Sherry Chandler

This Thursday, April 17, is the birthday of my sister-in-law of, can it be?, about 50 years. Happy birthday, Pete!

But it is also the Academy of American Poets’ Poem in your Pocket Day!

Celebrate the first national Poem In Your Pocket Day!

The idea is simple: select a poem you love during National Poetry Month then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends on April 17.

Poems from pockets will be unfolded throughout the day with events in parks, libraries, schools, workplaces, and bookstores.

The site has suggestions for celebrating the day and also a selection of pocket-sized poems you can print out and share.

Or, if you’re more technology minded, you can carry Mobile Poets on your pocket communicator of choice.

April 17 is also the date for Hazard Community and Technical College’s Evening with Poets, hosted by Jim Webb. This year’s featured poet is Diane Gilliam Fisher. Readings begin at 6:30 in the Stephens Library. Admission is free!

The 12th annual HCTC Spring Writers Conference is set for April 18, 10:00 to 4:30. This FREE writers conference will feature workshops by Crystal Wilkinson, Gurney Normal, and Diane Gilliam Fisher.

At the other end of the state, Kentucky Writers Conference 2008 returns to Bowling Green for it’s fifth year on April 17 and 18. Presenters include George Ella Lyon, Richard Taylor, Lynnell Edwards, and John Guzlowski (about whom more later).

The 10th annual Southern Kentucky Bookfest will be held on Saturday April 19 at the Sloan Convention in Bowling Green. My friend Georgia Green Stamper, author of You Can Go Anywhere, will be there along with other local notables, including Kentucky Poet Laureate Jane Gentry, former Kentucy Poet Laureate Richard Taylor, along with Leatha Kendrick, Fred Smock, George Ella Lyon, Lynnell Edwards, and some folks who write stuff beside poetry. Full list of authors here.

You can find links to web pages for these and many other Kentucky writers on my Ky’s Writers page.

In case you didn’t get signed up, here are the archives for Knopf’s Poem-a-Day 2008

And don’t forget Dead Mule’s Poets on the Odds.

Asked to pick something as simple as a favorite color, I am apt to be catapulted off the Bridge of Death by the Old Man from Scene 24. About books I am as fickle as Gin (see comment to previous post). I can’t even claim to be serially monogamous because there’s genre to be considered. In mysteries alone, I have run through Agatha Christy, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Rex Stout, John D. McDonald, Ross McDonald, Raymond Chandler, Dick Francis, Tony Hillerman, Edith Pargeter, Martha Grimes, P.D. James, Colin Dexter, Ian Rankin, and now I’m looking to James Lee Burke.

This week ABC News revealed that George W. Bush himself approved the torture of prisoners: Bush Aware of Advisers’ Interrogation Talks. I’m not sure this came as a surprise to any of us. The scandal is that this revelation is being treated as rather ho-hum. The ACLU, of which I am a card-carrying member, is asking for a special investigator, but is being met with indifference. Avedon Carol points out that an impeachment proceeding doesn’t have to stop at the end of a term. She suggests that we all should be making some noise about this:

Above and beyond that, everyone should be contacting national and local media outlets right now to demand better coverage of these crimes and call for prosecution of these criminals.

Read also Digby, who also provides this handy list of media contacts.

Update: Sign the ACLU petition here.

Ratslinger won’t eat with Bush. Interesting to have a dinner in honor of some one who won’t be there. Even this Pope has his redeeming characteristics, though for some he is the last straw.

Barack Obama’s unlikely political education. The Agitator. This article by Ryan Lizza is several months old, but it is still a good example of what I find appealing about Barack Obama and the reasons why I am skeptical of his readiness to be President. It might also be worth revisiting this Feb 2007 profile in the Rolling Stone. I found both links at No Quarter, though I don’t necessarily draw the same conclusion from them that the poster draws.

Why Hillary Should Be President

The new Don of the Dirty Dozen. The League of Conservation Voters is not impressed by Mitch McConnel’s green record.

Talent, Guts, and Condition. Jeff Hess at Have Coffee, Will Write is asking writers to share their ways of keeping in condition.

The Dependable Renegade is always, well, . . . dependable.

Zane Grey was one person who wrote 90 books. Lance Mannion speaks of 2,500 people who chose one book, their favorite. No surprises: the Bible, Gone With the Wind. Lance is having none of it. We’re not a nation of readers, he says, we’re a nation of liars. Where are the Oprah picks, the mysteries, the bodice-rippers, and the westerns? (Well, I might argue for GWTW as a sort of ur bodice-ripper, but then it’s far from my favorite book.) “But here’s the thing,” says Lance:

Most real readers, men and women, don’t have favorite books. They have favorite authors.

Enter Bogart with his tight-lipped lisping sneer, his piercing eyes under the snap brim of his hat, and this movie comes alive.

Three on a Match is a pre-code (Warner Brothers, 1932) soap opera that re-unites three schoolmates: the bad girl, the good girl, and the rich girl. Wikipedia has a nice plot summary.

Mary Keaton, the bad girl, is a good egg, a free spirit who shows her black bloomers on the swings and skips classes to smoke in the barn with the boys. Portentously, she steals the rich girl’s boyfriend.

Vivian Rivere, the rich girl, is given a special diploma as the most popular girl in class and Ruth Westcott, the good girl, gets honors for making the highest grades. Mary is only allowed to attend graduation after a scolding by the principal.

Graduation is from grammar school. This opening school-days scene takes place in 1919. In those days, as for my parents, high school was not part of public education, so these girls are now on their own. Times have changed in more ways than one. In fact, the movie introduces its time-changes with bits of newspaper articles and newsreel footage that are almost like archeological artifacts to the modern viewer. The scene in which Mary is getting a permanent wave is an eye-opener, too. And I always always love to look at the clothes from the 1930s.

In saying farewell to Ruth, Vivian announces that she will go off to a prestigious boarding school. Ruth says she will have to go to business school so she can work. “What will Mary do?” Ruth asks. “Oh, she’ll wind up in reform school,” Vivian replies with some satisfaction.

This movie is actually about the rise of the working-class girl, poor, wild, but essentially honest, and the fall of the spoiled rich girl.
Bette Davis is beautiful, competent, but wasted as the third point in this triangle, the hardworking good girl. Ruth seems excess to the plot, needed only to fulfill the title trope of three on a match. Davis had signed with Universal in 1931 and moved to Warner Brothers in 1932. In those two years she made a dozen movies. I’m not sure she had a dozen lines in this one, though she is billed as one of the stars. She is mostly paired with a curly-haired moppet who looks like a male Shirley Temple and of course steals every scene. He’s uncredited, but I think it must be Frankie Darro.

Joan Blondell mostly plays type as the wisecracking showgirl with the heart of gold. She is charming but not inspired. In one scene on the beach, Davis frolics around in a bathing suit while Blondell is costumed in a full-length pantsuit. It’s a gorgeous outfit but all eyes are drawn to Bette Davis.

Ann Dvorak is an actress I never heard of until I saw this film. As the brunette who is third on the match at the reunion lunch, the bored, doomed, rich girl, she isn’t really interesting until the final third of the movie when she’s become a coked-out ruin who makes one final grand gesture to save the life of her child.

But then that’s when Bogart bursts into the tenement flat and the drama becomes intense.

Here’s the setup. Vivian Revere has tired of her successful lawyer husband, Robert Kirkwood (portrayed by the urbane Warren William), and her pampered life. She decides to take a curative cruise with her son, the aforesaid moppet. But onboard ship, she meets Mary Keaton who’s come to attend a bon voyage party. Accepting Mary’s invitation to join the party, Vivian meets the gambler Michael Loftus (Lyle Talbot) and is persuaded to elope with him, Junior in tow, by lines like this one:

I can tell you’re a real woman, not one of those stuffed brassieres you see on Park Avenue. You’ve got all the works that make a woman want to go, and live, and love.

Loftus seems to appeal to the heretofore well-hidden risk-taker in Vivian. Soon enough, she becomes debauched. The couple is in hiding from her husband but Mary knows where they are. She becomes concerned about Junior and her own role in facilitating this liaison. After talking things over with Ruth, she first confronts Vivian and offers to take the child to live with Ruth’s family. When that doesn’t work, she goes to Kirkwood and rats Vivian out.

Kirkwood reclaims his son, divorces Vivian, marries Mary (fulfilling the foreshadowing of the schoolyard), and sets Ruth up as nanny to Junior.

Vivian and Loftus continue on the fast track to perdition until, having run through all of Vivian’s money and desperate to pay back a gambling debt, Loftus abducts the child. Junior goes willingly with “Uncle Mike” to see his mother but the gangsters, led by Bogart’s Harve, see a chance to turn this into a real kidnapping.

Three on a Match was Bogart’s second film for Warner Brothers and his first tough guy role. It’s a joy to watch him turn this potboiler into a real drama.

Along with frank attitudes toward women’s sexuality, racy dialogue, and the shocker of an ending, Vivian’s coke addiction is one of the things that marks this as a pre-code film. It’s fairly subtly handled. We never see her snorting, only early on, drinking cocktails and feeding her child on bon-bons. By the time of the kidnapping, though, Vivian is obviously in trouble. She is unkempt with dark rings under her eyes. Confronting Harve, she sniffles and runs her fingers under her nose. Harve does a take, turns to his henchmen with a knowing look, and runs his own finger under his nose. If you aren’t watching closely, you’ll miss it. Later, when Harve has been out on an aborted mission to collect the ransom, he’s asked if he “got something” for Vivian but he says the streets are crawling with cops and he couldn’t. Of course, this is Prohibition time, so we could be referring to alcohol. But I think not.

My son pointed out that this movie lets not one but two blonds triumph over the brunette. But I think the real loser was Bette Davis. Always the sidekick, whether to Vivian as schoolgirls or Mary as adults, her big reward is the post of nanny to the rich brat. Not only is there not the least hint of romance for her, though I suppose as nanny she’s set up to meet some one well-heeled, but while the other two get to have their fun, Ruth doesn’t even get to misbehave a little bit. And she was never more beautiful

Ah well, Bette makes up for lost time later.

Zane Grey! The name just sings cowboy. Certainly moreso than Pearl Zane Gray, the name his Quaker mother gave him in Zanesville, Ohio. Dropping the Pearl is obvious, but the subtle changing of the American “a” for the English “e” is a master stroke. He played minor league baseball but never made the big time. His father paid off a paternity suit in the 1890s for $133.40. Eventually he settled down to practice dentistry, as had his father, but he was so bored with extracting teeth that he began to spend his evenings writing. He wrote more than 90 books.

Watch at YouTube.

Dolores Keane, Mary Black, & Emmy Lou.

Song written by Cyril Tawney. Grey Funnel Line = British navy.

Thanks to Rabbitswift.

Photo from David Taylor’s tribute page.

Ramar of the Jungle was a half-hour television adventure, starring Jon Hall and Ray Montgomery, that ran for 52 episodes in 1953 and 1954. It was set in Africa and India. IMDb commenters have written some nice reviews of the series. It was entirely too Rudyard Kipling but I was only nine years old. What did I know about the White Man’s Burden and the evils of colonialism? Although it was filmed in Hollywood, it seemed exotic and I loved the exotic. None of that urbanite Nancy Drew for me. I read Tarzan of the Apes and Zane Grey westerns.

Nascar with accents? Frank Deford is hard-nosed about the Olympics. I can hardly believe I’m linking to a sports commentator but I learned something from Mr. Deford this week. The torch run was started by the Nazis. Who knew?

Of interest to Kentucky voters, NPR asks What’s taking a bite out of Atlantic City casinos? Also Racinos. I leave it to you to decide whether this was an opportunity lost or a bullet dodged.

The Greatest Silence, a chilling interview with Lisa Jackson. Official site here. Rape as a weapon or war and genocide is as old as the Old Testament. In Deuteronomy 20, for example:

13And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword:

14But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee.

It was also used by the Greeks. It was over the services of a woman prisoner that Achilles was sulking in his tent, after all. I personally think it will go on as long as we have war. Men, guns, and testosterone add up to rape and, in this film as in other reports I’ve read and heard, men sometimes use their guns to commit rape. It’s one of the reasons war is not a satisfactory instrument for foreign policy.

It is also one of the reasons women need to stand up against misogyny in all of its forms, whether it manifests itself in popular culture, in our Democratic primary, or among our own armed forces and military contractors.

Joan Walsh says Thank you, Rush Limbaugh! and invites certain people to desist from reading Salon. Via

Go watch this Al Gore video posted by Chet Scoville at Shakesville.

I think this is probably Geronimo, certainly not Tecumseh.

Tecumseh (Jay Silverheels) vies with Stephen Ruddle (Jon Hall) for the love of Laura (Christine Larson) in the 1952 film Brave Warrior. The triangle is resolved at the Battle of Tippecanoe. I think we may safely conclude that this movie, which nets 4.3 stars on the IMDb, has little connection to reality but it might be of interest to watch, just to hear Jay Silverheels say more than “unh.” The NYTimes says the role is “well-played.” It might be fun, too, to see Michael Ansara as Tecumseh’s villainous brother, The Prophet. I loved Jon Hall as Ramar of the Jungle.