A New Blog!

I hope to publish here more in the near future, but I've also started a new blog this morning that will be very specific.  Please see my new post at The Journey.

The Vagina Monologues

The Vagina Monologues at Western Kentucky University got very local last night:

--Bowling Green Massacre
--Kentucky Sinkhole
--Lost River Cave

A Tale of Two Journals

Two journals.

On the left, the one I currently carry wherever I go. I make notes about art, exhibits, plays, movies, music, travel, poetry, literature, conversations, writers.

On the right, my reading journal. For a decade, maybe more, I have recorded every book I've read, including audio, and my thoughts. In recent years, I've expanded this, giving any book as many pages as needed.

I also keep a journal electronically and a travel journal (another bound book).

Hello, Darkness, My Old Friend...

I'm hoping to blog more in 2015.  Here's a new entry.

On the last Sunday morning of 2014, I recorded a show on History 2 called Afraid of the Dark. It was about darkness over history and what terrified people: lions, hyenas, wolves, vampires, werewolves, Satan, fire, strangers, thieves, highwaymen...fascinating stuff that gets my storytelling cells going.

Also included was mention of a darkness scale, the Bortle Dark-Sky Scale (from 1 to 9--the darker the sky, the lower the number). Due to artificial light "pollution," we have few places on the scale that are a one, very dark. In the continental US now, we have no ones and few twos...one modern day was in rural Ohio where the Mennonites live. To get to a one, an American would need to take a ship 300 nautical miles from the east coast.

We also see fewer stars than our ancestors saw due to air pollution.

I think the darkest place I've ever been was the night I spent at St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai Desert. It was truly dark there. I slept with a light on, and the night was long. I grew comfortable with the darkness as time passed and realized there were more people (and more women) around than I knew.  I'd have slept better the second night had one been on our itinerary. The good news, though, about not sleeping well that first night was being up early and seeing the sunrise over those mountains of rock. And I was allowed to attend a lovely mass in an old and dark church.

I love fall and winter when we have longer nights, but that's mostly because I'm safe and warm and have artificial lighting and a laptop and television.  Last winter when a polar vortex blew through my city, I stayed awake until nearly dawn, witnessing. 

Darkness. I think I'll try to channel some of the cells of my ancestors within me and write a story about a long, very dark night.  While I do, here are some images from St. Catherine for you to enjoy.

President Obama's Closing Words of Newtown Speech

“Let the little children come to me,” Jesus said, “and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”

Charlotte, Daniel, Olivia, Josephine, Ana, Dylan, Madeline, Catherine, Chase, Jesse, James, Grace, Emilie, Jack, Noah, Caroline, Jessica, Benjamin, Avielle, Allison, God has called them all home.

For those of us who remain, let us find the strength to carry on and make our country worthy of their memory. May God bless and keep those we’ve lost in His heavenly place. May He grace those we still have with His holy comfort, and may He bless and watch over this community and the United States of America.

President Barack Obama
Newtown, CT
December 16, 2012

A New Chapter

After work yesterday and today at lunch I wrote the beginning of a new chapter for the novel I'm currently working on, Painting Over Mistakes.  It felt so good to have an oasis of creative writing between writing the first draft of the ECE and the group-anthology SCE followed by returning to the ECE after my mentor makes comments.  Writing these pages is a taste of the semester after the ECE is accepted and I'll turn from critical to creative work for a while.

It's also good to be writing new material.  It will need to be edited heavily, I am sure, but so many bad habits have been replaced by good ones since I started my Spalding MFA work.  Now rewrites can focus on deeper issues, such as character development, the chapter's structure, and how they both fit into the novel as a whole.  And more fun:  I'm writing the chapter in second person (you:  the ashamed I), and it is set in Manhattan in 1970, 1987, and 1992/4.

Should a person have this much fun working?  Yes, yes, a person should.  And this person is very happy about her status.

There’s Got to be a Shortcut Here Somewhere

When I was a kid on a Sunday every summer it would be Ohio County day at Beech Bend Amusement Park in Bowling Green, Kentucky. There would be posters in every store window in Beaver Dam and Hartford, and you could get a free pass into the park. The pass also meant a few free tickets for rides. At the park my parents would eventually run into people they knew who had endured as much of the heat and the noise they could stand and who would give us their leftover ride tickets. Other than gas (cheap then) and snow cones and hot dogs, the day was pretty much free for my folks.

As that Sunday approached, the excitement would build for my brother, sister, and me. We'd finally ride the 45 minutes to Bowling Green, talking about the animals in the small zoo, the games we could play and the prizes we’d win, and the rides: the Tilt-A-Whirl and the Whip and the Wild Mouse. The latter one, a rickety-looking roller coaster, I never rode. But I could spin and snap on the other two until I was so dizzy and whiplashed I could barely walk.

We’d arrive in Bowling Green’s city limits, ready to go straight to the park. And then we'd be sunk. We’d forgotten about my dad’s annual search for the shortcut to Beech Bend, a shortcut he insisted had to exist. He’d start the search immediately. We'd fuss, of course, but Momma would hush us. For what seemed forever, the five of us would drive in circles in our car, windows down because there was no air conditioning. We kids were recalling how long the search had taken in years past and another obstacle that might delay us once we’d reached the seemingly-endless one-lane road that would take us into the park. Every year at least one car would break down and need to be pushed to the grassy median, slowing traffic even more. We’d finally pass that car, sitting there on the side of the road, steam rising from its radiator, glad our car hadn’t done that. We knew the sooner we got to Beech Bend’s entrance road, the sooner we could be past all obstacles and on the rides. Finally we'd start to fuss again, unable to be quiet any longer, and Momma would tell Daddy to go on to the amusement park. He’d give up on the shortcut until the next county day at Beech Bend. And the scenario would play out in pretty much the same way it did every year except as I grew older I became wiser and carried a book to read.

Years later as a college student I picked up a map at a service station in Bowling Green, and I discovered that there had never been a shortcut because all the roads were cut off due to the river and the railroad. A map, what a concept!