First Monday with Characters

Edited by Morris Dean

Ralph Earle, his forthcoming book of poems
    From Melissa Hassard, Partner and Managing Editor, Sable Books:

I am delighted to announce that we are now taking reservations for the forthcoming chapbook from Ralph Earle, The Way the Rain Works, winner of the 2015 Sable Books February Chapbook Contest. If you’d like to reserve a copy of Ralph’s book, we’ll be glad to hold a copy for you.

    Richard Krawiec, writer, poet, publisher, and esteemed judge for our contest, had this to say:

This is a deeply felt book about a family in crisis that lives inside you and lends itself to multiple readings. Sad, but not without its small, yet sustaining, redemptions: “In the evening, overflowing with secret love, / I dangle my feet above the receding / spillway and listen: ripples. The moon’s / reflection rides them like a blessing.” [Mr. Krawiec is the author of Women Who Loved Me Despite and She Hands Me The Razor, Press 53.]

    Of Ralph’s book, Debra Kaufman writes:

"We pray our life will turn out right.” This collection houses a kind of family gallery – portraits, landscapes, still lifes – and like good paintings, the poems contain not only the people, scenes, or objects being considered, but the dark shading beneath: here is a family breaking apart. Ralph Earle well knows that to husband is to manage prudently, sparingly – “If this is an emergency / I will manage” – until this husband can no longer do so. Despite broken branches, clumsy home repairs, a despairing wife, and unanswered prayers, the poet finds some solace in nature and solitude, showing us glimpses of fragile beauty: “On the edge of the precipice, ice plants, / like clumsy fingers, encircle wildflowers.” [Ms. Kaufman is the author of Delicate Thefts and The Next Moment, Jacar Press.]

    Sable Books is a collaborative publisher who works with our writers to create beautiful books. Please visit us at sablebooks.org

Susan C. Price relays an urgent story

In another state, a friend’s high-school-senior son, Harry, had this unnerving experience a few days ago. Harry went to a huge party at this mansion, at the end of a road, up a huge hill. He arrived about 10:30 p.m. A couple of hundred kids were there, many pretty drunk. Harry went around the back to the pool. He saw a boy on the opposite side of the pool, all wobbly, bleeding profusely from a gash across his wrist.
    Incredibly, other kids grabbed the boy and stuck his arm in the pool to watch his arm bleed out and the blood spread across the top of the water and record it with their cell phones. Harry ran over, grabbed the boy out of the water, took his own T-shirt off, wrapped it around the boy’s wrist, pressured it against the wound, and carried the boy over his shoulder from the pool, through the grounds, and out to the front curb. As he was carrying the boy, kids were trying to get Harry to take the shirt off the boy’s wrist and show them the gushing wound. These kids apparently had no realization that this kid, someone’s child, could bleed to death. One girl along the way did say, “Can I help?” But when Harry said, “Yea, call 911!” she evaporated. One other teen did help clear a path through the crowd, but then also disappeared.
    When Harry got to the curbside, one hand locked on the boy’s wrist around his T-shirt soaked in blood, he called 911 with his free hand. The operator asked for the address. Harry didn’t remember the number. He hollered to a kid nearby for the address. The kid said, “I ain’t giving it to you, the cops will come and bust up the party,” and disappeared back into the mansion.
    Harry finally got another party-goer to give him the address so the paramedics were dispatched. By this time, the bleeding boy was becoming delirious, his eyes rolling toward the back of his head. Harry kept him awake, talking. The boy told Harry he wanted to die. But then he said he didn’t, and kept asking for his parents over and over and saying, “I don’t want to die.”
    The paramedics finally arrived at 11:30, having to walk up the hill to the mansion because the cars along the street blocked access to the home. There were two paramedics. While one paramedic was with Harry and the boy, the other paramedic looked around and saw a girl passed out on the lawn in a critical state. Another ambulance came for her. Harry and the paramedic carried the boy a good distance down the hill to the ambulance. They got him stabilized and took him to a nearby hospital.
    I thought it was wonderful, Harry doing as he did that night, but horrible how some others behaved. Harry’s mother, who told me this tale, sadly concluded, “It’s hard for some kids, to be a happy kid. Graduation time is a dangerous time.”

The Rogers, behind bars in San Ramon

A few weeks ago our house was burgled for the second time, so we decided it was time to move. We loved where we were. The mountain views were wonderful and the neighbors were great, but those beautiful views came with a price tag.
    First, having views like we had meant we lived in the country and therefore were easy pickings for crooks. The police can be seen long before they get close to any robbers. Dogs bark all the time, mostly at wild animals, so after a while the usual response a barking dog gets is to be told to shut up.
    We feel safe in our new home. The view isn’t what it was on our mountain but we sleep better and no longer fear leaving the house and coming back to find it emptied. It has been a lot of work, but we have just about got it looking like a home. [Take Ed's video tour (on his Facebook page).]
                            –Pura Vida from Ed & Janie

The Midyetts, resettled in Bunbury

Shirley and I were missing the close comforts of van living, so we have moved back into our van and into a tourist park. It will soon be picture-taking time, as the park overlooks an estuary's large water basin. My camera was stolen out of the car a while back, sitting on the seat with the window down. I was only going to be a few minutes, but it was long enough for someone to come along and grab it. I've bought a replacement, though, so I'm ready. It dawns on me that I have not made pics or told you much about Bunbury, have I? I will, soon.

André Duvall, ringing in the season

My favorite season is here. I simply love the sudden appearance of light green on the trees, and the abundance of wildflowers that emerge within a matter of days. I plan to purchase a new bicycle this week (my previous bike was stolen), and I plan to try out some of the new greenlines in Memphis that connect forested areas in between subdivisions.

    I had the honor of serving as an adjudicator for the Amro Music Spring Keyboard Festival earlier in March. I enjoyed listening to around fifty students of varying ages. Musical selections ranged from beginning piano pieces to advanced repertoire. We are fortunate to have a fine locally-owned music store in Memphis. Amro is known for its exceptional customer service, and I enjoy being able to browse the rather large collection of pedagogical materials and printed music they keep in stock, a resource often not available to this extent in music stores these days. They are also the Mid-South’s go-to connection for Steinway pianos.
    The West Tennessee Handbell Association hosted the second annual River City Ring in Cordova in March. We expanded to a two-day event this year, featuring massed rehearsals and a concert of prepared repertoire on Saturday, preceded by optional Friday evening handbell technique classes and reading sessions of newly composed music for bells. The icy weather nearly caused our event to be cancelled, and resulted in cancellation of attendance from some of our out-of-town registrants, but we still managed to have a good turnout. I recently switched my position on the WTHA board from secretary to treasurer, so I’m getting my first experience serving in that capacity.

Courtesy Kyle's Facebook page

Kyle Garza, in counseling

My fiancé and I have begun pre-marital counseling with our former youth pastor, who is actually going to be our officiant, and his wife, and it is making us all the more excited for our wedding day. We had originally planned to go through a study book or something of the sort on marriage. After talking it out with him and his wife, we decided to instead just let them talk us through “the big questions” and the topics which they have found most important in their marriage. We have always wanted an older couple to come alongside us and talk us through our early years together. Now that we finally have one, we can start to revisit the questions and studies that we had actually done in the first two months of our dating lives. I’m still not counting the days because it will just make finishing the school year too stressful. As it is, I still have plenty of items on our to-do list for the honeymoon. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers! We need all the help we can get.

James Knudsen, recently surprised

March ended with a busy weekend, the memorial for Dad, which started at 10 a.m....ok, 10:30 a.m. (girlfriend time) and ended nearly 12 hours later – more if you count the after party at the house. Then on the following day, Sunday, I was taken by my ex-wife to breakfast only to be greeted by a good number of the memorial attendees greeting me for a surprise 50th birthday party organized by my girlfriend. My jaw still drops at the thought.
    I ended the memorial by saying that I look up at the stars because someone taught me to. But, given the amount of time Morris Knudsen spent weeding his dichondra lawn by hand, it's safe to say that he looked down as well. So, armed with a new set of macro-extension tubes for my Canon, I looked down and then got really, really close.

Flower of an ornamental strawberry plant, which a quarter could easily cover;
tiny bugs are for scale

Bettina Sperry, in springtime

Defrosting, growing sunflowers, lavender, roses, fruit trees...and babies, babies, and more babies.

Jim Rix, with granddaughters

One of my sons and his daughters spent Easter in Tahoe with me. We hunted eggs.

Courtesy the world-wide web

Morris Dean, laying it on the egg
    My main concern of late has been that my daughter has, like me a couple of years ago, had a retinal detachment (in her right eye; mine was in my left). First, about seven weeks ago, she had a peripheral tear; that is, her right retina tore near its edge. Five days after that was repaired, a larger, adjacent tear, with some detachment, was found and operated on the same day. Four weeks later the macula of that eye puckered, which led a week later (ten days ago today) to an almost complete detachment. It started after she boarded her return flight in London and might have been complete before she landed in San Jose but for the spot where a laser tack was made in the previous surgery. She was taken straightaway to her ophthalmologist and another surgery was scheduled barely twenty-four hours later. All went well, with an oil injected into the eyeball this time rather than gas, but there was considerable pain the following week, which featured several days of maintaining a face-down position to secure the reattachment. She can detect light through the oil and expects to be able to return to work soon. It is my understanding that the oil will have to be surgically removed after it has fulfilled its function.
     As for Easter, I was probably farther from Easter this year than I ever was. This was both a liberation and a sadness – not from missing anything ecclesiastical, which was where the liberation came in, but from the sense of distance from certain friends and relatives in whose lives Easter seems to matter, especially the ones who mailed us a greeting card. In each case it reminded me of the unfathomable chasm that separates their sense of the world from mine – and not just theirs from mine, but also mine from theirs, if they could imagine that receiving such a card would have any meaning for me.
    My wife wondered whether our fitness center would be open yesterday; it closes for Christmas, so she assumed that it would be closed for Easter as well. But she checked, and it wasn't. She wondered what their basis was for closing for Christmas, if they don't close on Christendom's arguably holiest day. I suppose it has nothing to do with religion, but the center closes in recognition of the family-centeredness of Christmas's traditional opening of presents. Not so many families get together to hunt eggs, I suppose.
    Hmm, there is an Easter connection, after all. My daughter's and my eye problems stem in large measure from our significant near-sightedness – from front to back our eyes are pronouncedly egg-shaped!

Copyright © 2015 by Morris Dean