Mitchell Toews's Blog, page 13

A Mennonite Imposter’s Discursive Rhapsody

Three Problems with Christianity: Souldierism, Heaven, and Receipts. (And possibly some of the reasons why the author maunders along in so many stories, searching out weak actors like a Red Rock Bible Camp Councillor hunting for Playboys between the mattresses.)

Problem One: Onward Christian “Soul-diers”

Mennonite religion is obsessively and unabashedly built upon an army mentality.
Follow orders or else. It’s just that simple.
Those who ask questions based on some external code or sense of moral dissatisfaction are often eliminated. Shunned, excommunicated, kicked out, shit-canned… The church is governed by court-martial law, coercively presided and prosecuted by high-ranking church officials who are put in place by you-know-who (Die Owlah! An unimpeachable authority.) Just like the armed services, to disobey is to risk extreme penalties and disgrace.

So why is an organization dedicated to peace governed by the same laws,  ordinances, and traditions that are used by the world’s militaries; the same rules that were in place for the fearsome armies of the Old Testament?

And like the military, conventions change, but they are grindingly slow to do so.  Examples of past changes in my own adult lifetime: Divorce (with the caveat that it is still far rougher on women then it is for men), Tight Jeans, and Rock n’ Roll. No? Just take a look around at church this Sunday, is there not at least one divorced person in your pew? Are you and others not wearing jeans that would have drawn a hair-afire rebuke in 1970? That musical menagerie: drum kit, synthesizer, and stable full of guitars up on the (ahem) stage is at the ready and is not out of place, in fact, they are the instruments of salvation and worship.

“Last one in the mosh pit is a demon!” 

And yet the church, just like the military, battle on in their efforts to resist LGBTQ (see below), to sustain their sadly obvious misogynistic roots, and to disavow the nativism that the church’s unholy co-combatants—far-right conservative politicians—seek to uphold.


In 2012, Steinbach, Manitoba’s Southland Church led opposition against a provincial law that sought to provide protection for LGBTQ students suffering from bullying. The church took the position that the Bill would promote “wrong lifestyle choices”.A slight but confident and charismatic high school student (not yet voting age at the time) serenely and handily took on the Steinbach Town Council, several adult congregants, a group of not-so-slight adult members of the local ministerial association who carried NOT ON MY WATCH! placards and also had to be gavelled into silence and were threatened with expulsion from council chambers.

A phalanx of spear-wielding ancient Roman soldiers was prevented from entering the chambers.

“We want them to change it (the Bill) to say independent faith-based schools do not have to have groups that are in conflict with their beliefs,” Coun. Susan Penner told CBC News on Thursday. —https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manito... (The soldiers could be heard grunting and clacking their spears in noisy agreement outside of the meeting room.)

At Steinbach’s Southland Church, pastor Ray Duerksen told parishioners during a (“worship”) service on Feb. 24 that God will judge those who don’t oppose the anti-bullying bill.—https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manito...

My QUESTIONS for Coun. Penner and Pastor Duerksen include: Is it still “your watch”? And, at the point when the church and the town change their puny positions on LGBTQ issues, what REDRESS can be expected for your irresponsible and discriminatory actions in 2012? Will this redress be financial? A public apology? Resignation? Stoning?

I have no questions for the placard-waving chuckleheads or the Roman soldiers. (Same fertilizer, different piles.)

It is my prediction that the young high school student who stood up to hatred in 2012 will one day be a legislator who will debate on a level battlefield where she will defeat the doctrine-wielding and the spear-wielding, alike. I suspect her “watch” will be empathetic and egalitarian.

Problem Two: Heaven

You rent a house. The owner stresses that you—the renter—have full dominion over that house. It’s yours to use as you please. It’s almost as though the landlord told you, “I got awesome insurance so party on, DUDE!” Additionally, you rent this house knowing that you will be moving to a castle at some point in the future. You’ve taken all the necessary steps to assure your admittance to the castle. It’s a done deal.
My prediction, based on close personal contact with numerous rat bastards and almost as many sweet soulful brethren is that the renter is not gonna put a lot of leasehold improvements into that rental house. The renter is not gonna worry about a drywall dent here, or a busted tile there, or a swimming pool filled with empty Tim Horton cups. (Or rusted out Chevy Blazers, dirty syringes or radioactive waste, for that matter. It ain’t the renter’s problem.)
The renter’s carefree attitude is in high contrast when compared to their landlord-less heathen neighbours who own their abode and who intend to hand it down to their descendants… Those dumb suckers are tasked with the constant upkeep and care of their place, unlike the renter. Renters have the same rights to live in their  home as the homeowners but, ‘cuz of the whole “I’m gonna move into a golden castle in the sky” thing, renters don’t really give a Norwegian rat turd about upkeep, cleanliness, sustainability or any other word ending in pollution or climate change or extinction or any words that are not “dominion over”.

Heaven appears to be an effective disincentive to take care of the earth. “DON’T BE GENTLE—IT’S A RENTAL!”

Problem Three: Receipts

Here’s a modern parable:

You run down to Anabaptist Appliances and buy a toaster. It’s fine, until one day you don’t smell burning toast. Hot under the collar, you hustle back to the store and ask to trade-in or return the toaster or to be given warranteed compensation.

“Sure, Mister Ishmael. Do you happen to have a copy of your receipt? I’m gonna need a scriptural confirmation to verify that everything you are telling me is gospel. Know what I’m sayin’?”

“Of course. But, can’t you just take my word? Have you no, uh, faith?”

“Oh bah jo! I believe everything you’ve told me—the trilogy: alternating, direct, and ground wire… the death of the thermostat and its resurrection via the reset button… the four horsemen of the power surge… It’s just that my boss is a stickler and I really need a  proof of purchase.”

He seems insistent. Now, you KNOW you bought it at Anabaptist Appliances and you never abused it or changed anything or went outside of the commandments of the operator’s manual so even though you don’t have actual written proof, you say, “Look, bro. I don’t have the receipt, but my buddy James, on King Street, he can vouch for me. Will that do?”

“Sure. As long as it’s in print, on ancient, rotting scrolls, in an appropriate language not spoken on earth in centuries, and concerns only the toaster model later built in the precise region delineated by the old blood-letting clinic (Art’s Arteries) on Queen up to Spadina and back to where the chandler’s shop was on Graffiti Alley near the 1840 common pasture… we’ll accept that as gospel!”

“Sure, partner. Sounds like we have a deal. Is it okay if the written proof from James on King is filled with ambiguities about when and exactly how to prepare and eat toast, how a toaster should properly be prepared for sacrifice, the selling of a toaster into slavery, the rules governing the crucifixion of a  toaster, and the throwing of plugged-in toasters into the bathtubs of Hittite neighbours?”

“Hittites, eh? They’re the worst. It can even be co-authored by several hundred of James’s best buddies (just not too many women, eh?) and you can come on down and revise it any time you feel like it.”

The main trouble with the good book is that it is the product of WRITERS and EDITORS. Untrustworthy louts, by and large. And the genre—is it literary fiction, is it reportage, is it non-fiction, is it science-fiction, is it fantasy, is it non-fiction? Astrological science?  History text-book or historical fiction? Maybe foodie lit? (What Whales Love to Eat: Old Guys with Long Beards… Superbowl Munchies? How to Feed a Crowd with Just Bread and Fish.)
Lots of authors. Lots of (Holy) ghostwriters. Distributors and agents gettin’ their Gideon on too and disenfranchising the Midianite Book Club. It’s quite the anthology!

The Bible is kinda like the Leity high rollers (from a long time ago) assuring all us lunchpail Leity types that a Deity won the big hand except the Deity does not want to show His cards. He wants us to take it on His word that He filled His holy straight. He understands our mortal doubts though, and instructs us to have faith. He gives His Leity pals a few tools to help with the convincing; some insider info to prove what He claims. The suite may be Clubs. (But it could be Diamonds.) He may have drawn the Ten or it may have been a pat hand. Sure, His betting pattern doesn’t support it, but… if you don’t believe the Allmighty, you just might be banished to the basement—with his relative, Diablo, who sells life insurance—for the rest of eternity, so… it’s up to you, but I know what I’d do.

Also, you cowboy philosophers and your John Prine mix-tapes (“Jesus Christ died for nuthin'” etc.) and your medical marijuana… you can just stop pointing out that whole, “Well, doesn’t the very presence of evil prove that an omnipotent God does not exist?” thing.

The man with the long white robe and the gold throne is getting pretty tired of that whole spiel and if you don’t want those glaciers to start melting at TURBO speed, just watch it!

Verily, I say unto you.

Conclusion: Wherein the Author Wraps Up with a “Ha! Toro!” and a Swirl of His Fadadatj

“The Holy Fool”. Another parable, of sorts.

You know the story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, where supposedly only those with “a perfect sense of fashion” can actually see the King’s new duds. Those peasants without the chic fashion eye cannot even see the King’s new apparel. At least that’s what the King’s advisors tell the King and his court in order to keep their ruse alive. No one dares point out the folly—they all pretend to be able to see the clothes, including the King—and it goes on and on.

Until, a person in the court, a jester perhaps, the so-called “Holy Fool” steps up and says the obvious. “The King is naked.”

Gasps and outrage follow. Slowly, the truth seeps in and then with a surge, everyone is busy denying that they see anything and the truth wins out after much subterfuge.

I sometimes feel like this “Holy Fool”; one who has no investment in the bullshit, a person who is not a part of it—not even close—and who without anything more than average insight utters the obvious, uninfluenced by the need to fall in line.

I am that fool. I cannot be sanctioned because I live a life within, but apart.

A believer may say to me, with force and indignation, that because I am nothing but a Mennonite imposter—a secular Mennonite—that I cannot and do not speak for Mennonites.

And yet,

My G-G-GF was Delegate Toews, born in Fischau and sent with 11 brooda to find a new home.
My G-GF and G-GM Toews, John and Sarah—late of the Kleine Gemeinde—were shunned from the Holdeman camp—shoed away like a pair of impertinent crows picking at a roadside deer carcass before the eagles had their fill. John and Sarah took umbrage at their unfair ouster and sued the church. The lowly corvids sued the uppity raptors. That must have sent tail-feathers fluttering!

Interesting bonafides, wouldn’t you agree? Plus I grew up in Steinbach Bakery—the floury bullseye of Manitoba’s cultural Mennonite dartboard. Add to that my uncommonly good and well-loved community treasure GrandMother Toews, despite her German Baptist (non-Menno) baptismal certificate. Also, my full-fledged adult-dunked Menno wife and one dunked daughter. (So our littlle family is 50-50: two wet and two dry. )

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And now, at the end of this trail of breadcrumbs, I find myself standing in the court—not at the bench John and Sarah Toews stood before at the turn of the last century, but the aforementioned King’s court.

Sure enough, the king is naked. In fact, he’s got a boil on his butt the size and texture of an overfilled jambuster and a belly that must be schmaundtfat cuz jelly don’t shake like that!

The dude is, as we used to say, nuck bak-ed!

You say, “I am allowed to do anything”—but not everything is good for you. And even though “I am allowed to do anything,” I must not become a slave to anything. I Corinthians 6:12 (NLT)

So, hear me when I say that I may be uniquely qualified to see it all—including the ignoble and the insincere and the hypocritical—with eagle eyes and a crow’s discernment. I am a slave to none. And with familiarity and empathy and kinship and knowledge of the waymarkers and the places to stumble and those places too, where Mennonites soar.

And if I’m a little bit annoying and more didactic than you’re prepared to accept from a everyday guy, an former class-clown, an ex-jock with a plentiful supply of demons and not near enough angels, well… too bad, because no one gave me this job, I just damn well took it.

“Poets are the unauthorized legislators of the universe.”—Shelley

Coming Up Soon

COMING UP:

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10.15.19—The VERY promising new UK literary journal market, Lunate Fiction has accepted Mitchell’s much-sweat-over story, “Holthacka’s Quandary.” It will appear in December, but don’t wait! Visit their site and see what’s on offer. It’s free so there’s no wrist.

Holthacka (Matt Zehen) interacts once again with the venerable Peter Vogel, one of the author’s favourite repeat characters. Here’s hoping these Hartplatzites can find a happy home in Lunate where favourites (like Damhnait Monaghan and Robert Boucheron and more) have taken up residence.

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10.13.19—One of Toews’ recent short stories has been graciously accepted by a special Canadian lit mag from a rock near a windrous and wondrous squiggly-edged place. Yes, it’s true, he has a short story called “Fast and Steep” in Newfoundland’s Riddle Fence: A Journal of Arts & Culture. Coming November 2019.

A winter’s tale from the flat, frozen front yard of Matt and Justy.

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The Toboggan Run

Did you ever love someone without rules or expectations? With the foreknowledge that it may not end well? With abandon?

Well, here then:

The Toboggan Run

by Mitchell Toews

 

Hart’s breath hangs in the air around his head and the sunshine makes splinters of floating ice into glinting flashes, gone in an instant. His long woollen scarf, creased canvas parka and red toque are all hoary with frost. Heavy leather work mitts, wet and steaming, cover his hands.

After first laying out a winding trail in the snow and marking its course with twigs, he sets to stamping and packing the snow into a shallow concave chute about two feet wide. With the course laid and the top layer of snow warmed by the sun, he drops to all fours to shape with palm and balled fist. The toboggan run begins on the steps of his tiny house, continues over the yard, across a rutted, ice-filled road and down into the nearby creek bed.

Following two afternoons of work, Hart is satisfied with his effort. A new garden hose uncoils reluctantly, its rubber memory stubbornly retaining a corkscrew pattern in the raw cold until hot water persuades it to relax. With a thumb over the sputtering end, he mists the run, glazing the surface with new ice. It vaporizes on contact, shrouding the slide in a white cloud. He drags the hose through the snow to soak the run’s entire length, his face a frown of concentration.

“Hey, Lord of the Slides! How’m I ‘sposed ta do dishes and laundry?” Justy calls from the kitchen window to her young husband. “No hot water!”

He grins and waves a non-answer back to her. Hunching to light a smoke, Hart thinks hard about the physics of momentum; if there will be enough to slide his son and the wooden toboggan up the far incline and let it stop gently on the other side of Old Tom Creek.

That evening, Justy asks, “Won’t it be dangerous to have Matthew slide across the road like that?”

“There’s no traffic because they only plow the road on the far side of the creek. This side stays plugged. No one but old man Funk and his tractor use it and I asked him not to drive over the run.”

“Okay.” Justy thinks about the parallel road on the far side but trusts Hart. “Funk, eh? I thought you said he was blind? Thought you two didn’t get along?” she says with a wink.

“As an umpire, yes, no question. Blind Jake. But he does okay driving that old cornbinder tractor of his. Sees better in the clear winter air, I figure.”

“If you say so. I’ll have some coffee if you’re getting up, please.”

# # #

The run is constructed to accelerate its cargo down the steep concrete steps and across the sloping yard. Then there’s a fast scat across the flat of the road, bank left, and drop into the creek. In the creek bottom at terminal velocity, a deeply slung right-hander peels riders around forty-five degrees. Ten feet later the toboggan mounts the sudden upshoot of the far slope with a lurch. At the last, there is the level ice of the road on the far side. A coasting, incongruent conclusion to a wrenching ride.

“Just like the Lockport roller coaster!” Hart says aloud, looking up at the incline of the creek bank from his surveyor’s crouch at the bottom.

He putters on the slide each afternoon after his early-rising workday in the bakery. Sculpting in the afternoon’s waning light with a broken-handled spade he scrapes the cupped run. “Don’t want no chatter,” he says over and over to himself, like a mantra. He imagines Matthew’s toboggan whisking down the run.

With a squint, he sights through the borrowed transit, making sure the rise is not too sudden at the far end where the speed will bleed off and the toboggan will—ideally—just barely top the crest.

“Man-oh-man, yer really playing for serious!” Funk says to Hart who is in the creek bottom, peering through the scope.

“Don’t wanna launch my little guy offa that far bank,” Hart says without looking up.

“About that…” Funk shuffles down the embankment and holds out a worn, silver hardhat from his past employer, the feed mill. There are several paper egg cartons compressed into its hollow crown. “That’s for padding…” A red lightning bolt is freshly painted on each side. “And that’s for speed.”

# # #

Hart makes the last preparations. He polishes the chute with boiling water and a drag made from a jute flour sack. The corners are given a trial-run by a test pilot—a thirty-pound bag of flaxseed tied to the toboggan—testing the angles, the banking.

“Top-dressing ‘er, eh, Hart?” Funk says on arrival, ever the willing sidewalk inspector. “When’s da first run?”

“Sunday.”

“Morning?”

“Think so.”

“Mmm. But ya know, actually, dat works pretty good ‘cause I been feelin’ sick. Like I gotta cold. I half-scared that I gotta miss church dis Sunday. So maybe I can come watch.”

Hart cocks his head. “You can’t take illness lightly.”

“Nope. You never know. Nevers not.”

# # #

On Sunday, Justy and Hart dress the boy in his parka, snow pants, mittens and boots. Hart’s red scarf hangs down Matthew’s back to the floor. The lightning bolts on the helmet seem to quiver with impatience; they point with electric vitality at the door as the boy waits to get outside, knees jouncing rhythmically.

“He looks like a lawn ornament,” Justy comments, tapping her knuckles on the shiny helmet. “Or maybe a bobblehead Red Baron.”

Hart has already broomed the snow off the run. The little boy jumps up and down, suspended between his parents’ hands. Hart kneels down to tug on the chin strap of the feed mill hardhat.

“I waxed it,” Hart says, running his bare hand over the blonde staves. “You hold on here, to the rope, and put your feet under here…”

“In there?”

“Yep, right under the front part, where it’s bent,” adds Justy. “Rear back a little when you first start going…”

“And lean into the curves,” says Hart, starting to feel jumpy.

“Are you going too?” Matthew asks, looking back and forth between them as he sits holding the braided rope.

“Sure, but this first time is just for you,” Hart says. “We want to watch you go!”

The adults look up and down the roads that parallel the creek. The smooth surface glistens white in the sun. No tire tracks. Tall furrowed piles of graded snow block the roadway entrances at each end.

“I see our neighbour has taken a sporting interest.” Justy nods at the freshly plowed windrow blockades just as Funk himself comes towards them, walking, mantis legs stiff, from his house. She waves at him and he gives her a thumb’s up.

“Ready?” Hart asks a minute later.

The boy’s lips press together and he hunkers down like an Olympian. “Go!” he yells through the muffler, “Go!”

Hart and Justy, one on each side, give him a slight pull back and then shove him down the stairway precipice. Matthew looks so vulnerable, but it’s already too late to reconsider. The toboggan skims across the yard and patters wood-on-ice across the road and around the first bend. Then the boy’s helmeted head drops out of sight as he plunges down the embankment. A second later—like the crack of a whip—he shoots out of the chicane, the toboggan loose in a skid. Just as it seems sure to tumble off the path, gravity regains its hold. Finally, the toboggan rises up the far bank and comes to a crunching halt, ending in perfect silence on the far side.

Funk cheers from his post at the top of the creek. Knees bent and one arm waving, the old man jangles a cowbell, raising a din and hollering.

Hart does not breathe until he sees the boy wriggling out sideways, kicking his booted feet free of the curled sled nose. Roly-poly in his snow gear, he scrambles up and runs back to the house, shouting and tugging the toboggan behind him, his short legs churning.

Justy and Hart watch transfixed, tears welling in smiling eyes.

“I love you, Hart,” she wants to say, just like that. She wants to tell him that and how their little family is everything for her now, even the prairie winter and Funk’s noisy damn tractor. All of this. Now and forever, she’d tell him, but she knows that’s no good, that he’d just stiffen up and crowd her out. Give him time. He’s still just a boy, really. The church ladies all say these years go by the quickest, but I’ve got to let him get used to it at his own pace. Look at Funk. His wife died inside of a year after they were married. Her and the baby both gone and her just seventeen.

She sucks air in through her teeth and worries they might crack from the cold. Looking at Hart, she can feel him through her winter clothing—no need for words. She senses his pleasure in her and in their son. It’s there like a cat purring in her lap. Even if she found herself, a lifetime later, pushing a walker, hair in a grey bun, and with Hart long gone to his man’s grave and beside her no more, at least she would have had this. Petal, leaf and stem — growing together as one. It’s more than most and today is mine forever, she thought. Come what may. Come what may.

Justy hears Hart pull in a breath—halfway between a laugh and a sob—as Matty clambers up the porch steps. She sees her son as if in a home movie; the rigid movements, stumbling and energetic and kicking up powdery snow. Everyone is talking at once, all bright eyes and Funk’s bell clamouring from the road.

“This year, I wish it wouldn’t melt,” Hart says, voice thick. Arms encircle jacketed waists.

Justy bends to kiss her little boy, his cheek as cold on her lips as an apple from the cellar.

From the top branches of the leafless poplar beyond the creek, two ravens call to each other as if by name. Their reedy voices ring clear in the frozen air. A car passes on Barkman Avenue, church-bound with frosted windows. It trails a plume of white exhaust.

Hart sets the toboggan in place, gets Justy settled and then pulls the boy up the slippery porch steps and helps him to sit on his mother’s lap.

First one raven flaps from the treetop and then its partner follows. Their black bodies are sharp against the pale sky and their wings make a swooping noise in the still air.

The car driver brakes to watch the tobogganers. Faster now with two aboard, they slip over the glassy edge and into the steepness, the smoothness, hurtling down the toboggan run.

End

The Toboggan Run was first published in 2019 by the generous and wise Leslee at The MOON magazine, a friendly joint in the stabby western mountains that are made of rock that once boiled like maple sap in a cauldron. Buy a helping of her sweet elixir, HERE.

 

Peace, Brooda

Today is the UN’s International Day of Peace. So, even if you are a follower of the incandescent flaccid golf popsicle from south of the 49th—and are therefore ideologically opposed to the UN for some incomprehensible reason (draws deep breath) —you may want to meditate on peace for a few minutes.

Couldn’t hurt, right?

Here’s a squawk from the rearmost pew; a story called “The Peacemongers” which first appeared in The MOON magazine in June 2017. This story was also chosen to be included in the publication’s recent, beautiful anthology, “Out of This World” The Best Short Stories from The MOON Volume I (2013-2019).

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Peace. Conscientious Objectors. “Just War”. Leaders we are bound by the bible to follow, chosen by and given authority by God, we are told… even leaders with triangular moustaches.

My cousin Doug and I used to jump aboard the tractors lined up for sale on the Case dealership lot in Steinbach, Manitoba. We were, in those long-ago summers, U.S. fighter pilots shooting down Messerschmidt 109s in our P-51s. If a few things in our ancestry had gone differently, maybe we would have been in imaginary Luftwaffe cockpits instead of those of the USAF. A few more twists of fate and we might have had ancestors in the Russian infantry meat-grinder or the Polish resistance. Or maybe, had our forefathers stayed in Frisland, our Opas past would have considered a “MANNEN VON NEDERLAND!” recruiting poster and become real Flying Dutchmen.

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Had our great-great-grandpa Toews chosen Mountain Lake, MN instead of Manitoba’s East Reserve, Doug and I may well have found ourselves singing along to Country Joe and the Fish in Da-nang or some other place of less-than-righteous smiting. My fiction, “A Vile Insinuation” revisits this troubled time on the borderline.

Anyway, please find highlighted and hyperlinked above a couple of peace inclined short stories of mine. Give’em a read and afterwards, maybe give some waiter or waitress a twenty-buck tip to address the war on poverty. THAT’s a JUST war!

Also, here’s a link to Slaughterhouse-Five, a true book of peace for this day of peace. So it goes.

We Refugees

My short story, “Groota Pieter” based on my experiences in Southeast Manitoba, is included in this thoughtful, important conversation on forced migration. In 1873, my great-great-grandfather, Cornelius Toews, was one of a group of 12 delegates to travel to North America to scout locations for a mass migration as Russia constricted around their Mennonite villages in the Molotschna region of Ukraine. This historical connection, plus my life in a Canadian diaspora community that now sees others arriving as they once did—scared, unfamiliar, poor, and without a choice—makes the story personal for me.

I’m pleased to be a part of the book and if you happen to be in Melbourne, September 16…

From: https://regalhouseinitiative.org/we-refugees/

We Refugees is now on the shelves in Readings bookshops across Melbourne, and it will be launched by Julian Burnside at Readings Hawthorn next Monday 16th September at 6.30pm.

Two contributors, Kirsty Anantharajah and Akuol Garang are able to be here for the launch, which is very exciting.

The launch details are available via the link below:

https://www.readings.com.au/event/book-launch-we-refugees

Now available in Australia…  For release September 27, 2019 in the U.S.

The Regal House Initiative, together with Pact Press, is proud to bring you an anthology of writing by and about refugees, asylum seekers, and other forced migrants. We Refugees is intended to amplify the voices of displaced people and bring their experiences to the awareness of readers. The lead editor for this anthology is Dr. Emma Larking.

Our aim is to provide insights into the lives of the displaced, insights that are often ignored in contemporary media accounts of the global refugee crisis. Rather than present a vision of crisis, we would like to present a vision of hope and energy, to celebrate the resilience of people who have been forced to leave their homes and seek new ones. We sought contributions that may discomfort or challenge readers, presenting the experience of displacement in a manner at odds with more typical representations.

Proceeds from the publication of We Refugees

Editorial work will be provided free of charge by the Pact Press editorial team, lead by Dr. Emma Larking, and all net proceeds from the sale of the anthology will go to support the work of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC).

Based in Melbourne, Australia, the ASRC describes itself as:

…both a place and a movement. We are an independent not for profit organisation, whose programs support and empower people seeking asylum to maximise their own physical, mental and social wellbeing. As a movement, we mobilise and unite communities to create lasting social and policy change for people seeking asylum in Australia. We are proud to be owned and run by our community of volunteers and supporters.

Please visit the ASRC website for more information about its campaigns, work, vision and values.

Interview with Artist Virginia Ryan, Contributor to our forthcoming Pact Press Anthology, We Refugees.

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~ ~ ~

“Groota Pieter” is also a part of the 2018 Lilly Press publication (U.S.), “The Immigrants” by The River Poets Journal.

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Din and the Wash Bear

My 450-word-or-less flash fiction, “Din and the Wash Bear” appears today on the flash portion of the Pandemonium Press family of literary sites, Doorknobs and Bodypaint Issue 95. This Berkeley-based online zine is a favourite of mine — especially because I’ve had success in Dorsals and riverbabble, with appearances in a half-dozen issues, or so.

For this month’s Dorsals section, I responded to a themed call that asked for short fiction pieces that included a classic noir feel and a femme fatale. I did so, allowing my immediate surroundings to influence my character selection.

I hope you enjoy it. If you do, just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you? You just put your lips together and blow.

http://www.iceflow.com/doorknobs/issue95/DO-95-TOEWS.HTML

allfornow,

Mitchell

 

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Justina “Jesse” Toews, 1933-2019

http://bit.ly/JesseJustinaToews

This page is a celebration site for the life of Jesse Toews, of Steinbach, MB.

The obituary follows below, but this page is intended to host much more. It has been posted and will be maintained as a gathering place for Jesse’s family and friends. Pictures, comments, anecdotes and other loving memories of our mom-grandma-oma may be found and enjoyed here and you may also wish to contribute to the collection.

Please feel welcome. To contribute, send your material to mtoews55@gmail.com. I will receive it and share it with my sisters Char Toews and Marnie Fardoe. Share directly with them if you wish and have their contact information. We’ll contact you to confirm and then share your submission, with thanks and love.

Additionally, visit this site for information on the Celebration of Life event planned for Winnipeg in September.

Feel free to share the link with others who knew Jesse and may wish to visit the site and/or attend the event.

http://bit.ly/JesseJustinaToews

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Justina “Jesse” Toews (nee Harder) July 17, 1933—August 10, 2019

Jesse Toews, age 86, formerly of Steinbach, MB, passed away peacefully at the Grace Hospital in Winnipeg on August 10, 2019.

The eighth of 10 children, Justina “Jesse” Harder was born on the family farm near Plum Coulee to parents Marie (nee Penner) and Diedrich Harder. When Jesse was nine-years-old, her family moved to a small homestead on Mackenzie Road in Steinbach. Here the family continued to grow their own food in their large garden, and father and sons were employed as house painters. A skilled painter herself, she liked to tell us, “Paint is in my blood!”

Jesse was a capable, bright kid with boundless energy. In her life, work was rewarding play. As a child she frequently helped with the care of young relatives. As a teen she had responsible jobs such as a pharmacy assistant and an aide at the Ninette TB Hospital. Jesse married Norman “Chuck” Toews in 1954. Always a quick study, she fulfilled her role and was instrumental in the family businesses, Steinbach Bakery and Grow Sir. She also curled, water-skied, cooked up many a storm, and cut grass—all with joy and zeal!

She was the last surviving sibling in her family. Predeceased by Norman in 1994, Jesse is survived by their three children: Mitchell (Janice, nee Kasper) of Jessica Lake, MB, Charlynn Toews (David Menzies) of Terrace, BC, Marnie Fardoe (Ken Fardoe) of Winnipeg, and five grandchildren: Megan Olynyk (Blair Olynyk) and their children Tyrus and Hazel, Tere Toews (Tom Halpin), Cameron Menzies, Emily Fardoe, and Maris Fardoe.

A celebration of Jesse’s life is being planned for September, details to be announced. For more information on the event and also to share pictures, memories and other fond expressions of our mom/grandma/oma, please visit this commemorative web page: http://bit.ly/JesseJustinaToews

In lieu of flowers, you may want to give to the charity of your choice and then get together and schputt with someone over a coffee, laughing until your stomach aches and your cheeks are sore from grinning. Jesse would like that.

[image error]Aunt Dee, Uncle Earl, Jesse

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[image error]Mitch, Jan, Char, Marn, Maris, Mom

 

 

 

 

 

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Spinning Tops

I spin tales, mostly full of yarn. The following optimistic—if not quite upbeat—pieces are two of my top tjriesele; that is, they are not bad, maybe, sorta, kinda… I’m less than indifferent about them… etc.

1.) “DIED RICH”

This is the heartfelt tale of a neophyte basketball player—slash—jung Reiba and it was selected for the May 2019 Issue #27 edition of the American literary magazine Fabula Argentea. Find it HERE.

Editor Rick Taubold: “We don’t single out any pieces in an issue as being better than the others, but you might find it interesting to read and compare “Died Rich” and “Whence We Came, Whither We Go” because they both explore a similar theme, yet they are very different stories with different outcomes.”

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WHY WE CHOSE TO PUBLISH “Died Rich”:

The title alone is compelling, even if it totally misleads the reader about the story’s content. After the first couple of paragraphs, the reader is hooked on the character and anxiously wondering where the story is headed. One mark of a great story is that opening hook and promise, and with his opening author Mitchell Toews promises a good story and does not disappoint with his different take on how to handle a bully, even if… (spoiler removed)

One thing we loved about this piece was Dr. Rempel’s story about the borderline cases in Hell. At the time, this seems like… (spoiler removed)

 A jung Reiba is a boy pirate, according to the author’s less-than-perfect Plautdietsch.

2.) “THE TOBOGGAN RUN”

This simple love story is swooshing along in The MOON magazine‘s August Issue. The magazine for August is a stunner! Topical pieces, essays, fiction and poetry. A movable feast spread on your summer picnic blanket.

Slide over to Mitch’s joint, at the corner of Barkman and Creek Road: http://moonmagazine.org/mitch-toews-toboggan-run-2019-08-03/

And… because Druids and Christians alike appreciate things in groups of three, here is a third possibility, a variation on the theme with perhaps a slightly swarthier metric. Take it out for a couple of rotations, especially if you want to switch to a summer setting after the last two winter tales:

3.) “IFS AND BUTTERS”

Another in the continuing saga of life in Hartplatz, Manitoba in the Fifties and Sixties. The Vogels make an interesting cameo here and Pete Vogel is a repeat character familiar to readers of other stories from this Mennonite Twilight Zone. The exciting new lit mag, TurnPike from Ball State University is running the story. Read it HERE!

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“OUT OF THIS WORLD”

I’m equal parts thrilled and honoured to be included in Leslee Goodman’s anthology of The MOON Magazine 2013-2019. As a contributor (“Peacemongers” June 2017) I find myself sharing the lunar night with a wide variety of heavenly minds and rising stars.

[image error]The back cover of OUT OF THIS WORLD

Jessica Lake, Manitoba—Local author Mitchell Toews has a short story featured in the new anthology, Out of This World: The Best Short Stories from The MOON. His story, “Peacemongers,” tells of young boys wrestling with issues of non-violence, conscientious objection, and how to stand up to a bully in Hartplatz, Manitoba, against the backdrop of the Cuban missile crisis. The story is one of 23 works included in this anthology from The MOON magazine, a monthly journal of personal and universal reflections. (Full Press Release linked below.) “Peacemongers” is one of eight “Making Peace” selections in the book.

Curious and ready for a great summer read? Both Kindle and softcover versions of the anthology are available on Amazon at a great price! Take a brief exit from this world and its circular rancour, breaking news, rising water and record temperatures and find 23 new worlds to explore!

Preview a sampling of OUT OF THIS WORLD here: http://a.co/hL673Qd

Booksellers—US & Canada Retailers, Christian Retailers, International Retailers: https://www.ingramcontent.com/retailers/contact

Public and K-12 Libraries— https://www.ingramcontent.com/libraries

Press Release—Local author Mitch Toews featured in Out of This World anthology

[image error]Contributor Mitchell Toews of Jessica Lake, Manitoba

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Invisible people | Addressing homelessness

The theme for the July 2019 issue of The MOON Magazine is Invisible People. It’s a multi-faceted look at homelessness. “If your brother becomes impoverished and his hand falters beside you, you shall strengthen him, whether he is a stranger or a native, so that he can live with you.” – Leviticus 25:35

 

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