Ecology, Essays, and Mermaid Redux at 1st Sunday Prose

Time again for The Bloomington Writers Guild’s “First Sunday Prose and Open Mic,” at Morgenstern Books on a lovely, sunny, warm afternoon (as opposed, say, to Friday night’s tornado warning — such is spring weather in Indiana), though this time not adjacent to the coffee house but relocated to a conference area in the store’s back. Nevertheless, with a healthy audience of, for the main part, about twenty people.

So, first up this time was cultural anthropologist and IU International Studies professor Stephanie C. Kane, currently specializing in research on the political ecology of water and ice (though earlier publications include THE PHANTOM GRINGO BOAT: SHAMANISM AND DEVELOPMENT IN PANAMA and AIDS ALIBRIS: SEX, DRUGS, AND CRIME in the 1990s) with several selections from her latest book, JUST ONE RAIN AWAY: THE ETHNOGRAPHY OF RIVER-CITY FLOOD CONTROL (2022). Her readings were followed by human bevavior observer and essayist Darrell Stone with four writings on the recent and not-so-recent past, “Birth Announcement,” “The Box,” “Ode to a Squirrel,” and “The Visitor,” combining poignancy, humor, and a keen eye into the workings of the world around us.

Following these there were five walk-on readers out of about ten remaining for the post-break “open mic” session, with me next to last. My part was the second of three tales, begun last month with “The Mermaid Vampiress” (cf. March 5), “Mermaid Vampiress Dates Octopus.”