My performance of "The Dead: A Stream of Consciousness"

A performance of my original poem "The Dead: A Stream of Consciousness" was recorded on July 10, 2020, at the What Matters Now live, global, online event. You can watch it through this link.

The statement below is a transcript of my introduction to the poem (which you will also hear on the link):

I wish I could make words as instantaneously descriptive as images, which of course they can never be. But words are what I've got. I'm asking you to fill in the blanks.

"The Dead: A Stream of Consciousness" consists of words that I've been experimenting with during the ongoing protests against police brutality following the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police.

The words are inspired by the righteousness and manifold beauties of the protesters and by their courage, strong against the backdrops of a global pandemic and continuing state-sanctioned, state-sponsored violence against people of color.

I want to remember those who've died during this dark time, and those who live on, hoping and working and fighting for a future time of light.

I wish for us to be in solidarity and to share strength with one another.


Please check out the other amazing What Matters Now speakers/performers here. I wrote a short post about the program here.

What Matters Now

A couple of days ago I mentioned that I would be reading a poem as part of the What Matters Now online, global event.

UPDATE: It happened, and it was fantastic!

Not only did I have a blast sharing my poem, but every single talk and performance in the program—I think there were 18 five-minute presentations in all—was compelling and inspirational.

Topics ranged from innovative programs to keep library patrons engaged during COVID to native, perennial food production in the Sahel region of Niger; Wikipedia's response to COVID to decolonizing museums; fighting against disinformation in advance of the US's upcoming presidential election to uniting the divided island of Cyprus through music; and so much more.

You can watch the talks and performances here.

What Matters Now?

On July 10, 2020, between noon and 1 pm. EST, I will share my new poem "The Dead: A Stream of Consciousness" as part of  What Matters Now.

What Matters Now is a free, online, global event to address our options and obligations during the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing protests against systemic racism and police brutality.

All are welcome. I hope you can join us!

For more information, and to register, please follow this link.

Rumors of War, by Kehinde Wiley

Rumors of War by Kehinde Wiley
Photo: LSE

I've listened to Bob Marley's song "War" many times, but I never paid particular attention to the phrase "rumors of war" until today, when I went to Richmond, Virginia, to see Kehinde Wiley's Rumors of War. It stands in front of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, on Arthur Ashe Boulevard.

The statue has been described as a response to the many Confederate war monuments that still stand in Richmond and other places around the U.S. (An equestrian statue of Stonewall Jackson, a Confederate general, stands just a few blocks away.)

Wiley's gorgeous and imposing statue portrays a contemporary African-American man riding a horse in this same European/American equestrian tradition. The artist's website says that the statue, along with a series of paintings also called Rumors of War, reflects "Wiley's interest in the aestheticization of power and masculinity." 

According to Wikipedia, Wiley took the title "Rumors of War," from a bible verse. But I know the phrase from Bob Marley's classic song, and I wonder whether Marley took it from that same verse.

The lyrics of "War" consist almost entirely of a near-quote from Haile Selassie I's 1963 speech before the United Nations, in which he advocates for an end to international exploitation (particularly of Africa), equality for all, and nuclear disarmament. From what I can tell, the phrase "rumors of war" wasn't in his speech; Marley added it to the song.

Taken together, the phrase "rumors of war," its (possible) biblical source (Matthew 24:6-13), and the song's initial strident, minor riff create an air of prophetic doom -- but also some of the same militancy that I see in the statue.

"War" by Bob Marley

Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior

Is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned

Everywhere is war

Me say war.

And until there's no longer first class and second class citizens of any nation

Until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes

Me say war

Until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race

Dis a war

Until that day

The dream of lasting peace

World citizenship

Rule of international morality

Will remain but a fleeting illusion

To be pursued

But never attained

Now everywhere is war

War

And until the ignoble and unhappy regimes that hold our brothers in Angola

In Mozambique, South Africa

Sub-human bondage

Have been toppled

Totally destroyed

Everywhere is war

Me say war

War in the east

War in the west

War up north

War down south

War, war

Rumors of war

And until that day the African continent shall not know peace

We Africans will fight we find it necessary

And we know we will win

As we have confidence in the victory

Of good over evil...

War, war. Rumors of war. 

I'm afraid that the growing disregard for human rights during the last few years has brought the possibility of war closer in this country. 

Justice will not be put off forever. I begin to understand the power and the dread of the phrase "rumors of war."

But I also get chills whenever I hear that last verse. 

Back view of Rumors of War by Kehinde Wiley.
Photo: LSE

Seeing Jane Fonda

Actress, philanthropist, and activist Jane Fonda was arrested on the steps of the Capitol yesterday, demanding that our political leaders take action on the climate crisis through what she is calling "Fire Drill Fridays", which she has organized with Code Pink.

Ms. Fonda has been an activist—anti-war (Vietnam, Iraq), civil rights (women, African-Americans, Native Americans), pro-environment, and more—for about fifty years now.

Jane Fonda at an anti-war conference in the Netherlands, 1975
Photo by Mieremet, Rob / Anefo - [1] Dutch National Archives, The Hague, Fotocollectie Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau (ANeFo), 1945-1989, Nummer toegang 2.24.01.05 Bestanddeelnummer 927-6990, CC BY-SA 3.0 nl, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32335035.

Ms. Fonda's actions have often been controversial, and I imagine there's a fair amount of cynicism swirling about as she embarks upon this new project. I was a bit cynical myself. But then I had the opportunity to see her in person at U.S. Representative Don Beyer's Fifth Annual Women's Conference: Nevertheless, She Persisted.

Jane Fonda has been a force since the 1960s, through her talent, her hard work, and her dedication to her art and to social justice. Still, her gravitas took me by surprise. I was also surprised to feel myself identifying with her so strongly.

It occurred to me that she has lived a life similar to my own—that of an American, white, middle to upper-middle class woman; daughter, wife, mother—only she has had to live it under intense public scrutiny since childhood.

Being a part of our particular demographic is, of course, not the hardest lot in life—not by a long shot—but it does entail its fair share of indignities, impossibly conflicting expectations, and lots of other things that I won't rant about here. But Ms. Fonda hasn't let herself be silenced, she hasn't shrunk away in shame for her failings, she's never given up on herself. And more than most of us, she has consistently tried to use her privilege and her platform for the greater good. She'll be 82 in December, and she's still at it.

She told us—and I didn't get the exact quote, but it was something like this: It would be sad to get to the end of my life and not have figured out why I was here. 

Imagine, someone who has done as much as she has, but who is still searching. That's something to think about at any age.


P.S. Just FYI, by way of introducing Ms. Fonda, conference organizers showed the trailer for the HBO documentary, Jane Fonda in Five Acts (2018). It made me curious to watch the entire film. Also, Ms. Fonda recommended that everyone read Naomi Klein's On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal. Ms. Fonda's autobiography is called My Life So Far.

P.P.S. Even aside from Ms. Fonda, there were many amazing and accomplished women at this conference, on stage and in the audience. Plan to come next year!

Striking for the Climate in Seven Easy Steps: We Are Not Alone

Climate activist Greta Thunberg began striking for the climate last year, standing alone outside the Swedish Parliament, day after day, month after month. This past Friday, she spoke before a crowd of 250,000 climate strikers in New York City.

Let us join them!

Here's the story of a strike that took place in our little community while masses gathered in New York and all over the world.

Building a climate strike--building a community--doesn't take as much as you might think.

1. A listing
A man registered a climate strike on fridaysforfuture.org.

Friday, September 20, 2019, 8 AM.

The environment is important to him, as it is to all of us humans. "I didn't know whether anyone would show up," he said. "But I just went ahead and did it."

2. A prop
As we were getting ready to go to the climate strike, the globe caught my eye. The stand had broken long ago, so only the sphere of the Earth remained, wedged between books on the bookshelf. Its political boundaries were out of date, but I hadn't wanted to just throw it away. It brought to mind the iconic Earthrise photo, taken from the moon in 1968--the one that was so important to the nascent environmental movement.

That's what we're striking for, right?
Our planet.

I grabbed it as we walked out the door.

3. An icebreaker
There were fewer than ten people standing there when we arrived at the busy intersection where the strike was to happen, but everyone wanted their picture taken with the globe. I don't like to be in pictures, but I ended up posing for a few, and I smiled. It was for a good cause.

4. An activity
As we approached the intersection, we could see a small group of people standing on the corner about a block ahead. We thought they were probably fellow strikers, but there was nothing to distinguish them from any other random group of pedestrians.

"I'm going into the CVS to buy some poster-board and markers," my husband said.

I said okay, although I have just enough social anxiety that I don't like to be left alone in a new group of people.

(See #3, An icebreaker, above.)

Of course, everyone wanted to make a sign, because who can resist poster-board, big fat markers, and the opportunity to say what's on their mind? Many of the strikers were older people, crouching on the sidewalk, thinking about what to write. "My grandchildren deserve a future." "EPA Do your F-ing Job." "Listen to the Science."

There was much discussion and shared laughter around this sign-creation. A community was born!

5. A bullhorn!
Someone brought one. It was necessary. A major intersection at rush hour is very noisy. But with the bullhorn, we could hear each other.

No more coal, no more oil, keep the carbon in the soil! We began walking around the intersection. We didn't impede traffic, we just crossed with the lights and kept moving, holding our signs up and chanting.

6. An ask
One striker made a sign instructing drivers to Honk for Climate Action. This was genius.

The honking of the cars--and even of delivery trucks and construction vehicles--electrified our little group of strikers, now maybe around 40 people.

It created a communication loop. We weren't just shouting into the noisy, smelly void of engines and combustion engine exhaust; drivers were receiving the message, responding, and then we, in response to their honking, were cheering and waving our signs. We were not alone.

We ARE not alone.

7. Youth, energy, creativity
Two bright, enthusiastic, positive young women from nearby George Mason University ventured off campus, into the unknown, to join our strike. They made signs with us and took lots of pictures.

One of them borrowed the bullhorn and began chanting: Hash-tag, Go green, Save Our Climate, Join Our Team. It was a great chant, combining some modest syncopation with a contemporary, inclusive, imperative. I asked the young woman where she'd gotten the chant, had she made it up? And she said, "we both did." Everyone loved the chant. It really brought our little group together. Chanting can do that.

We spent a little more than an hour walking around and around the intersection. I don't know how many drivers saw us and our signs, but I'd guess they numbered in the hundreds. Maybe a few of them are thinking more about the climate now. Equally important, we created a little spark of community and learned some valuable lessons.

As we walked away I remarked to my husband that it reminded me of the story of Stone Soup. Building a climate strike--building a community--doesn't take as much as you might think.

All photos by Michael Edson. Thanks, Mike!

An excerpt from Seeking the Center, in honor of the Stanley Cup Playoffs

The final round of the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs is set to begin on Monday, May 27, between the Boston Bruins and the St. Louis Blues. Eliminated in the previous three rounds were: the Washington Capitals, Pittsburgh Penguins, Tampa Bay Lightning, Toronto Maple Leafs, Calgary Flames, Las Vegas Golden Knights, Winnipeg Jets, Nashville Predators, New York Islanders, Columbus Blue Jackets, Dallas Stars, Colorado Avalanche, Carolina Hurricanes, and San Jose Sharks.

That’s a lot of sad hockey teams!

I'm posting an excerpt from my novel Seeking the Center in honor of all the teams that have been eliminated from the Stanley Cup Playoffs—or from tournaments anywhere, of any kind. You can read the excerpt here. It's one of my favorite chapters in the novel, so I hope you enjoy it!

P.S. I plan to post an audio version of the excerpt within the next week or so.

P.P.S. You can purchase Seeking the Center directly from the publisher, Cuidono Press, here, from your local bookstore, or from the usual suspects including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Indigo/Chapters.

Book review: Dancer by Colum McCann

In Dancer, Colum McCann gives us a passionate, gorgeous (fictionalized) account of the life of dancer and choreographer Rudolf Nureyev.

Often, when we hear statements like, "his life is inseparable from the tumultuous events of the twentieth century," we cringe--what a cliché! But in the case of Nureyev it is undoubtedly true. Furthermore, McCann blows the cliché out of the water by actually showing us what this means. For example, he plots Nureyev's childhood against the backdrop of what Soviets called "The Great Patriotic War"--the part of World War II in which they fought off the German invasion. McCann's depiction of frostbitten, maimed Soviet soldiers eating their starved horses in the trenches, the women who cleaned them up afterwards, and little Rudik Nureyev and his schoolmates performing folk dances to entertain the wounded men in the hospital is no less virtuosic than Nureyev and the great Margot Fonteyn as Romeo and Juliet.

Nureyev was born in 1938 in Soviet Russia; in 1961 he defected to the West. McCann masterfully creates the colors and contradictions of both worlds. The Soviet Union is a repressive regime whose luckiest citizens are those old enough to cherish memories from before the Iron Curtain dropped. The West has its own brand of coldness. McCann reveals the sorrow of the émigré who--a product of both, yet belonging to neither--may never go home again.

Through this bleak milieu leaps Rudik Nureyev, a gay (bisexual?) ballet dancer of Muslim Tatar heritage, passionately devoted to his true self and his art in defiance of his army veteran father and eventually in defiance of his government. We come to know him through others: his mother, his first ballet teacher, his sister, his assistants and lovers and friends--even the cobbler who manufactures his custom ballet shoes. We also know Rudik through pages of hastily scribbled notes to himself--on how to perfect his grand jetés, to remember social appointments, on books he'd like to read or had read, on his travels--his energy and love of life transported as if by electrical impulse from his mind to the page.

To me, McCann's refusal to tie up or reconcile the many facets of Nureyev's life and personality speaks not only to how various, how expansive, and how deep this artist was, but also to how many strands of his being there were to manage, how many relationships to nurture, how many choices to make. What was the limit of the sacrifice he offered to Dance?

Or maybe McCann means to say that there can be no definitive version of Nureyev's life, other than the one that he himself lived.

That life ended in 1993, when Nureyev succumbed to HIV/AIDS. But, as portrayed by Colum McCann, the Dancer never succumbed to the vast impersonal forces of twentieth-century wars, totalitarianism, capitalism, or even homophobia. He soared above.

Book review: Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class, by Jefferson Cowie

I didn't study the 70s in school, because it was happening as I was growing up. So, though I remembered the outlines, I needed someone to fill them in. Cowie's palette is a somber one, though. At stake was, he writes: [the] dream... that collective working-class agency could guarantee basic economic security for all as the foundation of a greater freedom.

Cowie begins in 1972 in Lordstown, Ohio, where young auto workers, fearing that they will be "hacking on the line for 30 years" with no say in how their work is managed, go on strike. Pitted against them are the old, entrenched capitalists (of General Motors) and status-quo loving union bosses. These guys fear the young strikers - men with long hair and afros, love beads and mod clothing; Vietnam vets who know dysfunction when they see it. This bunch had seen liberation (at least on television) and wanted some for themselves. 

Stayin' Alive looks at the 70s as two distinct periods (1968-1974 and 1974-1982). Cowie discusses the political and economic happenings within each, followed by an analysis of that period's popular culture - music, movies, and television. At the beginning of the 70s, there is a glimmer of hope: maybe the young, integrated, liberation-demanding kids can win. But alas, Nixon's paranoid scheming, an energy crisis or two, stagflation, an ineffectual Carter administration, a union-busting Ronnie Reagan, and the sickening, no-holds-barred, runaway greed of the wealthy classes, all combine to drastically shrink the pie for which American workers must compete. By the end of the decade, being chained to an assembly line job in a factory with no say in your present, let alone your future, is actually looking pretty good - and damn near unattainable - to most working class Americans.

Cowie explains how the rise of identity politics, sadly, played directly into the cynical divide-and-conquer strategies of the union bosses and politicians. He shows how Wallace, Nixon, and Reagan deliberately inflamed racist white nationalist and misogynist sentiments in order to consolidate their own power. Sound familiar? Even the part where (Republican) politicians turn their backs on the material concerns of poor white people and replace those concerns with cultural ones - things like abortion and school prayer that would have no effect on their standard of living no matter how they were decided: that strategy began all the way back then, in the 70s, too. 

Cowie clearly knows his stuff - the detail about labor legislation and all the various political maneuverings are fascinating. That the momentous decisions made by the president and congress come down in the end to trivial matters of timing, or even just naked human frailties, incompetencies, and vanity is not well understood by most of us and is difficult to fully comprehend. I suppose that's why we accept simplified and simple-minded explanations for so many things? At any rate, Cowie's conclusion is that, by the end of the 70s, no economically-based "working class" identity remained in the United States - that workers had been successfully divided and, thus, had no real voice. 

He ends the book with something of a challenge: 
Whatever working-class identity might emerge from the postmodern, global age will have to be less rigid and less limiting than that of the [post-World War II] order, and far less wedded to the bargaining table as the sole expression of workplace power. It will have to be less about consumption and more about democracy, and as much about being blue collar as being green collar. It will have to be more inclusive in conception, more experimental in form, more nimble in organization, and more kaleidoscopic in nature than previous incarnations. The chapter of the modern working class has closed; the page of imagination is open; and the future is unwritten.

Book review: Dispatches, by Michael Herr

As a correspondent in the Vietnam War, Michael Herr experienced first hand the Tet Offensive, the siege of Khe Sanh, and the battle of Hue. In Dispatches, which I believe was first published in 1977, Herr describes multiple facets of the war as seen through his eyes, as filtered through his consciousness, and as wrung through his conscience.

Much of what Dispatches describes is not news to me; the Vietnam War has been something of a hot topic since I was a little girl listening to the casualty counts on the evening news. However, Herr's account is so rewarding, so riveting, that I hated to put it down. Combining rich descriptions of the milieu - landscape, city, or awesome, ghastly destruction - with unforgettable portraits of grunts and officials, fellow correspondents and super sappers, he fills in the outlines of what I already knew with vivid color.

The themes of the book are military malpractice, political bullshit, and, of course and above all, death. Also, Herr's (and everyone else's) love-hate relationship with war. And his attempt to reconcile the unreconcilable. And the sheer inevitability of it all. He writes, "There'd been nothing there that hadn't already existed here, coiled up and waiting, back in the World."

Epic and intimate, humorous and horrible, Herr's account is never simplistic and almost always fascinating. The only part that falls short for me is the section about his colleagues in the press corps; though many of the portraits are well drawn, for me they rarely measure up to those in the remaining chapters of the narrative. 

Still, I enthusiastically recommend this book for those interested in the Vietnam War, and for those interested in war generally. Men and war. Yep, men and war.

Book Review: The Other Side of Grief: The Home Front and the Aftermath in American Narratives of the Vietnam War, by Maureen Ryan

The Other Side of Grief is a survey of what must be hundreds of narratives, mainly novels and memoirs, relating to the Vietnam War - every type of narrative that I can imagine, except for stories of combat. Author Maureen Ryan takes the soldier's often repeated, familiar refrain of "you had to be there [or you can't understand]" and replies, "we were all there." 

Ryan's thesis is that we tend to privilege the stories of men, and therefore those of combat vets (who, we assume, are particularly manly men), but that, if we wish to understand the American "lingering fascination" with the Vietnam War, we need to consider everyone's stories - those of the siblings, wives, and children left at home, those of the war protesters who dodged "home front artillery" in Chicago and on college campuses, those of Vietnamese refugees, as well as the "aftermath narratives" of returning vets, and POW memoirs.

In The Other Side of Grief each of these categories gets its own chapter, in which Ryan discusses the themes touched on by the narratives in that category. Those themes illuminate interesting historical, social, political, or psychological points. For example, in the chapter "Years of Darkness: Narratives by and about American Prisoners of the Vietnam War," Ryan dissects the texts in question to lay bare the political appropriation of the POW issue - in careful counterpoint to women's liberation in the context of the POW wives. In "The Other Side of Grief: American Women Writers and the Vietnam War," Ryan examines the unique psychology of the sisters of soldiers.

Although I thought I knew a lot about the Vietnam War, the '60s, '70s, and '80s, I learned quite a bit from this book. I believe that the sheer number of texts that Ryan examines allows her to make certain assertions with authority. One of the most important from my point of view is her statement that "the women understand, as the men do not, that the Vietnam War happened to an entire generation and lingered long after the last bullet was fired." Clearly, many of us have had that thought before. But in this case Ryan shows how it is grounded in numerous texts, written by many different men and women, all seeming to indicate that same pattern. 

Privileging one type of story unquestionably leads to misunderstandings of reality. This should be a rallying cry. We need the full spectrum of perspectives not only to unravel our fascination with the Vietnam War, but also to prevent future wars.

Beware of Book Reviews

For the past several months I've been reading in preparation for a new writing project. As I did when I was researching my previous novel, Seeking the Center, I'm trying to be diligent about reviewing the books that I read. I post the reviews on Goodreads, and I've decided to post them here as well, where they are more accessible to folks who aren't on Goodreads.

I hope you find them interesting, and I invite your comments.

The blood spilled at the end of life, and the blood spilled at its beginning

I'm currently reading Dispatches, by Michael Herr. Of all the hundreds or maybe even thousands of books written about the Vietnam War, it is one of the most celebrated. 

The book's reputation is well-deserved. I'm admittedly not terribly far into my Vietnam War research, but of all the books I've read so far (and also including Burns's and Novick's documentary series The Vietnam War), Dispatches is the first and so far the only account that has haunted me at night. It is riveting, horrifying, beautiful, sad, funny, gruesome, and insightful. In loving, sketchbook fashion, Herr fills even the most briefly encountered grunt with a luminous humanity. He owns up to his own bullshit, and helps us understand.

Reading this afternoon, on page 210 out of 260, I suddenly imagine the rivers of ink spent accounting for all those rivers of blood spilled in that misbegotten war. And then I remember how, when I was writing my (unpublished) first novel (The Bear Wife), I determined to imbue its birth scene with just as much suspense and violence, as much glory and dignity and prominence, as its scenes of Viking battles.

Because those nasty old pragmatic pagans recognized, even if we don't, that you can't spill blood at the end of life unless you've spilled some at its beginning.

Spindle whorls (and spinners) at Jamestown

Meanwhile, in other news, two spindle whorls were found at the site of the English fort at Jamestown, Virginia, dating from the early 17th century. This would seem to indicate that, at that time, there were European women in Jamestown engaged in spinning yarn. Presumably the guys needed clothes, sails, fishing nets, bags, etc.

The fact that they found the spindle whorls in such a recent (17th century) context is interesting to me, because, in my incomplete knowledge, I didn't realize that the ancient "drop spindle" method of spinning was still employed during that time. According to the Jamestown author the method was still used in rural England and, I would venture to guess that, because the whorls themselves apparently came from present-day Belgium, it was used there as well.

Why did folks adhere to the earlier technology? Probably because it allowed for more efficient multi-tasking by the women. If you're sitting at a spinning wheel, you can't do much else except, maybe, sing. But the distaff and whorl put you well on your way to accomplishing the womanly mission of being everything to everyone. Alternatively, it allows you to go hide away somewhere and spin a tale or two, take in the scenery, or simply philosophize on the nature of the cosmos, all while creating a strong, fine yarn.

The Jamestown spindle whorls are described here. Also, I wrote about Jamestown a few years ago. (It probably needs an update, but I haven't done that yet!) And I've written about Weaving, War and Womanhood (which includes a bit more about spinning).

Gingerly entering a new era, hoping not to jinx it

For my latest project, I'm doing some typically idiosyncratic, non-methodical reading about music, and about the Vietnam War.*

And while I didn't write on this site at all while I was full into researching, writing, and editing my novel Seeking the Center (Cuidono Press, 2016), now that I've moved on, I may occasionally "scribble" some ideas here. My new mix of topics - especially the war part - might end up fitting in somewhat with previous spindlewhorl posts, so it seems convenient. Additionally, and primarily, I don't want a third website. I can barely handle what I've got.

I welcome all comments! 

*Incidentally, I do review most of the books I read, and if you're interested, you can read my reviews on Goodreads.

My new website is up and running!

Hi everyone!

I wanted to let you know that my new website is up. Please visit for up-to-date information about Seeking the Center, including some blogging on relevant topics. See you there!

P.S. We finally have an official release date, October 17!

Seeking the Center cover art!

You've been there, I know you have. You find the perfect one only to have your hopes dashed: it's not available. How could you have such horrible luck?

And then it happens again. Utter despair!

But finally, amazingly, you stumble across something that's even better than those earlier ones, the ones you loved before, the ones that broke your heart...

I'm thrilled to report that we've found the perfect cover for Seeking the Center! It's a photograph by Mike Wilkinson, of Wilkinson Visual.

We're still working on the design, but for now, suffice it to say that it's got it all: stick, puck, ice, clouds, and sky. Stay tuned!

Seeking the Center will be published by Cuidono Press

Seeking the Center is my second novel, but the first one to be finished. I started thinking about it all the way back in 2008 or so. It tells the story of Agnes Demers, a young Métis woman growing up in Saskatchewan in the 1980s and '90s. Here's what it's about:

Agnes Demers grew up playing hockey, skating with the neighborhood kids on the frozen ponds of her hometown, St. Cyp, through the long, cold Saskatchewan winters. For Agnes, hockey is the measure of all things - the ultimate test of passion and power, spirit and skill. But now hockey has betrayed her, left her watching from the bleachers - all because she's had the miserable luck to be born female.

Agnes moves to Wapahaska to work at the Indian Jewel Box with her friend Jo. She intends to ignore the town's minor-league hockey team, the Prairie Wolves, not to mention her childhood teammate Owen MacKenzie, the Wolves' star center. In fact, she intends to ignore the whole smug, self-congratulatory scene, but it isn't long before she becomes re-entangled with the game she loves, with Owen, and with the team's new enforcer, Claude Doucette, an older player who shares her Native heritage and aspires to live by its warrior creed.

Locked in a three-way tilt at the convergence of history and desire, Agnes must seek the center: the balance to stay on her skates, the opening to make a play, and the vision to reclaim her game.

No release date yet, but you'll be the first to know!

Dear Reader,

Welcome to my new home!

Moves can be stressful and disorganized and this one is no exception. Please forgive the mess, the dining table mistakenly left in the bedroom, and the boxes emptied before the shelves are ready to hold their contents. It's going to take me a while to get it all together, so be patient. But don't hesitate to stop by and look around.

Meditations on 'The Monsters and the Critics' by J. R. R. Tolkien

I've just read Tolkien's famous lecture/essay on Beowulf, "The Monsters and the Critics." In it he takes certain literary critics to task for their assertions that Beowulf's author eschewed the lofty in favor of the trivial by placing the monsters – Grendel, Grendel's mother, and the dragon – at the center of the poem.

It is a beautiful, beautiful essay that, apart from scoring an absolute bull's eye (and applying the zinger: I have, of course read The Beowulf, as have most [but not all] of those who have criticized it), also weighs in on the power of myth and the importance of looking at art as art. It also demonstrates how we can gain perspective through a thoughtful examination of historical context.

Near and dear to my heart, and at the heart of his argument, Tolkien staunchly defends the northern mythological imagination. This is a balm to my soul! I show great restraint by not simply retyping the whole thing right here!

Though scarcely a child of the internet age, I wanted so much, as I read the essay, to send Dr. Tolkien an email, or tweet to him in sincere appreciation and in solidarity; but Tolkien, of course, was, as he himself said of Beowulf, a man, and that…is sufficient tragedy: man falls prey to death and then he is lost…! How fortunate that his words may live on, so that one may meditate upon them, as below.

A person alive and a person dead exist at the same time 

Like Tolkien, I believe strongly in the significance of myth.

Myth does not unfold in an "historical" time, but rather in an imagined time. However, as Tolkien says, it is at its best when it is presented…as incarnate in the world of history and geography…

I would add that, in myth, meanings bleed to the surface of the ordinary, so that this bloodiness, this contact with the juice that (normally) flows invisibly within, becomes ordinary.

In my novel The Bear Wife, bones - skeletal remains emptied of a person's soul - are inhabited, pregnant, in a sense, with significance. (He who in those days said and who heard…[the kenning] ban-hus 'bone-house'…thought of the soul shut in the body, as the frail body itself is trammelled in armour, or as a bird in a narrow cage, or steam pent in a cauldron. There it seethed and struggled in the wylmas, the boiling surges beloved of the old poets, until its passion was released and it fled away on ellor-si∂, a journey to other places 'which none can report with truth, not lords in their halls nor mighty men beneath the sky.')

In this mythological way of thinking, a thing is both what it is, and what it is not. Or maybe what it is, and what it once was, both at the same imagined time.

In this way of thinking, a person alive and a person dead exist at the same time, in balance, as Tolkien describes the two halves of the Anglo-Saxon line of verse, halves that balance and build upon each other, "more like masonry than music."

In this way of thinking there is the sense of a building, a structure, "a tough builder's work of true stone," rather than a sense of moving forward, or of narrative. But I don't think – and I don't think Tolkien thought either – that this 'structure' represented a state of repose. Far from it; the balance, in fact, was an uneasy one.

In The Well and the Tree Paul Bauschatz discusses the lack of a future tense in Germanic languages. There are only the past and the present, two conditions, and the future is called necessity.

Some say the future is now. Perhaps, essentially, necessity is the now, the only weapon we may wield against the monster, a stonemason's tool in the delicate balance between life and death.



Quotes are from "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" and "On Translating Beowulf", both from The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, by J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1984.

I also refer to The Well and the Tree: World and Time in Early Germanic Culture by Paul C.
Bauschatz. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1982.