Victoria Waddle

Under the Spell of the Inland Author’s Imagination: Nalo Hopkinson Taps the Speculative and the Supernatural

I’m not one for making New Year’s resolutions; not anymore that is. But in the last five years, as each year ends, I’ve picked out a few things that I’m curious about to see if, throughout the year, I can follow that curiosity wherever it takes me. This is a joyful experience, and I’m glad that authors have recently written books encouraging this practice. (A few good ones are: A Curious Mind by Brian Grazer and Charles Fishman, and Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert.)

My journey on the road of inquiry took a turn backward at the end of 2015. I decided I would treat myself to audio versions of old myths and epics I’d read back in college English courses. I listened to “Gilgamesh,” an ancient Sumerian epic about grief and mortality; “Beowulf,” the old English epic about the Danes and their struggle with the monster Grendel; and “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” a short symbolic tale of a knight in King Arthur’s court. I don’t know why I am now drawn to humankind’s need to slay dragons, but the tales were all as fantastical as I remembered them.

Just as I finished the epics, I read “All Stories are the Same,” an article in The Atlantic which discusses the ongoing fictional battles between people and creatures. Author John Yorke concludes with, “In stories throughout the ages there is one motif that continually recurs–the journey into the woods to find the dark but life-giving secret within.”

When we become interested in something, it pops up everywhere. For Christmas, my son gave me a copy of The Book of Imaginary Beings, Jorge Luis Borges’s compendium of imaginary creatures. Of course, there are centaurs, dragons, elves, and angels. But Borges also includes more recent literary creatures from Kafka and C. S. Lewis. His description of H. G. Wells’s Eloi and Morlocks from The Time Machine, drove me to wonder: who, in the Inland Empire, is imagining such creatures now?

In venturing into the supernatural woods, I stumbled upon Nalo Hopkinson, a professor of creative writing at UC Riverside. Two of her stories appear in Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, edited by Sheree R. Thomas (2000). “Greedy Choke Puppy” is the story of a soucouyant, a sort of Caribbean female vampire who removes her skin at night and changes into a ball of fire, searching for babies whose blood she can suck. “Ganger (Ball Lightning)” is the story of a couple who uses a technologically-enhanced second skin for fulfillment, but who find themselves fighting the life-threatening consequences.

In the more recent Unnatural Creatures: Stories Selected by Neil Gaiman (2013), Hopkinson’s story is “The Smile on the Face.” The title has its source in the limerick “The Lady of Niger,” lines of which are interspersed throughout the tale. In it, teenager Gilla is bored with a school reading assignment that includes the story of the laidly worm that ate St. Margaret. Gilla’s mum tells her that the story shows that St. Margaret was a hamadryad, a female spirit whose soul resides in a tree. Later, Gilla fearfully walks past a scary cherry tree in her yard while on the way to a party with her best friend. Gilla is ashamed of her blossoming body and large breasts. At the party, a particular boy openly ridicules her and becomes a true threat, but Gilla has swallowed the pit of a cherry from the tree in the yard. She discovers the powerful spirit of both dragon and tree within her.

Having enjoyed these stories, I bought Hopkinson’s most recent collection of short fiction Falling in Love with Hominids (2015). Of the three stories above, only “The Smile on the Face” is repeated. But the creatures of Hopkinson’s imagination abound. In the opening story “Easthound,” Millie believes that she has brought a pandemic to the world simply by misreading the word ‘eastbound’ and transforming the direction into a nightmare world where children hide from adults and fear growing up. As a character in “Message in a Bottle” says, “Human beings, we’re becoming increasingly post-human,” and the result is often terrifying. Other stories have teens who transform into human-water snakes, an elephant that appears in a living room, a child who is a magical granter of wishes. There’s a very different shaggy dog story in which fauna and flora commingle. Hopkinson reimagines Caliban and Ariel from Shakespeare’s “Tempest.” Her trees, tired of freezing weather, take flight. The story I most enjoyed for its sense of Mardi Gras magic about to collide with impending evil was “Ours is the Prettiest,” written as Hopkinson participated in a shared-world anthology, the Bordertown series.

In his introduction to Unnatural Creatures, Neil Gaiman writes, “I liked animals who existed in a more shadowy way even more than I liked the real ones. . . because they were impossible, because they might or might not exist, because simply thinking about them made the world a more magical place.” Hopkinson–who is local by way of Jamaica with a detour into Canada–takes us into the woods she inhabits with her shadowy creatures, making our world that more magical place.

We’re Still Here by Joan Koerper and Marja Anderson

“We’re still here,” announced Paakuma Tawinat, member of the San Manuel Mission Indian Band of the Serrano Nation, to the standing-room-only crowd at the Wrightwood Historical Museum on November 6, 2015. Accompanied only by his gourd rattle, Tawinat opened his presentation in Serrano tradition, singing a melodic song honoring the Big Horn Sheep, sacred to his tribe.

In an entertaining, informative, and interactive demonstration, Tawinat shared the history, culture, and current status of the Serrano Nation whose territory once covered 10,156 square miles of the San Bernardino Mountains, the Banning Pass, and the Cajon Pass. Now, Serrano territory is reduced to 1.5 square miles: the San Manuel Indian Reservation.

When the Spanish arrived in Southern California, 30,000 Serrano called their territory home and spoke the language. Only 200 closely related Serrano remain. Tawinat’s distinguished elder cousin, Ernest Siva, is one of only two remaining Serrano speakers. Determined efforts are being made to recapture the language and teach it to new generations. Classes in the Serrano language are even being offered at Cal State San Bernardino.

Tawinat’s ancestors survived forced conversion, slavery, disease, loss of identity, the “War of Extermination” declared by California’s first Governor, and deployment of Serrano children to Indian Schools dedicated to the motto, “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” His godmother was one of the last Serrano to attend the Indian School at St. Boniface in Banning.

The Serrano once flourished on over 300 local abundant foods: plants and animals of the mountains and valleys in large territories they shared with neighboring tribes, such as the Cahuilla. Under Spanish and American rule they died of starvation.

Traditionally, the Serrano made full use of their environmental resources building round dwellings from flexible wood poles, palm fronds, and willows, which they left behind to be absorbed back into the land. Clothing was made from yucca and plant fibers. Established trade routes were used to both augment and sell goods with other nations.

Musical instruments were formed from natural elements. Flutes were carved from hollowed-out wood and reeds, while acorn seeds filled gourd and deer hoof rattles. Drums were not part of the Serrano repertoire. Traditionally, the Serrano also excelled in basket making. The audience was invited to peruse sandals, baskets, musical instruments, and other Serrano wares on display.

Tawinat highlighted how knowledge of the changing seasons was critical to his ancestor’s survival. These lessons were passed along, in part, through Bird Songs, Big Horn Sheep stories, and Flood Stories.

The Serrano had, and have, a rich social and spiritual life believing in a higher power, shamanistic healing, an afterlife, coming of age rituals, and death rituals. Music, gambling, and stories are enjoyed by all ages.

Strict rules covering marriage are in place thus, in the past, most were arranged. Tawinat’s grandmother, Martha Manuel Chacon, was the last Serrano woman to enter into an arranged marriage.

“It is done,” Tawinat concluded in his native language, the traditional closing of a Serrano gathering.

The meeting may have concluded, but the Serrano Nation is, as Tawinat announced, “still here,” succeeding. Serrano ancestors live on in their descendants and in the land itself. Purposefully overturned grinding stones lie under oak trees anticipating the return of the people who used them. Artifacts mark the sites of villages, and clumps of Datura plants still wait for the shamans who once harvested them. And if you listen carefully you can hear the voices of the People, intoning sacred Big Horn Sheep Songs, riding the winds up the Cajon Pass to a strong and healthy future.

Postscript for this post: Marja Anderson joined me in penning this article. Marja has a Masters in Anthropology from UCR and has conducted fieldwork in Hong Kong and Malaysia.

This article was first published in the Mountaineer Progress newspaper on November 12, 2015. Unfortunately, due to editorial oversight, the hardcopy version published that day contained innumerable errors and repetitions. The newspaper admitted to the mistakes in the following weekly edition and made the necessary corrections for the online version of the paper.

She Cultivates Ancient Wisdom by Joan Koerper

She cultivates ancient wisdom: Inland author’s work points to agriculture in natural harmony.

When author and archaeologist Anabel Ford traveled the world with her family, retreating to their Wrightwood cabin beginning in 1960, she could only dream that her fascination with Meso-American and Maya prehistory would lead to great discoveries. It did.

In 1983, Ford and her team uncovered the ancient Maya city of El Pilar, which had lain dormant for more than 1,000 years.

Ford’s book, The Maya Forest Garden: Eight Millennia of Sustainable Cultivation of the Tropical Woodlands,” co-authored with Ronald Nigh, a professor at the Centro Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social in Chiapas, Mexico, published in June, is the result of 44 years of excavation and research into El Pilar’s domestic architecture, gardens and traditional forest crops.

“I set out to answer fundamental questions,” Ford said. “How did the Maya successfully establish a flourishing civilization in the Mesoamerican tropics? Would their strategies for survival be an alternative for us today?”

The findings counter the longheld assumption that the collapse of the Maya civilization was due to overpopulation and deforestation.

“There was no extensive deforestation in the past,” the authors contend. The forest gardens have been productive for 8,000 years. When crisis stuck, the Maya left their cities and took refuge in their life-giving forest gardens.

Simply put, a forest garden is an unplowed, tree-dominated agricultural field sustaining biodiversity and animal habitats and producing a wide range of plants that meet human needs: shelter, food, and medicine.

The forest garden is part of the traditional Maya land management system known as the Milpa Cycle. Cultivated year-round, up to 90 percent of plants in the Maya forest garden are useful.

Gardeners maintain it with local resources such as organic material, household compost and manure, which enrich the soil and productivity.

Intercropping, or cultivating two or more regional vegetables at the same time, is core to the Milpa system. The Maya annually rotate small plots of vegetable crops and plant short-term perennial shrubs and trees in stages.

Present-day Maya farmers practice slash and burn, a tradition the Serrano and Cahuilla Indians of the San Bernardino Mountains once included in their land management efforts.

Ford’s research reveals a carefully human-orchestrated, complex, dynamic, symbiotic, and integral relationship with the tropical woodlands that has consistently nurtured the Maya.

This led Ford, director of UC Santa Barbara’s Meso-American Research Center, to champion sustainable cultivation, indigenous ecology and farming methods used in the Maya forest garden. It also shaped her vision for the future of El Pilar, which straddles Belize and Guatemala.

She helped form the Maya Forest Garden Network, connecting forest gardeners whose knowledge and approach to gardening can be traced to ancient times.

Ford, who earned her doctorate at UC Santa Barbara in 1981, also built an international interdisciplinary team including local villagers, scientists, university students and government administrators who are working to rescue the rain forest, curtail looting, and recover the cultural heritage of the Maya forest region. Ford transformed El Pilar into a living museum and research center: the El Pilar Archaeological Reserve for Maya Flora and Fauna. Several thousand tourists a year step back in time under the forest canopy and observe the gardens and wildlife of El Pilar. Ford continues her hands-on work at El Pilar and travels worldwide to promote the wisdom of indigenous conservation and the living future of the Maya forest. Still, somehow, she finds time to spend at the family home in Wrightwood, continually inspired by the forest she first explored as a child.

The Maya Forest Garden: Eight Millennia of Sustainable Cultivation of the Tropical Woodlands

By Anabel Ford and Ronald Nigh. Left Coast Press, 2015.

Learn more about El Pilar.

This article was published in the Press-Enterprise, Jan 3, 2016; Section: Life; Page Z2

Blink of an eye / ideas and people connect / in haiku by Timothy Green

Frogpond

In Japan, the brief poetry form is all about socializing. Why not here, too ?

When my grandmother’s hearing had grown too poor for the telephone, we started exchanging letters. Once a month—on the same day as the Edison bill—I’d receive a handwritten letter, pressed firmly with a retired schoolteacher’s perfect cursive, yellowed paper cut neatly from the same ancient notebook. Family gossip, news of my father, the weather back east, details of her various ailments.

She’d close every letter with a haiku. It was both a hobby of hers, and a nod to my odd profession. Her last was probably her best:

snow-covered sundial

waiting

to tell time again

I imagined her as the sundial, snowed in by age, her bed long-since moved to the living room so she wouldn’t have to negotiate the stairs, waiting patiently for whatever spring might come in whatever existence might come next.

When I had a moment, I’d tap out a hasty reply, glancing out at the palm trees on Ventura Boulevard from my office window, and close with a responding haiku.

it’s December too

in California

the crickets shout!

There was a joy to the haiku that I’ve only recently come to understand. Easy to write but impossible to master, they never grow old. You can write them in the car stuck in traffic, or plop them easily at the end of a newspaper article. Haiku are so simple they can be simultaneously silly and profound, and that contrast has kept them fresh for centuries.

Most often my grandmother’s haiku would offer a shift in mood, adding levity or perspective or clarity to the information that the letter had shared.

lost my other shoe—

now even the right

isn’t left

Almost a decade later, I still remember many of them fondly, and they always embody my grandmother’s quietly sarcastic personality.

More recently, I interviewed Richard Gilbert, a haiku scholar at Kumamoto University in Japan. He described with great enthusiasm the beloved space haiku holds within Japanese culture. With a total population of 130 million, it’s estimated that 12 million attend a regular haiku group. Witty celebrities compose haiku-like senryu live on TV.

Haiku itself descends from a party game, so it should be no surprise that they’re fun to write. At the kukai, as it was called, friends would gather around a bottle of saké, taking turns composing lines on a chosen topic. Class boundaries and social conventions dissolved as participants adopted pen names, many of them humorous. Bashō was named after the banana tree outside of his hut.

Listening to Gilbert tell it, haiku as a social act sounds like so much fun that I can’t help wishing we made it a part of our culture in the West. An outlet for playfulness and creativity and face-to-face interaction, haiku embody much of what we seem to be lacking in the age of smartphones and Facebook.

So let’s start now. Why not cap off your annual holiday letter with a summary haiku? Turn a family dinner into your own kukai, composing short poems about the season.

Before you start, it’s important to know what haiku are and what they aren’t. No other form of poetry is so misunderstood. Haiku are not three-line poems of five, then seven, then five syllables. Counting syllables doesn’t make any sense in Japanese, which is divided into units of time and not sound. You can think of traditional haiku as three lines that are short, then long, then short in duration, but even that generality isn’t an important rule in modern haiku.

The heart of a haiku is really the kireji, the cutting word, which is almost a form of punctuation that divides the poem in two. In English we might use a dash or colon—this division separates the first image from the last, creating a comparison that can be evocative or uncanny. The best example is Bashō’s famous frog:

old pond—

frog jumps in

the sound of water

That dash is the kireji, and it signifies a complete cut in time and space. The haiku presents one image, an old pond, and then another isolated image, the frog jumping into the sound of water. How the two images relate to each other is left up to the reader—and it’s that interactive, connective leap that stirs our thoughts and emotions. This is one of the many things Bashō meant when he said, haiku jiyu, or “Haiku is for freedom.”

Much more goes into classical haiku, but this is all you need to know to write decent modern haiku in English. Don’t count syllables, just count images or ideas: There should be two.

watching football

my keyboard

almost silent

To learn more about the history of haiku, you can find my interview with Richard Gilbert in issue #47 of Rattle, or read his translations of contemporary Japanese haiku poets at his website.

Indestructible Alice Continues to Inspire by Susan Zieger

“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” turned 150 years old in November, and it remains as vibrant and relevant as ever.

At its 100th birthday in 1965, it became a totem of the counterculture, inspiring Grace Slick’s heady bolero, “White Rabbit.”

Adapted into animated and live action films, music and videogames, plentifully referenced and reillustrated, it shapes and reshapes our globalized mass culture.

Do girls today still read Carroll’s original tale? I think they should. Nowadays girl heroines train to be assassins, master their supernatural powers, or shop. By contrast, Alice dreams a world and forays into it, modeling all the qualities we should inculcate in girls: curiosity and common sense, confidence and courage.

Alice teaches girls to navigate the world without fear. When she falls down a rabbit hole, and continues falling, she gets bored and tries to calculate the distance. In passages that probably made parents squirm, she quaffs from a strange bottle labeled “drink me” and devours an unfamiliar cake titled “eat me.”

To her credit, she checks the bottle to see if it is marked poison, “for she had read several nice little stories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts, and other unpleasant things. …” Carroll was mocking earlier Victorian books for children, which didactically instructed them to avoid injury and misfortune, to be proper and to become prosperous. On the graves of such grim plot lines, Carroll created a monument to sheer absurdity, uncommon sense and downright silliness.

Adrift in a dreamland, Alice ventures forth, mingling with its odd inhabitants: the White Rabbit, the Caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat, the Queen of Hearts. She meets their madness with reason and their incivility with toughness. To the caterpillar’s befogged, pedantic demand, “Who are you?” she replies, “I think you ought to tell me who you are, first.” In Carroll’s story, this behavior is not answering back; it is standing up for oneself.

Alice speaks truth to power. When the Queen of Hearts chides her to hold her tongue, she refuses, pointing out the absurdity of a trial in which the sentence precedes the evidence. Alice’s thinking is not always crystalline: She can’t precisely perform math and remember geography. But her questions penetrate the morass of unthinking custom that the often pathetic creatures inhabit, such as the mad tea party. Alice’s bracing voice should inspire girls to speak their minds to make a difference.

Perhaps the largest life lesson Alice has to offer smart, ambitious girls is not to take themselves too seriously. She grows 9 feet tall, and shrinks to become smaller than a puppy. So much happens to her in one day that she forgets who she is. Yet this doesn’t deter her from engaging the strangeness around her. “How puzzling all these changes are! I’m never sure what I’m going to be, from one minute to another! However, I’ve got back to my right size: the next thing is, to get into that beautiful garden – how is that to be done, I wonder?”

The capacity to wonder makes Alice indestructible.

The fictional Alice holds far more interest than her inspiration, the real-life Alice Liddell. Readers wring their hands about Charles Dodgson, who wrote the story under the pen name Lewis Carroll, and his relationship with his young protégé.

He photographed her in questionable poses. Her family suddenly broke off contact with him. Did he make advances on her? Propose marriage? Scholars have strained the evidence repeatedly without finding a conclusion, so we will probably never know. But Victorian sexual standards differed from ours. The age of consent for girls was raised in 1865 – from 12 to 13. Why does our culture wish to cast Alice Liddell as Dodgson’s victim? Must the story of a fearless girl adventurer be haunted by a tale of violation?

Perhaps the pedophilic narrative about Dodgson expresses parental fears about the welfare of our daughters, granddaughters, nieces and other young female relatives. But constantly imagining a predatory world in which girls are always available for victimization also helps bring about that reality. Wonderland is an upside-down world in which nonsense reigns. Is that the only context that supports a fearless girl protagonist?

I don’t recommend turning a blind eye to the real and horrible ways in which girls are routinely deprived, violated and immiserated throughout the world. But within popular culture and our own families, we can do a better job of imagining girlhood.

When girls are hemmed in by overprotective adults, they take fewer chances. When they are encouraged to be fearful, they never acquire the strength to stand and be counted. Perhaps that’s why “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” still enchants us as an ideal. On its anniversary, we can best celebrate Carroll’s story by using it to teach and delight our girls.

Let’s follow its example, to reimagine the real world as one in which they thrive.

Susan Zieger is an associate professor of English at UC Riverside who specializes in 19th century British and related literatures.

Return to lender? Borrowed books don’t always have to end up with original owner by Cati Porter

Twenty-five years ago, I borrowed Milan Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” from a boyfriend, along with a couple of books by Jack Kerouac and a college lit anthology.

I read them all. At some point, we broke up, quietly disappearing from one another’s lives, never to speak again.

I never returned those books.

Later, from a high school friend that I’d reconnected with after moving back home, I borrowed two short story collections by Woody Allen, a memoir of a young Chinese woman, and probably others that I’ve just assimilated because, as you might have guessed, I never returned those either.

Maybe it’s just me, but there is something about borrowing books from a friend that makes me feel that I can be leisurely about returning them. My friends don’t charge me late fines, and there is no revoking of my library card if I fail to return them on time.

Of course I should have returned them, but all these years later, I only half-regret that. I didn’t borrow them with the intention of keeping them, but time passes and people move on, and sometimes only the books remain.

Among my books, I still have a couple of high school textbooks: another literature anthology – which, incidentally, contains a poem by someone I have in later years gotten to know and work with as a mentor – and also a book on Greek myths, both lost in the mess beneath my bed until it was too late to return them with dignity, fines paid, the books long replaced.

Among my recently borrowed books, I currently have a collection of poetry by Tristan Tzara, two short story collections, a novel, and CDs of Dylan Thomas reading his poetry.

Yes, I intend to give those back. But for all the books I’ve borrowed and kept, I have loaned out three times as many, many of which are either still out, some never to be returned.

Books are meant to be shared. I have never been stingy about loaning my books, even prized volumes that are personally inscribed. I am a collector, but I am not a hoarder, and I would rather a book keep making the rounds than sit on my dusty shelf.

A friend stopped by my house this week in need of poetry. He is a voracious reader and recently consumed a 900-page biography of Darwin after recommending to my husband a multivolume biography of Lyndon Johnson, which we promptly ordered.

In addition to borrowing books, I believe in buying books and supporting our local booksellers, like Cellar Door Books, Renaissance Books, Downtowne Books and the Mission Inn Museum store.

I like real books with tangible pages that can tear, dog ear, wrinkle, stain. New or used, purchased, found, loaned or given. I am not one to turn pages gently in the upper right corner, never breaking the spine.

I open my books flat, I write in them – even borrowed books, though those I only write in lightly with pencil – and I fold corners and improvise bookmarks, cram them in my purse to be jammed up against a fat wallet, multiple pens, vials of pills. I am rough with my books. I like them lived in. A pristine book is an unloved book. I love my books, sometimes to death.

One of my favorites activities is looking through friends’ bookshelves, always attuned to the evidence of lives lived in the company of books: smears of chocolate, coffee, ketchup, grease; notes in the margin, or scrawled across the page, covers detached and taped back on.

I prefer to acquire used books over buying new for that reason; the cost savings is just a bonus. I love knowing that the book had a secret life before it came into my own – that somebody loved it, then set it free. But nothing beats a free book, a book freely given or loaned. Loaning a book to someone is like belonging to an exclusive club, one where to become a member requires trust, faith, and a willingness to let things go.

That is one reason I love the new Little Free Library trend. We trust, lend and sometimes let it go. To find one near you, all you need to do is visit littlefreelibrary.org and click on the “map” tab, then select “near me.”

According to this map, there are nine near me, including at a favorite sandwich shop, The Back Street, and up on Box Springs Mountain near the big C. There is also one in front of the Women’s Club on Brockton, and another at a private residence on Falkirk and one at a private residence on Victoria Avenue at Madison.

No, you can’t reserve a book. No, there isn’t a huge selection. But the fact that so many people value books in this way is heartening and I am reminded of all that communities do for each other. This is just one way for neighbors and strangers to connect, even if they never in fact meet. Books shared are the best kind of books around.

That Milan Kundera book? Loaned to another friend, mom to one of my oldest son’s elementary school classmates. I haven’t spoken to her in years. It is doubtful that I will ever get it back.

And that’s just the way it ought to be.

Remembering the Quiet Man by Carlos E. Cortés

Sometimes writers just have to write. Hm, that’s the same line I used to begin my previous column about how I was driven to write about the death of our beloved kitty, Tigger. But that time the “have to” was propelled internally. This time the impetus came from the outside.

This “have to” began a few weeks ago with a phone call from my wife’s sister, Joy. Her husband, Bill, had just died after years of declining health. A proud 85-year-old retired lieutenant colonel, Bill wanted a formal Marine burial in Miramar National Cemetery in San Diego.

As Joy explained to me by telephone, the cemetery allotted a strict thirty minutes for such events: a ten-minute Marine ceremony; ten minutes for the family; and ten minutes for the burial itself. Then came Joy’s request: would I be willing to present a ten-minute eulogy about Bill as part of the ceremony? Of course, I answered. This was one of those “have to” moments, one that created a formidable writer’s challenge.

I’d never given a funeral eulogy. Plenty of talks at celebrations of life, but never at a funeral. In fact, I had never even attended a military funeral. As I thought about my eulogy, the word, “appropriate,” hung threateningly over my head.

I also was never a Marine. Just two years doing public relations as a member of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, where my major assignment was writing press releases for social events of the Officers’ Wives Club.

On top of that, I didn’t know Bill all that well. I saw him occasionally, mainly at large gatherings of the Vermilyeas, my wife Laurel’s casual, sprawling (eight siblings), outgoing family. During those boisterous Vermilyea events, Bill, a friendly but innately reserved man, tended to share little about himself. Over the course of forty years, he and I probably hadn’t spent 60 minutes total in one-on-one conversation. As I thought about my challenge, those ten minutes kept getting longer and longer.

Fortunately, in his last years Bill had written down a few of his memories of growing up in Mariposa, California. That was a start.

Then there was his family. Besides Joy, Bill had five daughters, now spread from Nebraska to New Zealand. So I wrote to his daughters, asking if they would briefly share with me some stories about their dad. Three responded with charming reminiscences. Now, how to put it all together?

Compared to most creative writing endeavors, preparing an imminent funeral eulogy is truly high pressure. There is no waiting until you’re in the mood, no gracious time to let your ideas gestate, no ruminating about who might read it, no opportunity for second chances. With a funeral eulogy, you’ve got one shot at it. Opening night is also closing night.

And you know your audience. In this case, there were six people I wanted to please: Joy and Bill’s five daughters at a time of supreme loss. Anyone else was a bonus.

My writing predisposition is to choose a single image and then build a story around that. So I began the eulogy with an image: “When I think of Bill Stewart, I remember him as The Quiet Man.” From there I constructed a narrative about Bill, integrating some of his own written childhood reminiscences as well as stories from his daughters.

How I labored over those six pages! Draft after draft. Laurel remarked that she had never seen me work so hard on a piece of writing.

The ceremony began with the Marines conducting a profoundly moving American flag ceremony in front of Bill’s ashes and firing 21 shots in honor of their deceased comrade. When I got up to speak, I felt as much pressure as I ever have in my long public lecturing career.

I think the eulogy went well. Joy and one daughter hugged me. Two others sent me very nice thank you letters. Maybe best of all, my sense is that The Quiet Man would have been happy, too.

Carlos E. Cortés is professor emeritus of history at UC Riverside and author of a memoir, “Rose Hill: An Intermarriage before Its Time.”

Gratefully Yours: Remembering the Veterans in My Family by Joan Koerper

I was told he never heard it coming. The bomb careening through the sky over the fields of France, the morning of September 18, 1944 killing William Edward Asman. The man we all affectionately called Big Eddie was Hollywood-handsome, tall, slim, and graceful with a smile that lit up a room. He courted my mother for four years, saving every penny to buy them a home. He would not ask for her hand in marriage until he could carry her over the threshold. They married August 23, 1941. Big Eddie knew his son, Edward Gordon Asman, my half-brother, only fourteen months before he was shipped overseas.

Big Eddie’s photo stood as one of three men in uniform on his mother’s side table. Granny Jenny Bell Asman’s other two sons made it home.

The story that Big Eddie never knew what hit him, and that it was a direct hit, made it palatable to my young ears as Mother and I shared his photos and letters, not yet curled up at the edges, and her stories. The knock on the door. The telegram. How I cried for their loss.

My father, William George Koerper, also served in WWII. A child prodigy and educated performance musician, he was with the USO providing desperately needed R&R, and entertainment, for the troops.

Many men and women in my family have served in the military. More than I can recount here. Their stories came alive in songs, over card tables, in whispers, and flamboyant parties.

We never glorified war, pain, or suffering. Rather, we honored duty and sacrifice.

My father and his siblings vividly remembered the photo of their maternal grandfather, Michael McLaughlin, hanging on the wall of the family home. In it, he stands in a garden, U.S. flag flying behind him, holding the rifle he carried, and decorated with the medals he earned in 1865, fighting in the Illinois Cavalry during the Civil War. He received land in return for his service, and later returned to County Kerry, Ireland, to rest in peace.

Full size portraits of my mother’s only sibling, Gordon Burrell, and his wife, Mary Patricia, a WW II WAC, both in Navy dress uniforms, proudly hung over their living room sofa. They hold the same place of honor today in their daughter’s living room. Their only son, Thomas Burrell, a genius eligible for Mensa, was drafted during the Vietnam War. He returned so emotionally and physically crippled he was lucky to make a living driving a taxi until he succumbed to throat cancer in his forties.

In my brother’s home two photos sit on a marble topped table in the living room. One proudly displays my brother in his Army uniform. Beside it, Big Eddie’s grandson, Navy Captain Leo Edward Asman, an Annapolis graduate and pilot, is pictured beside his grandfather’s grave in France, sixty years later. The honoring continues.

As I grew up I learned, of course, that Big Eddie heard the bomb that killed him. And his death was probably not instantaneous. I’m deeply grateful to my parents and elders for making his story one of swift heroism to my then-innocent ears rather than the terror it really was. Truth is unveiled soon enough.

I still cry for all that was lost, and those memories of all who served silently carried with them.

Blessings and gratitude to you all.

Veterans Day, 2015

A Thinning Veil by Andrea Fingerson

Still Hungry for More Thrills & Chills?

We will continue to run a new story each day this week. These stories were written at an Inlandia workshop for those wanting to write for Ghost Walk.

***

Cast of Characters: Male Narrator, Female Bystander, Isadora, and Fred.

When the scene opens, a man and a woman are arguing with each other upstage. Downstage the Narrator (an elderly male) is preparing to introduce the scene when he begins talking to a bystander (female) hidden in the audience.

Narrator: Welcome. Welcome. Please, gather around. Come closer. But not too close, of course. We are surrounded by visitors tonight.

Bystander: Visitors?

Narrator: Yes, of course child. It’s almost Halloween. The veil between our world and the next has been stretched thin. Look, the ghosts are beginning to bleed through.

Bystander: What are you talking about? I don’t see any ghosts.

Narrator: Oh, you will. Take those two, for instance.

Bystander: The couple in the corner?

Narrator: That is Fred and Isadora. Poor souls. They’ve been stuck here for at least half a century.

Bystander: What are they fighting about?

Narrator: Who knows. It’s always something with those two. Let’s listen in. But remember, don’t get too close.

Bystander: Why?

Narrator: Trust me. It’s for you own good.

Fred: I still can’t believe you killed me.

Isadora: It’s no more than you deserved. Or have you forgotten about shooting me on the steps of the courthouse?

Fred: You were trying to take our daughter away from me.

Isadora: For good reason.

Fred: Things were perfect until you filed for divorce.

Isadora: Sixteen trips to the emergency room is not what I would call perfect.

Fred: Why, I ought to.. (he tries to hit her, but misses; they’re both ghosts, but they can’t touch each other)

Isadora: I’m not afraid of you anymore, Fred. You can’t hurt me.

Fred: You never used to be so flippant.

Isadora: Now all you can do is annoy me.

Fred: It’s the only way to have fun in this place.

Isadora: It’s called limbo.

Fred: Who cares what it’s called. I just want to know how to escape.

Isadora: You’re not the only one.

Fred: Oh, I’d give anything to be able to touch something again. Anything. Even you.

Isadora: You’d probably just hit me.

Fred: And this is my punishment? An eternity stuck with you?

Isadora: You deserve a torturous afterlife. I, on the other hand-

Fred: (interrupting) Killed me, remember?

Isadora: Not quickly enough. I should have started dosing you with arsenic the first time you hit me.

Fred: You were so timid. That’s what I liked about you. You never hurt a fly, until you went and killed me.

Isadora: Best decision I ever made.

Fred: I would never have hurt our daughter. I loved her.

Isadora: And how was I supposed to know that? You took your frustration out on me enough times.

Fred: God. What I wouldn’t give to have another chance at life.

Isadora: That’s probably the one thing we agree on.

Fred: What would you do differently? If you had the chance?

Isadora: I wouldn’t be so timid, that’s for sure.

Fred: But it was your best quality.

Isadora: You mean my worst. No, if there’s one thing I’ve learned being stuck with you all these years, it’s to take what I want.

Fred: So I did make an impression on you.

Isadora: Don’t flatter yourself.

Fred: I won’t. I’ve learned a little humility being stuck with you all these years. (quieter) Wish I would’ve learned it sooner.

Isadora: What was that?

Fred: I said I wish I would’ve learned it sooner. Ok?

Isadora: Oh, Fred. You mean I’ve made an impression on you too?

Fred: I suppose so. Despite myself.

Isadora: At least that’s something.

Fred: And I intend to do something about it.

Isadora: What are you talking about, Fred?

Fred starts looking around at the crowd. He begins to examine them carefully. Isadora is following behind him, asking him what he’s doing)

Narrator: (backing up) Oh no. We’ve gotta get out of here.

Bystander: What are you talking about?

Narrator: We need to leave. Now.

Fred: (stops in front of the bystander) Oh yes, you’ll do nicely.

Narrator: I’ve heard about this. (he starts to push the bystander away) You’ve gotta get out of here.

Before the bystander can leave, Fred pushes Isadora into her. After this, the actress who plays Isadora should stand one to two feet behind the bystander and mimic the bystander’s words and movement.

Bystander: Fred. Fred. Where are you? What’s happening?

Fred: Coming dear.

Fred faces the narrator, staring at him.

Narrator: Oh no you don’t.

The narrator turns to run, but Fred grabs his arm and pushes himself up against him. After this, the actor who plays Fred stands one to two feet behind the narrator and mimics the narrator’s words and movement.

While this is happening, Isadora and the bystander are freaking out and calling for Fred. They don’t know yet that they can be seen by everyone else.

Narrator: Wow. That felt weird. (he turns to the bystander) Are you in there Isadora? Did it work?

Bystander: Wait. Can you see me?

Narrator: Of course I can, Isadora.

Bystander: (looks closely at the narrator) Fred? Is that you?

Narrator: (proudly) It is.

Bystander: What happened? Where are we?

Narrator: This my dear, is our second chance. I suggest we make the best of it.

The entire cast walks out, arm in arm. The actress playing Isadora and Fred should follow behind the narrator and the bystander.

Spooky Story in Three Parts by Christina Guillen

Still Hungry for More Thrills & Chills?

We will continue to run a new story each day this week. These stories were written at an Inlandia workshop for those wanting to write for Ghost Walk.

***

Part I—Ghost in the Dark

ANY RIVERSIDE BUILDING 1935

(Phone rings in office. Secretary smiles and laughs, passes phone to Building Owner.)

Owner smiles: “A boy! No kidding…Wonderful! Be right there!”

Owner (To the cleaning woman.): “Go on home, I’m a granddaddy!”

Owner (To the carpenter.): “Go home, I’m a granddaddy!”

Owner (To the secretaries.): “Go on home, I’m a granddaddy!”

(Staff leaves. Owner locks door and kicks heels.)

(Dim lights, late afternoon.)

(Electrician with bag of tools knocks on the front door, Ghost Woman, long black hair, answers.)

Electrician: “Afternoon ma’am, here to look at the ‘ol hot box. Can you show me the electrical room?”

(Ghost Woman leads him to a door to a tiny room and right away he finds the boxes.)

Electrician: “Thank you.”

Ghost woman: “Uweka.”

Electrician: “Uweka, ma’am? I’ll have the job done faster than you can blink!”

(Electrician sets bag of tools on floor and gets to work.)

Electrician (Scratches head.): “Let’s see…”

(Electrician sighs and peeks behind him. Ghost woman waits and watches. Electrician shocks himself.)

Electrician: “Ouch! Diggity-diggity! Excuse my language, I don’t mean to be crude before a lady. Having a bit ‘o trouble here.”

Ghost woman (Glaring.): “Uweka.”

Electrician (Scratches head.): “Ha? Doing everything I can…”

(Ghost woman stares.)

(Lights buzz, brighten. Electrician smiles.)

Electrician: “All set ma’am, thank you for waiting. I’ll be going now.”

(Ghost Woman leads him back the way he came and he leaves.)

OWNER’S HOUSE

(Owner and his Wife in living room.)

Owner: “I just remembered! I forgot to call the electrician yesterday and tell him not to come. I better call and apologize.”

Wife: “Yes, you’d better.”

(Owner dials, phone rings.)

Electrician: “Hello?”

Owner: “Yes, this is the owner of the ____________ building downtown.”

Electrician: “Good morning, how do you do sir? Everything went fine yesterday. Your lovely secretary let me in and helped me find the electric boxes.”

Owner: “Are you sure? I was just calling to apologize for not notifying you. I forgot to tell you everyone went home early. There shouldn’t have been anybody at all to let you in. I personally gave everyone permission to leave and locked the door myself.”

Electrician (Big eyes.): “Uweka! Uweka!”

Owner (Looks at phone.): “So sorry, I’m, I don’t understand…”

(Electrician hangs up. Dial tone sounds.)

Owner: “Hello, hello? Hello…”

(Wife looks at owner.)

(Lights flicker.)

Part II—Spider Who Keeps Watch

GAS STATION 2015

(Axel swats a spider.)

Gonzo: “I wouldn’t kill spiders on Halloween.”

Axel: “Gonz, you’re takin’ this Halloween stuff too far—”

Customer (Out of breath.): “Pump #4 is completely covered in spiders!”

Gonzo: “Sorry ma’am, just pull up to Pump #3.”

Customer: “No way!”

(Customer drives off.)

Axel: “I saw a can of kill spray somewhere…”

(Gonzo shakes his head.)

Axel (Sprays can.): “What?”

Axel: “You see, nothing happened.”

Gonzo: “Bravo Ax. Let’s clean up ‘n get outta here…”

Axel: “What’s up with you? C’mon let’s hear it.”

Gonzo: “How ‘bout this, you mop, I tell.”

Axel: “Ok, ok…better be good.”

Gonzo (Cleans counter.): “My great-grandfather was Native American. His name was Spider, known as

“Spider Who Keeps Watch” after it happened.

(Axel looks at Gonzo.)

Gonzo: “It was Halloween night.”

Gonzo: “Spider and his friend snuck out their boarding school. They ran far away so nobody would tell them not to speak their Native Paiute (pie-oot) language or tell them to go back to bed. They went to Mt. Rubidoux. Now, Spider really wanted to impress the girl so he told her something in Paiute.”

FLASHBACK MT. RUBIDOUX 1930, act out or tell by Gonzo.

(Spider, short hair, and Woman (same as Ghost Woman) long black hair.)

Gonzo or Spider: “Last week I ditched school, found a door…”

Gonzo or Woman: “What’s inside?”

(A customer screams at gas pump.)

(Gonzo and Axel run outside.)

Axel: “Holy moly bro, check out this black fog!”

Gonzo (Sarcastic.): “Fantastic.”

Customer: “Help! Dead something at pump #2.”

Axel clears throat: “Ma’am…it’s nothing but a bag of smelly sandwich.”

Axel: Full of spiders!

(Axel swats.)

(Customer screams, drives away.)

(Axel kicks bag away. Axel, Gonzo go back inside.)

Gonzo: “Now where was I…So Spider and his girl dug out rocks and wild plants and found a slab of wood (scraping sounds). They ripped off the wood and found a chain (chain sounds). The chain led to a door in the mountain. They put their ears to the door and listened. Nothing.”

(“Ding-dong” gas station door, customer leaving. Gonzo rolls his eyes. Axel laughs.)

Gonzo: “Anyway, they smashed a rock to open the lock and the door opened. Out came black fog and a sound that squeaked and cried the most horrifying sounds, worse than the screech of an animal that knows it’s gonna die. It smelled like wine. It opened to the tunnels under these buildings—”

Axel (Looks under his feet.): “Tunnels?”

Gonzo: “Yep. Then a fuzzy arm, part man, part beast, pulled his friend inside. On instinct, Spider spoke Paiute, “Uweka,” which means, “Go to sleep.” Good thing ‘cause the thing spit his girl back out, but not before taking her soul. Spider slammed the door snapping off the creature’s fuzzy arm.”

Axel’s (Jaw drops.): “Gonz…dude…”

Gonzo: “Yeah. Spider turned the creature’s leg into a staff and vowed to guard the opening. Thereafter he was known as “Spider Who Keeps Watch.””

Axel: “Dang, grotesque-ulous!”

(Gonzo nods.)

Axel: “Ok soooo…that explains why I can’t kill spiders because…”

Gonzo: “Oh it doesn’t, I’m just superstitious.”

(Big fake fuzzy spiders on strings lower from ceiling bouncing up and down, piñata style, tickling people’s heads. Fog.)

Part III—Beast Unleashed

LIVING ROOM 2015

(Two teens surrounded by piles of books and magazines.)

Henry (Opens book.): “Alright, a hundred dollars!”

Aunt Selena (Cleaning gear.): “Goes in the jar!”

Henry: “We know Aunt Selena.”

(Aunt Selena walks away.)

Becky: “Grandpa loved creepy stories.”

Henry (Shakes another book, money falls out. Puts in jar.): “He did, look, beasts and banshees…psychic mind powers…”

Henry: “Ghosts and auras…”

Henry: “All this time I saw grandpa reading, I never knew what.”

Henry: “Look! Another hundred bucks!”

Aunt Julia (Cleaning gear.): “You know, maybe we can use a little to buy your Halloween costumes…You are trick-or-treating tonight right?”

Becky: “Really mom? We’re fifteen and sixteen years old.”

Aunt Julia (Aunt Julia shrugs, walks away.): “Okay, okay. Excuse me, adults.”

Becky (Shakes head.): “Man! All I’m finding are cutout articles. Laaame.”

Henry: “Where? Let me see.”

(Becky shows pile of articles.)

Henry: “Wow you found a lot!”

Becky (Reading.): “Paranormal Catacomb Catastrophe,” “Spiderman Leaves Mt. Rubidoux,” “Electrician’s Ghost Woman.”

Henry: “What! Electrician? That’s grandpa!”

Becky: “Right? Look his photo!”

Henry, Becky (Reading.): “…electrician was on a job to repair the facility’s light fixtures…”

Becky: “Incredible grandpa…”

Henry (Murmuring reading.): “It says he saw a ghost. She spoke to him…”

Becky: “She? What did Miss Ghostie say?”

Henry: “Doesn’t say.”

Becky: “Oh. Woah! A journal!”

Henry: “Is there a date matching this article?”

Becky: “OMG, yes! Right here…“I encountered a ghost woman with long hair. She said, “Akewu.”””

Henry: “What’s that ‘sposed to mean?”

Becky (Shrugs.): “Do you think grandpa was trying to solve something?”

Henry: “Think so…look, a drawing.”

Becky (Whispers.): “…A map.”

Henry: “Know it?”

Becky (Excited whisper.): “It’s close, we can walk.”

(Becky, Henry smile.)

RUBIDOUX

(Becky, Henry find the spot, dig, hit a chain. They pull chain and find a door in the mountain. They scrape away dirt and find a locked handle. They raise hammer to knock it open.)

(Spider, a Native American man with a fuzzy staff appears.)

Spider: “Spider Who Keeps Watch warns you of this place.”

Henry: “We aren’t doing anything wrong. We just want to help our grandfather.”

Spider: “Your grandfather wouldn’t like you to be here. Not safe.”

Becky: “He left clues, I’m sure he wants us to figure his mystery out.”

Spider: “Many have died. Great danger. Leave now.”

Henry: “But, we have to help him solve his mystery.”

Spider: “I have warned you three times.”

(Spider disappears.)

(Becky, Henry smash the lock with hammer.)

Becky: “Smell the wine?”

Henry (Nods.): “Like the journal says…And it says to say the ghost woman’s word: Akewu.”

(A foul sounding rustle and screech emits.)

(A long fuzzy man/beast arm protrudes. Black fog emits.)

Becky: “I don’t like this. Quick say the word again!”

Henry: “Akewu!”

(A man deformed with many grotesque spider features creeps out around audience.)

Henry: “Akewu! Akewu!”

Becky (Takes off shoe.): “EeeEeee! There’re spiders crawling in my shoes!”

(Ghost woman with long hair walks out around audience.)

(Spider Who Keeps Watch appears.)

Spider: “The word is Uweka. You say it backwards.”

Becky (Looks at Henry.): “Why would grandpa write it backwards?”

Spider: “Perhaps he was protecting what he did not understand.”

Henry: “What’s “Uweka”?”

Spider: ““Uweka” means “Go to sleep.””

Becky: “And Akewu?”

Spider: ““Akewu” means “Wake up.””

(Becky and Henry look at each other.)

(More Ghouls escape through door, circle audience.)

(Sound of spiders scurrying. Throw fake spiders. Fog fills room.)