Big Tent Wordle

GOD'S PURSE

Look in God's purse
for hidden candies.
This is no delicate Evening bag.
She carries something simple, black,
crumpled. She will open it for you.
You may peek inside
where there are hidden treasures: zippers
and mysterious pockets. It's lining is
a caparison, a wild extravagance
across the back of an Indian Elephant
on the back of a mouse.
Ganash, on a lotus flower,
candies falling from his trunk into your hands--
a tincture of prod and noose.

Suspend your disbelief.
Feel the patterned lining of the purse
with your fingers for proof.
Fondle the straps
that lock the moon in its place
inside the black bag.
Capitulate to the futile terror of Her fecund
nursery of stars across the high,
steep walls that rise up
toward the clasp.

This is God's purse. Sapient, She will
soon fasten the zippers without a glitch,
doff the splendor, and open
a small tin of lemon drops
for our pleasure,
assessing Her role as Mother,
soothing us with linty candies from Her
simple handbag, wearing Her simple
hairnet, fooling us
with Her simple shoes.


(There. I think I used every one: purse, crumpled, caparison, tincture, pattern, proof, capitulate, futile, fondle, sapient, glitch, and doff. Did I miss any?)

Words for a Fairy Godmother

Listen, I have a confession:
my words think they are
the only beautiful things I have.
They are my lapis lazuli eyes,
my teeth-pearls,
my French damask tongue,
my Speed-E-Namel diamond nails,
my October-opal nipples,
my jade-green navel.
My husband cannot eat them.
My lover's deaf.
Listen, I have sinned.
For penance what shall I do
to bring money home
for milk and bread?
I have a confession: There are worms
in my dreams.
My words are all pigs-in-a-poke
believing that they're treasures.

Must I recant?



(Big Tent Poetry prompt #2 Words)

The Official Tattooed Lady

I thought it would hurt more
this needling and inking of pictures
coming to life on my skin

this black and blue here
across my heart
looks like an eye

could have been anything maybe
a bullseye for any sighting weapon
ah, hell, didn't I ask for this

sign up for it
didn't I pay
this here across my back

these flowers and snakes
look real, don't they
blood coils and green coils

if you look close you can see
something caught and dying
on those thorns, those fangs

that bifurcated tongue
this is how I make my living, see
I show the world what eats me alive

the little acorns and dollar signs
at the small of my back
they're for love and luck

and the little ladybug here
on my lip
they haven't worked yet

but who knows
why did I do it you ask
I want people to see

what I look like.


(This is what the world's most tattooed lady said when asked why she did it.}

Carter Family one of Wealthiest in Colonial America

By HENRY BURKE
eagleman@theriver.com



Perhaps there never was an official royal class in North America, but the Carter Family who had huge land holdings in Tide Water Virginia were very close. The fortunes of the Carters in England began when William, Duke of Normandy crossed the English Channel in 1066 to fight for the crown of England. Naturally William brought his most loyal Norman knights with him, and among them was a clan of knights known as Cartiers.

According to the Tapestry, which recorded the Battle of Hastings, William found himself in danger of being surrounded and overwhelmed by English soldiers. The Cartiers rushed to defend their Duke, and saved his life. With out their action, William would surely have been killed, so when he won the battle and became King of England, the Conquer showed his gratitude by giving large estates and other privileges in England and Ireland to the Cartier Knights. The Cartiers became part of the privileged class of England.

The Cartiers were progressive and after a few generations many of the Cartier descendants became wealthy manor owners and businessmen. By the time England founded Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, Cartier had been changed to Carter, and the Carters were among the most educated elite of their time. Around 1612, members of the Carter business cartel began looking at the potential of the emerging tobacco trade in Virginia.

John Carter was born in 1613 at Edmonton, Middlesex, England. He was sent to the Virginia Colony in 1635 and settled along Corotoman River, which flows into the Rappahanock River near Chesapeake bay in Lancaster County, Virginia where he founded 'Corotoman' Plantation. He managed to become a colonel in the militia, and was instrumental in driving out the remaining Indians from the region by 1640.

With the support of wealthy relatives and associates back in England, John Carter had the resources to outfit ships to go to Africa and bring back slaves. He soon discovered that Africans from the Ibo culture were excellent subsistence farmers in a semi-tropical environment, and he chose people from the Ibo culture to become slaves on Corotoman Plantation.

While he eventually had children by his five successive wives, it was his son Robert "King" Carter (1663-1736), by his second wife Sarah Ludlow, whose descendants are associated with the history of the Burke family of Washington County, Ohio.

Carter died 10 June 1669 at Corotoman Plantation, and is buried in Christ Church Cemetery, Lancaster County, Virginia. The descendants of the Ibo people, enslaved and brought to 'Corotoman' Plantation by John Carter were the slaves for future generations of John Carter's descendants.

Robert "King" Carter was born at 'Corotoman' Plantation. The name "King" was not used in jest. By 1700 Robert "King” Carter was the richest man in the English Colonies of North America. In other words “King” Carter was America’s first millionaire! He owned nearly 300,000 acres scattered across the Northern neck of Virginia and he had about 1500 African people enslaved on his many tobacco plantations which were managed by resident managers.

Not only did “King” Carter cultivate tobacco, he owned warehouses where he stored tobacco purchased from other planters, and he owned ships which carried the product to Europe where other Carter family members operated businesses linked to the tobacco trade. His ships were also stocked with trading goods, and sailed down to Africa, where the goods were traded for African captives, who in turn were brought back to Virginia as slaves.

Robert “King” Carter had a son he named Robert Carter Jr., born in 1704. Robert Jr. died in 1732, leaving a son named Robert Carter III, who was born in 1728. “King” Carter raised his grandson Robert Carter III, who became a wealthy planter in his own right, known as Robert Carter III of Nomini Hall Plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia. In 1791, Robert Carter III emancipated 500 slaves, including the ancestors of the Burkes of Washington County, Ohio!

Henry Burke is an historian specializing in Afro-American history and the Underground Railroad.



(** Just storing this here until I can figure out how to put it somewhere else....)

Pam Antonivich 1942 -- 2010

"My heart is heavy as I mourn the loss of a dear friend Pam aka Batman, from ALS. She was an amazing artist and friend who never gave up. I love you Pam, fly with the angels." -- Tammy Brierly (Warrior Woman aka Robin)


Me, too.
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Smoke from the Central Fire

Early this afternoon I was saddened to hear of the death of Wilma Pearl Mankiller, former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation.

In her book "Everyday is a Good Day," Wilma wrote of attending a "Stomp Dance."

"In the past there was a ceremony in which the medicine man prepared a central fire" around which the people danced all night. "In the morning, every person in the village took a new fire home from this specially prepared central fire. Putting out home fires, then relighting them from the central fire was an important symbol of community and shared relationships." She spoke then of the people "attending Sunday morning church services smelling of smoke from the central fire."

Wouldn't it be a great thing if we all, regardless of our various faiths and genealogies took home a new fire and came away smelling of smoke from the central fire?

(Photo by Yodit Gidey/Durango Herald)
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Illusions of Arrogance

My old friend Jerry Johnston writes wonderful columns for the Deseret News. Not long ago he wrote one that I especially liked (Saturday, March 27, 2010) and thought I would share. He titled it "Nothing on Earth is under our control," and began by relating how TIME in Yuba City, Arizona, is reckoned. Half the city is on the Navajo reservation. The other is on the Hopi reservation. Because one half subscribes to Daylight Savings Time and the other doesn't, you can time travel from one side of the street to the other. "And here," Jerry writes, "is the funny part. Nobody seems to mind."

Most Native Americans "don't put much stock in man-made constraints -- things like minutes and seconds, private property, mineral rights, and air space. Jerry says these things were invented by haughty human beings to give them an illusion of control.

"They're fantasies," he writes. "And the idea that people can actually own a piece of the earth -- all the way to the center of the planet" is only a little less silly than thinking "you own the air above your property. It's like claiming to own the sun itself, or the breeze in the sycamore trees or the sound of wild foxes as they bark on the hills...I've heard white Americans complain that Native Americans don't show more pride of ownership.

But I have seen puzzled looks on their faces when a town nails a city limits sign on the top of a mountain -- miles away from the community -- because the city fathers want to control all the zoning. And I've seen them listen extra carefully, trying to understand why farmers and industrialists say they own so many cubic feet of a river.

We'd "go nuts," he says, "living in Tuba City. We'd want to beautify the place, when the truth is the desert landscape is about as beautiful as it gets. We'd want to make the place more efficient. We'd want to know exactly what time it was, every second of every day in every part of town. We'd want to feel we were in control of our environment.

The truth is, nothing is under our control. We are at the mercy of the elements and the Creator every moment of every day. Control is an illusion. It's a delusion of arrogance -- like thinking we actually own the air above the swaths of Earth we think we can buy."

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Tales Well Worth Telling

Undoubtedly, there will always be storytellers in our midst with tales well worth telling.

Art by Deviant Art
Storyteller by ~sw33tdreamm
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MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU

THE FORCE

"The force that through the green fuse drives the flower...
--Dylan Thomas


This is how the story goes:


There is a light that only leaves can see,
green cells whose sugar-yellow receptors, like retinas
down the length of their veins, recognize day breaking.

The light is sovereign
as the Father's rituals, as the Son's relics.
The field is white with flowers:
the force is in the flower, and in the field, and in the rain.
The Holy Spirit is light disguised as water.
Will you recognize the glory as it falls before your face,
and on your right hand, and on your left?
Cleanse your feet with water, pure water.

O, sister, lets go down, come on, brother, come on down
O sinner lets go down, Good Lord show me the way

Kick off your shoes! For as long as there is light,
the light becomes a cool river in the heat of day;
fill your arms, fill your skirts with flowers growing down
to the water's edge. We are saved

for such a time as this! For verily, thus saith.



(Down To The River To Pray, Robert Allen Zipkin & Douglas Metgar)
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RWP Volta

Volta

Sixty miles per hour
along the Pacific Coast Highway
beside you, and you say, I wish
that you would lay your hand upon my thigh,
and so I do. The sea is gray with rain,
and no perceptible horizon reveals
saltwater to sky.

Now that I am old, ad patres, as it were,
and you are older still, I regret to say
that yours was not the first
my hand had touched.


(ad patres, Latin, to be dead, to be gathered to ones forefathers.) :)

RWP -- The Doppler Effect

The Doppler Effect


"Uber das farbige Licht der Doppelsterne"

("Concerning the colored light of double stars and other stars of the heavens.")
--Christian Doppler


Centered in the doorway, you stand where a window
Looks two ways: one way the hours swarm into blue,
Colliding like dominoes, piling up like old newspapers
On the porch. The other way the minutes retreat
Like beads on a broken string. Even the seconds
Are strangers speeding away, shifting toward red.

As you wait, entire universes are conceived and destroyed.
There, on the blue side, your mother's body
Has swallowed a seed, and shaped you from air.
A girl with freckles on her lips.
There, on the red side, your eight grandchildren
Hustle toward a future you cannot begin to imagine.

And you. You touch with care wherever the pain is worst:
Your eyes, your neck, your heart. You notice only now
That the window has become a mirror, and the doorway
Is shelter. Shifting now into red,
Your mother walks up behind you, slips you a chocolate
As she passes by. Your grandchildren's soft,
Unfinished baby skeletons tumble faster and farther
Away. And this moment, the Present melting in your mouth,
Is all you need.


(art by H. Koppdelaney)

Cautionary Tales

I watched the season premier of V last night--I liked it. But I kinda thought I was being hit on from the Right side, because the script could have dripped directly from the pens of Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, and Rush Limbaugh. What with the Visitors from space sending out messages of Peace and Hope, and *gasp* Free Medical Care for everybody. "You mean, like, Universal Health Care?" shouts one of the actors.

And, yes, Virginia, the attractive, tall Visitors outwardly beautiful appearance belies the slimy lizards beneath their skins. It all kinda left me wondering if I had just been assaulted by a rather thinly-veiled Cautionary Tale directed at the Obama Administration.

Or am I just being paranoid in the aftermath of Republican victories in yesterday's elections? But I liked it. I'll watch it again.

AND. I am reading COSMIC CONVERSATIONS--Dialogues on the Nature of the Universe and the Search for Reality, by Stephan Martin,
featuring interviews with Brian Swimme, Fred Alan Wolf, and several others. The book begins, "On a clear night, step outside beneath the star-flecked sky and listen,"...and continues, "If you let the immensity of the silence speak to you, questions may spontaneously appear."

Well, yeah. Stephan Martin suggests:"What is the universe?" And I add "Where is the universe?" And, "Why?" To Where I would answer Everywhere and Nowhere. The Why seems easier, although there are so many answers offered by various philosophies and religions...the Hindu version probably comes closest to my Mormon Christianity, with its Tantric view of the universe as "thread, flow, and continuity," in that scripture tells me "worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose...The heavens, they are many, and they cannot be numbered unto man; but they are numbered unto me, for they are mine. And as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof, even so shall another come, and there is no end...."

Stephan Martin asks questions concerning our relationship to the universe, and concludes, "We are Universe!" He quotes Clifford Matthews, professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois, saying that we can sum up everything we've learned through science about the universe in, just four words: "We are recycled stardust," that every atom of us, and of everything we know and see around us was created in the exploding bodies of stars. "WE are deeply interconnected with everything." We are them. They are us.

Maybe when it come right down to it, we really all do see things basically the same--whether our culture tells us the universe rides on the back of a giant turtle or is a thing created of Mind. As to what happened before, or outside the event point we've all heard about--that mysterious spark that began space, time, life--it's speculation. I'm with Bernard Haisch, who says that "Aristotle was basically on the right track when he said we need a prime cause...we might call it God." Why not?

WHatever you call it, when it comes to contemplating life, space/time, and the universe, I like what Albert Einstein said: we have to believe that everything is a miracle, or that nothing is. "We are process, not reality," says anthropologist/archeologist/poet Loren Eiseley (whose books I adore).

"Like a wave continually cresting from its origin," says Barbara Marx Hubbard, in Cosmic Conversations, "the universe has been engaged in an uninterrupted process of change that has surged from its beginning through atoms, molecules, stars, planets, cells, and now lately, humans. Of course, evolution does not end with humans, starfish, pine trees, or any of the life that surrounds us,...accelerating...with changes taking place all around us every day. After all, we ourselves change many time throughout the course of a lifetime, if not each day. WHere is it all going? you may ask."

Then why, I ask, is it so blasphemous to believe the old Mormon proverb, "As man now is, God once was. And as God now is, man may become." (?)

Anyway, whatever your philosophic persuasions may be, Cosmic Conversations is as its back cover describes it, "an eloquent but tough-minded" journey through "searching and heartfelt questions put to many of the world's leading scientists and spiritual wisdom keepers." A good read!

Up next: John Muir's Nature Writings.

Photo: The Crab Nebula from Hubble. Click it!!!
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God

Pickles, Brian Crane

Happy Halloween!

TRICK or TREAT

Here, see how
the pumpkins are fat
and ready for the knife,
the apples ready for the teeth,
their white flesh,
their golden flesh sweet
and ready for the pans.

See how our grins
and our toothy smiles are
their mirror,
their candled, fire-lit eyes
alive for a night
then dark, like ours,
pans-empty, bellies-full
of sweets, wishes, hopes,
and lies.


Jacob is going to dress up as a mummy for Halloween. Simon will be the Incredible Hulk (again). Nelson, in the comic strip Pickles is going as God. I LOVE Pickles! This Halloween, maybe I will be Ms. God. What d'you think?
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Try to Remember....

Just saw a delightful version of The Fantasticks last night at the Ampitheater in Layton--a perfect night, cool and starry, with a huge orange half-moon. We tried to see this charming play years ago when we were in NYC, at its original home in the little off-broadway Sullivan Street theater, but it had closed. The show ran there for 42 years. Jerry Orbach (of Law & Order) played the first El Gallo. Now both he and the theater are gone. They have since torn the old building down, and put in a new GAP store (which closed 6 months later). I don't know what is there now.

Michael Ballam, whose classes at BYU Education Week I am devoted to, and attended all eight faithfully, two weeks ago, said when he last saw the old Sullivan Street Playhouse they were in the process of tearing it down. There were huge garbage dumpsters out in front and they were tossing stuff in. He asked if he could rummage through them, and found a tambourine, which he donated to the Utah Festival Opera. Apparently the Smithsonian has the magic trunk, and some other institution has the girl Luisa's little blue dress.... Things change. We live in a time where we are entertained most often by big-budget films with lots of loud special effects. A quiet little musical like Fantasticks is overwhelmed, is something of a dinosaur, I guess, with no special effects but a little colored confetti, a magic trunk, and a cardboard moon....

Anyway, I went home humming Try to remember a kind of September when grass was green, and grain was yellow....

I also spent a week in blooming California with my son Chris and his family. They flew to Salt Lake, and rented a van. It's a l-o-n-g drive through lots of desert. When we finally reached a WalMart in St. George, my six-year-old grandson Isaac said, "Oh, thank goodness, there are people here!"

Let me tell ya, there were people at Disneyland! -- Hindus, Bikers, Goths, white-bearded Sihks in turbans, Muslims, Lesbians, Jesus-people, people wearing ball caps and Mouse ears, saris, T-shirts that said Out of Order, Lucky, Dead Men Tell No Tales, USA, FBI, Dodgers, STeelers, Michael Jackson Forever, Beatles Forever, Grumpy, Ezekiel, Chocolate Rain, Kids for King Jesus, I Piss Excellence, Sugar Water Purple, Marge in Charge, and Murder the Government. I thought I saw Wanda Sykes coming back on the ferry from Tom Sawyer's Island, and Alec Baldwin in the Toy Story gift shop, Carrot Top in the parking lot, and Sonja Sotomayor, and Santa Claus...but maybe not. Isaac defeated Darth Vadar handily with his light saber at the Jedi School, and Keenan mistook me for the witch who gave Sleeping Beauty a poison apple....

Let me tell ya, I saw more cornrows, and dreds, and beads, and frozen lemonades, and baby strollers, and wheelchairs, and more Jazzi and Rascal electric mobility chairs than I could count. I lost my red hat in the Haunted Mansion, my son lost his sunglasses at the Pirates of the Carribean...people, people everywhere, looking for water, looking for shade, for ice cream, for a place to sit down for a while. We threw pennies and made wishes, watched absolutely fearless sparrows gobble up spilled popcorn, and generally had A GREAT TIME! Fantastick!

Wish you had been there! (Photos in my FaceBook)

New Book

Here's my newest little book of sf stories (3), available for friends and family at Lulu.com, if you're interested!

Morning Dove, The Stars as Sheep the Void as Grass, and Too loose Toulouse--written a while ago for Orson Scott Card's Science Fiction class!

CATCERTO!

http://www.catcerto.com/cat_video.htm

Go ahead, CLICK on it! This will make your day!

Having Pi Forever!

Kim Peek is one of us, almost, but not quite. Born in Utah 57 years ago, Kim was something of a celebrity in 1988, when the hit movie "Rainman" came out, starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman. Kim is what scientists call a mega-savant, remembering every word of the thousands and thousands of books he has read in the areas of literature, mathematics, history, geography, sports, and classical music.

Kim has not learned to button his coat, nor tie his shoes. He relies on his father to do these everyday things for him. Today,Kim is one of as few as 50 known savants in the whole world. According to the article written by Lois M. Collins in today's Deseret News, Kim and his father have a "symbotic" relationship. Kim says simply that he and his father "share the same shadow."

I've been reading "My Stroke of Insight," by Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD, who is a neuroanatomist affiliated with the Indiana School of Medicine. She studies brains, and how they work. The book's jacket describes it as "a fascinating journey into the mechanics of the human mind," of right-brain, left-brain functions, anatomical structure and cellular networks, the two hemispheres communicating with one another through "the highway for information transfer," the corpos callosum. When she suffered a massive stroke that bled profusely into her left-brain (the side that allows us to know where "we" end and "other" begins, the analytical side that controls language, and organization of things like numbers and letters, and speech, etc) she was left essentially with only her right-brain--that fluid, spiritual, euphoric, artistic, intuitive right-brain.

Apparently Kim Peeks brain lacks this "highway." the connective tissue that links the right and left hemispheres in your brain, and mine. It is entirely absent. When he readsa book, he reads the left page with his left eye, and the right page with his right eye, simultaneously. And he reads fast, and with total recall. He is a mathematical genius. He is a huge baseball fan. He loves music.

He is very literal, and, until recently, hasn't displayed much of a sense of humor. Now, reports the morning News, "A math genius asks him how far out he can calculate pi. He answers, "3.14159265, then dad takes me to Marie Callenders's and we have pi forever!"

Tribes

"...we have the whole tribe behind us and inside us, wherever we go."

A nice article by Orson Scott Card, about our tribal homeland, not our family home, but the homeland of our people. "These days," he says, "It isn't politically correct to talk about 'tribes.'--We're supposed to say 'ethnic groups.' But those are not exact synonyms. A tribe is considerably more than mere shared ethnicity....A tribe commands your loyalty. You look to the tribal homeland as the center."

On the 24th of July our tribe celebrates Pioneer Day with fireworks and parades and reunions and picnics. No matter where in the world your home is, if the tribal homeland is inside you, CELEBRATE!

ouroboros review

The third issue of ouroboros review is out today. It's available in both hard copy and online editions. It's full of great and wonderful stuff, not to mention that I have two poems in this issue. Have a look! Enjoy!