Gone Ridin'

Just a brief update to say that I'm out riding my bee-yoo-tee-ful new cruiser, a generous Christmas gift from my amazing children. :-)

Merry Christmas

Most embarrassing news anchor line on election day 2008

Brian Williams (white) to Tavis Smiley (black) after Smiley's observations about the import of this election:
"That's why we invited you to our family table."
Yikes.

The Troubles: 1968

Professor MacKenna teaches his children to spit through their gapped front teeth at the American flag. When asked, they are to say they’re not from America. Ameri-k-a, he spells it out in conversation. Boann MacKenna cringes each time.

The children don’t question. Well, Siobhan, the baby, six, asks: “Why can’t we be American, Da? My friends are.”

Her elders stifle groans. They’ve heard it, all.

“Shuvvy, my love,” Mam coos.

“You’re no more American than my R’s,” MacKenna lectures his giggling brood, his brow knitted all over in a complicated cable pattern.

Even the older kids think he means arse. They’ve been taught to call it bum.

Mam shakes her fair head. “Gair,” she murmurs.

Gair. His Irish name. Some of the neighbors call him Gary and he seethes.

Gaping teeth aside, the five of them look American, Boann thinks. Red, brown, blond heads. Wide-striped T-shirts, frayed jeans, sneakers with rubber-capped toes. (Trainers they’re called back home, which the children know is not Home anymore).

At school, where they wear St. Margaret Mary’s chosen plaid, they look much like the others, the Americans. Their names are anything but: Breandan, Aedan, Boann, Emer, Siobhan.

Boann—a misery of a name to wear to middle school, where she is called Boo Ann. “Close enough, Sister,” she says each September, a small smile painted on her face.

She’s stuck in the middle at home, too. And what’s she called when she’s at home? Her nickname’s worse: Bobo. She doesn’t explain to Da that he’s given her a clown name, that they’re all clowns. Worse, she doesn’t tell him the neighbor kids call him Mr. Magoo. A cartoon character. Well, aren’t they all?

Boann drives her father mad with her American desires, habits, terms. Her dreams he only guesses at. She cocks her hip out when he lectures, sticks a tolerant look across her face like a plaster. Boann has a friend, an open-faced Proddie girl from down the block who came to the house once. Da answered the door to her trusting knock and glared until she ran back down the messy front walk.

Now they only speak at school, and to and from. They stow their friendship at the corner every day.

Da is not all bad. It’s hard on him that he’s not allowed in Belfast anymore. What was he called when he was at Home, then? His friends there knew MacKenna as Mac Cionaoith—“sprung from fire.”

It’s a derivation his children never can forget.


© Erica Jeffrey 2008

Critical thinking is just code for . . .

. . . being an informed voter.

Who's your candidate in the upcoming election? Why?

If your man is Barack Obama, please visit the following site for a detailed, dispassionate overview of his stated policies, recorded votes, and issues on which he's been called to account and had to respond/recant publicly. Having read much of the material (and planning to read more via the copious links supplied), I wonder: Is Joe Biden running the most Freudian, passive-aggressive, covert campaign for VP in US history? When he said that Obama's response to an outside threat within 6 months of being elected would look like the wrong choice to the rest of us, I don't think he was being hyperbolic.

Please read carefully: The comprehensive argument against Barack Obama.

OUTRAGE!!!!!!!

A tragic bus accident a few weeks ago in a nearby county left several people dead, including the owner of the bus. The bus was on its way to a casino. Investigations revealed that the bus and driver weren't properly licensed and that the driver may have been impaired by medications and/or alcohol.

One can find any number of offenses in this story, right?

So, obviously, the first lawsuit I've heard about is directed against . . . THE CASINO!??

The lawyer who has brought the suit on behalf of family members of a woman killed in the accident said on camera (and I paraphrase) that the casino needs to be held responsible for the fact that it earns money from people who are transported to the casino on buses! NOT casino buses: privately-owned buses! NOT buses driven by casino employees! NOT buses that may crash on casino-owned land!

Anyone who knows me well knows that I'm not a fan of casinos. My outrage isn't about protecting the casino industry. It's about SHAMEFUL, SHAM lawsuits motivated by greed.

I'm wondering . . . if someone gets in a car accident on the way to the lawyer's house . . . is the lawyer responsible because the accident wouldn't have happened if the driver weren't on the way to the lawyer's house?

Turn Down the Rhetoric!

We're in the final push toward Election Day 2008. Of our honorable candidates, who, along with the rest of us, are staking so much on the ballots we'll cast in November, I make this request:

TURN DOWN THE RHETORIC!
TURN UP THE SUBSTANCE!

I don't want to hear another word about what the "other" candidate is hiding . . . I want to hear what you're planning.

I don't want to hear another word about failed economic policies or broken systems . . . unless it's a potential solution.

I don't want to hear another word about a citizen asking a "good question" in a town hall forum while the candidate stalls for a response . . . I want to hear a straightforward answer.

I don't want to hear another catchphrase from either side . . . We Americans are capable of analyzing sentences longer than 7 words, no matter what journalists have been taught. My comprehension is waaaay past that of an average 5th grader's, so I don't need your speeches and subsequent pundits' explanations broken down into small, manageable clauses lest they go over my head.

This election is serious business. Please, candidates and media, don't treat it like a sitcom that's geared toward the lowest common denominator.

A writer reviews my book . . .

. . . and here's what he said: CaptainD's Book Reviews Blog.

Next up on my reading list is David's book, Space Oddity, which just arrived in the mail. David is a fellow reviewer for Curled Up.

Thank you, David!

Henry Ward Beecher said . . .

The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance.

Who am I? (Guess!)

I am 42 years old,

I love the outdoors,

I hunt,

I am a Republican reformer,

I have taken on the Republican Party establishment,

I have five children, and

I have a spot on the national ticket as vice president with less than two years in the governor's office.

-Did you guess?
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I am Teddy Roosevelt in 1900.

Rural Decay

I heard it on this morning’s news report—
another threat of coming urban blight,
another fear to keep us up at night,
another cloud to adumbrate the light—
how marching souls are leaving home in droves,
their lands devoured by the hand of greed,
their fields now sown with sand and not with seed,
their forests burned beyond the power to bleed,

and swarming cities as a last resort.
Twenty-five million scorched-earth refugees,
displaced from farm and plow and grain and trees.
Yet they are not the only companies
to turn their faces from their native soil
and seek to live upon another’s toil.

© Erica Jeffrey 2008

For those who don't think Sarah Palin gave birth to her 5th child

. . . apparently the obstetrician who helped deliver him does:

Article in the Anchorage Daily News, dated April 22, 2008

Bibliography Entry for Ole Halverson

Ole Halverson, born in 1930 in southwestern Wisconsin—in that lush region of river valleys and forested ridges known as the Wisconsin Alps—has never seen the native land of his forebears. Nevertheless, the heart of Norway beats within his works. Halverson still resides in the farmhouse where he was born, midway between Eau Claire and Prairie du Chien, on rich farmland that is home to some 100,000 Norwegian-Americans, most of them with ancestral roots in Gudbrandsdal, Norway.

Unlike the vast majority of Norwegian immigrants to the United States, Halverson’s parents railed against assimilation from the moment they landed at the St. Paul/Minneapolis Airport in 1921. Then newlyweds, Halvor and Lena had come to America to pursue farming on a larger scale than they found easily possible in Gudbrandsdal. They embraced the rolling hills of Wisconsin, the rich loam and mechanized equipment that New Gudbrandsdal offered, but they eschewed the adopted tongue of their fellow immigrants. Thus, their ninth child Ole—born and schooled at home—did not learn to speak English until he was sixteen. Today he writes exclusively in Norwegian, approving only official translations into English by youngest sister Ethel.

From his seminal work “Knut Brye”—the eponymous epic poem about the well-known sawmill foreman who provided shelter in the 1860s for newcomers to Wisconsin’s Ramsrud Hills—to his 2005 published collection Bad Axe, Coon Prairie, Viroqua, Halverson gives new voice to the childhood tales he heard of the early Norwegian-American experience. His “Uffda,” translated into eighty-five languages to date, recalls the devastation wrought by millions of grasshoppers in western Minnesota on June 12, 1873, and is, arguably, his best-known work. On the other hand, Halverson’s tribute to his parents’ enduring marriage, the naive “et kyss for de” (“a kiss for you”)—found scribbled on the back of a seed order form—is listed in numerous publications as “the most quoted love poem in the modern Norwegian language.”

In “The Garden of the Herrnhutters,” Halverson draws on the memoirs of A. M. Iverson*, pastor to a company of emigrants from Stavanger who settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the mid-1800s. This group, members of the Congregation of Brothers, sought to live in the countryside, away from the temptations of city living. A wealthy and well-educated benefactor, Nils Otto Tank, came to Milwaukee in 1850 to furnish them land and help them establish a colony. The settlement would be built on the model of Herrnhut—a village established by the organizer of the Church of the Brotherhood, Count Zinzendorf, in the mountains of Saxony. (Tank had undergone a religious conversion as a young man when he was injured and subsequently stayed in a private home in Herrnhut.) Nils Otto purchased land for the settlement in what today is Green Bay, then a small pioneer settlement. Forty-two adults were among the group that moved to the land to build the new village, which was named Ephraim, meaning “the highly fertile.” The colonists cleared the heavily forested land and built the structures in a process memorialized in “Denne Hagen av Herrnhuters.”

Halvorson writes in blank verse, which lends itself well to the combination of lilting cadences and stark images that infuse his work.

* Pastor Iverson’s memoirs are considered a wealth of information about the early days of Norwegian pioneers in America.

Distinction?

I'm the only person I know who got injured watching the Olympics on TV.

Have you ever read Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine?

I wrote this very brief, impassioned review of it just now. (Click on the teeny image of the book cover to reach it.)

Slow

He yelled at the large young man crossing the road
against traffic—
the morning sun too much in his eyes:
"Idiot!"
and saw too late
the mouth agape, the frightened eyes, badly cut hair,
and felt the heat of shame
rise in his belly.

© 2008 Erica Jeffrey

It's OK to be a writer. For a job.

Yep. It's more than OK. It's nice to have others read my writing as a sort of validation of how I invest my time, but I guess I'd keep writing even if no one else were reading my work. Happily, people do.

Why do many artistic folks feel a need to justify their chosen work? I, for one, didn't inherit this attitude from my parents, who were artists themselves. Yet, over the years I've guiltily hidden my stories and poems the same way I've hidden candy-bar wrappers and empty See's Victoria Toffee boxes.

Ironically, sometimes it's more "OK" in my mind to edit and proofread--and promote--other people's writing than it is to work on mine. Isn't that weird? What if chefs felt this way about the dishes they create? Or shepherds about their sheep? Or firefighters about the fires they battle? ("No, it's OK. I'll just leave this house to burn for now and come help you with that one.")

When I was a kid, I wrote for the pure joy and release of it. Then, as I entered adulthood, the whole money thing got entangled with the production of writing in my mind. It began to seem that without a concrete something being received in exchange for a story or poem or essay I'd produced, I wasn't really working. I was . . . playing.

I'd like to think more like the second worker in the following story: A visitor to the construction site of one of Europe's great cathedrals in the Middle Ages asked a stone cutter what he was doing. The stonemason replied, "I'm making a brick." The visitor asked another stonemason the same question. That stonemason answered, "I'm making a cathedral."

:-) :-) :-)

New blog to check out: Three Sisters Blog

My friend Nicki, a wonderful young mother and writer, has started a blog with her sisters. One of them lives in Nebraska, so I already love their blog. They posted a plug for my book (Omaha Beach) today, which makes me love their blog even more!

Check out their writing: Three Sisters

Yakari and the Stranger

One of my writing jobs is translating French comic books into English for Cinebook, the "9th art publisher." (If you know what that tagline refers to, send your explanation as a comment and I'll post it!) This fun work has introduced me to some classic Franco-Belgian comic books and graphic novels, including the beloved Yakari series by Job and Derib. Yakari is a young Sioux boy who can converse with animals. In each volume, Yakari learns a valuable life lesson through an encounter with animals.

In Yakari and the Stranger, the boy and his horse Little Thunder help a pelican that has a nasty cold. This charming story teaches a lesson, quite powerfully, about kindness--or a lack thereof--repaid.

These tales are a welcome change from the superheroes and angst that fill the pages of many popular comic books and graphic novels.

A River Runs Through It (the book, by Norman MacLean)

A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition by Norman Maclean

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Incredible writing: profound, poetic, unflinching, humane. The book and the movie have both had impacts on my work and the way I look at the people around me.


View all my reviews.

Unfinished Business

Recently I found the following journal entry, which I wrote for a college class many, many years ago. I was 20 at the time. Who was I to be philosophizing?

Last year I got to thinking about unfinished business. I decided that living one's life is like weaving a rug.If you leave any threads untied or broken, they may hold secure as long as you're weaving. At the least stress, though, no matter how tightly you weave—maybe even as you're pulling it off the loom—the ends might loosen throughout and the rug fall apart.

I had gone through one of those familiar phases of trying to shape my actions around a few choice mottoes and proverbs. In this particular round, I paid off debts, confessed bygone mistakes and even went so far as to throw away some old, special letters I'd been saving. Once in awhile, I even cleaned my room.

I tend to overdo a few things. Well, sometimes I over-everything. It wasn't long before I was neatly wrapping up relationships that had been giving me trouble for awhile. Somehow, the idea of finishing business turned into not getting involved in any kind of business at all—that is, not getting into situations that would leave me obliged to anyone. That meant sticking to the basic necessities of socialibility and friendship and not cultivating any relationships that would leave a lasting, maybe bothersome impression on me afterward.

It didn't take long to see that those obligations and troubles were the brighter threads in the rug, and that the whole pattern looked pretty dismal without them. They were time-consuming, and difficult, but the end result was so much finer when they were included.

I also saw the nonsense in trying to tie off a thread before coming to the end of it. Use it until it comes to its end, then tie it off with a necessary bit sticking out behind the knot. Deciding to tie it off halfway through leaves a long end trailing off, looking clumsy and messy in the rug. Really, cutting anything off before it's finished is painfully wasteful.

A gallon of gas vs. a box of plastic bags

Can someone explain something to me? SO MUCH of what we wear/put on our skin and hair/listen to/play with/drive/eat/smell is either derived from petroleum or gets to us, in part, because of petroleum. It's not just about the gasoline we put in our gas tanks.

Why is the cost of a gallon of gasoline $2.50 higher than it was a few months ago when the costs of other petroleum-based products have not risen commensurately? I know prices in general are up, but I haven't seen a $2.50 markup on a jumbo box of plastic bags or a tub of petroleum jelly.

If it's about supply, or investors, or refinery capacity, or those countries in the Middle East who are selling us petroleum, why isn't the cost of every petroleum-based product going up equally??

What do you think?

My book is on Amazon now! :-)

It's here: Omaha Beach.

If you want to leave a review, I'll write it for you. HA. Kidding. If you'd like to leave a review on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Target, that'd be sooooooper.

Not to be an alarmist, but . . .

I don't recall what the Wall Street Journal wrote about preparing for Y2K, but here's what one WSJ journalist has said about rising food costs and possible food shortages in the USA:

"Load Up the Pantry."

At our house, despite efforts to cut back on unnecessary driving, I'm pretty sure we're spending more on gas for the cars than on food right now. The thought of food costs rising faster than the cost of oil isn't a happy one, even if we are an overweight nation.

Omaha Beach, part deux

Not part two of the book, but part two of the publication news.
Omaha Beach now has a different cover (fab, fab, fab!) and a better layout inside. It also has an ISBN!

Here's a link: Look here.

On a side note, I returned home last night from a trip to London, where I worked at the London Book Fair for comic book publisher Cinebook. An international book fair is a great place to embarrass yourself by trying out your textbook French, German, Italian, Cantonese, etc. on people who actually speak the language. Tee hee.

If you're blondish and mention that you live in California, expect to be asked by at least one person from another country if you surf. I am, I did and I was. And I don't.

In a narrow, crowded restaurant with uneven floors in the Earls Court section of London, I enjoyed the best tikka masala I've ever tasted. At the tables on either side of ours (we were almost bumping elbows with the diners at those tables), unidentified and highly gutteral languages were being spoken with such intensity that I could practically feel the speakers' breaths in my face. It sounded like a throat-clearing contest.

My one tourist foray of the trip was to Hampton Court, just outside London. Hampton Court was taken away from Cardinal Wolsey by Henry VIII after Wolsey failed to persuade the Pope that it was a good idea for Henry to divorce his wife and marry Anne Boleyn. Some of the outstanding features of the palace include a 500-year-old astronomical clock (taken down for renovation during my visit), the Chapel Royal (closed between church services the day of my visit), the gardens and the Royal Tennis Court (designed not for modern tennis but for the centuries-old game jeu de paume). I was really disappointed to miss the chapel and the clock, but the living history presentations around the palace (including actors preparing a meal in the palace kitchen) assuaged my feelings. I'd watched several PBS specials on Hampton Court before this trip and am thrilled that I got to visit the palace.

Omaha Beach is now in print!

To everyone who's been beating down my (virtual) office door asking when I was going to publish my Omaha Beach collection of short fiction . . . it's done! Omaha Beach is available in print and as a PDF download. These stories, many of them set near a fictitious lakeshore beach outside of Omaha, Nebraska, are about survival.

I'm revising the layout, so I've taken down the link to the preview site. :-)

The Fiction of Real Life

Standing on the tarmac at Munich, rolling
new words around my mouth. Hübsch. Süß. Liebling. Mein Liebe.
I like them all.
I’m not sure I like you as well, but your face
anchored by your tender mouth
floats beside me in the falling mist—
your smiles, too, rising falling rising—
a barometer ticking off the measure of my tempers.

In two days we never once
mentioned Grass, Heine, Hesse or the rest of
the 27 Deutsch writers I’d memorized
in alphabetical order
in order
to impress you

You were too busy searching for my heart.
Implacable American. (There.
I said it for you.)

I was too busy building castles.

Now the fairytale mist gathers into real rain drops.
You lean into my shoulder for warmth. Again,
your timing is off, for
I’m shivering with cold and isolation.
Your precise lips part and form the words to
the first American ballad you ever learned:
“Are you lonesome tonight?” you croon
in sweet imitation of the King.

©2006 E.M. Jeffrey

Name this place . . .