Byron Edgington's Blog, page 13

This old house

My wife’s elderly uncle died last week. Ed was 85. He was fragile, in pain, clinging to the last shred of existence for several years. He lived in the old homestead, a dilapidated farmhouse in rural Iowa, a house that, had it been in town, the health department would have condemned as unfit for humans. That old house, too, clung to its existence for several years. The raccoons and squirrels seemed not to mind living in it. And neither did Uncle Ed. It was the house, the home, he and Rose, my wife’s mother, grew up in. It was where they came home after a day of schooling, and chores, and running loose in the fields where brambles stuck to their clothes. The house was on the high point of the property, adjacent to the barn, the windmill not far off. There were several outbuildings, a rusted pump next to where the outhouse used to be, until Ed’s dad installed the indoor facilities in ’43, during the War. The roof, the stairways and all else in the house sagged.
Now that Ed’s gone the house sits empty, except for the raccoons and squirrels of course. It will be razed. It’s used up, sapped of energy and utility. Dead, just like Ed and his parents, and several siblings and a generation before them. All gone and nothing to do. The house will come down. Likely the ground will be developed, a rural house lot, or perhaps turned back to farming for a new generation of Iowans. I like to believe that the memories surrounding that old house will stick somehow, like the brambles Ed and Rose peeled off their clothes as kids after a day of play in the fields surrounding that old house.

Child abuse in literature

Those who've read my recent book, The Sky Behind Me, a Memoir of Flying and Life, will recall that I make reference in it to my childhood abuse at the hands of a catholic clergyman. The events seared my soul, and changed my life. They removed me from the seminary at a young age after dedicating my future to the priesthood, the only life I ever contemplated. As I say in the book, I'd dreamed of ordination to the priesthood, then a posting to a foreign land where I'd minister to people, help them ease their lives, give them the light of salvation as I saw it. Instead, I was anointed an Army Warrant Officer, posted to a foreign land where I found those very same people and helped to kill them. The genesis of that life disruption was the childhood abuse when I was fourteen.
Much literature has been offered, many stories told and many lives destroyed and/or redirected by the scourge in our midst. Childhood abuse destroys trust. It causes life-long anxiety and dis-couragement, injects doubt into every human interaction that follows. It is particularly egregious when the perpetrator is a clergy member, since those people are offered as exemplars of probity, decency and integrity, adults any child can run to when trust and comfort is needed. Abuse in that situation is like escaping to a hospital where doctors cause bodily injury.
I came to believe, after much soul-searching and a life-long simmering anger that what happened to me was for the best. I would have been a lousy priest. For one thing I questioned every aspect of church dogma and have found very little that makes sense or is of value for me. For another, the way the church grovels in hypocrisy has become so ludicrous that I'm ashamed I ever participated, much less looked to join its ranks. It all stems from the event of abuse when I was fourteen. An example of today's abuse by the catholic church, no less egregious, is its treatment of LGBT people and its dismissal of their physical and spiritual needs. The only response the church offers is for them to repent. This is abuse, pure and simple.
I recently heard a radio report of new childhood abuse uncovered in the archdiocese of Los Angeles. It goes on and on. The question I had on hearing of this new revelation is this: Why are those men not in jail? Stay tuned.

No Sex Riding Rockets

Catchy title, hey? It’s all marketing. What we read in the title of a book has a great deal to do with our purchase decision. And guess what single-syllable word sells scads of books, pardon the alliteration? It ain’t sing. Rosalie Linver Unger puts sex right up front in the title of her memoir of a season on the French coast as a nanny. No Sex in St. Tropez describes Linver-Ungar’s summer of living in St. Tropez as an au pair for a family with two kids, a getaway for Unger at age 34.
Riding Rockets , Mike Mullane’s snarky, tell all inside look at NASA and the culture of, as he calls it, Planet AD (Arrested Development) alpha males in America’s space program. There’s a reason they call it the manned space program. Mullane’s snide, chauvinistic, testosterone-laced memoir will never earn the author any Feminist Pioneer prizes, but Mullane does arrive at a much better understanding of why women would choose to become astronauts. Oddly, or not, it’s the very same reason he did. Hello, Earth to Mike, they wanted to fly in space.
What do these books have in common? Both describe the authors’ decision to pursue a dream, of personal freedom in Ungar’s case, of escape from the mundane of Earth-bound existence in Mullane’s. So both chase the same thing, the desire to be extra-ordinary, to rise above the simple, routine expectations others might have had for them. Both authors must navigate the choppy waters of social misunderstanding, familial judgement and personal doubt. And both deal with very personal issues–such as sex, or its lack–in their own way. If there’s no sex riding rockets, the choice to ride one, to leave mundane pursuits behind delivers a more powerful incentive in any case. Both books are worth a look.

Happy Birthday Derek Walcott

Nobel winning poet Derek Walcott was born on this date in 1930. Mr. Walcott is perhaps most famous for his Caribbean poetry, the lush, grounded evocations of Island life with a focus on light and the immediacy of living in it. We are simpler than we imagine ourselves to be, as he writes in White Egrets: “…receiving vessels of each day’s grace.” That is, if we allow ourselves to be so simple. Derek Walcott owns an island just off St. Lucia. On this tiny island there’s a simple cabin. The poet retreats to his cabin on occasion to write, we presume, and to enjoy the light that only the Caribbean can provide. But his poetic message is that we all own an island, a place of retreat that we, especially writers, can retreat to and immerse ourselves in the light to be found there. Happy Birthday Mr. Walcott, and many more.

Cures for Blank Sheet Syndrome

People talk about blank sheet syndrome, and the terror of the blank page. I’m sorry but I don’t get it. The dilemma I find is narrowing down the topics, eliminating the peripheral junk that tries to crowd into my writing. I’ve never (yet) experienced a single day of blockage, at least not the un-physiologic, the literary type. Here’s the latest trick I recommended recently to a young colleague to light a fire under his reluctant muse: go to the grocery store, or better yet a quickie-mart. Check out with your purchase–hell, a pack of gum will do–and scan the tabloid offerings. “Katie slaps boyfriend” “Jen and Brad meet in secret at car wash” “Kim furious over Matt’s choice of dryer sheets!” This stuff will drive the anthropologists nuts in 2000 years. But today they’re rich sources of fiction topics. Just pick two of them, or three, combine the headlines, and let the fun begin. “Katie slaps Jen and Brad with dryer sheet!” “Matt and Brad find work at car wash” you get the idea.

Inauguration Day 2013

Regardless of how you feel about Barack Obama and his administration over the last four years, it's a day to celebrate the American way of governance. Inauguration day 2013 comes, as inaugurals always do, with a mixture of high expectation and low anxiety about the road ahead. But looking ahead is what Americans do. Expecting more and better is who we are as a people. This inaugural compares quite well with the one in March 1865. The nation was weary of war, and that war was at long last coming to an end with a victory for union. Today we are weary of a foreign war, which seems to be ending at long last with a victory for disunion.Exactly 100 years ago, March 4th 1913, Woodrow Wilson's inauguration took place on the east side of the U.S. Capitol. The interesting comparison is this: The day before Wilson's swearing in women marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to protest their lack of voting rights. It wouldn't be until 1920 that women would earn those rights in America. In this era marriage rights are the pressing issue. There have not been parades and pre-inaugural demonstrations, but this issue is one that will not fade away. Here's hoping, Mister President, that by the time you leave office all Americans can legally marry the person they love. This is a worthwhile goal. It's time. Best wishes, and let's go forward.

ER in the Sky this Fall

In 2013 I’ll be inflicting yet another book on the reading public. The title (for now) is ER in the Sky, a book based on my twenty year career as an Air Medical pilot. For 20 years I flew a medical helicopter for the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics in Iowa City.
It was the most gratifying, fulfilling, hardest, most frustrating and most rewarding work I ever did. Every mission was different; every mission was the same–all were life and death, sometimes with my own life in the balance. With more than 3,000 patient flights there’s a lot of material, a lot of human stories and a lot of inside information to share about a very controversial part of emergency medicine. Expect ER in the Sky sometime this Fall.

Branding

It’s been said that no one does for a living what we say we do–doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, none of those describe what it is we really do. We’re all in marketing, the saying goes. We’re all involved in our ‘brand,’ the image we must create and maintain in the marketplace if we are to succeed. Just so, we writers must create, polish, perfect and maintain an image, a persona—a brand. I was in aviation for more than half my life. I flew helicopters, in the military and commercially for 38 years. I flew all over the world, Asia, Alaska, South America, North America. I even flew from Toledo Ohio for a time, speaking of exotic. Try as I might there is no way, it seems, for me to avoid or excise myself from the aviation brand. Once a pilot, always a pilot, I guess. Now, pilot/writers are many, and some of our best literature has been penned by pilots: Ernest K. Gann comes to mind; Richard Bach, Amelia Earhart, Beryl Markham, Rinker Buck, Antoine de St. Exupery, the list goes on. So I’m in very good, very lofty company one might say. I have decided to stop resisting that forced branding and embrace it. Write what you know, as the saying goes. It also occurs to me that among those listed aviation writers there isn’t one helicopter pilot. So I accept the challenge, and go forward. I’ll hereby wring out the exotic, the arcane and the somewhat mysteriously dazzling interface of man and machine that flying a helicopter requires. I will write about rotary-wing aviation. It’s what I know; it’s my brand.

Book Reading/Signing 2/12/13

I’ll be reading and signing The Sky Behind Me, a Memoir of Flying and Life on Tuesday evening February 12th starting at 7 pm. Location, Barnes & Noble/Long’s Bookstore 1598 N. High St. Columbus Ohio, at the corner of 11th Ave. & High st. near the Ohio State University campus.
If you’re in the Columbus area please drop in. This is an independent B&N, not a franchise store, so it’s good to support their efforts.

Writing is the Easy Part