Memorial Day

A watercolor painting of Ralph Blanton in 1942.

Traditionally, on this day, we remember the soldiers who have fought in our wars.

"The Blanton Family came to the New World in 1654 when Thomas Blanton was granted land in Caroline County, Virginia. There has been a member of the Blanton Family in every American war starting with the Revolution." -- http://houseofblanton.com/NewFiles/crest.html

I will remember the soldiers of our family. 

The first Blanton in our family line came to this country in 1675 and settled in Virginia; his name was Charles.  He married a Mary, who gave birth to a girlchild four months after arriving in this country.  I've always liked that sequence: conceived in the Old World, born in the New World.  Those Blantons were French Huegonots (Protestants) fleeing persecution by the Catholic King of France.  After arriving in America, most became Baptists.  Since Charles arrived with very little and struggled at first as all immigrants do, he volunteered to fight for the British against the French in the French and Indian War (1689–1763).  For his service he was awarded @2000 acres of land.*

The Sartains are another Huegonot family that came over about the same time.  The Blantons and Sartains intermarried.  During the American Revolutionary War, the Blantons and Sartains fought for the Revolution because they had no interest in being ruled by kings.  One Sartain married Captain William Turner, who fought with Lafayette and Washingtion at the Battle of Yorktown.

An Isaac Blanton fought in the War of 1812 and was awarded a tract of land for his service.

As Blantons prospered and procreated, they spread across the land.  Some went north and settled in Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana.  Others went south into the Carolinas and Georgia.  Still others moved west into Tennessee and Northern Alabama.  By the time of the Civil War, there were white and black Blantons, Northern and Southern Blantons.  I have researched the army rolls for this period and found the following:  the white Blantons from the Carolinas, Georgia and Virginia fought for the South; the ones from Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky fought for the North; all the black Blantons fought for the North;  the white Blantons from Tennessee and Northern Alabama, who had only recently moved there from Kentucky and Ohio, stayed out of the war and sold horses to both sides.  I am descended from the Northern Alabama Blantons.

Blantons fought in World War One, but I have not researched their service. However, here are three that I found on a list from Caroline County, Virginia:  Peter Blanton, Edward Bailey Blanton, Oscar Wright Blanton

This brings me to my father, Ralph Richardson Blanton.  He was born in 1911.  He graduated from high school (the first in his family to do so) in 1931**, so he was a member of "The Greatest Generation."  Since the Great Depression hit soon after graduation and he couldn't find a decent job, he joined the Marines.  He spent his six** years of service in the Far East: China and the Phillipines.  This opened his mind to a wider world than he had known before.  He returned to the states and worked as a coal miner, but since he could read and write, his fellow miners elected him president of their union, so he spent little time in the mines.  When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, he joined the Army.  Because of his Marine service, the Army immediately made him a drill sergeant to train new recruits.  In 1945, he trained as a radio operator on B-29s, but the war ended before he had to fly any missions. (By the way, our mother Lois Rachel had worked near Atlanta in a plant building B-24 Liberator bombers.)  After the war, he continued his service with the USAF and worked with the Strategic Air Command.  During the Korean War, he was stationed in Japan.  Thus my father spent 26** years in the military in three different military branches and two wars.  He is buried in Arlington National Cemetary and his gravesite has a wonderful view of the Washingtion, Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials.

By the way, he was a good father and husband, too.

I toured the battleship USS Alabama in Mobile, Alabama.  In the list of sailors who served aboard it during WW2 was a Douglas Blanton.

I haven't researched thoroughly all the wars the United States has fought, but I have a feeling that a Blanton has served in all of them.

Here are some items that I have discovered.

1. There was a regimental surgeon named Dr. Blanton who served in the Mexican War, 1847.
2. Blanton, Benjamin F.--served in the Spanish-American War (1898).
3. Lance Cpl. Jeffery Steven Blanton was killed in Iraq on Dec. 12, 2004.
4. A Staff Sgt. Isaac Blanton is serving in Afghanistan.
5. Homer "Bud" Blanton, Jr. passed away on Saturday, May 1, 2010. Mr. Blanton was born on February 1, 1945 in Huntington, West Virginia. Bud served in the Navy during Vietnam, earning several medals.
6. Retired U.S. Air Force and Vietnam veteran, Raymond Blanton Sr. passed away recently.

I salute all the fighting Blantons, who have helped make this country what it is.

*There is reasonable evidence to suggest the Blantons lived in the area of Lyon, France during the 1400's, and as late as the 1560's. There is one suggestion that the family was there in the 1200's. To study the region and our DNA, you can only speculate beyond this. The DNA rib is common with the Basque. In addition the Rhone River that leads from Lyon to the Mediterranean Sea was well traveled by the Romans and the Greeks from early times. Therefore one would suspect an ethnicity of Basque, Roman and Greek influence throughout this region. There is a village of Blantin near Lyon. The name "Blanton" and "Blandin" most likely is a result of a place name of Blancs, which name came into being from French and Catalan. . . . The Blantons are French Huguenots as supposed upon good authority in Marshall Wingfield's "History of Caroline County, Virginia". The Blantons fled to England before the year 1600. . . . The spelling "Blanton" has one variation for the name "Blanding".  William Blanding, uncle to Thomas Blanton, immigrated to Boston in 1639. He was known as William Blantine or Blanton in his early years in England. -- http://blantonfamilyhistorylocal.com/


**These items were amended after my sister Debra sent me an email informing me of my errors.

death of a soldier

GRIEF’S ANATOMY

optics

T. J.’s physician wrote: “The first bullet entered just above the optic foramen, crashing through, shattering bone, smashing nerve endings and capillaries.”

His hospital buddy on crutches said, “We call him ‘Left-eye Jones.’”

I, his visitor, thought: He was always first to spot something interesting in the dappled foliage. I remember how he used to raise his binoculars, point and shout, “There’s one now! A red-winged blackbird!”

“Where?”

“There, on the towering pines swaying in the wind. It’s flitting from branch to branch like an acrobatic angel.”

T.J. said, “You have to see them to know . . . what those towns are like. All the buildings are the same . . . and they’re the same color as the earth around them . . . and the streets are crooked. You never know . . . what’s around a corner . . . or catty-cornered from you. I saw them first . . . because I was on point.”

olfaction

“Then the bullet, itself broken, and bone fragments tore apart and seared through the olfactory bulb and the nasal septum.”

“He’s gotten stinky. We have to help him change.”

When we camped, he loved to sniff the air and state, “Smell that? That’s wild honeysuckle and mint mixing in the breeze off the lake. What a wonder!”

He liked to cook the rest of us breakfast and brew the coffee whose rousing aroma wafted into the slumbering tents and raised us to waddle forth toward the bacon and eggs sizzling over the grill.

“Or . . . maybe I smelled . . . something different. I’m not . . . sure.”

audition

“One bullet fragment ripped into the tympanic cavity and destroyed the left osseous labyrinth.”

“He’s lop-sided: deaf on one side, blind on the other.”

Sometimes, because his hearing had been so acute, he could lie still in the forest and identify which bird’s call we were hearing: the to-wit-to-woo of a whippoorwill; the caw of a jay, the warble of prairie chicken, or the honk of geese, the wail of a loon, or the sweet melody of a bluebird.

“Then explosions erupted . . . all around us . . . the sound was deafening . . . and I took hits right away.”

dexterity

“A second bullet hit his right wrist, smashed the carpus and severed the pollicis, shearing away flesh, ligaments, nerves and bones.”

“We’d challenge him to arm wrestle, but he can’t grip.”

When we went fly fishing, he had a smooth cast, grasping gently with his fingers on one side of the rod and his thumb on the other like a fulcrum. He’d draw the line back in a curving arc as smooth as a bullwhip artist’s, then flick the wrist forward, so the fly would snap back as if catapulted, and the line would arc over the water and the fly would land soft as a flower petal settling off a breeze.

His flies were struck more often than anyone else’s, so he fed the rest of us.

“I was a mess . . . couldn’t use my weapon . . . couldn’t see . . . couldn’t hear.”

locomotion

“A third bullet struck his left ankle, smashed the talus and tore boot and all away from the tibia and fibula.”

“The stump’s not a problem. It’s a wonder what they can do with prosthetics.”

He was always first up a hill and the steeper the climb the greater distance between him and us when he reached the top. The rest of us would be huffing and puffing, grasping at twigs while his strong stride sped him upward and onward.

“I couldn’t even . . . get up and run. The pain . . . it’s there . . . but it’s not . . . greater than the fear . . . or greater than the not knowing.”

digestion

“A grenade exploded as he fell, so fragments entered both the pelvic and abdominal regions. Fragments puncturing the abdomen disrupted the small intestines.”

“He can’t eat anything he wants anymore. Gotta take it easy on the spices and sweets.”

He loved Mexican food the hotter the better and pizza with all the toppings. His appetite seemed bottomless. We would grouse about how he never gained weight no matter how heartily he ate – a high metabolism and an iron constitution.

“When the corpsmen . . . lifted me onto the stretcher . . . and carried me away . . . I knew I was hurt bad . . . seemed to be leaking . . . everywhere.”

evacuation/procreation

“In the pelvic region, fragments penetrated his bladder and ripped away his scrotum with testicles, which were not recovered.”

“He won’t always have those catheters and bags. They’ll fix him up, so he won’t need ‘em.”

His girlfriend waits back in his hometown. She was the prettiest girl in the town, and we often marveled what their children would look like with her beauty and his athletic grace and confident bearing. The lovebirds would have been married after his stint and started a family. Does she know?

“Listen . . . here’s a letter . . . mail it for me . . . because . . . she’s got a right . . . to a life . . . I can no longer . . . give her.”

psychology

(months later)

“Cause of Death: suicide by overdose.”

“We thought he’d hang in. He didn’t seem like a quitter. Who knew he was squirreling away his pain pills?”

We called him ‘The Optimist’ and ‘Mr. Sunshine.’ More than any of us he had relished each coming day. For him every day had been an opportunity to be the best that he could be. People had been drawn to him because they knew he was success waiting to happen.

His note to me, written with his left hand, read:

“This is the last thing I can do for everyone who’s been so good to me. Live a long, happy life and prosper for my sake.”

End.

This narrative is a hybrid.  It's form is poetic because the paragraphs resemble stanzas of alternating voices.  But it retains a fictional sequence of conflict and resolution.  It was first published in the short story collection Touch Me, 2009. ( Touch Me )

This piece of writing originated from my tutoring students in a laboratory setting.  Usually I help students with reading or writing.  A Vietnamese nursing student named Mygnoc came to me to help her with her Anatomy and Physiology class.  She had fled Vietnam several years before and had learned English, but, as any medical student can tell you, the languages most useful to them are Latin and Greek.  Speakers of Romance languages like Spanish and French have an edge over others because the roots, prefixes and suffixes of medical terms are familiar to them.  But a person who is literate only in an Asian language has no clues to the immense lexicon that she must master as a nurse in America. 

At the time she came to me I had just finished my sixth Buck Jaspers mystery (Possession), which has a character name Mai, who is a Vietnamese American.  I had bought a Vietnamese-English dictionary to help me with a few Vietnamese phrases that I used in the book.  I found that helping Mygnoc reinforced what I had written, but it also opened my mind to the beauty of the human body.  I found a copy of Gray's Anatomy accessible through Bartleby.com and used it to illustrate the bones, muschles and organs that she confronted in her text.  I probably spent four or fives hours a week helping her that semester.  Slowly but surely, she caught on to the nomenclature.

Meanwhile, my mind had begun synthesizing what I had been learning--yes, one of the pleasures of teaching is that I often learn a lot from helping the student master material that is also new to me.  As I had learned how beautiful and marvelous was the structure of the human body, I also felt a sense of tragedy for the mutilation, mangling and destruction that war inflicts on bodies.  My mind naturally set my conception in the current wars: Iraq/Afghanistan.  The title was a part of my initial inspiration.

Mygnoc passed her class, and when she came to thank me for my help, I thanked her for the inspiration for the story and showed it to her.  She seemed to like it.

Sometimes Mygnoc brought exotic fruit as a gift to me; for example, dragon fruit as shown below with a Vietnamese pear.  In turn, I sketched her on the computer and adapted a picture of her below.  Finally, I wrote her a haiku in English and Vietnamese.  This is the poem's debut.

Haiku for Myngoc

Chäo có, or “Hello,”
Vietnam – I didn’t go;
You left – xin cám òn.

a poem for a poet Gianna of the Yellow Jacket Press

SONGSTER BREEZE

(In rhymed iambic hexameter, a sestina for Gianna)

The air was soft that moved so slightly palms.

The thought was light that spurred a song of psalms.

The sun was bright that warmed so soon the sands.

The muse that sang then drew to mind the bands

That seemed to play as softly as the breeze

And made us start to shift as by degrees.

Our minds were gifted there to some degrees,

So under shady leaves of dulcet palms

Whose branches played and splayed beneath the breeze,

We heard the muses singing such sweet psalms

That we became in swift, concerted bands

The dancers gliding over warming sands.

And on those hot and deep and shifting sands

The temperature of which soon climbed degrees

As if to claim the heights of heated bands,

We danced beneath the canopy of palms

And sang the songs to us that were like psalms

Inside the sweet and cloying summer breeze.

It rose, it did, that ever-blowing breeze;

It picked the grains, it kicked the heated sands

And seemed to grab from breath our breathless psalms

That moaned from lips quite parched, and by degrees

That shadow strutted, under fronded palms

In febrile quiver, dancing with the bands.

And then it was that we became the bands

And held our sway under the ample breeze

Beneath the ever-swaying, scented palms

Over the burning grains of all those sands;

And so by effort we sure claimed degrees

That gifted minds like ours with Beauty’s psalms.

Thus Beauty gave us all her gifted psalms

As if the chosen muse had called our bands.

And we became angelic, bound degrees

Of bronzed young gods in thrall to summer breeze

That tossed and drove the blistering golden sands

Beside the waters near the arching palms.

We sang the psalms and so we blessed the palms

Whose fronds from bands of heat so saved the sands,

And we, by mused degrees, became the lofting breeze.

Gianna Russo was very young when I met her and became part of the Tampa Bay Poets.  Everyone in the group dedicated himself or herself to poetry.  We met weekly, shared poems, discussed and critiqued one another's work.  Once a month we would give public readings, usually at the Greenwich Village Cafe, which was a home turned into a restaurant.  Gianna loves the Tampa Bay area as much as she loves poetry, and was determined to stay there and make her mark.  She did so, as teacher and poet and mother, but her crowning achievement was establishing the Yellow Jacket Press, which has a reputation as a sponsor of good poetry and as an aid to poets and poetry.  Each year it publishes a chapbook of a Florida poet's work; the poet must submit the work (see The Yellow Jacket Press for submission guidelines) and win the submission contest. I have entered but never won.  Gianna wrote a sestina  about me and it was amazing; many years later for her I wrote this one about writing poetry in Tampa.

(A sestina is a highly structured poem consisting of 6 six-line stanzas followed by a tercet [envoy or tornada], for a total of 39 lines. The same set of six words ends the lines of each of the six-line stanzas, but in a different order each time; if we number the first stanza's lines 123456, then the words ending the second stanza's lines appear in the order 615243, then 364125, then 532614, then 451362, and finally 246531. This organization is referred to as retrogradatio cruciata ["retrograde cross"]. These six words then appear in the tercet as well, with the tercet's first line usually containing 6 and 2, its second 1 and 4, and its third 5 and 3. English sestinas are traditionally written in iambic pentameter or another decasyllabic meter.) --Wikipedia

A poem about a schizophrenic

From left to right above: Expectation, a painting by Gustav Klimt <Gustav Klimt (Expectation) Framed Art Poster Print - 11" X 17">; The French Lieutenant's Woman, a novel by John Fowles <The French Lieutenant's Woman>; the movie of the same name by Karel Reisz <The French Lieutenant's Woman>; Fullfilment, a painting by Gustav Klimt <Gustav Klimt Fulfillment Canvas Print>. 

R. A.: SCHIZOID

Haunting how many times I’ve thought of her

When our act together was so short like

The balancing act of blind justice. This is

The crux: I loved her normal person,

One with dainty hands and sweet lips

And large awareness and gift of words,

One who loved Gustav Klimt.

The other person scared me, one who

Got lost inside her mind and gifted no one,

Who shuddered like a block of ice and asked,

“Why did you come here?” when I visited her

In hospital in bare rooms with black windows,

Who lived inside Expectation, not Fulfillment. *

She was too honest for her own welfare.

She was The French Lieutenant’s Woman, **

The woman with two personas: the one

Who lived her life and desires,

Who would do anything to be;

And the one who didn’t recognize

Her reality, who shut out all others.

The honest one couldn’t go on

And finally killed the other one

Who hurt the ones she loved.

I can see her frail fingers picking

Up large pills one by one

And religiously swallowing

Each as the body of her redeemer.

Her final gift was this: Remember

One who loved all of you,

Not one who couldn’t;

One who wanted fulfillment,

Not just expectation;

One who cared deeply,

Not a shell.

* paintings by Gustav Klimt
** a novel by John Fowles
and a movie by Karel Reisz
 
 
This poem was first published in Creative Woman, Miami Dade College, 2008.  I wrote it a few years earlier after I learned that the subject had committed suicide.  It is about a writer I knew, who was a terrific writer, a mother, and a schizophrenic.  We dated for a couple weeks before she disappeared, and I subsequently discovered that she was in a hospital and being treated for schizophrenia, so I went to visit her. Months later after she was out of the hospital, she got in touch, but I told her I couldn't continue the relationship.  Her home was decorated with prints of Gustav Klimt paintings, and on our first date we had ironically gone to see the movie The French Lieutenant's Woman.  At the time, she was a better writer than I was.  She had waited until her child was grown before ending her life.

An Eye in the Anti-intellectual Storm

AN EYE IN THE STORM

John Avery wasn’t like the rest of us. We could see that right away. He was too soft, too friendly, too nice; and he talked in an educated way that we weren’t used to. But Connie and I liked him. He was always kind to us. Of course, I rented a house to him, so I had some pecuniary interest in getting along with him. I saw him several times a month: once when he paid the rent, other times if I was over trimming the bushes around his house or mowing the yard or repainting the shutters or doing a pest-control inspection, or if he called me to fix the plumbing or a light fixture or a lock.

He was a new teacher at the high school, and at first the young women in the community were attracted to him because he was educated, made a decent salary and was handsome in a kind of boyish way. All the women began talking about the new handsome teacher.

But it was the women that first turned against him. There’s a folk saying that “women are the conscience of the community,” and we men mostly go along with that because we want peace in the household. We figure we’re too busy earning the daily bread and making ends meet to be watching out for the town, but the women do that very well.

My wife Estelle is kind of the eye in the storm. She isn’t out battering things around. She just sits in the middle and sees what’s going on. Other women talk to her, she listens, and then I get fed what she’s hearing, usually at mealtimes or in bed at night. In fact, after the secretary and the principal of the high school, she had the first sight of the teacher, when he knocked on our door inquiring about the house for rent. She clattered out the back door to the chicken coop where I was cleaning, raking out the old straw, laying down fresh straw. “Freddy, there’s a man here who wants to rent the house.”

Since it was early fall and school began the next week, I guessed, “A teacher?” Since she had a light in her eye and was smiling when she nodded, I added, “Handsome, huh?”

“You could say that.”

I said to Connie, my golden retriever, “Come on, girl, let’s go meet the man.” Connie’s got a workable vocabulary. She trotted happily after me and we both greeted the blond drake standing next to a battered gray Honda. He bent down and patted Connie’s head and scratched her neck. “Beautiful dog,” he said. “What’s its name?”

“Connie.” If Connie liked him, I knew he was probably ok.

Connie and I took him over and showed him the little two-bedroom, one-bath wood-frame house, and I told him how much I wanted to rent it for.

He said, “That’s fine. I’ll take it.”

I said, “What do you teach?’

“Science.”

“Well, listen. Don’t leave any food out because the ants and cockroaches will come in and take over. I check for pests and vermin once a month, but if they bother you, let me know, and I’ll make a special trip.”

Estelle asked me as soon as I got back with the check for the deposit and first month’s rent, “What do you think of him?”

“Seems kind of shy. Connie likes him.”

“We think he’s the hottest thing to come to town in a long time.”

“Been talking to the girls, have you?”

“What else we got to talk about?”

Thereafter began an onslaught by the single, widowed or divorced women of the community toward breaching his boundaries. First were the single women, who thought he’d make a good husband and father, although they knew nothing about him. They looked him over and thought he’d make fine-looking babies. He received a torrent of invitations to church-sponsored events, town-sponsored socials and the JCs, and, although he attended a few of them and danced a little, he never went home with any of the young women or called them later.

Estelle is a member of the First Baptist Church, and I go to some of its sponsored events just to please her, but I have no patience for sitting through a sermon. At one barbeque and dance, I watched John Avery, and to me he seemed reserved, maybe not so much out of shyness, but out of wariness, so I thought he might have gotten slapped around by life and maybe he was older than he looked. I asked Estelle, “How old you think he is?”

“Twenty-two or -three.”

“My guess is older.”

The next week I mowed his yard during a very hot October day, so the sweat poured down my shirt and I had to continually wipe my forehead despite my cap. After an hour, Connie and I paused in the little bit of shade that we could get under the eaves of his home, and he brought out a tall, unsweetened iced tea and handed it to me. And he set down a bowl of cool water for Connie, who lapped it up.

“It’s really hot today,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said and gratefully drank the tea.

“How long have you lived here?”

“Oh, ever since I married Estelle.”

“How long you been married?”

“Going on twenty-six years.”

“That’s a long time. Almost as long as I’ve been alive on the earth.”

I smiled and asked, “How ‘bout you?”

“Once, but it didn’t work out.”

“So many don’t these days. Any children?”

“Two, a girl and a boy.”

“Well, thanks for the tea.” I handed him the empty glass and finished the yard.

I told Estelle, “He’s divorced, near thirty, and has two children.”

After that came the assault of the widows and divorcees. Hurt and injured seeks solace with other hurt and injured. But he didn’t want any of them, evidently, and he could have had them easily. Suffering sometimes needs to reject others’ suffering. The women were befuddled and began to suspect that something was wrong with the man.

Before Thanksgiving, Connie and I dropped by Avery’s place and gave him some snap beans and corn that we had grown in the garden, along with a few fat speckled perch that we had caught in our pond. He thanked us and I asked him what he was doing for the holiday.

“I had an invitation to eat at Ms. Kitchener’s, but I’ve decided to drive to Ft. Lauderdale and spend a few days on the beach.”

“Just as well. Kitchener’s turkeys have a habit of coming out dry. And she over sweetens her pumpkin pie. Well, enjoy yourself.”

While he was gone, Connie and I did a pest-control inspection of his place. It was clean, but I spread some poison in inconspicuous places and saw that he’d taken his school work with him. Other than his clothes, the computer that he had set up on the little desk and a few books, not much in the place was his. His only addition to the décor was a framed poster of Einstein that he had hung in his bedroom. Below the famous face was the famous formula: E=mc2.

During the Christmas holidays, I got a call in the middle of the night from John Avery. He said, “Mr. Sparks, I’m sorry to bother you at this hour, but I locked myself out of the house, and I can’t get in without breaking a window. I‘d rather not do that.”

“I’m coming.”

As I pulled up to his house, my headlights shone on two vehicles: his and next to it a sporty little job with New Jersey plates. He and two other young men were standing near his front door. I left Connie in the truck and walked up and said, “Howdy.”

John Avery said, indicating a tall blond fellow as good-looking as he, “This is my brother Stan and his friend Tobey.” Tobey was shorter, darker and very effeminate. “After I locked up the house, I locked my keys in my car. I’m really sorry about this.”

“I hope it doesn’t happen too often.”

“It won’t.”

By then I had registered the smell of alcohol and maybe marijuana, but I’m no expert on that. I unlocked the door and let them in.

John Avery said thanks again. I waved it off and drove home and went back to bed. I had just lain down again when Estelle said, “Was he drunk?”

“No, but been drinking.”

“Was he alone?”

“Two other guys.”

“Hmm?”

“Estelle, go to sleep.”

The next morning I rose to a half-empty bed and in the kitchen found Estelle sitting with the coffee already made. She had even put out Connie’s morning meal, something I usually did. She smiled at me but didn’t say anything, and I knew she’d been up all night mulling over John Avery’s disposition.

In January I heard the talk at Beulah’s Auto Repair where I took my truck to get lubricated. Jimmy Jones, the grease monkey, said to me, “I hear that new teacher’s a fag.”

“Yeah, where’d you hear that?”

“It’s all over town.”

“I bet it is.”

“Well, you seen ‘em together, didn’t you?”

“I saw him with his brother and another guy. That’s all I saw.”

“Well, they stopped in the Ibis and Gar for drinks, and people say that the little guy was a real flamer.”

“Well, I guess it takes one to know one, doesn’t it?”

Jimmy looked annoyed, and he finished the lube job quickly.

At lunch I said to Estelle, “There’s a rumor going round about John Avery being homosexual. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“Well, he doesn’t like women . . . evidently . . . and he doesn’t go to church.”

“Did you forget that he’s made two children by a woman?”

“He says, but nobody’s seen those children. Has he even shown you a picture of them?”

“Why would he lie?”

“People do lie.”

“And gossip.”

“Well, we’re worried about the children at the school. Suppose he should seduce them?”

“You’re confusing homosexuality with pedophilia.”

“What’s pedophilia?”

“It’s when an adult is aroused by children.” As soon as I said it, I regretted it because of the evil twinkle it lit in Estelle’s eye. Nothing is more dangerous than a little knowledge, especially if it swirls around town like gospel.

In February, I was weeding the tomatoes, squash and cucumbers when Connie started barking to alert me that the phone was ringing. I pulled off my gardening gloves as I ran and barely made it inside by the tenth ring. The president of the school board Tammy Stallings said, “Hello, Freddy. We’ve got complaints about one of the new teachers at the high school.”

“If you’re calling me, I suppose it’s the science teacher John Avery you mean”

“Yes, it is. Since you rent to him, I wonder if you’ve seen anything suspicious over at his house.”

“No, Ma’am.”

“Seen any drug paraphernalia?”

“No.”

“Seen any fancy boys hanging around?”

“No.”

“But I heard he had two men stay at his place over the Christmas holidays.”

“His brother and his brother’s friend stayed there a few days.”

“Are they gay?”

“I wouldn’t know. I didn’t ask.”

“Have you seen any children hanging around his place?”

“No.”

“Well . . . I know you’ll keep an eye out.”

“Tammy, you haven’t asked about bomb-making equipment or the Communist Manifesto.”

“Did . . . darn you, Freddy. You’re kidding me, right?”

“Right.”

“I know, rumors get started, but I have to check them out. I wouldn’t want folks to think I wasn’t vigilant.”

“Relax. The young man seems quite normal to me.”

Then in March some of the more religious parents got worked up because they heard he was teaching Darwinism.

Outside the grocery store, the card players, despite their irreligious nature, tried just out of meanness to pull me into a discussion of same as Connie and I walked by, me carrying some bread and coffee in a sack. “Freddy, sit down and play a hand,” said “Pepper” Corbett, rubbing his grizzled cheeks with his good hand, the one that hadn’t been caught in the gears of a cable pulley. The damaged other hand was only useful in holding cards or a cigarette – no grip. The others at the table patted Connie, who did her usual tour of greetings counterclockwise around the table.

“You fellows know I don’t gamble.”

“Well, we want to ask you about that pants-chaser teaching at the high school.”

“That rumor hasn’t been confirmed.”

“But it’s true he’s teaching that we came from apes. Do you think we came from apes?”

“I think you formed from fungus in the swamp and learned how to walk and talk in a saloon. You ought to watch the Discovery Channel once in a while instead of sitting in the shade playing cards and drinking beer.”

They howled with laughter. Pepper said, “I don’t have HDTV like you, Freddy. Don’t you believe in creation by God’s hand?”

“I believe all human beings came from the same source. That we’re all connected. Good day, gentleman. Let’s go, Connie”

The speculation about Avery was bubbling and grew throughout April, and although it was just talk, I knew it wasn’t going to stop, not with Estelle in the watch tower and plugged into every other woman in town.

Personally, I thought John Avery was suffering, that his divorce had hurt him and that he had come to our town to get away from the hurt. People handle hurt in different ways. Some take to booze or drugs or sex. Others get lost in their work. Others run to religion for solace. I think Avery was one of those who try to isolate themselves and work through their suffering.

His music was a clue, and in that also he was different from most in the community. Most of the town are country-western fans. The day I trimmed the bushes on Avery’s property, I could see he was inside grading papers and Connie and I could hear softly the sounds of blues coming from inside. Blues and country have a lot in common, but I don’t discuss that fact with anyone else. Both are about relationships and suffering. Both originated from rural areas, although the blues became quickly adopted by cities. Out of the blues came jazz and rock and roll. I learned that by watching a PBS special by that fellow Ken Burns. Even bought a B.B.King CD that Connie and I listen to in my truck.

I figured that John Avery was slowly working his way through the pain and that he would’ve been astounded if he knew the rumors that were swirling around him. I didn’t think he was gay, although his brother probably was.

Unfortunately, the storm was coming and I could do nothing to stop it. The pastors of the community, usually competitive with one another, joined together to pressure the school board to fire him, the women chorused their concerns, and the roughnecks in town were threatening to run Avery out of town with guns and clubs – not because they had anything against him, but that kind of mischief got their juices flowing.

In May I expressed my concern to Estelle. “Honey, you people need to leave John Avery alone.”

She wouldn’t look at me directly, but said between bites of chicken, “It’s bigger than you or me now . . . he just doesn’t fit here . . . he should move on.”

“He’s just a divorcé trying to get a handle on things.”

“His teaching Darwinism . . . that’s got all the churches riled.”

“He’s a science teacher for god’s sake. He’s got to teach science.”

“Well, he can teach it . . . someplace else.”

“Estelle, you’re wrong . . . very wrong.”

Just before summer vacation, Tammy Stallings told John Avery that his contract wouldn’t be renewed. I found out when he paid his last month’s rent. Connie barked to announce the approach of a vehicle and I saw him pulling into our drive and Connie and I went out, so Estelle wouldn’t have to talk to him.

“I guess I’ll be looking for work elsewhere,” he told me as he ruffled Connie’s fur and Connie licked his hands. “It was nice knowing you, Freddy.”

“Likewise,” I said. “You can stay there until you find something else.”

“I’m confused. Can I ask you a question?”

“Go ahead.”

“I’m a good teacher. I’m not sure why they let me go.”

“Let me put it this way, son. You’re bigger than this place. When you’re bigger than the place you’re in, it kind of squeezes you out. It’s no shame on you.”

“Why do you stay?”

“Well, believe it or not, I love Estelle and I’ve made a life here. She’s not a bad woman, but she might’ve been better if we’d ever had children. Besides, Connie loves it here.” Connie barked as if in assent.

Two weeks later on a Saturday in early June, John Avery dropped his key off and left, driving away in the battered car he’d arrived in. Since it was Saturday, I knew the local toughs would be getting liquored up and eager for amusement at the expense of any available scapegoat, so I got me and Connie in my truck, flicked on B.B.King and followed about a quarter mile behind Avery. We followed him over twenty-five miles until he passed the Five-Corners truck stop. After that we guessed he was safely away, so Connie stuck her head out the passenger window and I u-turned and we headed back to our little town.

End.
This story was originally published in A Collection of Nickel-Plated Angels, 2008.  I have taught in small towns in Florida, and although I didn't teach science, I sensed a strain of bias against intellectuals in the local populace.  Everywhere one goes, there exist good and bad people.  An imposing, but difficult, book about this subject was published in 1966:  Anti-Intellectualism in American Life .  Of course, the story is about more than anti-intellectualism because the teacher Avery is misunderstood more because of his psychological state during recovery from a divorce that makes him vulnerable and isolated at the same time.  To order my book, click here. A Collection of Nickel-Plated Angels

Kate Chopin The Awakening

This is the orginal cover of her novel.  You can order the current version by clicking on the link below.

The Awakening

KATE CHOPIN




Kindred spirit to Artemisia and Frida was Kate, who battled men in a man’s world,
As if she could play the patriarchal game, when all the while she suffered the
Torments of the specially gifted differently to see the illusions of the world as she
Eluded the stereotypes of wife and mother, although she was both, and
Created her truer world of Creole and Cajun denizens of real desires and
Hopes of all places and all times. She wrote so people could understand if
Only they would read and learn how women yearn to be another unique
Person, just that and nothing more, a flesh and blood and nerve and mind
Individually wrapped, but sensing the universe and all its possibilities
No more nor less than any other homo sapiens that ever trod the earth.


June 2008

This acrostic poem was first published in Creative Woman, Miami Dade College, 2008; and subsequently in the Ann Arbor Review, Fall 2009.

Edith Piaf La Vie en Rose

EDITH “LA MOME” PIAF

Every time she sang, people stopped: their work, their worries, their

Disappointments, their meals, and gave her their ears. O, Chanteuse!

In Paris, she was a little throbbing sparrow with a huge voice

That crooned, “I am singing about you—this place and this time—forever.”

How did such a tiny vessel ring with such a full tone?

“La Mome” knew their hearts, knew their souls, carried their torch,

And all who heard her caught the flame that seared them.

Many would start, clasp their hands, and gaze at the enchantress

Out of whose mouth their mysteries and secrets were revealed.

Many, listening alone to a radio, would feel their lips quiver, sense

Each tear that trickled down their cheeks, sigh and

Peek out a window at the City of Lights, city of art, city of

Iniquities, city of failing empire, city of humiliation.

As she sang “No, Je Ne Regrette Rien,” all the denizens knew she knew

Full well their strengths and weaknesses and loved them despite their faults.



This acrostic poem about another creative woman who suffered for her art was first published in Creative Woman, Miami Dade College, 2008, and subsequently in the Ann Arbor Review, Fall 2009.  I recommend the movie La Vie en Rose about Edith Piaf.  It's a wonderful rendition of her life and art.  Click here to order:  La Vie en Rose

A story in second person

The Voyeur by Alain Robbe-Grillet is an excellent 2nd person narrative.

YOUR SPACE

Each stage as you (your eyes protected by prescription sunglasses from the harsh sunlight and your body protected by air-conditioning from the enervating heat) drive closer to your home makes you feel more comfortable. The entrance ramp from your office district onto the expressway tells you (trying hard not to notice human forms like shadows under the overpass) that work is finished for the day. You touch off the cell phone for the drive home, touch on the CD-player with your favorite artist, and look ahead through your shaded lenses. Your electronic expressway pass waves you through the no-stop lane. Your neighborhood exit sign has you reducing your speed and bearing right. You turn onto the main drive that takes you to your neighborhood, to your gated community, through whose gate you pass with touches on the gate’s keypad.

Like you have many times before, you park your necessary vehicle, the machine that takes you wherever you need or want to go and protects you like a mobile metal cocoon, in your usual parking space. As you exit and walk to your apartment, the heat of summer beats down on you carrying a fast-food package that you picked-up at a drive-thru window. You press your keypad once and the car clicks and beeps, signaling you that the doors are locked and security systems are activated. Your neighbors aren’t home yet, their cars are not in their parking spaces, so no one (except the eye of the security camera) will see you as you stride down the concrete walk past the greenish-yellow bushes and the dark-trunked trees with furry pinkish flowers.

With the ease of practice, you slip your electronic key into your front door lock, and the door clicks open. You push in, out of the heavy heated air, into the air-conditioned coolness of your apartment. You flick the lock closed on the door and bolt it (in case one of them should be out there) before you move into the carpeted interior.

As you pass through the living room, among the bookshelves (self-help books dominate); the prints on the wall; the entertainment center with the television, stereo CD player, radio and library of movies and disks and artistic displays of knick-knacks and vases and flower arrangements; the easy chair; the sofa; and the coffee table, you sense safety. You drop your bunch of keys (office, desk, file cabinet, auto, safe-deposit box, storage, mailbox, front door) onto the fourth level, hip high for easy retrieval, of the bookshelf closest to the kitchen. Next to it, you place your cell phone and turn it on in case anyone you know and trust should call.

Next to the keys is a remote control where you left it that very morning. You pick it up and press a button; your favorite music comes from the entertainment center. You enter the kitchen and place the fast-food container on the counter next to the stove. You hum or whistle to the music or maybe you mouth the words to the song.

You go to your bedroom, where you shuck your work clothes and your shoes and socks (no machine has been designed to do this for you yet). You pull on a large cotton T-shirt and slip into some soft nylon shorts and a pair of flip-flops.

You return to the kitchen, remove the contents of the fast-food package and place them onto a plate, which you put into your microwave to reheat the food before consuming. You pour the drink from its plastic container into a tall glass and tinkle in some ice from the refrigerator’s ice-maker. You like seeing the food on a plate and the iced drink in a glass; the layout makes you feel civilized as if the meal had been prepared and served to you. You eat the meal, the same meal that thousands in your city, millions throughout the world are eating this very evening. You taste the food, chew quickly and wash every bite down with the drink. The taste is comforting because it is so familiar, and your stomach is full, so you can enjoy the evening.

After the meal, you scrape any food remnants into the garbage disposal and push a button. The disposal whirrs and slurps. The paper and plastic you put into a trashcan. The plate and glass you put into a dishwasher, but you won’t turn it on tonight, saving the process for the end of the week when the rack will be full.

You go into the second bedroom, which is your home-office-gym that holds a computer, a printer, a scanner, and attachments for camera and audio instruments. You boot the computer, which glows and hums, and soon the monitor shows the background screen that most appeals to you.

You sit. Click. Click. You have via the computing machine entered the World Wide Web, a connection to the rest of the world, your access to a plethora of information from professional, commercial and personal sources. The computer speaks to you. “You have mail.” You check your email, deleting junk, aligning bills, opening the message from your mother with its reminder of an important family holiday upcoming. You go to your favorite chat room. The people with whom you have become familiar (although you have no idea what they look like or where they live or even how old they are) are discussing something of interest to you. You type in “Hello.” and give your opinion on the subject. Each of the chat-room members reply in turn and seem happy to have made contact with you again. You type “Got to go. Goodbye.”

You have remembered that you need certain articles (clothing, sundries, and a piece of electronic equipment). You find websites for each needed item, compare prices, add your selections to your shopping cart, go to the checkout site, enter the payment method (charge card because your credit is good) and click off, knowing that the items will arrive by messenger within three to five business days. Then you go to your bank’s home site, log in, and move some money from your savings account into your checking account to be sure that the cost of the items purchased will be covered. Then you log out.

You have avoided any news sites because you find them depressing. (The sites will show them, and they make you uneasy.) You turn off the computer and return to the living room.

With the remote control you turn off the music that has soothed you and helped you relax and turn on the television, another source of information and entertainment from the greater world. You have a dish antenna which allows you to receive more than 200 channels through satellite connections, although (because of your preferences) there are only a dozen that you regularly watch. You check the programming index channel for anything that might interest you. You see that a celebrity who appeals to you will be starring in a movie later that night and that your favorite sport has a contest that will be broadcast, also. However, this is not a quandary thanks to split-screen technology. You will be able to watch the movie while following the sporting contest. However, those are more than an hour away. Many channels are showing news programs at this hour, but you avoid those. (The news will be about them, for whom you have no interest, and will only annoy you.) You also avoid talk shows (because they and their problems will be displayed).

You must exercise; you take an energizing vitamin compound that will increase your stamina and propel you to greater effort. You return to the home-office-gym (much better than being out in the humid heat) because it also holds your exercise equipment. Before you get on any of the equipment, you put on an earphone dialed into your favorite FM radio station playing your favorite kind of music. Then you mount a treadmill and start it. The tread turns at a rate designed for your running pace and tracks the distance that you cover. You watch the digital feet pass on the small screen as your legs move forward and backward, your stomach and back muscles pull in, your heart beats faster and your breathing keeps pace (another screen – if you remember to attach the instruments – shows pulse and respiration). Once the machine registers an appropriate distance and heart rate, you click it off, dismount and move to a machine that is a seat surrounded by series of cables and weights with two grips for your hands. By pulling on these grips in various positions, you can force your muscles to work and build strength. You do a series of six exercises with fifteen repetitions of each one. You stop and rise, feeling the tightness of your body. You take out the earpiece.

Now sweaty, you shuck all of your leisure clothing, throw them into the clothes hamper and go to your bathroom. You brush your teeth with your rotating electronic toothbrush and swish some mouthwash around your gums and teeth. You enter the shower and set the temperature the way you like it. The water pours over you, refreshing you. You wash yourself thoroughly, enjoying the soft, fragrant lather of the soap. You rinse and then turn off the shower. You dry yourself with thick, soft towels and hang them to dry on bars.

You return to the bedroom, select a new T-shirt and a new pair of shorts and put them on. You feel like a monarch in your kingdom.

You pour yourself a glass of liquid refreshment, but before you can go to the easy chair to watch your chosen shows, distracting sirens shrill in from outside and blue and red lights strobe onto your blinds. You step to the blinds and pull up one to peek out. Beyond the gated community in the street are police cars and flashing lights.

You mutter, “Them.” You think, They are smelly and messy. They are always out there, robbing, raping, hurting one another, killing, taking drugs, cursing and fighting, arguing noisily in a hundred languages, passing diseases to one another, crashing into one another, heating the planet, pushing and shoving, getting drunk, smoking, carrying weapons, falling down and struggling up, arousing themselves to passionate intensity with some hair-brained religion, having babies, going into debt, wailing and laughing, sucking in air and emitting carbon dioxide. They are disgusting.

You move away from the window and click on the television. You become absorbed between the movie and the sporting contest and take occasional drinks from the glass. Your team wins. The movie ends to your satisfaction. You click off the television. You check the door locks one more time. After setting the second glass in the dishwasher, you put on your night clothes and go to bed.

You take a pill that will help you sleep soundly until morning. If you don’t, you might dream about them and wake sweaty and wide-eyed into your dark air-conditioned apartment lit only by the electronic glow of the ever-ready machines standing by.

 
End.
 
 
This short story comes out of the perception that a middle class person in the United States can live a very sheltered life if he or she chooses, islolated from the hullabaloo of social interaction.  It was published in 2008 in the short story collection A Collection of Nickel-Plated Angels.  Follow this link to see other books that have been published. http://www.jerrycblanton.com/

Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi by Mary D Garrard  Order this book about Artemisia.

a self-portrait

ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI

As a woman, she learned that in a baroque

Renaissance she was not less proficient

Than a man, in fact, just as good stroke-for-stroke in each

Endeavor—canvas by canvas—that she undertook.

Men—those lying devils—were not, not

Including her father Orazio, to be trusted,

Should not be believed. They bruited falsely.

Instead, she followed her own golden thread.

Ahead of her time, she would take (like Clio and Minerva)

Great strides, paint greatly the tropes of

Each dream that would in a Medicean terrain

Not leave the orbit of her mind, that would

Take over her Roman spirit, that would

Inculcate within her a desire, a drive, to

Live the artistic life—courtly and ecumenical—despite

Every offense given her—rape, neglect, abuse—by those

Single-minded, lazy, self-indulgent, brutish

Curs that sniffed around her chiascuro.

Her dream grew in perspective with her visual

Intelligence and skillful hand—innately hers.

This acrostic poem was first published in Creative Woman, Miami Dade College, 2008; and subsequently in the Ann Arbor Review, Fall 2009.  This female artist was overlooked until the 20th century.

Frida Kahlo (Rivera)

Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo

Frida, the movie by Salma Hayek and Julie Taymor

FRIDA KAHLO (RIVERA)




Freed by her fractures, SHE, incising

Rivera’s otherness as his Aztec Santa,

Isis of Coyoacán, a lush jungle

Dadaed with open wounds and blood

Allas of butterbirds and lexicosex,

Kudzus of riveting red rios and cañons,

A vein to her bruised body and open

Heart of Mexico’s arta y misteria,

Lady of dry deserts and barren wombs,

Ortho-psychic in wondrous vias

(Reading her [he]art, the gargantuan feeder,

Insouciant breeder, was as a

Votary, her exceptional friend, so

Every pain belong her-belong him, and

Rode a budding Bodhi burr a tiempo to tun-

A) BLOOMED like herb cactus, plush and prickly.

 
 
This acrostic poem was first published in Creative Woman, Miami Dade College, 2008; and was subsequently published in the Ann Arbor Review, Fall 2009.  I highly recommend both the biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera and the movie by Julie Taymor (one of the most imaginative and original directors in the world).

Miami International Film Festival

Miami Film Festival 2008 "My Dream"

AN ENVOY OF THE FLOATING WORLD

1

My dream was seeing your grace and charm,

your acrobatic hands,

                    your lithe form twirling,

so the diaphanous dress rose

                like a cloud

                   or a butterfly.

You floated above us the dumb audience,

rendering a dance so composed

as if

                                  you did not live

                              for applause

but only

                                 for the dance.

2

Earlier in rehearsals I had seen you not

speaking, not

exclaiming, but

listening with your eyes

as your choreographer directed

with her hands your every movement:

a lift,

a dip,

your hands fluttering like the wings of birds

in flight,

rising on air,

your form embracing the curve of the earth

and buoyant as the sky.

3

Up close, your face was luminous

                      as the moon in early spring.

                   Through your lunar eyes,

you tried to understand the silent throng

of aliens

                                        that smiled, clapped and bowed—

                                              and had photos taken beside your gift.

You true artist,

who would have danced

in a blind forest,

so only the wild creatures could have fallen in love,

I blow you a kiss

because I know neither of your tongues—

Chinese

                      or your supple

                   arms,

                                    hands and

                                                 fingers.

3/2-12/08

I wrote this poem after seeing a deaf Chinese dancer perform with amazing grace at the Miami International Film Festival 2008.  The poem was published first in Creative Woman, Miami-Dade College, 2008.

First writing rite

This blog is dedicated to writing and thinking. I will try to write clearly and exactly. I will try to be imaginative and thoughtful.

First question: Is it possible to be an American and not be political? Can the citizen of a country founded on political opposition not think politically about what is advantageous or detrimental to his or her existence? I do not think of myself as a political person. I am generally skeptical of politicians, who have disappointed me many times. Yet, I find myself arguing with others about social and political ideas. I vote, a form of political expression. I donate funds, a form of political activity. I remember the line from the movie The Godfather, "Just when you think you're out, they pull you back in." Can an American ever separate from politics, or are we inveterately political?