Ajax Minor's Blog, page 7

New Voices: Keith Jason Carlock

Over the past few weeks I’ve posted some work in my Blog by previously unpublished authors. My sister, Joanne Trebbe’s, story The Old Soul appeared here. And more recently Winter Solstice Dance by Jude Ward.  Fresh voices are fun. But sharing your work, your thoughts, can be uncomfortable. One reader acknowledged that she had written a lot of poetry but felt very self conscious about putting it ‘out there.’  In fact she wondered if her reticence was hiding a deeper problem. Nope. All art is ‘performance art.’ As I said to her, even if the audience is ‘one,’ just yourself, it’s hard to confront feelings and beliefs in black and white. But the best way to truly understand your belief systems is to put them on ‘paper,’ digital or analog.

So when I offered a set of my series, The Ur Legend, to people who would share their written work on my author Facebook page, only one brave soul stood up. Below is his poem.

He sets the scene in the first few lines and then the poem soars with those quirky, lovely tropes only poetry can produce. Finally, deep, wrenching feeling emerges in the last line.

The Autumn Victorian

by Keith Jason Carlock

Moss-walls, garden-harvest, golden-sun turns afternoon-orange in the patio-vines hangin.

And in the coolness of air, parlor-games played in the old Victorian.

And the Autumn Victorian walks thru the leaves on the streets, the wind sends the leaves into dancing.

Like a ghost in a netherworld scene, swirl-winds serene, it’s Autumn breathing.

Bolt-white shards and ghosts of lightning. Never a full moment, cause it never ends.

Live was fine when she was alive, but love has now turned into graveyard dreams.

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Poets

A few weeks ago I published a short story by my sister, Joanne Trebbe, who was previously unpublished. This week, as promised, I’m publishing a work by Jude Ward.

She is actually the person who ‘stalked’ away from me in a cornfield in my short story,  ‘I Married a Butterfly’. So it’s true that authors write from experience!

I consider her a real talent and I hope readers will encourage her to go through all of her work and pick the best to published. Her talent needs to be shared.

Read her poem, “Winter Solstice Dance, by Jude Ward,” here: https://ajaxminor.com/stories/winter-solstice-dance/

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Who Knew? : Red and Blue

I’m a novice at Social Media. One of my previous Blogs and subsequent FB posts appeared not on FB but Instagram (yes, be careful; this can happen). My SM Guru (that’s Social Media, NOT, well you know…),  decided that we should reBoost to FB last week. The post was a riff on my essay in a previous Blog on The National Marriage: Red and Blue.

I posted on FB that parents now consider political affiliation more important in how they view their child’s choice of a life partner than religion, which dominated opinion fifty years ago. The picture accompanying my comment asked the question: Have we Lost our Minds?

To my surprise the Post drew a bit of a firestorm. I’ve written on a number of topics that could be considered volatile: guns, God and the like. I always try to make any comments of mine germane to the subjects in my Fantasies. In my second novel, The Girl from Ipanema, I paint a picture of a dystopian future shaped by an ecological catastrophe, and in the story the USA fragments into a number of small republics defined not only by geography but by belief systems. So I thought my Blog germane.

I was not prepared for the reaction. I’d heard of this kind of firefight on social media, but now I was in the middle. Some comments were thoughtful:

You’d think morals and ethics would top the list

Seemed reasonable to me. And:

Neither religion or party is important. The important thing is how they treat your child.

With you on that one. Then things got interesting:

When you consider that Republicans prefer wishful thinking to scientific theory and have no problem with a foreign adversary interfering in the sovereign affairs of our country, it makes you wonder; or how a party that once followed a consistent political ideology has suddenly cast it aside to impose tariffs and spend money like there’s no tomorrow it also makes you wonder

Which elicited:

Actually republicans are rooted in facts. Russia did not change a single vote in 2016. BO even said so. So this Russia thing is a smoke screen for illegal action at DOJ and FBI to cover up for Hillary’s criminal negligence with classified intelligence material and the coverup that followed.

As far as science, I assume you refer to the ocean level rise that hasn’t happened and the amazing failure of the artic poles to melt. As far as spending money, talk to me in 8 years if the debt goes up by $10 Trillion. Otherwise BO retains the record for waste and fraud.

So one Reply launched what a specialist in group problem solving called “a heat seeking missile”. I Replied that I appreciated the fact that the respondents proved the point of my Blog about National Divorce and my FB post. But how quickly things got off the rails was interesting. We see this all the time. A general statement can send people off in a number of directions on specific issues to ‘prove’ their point. This got me to thinking about how we form personal philosophies that support our policy positions.

Well, I guess I could write a book about this and many certainly have been. One answer is that there were key people in our lives, or key experiences that gave shape and give substance to our beliefs. I read one in college: Political Thinking and Consciousness by Robert Lane.

A fun read (not worth the $700 for hard copy but you can get the paperback for a buck and change). But certainly there is truth in the notion that we tend to adopt belief systems around which we grew up. One respondent to the FB post wrote:

Yes and I am not religious but red or blue doesn’t work either. Teach your children to free think.

True enough. But of course we know that ‘free thinking’ is hard work. That is, divorcing our thought process from ideas heard as children and adolescents. I grew up in a family where a Great Grandfather was a Socialist and emigrated with his family from Poland at the turn of the last century to escape Bismark’s ‘Anti-Socialist Law’. And a Grandfather,with distinctly Socialist views, emigrated from Wales. My maternal Grandmother was a Connecticut Yankee and a diehard Republican. Boy was it fun watching the news at their house. Within five minutes of Cronkite signing on they began a vigorous debate, to put it mildly. But they loved one another and got along otherwise.

So did this environment affect me? As a matter of disclosure I land on the Left side of the political 50 yard line. I was closest to my maternal Grandma but ended up with different views. However, being honest, I’m sure what I heard as a kid affected me.

I think it’s important to step back and try to figure out WHY you believe what you do. Do we have a viewpoint on Nature versus Nurture? The Left preferring the former and the right the latter explanation. The debate can be summarized succinctly  in the following song from West Side Story:

What do you think?

A single experience can shape or even change our worldview. My wife Linda worked with clients in Latin America during her career in international banking. Her exposure to the extreme poverty on that continent changed her views on religion and politics. Having grown up conservative and a regular at Church she began to question her belief systems.

Speaking of Church, God now seems to get into politics all the time. One person wrote:

Religion? Politics? . The same thing these days

I agree. It seems as if compromise on a number of issues gets pushed aside as the debate slides into an exchange of views on other more thorny problems. Why would we ever agree with anyone who defends/opposes gun control? It’s as if our discourse makes people view one another immediately as ‘enemy’, much as armies wore different and brightly colored uniforms in the eighteenth century so they would be sure to shoot only the enemy. Why discuss Infrastructure with someone who supports/opposes Abortion?

But God does always seem to get into any political discussion, eventually. One person wrote:

Suffice to say that if the full truth were preached in the fullness of God. Democrats couldn’t stay in the pew long without repentance.

Well, I’m a Democrat and, as do many people, have plenty to repent so I guess he has a point. Sort of. The nice thing about the notion of God is that those who believe can’t be proven wrong and those who don’t can’t be proven wrong either. So why not lay the notion aside while we try to solve our problems?

I’ve gone over 1000 words and if you’ve made it this far you’re probably exhausted. But do try to quietly reflect on where your views on topical issues come from and why groups of people affiliated with liberal or conservative views all agree on the same, seemingly disparate issues.

Examine your own personal history, examine critically your important belief systems and test them in a very hot crucible.

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Black and Blue: Divorce

I wrote a Blog recently about The National Marriage: Red and Blue, a  response to a David Brooks column in the New York Times. But what about the personal side of divorce? I went through one as a youth of 24. I had married a girl whom I’d first started dating in senior year of high school and then through college. She was, and is, beautiful and brilliant. A math major and a computer programmer way back when she’d often come home late because she had to wait for a program to run on time sharing. Anybody remember those days?

Anyway, we’ve kept in touch over the years and now have semi-annual calls on our respective birthdays to catch up. She remarried to a wonderful guy. My dentist! Brilliant in his own field. She had two sons and now has grandchildren. So things have turned out pretty well for her without old Ajax. She said we were too young. And maybe we were.

But the fault lies with me. However, that’s another story. Regardless, the pain and guilt remain.

I write poetry from time to time to work on economy in my writing and to try different forms of expression.

The poem is about a metaphorical gift of Anniversary Flowers—Click here to read.

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Bad Moon Risin’

While I continue to nurse my wife Linda after her foot surgery, I’ll be short on copy and long on video this week. So if you enjoyed my shot at ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’ last week, we’ll post my second song at the Sardine Factory in Monterey CA, ‘Bad Moon Risin’.

Given that I wrote Sun Valley Moon Mountains, in which A moon, Luna, is the context of the fantasy proper, I think it’s an appropriate riff.

The moon always held a particular fascination for me ever since my Grandma Kattie (yup, she was based on a real person) told me, after my Grandfather died, that the moon is where dead people go. I looked, as a child, with wonder at a bright Gibbous, as Jaq did on his porch in Ketchum.

My rendition of the Creedence Clear Water song may not be a wonder but I hope you enjoy it!

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Ajax Minor: A Different Shade of Tale

As individuals we are all unique, if not all equal in talent or, especially, recognition. We all have a different Tale to tell. I actually believe that if any two people are paired up, there will always be one thing that one excels at over the other. It could be playing the violin or getting that damned fourth screw in or out of a piece of furniture!

So, I write. As I’ve often said, I didn’t realize fiction was something I could do until I had a reason to write. I enjoy writing fiction and I guess a few people have enjoyed reading my stories, although I don’t think ‘best seller’ is in my future. But, as Buddhists believe, the DOING is the thing, not the result. It may not be the Western way of thinking, but all of us engage in activities for pleasure that we enjoy, even if our piano playing won’t get us on stage at Carnegie Hall, or our painting into the Museum of Modern Art.

Over the next couple of weeks and from time to time I’d like to share some of my avocations besides writing.

I always enjoyed singing. In high school and college I did some Broadway, some choral work and was in a small Madrigal group (my favorite madrigal BTW was Orlando Gibbons’ ‘The Silver Swan’). Anyway, as I got older (as in really OLD, on Medicare–you know) the classical repertoire became more difficult, so I began to sing rock.

Check out my debut at Sardine Factory in Monterey, CA recently doing ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’. Performance, whether on stage or  publishing literature, means totally exposing yourself and it can make you feel very vulnerable. I was a bit nervous at first at the Factory but got some mojo going.

On the piano is my voice coach, David Conley, a brilliant musician who plays piano, guitar and drums and sings with boundless energy:

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The National Marriage: Red and Blue

Last month, David Brooks wrote a column in the New York Times, to which he is a weekly contributor, entitled ‘How to Repair the National Marriage’.  I’ve decided to write on that topic.

In ‘The Girl from Ipanema‘ (which is Book #2 of  The Ur Legend Book Series), the USA, as we know it, was fragmented into a number of regions: the new Confederate States of America, the Rocky Mountain Republic and several others. While the new configuration was geographical, there was more than geography that distinguished the boundaried polities.

So I think Brooks’ idea is worth exploring, as the rupture in our national discourse is reflected in an aspect of the narrative in TGFI. And we continue our national food fight with a new point of contention each week. As I started writing this piece two weeks ago, the issue was Justice Kennedy’s replacement on SCOTUS. Now it’s ‘wouldn’t not would’. Dizzying to keep up with the weekly sources of venom.

‘How do I despise thee, let me count the ways’.

If Brooks’ argument is to be considered, the first question becomes: Is the marriage worth saving? As the USA is the most powerful and, arguably, the most successful country in history, the answer must be ‘Yes’. However, the question then becomes: Can it be saved? Let’s examine Brooks’ analogy.

Brooks writes about process. He makes the point that “the first task in repairing a marriage (and by analogy the National Marriage) is to seek empathetic understanding of the other person” and further that “The crucial step is the raw and willful decision each person must make…to recommit.” Are either of these expectations reasonable? It’s hard to believe this is possible, as discourse has deteriorated so badly. Not only is our national conversation ugly, but there are constant efforts on both sides of the political 50 yard line to undermine any attempt at compromise and to instigate outright hatred.

So we’re off to a bad start. But assuming we might have a rational discourse, what can we hope to achieve? Brooks makes the inference, from the literature he’s read on the subject, that “the people who repair marriages don’t necessarily fix their central disagreement. They just overwhelm the negative with the positive.” In my mind, this is a form of self deception. Or to put it in more colloquial terms, we’re putting lipstick on a pig. That won’t fool anyone. For if there is an unresolvable central issue at the heart of the conflict, does it really make sense to move forward together?

By objective measures, as I stated above, the ‘national marriage’ is worth saving; but does it make sense at a more visceral level. As an analogy, many marriages hold together ‘because of the kids’. Worthy, certainly, but after the ‘kids’ go off to college the internal tension becomes unbearable and the marriage dissolves. In the case of the US, the kids have grown up in the sense that we have proved a democratic polity to be achievable. The question then becomes: is our special demographic capable of living not only in harmony but of actually being happy as one national culture?

To examine this let’s look at another of Brooks’ assertions, which I believe to be correct.

He says: “Overcoming tribalism means rising up and taking care of problems that weren’t addressed at the founding…”. If one reads the Federalist Papers and the anti-Federalist arguments, it is clear that we had, and still have, a fundamental disagreement about the role of government. Hamilton represented those who believed in a strong central government and can be contrasted, not with Madison, but with Patrick Henry for whom ‘country’ meant his own state of Virginia. Robert E Lee used the same language referring to Virginia. It should be noted that while the Constitution was ratified unanimously, the vote was a very closely run thing, a 51/49 proposition, in many colonies. The issue remains still as a philosophical point of contention, which may never be resolvable.

It is also worth noting a passage in Harper Lee’s ‘Go Set a Watchman’. Scout and her Uncle Jack have a long discussion arising out of Scout’s frustration with both her father, Atticus Finch, and with southern society in general after the Brown v Board of Education decision. Her uncle attempts to explain behavior in the white South of the time. He says: “Has it ever occurred to you…that this territory (south of the Mason Dixon line) was a separate nation?” He even invokes the phrase “Tribal feelin”! The demographics and philosophies of North and South were very different at the founding. So perhaps this is Brooks’ ‘central disagreement’, which can never be fully resolved. I believe, as he states, that we can overcome this by compromise and overwhelming “the negative with the positive” on a variety of issues.  But what about the ‘Tribal feelin’? This is where the problem of satisfaction and happiness enter the debate.

Hot button issues expose this unhappiness. In America before the Civil War, the issue was slavery that got murky and subjective, as opposed to disagreements about tariffs and government projects like canals that helped commerce grow and flourish.

Today we deal with three issues that appear unresolvable: abortion, guns and gay rights.

While Europe faces its own challenges, especially national identity and immigration, those may pass. It is even arguable that guns and gays can be resolved with rational policies. But abortion? Not only are the arguments strong and reasonable on both sides but the slippery notion of religion and God are brought into the discussion. And God is a tough one. Non believers can take comfort in the fact that believers can’t prove a god exists, and believers are safe in that it cannot be proven a god does not exist.

Perhaps all of these contentious topics are merely symptoms of the original disagreement about the type of society in which a person wishes to live. And this is important because we all value ‘happiness’. Recall the ‘pursuit of Happiness’ as Jefferson’s odd substitution for ‘property’ in the Declaration of Independence. Maybe this is what he meant by the phrase. Maybe the value of a society cannot be measured by objective ‘success’ but by whether or not its citizens are in fact ‘Happy’.

If I had been born in the late eighteenth century I would have been a Hamiltonian Federalist, in Lincoln’s time a Whig and I would have embraced Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive domestic agenda. But I’m no longer convinced that the American experiment can continue to provide our citizenry with ‘happiness’. Perhaps Patrick Henry was right and we all need to live in our own ‘country’. The country that makes us content and fulfilled, even at the expense of economic gain and power.

Perhaps we should invoke Jefferson again:

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature  and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Think hard. This is an important question.

Should we forsake this experiment and replace it with something different, call a Constitutional Convention, or should we do as David Brooks suggests and make the “raw and willful decision…to recommit”?

The world I created in ‘The Girl from Ipanema’ was forced by an environmental catastrophe. We are not forced as a nation to make this choice but can make it of our own free will. So, what’s your choice?

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Old then New

We’re going to reprise some previously published short stories and poems this week. Why? Well, maybe some of you are either new to this site or simply haven’t read these.

The look back will be followed by a look forward to Book 3 of ‘The Ur Legend‘, ‘Kutusov’s Dream’.

Pay close attention to ‘I Married a Butterfly‘ and ‘Betelgeuse‘.

(Butterfly returns in ‘Kutusov’s Dream’!)

I MARRIED A BUTTERFLY

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Split Rock by Holly Hodder Eger: A Review

Is Split Rock by Holly Hodder Eger a romance? Is it the story of one woman’s mid-life crisis? Well, it’s both of those things and more. It’s literature; and terrific literature.  It is not woven amidst sweeping historical or social themes. But it is universal because it is a personal story most of us could write about our own lives.

The main character, Annie Tucker, gave up a career in publishing to follow her peripatetic husband to the far-flung places around the globe required by his job, and to raise their three children. She inherits a house on Martha’s Vineyard from her favorite aunt. She spends a summer there, as she used to do as a girl.

The author, Holly Eger, breaks a few modern rules of writing along the way. There is plenty of ‘showing’ but there is also a great deal of ‘telling’. However this should be expected, since we spend most of the novel inside of Annie’s head, which turns out to be a fascinating place. The novel could have been written in the first person, but I think it works better in the third, as a template for readers to overlay on their own journeys. And the story starts off with a dream sequence! Forbidden territory, I was instructed. My own first book, Sun Valley Moon Mountains, had originally begun with a dream sequence. I had to weave it into the fantasy I was writing and it actually worked better that way for me.  But Holly’s dream works just fine and Annie returns to it several times in the story as she tests and remakes herself.

Annie encounters an old love on the Vineyard, Chad, who had abandoned her in Paris as a young woman, and ‘the road not taken’ haunts her. Aren’t we all haunted by the same notion at some point in our lives? ‘What if?’ is a powerful question. Annie struggles with her feelings toward Chad and toward her husband, Gordon. I think the story resonates because I believe we all eventually ask that damnable two-word question.

Annie demands order in her life and from others, and she can be critical and is a perfectionist; but she comes to wonder if she is indeed perfect herself.  The story also deals with secrets and secret histories and what we ought to do about them. Ever been there? Yup. I thought so.

Since we spend a great deal of time inside Annie’s head, the prose is rich, but not too dense. Eger also gives us a good sense of place. The descriptions of the island are lovely, but the purple in the sunsets is never too ‘purple’. There are also a few thrills, which get the reader’s blood pumping. A mid-life crisis can be thrilling? Well, this one can and the action drives the story.  The scenes are a metaphor of sorts for the turbulence Annie experiences.

On Amazon in Holly’s bio, we learn that she now teaches writing.

Buy Split Rock, READ IT, and you’ll understand why  she teaches.

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History Rhymes: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Family Separation

Given the events of the past few weeks concerning the separation of families by ICE, I decided to jot down a few thoughts, in lieu of my plan to write a review this week of a wonderful novel I read recently: Split Rock by Holly Hotter Eger.

What has amazed me about the incidents is the reaction of people from almost every segment of our society to the separations.  Especially at a time when we Americans can’t seem to agree on anything. While there were some dissenting voices, the public overwhelmingly called for the practice to stop. What is particularly striking is the fact that 150 years ago the same issue brought Northerners together on the issue of slavery. The catalyst? A book titled ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ by Harriet Beecher Stowe.  Most people have heard of it but not everyone has read it. More than any other aspect of the story, the separation of families that occurred when family members were sold at auction resonated with the public. Following is a link to a synopsis of Uncle Toms Cabin.

Of all issues why would this one affect people of all political persuasions? I really do not know but am thankful that it has. And I believe we can all be proud of that fact.

So ponder the question and ask if there aren’t more things we can agree on. And take a minute to reread a Blog post from a few weeks ago that delved into other issues raised by the book. And if you haven’t read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, DO IT!

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