Month: January 2016

Fairy Tales: Magic All Around

~ Jeanne Lombardo ~ 10 Comments

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Magic. Fairy tales. This be the prompt the mistress Mills has set for us this week:

January 13, 2016 prompt: In 99 words (no more, no less) begin a story with, “Once upon a time…” Where you take the fairy tale is entirely up to you. Your character can break the traditional mold, or your ending can be less than happy. Elements of fairy tales include magic, predicaments, villains, heroes, fairy-folk and kingdoms. How can you turn these elements upside down or use them in a realistic setting? Write your own fairy tale.

I have grappled with this challenge for days. Is it because I have lost what little faith I ever had in magic? That I’ve grown too removed from the stories upon which I cut my literary teeth and early artistic aesthetic? That I disdain the silly young girl I was, a creature who unconsciously modeled herself on all those lovely but passive heroines swooning and fainting and waiting for some prince to save them from remote towers, thorny enclaves, and glass caskets?

Not that I didn’t devour fairy tales. Not that my heart does not quiver still when I remember the gorgeous red-leather-bound volume of Grimm’s Fairy Tales that my sister Peggy “borrowed” from our Catholic school library. It was a book so far removed from the flimsy paper Scholastic books we ordered from school, and the ordinary juvenile mass market fare we got from the local library, that even my ignorant young mind intuited its quality. The Romantic illustrations alone sent me into ecstatic reveries that I did not yet know signaled an awakening to aesthetic appreciation.

And come to think of it, not all the heroines were silly little creatures. Among my favorite stories were “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” who defied their father’s authority and snuck out of the castle night after night to dance until dawn with rather dubious companions. And Snow White and Rose Red, who traipsed all over the dark forest, invited a bear into their home, and had numerous dangerous encounters with a malicious dwarf.

Alas, as we all do, I grew up. I lost my religion, replacing it with skepticism. I had my knocks and disillusionment. But I embraced other delights too: classic literature, philosophy, art, travel, science, humanism. And I found solace and delight in the natural world. I found wonder and awe. At times I mourned the loss of magic. At others I felt its power swell all around me in the things I had yet to discover.

And yet, fairy tales are not incompatible with an adult world view. They are not just simple stories for children. They are our connection to both a collective past and worlds erased by time. They provide a way of making sense of the world, not only for children but upon multiple readings over many years for adults too. Fairy tales are rich with examples of values passed on through generations. They are repositories of charming details and quaint customs. The creatures of fairy tales are tied to the ancient natural world. And like all stories, they perform the greatest magic trick of all: granting immortality to voices from the distant and near past. Carl Sagan put it this way:

Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

So. I find I want to think more about fairy tales. I want to reread them. And though I don’t think I’ve conjured up a true fairy tale, I did pick up the gauntlet Charli threw down. Here is my fairy tale flash.

Magic All Around

Once upon a time there was a maiden who scorned magic. A wise teacher called Skeptic had set her straight about the world. One evening Skeptic found the maiden on a cliff overlooking a vast canyon. Condors wheeled against cliffs glowing with a million sunsets. Below a turquoise river coursed its cursive script in an ancient letter to the sky.

The maiden wept.

“Why so sad?” the Skeptic asked.

“I want for the magic I once knew,” she replied.

Silence sang. The sun sank aflame. Stars slowly spangled the indigo sky.

“Be this not magic enough?” the Skeptic whispered.

Times Past: A White Linen Tablecloth and Crudités

~ Jeanne Lombardo ~ 8 Comments

Baby Boomer, Phoenix, Arizona

Menu from Neptune's Table, Phoenix, Arizona, 1960s
Menu from a swanky restaurant, Phoenix, Arizona, 1960s

When Charli Mills posted a piece the other day based on a fellow Rough Writer’s memoir challenge, my own writing juices immediately started simmering. A link led me to  Irene Waters’ Times Past blog, where Irene has started a new monthly challenge for writers. What immediately marked this challenge as something special was its sociological bent. Participants are asked to state which generation they belong to at the beginning of their piece, so that in responding to the prompts, and reading others’ posts, writers will gain “social insights into the way the world has changed between not only generations but also between geographical location.” The first prompt is one that has been the crux of numerous conversations I’ve had with fellow Baby Boomers, most of whom have vastly increased their incidence of dining out since childhood. Here’s the prompt: The first time I remember eating in a restaurant in the evening.

The prompt immediately sparked a memory from about 1968. I was twelve and feeling very grown up with my stylish pageboy haircut and straight lime-green shift with a faux belt at the hip. I may even have worn fishnet stockings that night, held up with that queer relic called a garter belt. My mother had only recently allowed me and my twin sister to advance to a one-inch heel on our shiny patent-leather shoes.

The Green Dress
You guessed it; the green dress

It was some special occasion, perhaps my parents’ anniversary or my mother’s birthday. The seven of us had piled into my father’s boat-like Chrysler sedan for the ride over to Giordano’s Italian Restaurant on Central Avenue—upscale indeed compared to Sunnyslope. Russ Giordano was a friend of my father’s, a fellow veteran from the VFW club (Veterans of Foreign Wars). Along with our church, Most Holy Trinity, the Club constituted my parents’ primary social circle.

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The burgeoning Southwest hub of Phoenix Arizona, ca. 1960

The Chrysler was a recent luxury. My father’s paint-splotched Dodge pickup had served for some time as both his work vehicle (he earned his living painting houses all across the rapidly growing “Valley of the Sun,” as Phoenix is still referred to) and our family transportation. It was in the bed of that pick-up that we five kids had, until recently, ridden to our modest suppers out. Those were at one of two places in the north part of town where we lived, Sunnyslope, at both of which our play clothes were entirely respectable:

Sunnyslope late 1950s, early 1960s
Sunnyslope in the late 1950s, early 1960s

The most regular spot was the fish fry in the big hall at the Monfort post of the VFW Club on Friday nights, where permed and padded-hipped women called us “Hon” and sashayed loaded paper plates to the long folding tables. We squirmed on our metal chairs just long enough to eat, like skittish colts, the din of voices ricocheting off bare walls.  Nickels for the pop machine embedded themselves in our grubby, hot palms. A hulk of a bald man named Tiny could be seen through the cut-out window at one side, manning the sizzling fryers. Our hunger pangs subdued, we were off to the park across the street, but not without searching out the wizened old vet who always teased us through a little box on his throat.

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My family’s other go-to spot was the Northway Fish & Chips in Sunnyslope, where we dug into flimsy cardboard boxes of (yet again) deep fried cod squares or chicken or splayed butterfly shrimp served with a white bun and limp French fries. We gathered round a picnic bench under a festoon of fishing nets and glass baubles, jockeying for a place in the jetstream of damp air blowing from the swamp cooler .

That was before the change. Before the advent of my parent’s business venture. Before the five-bedroom, ranch-style house with the pool. The new Chrysler sedan and matching bedroom sets bought at auction.

And . . . a first grown-up dinner at Giordano’s on Central Avenue in Phoenix. The sophistication of the dimmed lights, the white linen tablecloth, the glass water goblets, the chilled oval tray of chilled crudités (celery sticks, radishes, carrots and fat green olives with pimentos) and salad served before something called an entrée. I sat straight and proper on my heavy wooden chair, dabbing the corners of my mouth with a cloth napkin.

Just as I had surely seen some actress do on TV .

 

Flash Fiction: Rebellion

~ Jeanne Lombardo ~ 13 Comments

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Rebellion: 1) opposition to one in authority or dominance; 2) open, armed, and usually unsuccessful defiance of or resistance to an established government

I am inspired to write my first blog of the year by the January 6 flash fiction challenge from Charli Mills at Carrot Ranch, which references, as a starting point, the occupation by an armed group in Oregon of a federal wildlife preserve, in protest over the government’s imprisonment of two local ranchers.

To provide perspective on this event, Charli gives us both a personal history of the kind of people who make their living off the land—and who often find themselves front line in the battle over use and control of resources—as well as an impassioned appeal to try to understand the intersection of power, control of resources, individual rights, and our duties as members of a democracy.

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The Farm outside Willow City ND, 2014

Most of us can surely sympathize with cases of justified dissent and protest, of instances of the provoked little guy finally standing up to the big bully. Indeed, I resonate with stories of farmers and ranchers standing up to the government’s overreach, tracing my own paternal roots back a hundred and twenty years or so to a farm cut from the open prairies of a remote stretch of North Dakota (how much of that state is not remote?) And like all Americans, and perhaps especially those who’ve grown up in a Western state like Arizona (in my case) or Idaho (where Charli lives and writes), I have also gotten drunk on the lore of the staunch, independent pioneers, ranchers, and cowboys who risked all to stake a claim to open space, land, and greater self-determination.

Ahh the passions such a train of thought can dredge up!

But I am no believer in the free rein of passions without the restraint of reason. Passion is the voice not only of rightful advocates of good causes but of mobs, fascists, and demagogues.

Which brings us to the current climate in the United States and the underlying issue of guns. Forgive the overt sexism, but any group of men wielding AK-47s is apt to make me piss my pants. I am one who shudders at violence as a response to conflict and to the vitriol, distortion, and irrationality of the debate surrounding the Second Amendment’s presumed guarantee that every American has the constitutional right to arm themselves to the teeth with high-powered automatic, military-grade weapons. So while I may find it edifying to hear the stories of the half-frozen men—now appealing for deliveries of vittles via the United States Post Office (a public service of the Federal Government)—their wielding such weapons makes them immediately suspect in my eyes. As does the recent evidence (the arrival Saturday of a similar group calling themselves the Pacific Patriots Network) that their example sends a clarion call to others whose main objective may not simply be solidarity with a cause but an opportunity to engage in rabble-rousing and mayhem.

In short, I realize it’s a complicated issue, but I do not support insurgency or outbreaks of seditious activities by any group. And I’d like someone to explain to me the justice in one group forcefully claiming 187,000 acres of federal land on behalf of the county in which it is situated. Last time I checked, we are supposed to be a government “of the people, for the people, and by the people,” and that land has been set aside and protected since 1908, for all Americans. Again, I admit there are issues here that I do not understand. I am willing to be enlightened.

For now, I prefer to hold faith with a central government that, imperfect organ as it is,  strives to balance the rights of all Americans and the competing interests of states, special interest groups, and individuals. And when that faith is tested, I turn first towards educating myself on the various angles of the issue being contested. In the case of Oregon, I first try to understand why the government owns so much land in the first place.

So many angles of this issue compete for our hearts and minds. That’s why I applaud Charli for honing in on this theme for the prompt this week on rebellion. Her appeal at the end makes it a particularly thought-provoking challenge.” As she notes: “Perhaps little story-rebellions from marginalized communities around the globe can teach us to better appreciate one another’s struggles. But how do we stand up to the powers that be? How do we take control of our lives and livelihoods without becoming what we struggle against?”

January 6, 2015 prompt: In 99 words (no more, no less) write a rebellion. Is it one a character fights for or is it one another suppresses? Explore what makes a rebellion, pros or cons. Use past or current rebellions as inspiration or make up one of your own.

And here’s my flash, inspired by reports on just one of the groups roused to anger by the events in Oregon.

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Photo by Jeff Rietsma

Crack Shots

In the spring they came. From Florida and Minnesota, New York and Texas. A great gentle army streaming from the four corners of a common patrimony—the land. Along the Pacific Flyway they massed, their pickets like pistons, rising and falling with their footfalls. The first yellow warbler flashing topaz against the sky heralded their arrival.

Sharp angles marked the buildings of the Malheur Wildlife Preserve. Sunlight glinted off gun barrels from beyond the entrance. The marchers halted. They readied their arms. Focused their targets in their sites. And let loose a volley of shutter-clicks.

The Birders had returned.