Kate E. Thompson's Blog: An Author's Whatnots, a blog of days gone by, page 6

Brotherhood Across Cultures and Time

A Book Review by Catherine Kigerl

POSTCARDS TO DONALD EVANS, by Tikashi Hiraide, translated by Tomoyki Iino. Tibor de Nagy Editions, 2003.

Intrigued by a collection of hand-painted watercolor postage stamps, first seen in a Tokyo gallery in 1984, Japanese poet, Tikashi Hiraide—one of Japan’s leading poets of the post-war generation—enters a quest to better know Donald Evans, the American artist who created them. Although Evans died in an Amsterdam fire eight years earlier, Hiraide addresses him as though they have been lifelong friends in a series of postcard entries that are a combination diary, homage to the artist and interior journey. After spending three months in Iowa City at a writer’s workshop the author visits the friends and family of Donald Evans in Morristown, Philadelphia, New York City, and Washington, DC. While traveling from the east coast to Seattle, Hiraide relays the story of Donald Evan’s in his own postcards. The artist’s childhood to adulthood is covered including Evans’ original artistic inspiration: a stamp collection he started at six-years-old.

“Many devices of yours, such as organizing a picture in the extremely limited space of the postage stamp form, are surprisingly delicate. The erasure of the painter’s personality is itself a device.”

Hirade continues to chronicle his thoughts for and about the artist back home in Tokyo. Then, almost two years later, he travels to Amsterdam where Evans resided over the last five years of his life. Here Hirade becomes even more intimate with the artist as he walks the streets Evan’s walked and visits houses and rooms where he lived and worked.

“Coming from Morristown, you gained access to another world and entered it. In the attic of 63 Krom Boomssloot, you built yourself a final workshop. The door facing the street by the river is shut as though your world were still enclosed in there, and I can’t get inside.”

Tikashi Hiraide’s narrative is thoughtful and poignant, his descriptions of Donald Evans, endearing. I became fond of both Takashi and Donald as the postcard journal unfolded. It is obvious Hiraide felt a strong kindredship with Evans to take his journey into such far reaches, both internally and externally. In Hiraide’s testament, there is a strong sense of intimacy, of brotherhood across cultures and across time.

The publishers would have solidified the incredible draw Hiraide felt for Evan’s if they had offered a more vivid likeness of his work and included a greater number of his postcard art reproductions. During the last five years of his life, Evan’s created thousands of postage stamps from imaginary countries that were based upon actual international influences. His stamp subjects included domestic, political and ecological topics and were rendered in soft colors true to European stamp form. The black and grey reproductions of Evan’s work—scattered rather scarcely amidst the passages—do not do justice to Evan’s colorful, detailed work, and thus to Tikashi’s poetic homage. In addition, photographs of the artist and the poet would have added a human dimension to this obviously predestined connection.

Throughout his postcard-narrative, Hiraide grieves the deaths of friends in Japan. Using his poetic skills of acute observation and attention to minute detail, he produces an equally intriguing complement to Donald Evans’s catalog of postage stamp images.

“Although the hours of my writing were thus shadowed by the images of the dead, the postcards to Donald did soar with momentary weight, only to be scattered onto the earth without ever reaching another world.”

This book review originally appeared in the International Examiner, Seattle Washington, under the name Cathy Ruiz.

Catherine Kigerl is a contributing author to New Halem Tales Secrets. She is also the author of Stirring up the Water (under the name Cat Ruiz) published in 2008 by Salt Publishing Ltd, Cambridge UK. Her projects in the works include: The Further Adventures of the Parking Lot Prophet and No Expectations. A second collection of poems, The Water Settles, is also forthcoming. You'll find The Parking Lot Prophet in New Halem Tales Secrets. Check out the book here. The book trailer and excerpts here and more about Cathy at 5 NW Authors.

Small Town, Cheese, and an Ocean Breeze

Cattle Grazing. Photo by Gary Halvorson. by Charles Thompson

"Charlie, do you know how to roll your own?" It was my first day on the job selling ads for the Tillamook Headlight Herald Newspaper and the managing editor was standing in the doorway of the composing room holding a 35 mm camera and waving me over. 

"Sorry, I don’t smoke," I replied and the rest of the staff laughed.

"Roll your own can? I see you’re not a photographer," he said. "You are now. This is your camera, keep it with you and always have film loaded. Everyone at this newspaper carries a camera. If you see anything interesting or something happening, take pictures. We can catch the story later, but we can’t go back and get a picture.  First rule: film is cheap. Don’t be concerned with how many frames you shoot."

The sports editor showed me how to roll my own.  I noticed a large Oregon coast poster featuring Tillamook hanging on the wall. Cheese, Trees and Ocean Breezes was the bold message across the top.  I chuckled about the need for an ocean breeze that morning. The downtown area stunk from the many dairies surrounding the area.

“Rule number two,” boomed the voice of the newsroom. “Don’t ever bad mouth the smell in town. Merchants are touchy about that. Around here it’s the smell of money. In fact, don’t speak badly about anyone either. This is a small town. Everyone is related or knows everyone else. Anything you say can circle back. Focus on the good.”

In the fifteen years I worked in small community newspapers, those two rules stuck with me. Even as a publisher, they still rang true. Don’t lose sight of the big picture worrying about saving a few cents and stay positive, every town is a small town.
Charles Thompson

Charlie teaches Health Science courses at a community college in Washington State. He entertains himself and his students with stories from his experience from two careers, healthcare and community newspapers. He is a contributing author in New Halem Tales Secrets with the story of a newspaper publisher who chooses to keep secrets and the trouble that ensues. New Halem Tales Secrets is available in Amazon’s Kindle Store and will be out for the Nook very soon. Check out the book  here . Read excerpts here.
 
Cattle Grazing. Photo by Gary Halvorson, Oregon State Archives [Attribution], via Wikimedia Commons

The Tradition that Came out of a Book

Turkish Delight by Kate Thompson

Our daughters will be home for the holidays soon and this means it’s time for our annual trek to Turkish Delight, a little deli in downtown Seattle, to buy a box of Turkish Delight. We’d never heard of the sweet gel candies made of sugar and cornstarch and rosewater flavor until we read, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis. In the story, the Queen of Narnia, aka the White Witch, gives Edmund a box of Turkish Delight. Edmund couldn’t eat just one.

The book was already on the big screen the December we read it out loud at the dinner table. Our girls were young teens then. Book before movie, we decided, and my husband, Charlie, because he always finishes his dinner first, would read.

The witch conjured up several pounds of the best Turkish Delight Edmund had ever tasted. “Sweet and light to the very centre” – Our daughters stopped the reading that night. Is Turkish Delight real? Their eyes shined. Charlie didn’t think so. This is a work of fiction, he said, and continued reading.

The next night, he left the table to fetch the book and came back with it and a small white box. Now his eyes were shining. He opened the box and grinned. Turkish Delight is real.

The Narnia story goes; the more Edmund ate, the more he wanted to eat. We enjoyed the candies, not nearly as much as Edmund, but when the holidays rolled around the following year, our daughters asked when we were bringing home the Turkish Delight and this is how our annual trek began. A tradition we’ve kept up, not out of greed, poor Edmund, but out of the good memories we share from those nights we read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe together.

Do you have traditions that began with a book? We’d love to hear. Share your stories in the comments.

Kate Thompson is a contributing author in New Halem Tales Secrets, newly released and available in the Amazon Kindle Store. Check it out here. Kate is currently working on her second novel, Tied by Water, and researching a third. Click here to go to Kate's Author Page

Turkish Delight. Photo by Chris Buttigieg at en.wikipedia [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons.

A Crow Flies into a Mystery

Crow in Flight by L. C. Mcgee
It was on an early morning beach walk when my wife and I were first startled by the appearance of a saucy and glossy, brown-colored crow. With the exceptions of an Apollo legend, we thought all crows were black. After a few exclamations as to its beauty, we dubbed the unusual bird the amber crow.

In my childhood I raised two black crows. They enchanted me with their intelligence and personalities. They taught me how they lived, their likes, dislikes and some of the ways they thought. Did this different crow symbolize our environment and its continual evolution and change?

Later, near the same area, again we saw the amber crow strutting among other crows. Must be a family we whispered, most were black but a few sported amber feathers in their wings; others were feathered in various combinations of black, white and amber.

Months later, working in my garden, a pure white crow fluttered onto a phone line. It was quite thin and weak. Two black crows flew up to support it, each on a side. Was it a relation, the matriarch perhaps? I’ll never know. I’ve noticed much compassion in crows, i.e. the helping of the sick and wounded, so I was not surprised at the support and caring I saw.

Once, driving by a lone graveyard, I spotted a large gathering of crows settling in trees near the road. All were oddly hushed and looking down. I pulled over. Below the trees, a few mourners stood in a respectful oval around the dead body of a large crow. I was fortunate; I was witnessing a “crow funeral”. With the exception of the occasional caw, it was eerie and silent. What irony, the crow lying on the green sward of a peoples’ graveyard and being shown crow-respect. Corvids are rarely shown human-respect for they are regarded as harbingers’ of death, since they do peck and eat, among other carrion, the dead body of an unfortunately exposed human; a blasphemy of the highest order, whatever that might be. 

Later I was mulling over our sighting of the amber crow and told my wife that a mystery of the natural world was calling me. “Ah, one of our favorite genres,” she replied, “mysteries!”  So the germ of an egg had been laid.

The Amber Crow series is pure fun mystery-fiction, scribbled to entertain. I delight in making up stories. I hope you enjoy the tales as much as I enjoy writing them.
L. C. Mcgee

Crow in Flight: By Iain Wanless (Flickr: Crow in flight) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)], via Wikimedia Commons

L.C. Mcgee, his wife and two fine cats live on the coast of Puget Sound. He enjoys reading, writing, writhing in coils (yoga), gardening and the occasional summer sail. Researching coastal Indian lore is a hobby and is further enhanced by his son’s Tlingit ancestry. He has finished writing his first mystery novel, The Amber Crow (available May 2013), is updating the sequel, The Amber crow and the Black Mariah, and has begun, The Amber Crow and the Hooting Woman. He is a contributing author to New Halem Tales Secrets, available at the Amazon Kindle Store.
More about L. C. at 5 NW Authors

Just Who is the Parking Lot Prophet?

An interview with Catherine Kigerl, author of the Parking Lot Prophet

Q. How did you come to write about the PLP?
A. My husband, William, once knew a man he personally called the Parking Lot Prophet, a man who had left a successful business profession to become a mystic. This man lived in a truck and camper and offered higher knowledge to anyone who would listen. He didn’t adhere to one specific religion but, like many mystics, he spoke about the Truth as it relates to all religions. I was inspired to write a character based upon this type of person. My Parking Lot Prophet looks different and has unique eccentricities. He jumped onto the page as a stockbroker who found his greater Call by way of a beach-rights campaign.

Q. What is religious mysticism and what is a mystic?
A. Mysticism lies at the deeper levels of all religious practice. Many do not know it but all religions have a mystical core. This core typically involves disciplined meditation or contemplative prayer. Writers who have captured the mystic vision and process include: Evelyn Underhill, Huston Smith and D.T Suzuki. One needn’t be affiliated with a religion to be a mystic. For the mystic’s goal is to drop the self and to truly know the Absolute otherwise known as God.
A mystic is anyone whose purpose in life is to practice religion at its deepest level. The mystic foregoes all other pursuits for this goal of becoming.

Q. What is your aim in writing the PLP?
A. My aim is to help readers understand what a mystic’s life involves, how a person can consciously make a choice to not be a part of the status quo, a choice to drop all matters of the self to follow the Path. This decision can happen fairly quickly for some people. Some join monasteries when it happens, others decide to do this work while living in the world. The PLP is of the latter group.
At the same time, spiritual-religious transformation takes time, there are steps along the way as a person learns to drop old habits and old ways of thinking that obstruct the Path. The PLP shows this work is not easy.

Q. There is humor in your PLP stories. Why is that?
A. A religious path can sometimes be taken too seriously. Actually, it can be incredibly funny and absurd. We are all bumbling along the way. Not to mention the PLP is a very funny, quirky person.

Q. So are you saying he speaks for himself?
A. His words, his actions, often come to me within a stream-of-consciousness. I never know what he’ll do next. He is truly a sage that way.


Catherine Kigerl is a contributing author to New Halem Tales Secrets. She is also the author of Stirring up the Water (under the name Cat Ruiz) published in 2008 by Salt Publishing Ltd, Cambridge UK. Her projects in the works include: The Further Adventures of the Parking Lot Prophet and No Expectations. A second collection of poems, The Water Settles, is also forthcoming. 

You'll find The Parking Lot Prophet in New Halem Tales Secrets, available in the Amazon Kindle Store.  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AHHNROW
Visit Cathy at http://www.5nwauthors.com

Miss Fluffy Pants Isn't the Only Cat

by Kate Thompson
Mitzi leaps onto my desk when I least expect it. She head butts me and lays on her back under my desk, her paws curled, the pose that makes me pause and say, awe.
   Mitzi isn't the only cat in my life. Don't tell her. I have another who is rather surly. I doubt Mitzi would like him. His name is Bartholomew. He lives in my story, "The Asteroid's Daughter and the Serpent Handler's Son".  Whether she likes it or not, Mitzi did serve as inspiration. She is a cat, after all.
   Mitzi is a Norwegian Forest Cat. Well, we think she is. We rescued her from a shelter in Seattle, WA six years ago. She was adorable, that's all we knew then. The giant paws, hairy toes and ear tufts, we learned, are typical of the Norwegian Forest Cat. If climbing the Christmas tree is proof, she is one. 
   We like to call her Miss Fluffy Pants. All that thick curly fur, you can imagine. A cold-weather cat, yet, she's never set a paw in snow. Her ancestors may have served as mousers on Viking Ships sailing for Norway. Mitzi has never seen a mouse, but I'm pretty sure she dreams about chasing them.

Kate Thompson is enthralled by treasure hunter stories and pirates, pioneer women, UFOs and Bigfoot. She's a contributing author in New Halem Tales Secrets and is currently working on her second novel, Tied by Water, and researching a third. Click here to go to Kate's Author Page

Read "The Asteroid's Daughter and the Serpent Handler's Son" in New Halem Tales Secrets. Book available at the Amazon Kindle Store.   

Greeting Card Junkie

Christmas card shopping in 1910 by Gwen Knechtel

I am a greeting card junkie. Whenever I see one, I have a Hallmark moment.  Or two. Or three. Can’t seem to help myself – they call to me!

     I’ve organized my addiction in four boxes labeled accordingly: Birthdays, Thinking of You, (with sub categories for Sympathy and Get Well) Anniversaries and Other Celebrations (specific sub categories include Graduations and Retirements) and the last one is for immediate family members’ special occasions. As for Christmas – that’s in a special Santa bag and usually filled with 4-5 boxed selections with additional Hanukkah and New Year’s cards. Other holidays (Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day etc.) find different roosts.

     Perhaps it’s my singular focus, (which may be a nicer way of saying I may have an addiction) but I have issues around greetings cards. Well, I also have them around potato chips; however, that’s another story…

     According to a friend, I don’t really have an addiction. That implies it’s “all about me”. As long as I address, stamp and send them, I’m being thoughtful. And I do - so buying cards is now justified because it makes me a thoughtful person. Hmm.

     How many hours do you spend perusing through stores with miles of card racks?  I try to keep it reasonable; retail therapy of any kind IS a dangerous thing… But at least it’s calorie free entertainment. A good thing too otherwise the bathroom scale would be screaming.

     With technology being what it is, you’d think hard copy cards would go out of style. Not as long as they have junkies like me! And even with big time cyberspace around, I’ve discovered another way to feed my addiction: e-cards! If you haven’t been introduced to Jacquie Lawson’s website, you are missing a sure bet.

     Well, time to bid adieu; gotta sign and mail some cards.


Christmas Shopping 1910 (Photo Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

Gwen Knechtel is a teacher and resides in western Washington with her husband and family. Now in “late middle age” she celebrates daily, love of family, friends and creativity. With one published story in Lembas for the Soul and a contributing author to e-book New Halem Tales: Secrets, she is currently working on DORM 1973. Find Gwen at www.5nwauthors.com 

“It Takes a Group to Raise a Writer”

“It Takes a Group to Raise a Writer.”
By Cathy Kigerl

For Winter Quarter of 1997 I was asked if I’d like to teach a Fiction Writing class in Highline Community College’s Continuing Education program. I was trying for a career change from office work to teaching. I had taught Poetry for their Senior Program the previous year and enjoyed it. Since I had worked on two fiction novels and knew the process of writing a novel well, I said yes. One of my students in that first Fiction Writing class was LC McGee as well as another mystery writer, Nancy Conkle. At the end of the quarter I offered a critique group for interested student’s off-campus. Five students, including LC McGee and Nancy Conkle joined. We met twice a month in a room in back of a used bookstore called Book World. It wasn’t the most comfortable room but all we really needed was a big table and chairs. Most students were seriously working on novels. I taught the class again Spring Quarter and the critique group continued off-campus. That Summer Quarter Gwen Knechtel and Kate Thompson attended the class. Gwen said right off she was looking for a writer’s group. So at the end of the quarter the critique group kept going only now it was down to LC, Gwen, Kate, Nancy and another writer, Leslee Browning. Since the room at Book World was no longer available we met at various County Library meeting rooms. Then Kate’s apartment event room came available where we met for our once-a-month meetings for over two years.
I continued to act as teacher, mediating the critiquing; everyone would share an excerpt from their novels or stories in progress. Afterward, I’d give the group writing exercises to flex writing muscles. A few other writers joined us for periods of time, and Charlie Thompson, Kate’s husband, also became a regular part of the group. 

In 2000 I moved to Berkeley, California. It wasn’t easy to leave the group behind but something told me it was time they were on their own and I wanted to get my Master’s degree so I could earn a better salary as a teacher. Back in Washington State they continued to meet and became an even stronger writing group. Gwen took over group organization and besides growing as writers they also strengthened their social bonds. 

When I returned to Washington from California in 2002 it was clear they no longer needed me in a teaching role. The group now consisted of five steady members: Gwen, Kate, Charlie, and LC. Leslee and Nancy had left the group. Meanwhile, I still worked on fiction on my own as well as poetry. My primary focus had shifted to academic teaching when I accepted my first adjunct instructor position at a community college in Seattle. 

Still I missed their camaraderie and writing expertise. So in 2003 I asked the group if I might return and join them as ‘just a writer.’ They whole-heartedly welcomed me back. It was rather sensitive at first for there may have some reluctance on their part to critique my work. I had once been their teacher after all. But over time, my writing became just as subject to critique as theirs. Their greater social emphasis was new to me. I’d run the group in the past as ‘straight business.’ I feared they were becoming too social for a serious writing undertaking. Yet I came to understand that some socializing was part of creating a strong writing group bond. 

In 2005 Gwen presented us with the idea that we create a collaborative work—for each of us to write unique stories set in a fictitious town named New Halem, Oregon. The only thing that would tie our characters together would be the town itself. We all thought it an excellent idea. I’d been toying with an idea for a character and saw he’d be ideal for that town. So my character, The Parking Lot Prophet, was born. A story I’d written a few years earlier eventually became Those Demon Denims. 

Despite another move I made to California from 2007-2011, this time to Mt. Shasta, the group kept me in. Sometimes I’d send my excerpts for our critique meetings in the mail, by email and we even Skyped together a few times. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to participate every month but I contributed when I could. 

When I returned to Washington and rejoined them in person August of 2011, I was amazed at how much they’d developed in my absence. A stint in a PhD program didn’t help my wordiness. But with their example I’ve learned to cut my sentences down to a better size. On the other hand, my character, the PLP, does give me a good excuse to be wordy!

I teach completely online now and look forward to our face-to-face meetings every month. After meeting in a coffee shop for a while we now hold our once-a-month meetings at LC’s graciously-hosted home. Even though I teach completely online, I’ve struggled with our 100% computerized critique format instead of using paper copy like we always did in the past. Thankfully Kate and Charlie, our computer technology experts, have made that transition smoother and I eventually gave up any unconscious Luddite hang-ups. Earlier this year we decided to ‘go for it’ and e-publish our collection. 

We all have busy lives with work and family, so it took time for us to arrive at a good collection of New Halem Tales. But here we are with what I think is a fantastically unique set of stories. I’m proud of this group of writers whom I once taught and who have in turn taught me.

Recently, I found a card in ‘The Writer’s Workshoppe’ a business devoted to writers in Port Townsend that I presented to the group. It says, “It Takes a Group to Raise a Writer.” I couldn’t think of a better way to express who we are.

Cathy was born in Seattle and has lived on the US west coast most of her life. Her poetry book, Stirring up the Water(under the name Cat Ruiz) was published in 2008 by Salt Publishing Ltd, Cambridge UK. She is working on, The Further Adventures of the Parking Lot Prophet and No Expectations. A second collection of poems, The Water Settles, is also in the works. An online college instructor in the Humanities, she currently resides with her husband in Washington State. 

--Cathy, November 2012.