Mother’s Day – 2012

Posted on May 13, 2012 by

My mother – beautiful at 58 years old

Today is a day to think about mothers. I think of my mother’s courage and that instinctual drive to keep her family together when, as a widow, she trudged to a Fredericton courthouse to testify that her children should remain with her even as she cast her lot with my stepfather who would take her (and the five of us) 4000 miles away from everything she had ever known. A country girl made good by the city and the miles between herself and the wagging tongues of those “back home.” As a child I remember my mother crying only once – in 1958, pregnant with my baby sister and reading a wrinkled yellow piece of paper  – a telegram of the death of Nanny – her grandmother. Surprisingly, I can’t remember the times I made her cry. But the salve of good years and the sovereignty of hindsight became my apologies.

Mom died in 2004. No heroic measures she wanted, “just bury me face down and all my enemies can kiss my ass.”  This attitude didn’t last long – after witnessing the deaths of her oldest and her youngest she knew the wages of grief. “On second thought, cremate me and sprinkle my ashes over any J.C. Penney’s store for all the time and money I’ve spent there.”  Mom was never far from her signature humor.

In 2012 I consider what my mother has missed: our first African-American President. I am certain she would have taken time from her usual apolitical understandings of life to consider President Obama’s impact.  But I wonder if she would have thought of her decision to leave Canada as the signifying verso of our collective destiny? The single cup coffee maker is something she would have hated. My mother was as social drinker – that is, any act of sociability on her part had to include coffee. Facebook – hmm, I’m sure I could have induced a certain curiosity in my mother if I could have shown her what little I know about the massive internet communications highway. She was, after all, the same woman who so desperately wanted to get clear of the downtown Los Angeles sweat shops (the price she paid for her mother taking her out of school after fifth grade) that she borrowed my high school English grammar text and an old Underwood typewriter and taught herself how to write and type so she could become a secretary in an optometrist’s office. By the time she retired she could read prescriptions, adjust glasses and make the choices of what frames to stock based on the like and dislikes of the clientele at the Los Angles College of Optometry. There’s more that she missed, to be sure. Painful as her death was, life did go on. I am hoping she now knows everything – especially how much I miss her – of this I am certain.

A fine coda:

“Honey, if you want something done – do it yourself. If it’s not done right you have no one else to blame.”

Posted in Daily prompts, Death, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

That Titanic Sinking Feeling: A Movie Review

Posted on April 5, 2012 by

The tragedy of a death has no exact expiration date as any parent or survivor can tell you. Likewise, tragic deaths on an international scale is an event that can become, in-and-of itself, a being – some thing to be festooned each milestone with wreaths of remembrance; flowers and stories interwoven in the airy base of the human condition. Next week we will be exactly 100 years from just such a tragedy, one that has been turned into a multi-million dollar business for good or ill. This is a story that plays into the hands and hearts of those who refuse to and those who cannot forget. We live for this stuff – nostalgia; our friend who takes us by the hair and drags us into the cul-de-sac of romantic endings. There is room here too for the ironic, the boarding ticket lost equals, in the end, a life saved and the ship that was dubbed unsinkable – did just that – sink.  And while we’re on the subject of sinking ships let’s look at the movie Titanic – again.  I saw this epic disaster twice in 1998. I suppose I provided balance for the scores of others who attended its opening in ’97 and now need permanent resident visas at certain theaters.  I did not understand it then and I don’t get it now.

The reality of me directing a movie is highly unlikely so I do what all people who believe their creativity is unappreciated do – I criticize – or critique, if you will. To be fair, I don’t want to minimize the colossal effort it must take to create a blockbuster movie in which the plot’s climax is well-known history. Just the facts; unsinkable boat sinks drowning 1500.  With this information to work with there’s nothing left to do but get technical. And technical the movie was. The academy award presentation was right on the mark in awarding Titanic the Oscar for the best movie in all the technical areas. I know they did the right thing because my mom cringed months later when speaking of the beautifully monogrammed china crashing to the floor after the ship’s impact with the iceberg. And the replication of the grand staircase was straight out of a young girl’s dream; to stand at the top of such beauty before descending into a crowd of admirers. No,  I am not here to critique perfection. And had I been favored with input on the choice of actors I would not be here putting these words to print. But I wasn’t asked for my choices so I shall critique the casting mistakes of those who were.   I’ll start with Leonardo DiCaprio. He should have won an Oscar for the most valiant (yet failed) attempt at impersonating a fictional character. I think it was the smile. I had to remind myself that the year was 1912 and DiCaprio was cast as a less than high society character.  So I was bothered whenever he flashed that perfect keyboard which smacked of very expensive Beverly Hills orthodontia. I don’t believe people were that model-agency perfect in 1912. A small, brown cavity working its way between any of his front teeth would have been more authentic. I mean he did just win his ticket in a card game for heaven’s sake! And the haircut? Really!  kid DiCaprio swooped, lunged, and spat his way around the world’s largest ship and at every turn I kept expecting him to show up with a surf board over his shoulder looking every inch the truant high schooler shooting the curls (instead of brushing them) at Santa Monica Beach. And I have a problem with the dynamics of this movie – fluid dynamics that is. I am not here to minimize the power of love but there is no way DiCaprio and his love interest could have maneuvered so skillfully through near freezing water. Puhleeze! This was the same North Atlantic Ocean that kept that iceberg intact. In my second viewing the characters seemed to shiver only as an afterthought.  And the dialogue… I could have sworn I heard DiCaprio say “cool.”

Now, Kate Winslet is another story. I liked her style immediately. No pink, Barbie-type doormat this one. Winslet portrayed well the serene woman of substance. While I can’t say much for her taste in fiancées, she did an admirable job of displaying the anguish a young, beautiful woman must feel when confronted with a real Miss Havisham of mothers. I would have given her an Oscar though for at least one scene. It’s the scene where she poses nude for that worldly (he looked all of 13 years old!) artist of distinction with incredible gifts and experience. All this boy’s wincing and squinting at Winslett’s beautiful female form evinced nothing of his fascination for her “…hands…” he says he has. How she remained in character is beyond me. Maybe she got through the scene by visualizing a Cary Grant or Clark Gable in place of this teen heart-throb. In any case, I am sure this is why I have never been asked to star in a movie.  Winslet, the actress, is believable even when she lets this youngster calm her Victorian fears of low-class impropriety. A real woman would have gathered DiCaprio  up with milk and cookies, taken him to bed and tucked him in soundly before kissing his greasy forehead goodnight and going below decks. Yes, below deck, because that’s where all the fun is. Didn’t you know? All the steerage types – those without shoes, proper fitting clothes, and little food – always come with a fiddle or two to dance like River Dance. If I show an unnatural rancor here it’s because my son asked if we would be in first class or steerage if we had sailed on the Titanic?  “We wouldn’t have been on the Titanic honey… you know how dad hates cruise ships.”

The actor, Billy Zane did what he does best. He played the sinister, psychologically frightening, yet oh so attractive man of means. Zane’s best sinister performance though remains with the movie Dead Calm. I felt the director really kept the gloves on my hero, Kathy Bates’ Molly Brown. This character always seemed to be holding back. It was as if she could have run away with many scenes with her shoot from the hip delivery. Here is where I’d like to see the outtakes. And in the lifeboat scene, the Molly Brown of my knowledge was far more urgent – you could say a real pushy broad as she verbally badgered the rowers (all women I thought) to return for survivors. And then there’s Gloria Stewart with her character throwing the blue diamond overboard after all those years!  I have trouble here. The jewel really had nothing to do with her love relationship with the Dawson character. She could have used the proceeds from the sale of the blue diamond to, say, purchase more lifeboats for the next Titanic or (and this is cruel I know) she could have used the money to open the Jack Dawson Acting School. What better way for her to memorialize her (thankfully dead) loved one.  Seriously, to feature such a thin love story within such a technical masterpiece as the Titanic is to minimize the real story – the death of more than 1500 people and the class/monetary barriers that allowed the privilege of life for some and death for others. (It appears the fate of the world’s 99% hasn’t changed much).  What of the mother who soothed her children with lullabies as the unsinkable massive ship tilted them toward certain death? What about the aged couple deciding to end their life together in peaceful non-resistance to the inevitable?  Are these not love stories?  What of the builders of this magnificent ship and that blind faith that a calm North Sea must engender? What about the Titanic’s near miss out of her last port? Another huge ship, (ironically named, the New York) pulled by the suction of the passing Titanic had cables snap  and engines had to be reversed to avoid a collision. Frightening premonitions are also evident in the novel Titan, written years before 1912 but with the unsettling storyline of big ship hits iceberg and sinks without enough lifeboats. There was the chief officer of the real Titanic who wrote a letter to his sister saying, “I still don’t like this ship. I have a [strange] feeling about it.” No kidding.  James Cameron missed incredible foreshadowing opportunities here. I’m just sayin’.

I write this review under the protection of time and distance.  I can tell you now that the pictures of Kid DiCaprio my then 9th grade female students taped on my bulletin board suffered an ugly fate by a few boys who planned to inflict certain pictorial pain. Everyday they waited for the safety of a (relatively) empty room in order to add some odd caricature over each new picture the girls put up. And I was remiss in my instruction of values and morals for I did not lecture them about their behavior. Instead, I ate my lunch and admired DiCaprio’s new look (black eye, fright-wig, hillbilly teeth) and the new moniker – Leonardo Decapitated.  After my lunch I removed all traces of the offensive facelift and waited for the next day’s incarnation.

These girls are now young women and I am sure part of the throng that will watch the Titanic movie in honor of the 100 year anniversary of the sinking. Maybe time is what I need to appreciate the movie Titanic. Maybe I need to see it again if for nothing else to get some pointers on how to survive the next 100 years.

Posted in Movie Review & response | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Boys in (the) Hoods

Posted on March 28, 2012 by

Memo to self: burn all the hoodies under my roof. Wearing hoodies should go on my list of

photo courtesy of:
http://www.publicservice.co.uk/feature_story.asp?id=18175

things African-Americans ought  not to do – though I’m sure it won’t. But I do have a list (acquired over the years) of suggestions and warnings from the dominant culture. No, Geraldo Rivera is not the first fool to make suggestions regarding the dress and presentation of African-Americans. And after shaking the dust off my list I can still read the early penciled in responses to me and my racial collective from those adults whose admonishments in some cases changed my life but in the larger scheme of things revealed much more about the pathology lurking in the quiet halls of covert racism. The subject matters include but are not limited to:

1.  Cursing: “Your English is atrocious!”  My junior high librarian. I suppose she was right. So I set out to prove that using swear words did not mean my vocabulary was lacking. Now, I swear with impunity and still maintain an impressive vocabulary.

  1. The death of Dr. King: I listened to Robert F. Kennedy’s speech after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King and caught the whiff of condescending assumption. His forced soothing manner implied that all the natives were going to riot because they had no better way to handle the death of a fallen leader.

3. Regarding my Afro hairdo: “You should wear your hair differently.” “have you been standing too close to a light socket dear?” “Duh, can I touch it?”   From whites believing in nothing but their own originality.  Alas.

4. Regarding the pronunciation of the word striped: “Dear, it is pronounced with one syllable. You do not want to be ignorant the rest of your life do you?” This from the well-meaning mother of one of the few white students left at Compton High School in 1967.

5. High school teacher talking to an African-American mother on the phone: “Your daughter was arguing loud in the hallway and being offensive because she was twirling her neck and swearing – you know – talking black.”  I asked this young teacher what she said to the parent of the white student who was just as ‘creative’ in her speech. “Did you accuse her of talking white?”

  1. Regarding my marriage to a white man: “What about your children?” It was 1985 in western New York and I was shocked at the question from my then superintendent. I was amazed that as we were returning from an educational conference this man could let slip the most uneducated of questions. I fairly shouted, “Wait! Wait, so I should not be married or entertain my right to parenthood because your children wouldn’t be able handle my inter-racial children?” He was offended at my defensiveness! He told me he was only concerned about the welfare of my children. Really? Why would he NOT think to make HIS children less racist.
  1. An early harbinger of concern:  when we adopted our seven-week-old bi-racial son in 1987, our white social worker looked at my husband and, very bluntly stated, you will be the white father of what some will consider a most feared element in this society; a black male. We looked at each other in bewilderment believing deep in our hearts that our world had changed for the better. And we were right (and lucky) – for the most part.
  1. Geraldo Rivera:  a man, who should be a lot smarter than he sounds, says my son and the sons of others should not wear hoodies because of some racist gunslinger whose right to carry a gun overshadows a black man’s right to choose what he wears. He has since apologized (in a manner of speaking). Apparently his own son was quoted as saying he was ashamed of his father’s stance on the hoodie issue. This represents proof that stupidity is not necessarily generational.  My outrage at the Trayvon Martin fall-out  lacks the appropriate surprise because I know, as do many African-Americans, that there is always someone emboldened by ignorance, stupidity or both to declare that black men get what they deserve (in this case) because of their choice of clothing. By Rivera’s rationale, a scantily clad woman is simply asking to be raped. Hmm.

What does this all mean? If Trayvon Martin’s death is to have any meaning at all we need to acknowledge that all parents want to raise children to be free to move about in society at large. Once this is accepted, then the Trayvon Martins of this world belong to all of us. We need to stand together and express outrage at all the perpetrators of social injustice – especially those who believe an innocent victim, somehow, warranted his fate.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Craven Terrace: In Case of Fire – Do Not Reenter the Building

Posted on February 4, 2012 by

Before              

You go to bed

Make sure you know

The means of escape

In case

Of fire

Know how

And where

To raise

The alarm

Always pledge

That doors

Between

Across

Corridors

Stairways

Are closed

Especially at

Night

Doors

For protection

From fire

In the Heart’s Hallways

Posted in Daily prompts, Travel | Leave a comment

WAR HORSE: In praise of Schmaltz

Posted on January 16, 2012 by

                                                                                                                                                                    I was impressed by some of the promotions of  the Broadway play War Horse; the wicker puppet horses that exuded a Lion King feeling though in much more dire circumstance. So I am not sure what I expected from Steven Spielberg’s movie War Horse.  But the story of War Horse is not a new one and like human nature the camaraderie that can exist between animal and man can take many permutations. And Spielberg gives it to us in spades. After five minutes of the story I was on the verge of feeling cheated. Hadn’t I been animated by the themes involving the power of love and  love conquering the unconquerable  in the many Lassie movies and the TV show? This is Steven Spielberg, the man who gave us Schindler’s List, Amistad, Saving Private Ryan and Munich – all stories that pulled the curtain back on the wizard. Stories that gave pause to consider the questions of God, free will and the vile temper that can run deep within the breast of the human animal. What’s he doing treading the emotional road too-well trodden? I took a deep breath before suspending judgment.  Yes, “pure schmaltz,” was my reaction upon leaving the theatre and a woman waiting on her husband claimed she felt the same way but added, “in a good way.” She is right. A heartfelt story to occupy the heart is just what we  need. Now, today – in 2012.

From the very opening scene, I was struck with visuals of a lush and verdant English countryside replete with a mare giving birth then frolicking across the hillside with her young stallion foal. I settled into the movie made comfortable with expansive panoramas and life affirming human and animal nature. I found myself considering the job of color-timer – the person later in the post-production process whose job it is to balance the color, tone and density of a film. It is a job that is usually noticed for its annoyance when there are shifts or bounces in color as a film progresses from scene to scene.  Not so with War Horse.  I was wrapped in a blanket of greens, tweeds, dun earth and rich sunsets that moved seamlessly from the first dramatic moment to the last.

Life lessons abound in War Horse. There are lessons in courage, selflessness,  what it means to be a real man and the ubiquitous battle between the haves and have-nots.  Joey, the war horse is sold (his ownership changes hands more than a few times after this) in a bidding war to Albert’s father a Boer War veteran struggling to maintain his farm and family. Once the long-suffering wife scolds her husband for spending too much money on a thoroughbred rather than a draft horse, the emotional trajectory of this film is obvious with the time-honored theme of Eric Knight’s 1938 short story and later novel, Lassie Come Home. Like the entire Lassie franchise, Spielberg also wrings every human/animal bonding cliché from every scene.   In spite of cliché, this theme works for War Horse just as it did in reality. According to writer Nigel Clarke,

the original Lassie who inspired so many films and television episodes was a rough-haired crossbreed who saved the life of a sailor during World War I. Half collie, Lassie was owned by the landlord of the Pilot Boat, a pub in the port of Lyme Regis. On New Year’s Day in 1915, the Royal Navy battleship HMS Formidable was hit by a torpedo from a German submarine off Start Point in South Devon, with the loss of more than 500 men. One of the ship’s life rafts, containing many bodies, was blown by gales along the coast and was washed ashore in Dorset. The bodies were laid out on the table of the local pub. The pub dog, Lassie, began to lick one sailor’s feet, and someone noticed the man was reacting to it—so they revived him.

This was life awaiting art (enter Hollywood) to validate the experience. Suspending disbelief is good for the soul. It provides a delicious alternative to the certainties of life today – for as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow the political landscape will continue to offer podiums for patriotic scoundrels conferring the blessings of improper gods. Children will make life-altering decisions out of starvation and necessity. A mother will make choices that in sunnier times would seem unthinkable but now – hauntingly probable. This is a world where the transitive verb, occupy now does double duty as a noun. War Horse is a movie that allows the viewer to address the issues of the human heart and run free when the heart is held hostage to what seems to be man’s congenital desire for war.  On the back of Joey we can escape the many handlers who do what they have to do to keep the war machine alive. The scene in which the horse is actually able to bring two sides together is antithetical to the Omaha Beach scene in Saving Private Ryan – there is no blood just one English and one German soldier cutting free the horse from yards of barbed wire. Even these characters are given enough intellect to acknowledge the irony of their duties.  “We’ll be fighting in a few hours…” the Englishman in his thanks for the German offered wire cutters.  Joey is free and in a coin toss returns to the  English trenches unknowingly passing a gas-blind Albert being treated in a front line Red Cross facility. It is Albert’s well-known whistle that saves the badly injured horse from destruction. Cue John Williams and his mounting crescendo when long-lost horse meets his loving now blind master on the WW I battle field. This could have been the end to a very sweet movie.  But no – Spielberg has more emotion to wring from us. Such as the return of the grandfather of the beautiful yet sickly little French girl (into whose hands Joey fell when his two German deserter handlers were shot for their troubles)  who walks three days to the  auction of all English military property at the war’s end. In a show of love and good-will Albert’s entire unit pools their pounds to purchase Joey for Albert but it is not enough to compete with the grandfather who wants the horse to remember his now dead granddaughter. What is a heart to feel?  The granddaughter was so sweet and precocious that we want the horse to go to the grieving old man. But then there’s Albert, he’d been blinded by mustard gas in service to his country and we are happy he can see now so, “gee, let the soldier have his horse old man.” And the grandfather relents. It is what the young, beautiful and precocious girl would have wanted.

Albert returns home in the most touching and emotional scene in the entire movie. Mom and dad are in the garden unaware of the silhouette on horseback moving across the horizon. Mom puts her hand to her eyes prolonging the dramatic irony – it could be anybody riding up to the farm but we know who it is. This lasts long enough for both mother and father to come to full recognition of their son and then -  group hug. Big – group hug.  Joey is left to display his great profile for us to admire. The rich, fire-inducing sunset backdrop screamed Gone With the Wind and the moment when Scarlet falls to the red earth of Tara and screams, “as God is my witness I’ll never go hungry again…” Seriously, I indulged in a claymation visual of Joey the horse laying on the ground at the gate furiously pounding a many-scarred hoof neighing, “as God is my witness I’ll never go to war again.”

Yes, pure schmaltz. But schmaltz never tasted so good.

Posted in Movie Review & response | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

Waiting For The Osprey – Peacefully

Posted on January 15, 2012 by

The nest is perched high atop a pole (compliments of Monroe County) about 200 yards from my morning deck. Most mornings there is no movement and with an obtuse spotting scope I can see the beginnings of a nest of heavy twigs – home building, slow and deliberate. Then an evening arrives and the outline appears. I grab my camera and shoot as best I can.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

The Myth of Fingerprints: You Are What You Read

Posted on January 5, 2012 by

I have just completed the short story, The Bus Ride by Sahar Sabati. It is a fairly straightforward narrative about a nurse who gets off work early and finds herself  (the assumption here is that the nurse is female) on a city bus sitting across from a disheveled and smelly man. The nurse eventually imagines an entire Law & Order-type scenario from which the ragged, dirty man is running. The narrator begins her speculation by way of good character description.

He was carrying two bags. One was a red postman’s bag slung over his shoulder, the other was a black heavy-duty garbage bag he was half carrying, half dragging behind him. He put them both on the ground, propped his feet on them and leaned back in his seat.

The reader is intrigued by what the man might be carrying in these bags. The narrator describes the look of this middle-aged man before entertaining a host of possibilities as to why he is looking and behaving as he does.

The man, unaware of my musings, took a long sip out of the bottle. It looked like plain, clean water—why did it stink so much?

Once again, my imagination started to wander. Maybe the man had gone down on luck, and had spent the night hunting for meat to feed his family. Maybe he worked as a sewage-cleaner during the night. Maybe his washing machine didn’t work, and when his clothes reached a state of utmost dinginess, he finally gave up and is now going to his mother’s house to use hers, which would explain his state and the smell emanating from the bag.

This is the innocent rationale offered before the narrator takes off in her own self-described flight of fancy after seeing the blood on the man’s hands – blood that contrasts greatly with the shiny gold ring on his finger.

Horrific visions of my mutilated body danced before my eyes.

The nurse gets off the bus one stop later chiding herself for letting her imagination take things too far.

I rang the bell and was getting up to leave when the man looked at me and winked. It startled me. I tentatively smiled back. When he smiled, I felt utterly ridiculous. A man with such a nice smile couldn’t be a murderer. I got off and told myself that the extra walk would serve me as a lesson.

This short story ends in  the fashion of  O’Henry albeit lacking in cleverness.  Having convinced herself of her foolishness, the narrator is shocked when she gets home and opens up the daily news paper.

Looking up at me was the man from the bus. Over his head was the title: “Man caught on tape killing wife and kids.” It seemed that I had been right, after all. I fearfully looked around. I had been right about the man’s past actions; had I guessed right about his future actions, including my possible demise? I hurried inside the house and closed the door firmly, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to sleep anytime soon.

Why does this story disturb me so? This story and follow-up questions was a homework assignment for my ten-year-old niece. Is our world not crazy enough that we need to continue to stoke the fear machine for simple reading pleasure? And is this what would make a young girl want to continue to investigate the beauty that can be created with words?  I think not. When I was twelve-years-old it was A.M. Rosenthal’s New York Time’s story of Kitty Genovese, the Kew Gardens nurse who was stabbed and left to die as 39 people watched and listened to her early morning hour screams, that scared me beyond reason. This story has since been updated with corrections as to the number of actual onlookers and the coming and goings of the perpetrator who did return to the scene to eventually silence (kill) Genovese. But, in 1964, my take-a-way was that a woman could be beaten and killed by any man and the first assumption is that, in spite of  the obvious physical assault,  the commotion is simply a domestic dispute. This was the beginning of a female-victimizing world for me.  A man had a right to beat his wife and no one has a right to “get involved.” That Kitty Genovese may have fared better had she simply screamed “FIRE!” rather than ‘I’ve been stabbed’ was not lost on my young mind. But again, I was 12 almost 13 years old. At 10, I had not been imprinted with the blood and guts of dismemberment.  At 10, I was fearing wicked stepmothers and loving the little girl going to live with her grandfather in the Alps.

Could there have been other stories for my nieces 5th grade educators to choose from that would not make her fear disheveled men who happen to carry bags? Also, are there stories available that would not make her fear the male gender in general? The subtext here is my niece should fear for her life in the presence of men who don’t look a certain way.  Yes, the world can be a vile and dangerous place for anyone. But I believe these are the lessons best taught by concerned parents who understand their child’s capacity to assimilate the contradictions inherent in human nature.

I suppose the story, The Bus Ride, has its place in the pantheon of homework assignments. But, for a ten-year-old girl whose father has completed numerous military tours in service to this country, this story should have no quarter. It is a cheap knock off of so-called television crime dramas that I can’t believe took more than two hours to write.

 

Posted in Essays: Life in These Hinterlands, Teaching, Writing | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Yep, I’m an Author – update

Posted on November 14, 2011 by

No, an agent has not crawled out of the innards of my computer to tell me he/she has been tracking my fabulous facility with the written word and, by the way, here’s a six-digit check for anything else you might deign to write – on a cocktail napkin say. Such is the stuff of movie scripts, nightmares and daydreams.

But I remain an author. I deem myself so as I follow the dictates of the poster I had posted in my high school creative writing classroom, Don’t leave your story for someone else to tell – they’ll probably get it wrong.  So, here I sit telling my story.

For Sisters Who Pick the Rose is fiction although I do use bits and pieces of my Compton childhood to support my storybook events. I’ve been working on this (my third) novel for two years now and have completed what I believe are five acceptable chapters. I would appreciate constructive input from any and all readers of For Sisters Who Pick the Rose Please find chapter one at my wordpress writing blog:

http://gwenatplay.wordpress.com/

and if you like what you’ve read please feel free to hit the subscribe button and you will get each new installment in your e-mail.

As Ever,  Gwen

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

In Parenthood: No Crime Warrants This Catastrophe

Posted on November 5, 2011 by

I don’t know what the death of a child means – its purpose really – nor am I ready to lay the cause for such pain and misery at the feet of some ostensibly benevolent entity.

The beauty and pain of life and the road beyond...

Two former colleagues will be burying their son today. Their son: my son’s lacrosse goalie, two years younger. This is tragedy writ large across the small town landscape of the human heart. A tragedy that speaks to the lie that the cities are where it’s at. Maybe when I figure out the IT of everything I will be better able to make a distinction between the pain wrought by a life – and a death.

What I do know is that becoming a parent can be the most joyful experience two willing people can embark upon together – the endless dreams founded on faith in love and the innocent sounds of new names – mommy and daddy. It must be what an addiction is like; looking into the eyes of your child and succumbing to the bone-melting moment when you realize that there is nothing, no one in the world you could love more. It is the moment you watch your toddler waltz around the lawn in a spring rain babbling the language of sheer happiness, arms spread wide, head held high as if sipping from some celestial chalice of innocence,  that you know you would lay down your own life for this moment to continue. Children, loved, cherished – as it should be – infused into your veins every morning, every handhold, every neck hug, every embrace of that small sturdy body that holds the contents of your elixir, the potion you need to survive. Liquefied, cooked love – injected in the open for all to see – the tracks of which you are proud to expose. Children can make us whole.

As children can make us whole so too can they lay us low. There is emotion that resides in the cracked plaster and glass of all adolescent door slams – an emotion whose power, we

that road untraveled - to self-hood

forget, is as strong an elixir for the adolescent as our fresh-parent love was for us. But it is the road out of the nest, to selfhood that we keep our eyes upon – beyond adolescence – when the parent-child relation ship is supposed to right itself – the waters begin to calm, the phone conversations end in “I love you(s)”  – both ways. But before the road untraveled, we believe we are cursed; what did we do wrong? Worry – the congenital parental condition beginning, not with ours but with our child’s birth. Even as we wrangle with adolescence we begin to paint pictures of that road out of the nest, putting our dream-child squarely upon it, smiling and ecstatically babbling that sonorous, personal language of sheer happiness – it is this emotional chimera that saves us when all hell breaks loose. It is what keeps us on the edge of the grave looking in even as our flesh and blood is lowered into the earth – buried.

I realize my tears are useless in changing the scenario. They will not revive the loved ones of the T’s, A’s and the F’s. – the first initials of those friends and colleagues who have all buried their young.

To be a parent is to expect to see your child to a healthy adulthood

To be a parent is to expect to bring that child to a healthy adulthood – it is what you deserve for all the love and parent-hours spent keeping that child alive and well. What these parents get for all their love is not what they deserve. There is no crime that warrants such catastrophe.

And so I wonder what it all means? I think of my own son, the vessel that walks the earth holding my heart and dreams – for him. And now my frustration with him, for his comparatively minor infraction of the adult responsibility code, pales with the knowledge that this frustration could be easily trumped – any day, any time…

Posted in Essays: Life in These Hinterlands, The Portable Parent | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Searching for Howard Beale: The Fall of Our Discontent

Posted on October 29, 2011 by

Photo courtesy of Kelsey Johnson

*Picket lines and picket signs
Don’t punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
Oh, what’s going on
What’s going on
Ya, what’s going on

Wall Street: a neighborhood that handles the finances of those elusive job creators who have perpetrated the ultimate coup: enacting a suspect political dogma that the masses think they understand. Simple wording and snappy sound bites are all part of the gelatinous political-stew of lies and half-truths. But wait a minute, not all the masses have eaten this last supper of deception. Zuccotti Park has become a festival of signs and faces of protest which brings to mind a certain declaration – the emotional genesis for many a proletariat movement – “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”  Today, life imitates art imitates life… (I could go on). The art here is the 1976 movie Network (written by Paddy Chayefsky, Directed by Sidney Lumet) where the mad rantings of prophetically sensitive newsman Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch) send the network establishment into the hair-pulling tizzy of damage control. They fire the unhappy newsman deeming this much easier than attending to the root of his suicidal outbursts. Beale’s position is saved by a friend’s intervention and his promise to apologize to his viewers. But the emotional waters have already boiled and all it takes is heat from the lights, camera and the countdown to spill over. Once more, rather than the promised apology, Beale rages at the camera calling life meaningless and “bullshit!” The “angry man” scenario is an overnight (today it would be instantaneous) ratings hit moving the network to give Beale his own show. Network is ripe with subtext and the firing of Beale highlights the old Hollywood maxim – “…you’ll never work in this town again — until we need you.” The personal urgency behind Beale’s rage remains unexplored by those he works for and the audience he entertains with his emotional antics as the “Mad    Prophet” who refuses to be ignored any longer. Timing is everything in love, politics and business and Beale hits the perfect note when he persuades his audience to throw open their windows and shout the “mad as hell…” mantra of the masses. The people have found their leader  and, at his behest, will send letters and telegrams (yesterday’s e-mail and twitter) to the White House in protest of the UBS network company being bought out by a Saudi conglomerate (any of this sound familiar?). Beale’s pending emotional breakdown is ignored even as his message is being co-opted and twisted by his employers who fear his power.  The big boss does manage to get a naïve Beale to put his evangelical zeal to work on another, less populist cause. As a result, ratings tumble but Beale is kept on and, like a public hanging in which the corpse is left (as a lesson) to twist in the wind, his messages, along with Howard Beale the Mad Prophet, are barely remembered.

Photo courtesy of Kelsey Johnson

In 2000, because it was considered “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant,” Network  was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. And rightfully so. Those protesting in Zuccotti Park are mad as hell and (in a figurative sense) refuse to continue the dance with their executioners. It is as if Network creators had their fingers on the pulse of the future.

I have a journalism student who spent several days photographing, talking and sleeping at

courtesy of Kelsey Johnson

Zuccotti park as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement. This highly  motivated and intelligent young woman believes that education is her key (as it has always been) to open the gates of success. I wondered if she would come in contact with other college students, those who perhaps have already acquired the key to said gate. Would they tell her how the key no longer fits?  How can there be a future with bright horizons when there is no present to occupy? Sadly, it is part of the grand deception; the horizons that once belonged to today’s youth have been bundled, parsed and sold as part of the derivative stew of lies and half-truths. Yes, education can be the key to success, but not in a society that allows the 1%  to leave the building and take all horizons with them.

In the quest for lost horizons, frustration becomes the muse of the masses from Egypt to     Oakland and major points in between. If Howard Beale represents the 99%; those  unemployed without hope and those workers with more empathy than hope, then the 1%,

A wall Street-off Scott Lynch/Flickr

the vile and heartless who today would mock the protesters as they sip champagne on a balcony overlooking Wall Street, is represented by Diana Christiansen (Faye Dunaway) the network programming head whose spiked heels have pierced many backsides in her race to the top of the ratings chart. Like the Wall Street dwellers, Christiansen has crapped where she lives but a little cinematic license allows her to close the door on the smell.

Not so in life – today.  Chickens truly do come home to roost- witness Zuccotti Park. But, until these demonstrations manifest in a change that will slay greed thereby returning futures to their rightful owners, these Wall Streeters get the same warning of self destruction that Network‘s Christiansen received from her lover (William Holden), “You are [greed] incarnate…indifferent to suffering, insensitive to [true] joy.” For Diana Christiansen, “All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality.” And so it goes with a life owned by those who would mock  misery with their bitter toasts.

   *From, What’s Goin’ On/Marvin Gaye

Posted in Movie Review & response, Teaching, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments