I had a busy, very busy St. Patrick’s Day.  I used the morning for Internet marketing work for my books.  I’ve already received three personal and interested responses to my queries that may lead to some brisk sales. That quick response took me by surprise because I wrote these contacts on a Saturday, and I expected to not hear from any until Monday, when the proper work week began.

At 1:30 p.m. I met my fellow band members at the main branch of the Monroe Public Library. We are Angus Dubhghall, a Scots-Irish band. We played some jigs, marches, and reels for the library’s dance troupe that children’s librarian and Irish dancer, Jennifer Schneider, has formed.  The kids she instructs were excited, the parents in attendance proud, and the visitors impressed. As this was our first dance to play for, I was happy that I can now officially call us a dance band.

After the performance at the library, Tom McCandlish and I went to Enoch’s where we sold raffle tickets for Enoch’s annual fund raising for St. Vincent de Paul’s Pharmacy—a very worthy cause. After 2-3 hours, we were relieved by the sisters who work with St. Vincent’s. We spent the rest of the evening talking to friends and meeting new ones. The weather was perfect, the night was festive, and I’m sure St. Patrick feels honored by our devotion to the holiday.

The images of the fast-paced St. Patrick’s Day are still swirling through my mind, but I’m sure they’ll soon settle and I’ll be able to draw writing ideas from them. Arriving home at midnight, I closed the day by writing a poem. State tests begin next week. May St. Patrick help me get through them without losing my mind.

Last night was the fourth night in the series Battlefield Louisiana: The Louisiana Experience During the Civil War, which I’m facilatating at the Winnsboro Public Library. We were reviewing and discussing Gary Joiner’s Book, One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End: The Red River Campaign of 1864.  

Our alloted time went by quickly. Once again, the room was full, the comments relevant and interesting. We had another show and tell with participants brining all kinds of Civil War period relics and reproductions for a show and tell.  We were able to relate all of these to our reading. We had a grand time. In fact, the members of this reading group were so excited I had trouble getting them out and something happened that almost never happens when I speak somewhere—I kept them past the scheduled quitting time.  The most enjoyable part of this series for me personally is meeting the participants and listening to their stories. One man’s family has been in this part of Louisiana, and on the same land, since around 1840. I can’t wait to write about them. Here too are some stories that need to be told.

My first children’s book, Jim Limber Davis: A Black Orphan in the Confederate White House, will be in print the first of May. If you live in Monroe, Louisiana, you’ll be able to purchase it at Windows: A Bookshop. I have a signing scheduled there, Saturday,  May19, 2007 from 2-4 in the afternoon.  On thinking about all of the work that lies ahead of me in the promotion of this book, I came upon a great little site giving aspiring authors 10 tips on writing children’s books. You can read the author’s suggestions here: http://www.wvculture.org/arts/artworks/Fall01/childrens.html

The book will be published by Pelican Publshing in Gretna, Louisiana. I was fortunate to partner with a fantastic illustrator, Judith Hierstein. Here’s a little note about her from the book’s Amazon.com page:

Judith Hierstein believes that “pictures should begin where the written word ends.” She encourages children to share in her love of learning about other cultures through illustrated books. Ms. Hierstein holds a B.A. in art from the University of Iowa. A former elementary-school teacher, she now teaches high-school graphic and media arts. She sees digital art as “another exciting media to explore when illustrating for children.” Aside from teaching and learning,Hierstein has also illustrated a number of children’s books for Pelican Publishing. Ms. Hierstein resides in Tucson, Arizona.

I love art—art of all kinds. Stumbling again upon Auguste Rodin’s famous statue, The Kiss (1881-82), led me to do some research on the artist himself. I found out that the model for this famous statue was Camille Claudel, his student, collaborator, and mistress. I learned that he associated closely with many influential artists of his day such as writer Jean Cocteau, painter Henri Matisse, and dancer Isadora Duncan.

Here is a great site about Rodin: http://www.cantorfoundation.org/Rodin/rbioe.html

I intend to study more of Rodin, perhaps by this summer reading his full biography. Just this cursory glance today at his life today revealed how much I have to learn about so many people.

By accident, I found a great poetry resource that I can use in my teaching and my own personal research and writing: Representative Poetry Online. The site says of itself: “Representative Poetry Online includes 3,162 English poems by 500 poets from Caedmon, in the Old English period, to the work of living poets today. It is based on Representative Poetry, established by Professor W. J. Alexander of University College, University of Toronto, in 1912 (one of the first books published by the University of Toronto Press), and used in the English Department at the University until the late 1960s. Its electronic founder and editor since 1994 is Ian Lancashire, who is a member of the Department of English, University of Toronto.”

The value of the site is that there is so much material and so many poems together in one site. I often would have Google search for the text of a particular poem or a short bio of a particular poet, but I’m sure this site will lesson my search time. Here is the Web address: http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/display_rpo/intro.cfm

I’ll close this post with a quote of Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) in his poem, “Bacchanalia.” He had a few insightful words to say about poets:

The world but feels the present’s spell,
The poet feels the past as well;
Whatever men have done, might do,
Whatever thought, might think it too.

Being a Southern boy, I’ve carried a pocketknife for as long as I can remember. Now, my knife of choice is a Spyderco. I learned at an early age how to sharpen and care for one, and I literally can remember every pocketknife I’ve ever owned, and every one that I ever lost. To Southern boys pocketknives are not weapons, they are tools and symbols.

Southern boys are not the only ones who view blades in this way. For example, the Sikhs carry a knife called a kirpan, a ceremonial dagger. According to About.com, kirpans are a reminder to fight for justice and against oppression. The knife is one of the five khalsas, or dress rituals. Kirpans range in size from large ceremonial swords, to tiny knives worn around the neck. It is required that all Khalsa Sikhs wear the kirpan. According to the Religions Paths Web site, the kirpan is one of the five symbols of the Sikh faith. The site says, “The kirpan, alongside the unshorn hair of the believing Sikh, is certain the most visible symbol of Sikh masculinity, and the very potency of the kirpan appears to signify to an outsider the martial qualities of the Sikh.” You can see photographs of kirpans here: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=kirpan&btnG=Google+Search&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi

Sikhs have encountered opposition to the carrying and display of their knives on planes and in public. Yet, though I’ve read of many terrorists attempting to use C4 and other explosives, I haven’t read of a single Sikh terrorist wielding his knife yet to take over a plane. Maybe I’ve missed some incidents, but I doubt it. If I have please let me know. I don’t plan on carrying such a blade, but my pocketknife? That will stay with me.

I remember reading a book a few years ago, Steinbeck: A Life in Letters, edited by Elaine Steinbeck and Robert Wallsten. I’ve always been inspired by reading biographical material and this book was a powerful and influential read for me. At 860 pages (not counting the appendix), it is a formidable book to attack. From the reading, I learned much about Steinbeck. I learned he hated the telephone, and that for him, “letter-writing was a preparation for work” and a way to express his thoughts on people “he liked and hated; on marriage, women, and children, on the condition of the world, and on his progress in learning his craft.”

I had always admired Stenbeck’s writing, though I was a late bloomer in the reading of his work. Looking at the book, I see the lines I underlined and I wished I had memorized them. A line from the preface sums the book up well: “[I]t is the record of a man learning his craft.”

I did learn much about what it meant to be a writer, and I identified with Steinbeck in many ways. I was much impressed with the honesty of the letters. For example, when he was having his affair with Elaine Anderson (Scott) who would later become his wife until his death, he wrote her these words in a letter: “I’m not afraid of anything now. And surely I won’t force anything and surely I’ll let it go on happening. And I know it will work out. I’m sure of it. Completely sure.”

And it did work out between them. Steinbeck wrote books that changed America. Every time I pick up a pencil, I think of his ritual of sharpening two dozen or so (some say up to 60) in the morning to write with, and I think of how great a writer he was, and of how far I have to go. I’ve taught Steinbeck in the past to high school students, allowed him as a choice for research papers for my college students, and those that have read him are always affected. Several of his books are still on my list to read.

I’ll end this post with another quote of Steinbeck on writing. Dennis Murphy was in the middle of a book and having some difficulty finishing. Steinbeck said: “You must finish this book, then you must finish another. If anything at all, saving your own death stops you, except momentarily, then you are not a writer anyway . . .”

A few years ago, I taught theatre at Seagoville High School.  The high point of my year there occurred with my Theatre II class with the performance of Ladies of the Tower, a one act play by Ruth Perry and Tim Kelly. The play required a cast of nine females, and my girls really got into the play.  Like the historical women of the play, my girls were beautiful and about the same age.

The Dramatic Publishing site says this of the play: The Tower of London provides the setting for this provocative play. Two cleaning women come to scrub down a forgotten room and are visited by the spirits of the ladies who met death inside the dark walls. Each is doomed by her own bitterness to walk the Tower. What is particularly interesting is their youth: Lady Jane Grey (15), Queen Catherine Howard (19) and Lady Rochford (18). Much of the dialogue is taken directly from historical record. In a brief overlapping of the present and the past, there is a touching scene of communication and understanding that sets the embittered women free of their bondage to the past. Bare stage w/props. To read more of the play go to:
http://www.dramaticpublishing.com/catalogdetail.cfm?listcode=L11

Thinking of the coming series on Showtime, The Tudors,  I thought again of this play and how Henry, though not present on stage in Ladies of the Tower, permeates the play. You can read about the six wives of Henry here: http://tudorhistory.org/wives/

Tonight, I went to Enoch’s, Monroe’s Irish Pub, with my fellow band member, Tom, and heard one of my favorite Celtic performers, Beth Patterson. She was in fine form tonight. The weather was warm enough that we were able to hear her perform outside on the pub’s patio. I stayed until midnight. There was a good crowd tonight, bascially there were two different crowds that drifted in, and all were really into the music. Beth knows how to work a crowd, and she had them laughing at her jokes (she is brilliant) and even singing along with some songs. Bold, sometimes naughty, sometimes irreverant, the people in the audience adored her. I loved her show. One example of a joke she told: What do the 6th Sense and the Titanic have in common? Icy dead people.

Beth has a My Space site: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=50774964

You can also find much about her music here: http://www.littlebluemen.com/beth.asp

Tonight was the third night in the series I’m facilatating at the Winnsboro library. In this session, we discussed When the Devil Came Down to Dixie: Ben Butler in New Orleans. As was true in earlier sessions, the meeting room was packed, the discussion was lively, and the audience receptive. It seems that Ben Butler made an impression on all of us. As Hern’s book says, “He was a man who left few people indifferent.” We discussed various points made by the book about Butler, and read and discussed several key passages. Then, I used an Elmo Digital Visual Presenter (see this link to take a look: http://www.elmousa.com/presentation/index.html that two school teachers brought with them to show them an early New Orleans map, pictures of Butler, and a photograph of a chamber pot with Butler’s picture pasted in the bottom.

During the break, we ate some of the finest gumbo I’ve ever tasted. Afterwards, we talked some more about Butler, and using the Elmo, we showed some period Civil War photographs of Confederate ancestors that two participants had brought, as well as original hand-written letters. One letter was written on original Confederate stationary!

I’ve three more presentations remaining in this series. The next one deals with the Red River Campaign. Several in the meeting said they had seen the interview (about my writing and my new book) in the Monroe News Star. You can see that interview yourself here: http://www.thenewsstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070305/NEWS01/703050313