The Misuse Of Language

The misuse of language induces evil in the soul" -  Socrates

Socrates wasn't talking about grammar. To misuse language is to use it the way politicians and advertisers do, for profit, without taking responsibility for what the words mean.

I wish we were only talking about grammar. Grammar is easy. It has clear, indisputable rules, but if you misuse them it won't be catastrophic. Whether you do it on purpose or because you aren't aware of the rules, it won't impact your  livelihood or your neighbor (unless she's a grammarian!), and you can still be an honest, hardworking, good person, and a good neighbor. 

The deliberate misuse of langauge is another animal. As in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four with its Newspeak, Doublethink, and  Thought Police, we have the same authoritatian decrees popping up like chickweed, by different names but hiding under the same cloak. Orwell's fictional world had banned books, control of news outlets and intimidation of the press, government control of universities and curiculums. When I first read Nineteen Eighty Four, I thought it was creepy but bizaare and ridiculous and could never happen here.

But truth is hard to discern when it is under constant attack. Is that an apple or an apricot? A spider or a cockroach? How long will we have three branches of government, separate but equal? How long before the pillars cave under the slow grinding down of the truth? What about freedom of speech and peaceful assembly? Separation of church and state? 

Federal agencies tasked with guarding the Common Good—food inspectors, for instance, (that can of tuna you've never worried about opening) are being shackled and dismantled. Cuts to our Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) with firings of thousands of food inspectors to be replaced by sycophants or by nobody is the latest blow to food safety protections and incredibly dangerous.

The latest insult is the gutting of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the agency responsible for distributing federal funding to libraries. Four of the Big Five publishers just sent a letter to Congress, asking them to reject the executive order signed on March 14th calling for the elimination of the IMLS and rescinding the library grants appropriated by Congress. More about that on Nathan Bransford Blog. 

Why would I write something so bleak when spring is knocking at the door and the daffodils are up? I write it for my ancestors who immigrated to this country because it embodied all of the before mentioned freedoms, none more so than freedom of religion, which if we would have it, also means freedom from it. 

If you want a prescient glimpse of what our world might look like with a ruling billionaire class, read I Cheerfully Refuse by Lief Engler, set in a not-too-distant America.  

Historians have said, "When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and waving the cross.” 

Wheelbarrow in the Snow

My short story, Maybe in The Milkhouse, a rural writing collective. 

Chemical farming catches up to these flawed characters who struggle with the difficulty of being human. 

Pushcart Prize Nominees

It's cold this morning with snow fog blanketing the land but I'm wrapped in an old afghan with a hot cup of coffee, warm with the news:

Pushcart Nominee

I hate tooting my own horn but you know what they say.

Thanks for reading this blog especially those of you who have put up with me all these years!!

The Greatest of Lakes If We Can Keep It

 

Sand gives way under my feet

as I bend to the effort

of climbing a dune

on the sweetwater sea.

 

Beyond waving fronds of seagrass

water to the horizon heaves and hurls

plumes of foam that pound the shore.

It polishes stone

and whittles driftwood

burnished and smooth as a baby’s sole.

 

With sand in my shoes

hardpack underfoot

I fill my pockets.

Clouds scurry happily overhead

as gulls ride the waves

like surfers in wet suits.

 

Where water meets sky

the stars and the moon live in the depths

while on a rush of wing

eagle eats gull and feathers fly—

            ferocious predator

            rules the sky

while fox of the bayou

trots over the sedge

to circle his den of many rooms—

            intrepid hunter

rules the beachhead

as Superior turns herself

inside out to bring in treasures

whittled to size by the push and pull

of the big shining sea.

For dVerse, the Poet's Pub, and their Open Link Night, Poets and Storytellers, what does "low battery" mean to you, and how do you recharge?  and What's Going On the writer's blog that asks us to think about the personal nature of homemade gifts, and while they're the best, I think gifts washed up on the shore of Lake Superior might be their equal 

 

Review of The Painter by Peter Heller

 

This is the first novel I've read by Peter Heller, but it won't be the last!  I've never fly fished but I felt like I was knee deep in the rushing water with a reel over my shoulder. I've never painted but I held the brush, smelled the pigment and the turpentine and felt the satisfaction of art well done. I've never killed a man, but felt the horror of it. Heller made me feel like I was knee deep in all of this alongside his protagonist, the troubled and complicated painter, Jim Stegner. Reading this novel was "living in the stream of eternity", stepping outside of myself. And what an accomplishment that is.

A masterpiece!

The Cedar Swamp and the Car Wreck

The Flapper Press recently published my essay, The Cedar Swamp and the Car Wreck, in their online magazine and just notified me that they intend to nominate it for a Pushcart Prize, announcements usually come out after the first of the year.

Even though I haven't won one of these yet, it sure is nice to be nominated. What long forgotten stories do you think reside in your family's tree? And please let me know if you've received a Pushcart prize or been nominated for one. Give yourself a shout out!!

Behind the Scenes at a Book Reading.

When I first entered the Community Room at the Peter White Library in Marquette, MI and saw the huge stage I was to speak from, I felt as small as this picture makes me look.

Four steps up to the stage,
podium, microphone,

and cameras running

(it was being live-streamed!)

I needed a drink.

Voice like a frog.

And then....

I started to get the hang of it.

After which mingling and signing books was easy

             One-on-one with an old friend is the best.

             See the sound guy in the background?

             His name is Marty and he was amazing.

             He put me at ease with his calm demeanor. 

My sister who made it all happen

And

Then....

                the 

                        AFTER

                

                                    PARTY!!!

One thing I would recommend to authors if you take questions after a reading in a large room like this, is repeat the question for the steaming audience. Otherwise there's dead space (as I discovered) and anyone listening in would feel left out.

Finally, I highly recommend an After Party!! 🥳It's fun to kick back and such a relief (for everyone involved) when the main event is over.

I'm very thankful for you and for your comments and for just hanging in there.

Happy Holidays!

 

Making Friedcakes

This time of year, our thoughts go back to making friedcakes on the opening day of pheasant season. Back when pheasants were plentiful, hunters in cameoflage jackets and canvas vests lined with pockets to store their bullets, traipsed in and out the back door to sign in on dad’s clipboard. After the hunt, they’d stop back to report in, show off their game, if they'd been lucky, and get a friedcake, warm from the fryer and glazed with frosting. 

Betty Crocker called them cake donuts but Mother called them friedcakes, so friedcakes they were. 

Last year was the first in many that we decided to bring Grandma's old Presto deep fryer up from the basement and continue the tradition. I found Mother's recipe with her penciled-in notes still legible. We were rusty and had a few laughs, but we'll try again this year because it's fun and they are delicious.

If you want the recipe, send me a message and I'd be happy to share it. 

Writing this, I can't help but feel a twinge of nostalgia. What beautiful birds those ringnecks were. Sometimes we hear their truncated chortle, the two-note song, but seldom see them anymore.

In the Library of My Mind

A poem written to the prompt at  Shay's Word Garden using three words she culled from The Book of the Dead, classic tales of the supernatural. 👻 

A natural for the month of October!

In the spirit of compliance I went two better. 😀

In the library of my mind

I speak Latin.
I’m kind, lucid, and brave.
I remember the poor
drop a coin on the plate
and one in the cup
of the man wrapped in wool

braced against the cold
at the end of the road.

I decided to add a little bonus content using one more word. (Can you find it?)

 

Someone poured a stein for the man in the box,
the no more man who was a father who was dead
and set it on the mantle like a plate for the missing
on the Day of the Dead.

On The Beat!!!

I'm excited to be invited to read from and discuss my debut novel Let Evening Come at Detroit's premier bookstore, Book Beat.

They've been specializing in quality Lit since 1982!! They even added some reviews. I'm sharing the night with another author, Donald Levin, who wrote The Ghosts of Detroit, there to talk about it just in time for Halloween.

It's been six months since my novel's release so this feels like a mini celebration for me. Sometimes it's like pulling teeth to get booktores to take a chance on a new (unknown) author, so I very much appreciate the opportunity and social media push.

Also, I just received a new review from the UK!  And have you heard of Blackwells? In addition to normal retail outlets, the book reviewer has included a link to the bookseller based in Oxford, For some reason that seems exotic to me. (Delivery to the United States included in the cost.)  Imagine seeing your novel on a bookshelf in a book store in Oxford. It might not be that big of a deal but it seems so to me. 

It's been quite the publishing journey. I feel like I should have more words of wisdom but they elude me. For now I'm just sharing the epigram for the poetry compilation I'm submitting for publication. It sums up the feeling I'm feeling.

It is a serious thing

Just to be alive on this fresh morning

In this broken world

- Mary Oliver

Feeling Small in a Multitude of Ways

                "I will love my crooked neighbor with my crooked heart"                                                                                           W.H. Auden

If the sky were any bigger it would kill me clean.
like an iceberg into the melting sea.
 
The sun colors the sky best before it breaks dawn
each wisp of cloud a red kite on a string.
 
It enhances the tree clinging to its last wind-torn leaf
like a mother to her child through the fence of the king.
 
It’s bigger than a barn from afar, that tree
and I don’t know its name or how old it is,
 
limbs full of empty nests unraveling in the wind.
Too lazy to have walked through a field of grass
 
to stand under a tree, the vast sweep of its arms,
and pay homage to that which is braver than me.
 
Too cowed to lob arrows at he who'd be king, 
my capacity to feel small is undiminished  by lies.
 
The sun travels its arc across a blood-splattered sky
and I finish the day in a multitude of small ways.

In concert with the theme March of Time from the poets at What's Going On and with OLN (open link night) at dVerse, the pub where poets hang out.  A good way to finish out the week, methinks!!. 

What The Tree Remembers

 

Stumps  cut down in their youth

line the ditch. Roots full of life

 

with a reach wider

than their whacked-off crowns

 

cut off at the knees

        (can you feel it?)

now have nothing to feed.

 

The parked bulldozer

        (can you smell it?)

with its claws in the dirt

 

is poised to make smooth

the way of man.

 

But wait.

        (look closely)

Saplings spring stubbornly

 

from stumps left alone.

The tree remembers.

Written for What's Going On Blog which challenges us this week to see both the dark and light in a world abounding with both and find a balance. Showing, somehow, the beauty and hope in a world that often feels dismal and divisive; with highlights to poems by Mary Oliver and Deena Metzger who do this all the time in their amazing poetry.

Flash Fiction - Cece Got Her Gun

On the first warm night of summer she wore the sarong she bought in Venice Beach where everyone is beautiful. The drape of fabric, soft as a sigh, brought back the surf that smelled like seaweed, the muscle volleyball game, and the blackest man in America who mimed on the boardwalk to a growing crowd. Candle wax from the last time she'd worn it had hardened in little droplets down the front. She could lift them out with an iron and a piece of paper towel. But that would have to wait.

The rain came across the fields like wind through corn, and with it rose the howl from the barn, and what she had to do because he was gone overtook the carefree evening. She hung the sarong back in the closet, changed into the jeans that fit and pulled on the tall rubber boots that didn't, then loaded the gun, raised the hood on her anorak, and entered the night.

Flash Fiction can be looked at as a half circle. But what if this was just the beginning. Would you turn the page?

 

The D.A.R. and Four Sacred Herbs

Not many things can beat sitting around a table with a group of like-minded people to discuss books.

I was recently invited to the monthly meeting of Town and Country, a local women’s group of lifelong friends. From historians to teachers to retired medical professionals, we gathered at a friend’s house over hors d’oeuvres, bourbon slush, and elder blossom liquor to discuss my novel, Let Evening Come. 

Some in the group have a direct relationship to Native Americans, and I learned of the four sacred herbs: sage, cedar, sweetgrass and tobacco, a discussion that led seamlessly into that of my novel with its Indigenous components.

Other members of the group are affialiated with the Daughters of theAmerican Revolution, the historic patriotic organization of forward thinking women established in 1918. There were bookmarks proclaiming The American Creed: I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it; to support its Constitution; to obey its laws; to respect its flag; and to defend it against all enemies. Penned by William Tyler Page in 1918, a creed that seems more urgent today.

While they don’t call themselves a “book club”, on this day it was.  

America - Love it Or Give It Back

I had one of my best readings right here at our local township library. This man, with the evocative message on his shirt, made an indelible impression on me. I was honored he asked me to sign a book for his daughter. 

My novel, Let Evening Come, is about the displacement of Indigenous peoples, love and loss, broken treaties and sundered promises. His shirt says it all and made me feel I had written something of worth. I'm sad that in the confusion of signings and surrounding conversation, I didn't get his name. That he had me sign it for his daughter, felt like the best tribute of all.

Regarding book signings, I'll be doing a Fourth of July giveaway. All you have to do is sign up for my newsletter here.  I promise to keep the content interesting and the mailings infrequent. 

The Price of an Ignorant Nation

In praise of libraries, my two local ones, the Goodland Township Library and Brown City District Library, have been amazing in their support and enthusiasm for this local author. They are involved and interested in their communities and support literary events, book sales, and summer reading programs. Like our public education system, libraries are part of the structural backbone of a democratic society. They are the literary center of small rural communities and encourage civil discourse. The public monies allocated to them are an investment in literacy and an educated citizenry.

The price of libraries is small compared to the price of an ignorant nation.

My self-arranged book tour has been a mini success to date, and I'll keep reaching out to libraries and independent bookstores far and wide to invite me to talk, read, and sign my debut novel Let Evening Come.  Who know, maybe someday I'll be at one near you. My publisher is small and they don't have the resources or personnel to organize book tours for their authors, so I have the reins in one hand and a sharp pencil in the other, searching for the sweet spot between promotion and creation. 

My hope now is that the first print run sells out and they have to do a second printing so the four (yes 4!!) typos a friend and sister found can be corrected.

IMPERMANENCE

The women gather at the riverbank
Musician, hunter, poet, mother.
Far from the withering gaze of the preacher
They bare their breasts to the sun.             
Sacred herbs for the midwife—
Sweetgrass and yarrow, sage, and cedar.

They gather and gaze

At the image of their mothers
In the mirror of the river.

Like snails in an aquarium
loosened from their shells,

In the reel of the river
They bare their breasts to the sun.

 

Bird’s plaintive cry o’er

purple nestling on the walk

Flees in silent flight.

 

 

May is a time of transience, and Frank Tassone, Monday’s host at dVerse, asked us to face the inevitable passing of it all with a Haibun, a literary form that blends prose and haiku.  

Bloodthirsty Nocturnals

A story about them is in the Flapper Press this month. 

After my mother died, I found a mink stole wrapped in newspaper at the bottom of the cedar chest . . . 

Yes, living where I do, we have rat stories, mink stories, weasel and skunk stories, the knock-in-the-night stories. Nocturnal stories. 

Fodder for a memoir. Would you pull up a chair?

Me and Tommy Orange

 In good company at Eras Bookstore

Thanks to the way bookshops and libraries organize books, I'm butting up against one of my favorite authors! I couldn't ask for a better position. We even happen to be color coordinated. 😃

To cap off my novel's birthday month I spent the afternoon at this new bookstore in Oxford, Michigan.

Tell me that checkered tablecloth isn't corny as all get-out?! Like I'm at a picnic. I meant to buy a plain black one but time got away from me.

Finally, I just want to say that because of the power of "local", independent bookstores are growing in number and popularity, helping their communities and the authors they support. Bookshop is the best way to access your own favorite local bookstore.

Onwards and upwards in this pursuit of the written word, doing what we all love best. 

Yvonne

Human

The Out-Of-Sorts Time For Novelists

If you are a writer, could you base a novel on a single solitary memory from your childhood? 

Sometimes that's all that's needed to jumpstart a story.

For me it was a barefoot boy beckoning from an adjacent dock on a Northern Michigan lake,  the boomerang that wouldn't come back, and the boy who lived with his family in a migrant's shack and one day stopped coming to school.

Writing is a solitary business (why writers love to write). Yet we eavesdrop and belly up to the bar where interesting people rub shoulders and words flow and ideas percolate to flow off our fingertips onto the white expanse of a screen or a notebook or a bar napkin.

Some of the reasons I'm passionate about writing and the natural world are explained here  (the scary out-of-the-way, desolate places our dad would park our pop-up camper on family vacations), along with some of my favorite immersive fiction from 2023 and the novels whose readers I felt would enjoy Let Evening Come.  But I wonder how accurate my assumptions are.

I've been asked, if I  had to do anything other than write, what would it be? I would like to hide in the upper branches of a tree. Drop raspberries in a basket tied at my waist and stomp grapes. Walk the fencerow to the rear of the farm to see the eagle's nest I've heard tell of, a mere hundred-acre walk away.

With one project complete and out of my hands while another is stalled and yet another still percolating like a an old coffee pot, I'm stuck in that out-of-sorts time for a writer. So, why not do some of those things? Why let a 20-mile-an-hour wind dissuade me, or a cold rain, or a mass of turbulent clouds skuttling across the sky to hide the sun as if another eclipse were underway? Why do I let the mundane eat away at the day, like the moon to the sun, or suddenly find myself daydreaming in front of the open refrigerator as if dinner will miraculously appear? Why let the out-of-sorts-time interfere with a walk along a fencerow to discover an eagle's nest rumored to be as big as a dining room table and maybe . . . maybe even catch sight of an adult in the act of remodeling or adding to last years structure.

Now that would be something to write about!