- BEYOND BUCKSKIN By Dr. Jessica R. Metcalfe
Project 562: Changing The Way We See Native America The images that Edward Curtis shot over 100 years ago continue to be popular representations of what an Indian is supposed to look like today. So when Native photographer Matika Wilbur picked up her camera …Read more
BEYOND BUCKSKIN: Project 562: Changing The Way We See Native America
Cathedral of Leaves
By Linda Boyden
Grandmothers sit
around a small table;
above their silvered hair
oak boughs weave
a cathedral of leaves,
for shade and secrecy.
Grandmothers sip tea,
the clink of their cups
pepper their thin voices
as they spin Forever Stories
to soothe or amuse
or guide a troubled child.
Grandmothers quilt
a patchwork of words;
stitch the bliss of a first kiss
onto the death of a language;
hem a baby’s first smile
on the memory of a massacre.
Grandmothers spark stories,
their pale voices bloom
under the cathedral of leaves,
where remembering
becomes a sacred thing.
Copyright © Linda Boyden. All rights reserved.
"The Blue Roses" from Low Books 2002, winner New Voices Award, Paterson Prize and Wordcraft Circle's Book of the Year, 2003
"Powwow's Coming" the University of New Mexico Press, 2007.
"Powwow's Coming" is included on Reading Is Fundamental's 2011 Multicultural Book List! http://www.rif.org/us/2011- multicultural-booklist.htm? mid=5459710
"Giveaways, An ABC Book of Loanwords from the Americas", written and illustrated by Linda Boyden (University of New Mexico Press), 2010
"Giveaways", winner of three Finalist awards from the 2011 International Book Awards, two Finalist Awards from the 2011New Mexico Book Awards and included in 2012 California Collections form the CA. Reading Association.
"The Blue Roses" from Low Books 2002, winner New Voices Award, Paterson Prize and Wordcraft Circle's Book of the Year, 2003
"Powwow's Coming" the University of New Mexico Press, 2007.
"Powwow's Coming" is included on Reading Is Fundamental's 2011 Multicultural Book List! http://www.rif.org/us/2011-
"Giveaways, An ABC Book of Loanwords from the Americas", written and illustrated by Linda Boyden (University of New Mexico Press), 2010
"Giveaways", winner of three Finalist awards from the 2011 International Book Awards, two Finalist Awards from the 2011New Mexico Book Awards and included in 2012 California Collections form the CA. Reading Association.
Archive | Author
Linda Boyden
Saboulet
By Michelle Pichon
I remember you
like the only shooting star
I ever saw
streaming across the eternal Texas sky
vibrant and magical
Your fingers long and rough
Camel Turkish blend
unfiltered
burning at the tips
chilled Budweiser
in a can
sweet on your breath
That’s how I see you
Legs like a blue heron
crossed at the knee
sitting in the swollen air
the backyard that once was
nothing but bayou
under the shade of our
family tree
telling me about
birds and baseball
You ask me
if I still play the piano
and I wish I did
because that would give me
something to say
I could learn some
big band jazz
and play for you
like the Duke
But I quit playing the piano
like everything else
I don’t like it anymore
I say
eyes on the thirsty ground
my voice like
caterpillars chewing on leaves
And now
I imagine you’d say
The piano is like baseball
Shah, you got to saboulet
or don’t do it at all
* saboulet is a Louisiana Creole baseball term meaning hit
the ball as hard as possible
Copyright © Michelle
Pichon. All
rights reserved.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michelle Pichon is a Louisiana Creole with roots in Slidell and Isle Brevelle, Louisiana. Teaching English at Northwestern State University is her bread and butter but poetry is her chocolate cake and Sauvignon Blanc at the end of the day. She has previously been published in Country Roads, Xavier Review, and Louisiana English Journal. She is co-founder of Down River Art Gang (DRAG) where she and her friends put on killer multi-cultural, multi-genre art shows and other events.
You can follow Michelle on Tumblr at http://mpichon.tumblr.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michelle Pichon is a Louisiana Creole with roots in Slidell and Isle Brevelle, Louisiana. Teaching English at Northwestern State University is her bread and butter but poetry is her chocolate cake and Sauvignon Blanc at the end of the day. She has previously been published in Country Roads, Xavier Review, and Louisiana English Journal. She is co-founder of Down River Art Gang (DRAG) where she and her friends put on killer multi-cultural, multi-genre art shows and other events.
You can follow Michelle on Tumblr at http://mpichon.tumblr.com
Archive | Author
Michelle Pichon
Ghost Dance
By Chip Livingston
Chip Livingston is the mixed-blood Creek author of two collections of poetry, CROW-BLUE, CROW-BLACK and MUSEUM OF FALSE STARTS, and a collection of short stories, NAMING CEREMONY, Lethe Press 2014. Chip has received fiction awards from Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas, Wordcraft Circle of Writers and Storytellers, and the AABB Foundation. Chip grew up on the Florida-Alabama border and now lives in Colorado, where he teaches writing online, and is a faculty mentor in the low-rez MFA program at Institute of American Indian Arts in New Mexico.
I think I’m going crazy when I see my
reflection in the camera’s lens. I’m
surrounded by the dead. Jimi, Marilyn,
Joan — face covered in cold cream, hand
holding wire hanger high above her head.
The Halloween Parade has paused for television crews in front of The
Revolver on Duvall Street in New Orleans.
I duck inside for a drink, take the elevator to the thirteenth
floor.
I walk inside the
club without ID. Tonight I don’t need
it. Tonight I’m invisible. I pass witches, goblins, boys dressed like
ghouls. Once we were two of them. Once we both joined the annual
masquerade. But tonight is
different. Tonight I don a plain white
sheet with ink. Circles traced around
holes cut out to see through. Another
hole through which I drink, from which I breathe.
I wasn’t coming
out tonight. Didn’t plan or purchase a
costume. Wouldn’t wear one hanging in
your closet. What led me to the linens
then, to quickly cut a cotton sheet into a kid’s uniform? What drove me to this?
Beneath this
sheet, your medicine bag hangs around my neck, the tanned leather pouch you
made me promise never to open. This is
the first time I’ve worn it. But no one
can see it. No one can see me.
I finish my drink,
scotch neat, with a gulp, sing the invisible song you taught me, set the glass
on the black wood rail, and, still singing, step onto the dance floor.
Beneath this
sheet, I imitate you dancing. My feet,
awkward at first, soon find your rhythm, and my legs bounce powwow style in the
steps we both learned as kids. The steps
that never left you. I dip and turn
between, around the fancy dancers in their sequin shawls and feather boas. I shake my head like you did when your hair
was long, the way you flipped it, black and shining, to the heavy beat of house
music. The music hasn’t changed much in
case you’re wondering. I dance in your
footsteps; sing the invisible song; close my eyes.
When I open my
eyes, I swear I see Carlo. Impossible
right, but he’s stuffed inside that Nancy Reagan red dress and he’s waving at
me, sipping his cocktail and smiling.
He’s talking to Randy, who’s sticking out his tongue that way he always
did whenever he caught someone staring at him.
I start to walk over but I bump in to Joan.
She’s glaring at
me. Or it may just be the eyebrows,
slanted back with pencil to make it look like she’s glaring at me. She reaches past me and grabs Marilyn by her
skinny wrist and pulls her away, but Carlo and Randy are gone. Where they stood are faces I don’t
recognize. Faces dancing. Masks I realize. Faces behind masks.
The DJ bobs
furiously with pursed lips, headphones disguised as fiendish, furry paws, in
the booth above the floor. He introduces
a new melody into the same harping beat, and I remember to dance. I remember you dancing. My fingers slide across your sweaty chest,
and I find your necklace. The sheet
clings to my body in places. The new
song sounds just like the last song but I’m suddenly crowded by strangers. I can no longer lift my legs as high as I
want to, so I sway in place, shuffle with the mortals on the floor.
Behind me someone
grabs me, accidentally perhaps, but I turn, violently, jealously. There are too many people in this equation. Twos become one again and again, and ones
become twos. All around me real numbers
add up to future possibilities.
Imaginary numbers. It’s why we’re
here dancing.
A cowboy nods his
hat in my direction. But he can’t be
nodding at us. We’re invisible. I think maybe he is a real ghost; he’s
peering intently into the holes cut out for my eyes. He looks like Randolph Scott, blond and
dusty, so I look around for Cary Grant as Jimi lifts the guitar from his lips
and wails. Randolph Scott is coming this
way and I turn my back and dance.
I want you back,
Elan. I want you back dancing beside
me. I start chanting this over and over
to myself. I want you back. I want you back.
You taught me the
power of words. I believed you. I can even smell you now. Sandalwood oil and sweat. I turn and expect to see you.
Not you behind
me.
Not you beside me.
Not you in front
of me.
Not you anywhere
around me.
I make my way to
the bar, but the bar is too crowded. The
barman’s face grimaces over hands holding folded dollars as he tries to keep
the glasses filled. The air is thick with smoke. It’s hard to breathe. I make my way to the door, notice the cowboy
trailing me. In the elevator, I go down
alone.
Into the rain on
Duvall Street, we walk out together. One
set of footprints splashes our muddy way home, then, turning, I realize we are
not going home, but passing more pagan tricksters decked out as holiday
spirits.
The
bells in the clock tower tell me it is midnight. Squeaking from its hinges, the door to
morning slowly opens and it’s All Saints Day, the Day of the Dead, and I am
walking toward Boot Hill, to where you are buried.
We’re alone in the
cemetery, and the wind lifts the rain in a mist rising up from the wet earth
that is claiming me. I remove my sheet
in front of the cement memorial that holds your body up above the boggy
ground. I remove my shoes. I strip off everything except your leather
pouch around my neck, and I dance for you.
My legs are free and I whirl and sing.
I’m dancing for you now, because you loved
to dance. I want you back dancing. I want you dancing now.
I’m dancing for you now, because you loved
to dance. I want you back dancing. I want you dancing now.
I’m dancing for you now, because you loved
to dance. I want you back dancing. I want you dancing now.
I’m dancing for you now, because you loved
to dance. I want you back dancing. I want you dancing now.
Ghost Dance, was first published
in Boulder Planet and
is reprinted from "Museum of False Starts" by Chip
Livingston (Copyright 2010). Reprinted by permission of Gival Press.
Chip Livingston is the mixed-blood Creek author of two collections of poetry, CROW-BLUE, CROW-BLACK and MUSEUM OF FALSE STARTS, and a collection of short stories, NAMING CEREMONY, Lethe Press 2014. Chip has received fiction awards from Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas, Wordcraft Circle of Writers and Storytellers, and the AABB Foundation. Chip grew up on the Florida-Alabama border and now lives in Colorado, where he teaches writing online, and is a faculty mentor in the low-rez MFA program at Institute of American Indian Arts in New Mexico.
Archive | Author
Chip Livingston
Orange Dream
By Wang Ping
Orange trees have roots in the earth
We migrants have roots in our souls
When the autumn wind blows across the Three Gorges, the hills along the Yangtze River light up with ripening oranges. They have been hiding behind leaves like shy girls all summer, but now they burst out shamelessly, filling the valley with their sharp citrus fragrance and flaming color.
And the peasants get busy. First, they repair the road from the orchards to the villages, from the villages to the highway and the river. All the roads are narrow dirt roads. All zigzag along the river cliffs. They get muddy after a few rains, and are often washed away by landslides. But no matter, it’s the only way to carry the golden harvest off the mountain slopes in bamboo baskets, out of the villages and Sichuan Basin in boats, ships, trucks, planes.
Next they clear the yards to make baskets. Oranges are fragile, easy to bruise and get moldy. Bamboo baskets are the best and cheapest containers. Since each family has about ten to twenty thousand jin of harvest, they’ll need hundreds of baskets. The villagers buy the raw materials, and hire bamboo smiths to make the baskets. Bamboo smiths come as a family, husband and wife, children, cousins. They work from six o’clock in the morning till midnight, taking breaks only when they eat. For each basket, they make two yuan, and a good smith can make about thirty-five baskets a day. And the peasants pick oranges, pack them in baskets, carry them down the steep hills, sell them to buyers from Chongqing, Chendu, Shanghai, Beijing...Orange price fluctuates according to the market demand, traffic, weather, and the whims of the wholesalers. There are times when they can’t sell at all. When late fall comes rolling with rain, the fruit rots in the mud. Even pigs won’t touch it.
This has been the way of life for the peasants along the river for two millennium.
The oranges from the Three Gorges have been known since the time of the Confucius (551-479 BC), Warring States (475-221 BC), Qin (221-207), Han (206 BC-220 AD), Tang (618- 907) dynasties, during which orange production was just as important as the salt industry, if not more. There were salt officials as well as orange officials managing the trade and farming. At 15, Du Fu (712-770) got his first government job to take care of 40 mu of orange groves and 100 mu of grain fields in Fengjie, where he wrote many of his great poems and made the place known as Poetry City.
The orange harvest was used as a symbol for the rise and fall of China. When an emperor chose the right way to run the country, there would be a good harvest and oranges would ripen with the right taste, color and texture. That was because the Three Gorges orange was the best of all fruit, and would serve only the true heavenly son. If the throne was usurped, oranges would turn sour, or refuse to grow at all. Peasants regard oranges as lucky symbols because of its shape, color and sound. Ju (orange) is close to the sound of good luck—ji. A peasant bride would hide an orange cake, rock sugar and a mirror in her bra on her wedding day, hoping they would give her a good, sweet and bright life.
Dried orange skin is called chen pi. It cures gastric pain, clears phlegm, and revives the faint of heart. Oranges soaked in 65 degree liquor are served with hot fondues. It’s fire upon fire, burning the toxin out of the body. And the sweetest oranges grow on ancient graves. Beginning from the Three Gorges and down the Yangtze River, oranges form China’s citrus belt—Chongqing, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Zhejiang. Away from the belt, they change flavor, color and taste. The farther away from the river, the worse they fare.
Most migrants no longer grow oranges. Those who moved 100 meters above the hills have lost the land and climate suitable for the citrus bush. Those who crossed the river sit in high-rise apartments with a big mortgage and little hope for a job. Those who moved to Shanghai, Fujian, Guangdong, and Shandong are struggling with different dialects and cultures, with dire opportunities for jobs or schools. They’ve been farmers for many generations, and growing oranges and fishing are the only skills they have. Many old and middle-aged migrants can’t stand the homesickness. They steal back to their old homes and live with their relatives or friends illegally. Many men have joined bangbangjun—the army of porters on streets, and girls become “goddesses” in hair salons, hotels, dance halls.
The orange—soul of the Three Gorges. It haunts the dream of every migrant. Even those who have made it in their new places aren’t exempt. Almost every migrant said they missed the orange fragrance, its color and taste, missed climbing the steep hills along the river to the orchards, missed the backbreaking season of the golden harvest.
They sing “Orange Tree” to the tune of the popular song “Olive Tree.”
Don’t ask me where I came from
My old home is far far away
Don’t ask why I keep roaming
Roaming in this strange land
For the birds wheeling in the sky
For the gibbons calling from the riverbanks
For the fish that swim upstream to spawn
I’m roaming, roaming
For the orange tree in my heart
For the orange soul in my dream
Copyright © Wang Ping. All rights reserved.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Wang Ping was born in China and came to USA in 1986. She is the founder and director of the Kinship of Rivers project, a five-year project that builds a sense of kinship among the people who live along the Mississippi and Yangtze rivers through exchanging gifts of art, poetry, stories, music, dance and food. With other artists and poets, she has been teaching poetry and art workshops to children and seniors along the river communities, making thousands of flags as gifts to bring to the Mississippi during 2011-12 and to the Yangtze in 2013.
Her publications include American Visa (short stories, 1994), Foreign Devil (novel, 1996), Of Flesh and Spirit (poetry, 1998), The Magic Whip (poetry, 2003), The Last Communist Virgin (stories, 2007), All Roads to Joy: Memories along the Yangtze (forthcoming 2012), all from Coffee House. New Generation: Poetry from China Today (1999), an anthology she edited and co-translated, is published by Hanging Loose. Flash Cards: Poems by Yu Jian, co-translation with Ron Padgett, 2010 from Zephyr. Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China (2000, University of Minnesota Press) won the Eugene Kayden Award for the Best Book in Humanities, and in 2002, Random House published its paperback. The Last Communist Virgin won 2008 Minnesota Book Award and Asian American Studies Award. She had two photography and multi-media exhibitions--“Behind the Gate: After the Flooding of the Three Gorges” at Janet Fine Art Gallery, Macalester College, 2007, and “All Roads to Lhasa” at Banfill-Lock Cultural Center, 2008. She collaborated with the British filmmaker Isaac Julien on Ten Thousand Waves, a film installation about the illegal Chinese immigration in London. She is the recipient of National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council of the Arts, Minnesota State Arts Board, the Bush Artist Fellowship, Lannan Foundation Fellowship, Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, and the McKnight Artist Fellowship. Visit her on the web at www.wangping.com/
Kinship of Rivers
http://www.kinshipofrivers.org/
Orange trees have roots in the earth
We migrants have roots in our souls
When the autumn wind blows across the Three Gorges, the hills along the Yangtze River light up with ripening oranges. They have been hiding behind leaves like shy girls all summer, but now they burst out shamelessly, filling the valley with their sharp citrus fragrance and flaming color.
And the peasants get busy. First, they repair the road from the orchards to the villages, from the villages to the highway and the river. All the roads are narrow dirt roads. All zigzag along the river cliffs. They get muddy after a few rains, and are often washed away by landslides. But no matter, it’s the only way to carry the golden harvest off the mountain slopes in bamboo baskets, out of the villages and Sichuan Basin in boats, ships, trucks, planes.
Next they clear the yards to make baskets. Oranges are fragile, easy to bruise and get moldy. Bamboo baskets are the best and cheapest containers. Since each family has about ten to twenty thousand jin of harvest, they’ll need hundreds of baskets. The villagers buy the raw materials, and hire bamboo smiths to make the baskets. Bamboo smiths come as a family, husband and wife, children, cousins. They work from six o’clock in the morning till midnight, taking breaks only when they eat. For each basket, they make two yuan, and a good smith can make about thirty-five baskets a day. And the peasants pick oranges, pack them in baskets, carry them down the steep hills, sell them to buyers from Chongqing, Chendu, Shanghai, Beijing...Orange price fluctuates according to the market demand, traffic, weather, and the whims of the wholesalers. There are times when they can’t sell at all. When late fall comes rolling with rain, the fruit rots in the mud. Even pigs won’t touch it.
This has been the way of life for the peasants along the river for two millennium.
The oranges from the Three Gorges have been known since the time of the Confucius (551-479 BC), Warring States (475-221 BC), Qin (221-207), Han (206 BC-220 AD), Tang (618- 907) dynasties, during which orange production was just as important as the salt industry, if not more. There were salt officials as well as orange officials managing the trade and farming. At 15, Du Fu (712-770) got his first government job to take care of 40 mu of orange groves and 100 mu of grain fields in Fengjie, where he wrote many of his great poems and made the place known as Poetry City.
The orange harvest was used as a symbol for the rise and fall of China. When an emperor chose the right way to run the country, there would be a good harvest and oranges would ripen with the right taste, color and texture. That was because the Three Gorges orange was the best of all fruit, and would serve only the true heavenly son. If the throne was usurped, oranges would turn sour, or refuse to grow at all. Peasants regard oranges as lucky symbols because of its shape, color and sound. Ju (orange) is close to the sound of good luck—ji. A peasant bride would hide an orange cake, rock sugar and a mirror in her bra on her wedding day, hoping they would give her a good, sweet and bright life.
Dried orange skin is called chen pi. It cures gastric pain, clears phlegm, and revives the faint of heart. Oranges soaked in 65 degree liquor are served with hot fondues. It’s fire upon fire, burning the toxin out of the body. And the sweetest oranges grow on ancient graves. Beginning from the Three Gorges and down the Yangtze River, oranges form China’s citrus belt—Chongqing, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Zhejiang. Away from the belt, they change flavor, color and taste. The farther away from the river, the worse they fare.
Most migrants no longer grow oranges. Those who moved 100 meters above the hills have lost the land and climate suitable for the citrus bush. Those who crossed the river sit in high-rise apartments with a big mortgage and little hope for a job. Those who moved to Shanghai, Fujian, Guangdong, and Shandong are struggling with different dialects and cultures, with dire opportunities for jobs or schools. They’ve been farmers for many generations, and growing oranges and fishing are the only skills they have. Many old and middle-aged migrants can’t stand the homesickness. They steal back to their old homes and live with their relatives or friends illegally. Many men have joined bangbangjun—the army of porters on streets, and girls become “goddesses” in hair salons, hotels, dance halls.
The orange—soul of the Three Gorges. It haunts the dream of every migrant. Even those who have made it in their new places aren’t exempt. Almost every migrant said they missed the orange fragrance, its color and taste, missed climbing the steep hills along the river to the orchards, missed the backbreaking season of the golden harvest.
They sing “Orange Tree” to the tune of the popular song “Olive Tree.”
Don’t ask me where I came from
My old home is far far away
Don’t ask why I keep roaming
Roaming in this strange land
For the birds wheeling in the sky
For the gibbons calling from the riverbanks
For the fish that swim upstream to spawn
I’m roaming, roaming
For the orange tree in my heart
For the orange soul in my dream
Copyright © Wang Ping. All rights reserved.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Wang Ping was born in China and came to USA in 1986. She is the founder and director of the Kinship of Rivers project, a five-year project that builds a sense of kinship among the people who live along the Mississippi and Yangtze rivers through exchanging gifts of art, poetry, stories, music, dance and food. With other artists and poets, she has been teaching poetry and art workshops to children and seniors along the river communities, making thousands of flags as gifts to bring to the Mississippi during 2011-12 and to the Yangtze in 2013.
Her publications include American Visa (short stories, 1994), Foreign Devil (novel, 1996), Of Flesh and Spirit (poetry, 1998), The Magic Whip (poetry, 2003), The Last Communist Virgin (stories, 2007), All Roads to Joy: Memories along the Yangtze (forthcoming 2012), all from Coffee House. New Generation: Poetry from China Today (1999), an anthology she edited and co-translated, is published by Hanging Loose. Flash Cards: Poems by Yu Jian, co-translation with Ron Padgett, 2010 from Zephyr. Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China (2000, University of Minnesota Press) won the Eugene Kayden Award for the Best Book in Humanities, and in 2002, Random House published its paperback. The Last Communist Virgin won 2008 Minnesota Book Award and Asian American Studies Award. She had two photography and multi-media exhibitions--“Behind the Gate: After the Flooding of the Three Gorges” at Janet Fine Art Gallery, Macalester College, 2007, and “All Roads to Lhasa” at Banfill-Lock Cultural Center, 2008. She collaborated with the British filmmaker Isaac Julien on Ten Thousand Waves, a film installation about the illegal Chinese immigration in London. She is the recipient of National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council of the Arts, Minnesota State Arts Board, the Bush Artist Fellowship, Lannan Foundation Fellowship, Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, and the McKnight Artist Fellowship. Visit her on the web at www.wangping.com/
Kinship of Rivers
http://www.kinshipofrivers.org/
Archive | Author
Wang Ping
Driving Toward Yes
By Dawn Downey
The desert wind whispered yes as it blew across Dad’s
brow. In the summer of 1964, he and three of his teenagers (my older sister
Michelle, younger brother Bill, and me) waited impatiently at the edge of the
Mojave. Our road trip interrupted, because our family cat was having kittens in
the back of the station wagon.
Five days earlier, at age forty-three, Dad closed up Bill’s Body
Shop, his car repair business. He waived goodbye to relatives and friends, and
drove away from Des Moines, leading a four-vehicle caravan down Route 66, off
to California in pursuit of dreams.
Only a high school graduate himself, Dad insisted his kids would
go to college. He had five children, number six on the way, and no means to
finance all that education. But he’d read the University of California was tuition-free
for the state’s residents. The fact that no job awaited him in the golden
state—he’d work that out later.
He drove the station wagon and pulled a U Haul trailer.
Michelle, who’d earned her driver’s license two weeks before, drove a second car.
She towed a VW Bug, which Dad planned to sell in California. Bill and I rode
shotgun.
A water pump or two broke along the way. An eighteen-wheeler
mangled the trailer hitch. And Dad and Michelle parted company for a while—he
following the arrow on a detour sign, she driving around the sign and heading
toward Canada. But the four of us ended up together at the edge of the Mojave.
While waiting to cross it in the cool of the night, we watched Cass birth her
kittens, while the sun painted the sky pale pink, then navy blue. As we fussed
over the cat and complained about the heat, Dad towered over us, as big as the
desert.
Early the next morning he delivered his brood—three kids and
five cats—to Pasadena. (The kids went on to college; the cats did not.)
Long before our cross-country trek, my father had outgrown his
life in Des Moines. Between pounding out fenders, he’d written his first novel
on a legal pad. A year after the move to California, the Santa Barbara News
Press hired him, on the strength of an article he submitted. He was their first
African American reporter. He walked into the interview straight from his job
as a mechanic at the local Ford dealership, his muscled six-foot frame stuffed
into a pair of blue coveralls.
While working at the paper, he typed his second novel during
lunch breaks, in the back of his camper.
He stretched the newspaper job from obituary writer into outdoor
columnist. Every week, he expanded Gone Fishin’ beyond the expected
descriptions of the best camping spots and the latest model boats. His readers
got to know his old Uncle Russell in Ottumwa, and his brother Al, a TV
weatherman in Des Moines. When Uncle Russell got sick, he received hundreds of
get-well cards from all across the country. I suspected then that Dad might be
more than just the guy who grounded me.
After a ten-year stint as newspaper columnist, he transformed
himself into freelance writer and then again into published author, with five
books to his credit. He supplemented his income by teaching memoir writing
through adult education. And that’s how he became a guru. Others taught; Dad
cheered, encouraged, cajoled, nudged, nagged, poked and mesmerized. One of his
students described the classroom experience as a cross between a quilting bee
and a revival meeting.
Repeaters were common. Many took his course five years in a row.
One returned fifteen times. On the rare occasions that illness kept him home,
Dad learned that his substitutes had been greeted with surly expressions and
sarcastic complaints. My father had groupies.
Over the thirty years he taught, he told his students to take
more risks and write to their edge. After he died, a group of loyalists
continued meeting, reserving an empty chair for him.
Decades later, I feel him pushing me too. Through divorce,
lay-offs and career changes, he's challenged me to take a risk. When I’m typing
against a deadline in the middle of the night, I catch sight of him standing at
the edge of the Mojave. And I remember Dad driving toward yes.
Dawn Downey, an essayist, finds inspiration in everyday situations.
She writes about topics ranging from her pursuit of the perfect purse* to her
search for the meaning of life--with jealousy, prejudice, guilt and inadequacy
thrown in for good measure. She views them through the lens of a spiritual path
that has wound through the teachings of the Buddha, around to non-duality, and
has stopped for a while at devotion—a kinder, gentler relationship with the
sweet goofiness that makes us human. She secretly wants to be a rock star, but
since she can't sing, settles for reading her stories at coffee shops, galleries
and book stores, anywhere there's a microphone and an audience. She lives in
Kansas City with her husband, aka groupie, roadie and driver. He spoils her
rotten. She reciprocates.
Dawn Downey is the author of “Stumbling Toward the Buddha, Tripping Over my Principles on the Road to Transformation.” www.dawndowney.com
Dawn Downey is the author of “Stumbling Toward the Buddha, Tripping Over my Principles on the Road to Transformation.” www.dawndowney.com
Archive | Author
Dawn Downey
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River, Blood, And Corn Literary Journal: A Community of Voices
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If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.—Barry Lopez, in Crow and Weasel