More Like NOvember, am I Right?

Today I did something I haven't done in many years. I left my house, walked to the woods, and walked right into overgrowth. I didn't use the path managed by my wife's uncle and his bright orange Kubota. I didn't take my phone, a pen and paper, a child, or a walking stick. I plunged into thorns and fallen leaves ankle deep and I wandered. I tried not to look for anything, since it's NOvember after all, and what I really want to see, animals like snakes (I especially and foolishly look forward to finding a copperhead in these woods), turtles, salamanders, and frogs, have all gone to ground for a little while. Well, wait. I don't really know for sure. You see, I'm in North Carolina now and I don't know the laws of hibernation here. It's been cool, and rainy, and NOvember for about eight days now. And if the wild animals around here are anything like me, they hate NOvember too, and will sleep through it if possible. I know I would. 

The Four Chambered Heart, a eulogy for my mother.

My mother died on January 19, 2017, nine days before her 64th birthday. My dad asked me to write something to say at her funeral because I'm the poet in the family. To be honest, I was reluctant to say anything, knowing full well I wouldn't be able to put my whole heart and intention into the words I needed to describe this woman I loved so much. But I did because my dad asked me to, and he's done almost everything I've ever asked him to do for me. How could I refuse?

Portable Concrete Mixer, a poem for National Poetry Month

Here is one of the twenty new poems I challenged myself to write as a celebration of National Poetry Month. 

Portable Concrete Mixer

I don’t think I’ll ever be dumb enough to go to work everyday.

What life is better? Tying boot laces at 5 a.m. and sipping

Squalid truck stop coffee, or this pond life, playing on the wet bank

With mason jars full of tadpoles fat as Buddhas?

The frogs are right--rest in the sun or jump and hide until

All danger passes.

                        Father calls and I quit my squat,

Running to him because I’m not a frog, but a boy.

He’s behind the arborvitae hedge where something’s missing--

The portable concrete mixer used to stand just there,

Sagging on leaf springs, hitch propped on a stack

of wooden blocks, grass that had grown tall underneath it

Yellow as frog thighs, wheel ruts deep and empty and leading

Across the backyard to the gravel driveway, hidden from view.

                        What did you do with my stuff, I asked.

The treasures I collected and hid in there? Yeah, alla them

Sticks and shit you stacked up in the engine housing?

I threw it on the burn pile and tossed the rocks in the fire ring.

Uncle Dick sold the engine for a song and scrapped the mixer,

You gotta help me hitch ‘er up and haul ‘er over to his house.

                        Now stop acting like a little kid, we got work to do.

                        And we did.

After Work: My Grandfather's Eulogy.

On Sunday January 24, 2016, at 4:22 pm, I received a text message from my sister; it said just this: "He's gone." My grandfather had died at the age of 93, twelve days after his birthday. He was a Master Mechanic; he was awarded a Silver Star for gallantry in action against the enemy during the first wave of the Invasion of Normandy by Allied Forces; he was a careful and dedicated gardener; he was a hard worker. When we talked he never asked me "How's work?" but "Are you working?" He knew I was working, he knew I had a job, but he always asked me like that, as if I wasn't, or as if I could stop working. So, when my aunt, and then my father, asked me to prepare a Eulogy for his funeral I started thinking about his legacy, mainly the work ethic he exemplified, the lessons I tried to learn from his example, and that's where I started. I was deeply honored that I was asked to speak on his memory--I loved my grandfather deeply. And I'm also glad I finally got to read in front of him at least one time.

Superheroes Don't Rape

Every Wednesday for the past twenty years I've been stopping at my local comic shop on my way home from work for a little quiet time, a little chat with the regulars, and to pick up a few new releases. I've lapsed a few times over the years. When my kids were born I took a break from buying comics because really, every dollar counts when you have diapers to buy and your wife's on maternity leave. But I continued to read through my personal collection and kept up to date on news via Newsarama or Comic Book Resources. I love Wednesdays. I live for Wednesdays. I chat with the store owner, we talk about our kids, pick dream creative teams for comics that will never see the light of day, ooh and aah over Chris Samnee's Daredevil pages and marvel at Art Adams' covers. 

Look, I'm not a 'serious' collector. There are titles, like Daredevil, that I'm loyal to, and there are creators who I love and give anything they work on a chance. I keep my weekly haul to about 4 or 5 issues, which is a good amount to read in one sitting and it doesn't kill my wallet. It's hard to do, though, maintaining a maximum number of comics, because there are so many good books out there right now, stretching the medium to the edges of possibility. And that's what I love about comics, the versatility, the possibility, the wild imagination unbridled in 22 page, four color brilliance. I love that I can go to a comic shop and find colorful superheroes shelved next to African American soldiers fighting in World War II shelved next to re-imagined literary classics like Madame Bovary modernized as a graphic novel called Gemma Bovary. 

If I spent as much time on anything else in my life as I've dedicated to comics, I'd be a master carpenter by now, or a PhD in Comparative Literature, or, at the very least, I'd have saved a lot more money over the years. But it's okay because lately I've been feeling like we're on the verge of something amazing in this little corner of fandom. I feel like we're so close to another Golden Age, if I could be so bold. Books like Ms Marvel and The Lumberjanes, or The Mighty Avengers, and creators like Kris Anka and G. Willow Wilson, I don't know, there's still a long way to go but there's this sense of inclusiveness afoot, there's a sense of representation stirring, and I think, "Yes! Keep trying, keep going!"

And then a female journalist receives rape threats for not liking a comic cover. Yes, that's right. She took an artist to task, stridently but fairly, for misrepresenting human anatomy and objectifying a teen super heroine on the cover of a comic book and she got rape threats. I'm not going to rehash the whole thing here. The story's on the 'net if you want to read it, but I won't sully my blog by repeating some of the awful things that were said to her. Listen, there are people with stories to tell, men and women, people of color, people of various backgrounds. They should be allowed to tell their stories. People should be able to see heroes who look like them. People should be able to have heroes who don't look like them, too. People who love stories should be able to talk about them with other fans who love stories without fear, without shame, without hatred. Female fans have a stock in this medium we all love so much and I for one am happy to know female fans exist! I'm so glad there are female creators at work in comics. Thanks to them, all of them, we're getting new voices, new stories, new perspectives, hell, we might even learn something!

Young men and women are going to read these stories one day. It does us no good as a society to reinforce negative and dangerous stereotypes not only about women and people of color, but guys, we are going to be the villains of this story and I don't want to be guilty by association. Better writers than me have already tackled this topic, but I think change in the community has to start with guys like me, who don't say much otherwise, who avoid the forums and threads because we hate bullies and ignorance, we hate spoilers and ruiners and so we avoid them, but I don't think it's right to avoid them anymore, so here's my two cents, I guess. I want my compassionate and beautiful sons, and my compassionate and beautiful daughter, to see heroes of all genders and walks of life, in comics, if that's what they like, or in professional sports or television shows. I want them to see that people of color have stories and perspectives outside the narrow one the mass market media provides them with. It's as important to me, for example, that a female Muslim hero stars in a comic book as a female Muslim writes, draws, or edits the comic book.

I want my sons to see how big the world is and I think comics can do that. They taught us a man can fly, they taught us that great power requires great responsibility, they teach us about teamwork and unity and striving for the betterment of our world. Look, my daughter already knows what's in store for her and girls like her. She's 13 and not deluded. As evidenced by the hate spewing out of comics forums directed at girls and young women just like her she still has an uphill battle to wage. What I hope though, is that my sons, and boys like them, will grow up to reject this hatred and be voices of reason and fairness, that their dialogue with their female peers will be thoughtful and inclusive, so maybe my granddaughters can grow up in a world with representation and equality. 

Let me put it in terms we 'fanboys' can understand: when the Fantastic Four foils Dr. Doom's nefarious plan, or when the Avengers hold of a Skrull invasion, it's not only New York they've saved, but the whole world. They've saved people in countries we're at war with, they've saved you and the people you hate: women, black people, transgender, everyone. They are heroes: non-selective, put-their-lives-on-the-line, everyone-gets-out-of-this-alive heroes, and you read their adventures month after month, week after week, and you still want to exclude entire demographics from this hobby, this past time, this serious enterprise you claim to love so much? You think you can threaten someone, a stranger, with rape threats? Who did you learn that from? Spider-Man? The Green Lantern?

You guys--villains rape. Rapists are VILLAINS. Villains, real world, real life despotic villains use rape as a  tool to destroy communities and lives. I won't let you villains do that to my community, to our children, to our wives and daughters and sisters, to our sons, who need more kinds of role models than ever before, I won't let you do this thing. I'm not going to stand by and let you do this. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, but I know I'm not going to threaten you. I'm going to be a guard, The Guard. I'm going to look out for my peers and call you out when I see bad behavior. I'm going to build and enlarge this community. I'm going to buy comics for every little girl and boy out there, and I'm going to share this medium with everyone I can, and soon, if they don't already, the good guys will outnumber you. And if you haven't gone away by then, hopefully you'll at least keep your villain mouth shut.  

My Reading Year, 2013

My wife reminded me that we got married and pregnant this year, and we both worked a ton, plus we we took a few small summer trips, but still, I'm a little discouraged that I didn't meet my reading goal, which was 52 books. I've been buying books at library sales and off remainder shelves at bookstores for years, and now I have a nice collection of books I've never read. One of the purposes of setting my reading goal was to read a lot of those books that have been gathering dust for years. I established a few small rules for myself and I mostly followed them, with one or two deviations that were totally worth breaking the rules for. These were my rules: I had to read books from my shelves that I had never read before. I couldn't borrow books from the library. At least half the books had to be from the Modern Library's Top 100 Novels. As a side goal, I wanted to read as many of my wife's favorite books as I could, especially the ones she read as a young person. I liked a few of them a lot, and in fact one of my favorite books of the year was a young adult novel she loved called The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, by Avi.

So, here's my 2013 Reading List:

1. Animal Farm, George Orwell
2. Best Erotic Poems, David Lehman, Editor
3. O Pioneers, Willa Cather
4. The Anthologist, Nicholson Baker
5. The Captain's Verses, Pablo Neruda
6. The Sea of Grass, Conrad Richter
7. Habibi, Craig Thompson
8. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Sparks
9. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
10. My Life as a Weapon, Hawkeye Vol.1, Matt Fraction and David Aja
11. Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel
12. The Day of the Locust, Nathaniel West
13. Salvation on Sand Mountain, Dennis Covington
14. The Yellow Lighted Bookstore, Lewis Buzbee
15. The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Roald Dahl
16. Daily Rituals, Mason Currey
17. Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
18. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates
19. Disquiet, Julia Leigh
20. Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, Eleanor Coerr
21. Call of the Wild, Jack London
22. Strong is Your Hold, Galway Kinnell
23. Stag's Leap, Sharon Olds
24. Scapled, Vol. 9, Jason Aaron
25. Scalped, Vol. 10, Jason Aaron
26. The House Made of Dawn, N. Scott Momaday
27. Sailor Twain, Mark Seigel
28. The Nao of Brown, Glynn Dillon
29. The Celts of Myth and Legend, Tim Roberts
30. The Wasp Eater, William Lychack
31. Flex Mentallo, Grant Morrison, Frank Quietly
32. Late for Work, David Tucker
33. Hating Alison Ashley, Robin Klein
34. Star Girl, Jerry Spinelli
35. The Ocean at the End of the Lane
36. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, Avi

I have bookmarks in two books I didn't finish before the new year, they are The Devil's Arithmetic, by Jane Yolen, and Whirligig, by Paul Fleischman.

It's Pop Culture, It Makes Me Cry

I'm a recent Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast devotee. I found out about the NPR podcast a few weeks ago when Dean Trippe, a comics artist I admire, posted a link to an episode where Glen Weldon, a writer for NPR, plugged his comic on the podcast. I like Pop Culture Happy Hour because it's got a bit of snark, a bit of emotion, they talk about comics, and I love that, but they also talk about TV, opera, music, theater, etc. I hear conversations there I feel like I've had with my friends over the years. When I first started buying comics my friends and I would go to one of the Local Comic Shops, buy our books, then take them to Schmuckers, a local burger joint. Before we were allowed to read our comics, we had to finish the signature "Wimpy Burger", and an order of fries, and a cup of coffee. When that was all gone we ordered a slice of one of a dozen or more homemade pies, got our coffees refilled, and tucked into our comics. We talked about creator dream teams, which characters we'd like to see team up, who should star in the movie about our favorite characters. It was like our own little pop culture happy hour.

So, every PCHH podcast has a theme, and last week it was Pop Culture that Makes Us Cry. I took a cue from them and made my own list of pop culture that gets me every time I encounter it. Here it is, for your pleasure, with some visual aids when applicable.

1." In a Season of Calm Weather' It's a short story by Ray Bradbury, the opener in a collection called A Medicine for Melancholy. There was a bookstore called Friedly's Books here in Toledo, and they specialized in Sci-Fi before they finally went out of business. I used to go to a lot of the used bookstores looking for Bradbury books because I love him and I wanted as much of his stuff as I could find. Friedly's had a copy of A Medicine for Melancholy, wrapped in plastic, on a shelf in a display case. I asked to see it, and I held it with due reverence, saw the price, written in pencil on the first page, and regretfully handed it back the the staff person. It was $35, and I had $9. And then the staff person said, "You know, the pages are kind of yellow, and the binding is going to go any minute. If you have five bucks, the book is yours." And I did, so it was.

The story, 'In a Season of Calm Weather', is about a man who loves Pablo Picasso, who finds out he is vacationing only minutes away from where Picasso is vacationing. He takes a walk down the beach and sees an old man drawing in the wet sand with a popsicle stick and that's all I'm going to tell you. I cry every time I read this story. I've read it out loud lots of times, to girlfriends and dear friends, my wife and my son, to myself, it's beautiful. I mean, it's Bradbury. Of course it's beautiful.

2. The Iron Giant It's an animated movie about a boy who finds a giant iron robot in the woods near his house. Its'a movie about heroes, making good choices, and the wild imagination. When my dear friend John Swaile was alive, he did a passable impression of the robot's voice. Also, Superman. If you haven't seen the movie yet, don't follow the link to the clip. Big, big spoiler.

3. The opening credits score for the Superman movies, by John Williams. I cry like a fool, because Superman is the greatest hero, even if he isn't my favorite hero, and that score is just perfect.

4. The Black Cauldron, book two of the Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander. If you've seen the abysmal Disney adaptation of this book, don't hold it against the story--the story is brilliant. Brilliant. I've read the whole series nearly every year since I was 9 or 10. When I worked at Borders I must have sold the first book in the series, The Book of Three, to a thousand parents who said their sons wouldn't read. And when those boys came back for the second book they were readers for life. Just about a month ago, while I was at Barnes and Noble with my son, I over heard a mother encouraging her son to find something to read, and I recommended this series. I saw them leave the store with the first two books. Success!

The Black Cauldron finds our protagonist Taran in the midst of a great adventure. He is burdened with responsibilities both joyous and odious and seems several times to lose more than he gains. I'm moved to tears several times throughout this boy's challenging, heart-wrenching adventure.

5. Every year I get to read the penultimate selection for the annual Jack Kerouac Memorial Reader's Theater, called Back to Jack. It's the closing passage from On the Road, where Sal, the novel's protagonist, is thinking about his friend Dean who has just walked off into the American Night. I've read it one hundred times, and every time I get to the part where Jack describes nightfall, and I read the words "...cups the peaks and folds the final shore in...", I think of my beloved friends who have passed on and I crack, tears well up and my voice loses strength, every single time.