Lazy days of summer reading

Being succinct is often more difficult than being lofty. This is the realm of the short story writer; for the task of such an author is to come full circle; to satiate with a satisfying balance of   beginning, middle, and end… all the while maintaining a full and open throttle…driving the plot in a degree that it sustains the interest of the reader while not diverging off course. Take no side trips, no matter how lovely a place they could lead you, for the short story is like the plane on a scheduled fight…we don’t wish the pilot to deviate from the flight plan.

And so I must confess that this blogger likes to read and write the short story even though it sometimes appears to have lost its momentum in the 21st century… yet I maintain that it is still alive and kicking…you just have to go and get them…

With summer upon us I wish to invite your to a pre-order The Fortune Teller and Other Short Works. (yes, it may be  shameful of me to promote my work to some…but we’re among friends!)

If you read on a device or like paperback, it will be in the wild on July 1st…Happy reading!

amazon   KOBO  ibook

The semantics of a poppy

 

“From out of the ground a eulogy grows and becomes a poppy…” NL Avery

Memorial Day draws us closer to those who have given the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom and democracy; their lives. Words often do not give justice to the thanks and gratitude we feel and wish to offer these great women and men of the armed forces. As we enter into reflection, a characteristic that comes into our minds is Heroism; a word that we can define with both commonalities and personal experiences; rediscovered when we unite together or rekindled within our own private solitude.

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote about Heroism; here are some of his words that grants recognition as we pay tribute to our fallen heroes.

“… Self-trust is the essence of heroism. It is the state of the soul at war, and its ultimate objects are the last defiance of falsehood and wrong, and the power to bear all that can be inflicted by evil agents. It speaks the truth, and is just, generous, hospitable, temperate, scornful of petty calculations, and scornful of being scorned. It persists; it is of an undaunted boldness, and of a fortitude not to be wearied out…these men (and women) fan the flame of human love, and raise the standard of civil virtue among mankind. …”

With these words from Emerson and those from our hearts, let us pay tribute to our fallen soldiers and pay homage to their valor.

Spring’s molting season

Have you noticed that Mother Nature is often blamed for the trials and tribulations endured by everyday folks? But can you really blame those who are disgruntled…droughts, floods, blizzards, and humidity. It all adds up to a lousy drive home, a bad hair day, or even a back-breaking afternoon with a snow shovel.
But today, this blogger is going to turn the talk about our Mistress of the Seasons and offer good tidings; for it is springtime and everything is coming up “roses” (and other flowers!)

So, in honor of Spring and all its grandeur, here is a poem; take time out of your busy day and enjoy!

when spring sheds

 

 

Animal crusader: Henry Bergh

We are all too familiar with the quotes “Dog is Man’s Best Friend”; however, despite these bits of sentimentality we also must acknowledge that not all people agree with these statements. In the underlayer of humanity, there exists a cruelty to animals. Hoofed, pawed, web footed, and winged; animals regardless of their species are often mistreated.  They are the voiceless creatures whose barks and meows, neighs, and brays are often not ever heard. Only when they are physically abused do their human counterpart sense their despair. Fortunately, there is an organization that hears their voices, The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. It is their mission to “to provide effective means for the prevention of cruelty to animals throughout the United States.” So, when you hear the idiom, “Crying crocodile tears”, it just might mean something different than you think to the crocodile.

Today’s post brings you the esteemed thinker: Henry Bergh (1813-1888) aka “Angel with at Top Hat”. Philanthropist, animal crusader, founder of the ASPCA, he was born in New York into a wealthy family. His father, a highly successful shipbuilder, died when he was young leaving his son to inherit a fortune. Bergh’s notoriety grew in social circles that included the political elite of his time as well.  He supported abolitionist positions and gained appointment to Lincoln’s cabinet as an American Delegate to Russia. As a result, he traveled extensively. It was during his travels that he became greatly impacted by what he saw, cruelty to animals. In Russia he witnessed peasants beating horses and was shocked by the violence of Spanish bullfighting.

Driven by this suffering and injustice of the treatment to animals around the world and in the United States he decided to devote himself to these “mute servants of mankind”. In 1866 he drafted a Declaration of the Rights of Animals, proposed a society to protect animals. these creatures and offered his proposal at Clinton Hall. On April 10, 1866, a charter incorporating the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was signed and the following week, an anti-cruelty law was passed granting ASPCA the power to enforce such laws. The ASPCA agents were often referred to as “Berghsmen”.

His work for animals did not stop with the ASPCA, he soon earned the moniker of “meddler” when he installed drinking fountains for working horses and fought to put an end to dog fighting and cock fights. He also invented the clay pigeon, to spare live birds from sport shooters and carried on a high-profile dispute with P.T. Barnum over the treatment of the animals in his menagerie.  However, Bergh’s persistence and integrity eventually turned Barnum into a friend.

Second image: photomechanical print : halftone

Game changer

As much as one would not like to admit it; there is a stigma attached to growing older. Although sage, wise, and experienced are often implied to soften the blow, actions speak louder than words. These are the reminders in everyday life; those pesky commercials warning you of all the ailments on the horizon, the products needed to disguise your graying hair, and the places to send your elderly loved ones so they are safely away and not underfoot. Such are the few and not so subtle hints.

But take heed… despite the seemingly apparent drawbacks assigned to “senior” people, one of the phenomenon’s that those of a younger generation cannot relate to would be the pride of being part of a generation of human space flight; the first to watch our country launch the first men into space in real time.  Fuzzy and gray as the image appeared, it will forever be anchored to the memory along with the awe it inspired. So many were glued to a television screen to witness Alan Shepard a top of a rocket, literally.

So, when SpaceX founder, Elon Musk, successfully launched its new Falcon Heavy spacecraft, making it the world’s most powerful rocket, it was, to this blogger, a game changer. And as all eyes were peeled to the sky above, let us hope that those witnessing such an experience will never look at the stars in the same way again.  It was truly awesome.

 Elon Musk’s Tesla on ‘Falcon Heavy’ rocket flight

 

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the self

1964

The language we use, the language we hear and read, the language we have become accustomed to is constantly being remodeled. And as this remodeling reshapes our day to day jargon, there are those who embrace it and others who look upon it with trepidation. Words that we once used in conversation before have either died out for lack of use, such as ‘thou”, while other words have been altered, such as ‘television’ is now simply ‘t.v’. Quickly finding its way into our vernacular is a whole range of creative words mostly due to new technologies and ideas. Selfie, a more recent addition in English, was retailored from “self” to give rise to its meaning….the ability to instantly snap a picture of one’s self. And with this technological advancement, for surely it would be rather cumbersome to take a selfie if we had to prepare a tripod every time we had a whim, along with this adapted self-portraiture, comes the instantaneous ability to declare its arrival to the world.

The concept of self-portraiture is not new for as long as there have been artists there have always been portrait painters. However, what is different in the twenty-first century is technology and its dominant place in all societies. Regardless of which hemisphere you live in, we have accrued a most powerful set of tools. Powerful in the sense that some may believe it has transformed much of society into being quite self-indulgent; self-absorbed, self-centered, and perhaps narcissist.

Harsh words… well perhaps, though words that should not be directed only towards the present for humanity has always taken a liking to itself. Perhaps the “selfie” today is yesterday’s “mirror”. Perhaps our inventive technology has been able to just magnify what we already suspected about society, perhaps technology is presenting us with a faster and closer look at what was always there; perhaps we are getting the same images of mankind and womankind now as ‘close-ups’ rather than ‘landscape’.

After all, are we so much more different than our ancestors? I suppose there is something to that old adage… “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree…”

Today’s blog brings back a very great individual, the esteemed thinker: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968); a man widely regarded as America’s paramount advocate of nonviolence. Through his use of the words and acts of nonviolent resistance he was able to achieve seemingly-impossible goals. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister and social activist who led the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. In 1964 King received the Nobel Peace Prize, the youngest person ever to receive this high honor. At the young age of 39, he was tragically assassinated, leaving behind a forever grieving nation.

I now offer to you a moment of time to read the words of a most honored man. From his Sermon Delivered in 1957 at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, “Conquering Self-Centeredness”…I present to you Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“…An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. And this is one of the big problems of life, that so many people never quite get to the point of rising above self. And so they end up the tragic victims of self-centeredness. They end up the victims of distorted and disrupted personality.

Life has its beginning and its maturity comes into being when an individual rises above self to something greater. Few individuals learn this, and so they go through life merely existing and never living. … They start out, the minute you talk with them, talking about what they can do, what they have done. They’re the people who will tell you, before you talk with them five minutes, where they have been and who they know. They’re the people who can tell you in a few seconds, how many degrees they have and where they went to school and how much money they have. We meet these people every day. And so this is not a foreign subject. It is not something far off. It is a problem that meets us in everyday life. We meet it in ourselves, we meet in other selves: the problem of self-centeredness…

And the way to solve this problem is not to drown out the ego but to find your sense of importance in something outside of the self. And you are then able to live because you have given your life to something outside and something that is meaningful, objectified. You rise above this self-absorption to something outside… This is the way to go through life with a balance, with the proper perspective because you’ve given yourself to something greater than self…”

Notes, cards, and other forms of writing

The art of letter writing has since been dismissed like the home phone line that is offered a conciliatory smile and hence has been sentenced to the back of the closet; reinstated by a smarter cell that travels with us wherever we journey. It has become our side kick, riding shot-gun in our pocket or hand-bag, a trusted device that allows us to do away with pen and pencil, paper and pads; freeing us up from those mundane tasks such as…letter writing. However, there still is something very nice about receiving a letter, no matter how technologically sophisticated one has become. There is still something very lovely about pulling open the letter box, and as you sift through your bills and solicitations an envelope peers out with no other intention than to give you news, wanting nothing more than your attention. There is something quite special about knowing that someone picked out the stationary, sat down with their solitude to compose a personal thought; that they mulled over what to say, reread their sentences transcribed in their own words, and sailed their message along the paper freely as one would skip across a lake on a sunny afternoon. Or, just perhaps each word they wished to convey was produced from strained ponderings and like tapping syrup from a maple tree, the words came out slowly with long moments of rephrasing.

Yet, whatever method had evolved to get the message across, it was eventually folded into an envelope and the deliberate act of placing perhaps a very colorful stamp in the corner, the same spot that Benjamin Franklin would have blotted centuries ago, was acted upon; sealed and then slipped into a post box for transport, trusting its delivery to our ever-ready postal service…and considering it may have traveled by way of rugged terrain or choppy seas…it is still quite reasonable in price.

Yes, the letter! This blogger must confess that she still writes them and dearly enjoys the reciprocation of their receipt. The quiet stroll to the post box..up the driveway… mundane to some yet the probability that by chance there may be a letter in the box is certainly worth the trek up and back.

So if you wish to modify your posting of a letter and prune it back to a note or card, here is where you can get Drawlings, now released into the wild they may ease your fear of writing!

Just a click away!