Poem published in Last Stanza

Check out my poem in Last Stanza

 

POEMS ABOUT "THE NEIGHBORHOOD"

My poem “Downtown Neighborhood” has been published by Last Stanza Poetry Journal. Though I don’t live in an urban area, my sons have. Visits with them have convinced me that there are essential differences in your approach to life depending on where you grow up. If it was Brooklyn, your tastes and mores vary from those of a person from rural South Carolina and vice versa. That’s not to say one is better or worse than the other, just different.

Issue #23 of the Last Stanza focuses on “The Neighborhood.” It’s available in 1) black and white softcover, 2) eBook, and 3) color illustrated hardcover. Paperback is $12.95, about the cost of a hamburger and fries.

The hamburger will only make you fat whereas reading a magazine (esp. poetry) will sharpen your brain cells. Do yourself a favor. Buy and read the latest Last Stanza, or any book or magazine for that matter.

I hope you’ll take a look.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GGQXBHW3/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.PJXp2H4uP_TtTmta1saBBQ.XE452Me9xM_2tiIBKcF8GUvB3BHfz0nIeTOYDAnRJTU&qid=1768406125&sr=1-3

 

 

Foggy Morning

 

My foggy backyard this morning

Weather as Inspiration

Remember some of the old novels (and movies) with foggy scenes. Sherlock Holmes comes to mind and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And Wuthering Heights. Fog comes across as an obstruction to clarity, not just in the scenery but in the plot. The characters have trouble seeing the problem and so do we.

A most effective use of fog appeared in the closing scene of the movie Casablanca. Who can forget the sense of uncertainty it gave us?

According to AI, fog is loaded with symbolism, e.g. impending doom, isolation, moral ambiguity, hidden truth. With all that luggage, you’d think fog would appear in more general fiction than it does. If fact, fog seems to be fading into the genre of horror.

Of course there are the novels where the plot depends less on characters and more on circumstances brought about by the weather. Many of these stories fall into the genre of dystopian fiction, sometimes post-apocalyptic. If that’s your interest, “Weird Weather” may be a source of inspiration- https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeirdWeather.

Literary fiction, at least in what I’ve been reading lately, seems to ignore the weather. The characters living through an average plot don’t seem to sweat a lot, nor use umbrellas, or slip on sleet or brush off snow (unless the setting is the tundra).

I’ve finished a young adult novel about Calvin, who lives through a winter in 1942. He’s cold much of the time, the fireplace is the only warm spot in his house—a house, by the way, that groans and creaks with the wind.

I am gratified by the changing weather from hot to cold to in-between. And by the changing scenery winter and summer bring. Normal weather reassures us that all is well with the world. Catastrophic events come along to remind us of how much the weather means.

 

the cold gaze of nature

 FULL MOON in CAROLINA

View from my patio last night

 The moon is earth's only relative in a universe that is so full of stars but so lonely.

I've highlighted the monthly moons on my 2026 calendar to remind me to get outside and look at the sky. It's like taking a breath of frigid air to regard the moon's full glow.  And it raises the timeless questions: where am I and what am I doing here?

If there's something that's eternal, its unanswerable questions. Nonetheless, I'm in pursuit of just those answers in my writing. I have to wonder what that says about myself.

Words vs Numbers

 A LOOK AT WORDS AND NUMBERS

I suppose most writers are fascinated by words, as I am. Recently in a poem I wrote, I take the position that everything that exists  (whether physical, mental, emotional) has a word. In essence, you can’t think of something (much less write about it) if there’s no word for it. My hope is that readers will realize this premise is questionable. And as an aside, is it possible that language limits our imagination?

IS THERE A DIFFERENCE?

We communicate not just with words, but with numbers. I’ve told my sons to think of numbers as a different language. Some people hold that we developed numbers just as we developed words in a language. There are other people who will argue that there’s a difference. Numbers are not invented, they’re discovered.

ALL THINGS ARE NUMBER

So said Pythagoras. That is to say, the physical world, everything you can see, smell, taste, feel, or think is quantifiable. And with the discovery, or maybe it’s the invention, of calculus, even relationships and movement can be communicated with numbers.

UNIVERSALITY OF NUMBERS

Now that I’m into numbers over my head, I’ll back out by saying that math was my worst subject in school. Nonetheless, our fascination with numbers and our dependence on them has never been greater. Seems we’re on our way to proving Pythagoras correct.

DATA ADDICTS

For the entertainment of mathematicaphiles, The Week magazine provides a column titled “The Bottom Line.” The shear amount of data collection and analysis is mind-boggling. Numbers relay meanings and can affect our opinions, maybe even change our mind. Several random samples from The Week:

25% of unemployed persons are age 25 and over

64% of Spotify’s most popular podcasts in 2024 were men

The average commuter spends a record 63 hours a year stuck in traffic

Consumers plan to spend an average of $890/person on holiday gifts, food, etc. 

 A book titled Book of Unusual Knowledge, a Christmas gift, states that it took about 30 million hours for Stone Age workers to build Stonehenge. Who figured that out and how?

 

SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE?

Now I’m getting around to another point.  More and more research and/or scientific findings depend on data collection and not infrequently on polls taken of participants.

ARE THESE FACTS OR DATA DRIBBLE?

From The Times (UK) researchers analyzed data from 86,00 adults across 27 countries to find that learning a second language may help slow aging. (As if the only variable in 86,000 people is the number of languages they speak.)

Ultra-processed foods made up 55% of the food Americans ate from 2021 to 2023 according to the Centers for Disease Control. (What’s the definition of ultra-processed food?)

Researchers at the Univ. of British Columbia discovered that people are happier doing activities when sharing with others. Some 41,000 participants were quizzed on how happy they were doing three activities. (How happy? How reliable is a person’s opinion of their own happiness? And what if they’re asked on a bad day?)

 

the SC State Fair

 

 A TRADITION TO HOLD ONTO

 

Doug and I made our annual trip to the SC State Fair last night. I enjoy the neon lights that make me feel like I’m in fairy land. The rides are fun for me but Doug isn’t a good carnival rider, so we took a pass on most of them, except for the gondola that rolls above the fairground.

 

This is Doug sitting beside me in the gondola carriage and gripping the handle bars. He’s smiling for the camera but he’s shivering inside. He’s afraid of heights and is subject to motion sickness. 

Doug, hanging on for dear life

 

 

The panorama view is exciting with lights. In the photo below you can see the overhead view of the fairground with the carriage passing ours as we go in opposite directions.

Food vendors take up a portion of the space with everything you’d expect, most of it heart-attack foods, things like elephant ears, cotton candy, nachos, fried cheesecake, corn dogs, and shis kabobs. My favorite eats are hot dogs and french fries. Doug bought french fries we shared.

Some booths had long lines, but this one didn't

 

I had to get a photo of myself with a person (man) dressed in a metal suit with metal mask and hat. He was so completely covered  I couldn’t see his eyes. Hope he was getting paid plenty cause that costume had to be heavy, not to mention uncomfortable, and threaten a heat stroke.

How does he breathe with his nose covered?

 

 A state fair or a circus is often used as the setting for mysteries, and with good reason. Everything is loosey-goosey there. A criminal could easily commit a crime and disappear in a place like this.  

Appearance at Wine Festival

Wine Tasting at a Local Winery

 

 

Take a look at a local winery and try out their wines. The Enoree River Winery's Harvest Festival is Saturday, Oct. 11 from 10:30 am until 5:30 pm. I, with my novels, will be among the 30 vendors, along with live music, food, and the winery's debut of Cranberry Wine and Wine Slushies. 

Wine pouring service begins at 11 am. Location is 1650 Dusty Road, Newberry, SC. This is outdoors and in the country. Tickets are $40 cash only. I'd love to see you there and share a glass of wine with you.

https://www.enoreeriverwinery.com/event-details/newberry-harvest-festival 

The Right to Write

 SLAVERY in HISTORY 

Charleston, SC and slavery books 

 

Why am I not surprised to see the above headline? Maybe it’s because of my experience as the author of four historical fiction novels that tell the story of whites and slaves on a Southern plantation in 1857.

 

Before self-publishing, I queried a number of literary agents seeking a representative for my work. Two of them told me (a white woman) that they could not sell the manuscript in New York because there were slaves in the story. Maybe my books aren’t good books, but to have them rejected because of the subject matter doesn’t give me a chance, even if they’re excellent books. How has compassionate socialism turned into political correctness and worse, repression? 

 

Our media spurns Putin’s decision to rewrite Russian history, as if we aren’t doing the same thing. According to The Conversation, “New Russian high school textbooks … attempt to whitewash Stalinist crimes and rehabilitate the Soviet Union’s legacy.”

 

In particular, Russian history is being revised to “gloss over Stalin’s Terror and other truths.”

From the History News Network:
Now you see him, now you don’t. Stalin was a past master at the art of airbrushing. In one classic set of photographs, there Stalin is with his secret police chief, Nikolai Yezhov — and in the next photo, there Yezhov isn’t (he was executed in 1940, with his boss’s approval). And now, in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the airbrushing of history seems to be all the rage again.

Are we Americans trying to airbrush our history of slavery? A fiction novel set in the antebellum South either conforms to certain social strictures or it doesn’t get published by legacy publishers, regardless of the merit of the writing. When our history is ugly, no good is served by suppressing it.

 

Failing To Yield

 

OPEN TO DOUBT

My poem, “Failing To Yield,” has been published in the Spring/Summer issue of Quartet Journal. In an oblique way, the poem questions the value of prayer. When I was younger, I expected that by prayer I could reach God, who would intervene in an emergency and change things for the better, especially when difficulties seemed too hard to bear. For example, when my mom had a stroke, I prayed that she get better. When that didn’t happen, my lack of faith was at fault, at least that is what I was taught.

I have friends who, when they’re sick or have something like cancer, ask me to pray for them. I have to wonder what they expect of my prayers. And I wonder what I expect of those prayers.

Of course, prayers are of no use in saving lives or relieving pain, at least not physical pain. A prayer only has an effect, if at all, to the person who is praying. I pray for spiritual guidance, which I hope will give me good judgment and courage, but so far my prayers haven’t given me confidence in myself or God.

Every dead person is the same

 

WHAT MAY OR MAY NOT BE TRUE

 

I write poetry. I don’t necessarily write what I think is truth—or untruth for that matter. Thinking, for me, is neither true nor false. Really, isn’t it? Well, my thoughts can go a long distance without a label as to true or false.  

What’s real and what’s not real is a question I do think about. By that I mean real/unreal in a physical sense, not metaphysical (I’m dodging the argument that philosophy’s vocabulary deals with reality). Anyway, I’m sitting at my desk writing on my computer. That’s real, or at least I think it is.

 

Sometimes it’s not easy to separate physical from metaphysical lines in poetry. The murky, out-of-focus terrain between physical and metaphysical is one of the reasons I read poetry. Those lines throw a wrench into the brainworks. 

 

In writing poems, I want to make assertions that you can’t prove or disprove. For example, the last line of my poem “Lunch in a Belgian Chateau,” published in Last Stanza Poetry journal is “Every dead person is the same.” I can’t prove every dead person’s the same, but you can’t disprove it. I have a dear friend who would challenge me on this, but religious faith in an afterlife doesn’t rate as proof. 

lexicology

 

"Much Oblige"

 

My husband never heard the expression “much oblige,” which came as a surprise to me. However, when I thought about it, I haven’t heard that in ages. It was common in my childhood. If a neighbor gave you a ride, you didn’t say “thank you,” you said “much oblige.” 

 

Actually, the term has more of a masculine than feminine connotation. Expressing gratitude applies to situations where some unexpected charity is involved. In the rural area where I grew up, more generosity was expected of rural women than men, so thereby the less occasion for a woman to say “much oblige.” For example, my Aunt Myrth baked many a birthday cake for us and if anybody ever thanked her, I didn’t hear it. Her cakes weren’t unusual or unexpected. If she didn’t bake a cake, we thought nothing of that either.

 

If we ever said “thank you” in my home when I was growing up, I don’t remember it. When a family member went out of their way to help another, we didn’t thank them. It wasn’t anything special that required acknowledging. If a brother or aunt needed help planting tomatoes, we gave them help because that’s what you did in a family. Nobody expected them to say “thank you.” 

 

I’ve learned to say “thank you” from my husband, who finds it strange that my brother doesn’t thank us when we run errands for him. He’s of the old school who expects favors from us, his family. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t appreciate what we do for him. If we asked him for assistance, he would provide it, without expecting a “thank you.”

Disturbing Study Regarding Plastic

Kitchen items sent to the recycle bin

 

Plastic Brain

I’m getting rid of plastics that come into contact with my food and drinks. Maybe it’s already too late to save me from dementia or whatever damage plastics bring about, but I’ll do what I can. Scientists at the Univ. of New Mexico say that in the last 8 years the concentration of microplastics in our brains has risen 50 percent. They studied brain specimens from autopsies to reach this conclusion. 

 

There may not be much I can do to filter out plastics in my environment, but I can control what’s in my house. Seems logical that plastics used to prepare food have a high probability of flaking off particles that end up in my body. In the process of eliminating plastics from my kitchen, I’ve tossed into the recycle bin mixing bowls, spatulas, straws, measuring cups & spoons, pastry brush, colander, and funnel. I’ve bought stainless steel replacements.

 

In the grocery store, I look for soft drinks in cans and dairy products in paper cartons. 

 

My husband refuses to give up our coffee maker that produces coffee using a plastic pod. I’m hoping to get rid of it for an old fashioned perking coffee maker. 

 

Plastics are everywhere and the best solution may be to move to a wilderness, avoid contact with cities, grow vegetables, hunt, and fish for food. But I’m no hunter or farmer. Besides that, giving up city life is tantamount to giving up.

 

More than myself, I worry about my kids and grandkids when I read of research that finds that “the growing amount of nanoplastics in our brain as “alarmingly high” and “appears to be growing over time.” 

 

https://hscnews.unm.edu/news/hsc-newsroom-post-microplastics-human-brains

 

*Afterthought -- As I was brushing my teeth this morning with a plastic toothbrush, I imagined flakes of microplastics going into my mouth, into my stomach, my brain. What have I been thinking? Why would I scrub my mouth with something so fragile as plastic bristles? Found plant-based brushes online and ordered them. And to my surprise, I found plant-based dental floss picks.  

 

Why Am I Here?

A book of ideas on thinking 

Why Am I Here?

If you’ve asked yourself this question in a strange room after a night of heavy drinking, that’s not what I’m about. If you’ve asked it while wondering if you should try to develop a relationship with a church or synagogue, you’re the person I’m talking to.

 

If you’re like me, you have difficulty buying the Christianity message, and Judaism seems to be a religion with no benefits, except maybe cultural. You can’t escape having a belief whether or not you put any thought into it. I know some people who seem to believe that the meaning of life is a good hamburger.

 

NO ANSWERS

 

Some of us can’t accept the meaning of life even if we don’t know the meaning. Or perhaps, we can’t accept that we can’t discover a meaning. Not even hamburgers.

 

Of course, philosophers can explain it, but when’s the last time you tried reading a book by John Locke or Immanuel Kant? Even when written in English, their words are unrecognizable, like a foreign language. Or if Socrates, the writing is so dense your thoughts implode.

 

On the other hand are philosophers who advocate meditation by which you can explore the self and existence. Maybe something’s wrong with me, but the only thing I get out of meditation is frustration. Wondering how much longer I can try to get my brain into a meaningful clarity has only led to boredom. 

 

GIVING UP THE QUESTIONS

 

In the book At the Intersection of Existence, author Davis Stanard asks himself questions about existence. Why Am I Here? Davis suggests we get over that and build a belief system that allows us to live a meaningful life, whatever is out there beyond life. He doesn’t provide answers but he gives himself, and by implication the reader, permission to quit asking unanswerable questions.

At the Intersection of Existence Back Cover

Rice Festival

 

APRIL 25 & 26

 

I’ll be under my tent and signing book sales at the Rice Festival in Walterboro, SC, on Friday and Saturday April 25 & 26. It’s the perfect time of year for outside activities amid throngs of people. 

A car show will be on display

 

Even if you don’t care to see musicians on stage, dog acrobatics, a duck show, or cornhole tournament, you can enjoy people watching.

Doug & I will be there early to put up the tent

 

Put the date on your calendar and find me at the Rice Festival. It has something for everyone.

Festival Contacts: PH. 843-549-1079

STREET ADDRESS

494 Hampton Street

Walterboro, SC 29488

https://sites.google.com/view/colletoncountyricefestival/home

A gift like none other

 LITERARY AND VERY PERSONAL

My daughter-in-law Cindy gave her son (my grandson Frank) a unique gift for his 18^th birthday. In fact, only a limited number of these gifts exist. She researched Frank's ancestors, recorded the data, formatted photos and text, and printed a 50-page book that provides the names and dates of Frank’s male relatives and ancestors, living and dead. The title is “the Book of boys,” and in the case of Cindy’s family, it traces Frank’s ancestors back six generations.

The title is behind a cut-out

It's remarkable that four Civil War veterans appear in the pages, my ancestor John Gantt who lost an arm in the battle of the crater at Petersburg, VA; Jake Shumpert who was wounded at Gettysburg; Austin Stanard who fought with the 75^th Illinois Corps; and Lorenzo Myers who was Captain of the 64th Ohio Infantry. 

Sixth generation

The birth locations of Frank’s closest male relatives are Ohio and Illinois. But going back generations, they’ve come from South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Missouri, and New York. 

Frank's paternal great-great grandfathers

Cindy has inherited from her father a love of genealogy. It’s obvious from this book that she spent hours on family history research, not to mention formatting the book. She’s a graphic designer, so that explains a lot. However it takes a devoted mother to turn a hobby into something that will be a family keepsake.

 

Quartet Journal

 

 

CAR ACCIDENT AS INSPIRATION

The May edition of Quartet Journal will publish my poem “Failing To Yield,” which is about an auto accident that occurred at Fairview Crossroads some years ago. The Crossroads has been the scene of a number of accidents, in part because it is the intersection of four roads: Hwy. 178, Neely Wingard Rd., Calks Ferry Rd., and Wagener Hwy. 

 

I didn’t view the accident, but I was there when the EMS arrived. There were a number of us standing on the sidelines in silence. The hush was broken by the wailing prayer of the grandmother who had been uninjured in the accident.

 

A car accident has been used as a point of departure for a number of writers, I’m thinking of novels. Here are several examples of writers who took an auto accident and went into diverse plots:

 

* If I Stay by Gayle Forman – an accident leads to a common trope of memory loss which gives rise to mystery and discovery.

* Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor – five people are killed in a car accident which develops into a story about organized crime.

* The Heart by Maylis de Kerangal – a car accident begins a story about a heart transplant.

* Home Stretch by Graham Norton – after a car accident involving a wedding party, the driver can’t face living among the mourning relatives and friends.

 

The publisher of my poem, Quartet Journal, is an online poetry magazine with three issues a year—Winter, Spring/Summer, and Fall. Linda Blaskey is the usual editor, but on the masthead for 2025 is guest editor Franetta McMillian.

 

One of the things I enjoy about this magazine is the authors' comments about how they write and what has meaning for them. In the most recent edition, poet Deidra G. Allan wrote that a theme she comes back to is “the great interplay of hope and despair, grief and joy.” Her poem speaks implicitly to this theme and ends with “like a child’s laughter through the open window of a house in mourning.”

More of Quartet Journal at - https://www.quartetjournal.com.

relationships shift with politics

 

POLITICS AND FRIENDSHIP

I have a fundamentalist Christian friend who is an avid Trump supporter. Our relationship has survived for years, in part because we don’t discuss religion. She doesn’t proselytize, which I appreciate, and I don’t care about religion as long as people treat one another with respect. 

 

Recent politics has brought some uncongenial moments. For instance, if I make a comment about changes in our American situation, such as “I wonder what the Rawls Farm will do for field workers,” my friend comes back with a strident rebuttal about immigrants followed by “if you’d read the news you’d know.” We’ve come to the point that we’re too passionate about our opposing views to even touch on something political. 

 

After several comments about my lack of knowledge, which I’ve tried to ignore, our conversations have come to be limited to old times and mutual friends. 

 

At the end of the day and the reason for my writing this is—why is my friend so aggressive in her Trump support and why does she denigrated me, her friend, for having a different opinion? Her view of religion has always been unlike mine, but she hasn’t smiled at me and suggested I’m stupid for holding a different view. It seems that politics has surpassed religion as the most important thing in her life.

 

Such intolerance harkens back to history and a god-like acceptance of authoritarian rulers. History is full of examples as to where this leads.

 

Selling Books

FESTIVALS

Selling books is a challenge, in part because readers are hard to find. Even publishers have to work hard to market books, so for an individual writer it becomes near impossible, unless of course they are already well known, e.g., Tom Hanks, Britney Spears.

 

To market my books I’ve been going to festivals with some success, depending on the festival. Yesterday I went to Augusta to check out the Fat Tuesday Food & Music Festival as a possible venue.  

 

A description of the festival was tantalizing: it was to “bring a taste of New Orleans to Augusta.” My sister Nila and I waited 30 minutes to pay the $10 entry fee, we spent about 15 minutes checking it out.

My sidekick and sister Nila

 

I should have taken a hint about the “festival” when a person selling gutters approached me at the entry. On surveying the vendors, instead of jambalaya, beignets, or gumbo, we saw the usual tacos, lemonade, funnel cake, and kettle corn. There were few other vendors selling things such as soaps and jewelry. It didn’t have the sort of traffic to sell books, or much of anything else. 

I wasn't looking for lemonade...

In the past, book festivals in our area were more successful, at least in the sense that they were big events that pulled traffic from a large area. The three-day South Carolina Book Festival held in Columbia closed down in 2015 after 19 years. Book “Em NC, held at Robeson, and Lowcountry Arts & Literary Festival have closed. 

 

What we have now are smaller festivals that are hanging on despite low traffic. Several that have returned annually for several years are the Indie Author at Aiken, SC, Author Showcase at the Richland Library, and Authors for Literacy at the Lexington library. A more intimate gathering that features authors is Readers & Writers held at a local restaurant. 

 

At a time when selling books has become as productive as digging for gold, festivals in SC are multiplying like rabbits. Flower festivals (azalea, iris), food (crawfish, peach, pimento cheese, shrimp, BBQ, strawberry, rice festivals), cultural (Celtic, Cajun, Italian, Swamp, Greek, Irish, hippie festivals); music (jazz, bluegrass, boogie), which is but a sampling. A list can be found here:

https://festivalguidesandreviews.com/south-carolina-festivals/