Sherry Chandler

Mr. Snowflake Bentley has a birthday

Here’s something to think about when you’re shoveling your driveway — each one unique. This little clip of Wilson Bentley’s snowflake photography brings that home in the way the grade school teacher could not. And today is his birthday, too.

I found this at Pocahontas County Fare, where Rebecca has posted another of her Currier & Ives views. I especially love the snow-covered Ford tractor.

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By the way, I’ve just forgotten my fifth blogiversary (there’s a word for you, Charlie Hughes!), It happened on February 4. I always forget.

In the past, I’ve marked the anniversary by changing blog templates but this year I’ve had other things to think about and will stick with this one. People who are using one of the older templates, let me know how they’re working.

Thanks for sticking with me all these years, folks! Let’s see what the sixth year brings.

Kentucky Great Writers Postponed

The Kentucky Great Writers event scheduled for tomorrow (Feb 9) evening at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning has been postponed in anticipation of snow, ice, rain, and all manner of stuff that will make roads dangerous.

The event will be rescheduled I know. I’ll let you know what I know.

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Update: I’m told the reschedule date is March 9.

Tempest in a teapot?

Focus on the Family’s benign Super Bowl ad

Mr. Sinclair Lewis has a birthday

And here, in celebration on this February Sunday morning, are the opening paragraphs of Elmer Gantry (Harcourt, 1927), Lewis’s satire of populist evangelism:

Elmer Gantry was drunk. He was eloquently drunk, lovingly and pugnaciously drunk. He leaned against the bar of the Old Home Sample Room, the most gilded and urbane saloon in Cato, Missouri, and requested the bartender to join him in “The Good Old Summer Time,” the waltz of the day.

Blowing on a glass, polishing it and glancing at Elmer through its flashing rotundity, the bartender remarked that he wasn’t much of a hand at this here singing business. But he smiled. No bartender could have done other than smile on Elmer, so inspired and full of gallantry and hell-raising was he, and so dominating was his beefy grin.

“All right, old socks,” agreed Elmer. “Me and my room-mate’ll show you some singing as is singing! Meet roommate. Jim Lefferts. Bes’ roommate in world. Wouldn’t live with him if wasn’t! Bes’ quarterback in Milwest. Meet roommate.”

The bartender again met Mr. Lefferts, with protestations of distinguished pleasure.

Elmer and Jim Lefferts retired to a table to nourish the long, rich, chocolate strains suitable to drunken melody. Actually, they sang very well. Jim had a resolute tenor, and as to Elmer Gantry, even more than his bulk, his thick black hair, his venturesome black eyes, you remembered that arousing barytone. He was born to be a senator. He never said anything important, and he always said it sonorously. He could make “Good morning” seem profound as Kant, welcoming as a brass band, and uplifting as a cathedral organ. It was a ‘cello, his voice, and in the enchantment of it you did not hear his slang, his boasting, his smut, and the dreadful violence which (at this period) he performed on singulars and plurals.

Yet another miscellany

The Rondea Roundup is Announcing the Paul Laurence Dunbar Rondeau Award:

This award is given to the best rondeau on the subject of African-American history, life or culture submitted for consideration to the Rondeau Roundup Blog starting February 9th (the anniversary of Dunbar’s death) and continuing until Friday, February 26th, 2010. The author of the winning rondeau will receive a $50 Amazon.com gift certificate and publication of his/her rondeau on the Rondeau Roundup. Up to five More Than Honorable Mentions may also be selected for publication on the Rondeau Roundup Blog.

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Readings by Gaylord Brewer and Brett Eugene Ralph

Friday, February 12

The InKY Reading Series is a monthly music and literature event held on the second Friday of the month at the Rudyard Kipling in Louisville, KY.

Always free, never a cover.

Schedule
7:00—7:30PM Open mic
7:30—8:00PM Live music
8:00—9:00PM Featured readers

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The Winter Writing Classes Presented by
Still: The Journal
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Saturday, March 13, 1‐4 p.m.
Loyal Jones Appalachian Center
Berea College, Berea, Ky.
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Silas House‐Fiction
Jason Howard‐Nonfiction
Marianne Worthington‐Poetry

These intensive three-hour master writing classes, featuring the editors of Still: The Journal, will include lecture, writing prompts, generative writing exercises, and the opportunity to share your work with others. This is not a workshop, and there will be no individual critiques of work or manuscripts.

$60 per person (space is limited)

Registration must be received no later than March 6, 2010. To reserve your place in one of the workshops, please mail check, payable to STILL, along with your name and email address. Specify which writing class you want to attend. You will receive email confirmation upon receipt. Mail check, name, email address, and choice of writing class to:
Pines Publicity, P. O. Box 1121, Berea, KY 40403

Any inquiries may be made at poetry@stilljournal.net

Cats and Goblins

from Goblin Market

Evening by evening
Among the brookside rushes,
Laura bowed her head to hear,
Lizzie veiled her blushes:
Crouching close together
In the cooling weather,
With clasping arms and cautioning lips,
With tingling cheeks and finger-tips.
“Lie close,” Laura said,
Pricking up her golden head:
We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?”
“Come buy,” call the goblins
Hobbling down the glen.
“O! cried Lizzie, Laura, Laura,
You should not peep at goblin men.”
Lizzie covered up her eyes
Covered close lest they should look;
Laura reared her glossy head,
And whispered like the restless brook:
“Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzie,
Down the glen tramp little men.
One hauls a basket,
One bears a plate,
One lugs a golden dish
Of many pounds’ weight.
How fair the vine must grow
Whose grapes are so luscious;
How warm the wind must blow
Through those fruit bushes.”
“No,” said Lizzie, “no, no, no;
Their offers should not charm us,
Their evil gifts would harm us.”
She thrust a dimpled finger
In each ear, shut eyes and ran:
Curious Laura chose to linger
Wondering at each merchant man.
One had a cat’s face,
One whisked a tail,
One tramped at a rat’s pace,
One crawled like a snail,
One like a wombat prowled obtuse and furry,
One like a ratel tumbled hurry-scurry.
Lizzie heard a voice like voice of doves
Cooing all together:
They sounded kind and full of loves
In the pleasant weather.

— Christina Rosetti. Read the whole poem here.

Advocacy

I have been reading in Fooling With Words, a book of interviews Bill Moyers had with poets at the Geraldine R. Dodge Festival over a decade ago.

This moning I was reading his interview with Marge Piercy. Moyers asked her whether her poems about the “grittiness of life” come from her own experiences, her years of working as a clerk, a switchboard operator, a secretary. Piercy answers:

No more so than growing up in the center of Detroit and losing a good friend to heroin when I was fifteen. No more than being in the movement against the Vietnam War and experiencing the violence of the government’s willingness to use force against people who dissent. No more than packing a woman with ice so she wouldn’t bleed to death because a doctor wouldn’t help her when abortions were illegal.

There is more to this passage, and Piercy ends by affirming life, as she does in her poetry, but reading that last sentence reminded me what life used to be like for women and how the radical right wants it to be again.

I have been very discouraged lately about the state of the world and feeling powerless to do anything about it. So I had vowed to stick to my poetry and stay out of the culture wars. That I didn’t need to say anything about this Focus on the Family Tebow ad that’s scheduled for the Super Bowl and that my signing yet another e-mail petition was just another meaningless powerless gesture.

But reading Piercy convinced me that I need to speak out, even though my soapbox is small. Anyway, today is the birthday of Betty Friedan, founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League, a good day to speak out in support of a woman’s right to choose.

In case you’ve been living in Lower Slobovia, here’s the deal:

Focus on the Family, that paragon of “righteous” bigotry, has landed a coveted 30-second TV spot during the game that is expected to deliver an anti-abortion message, and the Women’s Media Center, with the support of several reproductive rights organizations, has kicked off a campaign for CBS to ban the ad.

Here’s what we know so far about the ad: It features star college quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam, sharing “a personal story centered on the theme of ‘Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life,’” according to a Focus on the Family press release. It’s safe to assume the spot will tell the story of how Tebow’s mom fell ill during her pregnancy but refused doctors’ advice that she have an abortion for her own safety. Luckily enough, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy and future Heisman Trophy-winner. Tebow only confirmed suspicions that the ad takes this tack when the controversy was raised at a recent press conference: “I’ve always been very convicted of it” — presumably his antiabortion view — “because that’s the reason I’m here, because my mom was a very courageous woman.”

Winning the Heisman Trophy, by the way, doesn’t strike me as a guarantee of moral probity. A man who is an amazing football player is not necessarily the same man I’d pick as a spiritual leader. Seems to me like O.J. Simpson won that prize once upon a time. Star athletes in general have a recent record of behaving badly. And if the ad argues as predicted, it strikes me as the worst kind of rhetorical trickery, emotional and manipulative.

I should also disclose here that I have never watched a Super Bowl and don’t intend to start this year. So the Focus on the Family ad is not targeted at me or folk like me.

This campaign is not about saving babies. It’s about controlling women. If it were about saving babies, these same people would be working hard to see that poor women get good sex education* and good prenatal care and that the babies of poor women get good healthcare and a good education. I don’t see that happening.

As for CBS, now that they’ve broken their self-imposed ban on advocacy ads during the Super Bowl, looks like they’ll have to take them from all sides. Like, for example, this one from Planned Parenthood

Women’s Media Center protest letter is here.

Gloria Allred Threatens CBS For Allowing Tim Tebow Anti-Abortion Super Bowl Ad

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*A new study published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine that abstinence-only can work with younger adolescents for a short period of time if coupled with intensive sex education.

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Added: From William Saletan via Jeff Hess:

Pam’s story certainly is moving. But as a guide to making abortion decisions, it’s misleading. Doctors are right to worry about continuing pregnancies like hers. Placental abruption has killed thousands of women and fetuses. No doubt some of these women trusted in God and said no to abortion, as she did. But they didn’t end up with Heisman-winning sons. They ended up dead.

Being dead is just the first problem with dying in pregnancy. Another problem is that the fetus you were trying to save dies with you. A third problem is that your existing kids lose their mother. A fourth problem is that if you had aborted the pregnancy, you might have gotten pregnant again and brought a new baby into the world, but now you can’t. And now the Tebows have exposed a fifth problem: You can’t make a TV ad.

On Sunday, we won’t see all the women who chose life and found death. We’ll just see the Tebows, because they’re alive and happy to talk about it. In the business world, this is known as survivor bias:
Failed mutual funds disappear, leaving behind the successful ones, which creates the illusion that mutual funds tend to beat market averages. In the Tebows’ case, the survivor bias is literal. If you’re diagnosed with placental abruption, you have the right to choose life. But don’t be so sure that life is what you’ll get.