Profit from Uranium

Investment University’s Profit from Uranium
Copyright 2007, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken NJ
$29.95, 38 pages.


Trying to review a technical investors manual as a work of literature is an experiment. I’m not sure how one is expected to evaluate such a book. At roughly one dollar per page it’s an expensive and dull read. As a book in the “how to make a million” genre I find it a little thin and not particularly deep or insightful. However when taken as a book on who to invest in if you’ve already made up your mind about Uranium as a good investment then it’s probably OK if you’ve never heard of Google.

I grew up in the “duck and cover” era. Uranium was both the savior and nightmare of the Utopian society we were promised. We had to be prepared, at any moment the Great Bear of the North would send his vast fleets of bombers (and later missiles) hurling down upon us. Although we were 40 miles outside New York City we had to be prepared to duck under our desks as soon as we saw the flash. That was kindergarten. By first grade they realized that we would have several hours or at least several minutes warning so we practiced marching into the purpose built shelter designed to withstand (or so they told us) the explosion of multiple atomic bombs a few miles away and protect us from the insidious poison that was radioactive fallout for weeks if necessary. There was talk that our parents would not be allowed to pick us up if the sirens went off and that the Police had machine guns to mow our parents down if they tried. No one believed it and my parents had a basement fully stocked with water and canned goods.

It was a scary time to grow up in. We knew that when we were 18 we would be drafted and if we were very lucky get to see an atomic bomb go off in the desert of the American Southwest. There were communists hiding in closets and under beds and it paid to be vigilant. The Uranium mines of Canada and the far west were in full production and if you were a coal miner you headed west where the yellowcake was as sweet as the gold was a hundred years earlier. Atoms for peace promised a never-ending supply of almost free electricity. Uranium was king. Utopia died a slow death.

The cold war gave way to the Vietnam War and the threat of mutually assured destruction stabilized all but our third world proxies and we found out that all those miners were dying of Uranium poisoning. Our unlimited free electricity suddenly had a price to pay in decayed waste, poisonous for thousands of years into the future. Uranium suddenly wasn’t so pretty any more. The US called a halt to building new atomic power plants but this didn’t stop the French or the Japanese who embraced atomic power with gusto. Largely because of atomic power Europe has some of the cleanest air on the planet. An American traveling in Europe can’t help but notice it.

America’s aversion to new Nukes survived the gas crisis of the 1970’s, the rampant inflation of the 1980’s and the Gulf war of the 1990’s. A petroleum engineer we know once said, “there’s no shortage of oil, there’s lots of it, it’s just a matter of what you’re willing to pay for it.” Adjusted for inflation we’ve been paying just about the same amount we always have for oil. What changed?

China and 911! Since 1949 mainland China has had a series of “Great leap forwards” that mostly resulted in economic belly flops while Taiwan and Hong Kong exploded economically. China finally got a clue about the same time Great Britain relinquished control over Hong Kong. Since then the Chinese economy has exploded. Whatever excess capacity existed in 2000 is gone, absorbed by the demands of China and India where economic growth marches on in double-digit percentages year after year. An unfortunate confluence of events have finally led us, in the U.S., to realize that without a drastic change in the way we do business our way of life is near an end. This has created a renewed interest in nuclear energy and alternative, preferably, “green” sources of energy.

America has a habit of waiting until the last moment before acting and when we act it’s often in an unreasoned, almost desperate fashion. Suddenly every town wants a wind farm, every house needs to be a source of solar energy every field of grain a source of ethanol for our cars. Suddenly nuclear energy looks “green” as we realize that it’s the America of the 1950’s with out the terror but with the promise that we secretly hope for.

So what does an investment portfolio look like in the new world order? If we want windmills GE reminds us that they are in the business with their series of eco-ads. I’m sure there are other vendors of windmills … in Holland perhaps? If it’s ethanol you want then Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) would like you to think that they’ve been on top of it for decades. I’m not sure if there are any publicly traded moonshiners out there to invest in. No one is touting the conversion of coal into liquid fuel or the burning of the Alberta tar sands yet so if you are a fad investor do your own google search. If you believe that Uranium is the future and want to forget that the associated problems of radioactive waste have not been solved then do a google search or buy this book.

Without giving away the plot, which consists mostly of naming the characters, let me give you a hint: Australia, Canada and a publicly traded company created by the U.S. Government. Keep in mind that there is a risk to investing in Uranium that is not mentioned in the book. In the U.S. at least, the promise of fusion has been just around the corner for decades. If a breakthrough occurs and fusion can be captured, bottled and commercialized then Uranium will resume its place as a source of very destructive weaponry and not of joy. Not a very “green” investment.

Wine, Women and Shoes

That defines every woman I know. I’m not sure why so many women have an obsession with their collection of uncomfortable shoes. I own six pairs of shoes and two pairs qualify as boots and one as sneakers. I have a pair of deck shoes, one pair of brown everyday shoes, a pair of black shoes, hiking boots, a pair of Wellington boots I put on when I have to shovel snow and some sneakers I got for Christmas that I’ve never worn because they are too white to wear in public; I’ll have to get them fashionably dirty in the back yard first.

A woman I know is an aspiring Imelda Marcos. Imelda Marcos was the wife of the former President of the Philippines whose proclivity for shoes was legendary. She had tens of thousands of shoes. My shoe-loving friend has a much smaller collection of shoes but with a room of their own. Each shoe is kept in the original box with a color photograph glued to the box end and arranged alphabetically by color. There are separate sections organized by heal height with a special section devoted to sneakers, yes sneaker.

Apparently the operating philosophy of the women I know is to buy the accessory first then find the item it will accessorize. This philosophy applies to jewelry as well as shoes. My daughter’s corollary to this rule (pronounced when she was still in college and still economically sensible) was that the price of an accessory should never exceed the item it accessorizes. Women have little apparent guilt when buying the little things like shoes and, after all, expensive jewelry can go with almost anything or so we are told until we discover that she has absolutely nothing to wear. Which is every time she needs to put on clothing. We have to pay to get them naked and again to get them clothed. Who knew?

All of this prater was inspired by a very shi-shi event I was dragged to called, oddly enough, “Wine, Women and Shoes.” The facts are that proceeds of the event help support The Virginia Thurston Healing Garden in Harvard Massachusetts, which is almost a hospice for women with breast cancer. It is a noble and beautiful place I have been assured, worthy of financial support.

I don’t go to many shi-shi events for a lot of reasons; I’m not invited for one but chiefly because I’m not known to be embarrassedly rich. To be shi-shi you have to be rich enough to throw money at problems with panache. The more panache the more assuredly “in” you will be. Donald Trump, known for perpetual bad hair and kitchey bad taste is “in” by virtue of showing up at every shi-shi event in Manhattan and throwing chump change around like confetti. Or so I’m told, I’ve never been to a shi-shi event in Manhattan and it’s unlikely I will be invited any time soon.

There is good news and there is bad news: There are no Donald Trumps in Boston. I can say this with some assurance since the shi-shi event I attended was “the only event in town” and if there were glamorous people there I didn’t see any. This is not to say that there weren’t hundreds of very nice and even some very wealthy people there. I didn’t know or recognize anyone famous except, perhaps (and I say this in generosity), for a local news anchor for a TV station I don’t watch. It took me an hour to remember her name. I said hello to her and she immediately mentioned an absentee husband – a newly wed or I was leering more than I remember. What struck me the most was how old and wrinkled the glamoratti of Boston are. Contrary to our opinion of us Boston is really a small backwater when it comes to the higher arts. Anyone seriously glamorous, talented or otherwise notable has long since moved to New York or LA. Plays don’t open in Boston anymore and what “serious” publishers remain are only petty rumps of international media conglomerates.

I don’t volunteer for these things but I’ve got an “other” who would love to be on everyone’s “A” list if we could afford it. She volunteered me to be a photographer. I’m not sure if that was our price of entry or a reason to keep me occupied since otherwise I would have been bored out of my skull. Do I really have an interest in Wine, Women and Shoes, well wine and women perhaps? I was dressed like most of the men at the event, suite and tie, no big deal, my camera couched in my left arm like a newborn baby.

“I want a picture of them,” she said pointing to a couple we know. After a glass or two of very delicious wine I was compliant. A funny think happens when you point an expensive camera at people at a shi-shi event: They pose automatically. Another glass of wine and I was into it. Someone asked me what magazine I was from, “Famous Magazine” I could say with a mild tone of distain. People love it when you’re slightly rude to them. I learned that lesson when I was a very proper waiter in college. The more “correct” the better the tip.

Photographing people poising has its limits, however, and it eventually gets boring and I had hours to kill. Shooting the cleavage of women far older than I am has little appeal so I had to find some theme that might challenge the tedium of the evening. I decided to photograph only men wearing pink or purple ties. It takes a modicum of courage to wear a gay tie when you’re not and while Boston may fancy itself a sophisticated city there are few who would consider themselves to be metro-sexual. Clearly anyone wearing pink or purple were either colorblind or had wives dressing them. I was wearing a pink and purple-stripped tie.

Shooting purple ties made the evening fun but my crap-shooting approach to photography made the evening worthwhile. A good friend of mine taught me the U.S. Navy approach to photography, which put bluntly, is there will be one good shot in each roll of film. The rest will be crap. Here is the one good shot:



OK so lots of people had a good time and most of us went home fatter. Anyone who wants to look at men with purple ties can look here: http://industrialmyth.photoreflect.com - you can also buy any photo you see.

The Rose Café: Love and War in Corsica
By John Hanson Mitchell
Shoemaker & Hoard, $25.00, 243 pages
ISBN 978-1-59376-095-3

Review by Steve Glines

John Hanson Mitchell is a man on a permanent quest.

Go out to the wilderness and find out what you are made of. There is always seminal event that forms the body of a great man (or woman’s) character. For men it has often meant going off to war where the soul is stripped of the possessions of youth and reformed on the anvil of Thor. For most of us this transformation, if we have it at all, takes the form of a quest and there is a time-honored tradition of quest literature dating to antiquity.

For urbanized Americans youth this quest often involves Europe or another exotic location and if you are lucky, both. My daughter’s quest was orchestrated by her college, about the only thing about the place for which I am grateful. She was dropped in Aix en Provence in France with 24 classmates and instructed to walk, which they did for 4 months, camping by the side of the road as they went. She left America an angry, lost teenager and returned a driven adult determined to find her place in the universe. After 2 months on the road she called me from Syracuse in Sicily to announce her epiphany: She could be 30 and wish she had her architects license or she could be 30 and have her architects license but she was going to be 30 anyway. She came home and made the deans list.

My own quest took me to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland Canada where I hiked and hitchhiked for almost five months after High School. I slept in a fish-packing shed on the northern tip of Cape Breton Island where I cleaned fish and shoveled ice for a month for beer and food. When I grew restless I moved on to Newfoundland.

The harbor a small fishing port named Fortune was filled with half a dozen tramp steamers, Liberty Ships, left over from WWII. In the bar of the only restaurant in Fortune I met the captain of a ship that continuously made the circuit from Fortune to Iceland, Ireland, England, France, Africa, Bermuda, New York City, Halifax and back to Fortune. His ship and its predecessors had been making the run, with obvious interruptions, for almost 100 years. It was a three-month journey. I needed a passport. Did I know how to cook? Would I like the adventure? It paid Canadian minimum wage. It has bothered me ever since that I said no.

Later I was hitchhiking to another small port to catch a boat ride back to civilization. It was 9 pm. I looked at the map and realized my destination for the night was 25 miles down the dirt road in front of me. I walked all night through the fog, my flashlight useful only for illuminating the edge of the ditch. About 4 am the fog lifted and the first hint of daylight appeared in the sky. I walked up a steep hill, a switchback, climbing out of a deep dark valley. As I walked over the crest I saw the most beautiful sight I have ever seen: a ship, perhaps 300 feet long, with multi-colored lights draped from bow to stern, passing up through the rigging of the tramps crane and mast. The town itself was smaller, just ten or fifteen small pastel colored shacks. I walked onboard, found myself a bench and went to sleep. An hour after the boat left port the bursar found me. I paid for a ticket to Port-aux-Basque and went back to sleep.

For the next two days we drifted along the south shore of Newfoundland stopping at one village after another. At one village I got off to explore while the ship exchanged cargo. An entire town had moved from one side of a river to another to accommodate a larger pier. I asked a local what the cost of a house was there. He blinked at me in disbelief then said, “We have lots of houses here, pick one. We’ll outfit it for ya!” A foghorn lament announced the departure of the tramp so I hopped back onboard and watched the little village that would have welcomed me slide slowly into the mist. So many “what ifs.”

John Hanson Mitchell’s new book “The Rose Café” is the tale of a quest. He is a young student studying in Paris in the early 1960’s. He is bored and uninspired, in other words, a typical French student filled with ennui. He is both unable and uninterested in writing although he carries an empty notebook with him wherever he goes. A chance offer takes him to Corsica where he ingratiated himself with the owner of “The Rose Café” who offers him a job for the season cleaning fish and sweeping up for room and board. What follows is a wonderfully charming account of the local characters. Mitchell’s ability to delve into the characters of the local town is reminiscent of Dickens. The collection of characters is wonderful and we get a small town full: There is Le Baron, the aristocratic patron with a very shady background, the agonizingly French tease Marie and classic French lovers Jean-Paul and Micheline to name just a few.

Mitchell has always been adept at describing Place. His “Ceremonial Time” covers the details of one square mile of land in Littleton Massachusetts where living characters provide an anthropomorphic dimension to the geography. With “Living at the End of Time” he explores both eccentric people and the detail of his environment in a Waldenesque shack. We dig deeper into the quest experience with “Walking Towards Walden: A Pilgrimage in Search of Place” where “Place” still takes prominence. In Mitchell’s book “Looking for Mr. Gilbert: The Reimagined Life of an African American” we finally see what he can do with character development. Place is replaced by Character.

“The Rose Café” is the crescendo of Mitchell’s quest. While we get his usual treatment of the geography in intimate detail where necessary, it never overwhelms the characters that bring light to the scenery. The description of a dilapidated farmhouse surrounded by semi-wild donkeys is just enough to illuminate the eccentricities of the farmer/donkey herder who tells us fantastical stories about the locals. We get to know the people of Corsica and the arid scrub they inhabit through Mitchell’s eyes.

At the end of the tourist season Mitchell leaves Corsica and returns to school. In a final brilliant tease, Mitchell’s last sentence says more about Corsica, its society and his characters than all the rest of the book. It’s marvelous and you’ll put the book down after a good knee-slapping laugh.

When Mitchell left Corsica he began to write. His quest had only begun and we hope will never be over. A very charming book recommended to all.

How to start a Viral Marketing campaign

© 2007 By Steve Glines

Creative Director, Industrial Myth and Magic

Viral marketing is the latest magic marketing bullet that promises to transform a sow’s ear into a silk purse, a dud into a winner. It’s the dream of every marketer to create a marketing environment that is self-perpetuating and inexpensive, a viral marketing campaign. There are companies that will go out and hire hordes of teenage girls to shill some new product in the hope that it will take off through simple word of mouth. “Oh Buffy, look at my new toy, squeal, squeal.” Campaigns like this rarely work for teenage centric products and not at all for industrial or commercial goods.

Viral marketing does work! Here’s how to do it:

1. A good story: You need a compelling story. Without a good story there is nothing to repeat.
2. A web site: You need an attractive, easy to load and navigate web site that’s been optimized for search engines. People use the web the way we once used the yellow pages. If it doesn’t show up on the web it might as well not exist. Right now Google is the only search engine that counts.
3. Drive them to your web site: You need to drive people to your web site; you need to give them a reason to go there.
1. Articles: Magazines and newspapers (both on and offline) pay writers very little so the quality of independent articles (even in major newspapers) is very low. The majority of quality articles (specially in trade journals) are “planted” by writers hired to make a point. Make sure you’re one of them and make sure that your web site’s URL is mentioned so that that Google’s web crawling robots find the reference.
2. Press releases: Targeted articles are expensive and time consuming. An easier way (and more effective from a web crawler’s perspective) is the press release. A press release serves the same purpose as a ghost written story and can be broadcast to many outlets. Remember what we said about newspapers and magazines, they exist to sell advertising not pay writers yet it’s the writing that attracts the readers that advertisers crave. When the media need content to carry advertising (no one is going to willingly go to a page with nothing but ads on it) they turn to the pool of press releases. If yours is written well there is a good chance it will be reproduced as written.
4. Advertise: Finally, to reinforce the message and the story it does pay to advertise. Advertising is most effective when it’s used as a way of reinforcing an existing message, when the reader (or viewer) is expected to already know the story.

Once you have a web site the most effective thing to do is send out lots of press releases. The chances are that multiple “news services” will pick up your press release and that Google will scan your press release multiple times within a day or two. Each time it scans a press release it will register your web site. A good portion of Google’s page rank system is based on how many times your site is referenced by other unrelated sites. A well-written press release might well show up in hundreds of sources, that’s hundreds of Google references to your web site.

Anatomy of a Press Release

Is it news? If you do a Google search on the phrase “anatomy of a press release” you‘ll be told over and over “make sure it’s really newsworthy.” Good, that discourages your competition from sending out press releases. Pay no attention to that. You’d be surprised what can be made newsworthy. The annual arrival of Spring is not news but the emergence of the first Crocus of the season is and could be used to your advantage. Indeed the emergence of the first Crocus could be the occasion of several press releases. For example, you announce that you are going to have some event contingent upon the emergence of the first crocus. Then you announce a contest for spotting the first crocus, then you announce (with pictures) the first crocus, then you announce the results of the event contingent the emergence of the first crocus. There is no such thing as a slow news day in the mind of a good publicist.

So you obviously need “news” in a press release or there is no reason for anyone to carry your press release but the “news” portion of your press release is really irrelevant except to the harried editor who needs filler to wrap paying ads around. What’s important is the viral payload.

Crafting the payload

If news is the vehicle for getting your story into the media then the payload is what you really want repeated. Since you are in control of the story, this payload should reflect the story as you wish it to be told and retold. Before writing the payload, before writing press releases clarify what your goals are. Is the goal to sell a product or service, or the company or even an executive within the company? The story, the payload should have the following elements:

1. The name, the buzzword, the hook, the logo that can be used to trigger a memory later on through advertising, word of mouth or planted stories.
2. A story that separates you from your competition. It doesn’t have to be much but it does have to be there. This is what you want people to remember and the simpler the better.
3. A way to get in touch with you and (most importantly) a pointer to your web site. This is what Google will see and use to point back to your web site. This is what you want Googles web crawler to see.

The story you convey in your payload should reflect the end point of your marketing campaign. If you’re a little one man (or woman) shop but plan to become Gigantic Humongous Corporation (GHC) then write your payload from the perspective of the Chairman of the Board of GHC. Using the hook of “news” you want to repeat the payload as often as you can. Repeat it over and over again and eventually it will become “fact.” Everyone will know the story of Gigantic Humongous Corporation because they have seen it over and over again. That’s how you create a viral marketing campaign, that’s how you create an industrial myth and that’s magic.

Industrial Myth & Magic is a cooperative amalgam of poets, playwrights, novelists, freelance journalists and a frustrated assortment of fine and commercial artists who make it a point of thinking outside the box. At Industrial Myth & Magic it’s our mission to tell an intriguing story that will resonate with your customers and draw them to you, your company and your products. It’s not good enough to build a better mousetrap you need a more compelling story. You need a story that will be told and retold. It’s not just advertising, it’s not just marketing, it’s not just corporate design … it’s everything. Its an industrial myth and that’s magic. 145 Foster Street, Littleton MA, 617-549-7274, www.industrialmyth.com

Letting Go Poems - a review

Letting Go Poems
© 2006 by Robert Collet Tricaro

ISBN 0-89002-385-9 ($16.95)

Northwoods Press

Reviewed by Steve Glines

Most of the poems in this book are not thematically connected to letting go, at least not that I could tell, but there were just enough hints of the catharsis of “letting go” that forced me to read this volume from that point of view. Letting go includes morning past loves as well as past loved ones. The title and the first few poems got me thinking about the nature of immortality.

Our collective conscience knows everyone alive today and we remember many of what could be loosely called the last generation. We no longer have a collective memory that includes what it was like to be at the battle of Gettysburg, to pick a spot at random. Out collective conscious let go of those memories with the passing of the last Civil War veteran. We do have descriptions of events, many poetic, of the people and places of that era. The catharsis of letting go involves the emotional draining of the swamp of past relationships. For a writer with the talent of Robert Collet Tricaro, letting go creates the immortalitzation of places, people and events. That is what I take to be the meaning and purpose of this little volume.

The book opens with a commentary on life:

Carousel

Faro seems bigger than the others,
harness and reins bejeweled with ruby
and sapphire glass, mane dusted
with gold. His eyes are
the wildest of all.

Children stand in his stirrups flailing
the air, shouting to a crown struck
by Faro’s glitter, as this magic carpet
whirls to the tune of the Wurlitzer.

Faro travels at great speed going
nowhere. Perhaps the wildness
in his eyes is really terror, having
learned that no rider can pull him out
from the centripetal rut he is in, as
he is rushed toward
an open distance he’ll never reach.

To immortalize someone gives them life beyond the grave. Plato gave immortal life to an otherwise miscreant character named Socrates. So to Tricaro gives life to an otherwise unnamed Irish cleaning lady:

The Irish Cleaning lady

Eyes gray as industry.
She’d boarded a ship in Cork
a city on her beloved isle,

but where living was hard,
to seek a better life.
Now she wears the starched

pink uniform that her school
kitchen job requires, which
passes for maid’s garb

when she cleans houses
late into the night. This lady
who speaks the brogue

of broad a’s
has work to do,
and a clean house it will be.

Poor in the sense that cars, rings
and fashions are of no
interest to her. Rich

in that cards, rings and fashons
are of no interest to her.
Resourceful in that she can

sew a silk purse from a sow’s ear,
but there’s be nothing in it
a friend, beggar, or thief could want.

Weak tea with a half slice
of marmalade toast for breakfast, thin
Mulligan stew with soda bread

for supper, perhaps
a pear, suit her well.
Her husband has but a small pension,

so she cleans houses.
With no child
of her own, she nevertheless

puts her deceased sister’s children
into their callings – white
turned-around collar for the boy,

nurse’s pin for the girl.
For decades, crouched
under the lash of moral obligation,

could her life have been more
spare, less giving had she

not left her emerald star
in its sky of sea?

We have all known them the little old ladies with a sad story to tell but a story largely kept to themselves so as not to trouble the grandchildren. We secretly wish for divine intervention, a lightning bolt of luck that transforms that losing lottery scratch ticket we all know to be in her purse into a winner capable of transforming her life into “Queen for a day,” a week, a month, just long enough to make her forget her past and smile the broad grin of someone inhaling life for the first time with the appetite of a hungry child. Alas life rarely works out that way and the poet is left with immortalizing a life that would otherwise be forgotten, a life that, without the poet, would cease with its passing.

Mrs. Dory’s Teacups

When her husband was alive a porch was called veranda, Later,
the New York Times became her seat on the stoop
of a four-story, run down walk-up.

Lines in her heavily rouged face, if placed end to end
could mark distance greater then the dimensions of her world –
the stoop and one room just inside the building’s front door.
The closest thing she came to activity was watching
UPS deliveries and girls playing hopscotch near the curb.

Her neighbor Todd ran errands for her. She’s offer him
coca in one of twelve teacups she and Mr. Dory brought
from their native England. Matching plates were sold
to pay for her husband’s cremation,
so she used saucers to serve her home-made scones.
Todd would run his fingers along the cup’s
fourteen-carat rose petals and smile.

She’s sip tea, her little finger extended, speak with clipped
eloquence about children she couldn’t have, her favorite nephew,
slightly older than Todd, who roomed in Greenwich Village
with a friend. She’d ask Todd why he blinked his eyes
so often.
Why at almost eighteen, he’d never dated.

When Mrs. Dory died some months later, her building super
gave Todd a box and a note. Ten teacups were exchanged for
scattering her ashes over Sleepy Hollow.

Two cups were for Todd. The note
included her nephew’s number.

And so it goes. This is a beautiful book of poetry. I recommend it to all.

Bohemian Bongo Poetry

Bohemian Bongo Poetry
by Timothy Carl
T.S. Productions

Review by Steve Glines

Fear and Loathing in Greenwich Village

As soon as I read the title, “Bohemian Bongo Poetry” I started having flashbacks (I wonder if that bottle of Thorozine I had in 1973 is out of date? I wonder where I put it?) . When you get one of these flashbacks you just got to let it go and … it’s like having a migraine headache, nothing will stop it except time.

It was the summer of 1968 and I was emancipated, free and in Greenwich Village grooving to the hip things that were happening, happening right before my eyes. It was a movement, The Movement. It was The Movement and I was hip to it. (Have another hit.) The smoke was so think in Tompkins Sq. Park you could smell it a half dozen blocks and a couple of subway stations away. It was incense mostly, mostly incense so the stoned out cops wouldn’t know what was legal smoke and what was illegal smoke but it was smoke just the same. The same was true but less so in Washington Sq. But there, yes there, in a corner of the park was the poet’s corner and man it was the hippest thing in the known Universe. It was the rhythm; it was the song of The Movement. (Want another hit?)

Now I was cool and hip but some of these cats, man, they were so far out I couldn’t tell if they were the new vanguard of The Movement or just plain goofing on me. I mean you take Maynard G. Krebs put long hair on him, give him a set of bongos and couple of stoned out poems and you got something. Man, You got something. Yah!

The hip chick next to me started grooving and swaying back and forth to the beat and, man that halter top with nothing but skin underneath was sweet and when I got into the groove with her (Want a hit man?) …. I woke up in her apartment someplace in the Lower East Side with a couple of junkies in the corner shooting smack. I don’t think they saw me or cared. She made breakfast, rolled a joint and said she had to go to work. “My old man will be back here tonight,” she said very casually, “He’s a roadie with The Fish.” “Heavy,” I said nodding while trying to hold my breath. I stumbled and drifted back to the commuter train that took me to my safe and catatonic suburb.

I stopped going to New York City in the 1970’s. I’m not sure why, I guess I always had a love/hate relationship with the place. It wasn’t till after September 11th that I had the chance to spend anything but transit time in “The City.” It’s a different time and place. New Yorkers are actually friendly and helpful and not just because I’m a harmless middle-aged man now instead of an angry long haired hippy. I stayed in a hotel that bragged that it was in SOHO but actually it was a block from “The Bowery,” that once wino infested warehouse district that smelled as much of urine in 1968 as “The Village” smelled of pot. The Bowery is gone, squeezed between SOHO and the Lower East Side. I walked the five or six blocks from the hotel to Tompkins Square Park for old times sake. It smelled different. Gone were the incense and hashish, gone too were the “head shops” replaced with respectable French and Japanese bistros. I ate sushi. It was 9:00 P.M. In Boston you’d be heading home. I walked to Washington Square Park.

Where the poets and bongos used to grove there was a good retro street band collecting money from tourists and lost businessmen like me. It was fun and nostalgic, they played “Country Joe and The Fish.” I stood next to a woman about my age that was grooving to the music too but all I could do was smile at her and laugh at myself. I still like the poetry of the era. Lots of it survived as did some of the best minds of that generation who made it out of rehab alive and productive; but The Movement, if it ever existed, at all is gone, ephemera in a smoke filled memory safely compartmentalized and labeled “youthful indiscretions.”

Bummer. Those times were fun but over, way over. Timothy Carl’s little book of bongo poems brings those rhythms back, the feelings back, the fog back. Get those bongos going. Can you feel the rhythm?

02 20 20 05
No one is left alive

Who remembers the sixties,
Who fought in the eighties,

To help it stay alive,
Into the night we now drive,

The lantern is extinguished,
The fight relinquished,

Not a draw, but a win,
For the side, opposite him.
-Timothy Carl, 2007

That poem is on page 2. That might also be the title, the number 2. I’m not sure. But for sure what ever it was it’s over and we didn’t win. That poem sounds familiar though:

LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
…
So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm, --
A cry of defiance, and not of fear, --
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beat of that steed,
And the midnight-message of Paul Revere.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1860.

It was a different war, different tone, viewpoint and effect. We were “The generation” that was going to change the world. We didn’t and poems that trigger flashbacks that tear at the soul like a migraine headache aren’t a way into my heart. I’ve moved on, I look forward, there is still some fight left in me and I still hope my life is not in vain.

For those born in the 1970’s and beyond this book of retro beatnik poetry may be fun in a theme park sort of way. Picture yourselves listening to jazz (You do listen to Jazz don’t you? Coltrain beats Brittany Spears by a country mile), shades down, fingers snapping to the beat. The music stops and the bongo player begins and you hear:

Cars sit at a tollgate,
Can’t wait to go ninety-eight.

City streets fry an egg,
Bums can’t stand to beg.

Beaches packed with cattle,
Children learn to dogpaddle.

Air-conditioned apartment dweller,
Locked inside a root cellar.

Sits around to complain,
Listing causes to distain.

Moving up a tax bracket,
Hopelessly lost in the racket.

What’s next in this show,
Viking ships on the row?
-Timothy Carl, 2007

Throw in someone who chants rather than sings and you get Dylan Revisited. Welcome kiddies to the Happy Hippy theme park.

Get your “Ripple” here, “speed, smack, acid, Mescaline.”
Where’s my bottle of Thorozine.

Oh look I made a poem.

Way Way out in the Woods

Way, Way out in the Woods

People think I live way, way out I the woods.
There are rabbits, deer, coyotes here and I swear
I saw a bobcat.

Last night, on my way home, just as I entered
The Littleton Town Forrest, I saw her, a majestic doe.
Standing in my headlights as if to dare me to come nearer
I slowed down, slapped my thigh and let out a holler.

Deer are a rare sight. It’s been, what? A year?
The most beautiful creature of the New England Forrest
Rarely shows herself except by accident.
She was lost, the trail, the deer run, here
runs at an angle to the street.

Yes I know all the deer runs, I study them and she was lost.

I pulled up beside her, not 10 feet away.
We looked and admired each other
or rather I admired her while she studied me wearily.

I honked my horn for joy, involuntarily,
she jumped in panic, found the trail and was gone.

Once, no, more than once, I chased a wild turkey.
Once I chased one into the swamp at the foot of Bumblebee hill.
Wild Turkeys can fly and deer do run and
it’s glorious living out in the woods.

A press release for Laurie McKinney

A press release for Laurie McKinney. Isn’t PR fun.

Harvard-educated Author’s Unique Approach To Find A Publisher For Novel

Arlington, MA – January 20 2007 – If you’ve written the first of an action adventure series with Harvard-based characters that could turn Harvard Square in Cambridge Massachusetts into a free theme park, how would you attract a publisher? “Simple,” answers Laurence O McKinney (Harvard College ’66, Harvard Business School ’68), “You prove that you have a readership already waiting.” With that he placed a classified ad in Harvard Magazine, the Harvard Alumni Association magazine looking for 100 Harvard reviewers to help polish up his manuscript.

Over 235,000 Harvard alumni received the magazine every month. “What better place than among Harvard alumni to launch a series of smart thrillers centered on Harvard,” he explained. “Besides, among Harvard’s alumni are some of the best editors and literary agents in the world. Harvard is one of the most venerated institutions on the face of the earth,” he continued, “Now Harvard’s finally got its own action adventure hero … Hunter from Harvard.”

“The Circle of Power” is the first in a series of action adventure novels featuring the Hunter Greene, boyish executive editor of Harvard's in-house newspaper. He was minding his business when something blew up a large chunk of Delhi, including a few friends. Petty soon all hell is breaking loose; if Hunter's not saving the day, his pack of fictional friends are. He may have been born a Boston Brahmin, but he usually ends up like Batman in tweeds, the loveable reluctant action hero we know as “Hunter ... from Harvard. The book’s pre-publish market test has its own website: http://www.everythingharvard.com/hunter/

Before the book is over, the US Army, the Indian Government, New Scotland Yard and dozens of major and minor characters take their part in a global thriller spanning two hemispheres that starts, and ends, in Harvard Yard. By then the reader will know how to build an atomic bomb, the basics of Indian classical music, the secrets of the computer in the Harvard science center, and who actually wrote Chevrolet's “heartbeat of America” jingle. Fact and fiction, Harvard and history, drama and romance combine in a moving, mindful, and entertaining style that invites the reader on a journey that only Hunter, from Harvard, could have imagined.”

Laurence O. “Laurie” McKinney’s family has been at Harvard since 1725. A graduate of the College, the Business School, who attended Harvard Divinity School, he is a serial entrepreneur whose challenges included selling “The Harvard Chair” and marketing 20,000 hand blown specimen jars from Harvard’s Agassiz Museum. He is also Section Secretary for the Harvard Business School class of 1969.

The Prince of Belvedere and other poems

The Prince of Belvedere and other Poems
by Ephraim Figueroa
Tabor Press 2006

There are many kinds of readers. My grandfather was a scholar who had a vast library of poetry from which he avidly read. He came from a generation who could quote from Chaucer to e e cummings with aplomb and when given the opportunity would argue the finer points of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s body of work for hours, but he was the consummate literary snob. My mother, on the other hand, didn’t particularly like poetry but considered any act of creation to be a sacred event. For her, the urge to create was everything, the great mother goddess at work. She would take me to art shows (with their attendant poetry readings) and nod her head earnestly while some artists tried to explain their works. Her journalistic instincts dug and prodded until the poor subject of her inquest would cry “mia culpa,” and run away leaving my mother shaking her head and mumbling, “I just don’t understand it.” As if to prove a point she started entering her “bonnie ickies” in local art contests, usually winning a blue ribbon for her effort. She never did get “it” but became locally celebrated anyway.

Her opinion of the written word was far more liberal. Any act of literary creation was sacred and even if she didn’t like the work she would honor its creator. This was totally contrary to my grandfather’s view. He would read and argue with the critics, going so far as to write clever and argumentative letters to the book review editor of the New York Times on a regular basis. A poet’s work should be judged by his peers and by the critical public and eventually a literary force majeure pronounces a work and its author acceptable or not and to my grandfather that was that.

My mother was a part time working journalist. She recognized that on the on the scale of literary prominence she was at the bottom being just above the scribes working for Halmark cards. She loved to point out that in his day Michangelo was a working artist just like the hoards of artists that populate Madison Avenue and that the poets working for Halmark cards made considerably more money and had a far larger following than most of the “hip” poets I liked. She started writing “little ditties” for the Readers Digest just to prove to my grandfather that literature was literature whether aimed at the highbrow snob or the workingman. She would publicly brag that she’d had a piece accepted by the Readers Digest just to make my grandfather cringe.

Everyone as a bias, of course, I like to read what I like to write. I like snapshot poems that paint a picture that can be seen with the eyes closed. That’s metaphorical, of course, I’m not saying that a short description of a still life equals poetry but I’m not tied to the form. Indeed the form has often gotten in the way of my own expression. My grandfather would object. For him the form was the very definition of poetry. A prose poem, a modern poem, a Gertrude Stein poem wasn’t really a poem at all but some shorter form of writing as yet unnamed. Perhaps he’s right. I’ve never claimed to be a poet and although I’ve tortured myself into writing a quatrain I didn’t enjoy it and generally don’t enjoy reading formula poems unless the formula drops away leaving the story, the snapshot in its wake. The “Cremation of Sam McGee” by Robert Service is great poetry as is e e cummings “little tree.” That’s my own bias. If someone were to write “little tree” today it would be judged sappy, no pun intended, and politically incorrect since it describes the murder of a little tree, the plunder of the forest so sweetly. Today “poems” by whatever form they take require meat, angst, anger and a little darkness. We get used to that and poetic forms with sweetness and light seem archaic and overly saccharine. I suspect my grandfather would approve.

All of this is a roundabout way of getting to “The Prince of Belvedere and other Poems” by Ephraim Figueroa. This beautiful little book contains more than 200 classically styled little poems. A quick reading reminded me of the “old poets” my grandfather would recite:

Among the Rocks
by Robert Browning

Oh, good gigantic smile o’ the brown old earth,
This autumn morning! How he sets his bones
To bask i’ the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet
For the ripple to run over in its mirth;
Listening the while, where on the heap of stones
The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet.

That is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true;
Such is life’s trial, as old earth smiles and knows.
If you loved only what were worth your love,
Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you:
Make the low nature better by your throes!
Give earth yourself, go up for gain above!

I don’t know why “The Prince of Belvedere” reminded me of Browning. It’s the sweetness and optimism and strict adherence to form, no free verse here, that made me think of Browning.

Tuesday
by Ephraim Figueroa

Tuesday comes to wake me up, he seems to say hello.
Underneath the sheets I stay, although its time to go.
“Eagerness” is not a word that properly describes
Starting out for work today, but still the mind decides:
Daily chores must first be done before it’s time to rest.
And so I leave, with cup in hand, to face my daily test
Yielding to the job at hand, I’ll try to do my best!

Yes, the initial letters spell TUESDAY and the poem is a rhyme and yes it sounds slightly Victorian in its tone. Cute. This whole book is cute and I’m not being cynical. This is not “modern,” “Language” poetry it’s in a more classic vein. No cutting edges here, just the soft, childlike purring of a neo-Victorian gentleman writing verse for the children and ladies of the household. If my grandfather wrote poetry (and I don’t know of any) he might well have written a book like this.

Anne
by Ephraim Figueroa

Beyond the horizon lies
A hidden treasure in your eyes;
And from it those who mearly gaze
Obtain much wealth for many days.

Maura
by Ephraim Figueroa

Your hair like golden sheaves of wheat,
Your eyes like stunning diamonds bright,
At once reflect the morning light,
No doubt, if ever they compete
In beauty’s realms, you would defeat
All queens on earth and them unseat

And so the author goes for 151 pages of easily accessible verse. Hallmark lookout. To be fair, the author is a self confessed lyricist of odes and hymns and his work shows it. If set to liturgical music many of these poems might well light up the otherwise drab interior of a puritanical New England church. I can hear a deacon musically chanting:

Till They see You Again
by Ephraim Figueroa

The bud shall not put forth its rose.
The streams of the south shall not repose,
Nor shall the clouds send forth their rain,
Until they see your face again.

My grandfather must be smiling after all his favorite all time poet was Alfred, Lord Tennyson whose work “farewell” seems appropriate:

A Farewell
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,
Thy tribute wave deliver:
No more by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.

Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea,
A rivulet then a river;
No where by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.

But here will sigh thine alder tree,
And here thine aspen shiver;
And here by thee will hum the bee,
For ever and for ever.

A thousand suns will stream on thee,
A thousand moons will quiver;
But not by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.

Children of any age as well as mothers-n-law safely tucked away in nursing homes will appreciate this book. It’s not for everyone.

The Long Black Veil by Robert Cooperman

Reviewed by Steve Glines

I am rarely speechless but this little volume left me in just such a state. I have had this thin poetic novel on my desk, glairing at me, for several months. I have read it and reread it and read it again. I rarely do that. It’s a moving, nuanced novella in poetry. I am haunted by the story and have found myself, at odd times, breaking into the chorus of the original tune on which this story was based, “The Long Black Veil.” By Marijohn Wilkin and Danny Dill.

Long Black Veil

Ten years ago, on a cold dark night
There was someone killed 'neath the townhall light,
There were few at the scene, but the all agreed
That the stranger who fled looked a lot like me

Refrain:
Nobody knows, nobody sees, nobody knows but me

The judge said son what is your alibi,
If you were somewhere else, then you won't have to die
I spoke not a word, though it ment my life,
For I'd been in the arms of my best friends wife

Chorus:
She walks these hills in a long black veil,
She visits my grave where the night winds wail.

Refrain

The scaffold was high, and eternity near,
She stood in the crowd and shed not a tear.
But sometimes at night, when the cold wind moans,
In a long black veil, she cries on my bones.

The Kinston Trio sang it 1962. Joan Baez recorded it, and The Band put a folk-rock version of it on their first album, Music from Big Pink, in 1968 but Johnny Cash did the definitive version at Folsom prison. Since then everyone has gotten into the act. It’s an inspiring song, inspiring enough to Robert Cooperman to create an entire novella in poetry from the story.

Cooperman takes this simple but haunting song and gives voice to a cast of characters that inhabit this confined little world. Miller Waggoner is taken in by his friend the sheriff for the murder of Banker Edwards an act he knows he did not commit because he was “thrashing in the heaven of Emma Richfield,” his best friends wife. Meanwhile, Tom Whitby, the man who ran, explains his hatred for the banker and gives us a good reason to feel sorry for him, his wife is dying and he needs money for a last ditch attempt to save her. The banker refused the loan.

I won’t give away the plot but it is as compelling as any novella. Were Hemingway a poet he could have written this story with its twists and turns and haunting, heart wrenching pleas from the grave. This is a love story, a tale of a love triangle, of blackmail and murder most foul. It yanks at your heart yet tells a universal story of passion. On her deathbed Emma Richfield thinking of both her husband, Conner who forgave her on his own deathbed, and Miller Waggoner, dead ten years, exclaims:

“Stupid to speculate: just worms and dirt
Yet, like a child who still believes
In Christmas, I long to see them both
Their friendship and our love sealed
Not in children’s innocent blood oaths
But in Heavens mild and honey.”

To which Miller Waggoner replies,
“…
our souls soaring together,
all our weary wayfaring over:
a lamp ablaze in a cottage window.”

Robert Cooperman is a masterful poet and storyteller. In less capable hands this might have become a full-blown novel but Cooperman resists the temptation to write prose and the results are remarkable. A story this powerful could only be told as poetry. I liked it.

The Long Black Veil
By Robert Cooperman

$12.95, paper
Higganum Hill Books
PO Box 666
Higganum CT 06441
(860) 345-4103

rcdebold@mindspring.com
ISBN 0-9776556-1-X

For Don O’Brien

The last view of mortal man,
For Don O’Brien

Hospice, last refuge of dust to be
Four walls, glossy green, industrial
Antiseptic, lest they should become soiled

Patent, former self of a close friend, a chimera
Sleeps fittingly between pain
And overdose of laudanum, a wish

Wishing for end to come, swiftly
But it lingers, lingers for 2 years … more
Abandonment of the spirit, please

But the soul lingers against the will
Give up, give up, give it all up
Perversity of nature, fight on and on and …

I sit, next to him, watching football
As we have for years and years and …
“What a bad call,” I cry

I see a smile, I think
But he is “unresponsive”
His children, unresponsive, his wife dead

We sit alone now, just the two of us
Friends unwilling to see a dying man
He unwilling to be seen dying

What he had is gone, mostly
What he has left are memories
Recorded in a book, only possession

“Port to port,” The story of a young mans journey into manhood
“Port to port,” The story of a warship clearing for action
“Port to port,” The memory of those who returned

For years we were “best buddies”
Tied by the sea, the sea, the sea
He the chief, I the collector of stories

He sank a camel in the Suez Canal
The United States Navy paused briefly
On they’re way to save the world, Korea, Indo-China

At the helm of the great ship
In the face of a typhoon
Even the admiral was sick

Military paradise: a .45 on your belt,
A 16-inch gun at your back
And an angry Turkish soldier with bayonet, fixed, at your side

First class, Chief, Master Chief Petty Officer,
Principal character in this poem
You rise through the ranks as you fail

I stare out the window
As he has these many days
Fixed prison of your last view of a mortal man

We shared a beer at thanksgiving
We shared a beer, I drank it, at Christmas
I drank to his health on New Years

“I’m sorry, he’s not here now,”
She said without emotion,
“Call the family,” she said

“We buried him on Tuesday next to his wife,” she said
“Was there a service,” I asked?
“No,” she said and hung up.

The Mutability Of Literature

The Mutability Of Literature

I will confess to reading far more than I write and I daresay I read about writing far more than I write. Still the pen is for me as a brush is to an artist. I study the great works mainly with an eye for technique. If I become enlightened or educated as a result it is purely an unintended consequence and inconsequential in the long run. Eventually the pen must be employed to greater or lesser effect, it really doesn’t matter. I read mainly to have something to write about. That I have nothing immortal to say should not surprise anyone, least of all me.

I have found, to my great chagrin, that I am not unique. Indeed every lament I have in my life as a writer has been echoed throughout the ages of recorded literature. That the ancients left no such lament is a great testimony to quality of their editorial boards.

I read indiscriminately. This morning, bored with the newspaper, I pulled a volume down from the walls of my library, a volume scarcely opened since I stole the book out from under the noses of a book buyer who had bought my grandfathers library by the linear yard 40 years ago, one book in 400 yards of books missing. It was “The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon” by Washington Irving. After reading it I pulled the text off the Internet to share with you.

Something in me loves irony. If, dear reader and fellow writers, you read on here are the delicious facts:

1. Washington Irving has been dead for almost 150 years.


2. My wife is planning our first (and perhaps last) grand tour of Europe for this fall and our first stop will be Westminster Abby and my first stop within the Abby will be the library.

THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE.
A COLLOQUY IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
(from “The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon” by Washington Irving)

I know that all beneath the moon decays,
And what by mortals in this world is brought,
In time's great periods shall return to nought.
I know that all the muses' heavenly rays,
With toil of sprite which are so dearly bought,
As idle sounds, of few or none are sought
-- That there is nothing lighter than mere praise.

DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN.

THERE are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed. In such a mood I was loitering about the old gray cloisters of Westminster Abbey, enjoying that luxury of wandering thought which one is apt to dignify with the name of reflection, when suddenly an irruption of madcap boys from Westminster school, playing at football, broke in upon the monastic stillness of the place, making the vaulted passages and mouldering tombs echo with their merriment. I sought to take refuge from their noise by penetrating still deeper into the solitudes of the pile, and applied to one of the vergers for admission to the library. He conducted me through a portal rich with the crumbling sculpture of former ages, which opened upon a gloomy passage leading to the chapter-house and the chamber in which Doomsday Book is deposited. Just within the passage is a small door on the left. To this the verger applied a key; it was double locked, and opened with some difficulty, as if seldom used. We now ascended a dark narrow staircase, and, passing through a second door, entered the library.

I found myself in a lofty antique hall, the roof supported by massive joists of old English oak. It was soberly lighted by a row of Gothic windows at a considerable height from the floor, and which apparently opened upon the roofs of the cloisters. An ancient picture of some reverend dignitary of the Church in his robes hung over the fireplace. Around the hall and in a small gallery were the books, arranged in carved oaken cases. They consisted principally of old polemical writers, and were much more worn by time than use. In the centre of the library was a solitary table with two or three books on it, an inkstand without ink, and a few pens parched by long disuse. The place seemed fitted for quiet study and profound meditation. It was buried deep among the massive walls of the abbey and shut up from the tumult of the world. I could only hear now and then the shouts of the school-boys faintly swelling from the cloisters, and the sound of a bell tolling for prayers echoing soberly along the roofs of the abbey. By degrees the shouts of merriment grew fainter and fainter, and at length died away; the bell ceased to toll, and a profound silence reigned through the dusky hall.

I had taken down a little thick quarto, curiously bound in parchment, with brass clasps, and seated myself at the table in a venerable elbow-chair. Instead of reading, however, I was beguiled by the solemn monastic air and lifeless quiet of the place, into a train of musing. As I looked around upon the old volumes in their mouldering covers, thus ranged on the shelves and apparently never disturbed in their repose, I could not but consider the library a kind of literary catacomb, where authors, like mummies, are piously entombed and left to blacken and moulder in dusty oblivion.

How much, thought I, has each of these volumes, now thrust aside with such indifference, cost some aching head! how many weary days! how many sleepless nights! How have their authors buried themselves in the solitude of cells and cloisters, shut themselves up from the face of man, and the still more blessed face of Nature; and devoted themselves to painful research and intense reflection! And all for what? To occupy an inch of dusty shelf--to have the titles of their works read now and then in a future age by some drowsy churchman or casual straggler like myself, and in another age to be lost even to remembrance. Such is the amount of this boasted immortality. A mere temporary rumor, a local sound; like the tone of that bell which has tolled among these towers, filling the ear for a moment, lingering transiently in echo, and then passing away, like a thing that was not!

While I sat half-murmuring, half-meditating, these unprofitable speculations with my head resting on my hand, I was thrumming with the other hand upon the quarto, until I accidentally loosened the clasps; when, to my utter astonishment, the little book gave two or three yawns, like one awaking from a deep sleep, then a husky hem, and at length began to talk. At first its voice was very hoarse and broken, being much troubled by a cobweb which some studious spider had woven across it, and having probably contracted a cold from long exposure to the chills and damps of the abbey. In a short time, however, it became more distinct, and I soon found it an exceedingly fluent, conversable little tome. Its language, to be sure, was rather quaint and obsolete, and its pronunciation what, in the present day, would be deemed barbarous; but I shall endeavor, as far as I am able, to render it in modern parlance.

It began with railings about the neglect of the world, about merit being suffered to languish in obscurity, and other such commonplace topics of literary repining, and complained bitterly that it had not been opened for more than two centuries--that the dean only looked now and then into the library, sometimes took down a volume or two, trifled with them for a few moments, and then returned them to their shelves. "What a plague do they mean?" said the little quarto, which I began to perceive was somewhat choleric--"what a plague do they mean by keeping several thousand volumes of us shut up here, and watched by a set of old vergers, like so many beauties in a harem, merely to be looked at now and then by the dean? Books were written to give pleasure and to be enjoyed; and I would have a rule passed that the dean should pay each of us a visit at least once a year; or, if he is not equal to the task, let them once in a while turn loose the whole school of Westminster among us, that at any rate we may now and then have an airing."

"Softly, my worthy friend," replied I; "you are not aware how much better you are off than most books of your generation. By being stored away in this ancient library you are like the treasured remains of those saints and monarchs which lie enshrined in the adjoining chapels, while the remains of their contemporary mortals, left to the ordinary course of Nature, have long since returned to dust."

"Sir," said the little tome, ruffling his leaves and looking big, "I was written for all the world, not for the bookworms of an abbey. I was intended to circulate from hand to hand, like other great contemporary works; but here have I been clasped up for more than two centuries, and might have silently fallen a prey to these worms that are playing the very vengeance with my intestines if you had not by chance given me an opportunity of uttering a few last words before I go to pieces."

"My good friend," rejoined I, "had you been left to the circulation of which you speak, you would long ere this have been no more. To judge from your physiognomy, you are now well stricken in years: very few of your contemporaries can be at present in existence, and those few owe their longevity to being immured like yourself in old libraries; which, suffer me to add, instead of likening to harems, you might more properly and gratefully have compared to those infirmaries attached to religious establishments for the benefit of the old and decrepit, and where, by quiet fostering and no employment, they often endure to an amazingly good-for-nothing old age. You talk of your contemporaries as if in circulation. Where do we meet with their works?. What do we hear of Robert Grosteste of Lincoln? No one could have toiled harder than he for immortality. He is said to have written nearly two hundred volumes. He built, as it were, a pyramid of books to perpetuate his name: but, alas! the pyramid has long since fallen, and only a few fragments are scattered in various libraries, where they are scarcely disturbed even by the antiquarian. What do we hear of Giraldus Cambrensis, the historian, antiquary, philosopher, theologian, and poet? He declined two bishoprics that he might shut himself up and write for posterity; but posterity never inquires after his labors. What of Henry of Huntingdon, who, besides a learned history of England, wrote a treatise on the contempt of the world, which the world has revenged by forgetting him? What is quoted of Joseph of Exeter, styled the miracle of his age in classical composition? Of his three great heroic poems, one is lost forever, excepting a mere fragment; the others are known only to a few of the curious in literature; and as to his love verses and epigrams, they have entirely disappeared. What is in current use of John Wallis the Franciscan, who acquired the name of the tree of life? Of William of Malmsbury--of Simeon of Durham--of Benedict of Peterborough--of John Hanvill of St. Albans--of----"

"Prithee, friend," cried the quarto in a testy tone, "how old do you think me? You are talking of authors that lived long before my time, and wrote either in Latin or French, so that they in a manner expatriated themselves, and deserved to be forgotten;* but I, sir, was ushered into the world from the press of the renowned Wynkyn de Worde. I was written in my own native tongue, at a time when the language had become fixed; and indeed I was considered a model of pure and elegant English."

(I should observe that these remarks were couched in such intolerably antiquated terms, that I have had infinite difficulty in rendering them into modern phraseology.)

"I cry you mercy," said I, "for mistaking your age; but it matters little. almost all the writers of your time have likewise passed into forgetfulness, and De Worde's publications are mere literary rarities among book-collectors. The purity and stability of language, too, on which you found your claims to perpetuity, have been the fallacious dependence of authors of every age, even back to the times of the worthy Robert of Gloucester, who wrote his history in rhymes of mongrel Saxon.+ Even now many talk of Spenser's `well of pure English undefiled,' as if the language ever sprang from a well or fountain-head, and was not rather a mere confluence of various tongues perpetually subject to changes and intermixtures. It is this which has made English literature so extremely mutable, and the reputation built upon it so fleeting. Unless thought can be committed to something more permanent and unchangeable than such a medium, even thought must share the fate of everything else, and fall into decay. This should serve as a check upon the vanity and exultation of the most popular writer. He finds the language in which he has embarked his fame gradually altering and subject to the dilapidations of time and the caprice of fashion. He looks back and beholds the early authors of his country, once the favorites of their day, supplanted by modern writers. A few short ages have covered them with obscurity, and their merits can only be relished by the quaint taste of the bookworm. And such, he anticipates, will be the fate of his own work, which, however it may be admired in its day and held up as a model of purity, will in the course of years grow antiquated and obsolete, until it shall become almost as unintelligible in its native land as an Egyptian obelisk or one of those Runic inscriptions said to exist in the deserts of Tartary. "I declare," added I, with some emotion, "when I contemplate a modern library, filled with new works in all the bravery of rich gilding and binding, I feel disposed to sit down and weep, like the good Xerxes, when he surveyed his army, pranked out in all the splendor of military array, and reflected that in one hundred years not one of them would be in existence."
"In Latin and French hath many soueraine wittes had great delyte to endite, and have many noble thinges fulfilde, but certes there ben some that speaken their poisye in French, of which speche the Frenchmen have as good a fantasye as w ave in hearying of Frenchmen's Englishe."--CHAUCER'S Testament of Love. Holinsh d,i his Chronicle, observes, "Afterwards, also, by diligent vell f Geffry Chaucer and John Gowre, in the time of Richard the Second, and after them of John Scogan and John Lydgate, monke of Berrie, our said toong was brought to an excellent passe, notwithstanding that it never came unto the type of perfection until the time of Queen Elizabeth, wherein John Jewell, Bishop of Sarum, John Fox, and sundrie learned and excellent writers, have fully accomplished the ornature of the same to their great praise and mortal commendation."
"Ah," said the little quarto, with a heavy sigh, "I see how it is: these in modern scribblers have superseded all the good old authors. I suppose nothing is read nowadays but Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, Sackville's stately plays and Mirror for Magistrates, or the fine-spun euphuisms of the `unparalleled John Lyly.'"

"There you are again mistaken," said I; "the writers whom you suppose in vogue, because they happened to be so when you were last in circulation, have long since had their day. Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, the immortality of which was so fondly predicted by his admirers,* and which, in truth, was full of noble thoughts, delicate images, and graceful turns of language, is now scarcely ever mentioned. Sackville has strutted into obscurity; and even Lyly, though his writings were once the delight of a court, and apparently perpetuated by a proverb, is now scarcely known even by name. A whole crowd of authors who wrote and wrangled at the time, have likewise gone down with all their writings and their controversies. Wave after wave of succeeding literature has rolled over them, until they are buried so deep, that it is only now and then that some industrious diver after fragments of antiquity brings up a specimen for the gratification of the curious.

"Live ever sweete booke; the simple image of his gentle witt, and the golden pillar of his noble courage; and ever notify unto the world that thy writer was the secretary of eloquence, the breath of the muses, the honey bee of the daintyest flowers of witt and arte, the pith of morale and intellectual virtues, the arme of Bellona in the field, the tongue of Suada in the chamber, the spirits of Practise in esse, and the paragon of excellence in print."-Harvey Pierce's Supererogation.

"For my part," I continued, "I consider this mutability of language a wise precaution of Providence for the benefit of the world at large, and of authors in particular. To reason from analogy, we daily behold the varied and beautiful tribes of vegetables springing up, flourishing, adorning the fields for a short time, and then fading into dust, to make way for their successors. Were not this the case, the fecundity of nature would be a grievance instead of a blessing. The earth would groan with rank and excessive vegetation, and its surface become a tangled wilderness. In like manner, the works of genius and learning decline and make way for subsequent productions. Language gradually varies, and with it fade away the writings of authors who have flourished their allotted time; otherwise the creative powers of genius would overstock the world, and the mind would be completely bewildered in the endless mazes of literature. Formerly there were some restraints on this excessive multiplication. Works had to be transcribed by hand, which was a slow and laborious operation; they were written either on parchment, which was expensive, so that one work was often erased to make way for another; or on papyrus, which was fragile and extremely perishable. Authorship was a limited and unprofitable craft, pursued chiefly by monks in the leisure and solitude of their cloisters. The accumulation of manuscripts was slow and costly, and confined almost entirely to monasteries. To these circumstances it may, in some measure, be owing that we have not been inundated by the intellect of antiquity--that the fountains of thought have not been broken up, and modern genius drowned in the deluge. But the inventions of paper and the press have put an end to all these restraints. They have made every one a writer, and enabled every mind to pour itself into print, and diffuse itself over the whole intellectual world. The consequences are alarming. The stream of literature has swollen into a torrent--augmented into a river-expanded into a sea. A few centuries since five or six hundred manuscripts constituted a great library; but what would you say to libraries, such as actually exist, containing three or four hundred thousand volumes; legions of authors at the same time busy; and the press going on with fearfully increasing activity, to double and quadruple the number? Unless some unforeseen mortality should break out among the progeny of the Muse, now that she has become so prolific, I tremble for posterity. I fear the mere fluctuation of language will not be sufficient. Criticism may do much; it increases with the increase of literature, and resembles one of those salutary checks on population spoken of by economists. All possible encouragement, therefore, should be given to the growth of critics, good or bad. But I fear all will be in vain; let criticism do what it may, writers will write, printers will print, and the world will inevitably be overstocked with good books. It will soon be the employment of a lifetime merely to learn their names. Many a man of passable information at the present day reads scarcely anything but reviews, and before long a man of erudition will be little better than a mere walking catalogue."

"My very good sir," said the little quarto, yawning most drearily in my face, "excuse my interrupting you, but I perceive you are rather given to prose. I would ask the fate of an author who was making some noise just as I left the world. His reputation, however, was considered quite temporary. The learned shook their heads at him, for he was a poor, half-educated varlet, that knew little of Latin, and nothing of Greek, and had been obliged to run the country for deer-stealing. I think his name was Shakespeare. I presume he soon sunk into oblivion."

"On the contrary," said I, "it is owing to that very man that the literature of his period has experienced a duration beyond the ordinary term of English literature. There rise authors now and then who seem proof against the mutability of language because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature. They are like gigantic trees that we sometimes see on the banks of a stream, which by their vast and deep roots, penetrating through the mere surface and laying hold on the very foundations of the earth, preserve the soil around them from being swept away by the ever-flowing current, and hold up many a neighboring plant, and perhaps worthless weed, to perpetuity. Such is the case with Shakespeare, whom we behold defying the encroachments of time, retaining in modern use the language and literature of his day, and giving duration to many an indifferent author, merely from having flourished in his vicinity. But even he, I grieve to say, is gradually assuming the tint of age, and his whole form is overrun by a profusion of commentators, who, like clambering vines and creepers, almost bury the noble plant that upholds them."

Here the little quarto began to heave his sides and chuckle, until at length he broke out into a plethoric fit of laughter that had wellnigh choked him by reason of his excessive corpulency. "Mighty well!" cried he, as soon as he could recover breath, "mighty well! and so you would persuade me that the literature of an age is to be perpetuated by a vagabond deer-stealer! by a man without learning! by a poet! forsooth--a poet!" And here he wheezed forth another fit of laughter.

I confess that I felt somewhat nettled at this rudeness, which, however, I pardoned on account of his having flourished in a less polished age. I determined, nevertheless, not to give up my point.

"Yes," resumed I positively, "a poet; for of all writers he has the best chance for immortality. Others may write from the head, but he writes from the heart, and the heart will always understand him. He is the faithful portrayer of Nature, whose features are always the same and always interesting. Prose writers are voluminous and unwieldy; their pages crowded with commonplaces, and their thoughts expanded into tediousness. But with the true poet every thing is terse, touching, or brilliant. He gives the choicest thoughts in the choicest language. He illustrates them by everything that he sees most striking in nature and art. He enriches them by pictures of human life, such as it is passing before him. His writings, therefore, contain the spirit, the aroma, if I may use the phrase, of the age in which he lives. They are caskets which inclose within a small compass the wealth of the language--its family jewels, which are thus transmitted in a portable form to posterity. The setting may occasionally be antiquated, and require now and then to be renewed, as in the case of Chaucer; but the brilliancy and intrinsic value of the gems continue unaltered. Cast a look back over the long reach of literary history. What vast valleys of dulness, filled with monkish legends and academical controversies! What bogs of theological speculations! What dreary wastes of metaphysics! Here and there only do we behold the heaven-illumined bards, elevated like beacons on their widely-separated heights, to transmit the pure light of poetical intelligence from age to age."

I was just about to launch forth into eulogiums upon the poets of the day when the sudden opening of the door caused me to turn my head. It was the verger, who came to inform me that it was time to close the library. I sought to have a parting word with the quarto, but the worthy little tome was silent; the clasps were closed: and it looked perfectly unconscious of all that had passed. I have been to the library two or three times since, and have endeavored to draw it into further conversation, but in vain; and whether all this rambling colloquy actually took place, or whether it was another of those old day-dreams to which I am subject, I have never, to this moment, been able to discover.

Thorow earth and waters deepe, The pen by skill doth passe:
And
featly nyps the worldes abuse, And shoes us in a glasse,
The
vertu and the vice
Of every wight alyve;
The
honey comb that bee doth make Is not so sweet in hyve,
As are the golden leves
That drops from poet's head! Which doth surmount our common talke As farre as dross
doth lead. Churchyard.

The New Renaissance

The New Renaissance, Number 37, Fall 2006

I shouldn’t do it of course. I shouldn’t read a magazine like a novel but I do; I find hidden meaning, hidden connections between disparate works of art or literature that were never intended to be read together much less strung together in a readers mind like chapters in a mystery novel. Perhaps it’s the editor in me that tries to make a theme from anthology. Most magazines are constrained by time not theme so it is unfair of me to judge a magazine by a theme that was never intended but I will anyway. It’s my prerogative, its any reader’s prerogative.

I don’t go out of my way to be politically correct or incorrect but I do try to remain sensitive to people’s private and public hurts. Smoking is bad; I know I used to be a smoker. Racism is bad, I once knew a woman of my parent’s generation, long gone, who would not eat food touch by skin darker than her own. I also know that since 9-11 most of America sees not black and white but us and them. Political correctness has not caught up to the man on the street. The bad guys of the near east want a religious war and there is just enough folk memory left in the west to remember the Nazi holocausts and be frightened. Black and White becomes a defense against the infidels, a defense of Vienna, a rally around the flag boys; they are coming over the hill to murder your wife and sister.  If Bin Laden had come a generation later … who knows we might have forgotten.

Literature speaks for the time it lives in. Shakespeare’s incomprehensible “forsouths” and whatnot spoke loudly to a generation 500 years ago but only softly today. It took a reading of Stephen Greenblatt’s “Will in the World” for me to realize how much of The Bards work has been lost through the passing of history. In his day Shakespeare was as topical as any sitcom or high drama on television today. We loose that in reading him today. On the other hand the word “literature” somehow implies a timelessness that may or may not be real. Shakespeare was timely yet has become timeless. That speaks volumes for Shakespeare and says nothing about magazines that publish “Literature” as opposed to, say, Soap Opera Digest.

When, in the opening act of an opera, the first voice to be heard is shrill it is hard to withhold judgment on the rest of the performance. One shouldn’t judge a book by its cover and people on first impressions but we do. So when I read the “Editor’s Comments” in the latest edition of “the new renaissance” I had to stop myself from thinking “liberal pabulum” while I got mildly nauseous.

I am a liberal so don’t get me started but I can’t stand blind adherence to the current dogma of political correctness. Who decides these things anyway? The current liberal, “politically correct” dogma has cost the Democratic Party all three branches of Government in the United States. The “Editor’s Comments” consisted of a shrill (but probably correct) call to save the tropical rain forests. Along the way there was the obligatory warning about global warming.

That’s where I get off the train. Years ago, long before I ever heard of “global warming,” I met a PhD in Climatology, a very long-term weatherman.  His specialty was the last 15,000 years, give or take a millennium. At the time the climatological buzz was all about how we were due for another Ice Age. Statistically they happen with frightening frequency but my friend assured me that we were in a temperature upswing as predicted by some arcane things like water levels in the Great Salt Lake.

Most of what I learned I have subsequently forgotten but I do remember that there was something called the “climatic optimum” about 8,000 years ago where the earth was several degrees warmer than today. Then, the desert belt had moved north into Europe and the deserts of North Africa and Arabia were a tropical green. There was a little ice age following the collapse or, perhaps, causing the collapse of the Roman Empire. Among other things this sent the men of the north, the Vikings, in search of a warmer place to live. The Viking age ended abruptly when an exceptionally warm period melted the ice around Iceland and Greenland and colonists headed north once more.

In 1000 A.D. the Labrador straits and Eric’s Fiord in Greenland were free of ice in the summer and the land produced enough during the near 24 hours of sunlight for foraging animals to be sustained year round. Whatever global warming has taken place it has not yet cleared the Labrador straits and Eric’s Fiord of summer ice. Of course by 1300 we were in the middle of “the little Ice Age” that lasted well into the middle of the 19th century. So are we going into a warming period? Probably. Is it hotter than it’s ever been? No, it was hotter in the time of Eric the Red. Did man cause “global warming?” I don’t know but hubris dictates an affirmative answer.

Should the tropical rain forests be saved? Of course, managed perhaps, but until there is an economic incentive to do so we have to recognize that it’ll never happen. There is archeological evidence that most of the Amazon basin was once cultivated and that most of the rain forest as we know it today was gone. It could be that deforestation of the Amazon 1500 years ago gave rise to the global warming that lead to the discovery of North America by Leif Erickson? That’s a stretch but the truth is that we/I just don’t know. It’s good that we are asking the questions but how much do we really know or is it that we think we know more than we do. Time will tell and it won’t be for me to decide. In the mean time I’ve been enjoying the warmer winters.

There is something about modern American literature that is very dark. The call to preserve the rain forests was succeeded by two poems by Daniel Tobin. The first is called “Effifi Tumuli,” which begins, “Wasted mesa. Earth stripped to bleeding mounds.” Oie! Is there no light in the world? The next is “The Scream (after Edward Munch).” Is there a pattern here?

I will confess that there are lighter poems and short stories in this edition of TNR such as M. E. McMullen’s touching story titled “Louise Berchine,” a story of unrequainted love. Another bright spot in this anthology of darkness is Thomas Robert Barnes’ poem “Dogwoods.”

Still darkness prevails. Lynn Veach Sadler’s poem “Purple Irises,” about the shelling of Dubrovnik by the bad guys of the last Balkan war left a palpable pain in my heart. My mother was a world traveler whose two favorite places in the world were Dubrovnik and the island of Gozo in Malta. The world changes but it’s not supposed to be for the worse. Does literature merely chronicle life or does literature lead life. Does art merely imitate life?

We have another theme creeping into this story. After the unrequainted love of adolescence we make mistakes in our love life. We all think about the one that got away, the one that might have been if only …. Keneth Rapoza performs just such a dance with his story, “Greetings from Portugal,” the love of ones life given up for a passing flirtation. Even when we know we are making a mistake we cannot help ourselves. Bruce Douglas Reeves gives us a different view of romantic lament in his wartime story titled OBSESSION. One has to wonder if anyone who writes for the New Renaissance has ever been happy or lucky in love. Is it really true that happiness makes for lousy writing? I hope not. The Gods, they must be laughing at us.

There is quite a bit more in the fall 2006 issue of TNR, most of it pretty good even if a bit on the dark side. The one exception I must make are the gray on gray reproductions of what must be vibrantly colored works of art. Rendering large ink drawings or etchings as halftoned images does neither the magazine nor the artist justice. The devastation of the third world jungles are served all to well in black and white so I would have preferred to see the small color well that was devoted to color pictures of burning jungle and farmers markets devoted to reproducing art instead … but that’s just me. This volume is worth reading.

Summer is finally here I hope

Summer is finally here, not that that will make living any easier or cheaper. Memorial Day marks the semi-official beginning of summer where we trade our dress blues for our summer whites and our $3.00 a gallon fuel bill for our equally expensive air-conditioning bill. Here in New England we have a very short spring. That was it, last week. If you missed it you are not alone. It rained a 100 years flood and never got above 50 degrees during this years spring. Still the consensus among old time New Englanders, and now that I’m over 50 I can count myself among them, is that we’ve had an early spring. Yep it was about a week early and packed a little tighter. That means that the crocuses were up late but everything else was up early.

I got my garden in, well most of it. I’ve been living here about 5 years and I finally got a fence up around the raised beds I built last year. Pounded the stakes in three years ago. It took me 10 years to get the garden I liked in Belmont so I’m really not procrastinating. I haven’t touched the front yard yet or even thought about it much. I really don’t care what neighbors or drive-by’s think. It is an ugly house and there is very little I can do about it except hide the blemish that it is. That’s part of the reason I haven’t done anything about the curb appeal of the house. Friends of mine in Real Estate call it a “teardown.” Which is something I’d love to do were it not for the fact that I need a roof over my head. I’d have to borrow money to tear it town and even more to put it back up. The house I can afford as is, anything else and I might as well wish for one of the plastic coated mansions that are going up in the neighborhood and selling for nearly a million. In other words, “forgetaboutit.” When the tasteless developers run out of land to build their insipid mansions on and if there is still a supply of newly wealthy but culturally deprived homebuyers (and there seams to be an inexhaustible supply) then I may jazz the front up just enough to sell the crumbling ruin and retire to … where? Florida is to hot, Maine is too cold, Fiji, to far. Something to think about while I wait for the offer I can’t refuse.