The people from the shanties had all gone back indoors. If they had windows, or shutters, they closed them. However, the sun on the tin roofs would soon make it too hot inside. The jumbo circled for another pass at the stadium. The black exhaust, from having to run the engines at a rich mixture because of the low altitude, was coating the neighborhoods with a thin film off oil. Those who came back out soon found the oil clogging their nostrils, and a petroleum taste on the insides of their teeth.

Covering his ears with his hands. Mulo tried to hide under his bed, as he had done when his father used to come home in a drunken rage. “Make it stop, Momma . . . make the noise go away!” he cried. Coughing in the dust under the bed, Mulo decided he did not like airplanes now.

RRRRRRRROOOOOOOAAAAAAArrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. . . .

One of the All Black’s star players, still suffering from food poisoning, and passing gas all through the first half, had retired to the lavatory at half-time, and did not return for the rest of the game.

RRR . . . OOO . . . Aaaa . . . rrrrrrrrr. . . .

Crouching in the corner of their shanty, Mulo’s grandfather contentedly smoked a cigarette. He had gone deaf some three years ago, just after his son disappeared. He took a deep drag, the light from the cigarette stabbing at the darkness of the hot room. If he closed his eyes, and held the smoke in his lungs long enough, it seemed as though he did not exist.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrooooooooooaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. . . .

Despite the distracting circumstances, the All Blacks were playing well. A team that offered neither tactical innovation, nor outstanding flair was nevertheless, beating them. The Springboks favored orthodox rugby, based on the avoidance of risk-taking, and a willingness to tackle everyone in sight.

“Fuck, that Lomu has got the fucking ball!”

“What the fuck! . . .”

“Grab the black son-of-a-bitch!”

“Fuck the bloody bastard . . . kill the fucker!”

Springboks converged from every angle, hitting the runner, with a crunching of bones, high, low, and somewhere in between – spirit counting for more than finesse. Waving his beer and shouting, “Bloody good show! Scragg the fuckin’ nigger!” a fan from Johannesburg voiced his approval of the play.

Normal time ended with the teams tied at nine.

RRR OOO AAA RRR RRRooooaaaarrrrrrrrrrrr!

During the break, the unstoppable 6 foot 5 inch, 20 year old, Johna Lomu, one of the All Blacks premier runners, sat on the bench, isolated in his headset, farting, and listening to a Bob Marley tape.

RRRROOOOOOOOOOOaaaaaaaaaaaRRRRRRRRRRooooooAAARR!

“Make it stop Momma, make the noise go away!”

“I don’t know how Mulo . . . I don’t know how!”

“Make it stop, Grandpa, make the noise go away!”

“I cannot hear you, Mulo . . . I have gone deaf.”

“Make it stop, Papa, make the noise go away!”

“I cannot help you my son . . . I am not here anymore.”

The shape of the match changed dramatically during the extra time, going from a traditional running game to a more modern, tactical kicking game, with the Springboks finally claiming victory by 15 to 12.

Lifting a glass of Champagne at the banquet held to mark the end of the World Cup, the country’s rugby president, in a stumbling speech that resonated with the old Afrikaans arrogance, proclaimed the Springboks as the first “true” world champions. “There were no true world champions in the 1987 and 1991 World Cups because South Africa was not there,” He declared.

At this remark, the captain of the defeated New Zealand team got up and led his players from the room. The All Blacks were quickly followed by the French and English teams.

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S. Francis Pringle was born in New Zealand, and educated in England. His stories have been published world wide, and he has won the Kiwi Prize. One of the foremost experts on the Ojibwa language, Pringle currently resides in upstate New York where he translates textbooks on casino gambling methods into Native American dialects.

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Tags: S.Francis Pringle, Rugby Union World Cup, Springboks,

THE BALLOONIST Reviewed

2007-09-27T19:36:00.000-07:00

Here is a review of THE BALLOONIST as it appeared in the December 15, 2006 issue of BOOKLIST, the magazine published by the American Library Association.

Poleskie, Stephen. The Balloonist: The Story of T. S. C. Lowe – Inventor, Scientist, Magician, and Father of the U. S. Air Force.

Dec. 2006. 368p. Frederic C. Beil, $24.95 (1-929490-27-5).973.7.

This first full-scale biography of Thaddeus Lowe (1832-1913) makes fascinating reading for aviation buffs and students of nineteenth-century eccentricity. Lowe is best known for organizing the Civil War Army of the Potomac’s Balloon Corps, though it was disbanded because of losing high-ranking support, bureaucratic infighting, and, to some extent, the technological immaturity of balloons. Lowe was a stage magician before the war and after it worked seriously in such fields as mountain railroading and the extraction of hydrogen from water. His career suggests a failed Thomas Edison. Endlessly fertile in his invention, he lacked an organization to support the development of his ideas and winnow the viable ones from the rest. He never abandoned balloons, however, and left a definite legacy to fixed-wing aviation in the person of his granddaughter, aviatrix Pancho Barnes (1901-75, subject of Lauren Kessler’s biography The Happy Bottom Riding Club. 2000). Aviation and history collections may acquire this seemingly tangential book with clear consciences. – Roland Green

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The Balloonist: The Story of T. S. C. Lowe,
Inventor, Scientist, Magician, and Father of the U.S. Air Force
by Stephen Poleskie
Category: Fiction / Historical
Format: Hardcover, 368 pages
On Sale: May 2007
Price: $24.95
ISBN: 978-1-929490-27-1

click on title for more information

Tags: Stephen Poleskie, THE BALLOONIST, Civil War Balloon Corps, Thaddeus S. C. Lowe, Poncho Barnes, The Happy Bottom Riding Club, Civil War,

WHAT FICTION ASKS US TO REMEMBER (r)

2007-09-24T16:35:00.000-07:00

By Jeanne Mackin

Think of history as narrative. Think of historical fiction as expanded narrative, history with all the trimmings, with cause and effect, speculation, personalization. Think of expanded narrative as the story teller reaching out to you, saying, ‘pay attention. This is important.” Or as novelist Jeanette Winterson repeats over and over in The Passion, ‘Trust me. I’m telling you a story,’ and then as she relates a Napoleonic narrative of a Venetian woman who walks on water, you do believe her even as you know she is lying through her teeth, because that is what novelists do. But this important: you don’t believe that Venetian women necessarily walk on water (though it would be a convenient skill, considering global warming and the state of Venetian canals) but you do believe Winterson’s message that love changes us, that war changes us and that war is not conducive to happy endings, because that is what her story is really about.

We best believe what we remember, and narrative is about memory: giving memories in the form of stories, receiving memories and adding them to our personal stores. But historical fiction, as memory creation, asks us to do the impossible, to remember experiences we can’t possibly have had, to ‘remember’ the smell of the rosebush growing outside Hester Prynne‘s jail in Hawthorne‘s The Scarlet Letter, to remember crouching in darkness outside the mead hall, the perpetual outsider, as John Gardner’s Grendel does; to remember the sensation of the earthquake that begins the action of Richard Hughes’ A High Wind in Jamaica; to remember the wild vines strangling the decaying plantation in Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea. All of those things were before our times; yet having read them, we remember them.

There is a relationship between memory and freedom, asserts Dr. Chris Nunn, author of De La Mettrie’s Ghost: the Story of Decisions. Nunn examines free will and the decision making process and ultimately concludes that “stories…are the mediators of free choice.” He argues that people whose ‘memories are more malleable should, other things being equal, be less prone to conditions like milleniarianism “{belief that the world will end on a given date simply because of the date} and other forms of private or mass delusion. People with flexible memories are less gullible…“thanks to its intimate relationship with the memory process, consciousness can to some extent determineits own future.”

Call me an idealist, but perhaps fiction can prevent us from making even bigger and more dangerous idiots of ourselves than the species already has. Perhaps historical fiction keeps our memories malleable by constantly recreating and adding to those memories; perhaps there is a connection between fiction, memory and freedom. Gardner’s Grendel can be read as an early eco-novel, among other things: “They {man} hacked down trees in widening rings around their central halls and blistered the land with peasant huts and pigpen fences till the forest looked like an old dog dying of mange.”

In Jean Rhys’ postcolonial devastation in Wide Sargasso Sea, the destructive misery of failed empire comes home to roost in a suicidal conflagration: “I got up, took the keys and unlocked the door. I was outside holding my candle. Now at last I know why I was brought here and what I have to do. There must have been a draught for the flame flickered and I thought it was out. But I shielded it with my hand and it burned up again to light me along the dark passage.”

Richard Hughes’ incredibly convincing narrative of the connections between entitlement and violence in A High Wind in Jamaica reveals how a lack of self-responsibility so easily leads to murder and how that violence estranges us: “Mr. Thornton made no attempt to answer her questions: he even shrank back, physically from touching his child Emily..Was it Conceivable she as such an idiot as really not to know what it was all about? Could she possibly not know what she had done? He stole a look at her innocent little face, even the tear-stains now gone. What was he to think?”

Murdered pirates, decaying plantations, mead halls, Napoleon’s roasted chickens…artificial memories bestowed by historical fiction, but who’s to say that an artificial memory is less meaningful than mundane ones? De La Mettrie argues that memories become encoded in neurons and have physical properties, so why can’t the memories acquired in a reading of fiction matter as much as the memory of today’s first cup of coffee and who poured it for you? Read, and remember. Is it possible to also understand something from what is given us by the memories in fiction? “The pastis the present, isn’t it? It’s the future,too. Weall try to lie out of that but life won’t let us,” Eugene O’Neill tells us in Long Day’s Journey into Night. Perhaps what fiction most asks us to remember is that memory keeps us human, and if we remember enough and remember well, we can add an e to human.

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Jeanne Mackin is the author of several historical novels including The Sweet By and By and The Frenchwoman. She teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Goddard College. mackinja@aol.com

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Barnes & Noble Book Fair

Tompkins County Public Library Foundation

in support of the Tompkins County Public Library

Thursday and Friday, October 25 & 26

614 South Meadow Street, Ithaca NY

author book signing on Thursday beginning at 6:00 p.m.

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Thank you for logging on. Please feel free to post a comment below. You can learn more about Jeanne Mackin's books by clicking on her name in the sidebar at your left.

Sidney Grayling

Tags: Jeanne Mackin, writing fiction, historical fiction, Goddard College

Book Review: THE BALLOONIST

2007-09-13T18:12:00.000-07:00

Gas Bag of Courage
(The Balloonist, 8/13/07)
By Nicholas Nicastro

The Balloonist. By Stephen Poleskie
(338 pp., Frederic C. Beil Publishers, $24.95)

It is often said that journalists write the first draft of history. Thaddeus Lowe, the pioneering inventor and aviator, was perhaps the first notable exception to this rule. Rising in his silk balloon over the killing fields of the Civil War, Lowe instantly got a breadth of perspective—a sense of who, what, and where on a grand scale—that was previously limited to scholars of great and tragic events. "To the right could be seen the York River, following which the eye could rest of Chesapeake Bay. On the left, and at about the same distance, flowed the James River..." wrote one of Lowe's most notorious passengers, George Armstrong Custer. "Between these two extended a most beautiful landscape, and no less interesting than beautiful; it being made a theatre of operations of armies larger and more formidable than had ever confronted each other on his continent before..."
      With The Balloonist: The Story of T.S.C. Lowe—Inventor, Scientist, Magician, and Father of the US Air Force, Ithaca-based writer Stephen Poleskie offers up what is perhaps the most gratifying kind of biography—one that convinces us that its subject is so manifestly significant that the absence of previous books about him seems downright mystifying. As hinted in the subtitle, Lowe (1832-1913) was something of an industrial alchemist, a restless polymath who contrived innovations in fields as disparate as chemistry, engineering, meteorology, espionage, and roadshow razzmatazz. His antebellum "magic" shows, staged under the assumed title of "Professor" Lowe, were more scientific lecture/demonstrations than the kind of portentous dinner theatre practiced by his modern descendants. Yet they were also very popular, making him not only a pioneering inventor but the Science Guy of his times.
      Lowe's lifetime passion, however, was the delicate craft of ballooning. Conceiving the then-outrageous plan to cross the Atlantic by air, he worked steadily to improve the technology and public profile of lighter-than-air aviation. The advent of the Civil War undercut public support for such adventures, but not Lowe's enthusiasm: if balloons could cross oceans, they certainly could be used to erase the front lines between armies. Along with a handful of rivals, Lowe labored hard to get Union generals to appreciate the potential of hydrogen balloons for intelligence-gathering.
      It took the intercession of Lincoln himself to finally get the US Army Balloon Corps off the ground. Rising above the battlefields of Virginia, Lowe became a unique witness to some of the most momentous battles in the war, including George McClellan's ill-fated Peninsula campaign. He became the first to supply real-time intelligence from the air when he conceived the notion of stringing a telegraph wire from his gondola. As his custom-built observation balloon floated above the trees, he also became the most shot-at man in the war, as Confederate sharpshooters and gunners attempted to erase the Union intelligence advantage by blasting him out of the sky. That Lowe exposed himself to such danger for more than two years as a civilian contractor, without commission or regular salary, is not the least of his miracles.
      Poleskie tells his story with a rare combination of practical expertise (the author is an aviator himself), empathy, and poetic vividness. Describing Lowe's lingering horror at the carnage he witnessed, Poleskie writes "A violent spasm twitched his body. Once again he heard the boundless roar of cannon; saw the shattered bodies and the collapsing bridges; listened to the clumsy, gasping cries of drowning men; and the agonizing shriek of the wounded. Riderless horses wallowed in the mud along the banks snorting flames from their nostrils. Corpses, swollen to twice their size, ground out curses and blasphemies from their bloated mouths as they floated on the spume. Summoned by he did not know what, the whole ghastly parade assembled around him, marching skyward, a relentless invasion of his senses."
      The Balloonist is full of similar, fictionalized passages, many of which are quite fine. Indeed, Poleskie is not alone in mixing the roles of historian and novelist—the bookstore shelves are lately full of similar hybrids. More literal-minded readers may chaff at this approach, however: it is occasionally nice to know which fine reflection or turn-of-phrase originates with the author, and which from Lowe's own memoirs (published only in 2004). Other strange omissions, such as a single likeness of Lowe, or an index (though Poleskie does provide a bibliography) may also frustrate the conventional reader.
      Compelling as Lowe's story is, the notion that balloon reconnaissance alone could have shortened the Civil War is arguably wishful thinking. Though Lowe did work wonders in that brief time before bureaucratic infighting finally drove him away, one senses that the skein of determined stupidity enveloping the Union general staff would have squandered any advantage. Indeed, one of the unanticipated dividends of Poleskie's book is to put the current trail of miscues in Iraq in historical perspective. If anything is as perennial as war itself, it's the quality of the foolishness it seems to attract.

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Thank you for logging on. Please check back again. Feel free to post a comment below. You can acess Nicholas Nicastro's web site at www.nicastrobooks.com.

click on title for more information

Tags: Stephen Poleskie, The Balloonist, T.S.C. Lowe, Civil War balloons, General George Armstrong Custer,

WRITERS IN AMERICA?

2007-08-27T18:54:00.000-07:00

This is an excerpt from an interview with Norman Mailer conducted by Andrew O'Hagan, in the Summer issue of The Paris Review, and reprinted in the September issue of Harper's Magazine.

The question asked by O'Hagan was: Do you think America is a good place in which to practice the arts?

Mailer's reply: When I was young it was marvelous for a writer. It's the reason we have so many good writers in America -- most of our literature had not yet been written. English novelists had all the major eighteenth and, and nineteenth, century geniuses to deal with and go beyond. What did we have to go beyond? A few great writers, Melville and Hawthorne. The list is very short. For us, the field was wide open. Now we're beleaguered. The movies were bad enough, though American novelists always felt a certain superiority to what was going on in Hollywood. You weren't learning more about human nature from films, you were just being entertained -- at some cost to learn a little more about why we're here, which I think is one of the remaining huge questions. Now people grow up with television, which has an element within it that is absolutely inimical to serious reading, and that is the commercial. Anytime you're interested in a narrative, you know it's going to be interrupted every seven to ten minutes, which will shatter any concentration. Kids watch television and lose all interest in sustained narrative. As a novelist, I really feel I'm one of the elders of a dying craft. It once was an art, and now it'd down to being a craft and that craft is going soon. The answer to your question is this: America is no longer a good place to be a novelist, and once it was a wonderful place.

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Mailer's most recent novel, The Castle in the Forest, was published by Random House in January. O'Hagan's third novel, Be Near Me, was published by Harcourt in June. You might want to check out the complete Mailer interview in either one of the two publications listed above. If you have any strong feelings on the subject feel free to enter your comment below. I hope a few people will read them. I am sure this blog has relatively few readers. Considerably more Internet users obviously prefer watching things like being cats tortured, or men falling off ladders, things which are supposed to make us laugh on sites like YouTube

We are always interested in submissions. You can send short pieces, fiction, non-fiction, or poetry to us at: OnagerEditions@aol.com.

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Below is a poster for an art exhibition you might find interesting if you are in the Ithaca, NY area. The show was put together by Rebecca Godin, who also designed the poster.

Sidney Grayling, editor

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Tags: Norman Mailer, Andrew O'Hagan, Writers in America, novelists

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE?

2007-08-01T19:09:00.000-07:00

SO YOU'VE BEEN SENDING around your manuscript, following all the advice you have gleaned from those "how to get published" books and articles. You wait six months to get a response addressed to "Dear Author" telling you Mr. Big Time Agent receives so many letters he can't be bothered to write to you by name, but he assures you that he has "given your material serious consideration," and has determined it is "not right for us," but that "other agents might feel differently." Good luck.

What he has not said is that you were not the hot chick he met at a party in Brooklyn thrown by a currently best-selling writer. He just loved her collection of short stories about hankey-pankey in trailer parks, written in short, easy to read sentences. Nor are you the cute MFA candidate he encountered at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. He couldn't put down her novel about corn-fed robot zombies attacking the citizens of Kokomo, Indiana.

It doesn't cheer you up when you read that Jane Austen sent the manuscript of "Pride and Prejudice" to a publisher under an assumed name and that within six weeks it was a finished book, which has never gone out of print. But what if Jane were alive today?

A story in the July 27, GUARDIAN WEEKLY, tells of David Lassman, the director of the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, England, cheekily submitting the scarcely altered work of Austen to eighteen of the UK's biggest and brightest agents and publishers. He was surprised to find that all but one sent back polite, but firm, rejection slips.

Lassman's trick was not the least bit subtle. Calling himself Alison Laydee, a play on Austen's nom de plume A Lady, he typed up chapters from three of his hero's most famous books, with a few changes of names and re-worked titles. Apparently only one editor, Alex Bowler, of the publisher Jonathan Cape, was familiar with the opening sentence of "Pride and Prejudice" and caught the ruse. He wrote back to Lassman expressing his "disbelief and mild annoyance, along, of course, with a moments laughter."

So keep sending out those manuscripts. Maybe you will have better luck than the resurrected Jane Austen.

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I hope you enjoyed this short piece excerpted from the Guardian Weekly. And don't forget to check the archives for postings you may have missed. If you would like to send us something see our requirements in the sidebar. I guarantee you we won't take six months to respond.

Sidney Grayling, editor

Tags: how to get your work published, Jane Austen,

THDNR-1

2007-07-29T19:18:00.000-07:00

THINGS HE DOES NOT REMEMBER - ONE

Stephen Poleskie

When I asked him, he said he could not remember being born. I told him he should not expect me to write an accurate biography if he could not remember such basic details. He apologized, and volunteered that he did remember things that had happened before he was born, while he was still in his mother’s womb.

He recalled looking down, through a small opening at the light, and seeing his mother’s legs, her high button shoes pacing up and down on patterned rugs or hot sidewalks. His view was blocked by his mother’s thighs when she went up and down stairs or sat down. In winter she wore fur-lined galoshes made of rubber. He told me he watched the snow passing under her feet, and wondered if it would be cold when he finally was born. Then one day, while we were going through an album of his mother’s old photographs, we realized that she had never worn high button shoes. He was born in 1938, and high button shoes had long gone out of fashion by then. She also appeared to be a very modest woman who never would have gone without underwear.

A year and three months after he was born the German army marched into Poland, in effect beginning the Second World War. He was sure he remembered that too, but I told him he was too young then to remember anything. I explained to him that the idea must have been put into his mind much later, by someone else, and he only thought he remembered it.

He began to think about what I said. Then it came to him that a woman artist he knew in New York City in the 1960’s, Elaine de Kooning, had told him a similar story about looking out of the womb and seeing her mother’s high button shoes.

Then he thought about the high button shoes. He wanted to be a detective once and so researched Elaine’s birthday and the date of the demise of high button shoes. He discovered that it was highly improbable the unborn Elaine looked down and saw her mother wearing high button shoes. Perhaps she had seen some other kind of shoes, but unless her mother was extremely out of fashion she had not seen high button shoes. He wondered if the idea might have been put into her mind by someone else. He knew I had written a history book and asked me if that what was what history was all about.

He told me about meeting Elaine’s husband, who was a very famous artist. The man was wearing a blue chambray work shirt and bib overalls, sitting at the table drinking a beer. It was the third time had had been to Elaine’s studio, for whom he was working at odd jobs. Elaine’s studio was on Broadway at 12th Street. It was large and well lighted by many windows. He lived in a boarded-over store front on 11th Street between avenues C and D. His studio had no windows.

Elaine turned to him and said, “Do you know my husband Bill?”

At first he was confused. He thought her husband’s name was Willem, and that he now lived in East Hampton with a teen-aged girl. He had seen photographs of the famous man who was tall and handsome, and painted large and powerful paintings. However, Willem was now painting on the wooden doors that had been delivered for his new house, much to the delight of the art critics who saw this as a radical idea. This Bill was short and bent over, and smelled of beer. If Bill painted large paintings he would have to stand on a box.

He had extended his hand. Bill ignored it and took another sip of beer from the can he was holding with the massive mitt of a house painter. Without looking at him Bill asked, in a deep accent, “Did I ever tell you the story of how I came to America from Amsterdam?”

“No sir you did not,” he replied. He knew now that this really was the famous Willem de Kooning. He had read in an art history book about how the artist had emigrated from Amsterdam.

Bill told him the story.

Bill would tell him the story several times after that.

He could not remember a time when they were together that Bill did not tell him the same story.

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STEPHEN POLESKIE is an artist and writer. His artwork is in the collections of numerous museums including the Museum of Modern Art , and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the Tate Gallery, and theVictoria and Albert Museum in London. Currently a professor emeritus at Cornell University, he has also been a visiting artist at twenty-six other colleges and art schools in the United States and abroad. The above piece is from a novel in progress.

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Thank you for logging on. Please come back again. And don't forget to check the archives, available from the top right corner, for things you may have missed. We welcome submissions. See the sidebar for our requirements.

Sidney Grayling, editor.

Tags: Stephen Poleskie, Elaine deKooning, Willem deKooning, being born

STEPHEN POLESKIE RADIO INTERVIEW

2007-07-18T19:48:00.000-07:00

Here is a recording of a radio interview Tish Pearlman did with Stephen Poleskie which aired on her program OUT OF BOUNDS on June 14, of this year. Click on his name to listen to the audio.

Stephen Poleskie
6/14/07

Artist and Writer, Stephen Poleskie

In this fascinating interview, Poleskie discusses his many life adventures as a flyer, an artist, and a writer. He also discusses his book "The Balloonist- The Story of T.S.C. Lowe: Inventor, Scientist, Magician and Father of the US Air Force."

Tish Pearlman

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Thank you for logging on. You will need a high speed connection to get the audio. To hear other interviews by Tish Pearlman you can go to her program web site: www.outofboundsradioshow.com Interviews are broadcast on WEOS-FM every Thursday at 7:00 pm. The station can be heard on 89.7 & 90.3 Geneva, NY & 88.1 Ithaca, NY, or via stream at weos.org.

Sidney Grayling, editor

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click on title for more information

Tags: Stephen Poleskie, Steve Poleskie, Tish Pearlman, Out of Bounds Radio Show, WEOS-FM Geneva NY,

LADY CLAIROL & HILL

2007-06-28T18:56:00.000-07:00

by Laurel Speer

HERE'S BARBARA FRIETCHIE DURING the Civil War waving our flag in the faces of Stonewall Jackson's Confederate troops marching through Frederick, Maryland:

"Shoot, if you must this old gray head

But spare you're countries flag." she said.

Being in her nineties - or so the story goes - perhaps she figured she didn't have all that much to lose. Still it's a nice note of patriotism for our side.

Here's our very own Hillary Rodham Clinton, wife of the Governor of Arkansas, the year before he gets elected as president of these great United States:

Then there was the morning of Labor Day, 1991, when Hillary noticed as she was driving away from the mansion that the security detail had neglected to raise the American flag. Pulling a U-turn, she came careening back to the guardhouse and screamed, "Where is the goddamn fucking flag? I want the goddamn fucking flag raised every fucking morning at fucking sunrise!"

No question, Hillary's got my vote. She knows where she's going, but if necessary she'll do a U-turn to correct a mistake. This woman's got time to pay attention to details. She's forceful, keeps her hair free of gray. And she's only in her fifties.

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Laurel Speer lives in Tucson, Arizona. Her work has been published in many journals including, The Louisiana Review, and Chiron Review. This piece comes from her chapbook Ali's Mouthpiece. The quotes are from Barbara Frietchie by John Greenleaf Whittier and The First Partner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, by Joyce Maynard. You can order a copy of this chapbook, for $4.00, from Laurel Speer, PO Box 12220, Tucson, Az 85732-2220. A complete list of other titles available from this author, including her Geryon Press Series Poetry Books, can be had by sending an SASE to the address above. And watch for more of her short pieces on OE in the future.

Sidney Grayling, editor, OnagerEditions

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Tags: Barbara Frietchie, John Greenleaf Whittier, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Joyce Maynard, Laurel Speer

KAFKA MADE IN PENNSYLVANIA

2007-06-25T19:29:00.000-07:00

PASSERS-BY

by Franz Kafka

translated into the patois of middle-Pennsylvania by Hans Upph-Ovryerhed

LIKE IF YOU'RE SHLEPPING your ass up a hill at night and see some dude a ways off because there's a full moon, and this here dude is running at you full-bore, well, you don't tackle the fucker even if he is some whipped out little piece of shit, if you know what I mean, and even if there is some other fucker panting after him. You play it smart and let the bastard run by you.

Because it's night, even though there is a full moon. And like what the fuck do you know, maybe these assholes are just having a game of tag or something. Or maybe the two are chasing some other motherfucker. Or maybe the second guy has a grudge against the first dude, maybe for something he didn't even pull. And maybe he's going to snuff the fucker. You might even get sent up as an accessory. If you know what I mean. Or maybe they don't even know each other at all and are merely running home separately to get laid. Or like maybe they just always like to go jogging at night.

Anyway, like you're too tired to grab anyone, even if you had the balls to. And haven't you had a few too many beers, and are a bit shit-faced. You watch the two men disappear into the darkness, thankful that you didn't stick you're nose in it. If you know what I mean.

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Hans Upph-Ovryerhed was born in East Germany. Accused of being a snitch for the STASI, he fled his homeland and moved to Trout Run in central, Pennsylvania, where he still lives. He has had many jobs, and currently works as a grocery-bagger in a supermarket. On Sundays he is an usher in a Slovak Catholic church. Han's goal is to translate all of Kafka's work into the middle-Pennsylvania dialect. This is his first published translation.

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Thank you for logging on. Please check back again. We welcome your comments. If you are interested in submitting a piece check the sidebar for the requirements.

Sidney Grayling, editor

Tags: Franz Kafka, middle-Pennsylvania, Hans Upph-Ovryerhed,

MAIL ART

2007-05-28T18:39:00.000-07:00

MAIL ART IS APPARENTLY becoming popular again. I have received several envelopes of stuff in the post in the past few months. This moved me to dig out a mail art piece Steve Poleskie did sometime in 1982. The image has been on the Internet for many years. It was done for a project called Budda Ray University, which was a collaboration between Ray Johnson, the quintessential "mail artist" and Artpool, a group from Budapest, Hungary. You can get the history of this project, at www.artpool.hu/Ray/RayUniversity.html.

The face and nose in the drawing was supplied by Ray Johnson, and mailed to various artists, who added their own elements to complete the piece, and then mailed it back to Artpool who put some of them on their web site, then an early adventure, and also made an exhibition that was shown in many European cities.

Steve Poleskie, mail art collage with Ray Johnson, ca. 1982

This small piece came to life again in 2003 when it was used by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as part of their Wright Brothers Centennial celebration. It accompanied an interview Poleskie did in which he talked about his Aerial Theater performances. This image was not his choice, however, the producers found it on the web, and it was large, bright, easy to swipe, and not copyrighted. It was put on the CBC web site, along with the audio. The program was also picked up by the BBC in England, and so had considerable world-wide exposure. This was in marked contrast to the artist's experience here in the U.S. A., where although numerous exhibitions, and books, were put together honoring the Wright Brothers, none of the organizers saw fit to include him, despite Poleskie having worked in the sky for thirty years. An especially dreary exhibition, with a massive catalog, was put together by the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Wright's First Flight was in North Carolina, in which b-list artists from New York City, Los Angles, and for some strange reason Australia, whose main connection with flight seemed to be riding on an airliner now and then, showed work that looked like they were responding to an art class project about "flying." Nor did the North Carolina Museum of Art bother to show the work of Otto Piene or Leila Daw or any of the other artists who worked in the sky for many years, and who regularly participated in the "Sky Art Conferences" arranged by MIT, in places like Boston and Munich.

And what became of Ray Johnson? On January 13,1995, the artist performed his final "Nothing," jumping off a bridge into the freezing waters near Sag Harbour, New York.

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Thank you for logging on. You can read more about Poleskie's Aerial Theater pieces in his blog, available through the listing in the sidebar. If you have anything you would like to add you can post a comment below, or contact me, Sidney Grayling, at OnagerEditions@aol.com

Tags: Steve Poleskie, Mail Art, Aerial Theater, Ray Johnson, North Carolina Museum of Art, Otto Piene, Leila Daw,

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LOWE LEAVES FOR BOSTON

2007-05-18T19:22:00.000-07:00

here is another excerpt from the novel

THE BALLOONIST

The Story of T. S. C. Lowe - Inventor, Scientist, Magician, and Father of the U. S. Air Force

Stephen Poleskie

IN THE SUMMER OF 1847, T. S. C. Lowe’s father decided, as his family was growing again, and his finances were still not doing well, they should move to Randolph. This town had been Clovis’s birthplace, and he had dreams of returning to a farm there and opening up a guest house.

Thaddeus listened patiently to his father’s schemes, but was secretly making plans of his own, knowing it was time for him to set off. He realized it would not be easy to leave as he loved his family. But he wanted to go to Boston, like his brother Joseph. After considerable discussion, the matter was settled. Although he was sorry to see his son go off, Thaddeus’s father wasted no time in talk, but agreed to write a letter to Joseph. Hopefully,Joseph would find an apprenticeship for his younger brother as a boot and shoe cutter. The father reminded his son if things didn’t work out, he could always return to the steady habits of home.

With the passing of each summer’s day, Thaddeus became more impatient when Joseph’s answer had not returned. Moreover, T. S. C. Lowe was not sure that he even wanted to follow in the cobbler’s vocation. Although he thought not unkindly of his father and brother, Thaddeus considered himself much more intelligent then they were. It was a difficult decision to make, but he felt he had more to do with his life. He had been brought up to believe that duty to ones family came before duty to ones self. Nevertheless, one moonless night Thaddeus packed his kit, and slid down a rope, secretly leaving without saying goodbye.

In August, 1847, toting his carpet bag on his shoulder and with two half eagles tied in a sack hidden under his shirt, young Thaddeus Lowe began his journey from his home in Jefferson to Portland Maine, more than 100 miles away. Lowe walked the dugways, and hitched rides on Owensboros with farmers, who often gave him food and a place to sleep in exchange for doing chores. At that time, $10 was an “almighty sum” for a boy of fifteen. Thaddeus had been saving this money since he was twelve. Despite his unusual height, and ungainly appearance, Lowe moved with a fluid grace, a skill he had learned from playing with Indian children when he was young, and hunting with them when he got older. Considered a clever lad, and a hard worker, Lowe had never had any difficulty finding jobs, and was good about saving his money.

When he finally arrived in Portland a month later, T.S.C. Lowe was overwhelmed. He had never seen so many buildings. Red-brick structures as tall as three stories lined the streets leading down to the wharves. The waterfront bustled with activity. Numerous drays and wagons rattled to and fro over the cobbled thoroughfares, the drivers shouting and fanning their horses with enthusiasm. There was commerce everywhere, with hawkers and peddlers doing business right out on the sidewalks as well as in the shops. The fishmongers shouted from their carts, and blew loud on their horns, selling porgies at five cents a pound. The salt air smelled of drying fish, wood, leather, tea, tar, tanning acid, and the dozens of other odors of cargoes coming and going to various ports around the world. After some searching, the awed mountain boy finally found a place to stay in exchange for doing odd jobs while he waited for a ship that would take him to Boston. A few days later he learned of a lumber boat going that way, and arranged to have a berth on it as a cabin boy.

Threatening clouds hung over the harbor as Lowe’s ship set sail the very next day. Never having been on the water before, the up and down movement, as the old hull creaked and groaned across the swells, did its best to upset the boy’s digestion. He spent the better part of his first morning with his head hanging over the rail. But Lowe soon became used to the boat’s motion. He loved the surge of power as the sails caught the wind, plowing the bow through the white waves, and the sudden change of direction as the boom came around causing the hull to tip, and the boat tacked off on a new heading. He decided that if he wasn’t to become a balloonist he would be a sailor. However, by the end of the trip, Lowe had set his choice firmly in favor of ballooning. The vast number of rats scurrying back and forth between the ship’s deck and hold, which one of his duties was to contain, and which he was told were an integral part of any sea voyage, had turned his mind to the clear skies.

After a sea voyage that lasted the better part of three days, young Lowe finally arrived in Boston. If he had been impressed by the city of Portland, Boston must have seemed to the boy to be the center of the world. The harbor was choked with boats of all sizes and descriptions. Masts towered above water as sloops, frigates, and whalers lay at anchor. Many ships in the vast armada were flying flags from nations which Thaddeus, even with his vast knowledge of geography, could not identify. The lumber boat had to wait in the harbor for a full day for a slip to be vacated.

When his ship finally docked Thaddeus Lowe ran down the ramp, relieved to be on land. He had no intention of ever going back to sea. Stories he heard from members of the crew of young lads being shanghaied and forced to go on voyages of sometimes two or three years, during which they were flogged for disobedience, had left him terrified.

Looking around him, the new arrival realized that he had been ridiculous to even consider remaining in Coos County. How could anyone with an interest in life remain there for long when there was such a stage as Boston? Lowe’s eyes danced about the many people engaged in diverse activities, from lawyers to chimney sweeps. The narrow, crooked streets hummed with the gabble of merchants, market men, ladies, priests, strumpets, street urchins, soldiers, and sailors; and rumbled with the clatter of horses, oxen, carts, coaches, broughams, and cabriolets. He could not stop long enough in any one place to catch his thoughts before his senses were assailed by some new experience or idea. Here, Thaddeus told himself, was where he would make his reputation.

The directions Lowe had received from a passer-by to his brother’s cobbler shop led through a labyrinth of dark and winding streets, lined with dank cavernous warehouses, where it appeared that even at midday the sun never greeted the ground. He wondered if he had been purposely led astray. The newcomer did not need to use his imagination to suspect that this neighborhood, the turf of rival street gangs, was not a place a person ventured into at night, especially if one was alone. To Thaddeus everyone appeared suspicious of everyone else; and he himself became the subject of numerous inquiring glances.

After a long, but for Thaddeus fascinating, trek through the tangle of narrow, foul smelling, streets Lowe found his brother’s place of work. Joseph asked his employer for the rest of the afternoon off. The two left the shop and set off walking, with Joseph catching up on the news from home. Thaddeus told of his falling out with his father over not wanting to move back to Randolph, and of their reconciliation, and how he had left without telling anyone. Out of indifference, or perhaps respect for their father, Joseph listened while saying little. What his thoughts were he did not divulge. The two boys had always tended to side with their mother in disagreements anyway. To them Alpha Lowe was an honored and beloved woman, possessed of exceptional energy, a strong will, and high moral principals, who they loved deeply. While Thaddeus had yet to take a serious interest in the opposite sex, these were traits he would discover in the woman who, after the briefest of courtships, he would eventually marry.

In a short while, the brothers came to a pleasant area with a green meadow and many trees. Overwhelmed by his rapid passage through what must have been the heart of the city, Thaddeus allowed as how he felt more comfortable now that they had arrived in the country. Joseph laughed, explaining they had not reached the outskirts, but were still in Boston, only in an enormous park called the Common,that sat right in the middle of town. Displaying his newly acquired urbanity, Joseph led his brother to the other side of the Common, where he showed the newcomer the wonder of Beacon Hill, lined with its elegant red brick houses, that led in orderly rows up to the massive yellow dome of the State House. Setting his bag down to admire the setting, Thaddeus asked his brother how much farther to their house?

The would-be shoemaker was disappointed when Joseph revealed they were merely “sight-seeing” in Boston. Thaddeus was being apprenticed to a Mr. William Otis Nash, who had taught his brother shoemaking. The boy who had come so far to get his start in the big city, would be living further down the south shore in the small town of Hingham. Sensing his brother’s disappointment, Joseph reminded Thaddeus, he couldn’t expect to start at the top, and should be grateful, as Nash, French, and Company was one of the best boot and shoe manufacturers in New England. He assured his younger brother that he would not come out on the “little end of the horn” in this situation. For Thaddeus, who had banked so much, against his better judgment, on working with his brother, it was a painful revelation. He went silent, torn between elation and despair over what might become of him.

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Stephen Poleskie did a signing of copies of The Balloonist at the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D. C. on Saturday, June 2, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.

Tags: Stephen Poleskie, The Balloonist, T. S. C. Lowe, Civil War,

Tags:

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BALLOONING

2007-04-29T19:25:00.000-07:00

From the prologue to THE BALLOONIST, a novel by Stephen Poleskie

A Brief History of Ballooning, or How War Was Taken to the Air

IT COULD BE ARGUED THAT the balloon was the most significant of mankind’s achievements. For the first time ever, a human being was able to leave the surface of the Earth and travel in the skies.

The French brothers Etienne and Joseph Montgolfier had long been considered the originators of the hot-air balloon. However, recent research has revealed that on August 8, 1709, almost three-quarters of a century before the Montgolfiers, a Brazilian priest, Bartolomeu de Gusmao demonstrated a model hot-air balloon at the court of John V of Portugal. An artist of the time, Bernardino de Sousa Pereira, recorded the event in a painting now in the museum of the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil. According to one Salvadoro Ferreira, who witnessed the feat, the small balloon was constructed of thick paper and inflated by hot air,the fire being contained in an clay bowl suspended below the neck of the envelope. Other reliable witnesses included: Queen Maria Anna, the Papal Nuncio, and Cardinal Conti, who later became Pope Innocent III. It was reported that the balloon reached a height of twelve feet before two panicked valets, fearing it would set the royal drapes on fire, used their staffs to batter the strange flying thing to the ground.

On April 25, 1783, the brothers Etienne and Joseph Montgolfier, paper makers by trade, successfully flew their first balloon at Annonay near Lyons in France. Propelled by hot air from a wood and straw fire, the balloon was reported to have risen to a height of about 1000 feet and traveled horizontally 3000 feet before the hot air cooled and it fell to earth. They had begun their experiments years earlier with tiny paper bags and the smoke from their fireplace.

Two months later, the brothers gave another public demonstration at Annonay with an improved balloon that rose to a height of 6000 feet. This ascension was witnessed by a visiting American diplomat greatly interested in scientific discovery, Benjamin Franklin, who described the event in his journal. The success of this balloon resulted in a summons from the king himself, Louis XVI, who wished to see the new invention.

For their command performance the Montgolfiers constructed an even larger balloon, and hung a basket underneath it. In the basket would be the world’s first aerial voyagers: a cock, a duck, and a sheep.

This balloon was launched at Versailles on September 19, 1783 before the astonished gaze of King Louis, Marie Antoinette, and their court. The brightly decorated craft climbed to approximately 1800 feet, and, carried by the winds, flew two miles before coming down. When the balloon was found the cock was discovered to be somewhat the worse for his adventure. Learned minds of the time speculated that the cock, while admittedly a bird, but not used to flights higher than three feet, had been weakened by the great altitude to which the balloon had ascended. However, further investigation suggested that it was more likely that the poor fowl had been trampled on by the overly excited sheep. The avid Ben Franklin was also present at this demonstration.

King Louis was so impressed with the flight that he awarded the brothers the Order of Saint Michel. From that time on all hot-air balloons would bear the title montgolfieres.

Having demonstrated that it was safe for animals to venture into the skies, the Montgolfier brothers concluded that human beings should be next. The brothers constructed another, larger, balloon specifically for this purpose. This magnificent new balloon was over 49 feet in diameter, and superbly decorated in a blue and gold color scheme, emblazoned with the royal cipher, signs of the zodiac, eagles, and smiling suns. Below its neck was a wicker gondola capable of holding two men, and the fire necessary to keep the the envelope inflated.

Louis XVI, worrying over the experiments success, proffered that a couple of prisoners, who had been sentenced to death, might volunteer to fly in the montgolfier if they were offered a chance of freedom. However, Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier, a man who had been a very active supporter of this project from the start, protested that the honor of being the first person to fly should not be given to a criminal.

Pilatre de Rozier won his argument and, on October 15,1783, made a tethered flight to a height of 85 feet. By carefully tending the straw fire in the gondola, the prototype aeronaut was able to remain airborne for a full four and one-half minutes.

Such was the progress of technology in those days that a mere seven months after their first successful attempt at launching a balloon, the Montgolfiers were preparing to put two men into the skies for an untethered flight.

Having proven himself as an aviator, Monsieur de Rozier was now ready to take up a passenger. On November 21,1783, de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes became the first men to be carried in free flight by a balloon. They made their ascent, before cheering crowds, from the garden of the Chateau La Muette in the Bois Boulogne, Paris. A southerly wind carried them five miles in 25 minutes, before the first aerial voyage in history ended in a farmer’s field. A dream of 5000 years had been realized; man had safely flown through the skies.

Unfortunately, two years later, on July 15,1785, Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier, the first man to fly, would also become the first man killed in a flying accident when a balloon he was using in an attempt to cross the English Channel, inflated with hot air and hydrogen, caught on fire and crashed in flames.

Despite their achievements the Montgolfier brothers, with their hot-air balloons, were beginning to feel competition from the phlogiston-filled balloons of Professor Jacques A. C. Charles. The lighter-than-air gas phlogiston would later be renamed hydrogen by the French chemist Lavoisier.

On August 27,1783, Professor Charles successfully launched a small, unmanned phlogiston-filled balloon from the Champs-de-Mars in Paris. This balloon was airborne for about 45 minutes before coming to earth at Gonesse some 15 miles away, where it was attacked by panic-stricken villagers wielding pitch forks who, believing it to be some strange device of the devil, were not satisfied until the balloon’s rubberized silk skin had been reduced to shreds.

Benjamin Franklin, by then a rabid follower of the balloon experiments being conducted in France, had viewed Professor Charles’s launch. Franklin was dismayed to heard many of those in the crowd around him dismiss the balloon as being of no practical value. Even members of the French military present at the ascent, with whom Franklin discussed the balloon’s flight, failed to recognize the potential of lighter-than-air craft as an instrument of war. One officer remarked on the balloon’s qualities as an entertaining toy and laughingly asked, "Of what use is it?" Franklin, always quick to grasp the significanceof any new invention, made his now-famous reply: "Sir, of what use is a new born baby?"

Following his great success with his model, Professor Charles designed and built a man-carrying balloon. On December 1,1783, the professor and one of the two brothers who had assisted him in constructing the skin, Marie-Noel Robert, became the first men to fly in a hydrogen-filled balloon, ascending from theTuileries Gardens in Paris before a crowd estimated to number 400,000.

On September 15, 1784, Vincent Lunardi, secretary to the Neopolitian Ambassador, rose from the grounds of the Honorable Artillery Company to become the first aerial voyager in England. He described his balloon in letters to his guardian, Chevalier Gherado Campagni, rejecting the Montgolfier’s method of inflating the balloon with hot air as being too dangerous in that it required a constant fire being carried aloft to be applied to the contents of the envelope. Lunardi chose instead to use inflammable air produced by the action of vitriolic acid on metals or semimetals.

The greatest of the early balloon journeys was the first aerial crossing of the English Channel by the Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and an American Dr. John Jefferies in a hydrogen balloon. On January 7, 1785, they took off from Dover, Kent in a balloon which had only a small margin of lift considering the weight of the two men and their equipment. At one stage of the flight the balloon began losing height so rapidly that the aeronauts, to avoid going into the water, threw overboard everything they could to lighten it. They conspicuously arrived in France wearing only their undergarments.

Newspaper accounts of the accomplishments of the Montgolfier brothers, Professor Charles,and other balloonists of the time, generated tremendous interest in the balloon as a sporting vehicle, and a money-maker for showmen and daredevils. Ballooning became such a fad that "even women" trusted going aloft in the fascinating new conveyance, the first woman to fly being a Madame Thible, who ascended from Lyons in a montgolfiere with the French painter Fleurant.

Artists and craftsmen also got in on the act, decorating every conceivable object, from cabinets and bureaus to vases and snuff boxes, with images of balloons. Some wealthy people even arranged "balloon rooms," where everything including the chandeliers was decorated with or took the shape of a balloon.

Several days after Pilatre de Rozier’s first flight with a passenger in the Montgolfier hot-air balloon, Professor Charles had also taken up a passenger, one Andre Giraud de Vilette. Afterwards, in a letter to the Journal de Paris, de Vilette commented on the ease with which he had been able to view Paris and its surroundings. He wrote:

From this moment I was convinced that this apparatus, costing but little, could be made very useful to an army for discoveringthe positions of its enemy, his movements, hisadvances. and his dispositions. . . .

In the not too distant future, Napoleon Bonaparte, consummate dreamer as well as master military strategist, would become the first commander to recognize the possibilities of the airship as an instrument of war, and form an air corps using balloons.

However, after Napoleon’s experiments little further thought would be given to using balloons as part of a military strategy, even though the idea went back, at least on paper, to 1670. In that year the Jesuit priest, Father Francesco de Lana-Terzi designed a balloon-ship, which was the precursor of lighter-than-air craft. He doubted that God would ever allow it to be built as, he perceived its immense capacity for destruction. With uncanny foresight, de Lana-Terzi described the ease with which his balloon-ship could bomb fortresses, fleets, and cities.

No nation would successfully establish a corps of war balloons until the American Civil War. This would be accomplished, although not without considerable opposition and difficulty, by the balloonist Thaddeus Sobieski Constantine Lowe.

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Tags: Stephen Poleskie, The Balloonist,

LOST BOOTS

2007-04-04T17:42:00.000-07:00

A Short Story by

Pamela Goddard

THE MOST NOTICABLE THING about him was that he was never there. He left traces of himself behind; a tin can from lunch, maybe a dropped rag, a sparse trail of cigarette butts. One time it even happened that way with his boots. He just walked out of them along a twisting highway. By the time anyone noticed any of these bits of debris, he was long gone.
He was a drifter. A loner. He'd been drifting so long, he could no
longer recall when or why it started. There were vague memories of a
family, or something like a family. But really the memories were
constructed out of a sense for a need of logic in his life. People come
from other people. Every person is born of a mother, so logic dictated
he must have one somewhere. But who this woman was, or what she looked
like, he could no longer recall.
You wouldn't think it to look at him, but he was very formal in his
mind. He'd never phrase his though "don't remember," but rather "could
no longer recall." While he was walking he had very formal
conversations with the company he kept in his mind.
He walked every where, drifting aimlessly up and down rivers, along
mountain highways, from town to town. He mostly visited towns at night,
when he could. His eyes were very good in the dark. He would walk
along the quiet streets, picking things up and putting them down. It
was a good time to catch up on yesterday's newspaper by street lamp. He
picked up ideas and left them behind as easily as he did cigarette butts
and food wrappers. He liked the still company of town streets at night,
knowing that families were companionably sleeping in near by houses. He
liked people, but found he somehow made them nervous. So he'd visit,
and leave a little something behind. Some of the housewives knew his
kind were around, especially those who lived near railroad tracks. The
kind hearted ones would leave a little food on the back steps. A loaf
of bread, or some cans of tuna fish. He'd leave some lines of poetry,
or a quote from the newspaper, chalked into the paint of the back door.
By the time they were up in the morning, and read what he wrote, he'd be
long gone.
As the years went by there was less and less that he could recall of
his early life; who he was, or where he'd come from. His education, for
example. Logic told him that he must have gone to school somewhere. He
knew how to read and write. He knew about poetry, and would sometimes
recite to himself; Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Robert Frost. But where
he had learned the works of these poets, and others, he could no longer
recall. He assumed that he'd either been formally educated, or he'd
picked up the words of these poets somewhere on the road. The poetry
was a comfort to him during long stretches when he didn't see another
face. The books, which contained those words, well after he'd committed
them to memory he must have left behind, for someone else to enjoy. He
was always picking things up and leaving them behind. Maybe he'd left
the pages behind with some housewife who'd put out particularly good
food. Just now, he couldn't recall.
He knew he was different from the other men of his kind whom he
sometimes met along the road. Their minds didn't seem so logical, or so
formally trained, and he found it hard to talk with them. So he mostly
avoided the settlements of drifters which seemed to spring up near
railroad stock yards. And he avoided cities, unless the weather was
particularly bad, for the same reason. Although they were good places
to pick things up.
He was going to have to pick up another pair of boots. He sometimes
thought about how odd it was that he'd walked out of that old pair.
They seemed to fit well, whether with two pair of socks, or no socks at
all. Worn in enough, and in the right places, they hadn't made blisters
on his feet the way some old boots did. The soles had been worn enough
that he could feel the texture of the ground beneath him, and yet hadn't
worked through to holes yet. He'd made something of a study of found
foot wear. It would be hard to find another pair of boots that suited
him so well. It was a good thing he'd picked up a pair of sneakers
somewhere.
As he walked he set his mind to unraveling where and when those
boots might have left his feet. Maybe... Maybe it was on that bit of
winding road which looked out over the Hudson River. He'd walked that road before. It was a highly busy road during the day, with sudden,
unexpected spectacularly views of the river valley. But at night, late,
late at night, it could be quiet and sublime. The recent night when he
had drifted up that road, the moon was full and the stars were
multitudinous. He just stood there, leaning up against the rock face on
the inside edge of the road, and stared up at the stars and out at the
dark expanse of the Hudson River. He couldn't recall how long he stood that way. But he had a vague recollection of his feet feeling hot in
those old boots. So he stepped out of them, and took his socks off.
The soles of his bare feet enjoyed the sensation of the warm sand and
rocks cooling in the late summer night air. It felt so fine. He didn't
always take the time to appreciate such things. Thinking back, he could
now well recall how, for a time that night, the logical chatter in his
mind became still. He was lost in the wonder of the feeling of his feet
in the sand, the river before him, and the multitudinous stars
stretching on above. The clear light of the full moon reflected
brilliantly off the stone wall across the road, and, farther away, off
the river's rippling water.
Then, with startling speed, the stark beams of car headlights came
seeking him out around the edge of the road. He was brought back to
himself and to his need to move on. He must have left his boots behind
in the warm curve of that rock face. He really could not recall. The
rest of the night was lost in the pure beauty of that short moment. He
was not really concerned. He would surely find another pair.

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Pamela Goddard is a many talented artist, writer, and musician who lives in Ithaca, NY. You can find her web site at www.pamgoddard.com.

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Sidney Grayling, editor

Tags: Pamela Goddard, Onager Editions,

A SWALLOW

2007-03-29T18:43:00.000-07:00

by Simon Lappington

A swallow stalls, loops from me, swims

up the light but hits glass; scratches

on a thin transparency of existence,

urgent, I pluck it off. The barn is cool,

high, beams aloft streaked in a luminous

shit, nests in joints of dried oak

on stone their dry dusts descending. I

hold it, a stilled mote - dun breast band,

twin tail spines, white flange of a beak's

rim gaping, thrusting burdening the shell

of my fist; hopeless. Helpless I cast it

out, a joy, a whole pulse into clean air

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Simon Lappington is a major contemporary English poet. When this poem was written he was living in a stone cottage in Wales. This work was taken from the book Steve Poleskie, Artflyer published in 1989 by the John Hansard Gallery of the University of Southampton, England, on the occasion of an exhibition of Poleskie's artworks at that museum. The book, which also contains texts by Stephen Foster and Alison Lurie, was printed in a limited edition of 500. Lappington's poem also appears in his collection Legend of True Labor published by Secker and Warburg in 1987.

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Thank you for logging on, please check back again. If you have something you would like to submit for publication you can e-mail it to me, Sidney Grayling, editor at OnagerEditions@aol.com. You can read the requirements in the sidebar on your right.

Tags: Simon Lappington, Steve Poleskie, The John Hansard Gallery, English poets, Stephen Foster, Alison Lurie

WEDGWOOD

2007-03-11T17:13:00.000-07:00

Author and artist Steve Poleskie writes about the creation of his print "Wedgwood" one of four images which will be shown in the show Emotion -- Black & White and Color, 15 Photographers, at the Terrain Gallery, 141 Greene Street, New York, New York, from March 24, through July. Two other prints in the show, and mentioned in the article, "Grater Light" and "Cherry Stalks" are also reproduced below. Other photographers included are: Dale Laurin, John Reddy, David Bernstein, Louis Dienes, Len Bernstein, Allan Michael, Vincent DiPietro, Wayne Mumford, Amy Dienes, Dan McCling, Harvey Spears, Perry Hall, Doug Cox, and Mary Fagan

Wedgwood, digital photograph, 2005

IN MY PHOTOGRAPH “WEDGWOOD” the light, rather than the subject, was the first consideration. Up until then I had been photographing my still lifes in the late afternoon, when the sun slanted very low and the shadows were long, and mysterious. Of course as the season changed from summer to fall this time became shorter and shorter. In the winter I found the light too cold for my purpose so did not photograph objects at all. Also, using only natural light in a rather cloudy place like Ithaca severely limited the number of days I could work. I found that I was unconsciously dealing with the technical problem of light and dark that Eli Siegel referred to in the thirteenth question of his essay, Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?, “Does all art present the world as visible, luminous, going forth? –- does art, too present the world as dark, hidden, having a meaning which seems to go beyond ordinary perception? -- and is the technical problem of light and dark in painting related to the reality question of the luminous and hidden?”

Rummaging in my garage one bright, summer morning for some gardening tools, I became fascinated by the sun shinning on an old work table leaning in a corner. Why had I not seen this light before? I had lived here for thirty-nine years. The sun’s rays, passing through the glass so old that it had a wavy pattern, were warm and gentle, the “opposite” of the harsh gold light of the late afternoon I had been using. I cleared the table of its boxes of rusty nails and empty oil cans and ran to the house for some objects that were more . . . what? More colorful? More picturesque? More artful? My hands full of stuff, I shouted to my wife to, “Help me bring some things to the garage!” “What do you want?” she asked. “Whatever,” I replied.

Sometimes I will carefully place the objects I use in my still lifes. Other times, as in the photos “Cherry Stalks” and “Grater Light,” (below) I just photograph them where they have been left behind, on the table or kitchen sink, by either Jeanne or me. That day we worked the rest of the morning, using my new found light source in the garage, placing and replacing things, pots, fruit, flowers, in various relationships, until a tree threw its shadow across the window and the table went dark.

I took thirty-three photographs that morning. The files were later downloaded to my computer, where I looked at them off and on over the next few weeks. Thirty photos from that shoot were eventually deleted. Of the three pictures, I kept only one has been printed. The photo is seen exactly the way it was taken. I do not use PhotoShop to alter these images in any way. The title “Wedgwood” while perhaps having a suggestive connotation was chosen for identification purposes only. If you look closely you can see a small Wedgwood vase among the collection of objects. And while I have presented the origin of this work as coming chiefly from an activity, a response to a situation, then a spontaneous selection and placement of objects in that situation, did I perhaps intend more than that? As Eli Siegel asks, “Does every work of art show the kinship to be found in objects and all realities? –- and at the same time the subtle and tremendous difference, the drama of otherness, that one can find among the things of the world?”

Grater Light, digital photograph, 2005

Cherry Stalks, digital photograph, 2006

Steve Poleskie, Ithaca, NY, 10 March 2007

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You can find out more about the Terrain Gallery by clicking on their entry in the sidebar on your left.

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A short story by Steve Poleskie entitled Fragile Things appears in the latest issue of SN Review. You can read this by going to the magazine's listing in the sidebar on your left. When the website comes up click on "Winter 2007." It is a rather sad story, but we hope you enjoy it. Steve's wife, Jeanne Mackin, also has a essay in the same issue.
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Thank you for logging on. Please try us again. And click on the archives icon above for previous posts you may have missed, as only the ten latest items are ever up at one time. You can find a biography of Steve Poleskie by clicking on the Wikipedia listing in the sidebar.
Sidney Grayling, editor OE

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Stephen (Steve) Poleskie's novel THE BALLOONIST, the story of Thaddeus Sobieski Constantine Lowe, will be available from Frederic C. Beil, Publishers in March of 2007 You can find additional information about this book posted in previous entries of this blog and in the blog archives, and also on the publisher's web site www.beil.com.

Tags: Steve Poleskie, Terrain Gallery, Eli Siegel, digital photography, Onager Editions

Mardi Gras Greetings

2007-02-14T17:45:00.000-08:00

Roald Hoffmann at the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, 2004

HERE IS A PHOTOGRAPH of our friend Roald Hoffmann, poet, and Nobel Prize chemist dressed as Santos-Dumont for the 2004 carnival in Rio. You might ask: Who was Santos-Dumont? Here in the U. S. A. the Wright Brothers are considered to be the first persons to have successfully flown a heavier than air flying machine. However, in many other parts of the world this honor is attributed to the Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont. This is a controversial subject about which we have included some information below. Santos-Dumont's success with dirigbles may have inspired the American balloonist T. S. C. Lowe to return to what would become his final project, his "planet airship," a design for an ocean crossing balloon. He had been working on this idea when the Civil War interrupted his plans, causing him, at the request of President Lincoln, to devote his time to organizing a balloon corps for the Union Army. You can find out more about T. S. C. Lowe from some of the other entries to this blog, including excerpts from the biographical novel Steve Poleskie has written on the balloonist, and a review of the book The Balloonist in the blog entry below this one.

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Alberto Santos-Dumont (July 20, 1873 - July 23, 1932) was an important early pioneer of aviation. Although he was born, grew up, and died in Brazil, his contributions to aviation were made while he was living in France.

Santos-Dumont described himself as the first "sportsman of the air." He designed, built, and flew a variety of balloons before developing the first practical dirigible balloons (i.e. airships.). In addition, he made the first fully public flight of an airplane, in Paris in October of 1906. That aircraft, designated 14 Bis or Oiseau de proie (French for "bird of prey"), is considered by many to be the first to take off, fly, and land without the use of catapults, high winds, or other external assistance. In comparison, Wright brothers did not make any public flights until 1908 with an improved Flyer presenting a considerably higher power-to-weight ratio. Thus, most Brazilians, as well as many others around the world, consider him to be the "Father of Aviation" as well as the inventor of the airplane.

Santos-Dumont Number 14 Later the balloon envelope was removed and the aircraft renamed the 14bis meaning "14 again".

The above material on Santos-Dumont came from the Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia, a very useful site that can be accessed at www.wikipedia.org.

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And what does Roald Hoffmann do when he's not dressing up as Santos-Dumont for a carnival parade in Brazil? Not only a recognized poet, Hoffmann is also the John A. Newman Professor of Physical Science at Cornell University. In addition to sharing the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Kenichi Fukui, he has been honored by the American Chemical Society with the Priestly Medal, the Arthur C. Cope Award in Organic Chemistry, and the ACS Award in Inorganic Chemistry. Professor Hoffmann has also hosted a twenty-six-segment television documentary on the Public Broadcasting Service entitled The World of Chemistry. Additional information on Roald Hoffmann, and some of his poetry, can be found on his web site, www.roaldhoffmann.com.

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Sidney Grayling, editor

Tags: Roald Hoffmann, Steve Poleskie, Santos-Dumont, T. S. C. Lowe, early aviation, ballooning,

A Book Review - THE BALLOONIST

2007-02-12T17:26:00.000-08:00

Here is a review of THE BALLOONIST as it appeared in the December 15, 2006 issue of BOOKLIST, the magazine published by the American Library Association.

Poleskie, Stephen. The Balloonist: The Story of T. S. C. Lowe – Inventor, Scientist, Magician, and Father of the U. S. Air Force.

Dec. 2006. 368p. Frederic C. Beil, $24.95 (1-929490-27-5).973.7.

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Thank you for logging on. Please check back again. And ask for THE BALLOONIST at your favorite bookstore or online. You can read an excerpt from this novel in the entry below. The review of Paul West's recently published poetry book has just been moved to the archieves, look for it there.

Tags: Stephen Poleskie, T. S. C. Lowe, Pancho Barnes, The Balloonist, The U. S. Civil War, The Army of the Potomac, book reviews,

A SHOW FOR PRESIDENT LINCOLN

2007-01-25T11:05:00.000-08:00

An excerpt from Stephen Poleskie's novel THE BALLOONIST, The Story of T. S. C. Lowe, Inventor, Scientist, Magician, and Father of the U. S.

Airforce

To pitch his balloon program, Thaddeus S. C. Lowe, the consummate showman, convinced some of the more venturesome of Washington’s government and army men to go aloft with him on his demonstration flights. Tethered half a mile above the Mall as the gondola swung with the wind, Lowe’s more often than not terrified passengers usually clung bare-knuckled to the sides of the fragile wicker basket. The balloonist, accustomed to the swaying, cut a brave figure as he stood there, balanced, looking through his telescope, pointing out the Federal fortifications along the river from Chain Bridge south to Alexandria.

Soldiers could be seen digging breastworks into the dull red clay of a flowering countryside. From below the sounds of drums floated up as companies of infantry drilled with military precision between the long rows of tents. Lowe knew that no matter how frightened the man in the basket next to him might be at the moment, tonight at a fashionable dinner party he would tell a different story, speaking only of the wondrous vista he had seen, and of the clear advantage the balloon presented as a vehicle for military reconnaissance.

As successful as these demonstration ascensions were, they were mere rehearsals for the flight Professor Lowe planned as his piece de resistance. He proposed to take aloft a telegraph operator, with a long wire attached to the ground. From his high altitude, supposedly overlooking hostile territory, the balloonist planned to demonstrate how he could telegraph back to headquarters a description of the enemy’s position. This information could be used by draftsmen on the ground to create a virtual map of the foe’s deployment.

The morning of June 18,1861 dawned bright and clear with a calm wind. Larks fluttered in the branches of the trees, as the clouds slowly dragged their shadows across the Mall. It was the perfect day for the spectacular ascension Lowe was planning from the Columbian Armory (now significantly the site of the National Air and Space Museum). This was the flight he had announced would be dramatically different from all his previous ones. In the basket with the balloonist was Mr. Herbert Robinson, a telegraph operator who would transmit Lowe’s message, and Mr. George McDowell, in charge of the equipment lent for the occasion by the American Telegraph Company. A half-mile of telegraph wire trailed down the Enterprise’s tether rope to another operator on the cool green lawn.

Carried on the lips of the curious, the news rapidly spread throughout Washington that a telegraph message was to be sent from Lowe’s observation balloon to the ground. Crowds gathered in the street to witness the event. With the naked eye, onlookers could just make out Lowe in his basket, surveying the enemy entrenchments laid out beyond the Potomac River, his spyglass sweeping in a wide arc across the landscape with a grand showman’s gesture. Then the balloonist began to dictate.

The people on the ground had become silent. Suddenly, an excitement spread through the crowd as the spectators down front heard the first tentative clicking of the Morse code signal transmitted down from the balloon above being received by the operator in front of the armory.The ground operator rapidly tapped out an answer on his own keys. A shout went up. The experiment was a success. This became the first time in history that a telegram had been transmitted from the sky to the ground. Professor Lowe sent the following message to President Lincoln:

Balloon Enterprise, in the Air

June 18, 1861

To His Excellency Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States

Dear Sir:

From this point of observation we command an extent of county nearly fifty miles in diameter. I have the pleasure of sending you this first telegram ever dispatched from an aerial station, and acknowledging indebtedness to your encouragement for the opportunity of demonstrating the availability of the science of aeronautics in the service of the country, I am your excellency’s obedient servant.

T.S.C. Lowe

The ground operator sent up a message that the reception was perfect. An formal announcement of the successful link up was made, and everyone cheered again. Encouraged by his accomplishment, Lowe and his assistants stayed aloft for the better part of an hour, sending and receiving messages that were relayed to various points including the War Department, General Winfield Scott, Alexandria, Virginia, and the balloonist’s wife Leontine back in Philadelphia. For Lowe it was a masterpiece of public relations, greatly strengthening his position as chief candidate for the yet to be created position of head of the aeronautical corps. But there was still much more to be gotten out of this show.

Signaling his crew, Lowe had the Enterprise hauled closer to the ground. Then, with the three men still in the basket, and enthusiastically waving small U.S. flags, the balloon was towed, bobbing in triumph, through the streets now lined with wildly cheering crowds to the White House. There President Lincoln greeted the balloon group from out a second-story window. After shaking hands with the president, Lowe had the basket lowered to the ground, and the still inflated balloon moored on the White House lawn. Upon disembarking, the ebullient Lowe found a personal note of congratulations waiting for him from Abraham Lincoln, and an invitation to supper.

That evening a triumphant T. S. C. Lowe, trying his best to restrain his hyperbole, dined with the president and several members of the cabinet. When the meal was finished, the president remarked that he was extremely interested in Lowe’s scheme for organizing a corps of observation balloons. Lincoln requested that the balloonist remain after the others had departed. The president indicated he wanted to discuss the time it would take to get the corps operational and details of its employment. He was especially intrigued by Lowe’s plan to direct the fire of artillery from the air, thereby enabling gunners to shell targets they could not even see.

Lincoln and Lowe talked well into the night. As the hour was rather late and, despite all the military presence, Washington was not the safest town, the president suggested to Lowe he was welcome to stay at the White House. Honored to be the president’s guest T. S. C. Lowe readily accepted the invitation. President Lincoln, wearied with the cares of the Nation, showed the balloonist to his room and said good night. Although the bed was larger, and more comfortable than the one in his room at the National Hotel, and he was tired from the toil and excitement of the day, Lowe did not sleep well. He lay in bed staring at the ceiling excited by, and yet fearful of, the prospect of becoming the founder, and head, of a new branch of the military service.

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The Balloonist: The Story of T. S. C. Lowe,
Inventor, Scientist, Magician, and Father of the U.S. Air Force
by Stephen Poleskie
Category: Fiction / Historical
Format: Hardcover, 368 pages
On Sale: January 2007
Price: $24.95
ISBN: 978-1-929490-27-1

Click on the above for more information about the book and the author.

Tags: Stephen Poleskie, T.S.C. Lowe, Abraham Lincoln, Washington D. C. Mall, Civil War, ballooning, The Balloonist

ONE MORE TIME

2006-12-29T18:25:00.000-08:00

A Poem by

Stephanie Poesie

If I could drive

yet one more time down the highway of my youth.

One hundred miles per hour, hoping that

some officer would dare to stop me.

Through towns with names like Nanty Glow

where no one lives, but trucks take feed.

And Berwick, with its factory making tanks for the military

that he refused to serve, and later subway cars

we rode in our pinch-penny youth.

All day and all night long,

roaring along the river, that roars along the road.

And I, passing through for one more time, my own

Spring, Summer, and Fall.

But now Winter comes,

and I move slowly.

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Stephanie Poesie is a short story writer and poet. She has studied at Black Mountain College and the New School. Her poetry has appeared in The Flatlander Review, New Voices from Nowhere, and Streetlights, among others. She presently lives in Ithaca, New York.

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Sidney Grayling, editor

WHOSE NAME ANYWAY?

2006-12-13T18:48:00.000-08:00

THE NOVEMBER 24-30 ISSUE OF THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY contained an article by John Sutherland concerning the problems of the British crime novelist Jake Arnott, whose latest book Johnny Come Home, was first published in April of 2006, only to be pulled off the market in August of the same year.

It seems that in this book, set in London's tin pan alley of the 1970s, Arnott named one of his characters Tony Rocco. Tony was a former big-band singer now turned impresario. While I have not read the book, Sutherland assures use that the fictional Rocco is depicted as a big-time pervert, and quite nasty. Unfortunately there is a real Tony Rocco, who has emerged out of obscurity, a former big-band singer and a figure of unimpeachable respectability.

Mr. Rocco has brought a suit against Arnott and his publisher, Hodder & Stoughton. And so the book has been pulped. At a loss to the publisher of thousands of dollars, the sum of which must be surely covered by liability insurance. The book will be reprinted with appropriate name changes. I am told that Arthur Hailey checked the names of his characters in the Manhattan telephone directory. Perhaps a more appropriate method these days might be an Internet search.

Sutherland informs us that "Where real names are involved an author cannot hide behind that all purpose shield: 'any resemblance is purely coincidental.' Nor do the courts accept ignorance as a defense. If you can be shown, by using a real-life name, to have injured a real-life reputation, then you will pay. The law is alongside the Bard," Sutherland quips, quoting Shakespeare: "He who steals my purse steals trash. But he who steals my good name steals all that I have.

The author is safe if his character has no good name to lose. Sutherland gives as an example Giles Foden lampooning Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, even though the exiled Amin was still alive and living in Saudia Arabia. The article also points out that authors such as Evelyn Waugh and James Joyce took great pleasure in introducing introducing the names of particular enemies into their fiction, but kept them in small nooks and corners of their novels, where there appearance became more of a private joke to their friends. Then law suits were not so easily instituted as nowadays, which was probably for the better.

Sidney Grayling.

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GOOCHA

2006-11-29T18:08:00.000-08:00

a short story

Etienne Espye

GOOCHA CAME HOME WITH an arrow in him. He knew he was home, but couldn’t get through the cat door as the shaft was sticking out both sides of his body. A good cat, he sat at the back door waiting for Josa to return, but she was at the other house. Goocha didn’t know that.

Goocha couldn’t have gone to the other house if he wanted to. It was too far away, three hours by car. He had liked the other house when he lived there by the lake with Josa and Jan. Now Jan was gone and he and Josa lived in this small town in the mountains, where there was only one grocery store which did not stock brand of cat food he required, so his bowel movements had become loose, and he gagged up quite frequently. It was also a town where frustrated, or perhaps just bored, deer hunters shot arrows at any small creature that moved.

Initially it had almost been fun. Goocha had never seen a bow hunter in his former hometown by the lake, which banned all hunting, except that done by cats. The first arrow that came his way while he was stalking a squirrel in the woods had missed. Here was something different, something he had not seen before. The long straight stick had come from the man very fast, and with a twang and then a hiss. Now it stuck into the ground at a strange angle. On the other end was something that looked like feathers from a bird. Goocha knew about birds. He hunted them; not that he ever caught one. He had once, and Josa had taken it from him, and scolded him telling him he “mustn't do that.” So now when he waited for them in ambush, and dived out of his cover, he only scattered them into the sky, holding up if it seemed like he might actually get one. He did the same thing with squirrels, even though no one had warned him against catching them. After all, he had plenty of food at home in his dish, which Josa always kept filled.

The sound of the arrow had startled Goocha, and caused him to break off his chase of the squirrel, a change of track that probably saved his life. Now, he heard the swishing sound again, and quickly dived under some ferns. The arrow stuck in a tree trunk, vibrating just above his head. The man walked toward him, then stopped to pull his first stick out of the ground. Goocha took advantage of the man’s distraction and scooted for home, careful to keep his tail down.

It was a new game to play, he thought. No one had ever harmed Goocha, or even threatened him; although he had had his tail accidentally stepped on once. He had no fear. Then one day, while chasing a squirrel, Goocha saw one of the arrows find the little animals back. The squirrel was pinned in place. It tried to run, but eventually realized it was going nowhere. Then it shuddered and went stiff. Goocha watched from his concealment as the man came to claim his stick, and the skewered squirrel was pulled off and thrown into the brush. The cat went looking for his friend, wanting to know what had happened to him. Spying the squirrel trashing behind some bushes, Goocha approached cautiously, stalking through the low grass in a crouch, with his ears back. He was near, but now the grass had given way to a grave path. Caution told him he must hurry across this open space. In the middle of the path he felt one of the sticks go through him. He tried to run, but could only drag his back legs behind him. His body hurt, like it had never hurt before, and now fluid was coming out of him, warm fluid which he licked at with his tongue. Not knowing what else to do, he hid in the bushes until the hunter was gone, then he crawled home to find Josa. He knew she would help him, as she always did. But she wasn’t home. Goocha waited at the back door for three hours, and then he died.

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Etienne Espye was born in Paris in 1938, and moved to the U. S. A. with his parents just after the Germans invaded Poland. Etienne grew up in New York City where he attended public schools, and took night classes at the New School for Social Research. He presently lives in Upstate New York, where he works as a part-time cat sitter.

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A RAID AT THE G

2006-11-17T18:55:00.000-08:00

a short story

S. Francis Pringle

THE PINE GLADE INN, an old stone tavern standing next to the two lane highway that ran between the river bridge and the mall, had become the main watering hole for our small college’s underage drinkers. Despite its name, The Pine Glade Inn possessed neither pine trees nor a glade. Peter, the owner, was fond of explaining away this apparent inconsistency. “In revolutionary times, before the farmers cut down all the trees, this tavern did stand in a cool glade of pines, where travelers could rest their horses,” he would expound, hoping his customers had not noticed the date 1938 on the tavern’s cornerstone as they came in. “Well, my name is Peter Rams,” the innkeeper would reveal, pausing to wipe the bar with a sour rag, allowing his listeners a moment to think about this fact before delivering the punch line: “Now, I couldn’t very well have named this place The Peter Rams Inn. . . .” This usually brought a curious look and perhaps a grunt from the customer, but Peter always laughed.

Few outsiders visited our town as nothing ever happened here, but those who did knew “The Glade” and made it their hangout, probably because, besides the college students, the place attracted an abundance of town girls known for their beauty, and their putatively loose morals. Prize winning poets, and writers-in-residence, although there were fewer of them now as the college was facing severe budget cuts, often gyrated on the dance floor among college kids clad in sweatshirts displaying the logos of Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. The only people wearing the name of the local school, Trumpett College, were the town girls, who didn’t go there anyway.

A kind of caste system existed among the students at Trumpett. The students who had transferred from some other school, where they bought their logo gear at the campus store rather than from a mail order catalog, having flunked out before coming to Trumpett, considered themselves superior to those students who had gone directly to the local institution. The two groups did not interact socially; in fact they were rather hostile to one another. Although Trumpett College had been my only choice, the one school my parents could afford, I was, because of my friendship with a transfer student named Hank Kolada, allowed to mingle, if only incidentally, with this group.

Outside my window the early winter’s night was being dampened by a gentle snow as I hurried to finish typing a term paper before going out for the evening. Across town my friend Hank would be shivering in his yellow rain slicker, as the volunteer Civil Defense Policeman waved his red baton-flashlight at the steady line of cars coming and going around a three ton boulder that had slid down a cut in the road and was occupying the southbound lane of Route 609. In another hour Hank would be off duty, and meeting me at The Glade for a beer. No one was scheduled to replace Hank Kolada; the cars would just have to get around the rock on their own, which they seemed to be capable of doing when he wasn’t there. Hank didn’t let the fact that his task was rather make-work to keep him from botching up a more serious job bother him. He enjoyed playing policeman, which was why Hank was a volunteer. Hank hoped to become a law enforcement officer when he graduated from Trumpett, the third college he had attended, which made him a kind of super hero among the transfer students. Plus, his father was the chief of police in Shankerburg, the township where The Glade was located.

Everyone, at least everyone under the legal drinking age of 21, professed to be Hank’s friend. If The Glade was going to be raided, they reasoned, Hank Kolada would be sure to know about it. The sight of Hank hunkered over the bar nursing his beer brought considerable comfort to the minds of those customers whose real ages did not match the ages on the ID cards in their wallets.

Looking out, my breath frosted the window. I imagined Hank tugging his slicker tighter around his neck against the cold, and checking his watch. Hank too liked to hang out with the “fast” crowd at The Glade. It gave him a sense of importance that someone who had already flunked out of two colleges by the age of twenty desperately needed. Unfortunately, Hank and I had been less welcome at the Glade since perpetrating our hoax.

It had been Hank’s idea. I still wonder how I had the temerity to agreed to the bizarre scheme, perhaps because I was rarely asked by anyone to participate in anything. Hank, as a volunteer Civil Defense Policeman, displayed an official-looking rack of warning lights on the roof of his car. He also carried in the trunk a complete store of emergency gear: helmets, yellow slickers, nightsticks, flashlights, whistles, hand-held radios; a mini police station complete with everything but guns.

The Glade, as a widely-known underage drinking spot, operated in constant fear of being raided by the Liquor Control Board, its young patrons speculating on how much of their nightly tab went into paying off whoever was being paid off, and when these payments mightrun out, and the curtain brought down. But this risk was part of the attraction of drinking at The Glade, a frisson that made the beer taste sweeter there than the same beer drunk from a can in a parked car, or out of a paper at a fraternity party.

Hank, nicknamed “Pina” to his chagrin, possessed of a strange sense of humor anyway, and perhaps to spite those insiders at the tavern who regularly mocked him, especially the owner Peter the inventor of his tag “Pina Kolada”, contrived to orchestrate a mock raid on his favorite drinking establishment.

The Friday night before the Homecoming Parade, wearing his Civil Defense Police slicker and helmet, and blowing a whistle, Hank had burst through the double front door of The Glade, the warning lights on his car flooding the background with flashing red and blue, its siren howling like the dogs from hell, and shouted through a bullhorn: “Don’t anybody move this is a raid!”

For a moment dancers on the polished floor froze in place, chuggers halted in mid chug-a-lug, the good times hung suspended. Then a crescendo of too young drinkers panicked for the side exit, where I, in similar faux police costume, had taken up my position also blowing a whistle, and rapping on the window with a billy club. Seeking an escape the crowd in the back room had bolted through the kitchen, and out the back door, which to their grief opened on a field that had been freshly fertilized with barn manure.

Clambering on an overturned wastebasket a ex-Yaleman got stuck trying to squeeze out the men’s room window. Harvard and Princeton sweatshirt wearers were found cowering on the toilet seat, the stall door locked.

At the first blast of Hank’s whistle Peter and his wife had fled up the backstairs, seeking sanctuary in their apartment above, where they would claim they had been all night, planning to place all the blame on their newly hired bartender.

The bogus attack lasted less than a minute: Hank, now Pina again, throwing off his helmet and yelling, “Surprise”. But before I could also reveal the joke, all of the underaged patrons, which meant most of the patrons, excluding those still hiding in the toilets, or out back running through cowpie up to their ankles, had rushed past me and gotten into their cars and fled.

The rest of the night was rather quiet at The Glade. Hank and I apologized profusely for our joke, which all agreed was in poor taste. Peter swore we were banned from his establishment forever, only relenting when he remembered how useful it was to have the son of the local police chief as a regular customer.

I was allowed back into The Glade perhaps because I was Hank’s best friend, or so everyone thought. Of all the people Hank Kolada knew there must have a dozen or so closer to him than me, but none, I suppose, quite as desperate and gullible as I was then.

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S. Francis Pringle is a writer who lives in upstate New York. He has published numerous short stories. including one in the June issue of this journal. A RAID AT THE G is an excerpt from a longer work.

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Sidney Grayling, Editor

Four - A Portfolio

2006-10-28T18:06:00.000-07:00

AT TWELVE

Jan Wroclaw

She bends her head

over her tablet, drawing

splendid maidens and silky

steeds that surely fly.

Outside the room

wars rise and fall again.

THE VERY LAST LILAC

Jan Wroclaw

There are all these gods,

these voices that went dead,

all these reasons why

we forget

some sons will rape

and some will kill,

and sons will weep

for what happens to the seed.

BARTONSVILLE IDYLL

Kenneth Oldmixon

Fire Is.

It fills the road with sun

striking cries of children, forging

fields to copper sung

with a clang of children.

Come brazen as the grain

banging your thighs and ring

your hair,

make me the liturgy of seed.

KETURAH CANDY (1858-1869)

Kenneth Oldmixon

Hello lover! How does it go

down there? All stone and leather?

Or settled to the mulch of our

best years. Do shards of lace

tease the tunnels of your bones?

I need to touch and thrill a rise

of skull to know if laughter

leaves a scar or tears erode

some way out, to trace

my maze of now become, a face,

although it hardly matters.

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These poems are from a portfolio printed in 1989 at AXIAL PRESS in Hublersburg, Pennsylvania, by Richard Rutkowski. Twenty-four sets were made. The portfolio was hand printed by Rutkowski using the silk-screen process. There were also four illustrations by E. M. Hollis. The poems and illustrations were all created by Rutkowski himself, and attribituted to the various imaginary authors. Richard Rutkowski died several years ago, and AXIAL PRESS is no longer in operation.

What Fiction Asks Us To Remember

2006-10-12T19:19:00.000-07:00

By Jeanne Mackin

Murdered pirates, decaying plantations, mead halls, Napoleon’s roasted chickens…artificial memories bestowed by historical fiction, but who’s to say that an artificial memory is less meaningful than mundane ones? De La Mettrie argues that memories become encoded in neurons and have physical properties, so why can’t the memories acquired in a reading of fiction matter as much as the memory of today’s first cup of coffee and who poured it for you? Read, and remember. Is it possible to also understand something from what is given us by the memories in fiction? “The past is the present, isn’t it? It’s the future, too. We all try to lie out of that but life won’t let us,” Eugene O’Neill tells us in Long Day’s Journey into Night. Perhaps what fiction most asks us to remember is that memory keeps us human, and if we remember enough and remember well, we can add an e to human.

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Jeanne Mackin is the author of several historical novels including The Sweet By and By and The Frenchwoman. She teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Goddard College. mackinja@aol.com

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Culp's Hill

2006-09-28T17:01:00.000-07:00

DURING THE SCHOOL YEAR 1960 to 1961, Stephen Poleskie taught art at the public high school in Gettysburg, PA. He endured this torture solely to avoid being drafted into the army. He had no teaching credentials, and had not majored in art. In fact he had only taken two art courses, in which his performance had not been exemplary. He got his job purely on his portfolio, and was issued a temporary teaching certificate, with the proviso he would pick up the required education credits by taking night classes during the year.

When he went over to Gettysburg College to inquire about courses, Poleskie ended up being hired to teach an evening painting class, so never had time for the education courses he needed. At the end of the term the high school principal asked him: "Just what do you plan to do next year?" Poleskie then realized that he had been fired. The sound of school buses still makes him nervous.

While in Gettysburg, Poleskie rented a house on the corner of Culp's Hill and Baltimore Pike. This house had stood during the Battle of Gettysburg, and purportedly served as a makeshift hospital for wounded soldiers. The structure has since been bought by the National Park Service and preserved.

Poleskie had been told that the house was haunted by the spirits of the men who died there. There were even stains on some of the wide floor boards that were supposed to be bloodstains from the war. Poleskie does not like to admit that at numerous times during the night he thought he heard cries, and even the sound of gunshots and cannon fire. The house was in the middle of the battlefield, and so it was not uncommon to look out the window and see men on horseback, and charging infantrymen, but these were only some of the many monuments that surrounded him.

One day, when he was adjusting a piece of loose molding around the fireplace, a small door popped open, revealing a narrow staircase. This seemed to lead to a basement, which Poleskie was not aware the old house had. It took him several days to work up the courage to go down those dark stairs, although he maintains it was because he did not have a flashlight, and kept forgetting to buy one when he went into town.

When he finally did go down, Poleskie did not find very much, some old barrels and empty chests that looked more like they dated from the 1920's. But, rolled up, and tucked behind a beam, he found a poem. The handwriting was clear, but there was no signature only a date, 1863. The title appeared to originally have been, "Culp's Hill Now," but the author had scratched over Culp's Hill and written Gettysburg. The text of this poem is reproduced below.

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Gettysburg Now

Cool shadows falling

where

once the sound of battle rang

amid

thicket and meadow and rock,

Far past the field

comes

the sound of picnic

as once the drums had rolled,

Cool now in idle forests

which

have felt the heat

summer's blood.

anonymous, ca.1863

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Sidney Grayling, Editor