Grandaddy's Hands

My mom wrote this poem as a type of elegy after her father passed away. I wanted to put it up here as a remembrance for him and because it is a really beautiful poem.

Daddy's Hands
baseball mitt palms
and plump sausage fingers
dirtied and hardened by
construction labor;
a hard day's work
born of necessity

extentions of a creative mind -
for crafts, repairs and gardens that
needed plowing and tending

rarely raised in anger;
not for disciplining,
those hands

In loving memory: 
George Ashley (1930 - 2009)

Copyright Brenda DeRamus 2009

Michael Cunningham Visits The University of Puget Sound

I ended last week by attending a performance of Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours, reading the prologue of the acclaimed novel to the music that inspired its creation. Cunningham thrust us into the experience of listening to literature to a soundtrack. Mozart and Schubert best captured the general tone of what he thought his novel would be. He described listening to the classical compositions over and over again until the lives of his both fictive and historical characters came into fruition. So he read to us his written incarnation of Virginia Woolf while the Northwest Sinfonietta String Quartet played Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" live to the cadence of his voice. To sum it all up, he completed his reading of the prologue, the intimate scene depicting his vision of Virginia Woolf's suicide, to the music from the motion picture composed by Philip Glass. From second row center, I closed my eyes and listened to Mrs. Woolf being engulfed by eddies of water through the unsettling trills of two violins, the deep current of the pulsating bass and the swift arpeggios of the piano that insistently pulled her along the river bottom. That night I got a book signed, purchased my first Philip Glass album, went home, listened and read.

Cunningham did me a favor really. I realize now how to use music to benefit my writing. Picking a tone is like picking the color of a certain day or feeling. Now something that seemed intrusive to my writing process can take part in getting some of those blasted words down onto some paper, or into the screen, for a change. As a musician myself I can only leap for joy at the joining of these two art forms, and I have to say, I've come away from it all with some new ideas.

Sephia Day

The day Grandma Banks died, people congregated in one space, brought dining chairs into the living room, sat on the floor, laid on each others' laps, laughed and quietly brushed at watery eyes for the first time in years. They let their hair down again. They loved and remembered. She had passed away and so we all came together, out of the woodwork, for her. The cousins I had grown up with, who I had not seen for over seven years were suddenly all together as familiar strangers and adults. I was ecstatic and solemn, feelings so far apart that they hardly made any sense at all.

I can't really describe what it was like, experiencing death among loved ones for the first time, finally grasping that my step-mother's family was mine too, had been all along, and being sad too. But that day I remember in sephia because it was like living in a memory. Because my emotions were polar opposites, black and white, like an old photograph. Then and now. Before and after. We were girls in white dresses and lace socks, we are grown women, independent, working, maybe in love, and confused because we are still young. And one day we'll be gone too. The sensation is too fresh to get now, but sephia describes it and makes a home of it for me.

In Loving Memory of Idella Cavit Banks (May 16, 1925 - March 19, 2009).

Hoshi Kashiwagi and American Autobiography

Today, memoirist Hoshi Kashiwagi spoke to my Genre: Nonfiction class about autobiography, family, secrets, and what it means to own your own story. But we can't really own our own stories can we? As I "write down my own bones" I find that every single one of them has touched or is attached deeply to someone else. While Dr. Kashiwagi talked about Japanese internment during the second World War, the useless feeling to which he succumbed while imprisoned, "no-no boys," half-owned half memories, and theatre art in a veritable jail, I thought about my mother, half siblings, our fathers, Alabama, and the Golden Gate Bridge. Can I morally tell my story when more than half of it belongs to someone else? Memoirists debate over the need to be true to their familial allegiances and there indescribable need to tell a true story, their story. Some have insurance to deal with the discrepancies, some take their chances, others have severed ties. There is no easy answer, no way to compromise desire with sometimes flimsy obligations. So I will try to write the truth. I will try not to hurt your feelings. I will try not to hurt my own feelings.  But tell the truth, tell the truth.

In the spirit of autobiography, which I've been working with a lot of lately, I picked a neat prompt to motivate some writing. In a week or so I'll post my own response to the prompt. Please feel free to post your own response in a comment which I can put up if you like, or just share your experience in a comment if you decide to write something. (I found this prompt in the article "Writing the Memoir: A Practical Guide to the Craft, the Personal Challenges, the Ethical Dilemmas of Writing Your True Stories," by Judith Barrington.)

Pick a day or part of a day from your memory and assign it a color. Describe that time, returning to, and developing, the theme of color and showing the reader why you think of it as a "yellow day" or a "purple afternoon."

Remember to pick a strong memory...

Swimming in the American: A Memoir and Selected Writings

By Hoshi Kashiwagi

Legally Own Your Work: How to Copyright Your Stuff

I've put some poetry on here but stories are my thing. I'd like to put some up but the main concern holding me back is that this is a public venue and there is no legal protection of my work. I asked a professor of mine, Hans Ostrom, who regularly puts his poetry in his blog, about the copyrighting process and his peace of mind. I thought I should put what I learned regarding the copyright process up here for the benefit of other creative writers.

There are two ways to go about copyrighting your work: Go through the U.S. Government. There is always a fee if you do it this way. You can go to this site and check it out: http://www.copyright.gov/. Here you can find everything from long winded descriptions of legalities to hokey anime animations that break down the whole process for you. Doing it this way is expensive, especially if you have a lot of pieces that are not part of a larger collection. 

There is a much simpler and cheaper way to go about this that will cost only as much as your work's weight in postage stamps. Mail the thing to yourself. Just make sure that it has a clear date stamped on the envelope. When you receive your present in the mail, don't open it. Keep it as proof that you have in fact copyrighted your work. You can mail novels, stories and poetry to yourself individually or together as a large collection. It's really up to you and what your own ideas are about how your work should be published. For instance, if you send a collection of short stories to yourself but a year later add two more stories to that collection to make a new edition, the new stories are not copyrighted. To be considered a part of the whole collection you would have to re-mail the collection to yourself with the new stories included. The new date stamp is the new copyright date. Of course, this information is heavily informal and should be researched again before you consider copyrighting. Here is an interesting site that debates the issue (because it is an issue): http://www.copyrightauthority.com/poor-mans-copyright. Copyrighting your work protects your work and makes sure that you lawfully receive credit whenever someone other than yourself publishes it. Which ever method you use, make sure you understand all of the laws associated with that method and above all, make sure you are comfortable with using that method for something you worked hard to create. 

Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit"

Ben tipped me off to this song. Billie Holiday, otherwise known as Lady Day, adapted this song from a poem and melody written by an English teacher named Abel Meeropol who wanted to address the southern atrocity, lynching. Holiday performed this at the risk of losing her career. Her music was a seminal contribution to the jazz musical surge towards the end of the Harlem Renaissance. It popularized the intimacy that is felt while listening to this song, watching her visage, and reading her words. Read the lyrics first, then listen, then read and listen at the same time.

Strange Fruit

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Some things to think about:

What does Holiday do differently with her voice? Her face? What effect does it have on you as you watch her?
Why does Meeropol use the poplar tree as a vehicle to portray lynching?
What is significant about the scent of magnolias?

Billie Holiday (April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959)
Abel Meeropol (February 10, 1903 - October 30, 1986)

Thanks for that awesome observation Ben.

Two Good Watches for Black History Month

"500 Years Later" is a great documentary to watch for Black History Month. Instead of just focusing on blacks in the United States, historians and professors, students and professionals, follow Africans through the centuries all over the world starting from the slave trade. Blacks are not termed as African American or African English or African Belizean, but together as African descendants. Through watching this I learned that many of the race issues that African Americans face are faced by the millions of blacks around the world who have descended from enslaved ancestors. It brings up issues about the legacy of slavery, the absence of African history/philosophy/art/spirituality in our history books,  and internalized racism. The documentary is very much supportive of the pan-africanist philosophy, which was a new take for me on how to approach black identity in a white world, but it broadened my perspective about who I have been as an African American and who I want to be as an African American. 

"The Color of Fear" is a dialogue project between eight American males - black, white, Asian, and Latino - specifically discussing racism in the United States. This documentary is not about black history or Black History Month but serves as a good follow up to "500 Years Later," which left me asking many more questions about race relations in the U.S.

This film addresses and asks questions such as:

What does it mean to be white vs. a person of color in the United States?

What does it mean to be American?

What is the definition of racism?

Is there a solution to contemporary racism?

The conversation between these men forces us to redefine racism as we know it and confront stereotypes that we all have about others and even ourselves. This is a must see for every American.

Below is a trailer to the film.

 

On Slave Narratives and Kate McCafferty's "Testimony of an Irish Slave Girl"

I just finished reading Kate McCafferty's Testimony of an Irish Slave Girl, a fictional slave narrative about an Irish child forced into slavery by her English overlords. After reading the autobiographical narratives Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass   by Frederick Douglass for two classes that I am currently taking, I thought it would be interesting to read a slave narrative from the seldom-studied point of view of a white European slave, captured, put on a ship, and forced into indentured servitude in much the same way as hundreds of thousands of Africans were. The crucial difference? The possibility of freedom. Although this work is fictional, I thought it captured the realities of what it may have been like to be a female Irish slave in the caribbean very well.

On the tiny caribbean island of Barbados during the mid 1600's, Cot Daley faces many of the same struggles that a black slave woman would have as she copes with coercion into the role of breeder and mate, while at the same time she superficially benefits by being one step higher on the social hierarchical ladder than the Africans by whose sides she works: if she behaves, she can eventually go home. While this possibility remains a ray of hope for Cot, she must still confront the alienation that comes with bearing the same shade of skin as her captors and the captors of the entire slave community. Her tale is not only one of survival, but one of trying to find a place and home within a community that is resistant to accepting her as one of their own.

"How to Write Good"

Here is a list of some rules about fiction writing and writing in general. I don't know where this came from, but some items on this list are pulled from William Safire's Rules for Writers. Some I agree with and some I don't. Most make me laugh.

"1. Avoid alliteration. Always.

2. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.

3. Employ the vernacular.

4. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.

5. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.

6. Remember to never split an infinitive.

7. Contractions aren't necessary.

8. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.

9. One should never generalize.

10. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."

11. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.

12. Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.

13. Be more or less specific.

14. Understatement is always best.

15. One-word sentences? Eliminate.

16. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.

17. The passive voice is to be avoided.

18. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.

19. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.

20. Who needs rhetorical questions?

21. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

22. Don't never use a double negation.

23. capitalize every sentence and remember always end it with point

24. Do not put statements in the negative form.

25. Verbs have to agree with their subjects.

26. Proofread carefully to see if you words out.

27. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.

28. A writer must not shift your point of view.

29. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.)

30. Don't overuse exclamation marks!!

31. Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to the irantecedents.

32. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.

33. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.

34. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.

35. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.

36. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.

37. Always pick on the correct idiom.

38. The adverb always follows the verb.

39. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; They're old hat; seek viable alternatives."

An Opportunity, A Tribute

Wilmott Proviso Ragsdale
(August 19, 1911 - January 16, 2009)

I wrote this essay in response to a contest prompt. The one who can best explain their reasons for wanting this prize (a 10 day trip to Africa with New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof) is the winner. It seemed the proper time to mull through some feelings about the recent death of an elderly friend of mine, Rags.

"I used to drive an old man around. He was modest and simple. He wouldn't step outside without a cap, a pair of loafers, and a kerchief in his breast pocket. He was that kind of an old man. Always put together, always a gentleman, and always abundantly kind. Wherever I drove him, somebody inevitably knew him; sometimes personally or simply as the great writer, journalist, and teacher that he was. While I drove or walked with him through grocery aisles he told me stories. He told me that his first car was a Ford Model T and that he remembered San Francisco, my hometown, before there was a Golden Gate Bridge. He told me what it was like working behind the scenes in the Oval Office under Roosevelt and how strange it was to see that strong man carried like a babe in the arms of a secret service officer. He told me about the scentless roses of Cairo and heat in India and how he had hunted a tiger there and was glad, though much later, that he had failed to kill “such a beautiful creature.” He told me many things. But the one thing he repeated to me often was that I should write always and read even more, even as his own eyes failed and no longer permitted him to do so.

While he was still alive I won a university fiction competition named for Esther Wagner who had been a professor and writer at the University of Puget Sound. When he learned of my achievement he bought me a bouquet of sunflowers and chowder to share while we chatted at his friend Rosa’s house.

He said between sips of soup, “Actually, Rosa and I used to spend a lot of time with Esther.”
“Yes,” Rosa interjected. “She used to sit right there, where you are sitting and eat soup with me, sometimes every week!”

That was when my writing became more deeply connected to me, through this man who had inspired me through a life he led many years ago.

His name was Wilmott Ragsdale (Rags) – the only journalism professor ever to teach at the University of Puget Sound, a veteran and war correspondent of WWII who reported on the Normandy invasion for Time Magazine, and writer for the Tacoma News Tribune and The Wall Street Journal.

I read this great man my prose and he told me never to stop. He told me to be a journalist, and while journalism is a field little known to me I feel that it is within my grasp because of him. I received an interdisciplinary grant last summer of $3000 to do my own writing project, at which time I wrote a collection of autobiographical stories. At the end of my project I did a reading of my work. Rags couldn’t make it because he had a stroke, so I read them to him while he was in the hospital. His earnest interest in my creative development has motivated me continuously throughout the time that I have known him and even after. Going to Africa and writing about it would be a grand accomplishment for me but it would also be a tribute to Rags, whom I have never been able to thank for his friendship, mentorship and steadfast belief in me."

After Rags passed away I learned the full meaning of his unique name in the most unlikeliest of places. I was in one of my classes and close to dozing in the middle of a lecture about the Mexican War, when his name seemed to bellow from my professor's mouth. He was talking about the Wilmot Proviso of 1846, a campaign against slavery advancing westward as new territories were conquered by the United States. Here is a small blurb about the Proviso from Wikipedia.org:

"The Wilmot Proviso was introduced on August 8, 1846, in the United States House of Representatives as a rider on a $2 million appropriations bill intended for the final negotiations to resolve the Mexican-American War. The intent of the proviso, submitted by Democratic Congressman David Wilmot, was to prevent the introduction of slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico. The proviso did not pass in this session or in any other session when it was re-introduced over the course of the next several years, but many consider it as one of the first events on the long slide to secession and Civil War which would accelerate through the 1850s." 

The remainder of this article can be found at this url: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmot_Proviso