Flicka Spumoni

Stock Up Now!!!

2010-11-04T14:06:00.002-05:00

A three thousand person entourage and thirty-four warships accompanying the President at a cost of 200 million a day all for a diplomatic excursion?

My guess is that they're going to strike Iran. People get ready.

The Eagle and the Chicken

2010-05-31T11:31:00.000-04:00

At the behest of my dear friend, Flicka Spumoni, on this Memorial Day, I humbly offer a short story I wrote in November 2008.

Whoever Treasures Freedom*

A Fable

Way back long ago, Child, in the days of the Flood, He-Eagle and Rooster sat on top of Noah’s boat and watched the waves lap against it. The good friends had spent many hours just so in silent, bobbing companionship.

The chicken broke the silence. “Brother Eagle, it seems to me that these waters are receding at last.”

“That’s so,” replied the eagle.

“What do you think you and the missus will do, once we can safely leave the boat?”

“Well,” He-Eagle paused, staring thoughtfully into the distance, “I guess we’ll be flying to the highest point we can find and building a nest and beginning again. What about you and Sister Hen?”

“You know, I’ve been thinking about that a lot, and I think we’re going to stick close to Brother Noah and the children of Noah.”

He-Eagle was startled. “Do you think that’s wise?”

“I can’t think of anything wiser,” Rooster replied. “Think about it, Brother Eagle: this whole world is going to be pretty barren and uninviting until after the first spring. Not a tasty grub or tender shoot to be found. But, you know that Brother Noah and his children will be planting their seeds as soon as we hit fertile land, and the first-fruits of the earth will be theirs. Plus, they have enough food reserves to feed us all until the harvest. Yes,” Rooster nodded solemnly, “I really do not see a better way for my family.”

"I am grateful that Father, through Noah, provided this rescue when the rains came,” He-Eagle began slowly, “But these many months on a cramped ship have made me yearn for the mountains. My very bones cry for freedom.” He-Eagle shook his head, “No, Brother Rooster, I cannot agree with your plan. Brother Noah and his children are well and good, but as for me and my wife, we shall rely on Father’s provision. Surely He did not save us to let us perish, no matter how harsh this new world.”

“Suit yourself, Brother Eagle, suit yourself.” Rooster laughed a little under his wing. “Now, how about a race two miles out from the boat and back? Loser has to wake the boat tomorrow morning.”

“You’re on,” He-Eagle cried, and they flew off.

Within a few days, He-Eagle’s excellent eyes showed him that a purple peak had emerged on the horizon. He and She-Eagle asked Rooster and Hen once more if they would want to stretch their wings and journey with them. The chickens politely declined. So, after bidding farewell to Brother Noah and his children, the eagles left the ark.

A few weeks after the eagles’ departure, Noah’s boat came to rest on its own mountain peak, and a whole mess of weary, dirty, grumpy animals and people stepped foot again on solid land. Just as the chickens had predicted, after sacrificing on an altar and drunken revelry, Brother Noah and his children began the task of rebuilding the earth. Rooster and Hen stuck close by, pecking up spare crumbs that the people kindly left, and feeling pretty pleased with their good plan. Now, if an egg or two was taken for Noah’s breakfast, occasionally, they really didn’t miss it; they had so many.

Child, things were hard for He-Eagle and his wife. Again, just as Rooster had said, the earth was unforgiving that first year, begrudging her lost beauty by taking her time to renew. Their first nest was a paltry thing, with spindly vines and soft, new leaves to build it instead of strong branches and cozy moss. The first eggs She-Eagle laid never hatched. She mourned for a season. He-Eagle would descend far down the mountain daily to try to find the smallest sign of edible matter, and too many days he would come home with nothing at all.

But, Father remembered His eagle children, and mousies and bunnies do tend to multiply, and it did not take long for the eagles’ bellies to be filled again. The next year, enough bushes had grown to make a stable sort of nest, and two of the five eagle eggs hatched. The year after that brought three eaglets; the year after that, three more. Soon, when Rooster and Hen and their broods of chicks looked into the sky, the graceful silhouette of an eagle child was not an unusual occurrence. So, both the eagles and the chickens grew and prospered; they scattered across the globe – the eagles between the mountains, the chickens with the children of Noah.

Years turned into decades, decades to centuries, centuries to eons. He-Eagle and She-Eagle died. Rooster and Hen died. Their children’s children’s children, and so on, lived together on earth, but worlds apart. Eagles had little interest in the chickens, but the chickens had nothing but interest in the eagles. But, Child, it was not a kindly interest; it was a resentful one. You see, in the years since the Flood, chickens had forgotten that they were creatures of the air. They had become so satisfied, living with people, that they had begun to change. Their bodies grew heavier, their wings smaller.

So, Child, you can see how when the people began to farm them, they had no way to escape.

But, instead of relearning the gift of flying – for Father never takes away the gifts He gives; they can only be refused – the chickens began simply to complain. They complained about the rows of coops they lived in; they complained about the strict corn diet they were kept on; they complained about their eggs that were taken every morning; they complained about their cockerels and pullets who were taken in the night; but, most of all, they complained about the eagles who flew so very far above the reach of Man and who were free.

You must not think, Child, that after the earth was reborn the eagles’ lives were always easy. No. Far from it. But, they learned to hunt through layers of snow in the lean winters; they learned to build their nests in the tallest parts of trees to keep away prowling egg-eaters; they learned to stay far from the habitats of Noah’s children. They could learn these things, because they had never forgotten how to fly.

Now, one day, Child, a young eagle named Lire got a spell of curiosity and decided to leave the aerie. He flew in slow circles down from the mountain and came closer to a child of Noah’s farm than he had ever been.

A new kind of world came into focus as he descended. He saw the odd boxy shape of buildings below him. For the first time in his life, he touched the ground of the valley and looked amusedly about. Here was a strange thing indeed: A group of birds – quite fat, quite clumsy – were pecking about a large bowl on the ground filled with yellow stuff. Somehow, they had all decided to eat together inside a long grouping of trees. But such trees as that tree-dweller had never seen. Short, pure white, with no branches or leaves, all perfectly planted to form an oval and covered with some sort of moss that was hard and grey and shiny and cold. Lire flew up and alighted on one.

Soon, a proud, strutting He-Bird came out from behind the squat building that was in the center of the tree-circle. Something stirred in Lire’s memory – stories his mother had told him about the Flood and Father’s setting His children free, and about his one-thousand-times-great grandfather He-Eagle’s best friend, Rooster.

“Brother Rooster! How are you?”

“Who is that?” the bird cocked his head and looked around the enclosed circle.

“Up here! Up here! On top of this small, white tree!”

The rooster squinted into the sunlit branches of the trees behind him.

“No, no,” Lire laughed. “Not that high up. Here, on this short tree; to your left.”

“Oh, an eagle. Yes. Humph. Go away.”

“Go away? Are you kidding? Why don’t you fly up here and we can talk, just like our great-greats did? Or, better yet, why don’t we fly up to that beautiful pine over there and enjoy the view while we chat?”

Now, in the rooster’s chest, a great resentment burned toward Lire. The rooster had never seen the view from that or any tree. Suddenly, he wanted, with all his heart, to drag that eagle down from his perch and keep him on the ground. What is worse, he saw a way.

“Fool,” the rooster said grandly, “Firstly, you are sitting on a fence, not a tree. Secondly, chickens do not fly. And, lastly, eagles and chickens do not become friends.”

Lire was incredulous. “Well, that’s just silly. Of course we can be friends. I mean, I know you live in the valley, and I live in the mountains, but what’s a little flying, anyway? Oh wait, but you don’t fly? C’mon, that is total nonsense. I mean, Mama told me many times about the races your great-great and mine had when they were stuck on that boat all those months during the Flood. Mama said that Rooster was the only bird able to keep up . . .”

The rooster cut Lire off with a dismissive wave of his wing and a haughty laugh. “Silly eagle, coming here, telling me of flying chickens and the Flood. I’ve heard those childish tales from the butterflies and ladybugs, but I thought that at least a bird would have evolved beyond that sort of thinking. Next thing I know, you’ll be jabbering on about the ‘Father’ myth and then I shall have to bid you good day.”

Lire said, dumbfounded, “‘Tales?’ ‘Myth?’ What’s going on? Are you trying to tell me you don’t know Father, who made the earth and all that is in it? Who saved us from destruction in the Flood? Who provides for our every need?”

“My every need,” and it was amazing how supercilious that rooster could get, Child, “Is provided by Man. Your every need is provided by scrounging around eating disgusting things and going half hungry when times are bad. Now, really, eagle, look at you and look at me. You fly about all day, looking for food, hunting it down, eating it (ugh), building or cleaning your nest, worrying about your eggs, worrying about even finding a mate – worrying and work all day long, every day, for the rest of your life. And then, having done this all to the point of exhaustion, you say that some sort of all-powerful ‘Father’ provides. Ha!”

“I don’t feel exhausted by it; I feel alive, I feel . . .”

“Pray, do not interrupt your betters. Now I, eagle, live a life of sophistication and ease. I want to eat? The finest corn is provided by Man. I want to sleep? Nothing could be more warm and safe than my roost in the coop. I want a mate? Well, you can witness for yourself the bevy of beauties surrounding me . . .”

“Fatties,” Lire muttered.

The rooster glared. “The beauties surrounding me – a veritable harem of pleasure and delight. And because, dear boy, I do not have to focus my attentions and energies to such mundane tasks as survival, I have plenty of time to improve and exercise my mind in deep contemplation. I am a philosopher.” The rooster puffed his chest up and let out a bellowing crow. “You can never be what I am.”

Now, Child, Lire was feeling pretty low at this point. The rooster was right on many of the things. He did spend a lot of time hunting, and he was searching for a mate, and he did worry that his eventual progeny would fall prey to the wily egg-thieves of the mountains. He said good-bye to the rooster and sadly flew back to his mountaintop, which did, all of a sudden seem rugged and cruel rather than exhilarating. When he shivered in a rocky crag that night, he thought a little wistfully of the rooster’s snug coop.

Lire did not want to go back to the farm, but he did. He went the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. With every trip he became more impressed by the rooster’s secure situation and more humbled by his elegant condescension. In his aerie home, Lire would practice walking, trying to perfect the rooster’s barnyard strut.

Child, Lire began to court a young she-eagle named Ara. She was beautiful, proud and fierce, and Lire hungered after her with all his heart. But, Ara was a practical bird. She became more and more frustrated with his trips down the mountain.

“Why you’d ever want to spend your time in the valley, I’ll never understand,” she said once in exasperation, “It smells bad down there.”

“I dunno,” Lire demurred. “Ara, don’t you ever wish for a better life than what we have on this mountain?”

“What could be better than the clean air and magnificent views of this mountain?” Ara returned. “Can’t you just hear Father up here?”

“Hmmm . . . yes . . . Father,” Lire replied, with a guilty sideways glance.

They continued doggedly in their courtship, but Lire’s mind was always preoccupied with the happenings of the valley barnyard. One day, he ventured to mention the rooster’s harem to Ara, and asked if she would, well, maybe consent to . . . He got about that far when she pecked him hard enough to draw blood on his shoulder and flew away. Child, take note of that. And, another time, in a quarrel, he accused her of being ‘bourgeois.’ She flew away again, never to return.

Lire’s journeys south became even more frequent.

So, one afternoon, Lire was making his daily visit to the child of Noah’s farm. The rooster had told him that only uncouth fowl ever perched on fences, so Lire was sitting on the ground, listening to the cock’s pontifications.

“You know, you’re not such a bad bean, now that you’ve taken to learning some sense,” the rooster drawled. “You might just – yes, might just – be ready to make your place in this valley paradise.”

“Where would an eagle like me fit into the Noah child’s farm?” Lire asked.

“Shut up about ‘Noah,’ would you?” the rooster retorted. “And I wasn’t talking about on the farm anyway, bird brain. There are other places for misfits like you – animals not refined or cultivated enough to live closely with Man, but still advanced enough beyond the wild hoi polloi to deserve a little of Man’s protection. They are called zoos, and I think you’ll do nicely there.”

“And in this zoo, will they feed me and keep me warm and find me a mate – or several mates?” Lire asked eagerly.

“Indeed. Now, come a little closer, and I will tell you what you need to do . . .”

Now, Child, Lire, had been seduced, led away from the fundamentals of his being. If his mama had seen it, she would have wept. The young eagle had grown to despise his mountaintop home. He had come to doubt Father and the stories of the Flood. And the seduction was almost complete. Lire leaned his head in, thinking of his chosen mate and their eventual eaglets hatching in the safety and warmth of this zoo-thing, when . . . Hatchlings! Progeny! Hey, wait!

“Brother Rooster!” Lire pulled back his head from the huddle.

“Yes?” Exasperated, but polite.

“Where are your chicks, Brother Rooster?”

“Chicks?” Still supercilious, mind you, but with an edge of something else.

“Yes, your chicks. Ten, fa-- . . . er . . . plump, hens surrounding you, and yet, no chicks inside your fence. Where are your chicks?”

“Ah, yes, well, chicks. We get a brood up about once a year. Really, such deep thinking as mine does not call for time to raise up a very large family, you know. Plus, that’s rather, well, gauche, wouldn’t you say, to have so many children in such an overpopulated world?”

“Overpopulated? Are you crazy? I can fly miles in a day without seeing any other eagles, let alone chickens. But, really, are you telling me that your wives are really your daughters, because . . . ew.”

“No, no, of course not,” the rooster was indignant. “None of our chicks stays around past a year after they hatch. They all go away . . .” Now the rooster’s voice trailed off and he looked uncomfortable.

“Where do they go? Where do your cockerels and pullets go, Brother Rooster?” Lire had a horrible sinking feeling in his stomach.

“Now, really, Old Boy, you needn’t shriek at me so. Do eaglets stay around after they’re grown?”

“So, they fly away to new homes. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes, they go to new homes,” the rooster finished, relieved.

“Liar! Tell him the truth, Ralph. Tell him about our eggs, too,” called a piercing voice from behind the coop. A comely, yet rather obese, red hen waddled out. Her eyes flashed and her voice quavered, “Tell him where our eggs go – the ones that we do not hatch.”

“Shut up, Doreen,” the rooster hissed.

“The Man takes them,” the hen wailed. “He takes them, both the younguns and the eggs, and he eats some of them and sells the rest. I’ve seen it – don’t think I haven’t. He takes our babies, hatched and unhatched and he uses them. That, that is the price we pay for living in this hell.”

"Shut up, Doreen, shut up!” Ralph was furious, beating his wings at his rogue wife.

Doreen was not quelled. “Now you,” she said, turning to Lire, “You need to get out of here. I know what Ralph is trying to do to you, and it is not right.”

“Trying to do to me?”

“He hates you, Lire, because you have what we chickens do not – the ability to fly away. We chickens have been hating eagles since after the Flood, because you chose Father and we chose Man. But Man never gives unless he takes away as well; and he takes in a way that outweighs what good he gives.”

“But, my life is horrible. No cornmeal mush on winter’s nights; no warm perch in the biting cold; no bevy of mates,” he watched Doreen cringe as he said that. “No time for deep thinking or philosophy,” he finished.

“You listen to me, and you listen to me right now. There is nothing, nothing more precious than the freedom to fly. Once you give that up, you have damned generations. If you got yourself into a zoo, you would have a warm home and plenty of food and a hand-picked mate. And, chances are, your little ones would not be eaten by Man or beast. But, they would clip your wings. And, when your eaglets came along, they would be born into a life of captivity. And there would be fewer eagles living on the mountaintops. And that is where you belong.” Doreen was stopped by Ralph’s pushing her to the ground and sitting on her head.

“I apologize for my ignoramus of a wife,” Ralph said. “Her outburst on freedom was tres outré, but she’s always been one to fly the coop, if you catch my drift. Heh, heh. Freedom is so yesterday. The cool kids are all about security, you know. So, now about the zoo . . .”

But it was too late. The scales had fallen from Lire’s eyes. He had already spread his wings.

As his feet touched valley soil for the last time, Doreen gave a sharp poke of her beak on the backside of her husband, and he jumped up, cackling in pain. She scrambled to her feet and called out to Lire as he soared, ever smaller into the great blueness, “Fly on! Fly always! Fly for we who cannot!”

Her eyes fixed on the sky whose corners she had never seen, Doreen added in a whisper, “Father, I will spend the rest of my life trying to remember how to fly.” Now, dear Child, do you not think she will?

*From the folksong, "Dona Dona," whose last verse declares: Calves are easily bound and slaughtered/Never knowing the reason why/But whoever treasures freedom/Like the swallow must learn to fly

Amen & Right On, Brother!

2010-04-11T19:10:00.003-04:00

I didn't write this. A guy by the name of Tom Lidbury did. But the sentiment is all mine. I signed it. Will you?

IN AMERICA, JULY 4, 2010

The unanimous Declaration of we the freedom loving people in the land called the United States of America

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for people to reject the government that prevails in their land, and to reassert among the powers of the earth their natural and unalienable liberties, a decent respect for peace requires that they should first declare the causes that impel them to reject the status quo.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all human beings are created equals; that they posses unalienable rights that are inextricably intertwined with their humanity; that among these are freedom from infringements on their life, liberty, property and pursuit of happiness; that governments derive their just powers only to the extent of the consent of the governed; that whenever any government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the oppressed to resist and, if able, to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect the security of the unalienable liberties.

Prudence will dictate that governments will not be rejected for light and transient causes, as rational beings are disposed to acquiesce to evils lesser than those incident to resistance. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations tends invariably toward intolerable despotism, rational beings will come to a point where even death be preferred to the status quo and they will risk all to overthrow tyrannical government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these citizens in the lands once freed by the founding fathers of the United States of America; and such is now the necessity which constrains us to rise up and reject the transmogrified government that is the status quo today and to restore freedom in this land. The history of the present system of government in the United States of America is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny, however benevolent the tyrants claim to be. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

1. The government has plundered our economy and set itself up as a leviathan that consumes an obscene portion of our productivity and has destroyed the spirit of our people.

2. The government has taxed so onerously at the federal level and so dominated and meddled in the affairs properly reserved to our state and local governments as to leave vanishingly little sovereignty in them, and has declared itself invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever, contrary to our Constitution.

3. The government has subverted representative government by taxing citizens unequally in myriad, convoluted ways and otherwise using gimmicks and tricks to impose hidden taxes, thereby creating large segments of people who are substantially immune to the direct and obvious consequences of taxation and others who actually receive more than they pay, and has thus obliterated the only real check against massive taxation and government growth, a system desirable to tyrants only.

4. The government has spent profligately and borrowed obscene sums of money, so much so as to have essentially hocked our future for generations to come.

5. The government has erected a multitude of administrative offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

6. The government has created a plethora of useless government employees and showered them with obscene salaries and benefits that scant few of those of us who must pay for these extravagances will ever enjoy ourselves.

7. The government has taken ownership or control over businesses, or subsidized politically connected industries and businesses, contrary to basic limits on appropriate government, including automobile manufacturers, the home loan industry, the agricultural industry, the “green” industry, and many others.

8. The government has refused to abide by the rule of law, including for example subverting bankruptcy laws and property rights retroactively to the benefit of favored constituencies such as labor unions like the United Auto Workers.

9. The government has purported to establish affirmative entitlements owed by some people to others, contrary to our Constitution and our unalienable rights to liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness.

10. The government has forbidden the sovereign states from passing laws as they see fit, including for example by confiscating their citizens’ property and then offering some of it back to the states only upon conditions, ranging from seemingly trivial matters such as speed limits to very serious matters such as Medicare.

11. The government has set up laws and regulatory schemes that are so pervasive and intrusive as to require people to regularly lay open all of their most private affairs to bureaucrats, making a mockery of the right to privacy and freedom from unreasonable search, including for example imposing a federal income tax and other taxes that can be assessed only by such invasive intrusions on privacy.

12. The government has taxed the people to fund arts, media and community organizers, each of which is an unnecessary and inappropriate object of government and is prone to being abused for purposes of government propaganda and mischief, including for example National Pubic Radio, the National Endowment of the Arts, and ACORN.

13. The government has aided and abetted the states in erecting a socialized school system by taxing the people and reserving the funds exclusively to the government schools, thereby leaving most of us little or no viable economic alternative to enrolling our children in the government schools, which not only violates our immediate freedom of choice but also: (a) insidiously undermines the foundations of liberty by allowing the government to indoctrinate our children and corrupt their spirits; and (b) creates otherwise unnecessary conflicts over the government’s role in matters of religion, discipline, dress codes, politics, and many other controversial issues, none of which would have involved the government at all but for the establishment of socialized schools.

14. The government has enabled organized labor groups to undermine our liberty and economy by, for example, forcing employees to join a union against their will at the whim of their coworkers, forcing employers to employ people who join unions, precluding employers from terminating the employment of union members who refuse to work, forcing employers to bargain with unions against their will, and in countless other ways turning upside down the proper relationship between employer and employee.

15. The government has encouraged illegal immigration by providing and inducing the states to provide entitlements and benefits to illegal aliens at the expense of citizens.

16. The government has forced people to pay into government programs for retirement and health against their will, and, adding injury to insult, pillaged the funds paid into these programs and conducted them as a Ponzi scheme that will come crashing down on most of us and our children.

17. The government has acted as the world’s insurer without collecting a premium or requiring repayment, even though we are already deeply in debt and cannot afford even the domestic spending and entitlements that have been erected.

18. The government has proposed to combine with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws, giving its assent to their acts of pretended legislation including, for example, conspiring to redistribute our wealth to foreign nations on the pretense of an imaginary and/or wildly exaggerated climate crisis.

19. The government has impaired our right to trade freely with all peaceful parts of the world including by imposing tariffs and other trade restrictions with respect to such places.

20. The government has placed unnecessary, dangerous and frequently misused power in the Federal Reserve, which has caused and worsened economic calamities since its inception; rather than provide for a stable currency.

21. The government has impaired the freedom of people to enter into contracts on terms agreeable to them including imposing minimum wage laws (which, apart from the wrongful government interference in private affairs, serve only to reduce employment of those most in need of jobs and employers’ ability to compete in the global markets), setting the terms on which people can purchase various goods and services such as credit cards, and myriad other interferences in private affairs of free people.

22. The government has taken away our Constitution, abolishing its most valuable restraints on the growth of the federal government, and altering fundamentally the forms of our government.

23. The government has established two dominant political parties that have, through various laws, set themselves up as perpetual rulers that can scarcely be challenged by independents.

24. The government has prevented the exploration and use of our natural energy resources.

25. The government has enacted paternalistic and oppressive laws that infringe on our freedoms without regard to any conduct that proximately causes real injury to others, which is the only legitimate justification for incursions against individual liberty, ranging from annoying little meddling like seat belt laws to egregious power grabs like so-called “health care reform” that essentially nationalizes an entire sector of our economy and private lives.

In every stage of these oppressions, and still others, we have elected politicians who have promised integrity and faithful service. Our repeated elections have resulted only in repeated injury. A form of government whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit for the government of a free people.

We, the oppressed American people, therefore reassert our unalienable rights as free people and declare that though we who are aggrieved may be forced to acquiesce in this tyranny, we do not consent. Take notice, you in the political class and whatever number stands with you, whether a majority or a minority, that you rule over us through force alone, and not by the consent of the governed, and therefore, your rule is illegitimate. We now stand in resistance, peacefully. We are now at work to reform or replace the present system of government, the likes of which our founding fathers raised an army to defeat. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm resolve, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

4 Quick Points

2009-12-27T22:16:00.003-05:00

Tori Amos says, "If Palin runs again, I'm going to run on a Republican ticket. What I know about Middle Eastern policy could fit on a thumbnail, but I still know more than she does. You have to ask, how could a nation nearly vote in somebody who isn't qualified for the job?"

Firstly, sweetheart, let us just say that we find your claim about what little you know of Middle Eastern policy completely credible.

Secondly, we feel certain that what Sarah Palin knows about the subject would dwarf your tiny brain.

Thirdly, we wonder what business someone who admits to knowing almost nothing on a particular subject has qualifying the extent of someone else's knowledge?

Fourthly, we believe that you should run for some office in a Republican primary if you so desire and strongly urge you to do so. Not only because we defend individual liberty and the pursuit of happiness whenever given the chance, but primarily because we'd be very much amused if you did so.

[Bonus Question: Whose voice do I summon? Justine knows!]

by C. C. Kurzeja

A Pleasantly Irrational Christmas

2009-12-09T16:28:00.005-05:00

“Christmas An Irrational Season”, by the amazingly prolific singer/songwriter, Carolyn Arends, is a CD collection of Christmas tunes and the joyful object of my happy obsession lately.

This is the irrational season

When love blooms bright and wild

For if Mary had been filled with reason

There’d have been no room for the child

Thus begins the album with a poem by Madeline L’engle and music by Carolyn Arends, a prelude that lays the thesis every song builds on. Not just in this glorious album, but also in the four others with which I’m familiar, deep and weighty theological truths are the intellectual hook of every song. Like a finely faceted trinket she turns this way and that in the light; here a rainbow, there a laser beam, she examines the abstracts. This is signature to her songs, equal to her woodwind voice and gentle rock-and-roll rhythm. So often the lament rises from the pews, “I wish modern worship can be as meaty and theologically deep as the hymns of yore. Modern worship music is so trivial by comparison.” At last, in Carolyn Arends songs we finally have both.

This is no more apparent than in one of my current favorites, “Is Bethlehem Too Far Away”. This song has a kind of smokey, soft country feel to it. It evokes lonely cowboys on the range under a night sky. As an artist she tends to move fluidly between a folksy soft rock and country with blues and Dixieland jazz influences, a style she is very good at and comfortable in. At first this song appears to be a simple question about faith, succinctly put, beautifully painted, as in the refrain:

Can we find our way to the baby king?

Can we worship him now in the hay?

And can we believe he can change everything?

Or is Bethlehem to far away

But then she veers into a tight change up musically and theologically. She pulls back the scope of the question and masterfully touches upon God’s magnificent, irrational I might add, condescension towards man.

O little town of Bethlehem

How far it must have been

From heaven’s throne of glory

To your humble manger scene

But if God saw fit to travel there

Should not also we

She proves with this one song what a shining poet she is. And she proves it more over with every new song she writes. However, she is not just a great poet, but a really fantastic storyteller also. To me, she brings to mind McCartney in her ability to tell story through song. This skill she demonstrates well in, “Now in Flesh Appearing” and in, “My First Christmas”. The first song has to do with the true meaning of Christmas, the second with experiencing Christmas for the first time. In the case of the latter, this simple reflection has many layers. In the first song she sings of two separate people working two separate ministries. In the second she follows a woman through stages of her life; infancy, the day she’s born again in Christ, and the day she’s called home to eternity. In both songs she paints such a vivid picture that one almost looks for these people at church on Sunday, forgetting that they aren’t real friends. She uses simple words, and yet they manage to sink deep into the psyche. She employs her (not too) folksy side for these songs; Her guitar sound brings to mind Patty Griffin, her voice a bit of Carol King and, as in all her songs, they have a very intuitive build to the melody. Indeed, there aren’t too many songwriters who can match her grasp of melody, of how to stretch it over a song, to soar through its natural rise and fall. I think this is the thing that most astounds me about her: She has a fabulous grasp of language, an equally fabulous grasp of the ebb and flow of melody, also a fabulous, almost guttural, feel for how to build a song, and can use all these things to deftly express deep, theological truths. She’s just so suited for what she does. But, I digress.

“Come and See”, is another of my current favorites and the second track on the CD. I love how much fun she has with it. This song is about as “big worship” as she gets and is infused with a really cool “island” sound that makes you just want to tap your toes and boogie. It’s perfectly celebratory. To paraphrase Chesterton: The chief aim of order is to allow good things to run wild. And that’s what I sense in this song, a wild appreciation for God. She approaches profound truths not piously, but joyously.

Come and see, come and see…

He’s a new baby boy

Who’s the hope of us all…

It’s the great love of God

In the cry of a babe

It’s the paradox, the whole irrationality of it all, that strikes us as most true in these brilliant lyrics. In our heart, we know that salvation could not come any other way. And instead of exhorting us to pay obeisance, she entices us to dance! I love it.

If you long for original Christmas music, you can’t do better than this album. It’s a compilation of seven original tunes (all of them better than the last), three covers and then the prelude/postlude which she wrote the music for. If you aren’t familiar with Carolyn Arends, you’d be doing yourself a favor by getting to know her. If you are lucky enough to give this album a listen, then you’ll fully understand why I wish you all very irrational Christmas this year.

by C. C. Kurzeja
2009 All Rights Reserved

A Damnable Lampoon

2009-11-28T22:43:00.004-05:00

Adam Lambert’s burlesque performance at the AMA’s will prove, I believe, much more unfortunate for him than it was for the poor saps who tuned in to watch him. Having the golden opportunity to establish himself as a world class artist destined to shape and define pop music and pop culture into the next generation – as I once believed he had the chops, vision and confidence to do - he instead chose to reduce his number down to the base standard of a float in a gay pride parade, complete with simulated sex acts, whips and men crawling around the stage on all fours being led around on dog leashes.

Here’s how he’s defended the two most ballyhooed of his onstage antics, the one where he engaged in a raunchy same-sex kiss and the one where he simulated fellatio with a male dancer for what seemed like an eternity: “Adrenaline is crazy and sometimes things just happen."

Really, Adam? Really? You have this problem with adrenaline often? Kinda’ like The Hulk, but instead of going all green and raging you go all rainbow and oversexed? What was that then, a performance or some anguished cry for help? Because, spontaneous public outbursts of simulated sex is decidedly not normal and you may be qualified for government assistance. We expect adults to be in total command of their sexual urges and not to demonstrate their foibles to the world at the slightest provocation. To do otherwise is indecent and there are laws against it. If this is true, you are a danger to society. Certainly, at the very least, our children need to be protected from you.

But this is where I get really flamed. Of course! it’s not true. We’d have to be dumb as a lump of mud to believe that. And just because Adam takes us for imbeciles doesn’t mean we have to play along for his entertainment. If it were true, what Adam did on that stage that night would constitute hard-core sexual harassment on his subordinates. Let me tell you something, I was a dancer way back when. And if a lead had deviated from the choreography, without my knowledge or consent, and had taken my head in both his hands shoving it deep into his groin while gyrating his hips like a stud in heat, especially during a performance when I would have been helpless to object, I would have felt deeply humiliated and violated. Indeed, every professional watching or participating would have immediately realized the serious, criminal nature of the offense that had just been committed on me. I would be suing him in my mind while it happened. I would be counting my money from the lawsuit on the way back to the dressing room. ABC, Dick Clarke Productions, and Lambert’s manager would have a diamond necklace, Mercedes, and a fat checking account waiting for me at the flop I shared with four or five other struggling dancers before I got home in an effort to assuage the trauma of the event. If it were true Adam Lambert’s career would be in grave danger. And the very last thing – and by “last” I mean, “wouldn’t happen in a zillion years” – his handlers would allow him to do would be to go on the record admitting those acts were essentially entirely unilateral in nature.

So my question is: Where’s the lawsuits? Are we to believe that his band mates were much obliged for the experience? What? They felt loved and honored by his generous sex gifts to them? “Doing sex to”, as SNL recently put it, your band mates during a performance is bizarre and deviant behavior. If this is Adam’s normal he needs to pull back the black velvet curtains on the group orgy room he’s living in and venture out into the bright sunlight for some fresh air.

But, of course, this foray into soft porn was a calculated strategy to drum up the maximum amount of cheap publicity he could the week before his CD hits the stands and the “spontaneous” story is a ruse to inoculate ABC and Dick Clarke Productions from the short and feckless arm of the FCC. As for Adam, it’s clear that he plans to run behind his twelve-inch platforms and scream, “homophobe” at anyone who objects. And so far it seems to be working.

I say seems, because in my opinion, this has already begun his undoing. It’s sad that Adam chose the path he did. Yes, he’s the most talked about performer today, but only in the same way that Kate Gosselin was the most talked about personality yesterday. They are both empty and eager for exploitation. And that’s where the rub comes in. One can’t claim artistic altruism while prostituting himself for the scandal gristmill. (Oh, and by that analogy take it to mean that I’m calling ABC and Dick Clarke out for being his pimps.)

Adam can claim that he believes in artistic expression but that’s not what occurred on that stage that night. He was given the golden opportunity to reach deep into his tool bag and slay us. We were waiting for it. We thought he just might be that kind of artist. We were hoping to see something that would reach us, linger with us, make us love him. Instead of picking a fantastic song to present to the world on his debut performance as a single artist, he picks a middling to annoying song, something that can hardly be distinguished from the noise of an already crowded, increasingly – by orders of magnitude- irrelevant industry. Instead of moving us with a revelatory interpretation he lambasted us with a performance that was, ironically, a tragic satire of all the worst of homosexual stereotypes. Instead of singing he screeched. His nerves were distinctly audible in his shaky voice. He was pitchy dawg. On top of all that, fell hard and magnificently. He did a stop, drop and roll fire drill in the middle of the song. It was rank amateur night. Here’s a hint, Adam. If you’re going to go to the trouble of putting on a million dollar production: dazzle me. Or, at the very least, don’t trip.

I went into that performance liking Adam as a performer and as a person. What kind of dupe am I, right? I came out of that performance believing him to be a sexual deviant and a cad. He’s a cad because he betrayed the people who brought him to national prominence and soiled the aesthetic of American Idol. American mothers and their teenage children did not vote this man to the next round in order to eventually see what he might look like having sex on stage. This is a man who was given a tremendous gift and owes something to the people who gave it to him. Also, someone needs to tell that spoiled brat that coming in number two on a game show doesn’t entitle one to redefine what’s appropriate material for public airwaves. Those airwaves belong to us all. And he used them like a toy for his own personal monetary gain at the expense of our children's innocence, our nation's culture and our right to safe public entertainment. What a jerk.

His CD debuts next week. We’ll see how he does. My guess is his fans aren’t going to be nearly as grateful for Adam doing sex to them as his band mates seemed to be.

by C. C. Kurzeja
2009 All Rights Reserved

You're Stucked, Lady!

2007-08-06T22:20:00.000-04:00

My dear friend Alexander Luvin showed great concern when he wrote, "I just got scared when I found out about Flicka finishing a book and being stuck with it."

But, I'm not stucked. Far from it. And, even if I were, no writer should ever be afraid of the same.

I do suppose that writers write for many different reasons. But I think it's fair to assume all want an audience and money, to some extent. But why a writer writes will directly influence how he goes about seeking those two trophies. If I wanted an audience, I could post a whole bunch of pictures of myself in various states of undress on the internet. And I'd have an audience. If I wanted money I could get a job. (Shudder.)

Any writer can attain audience and money much faster and less painfully apart from writing than by it. Continuing to pursue those bad twins through writing exposes them for the impostor objectives that they are.

So then, do I not want those things for Rainmaker? I do. But, I'm in no hurry. And that's the direct result of what interests me and why I write.

Commercial fiction, does not hold my attention. Especially, ESPECIALLY, Christian Fiction. At least not in it's current Genre + Gospel manifestation, anyway. If it did, I would go about writing a story in exactly the opposite way that I do. I would, first of all, relish commercial fiction and greedily devour every new title the publishers released. Then, I would learn everything I could about what my favorite publishers in my favorite genre liked in a writer and were looking for in a book. Then I would ape it until I became it and I would sell them exactly what they were asking for.

As it is, I find reading most commercial fiction to be such a tedious task that it is almost too much for me. I can not do the research necessary to discover what publisher's want because, very often, I can not stand to read what they sell. Even now, I'm slogging my way through a Christian Best Seller by an author who has had one of his books adapted into a major motion picture and I find it about as captivating as a sink full of dirty dishes.

It is The Same. It's a story that's mostly about the Twist, or Angle, or Catch. That is to say, it is a plot driven story with a broken down plot and all energy being directed towards bearing up the clever twist that is so meant to carry the reader on bedazzled wings. It's a beast of burden breaking under too heavy a load, I find.

The narrative is elementary. It is punch, punch, punchy. With lots of fragmented sentences. For emphasis.

It's guilty of gross misconduct with one-sentence paragraphs. If it is offset by itself, it is weighty, wise or witty, right? In fact, it only serves to highlight inanities.

It's characters are dumb and act in unnatural ways. But they are beautiful.

The only reason I'm reading it is because my mother informed me that this author was rejected by most Christian publishers as being too edgy. Perhaps, she reasoned, his publisher would be interested in Rainmaker.

But the book is not edgy like Rainmaker is.

Don't get me wrong, this author is highly skilled and accomplished. His attempts to explain Christianity and God through metaphor are very good. He knows his craft. It's just not my cup of tea, is all. And I have no desire - none, nadda, zilch- to remake myself in his or anyone else's image.

So, why do I write?

Primarily I write because I have something I need to say. I have a broad concept or idea I need to explore and demonstrate. And I have these people in my head that only I know. And I think they have done something or overcome something that deserves to be told. It is their story. And I find them worthy and feel obligated to make them known, to let them live apart from me. I start where I need to start in order to be able to tell what I need to tell. And once my character's have all done what they did that made me start the story in the first place, my story is finished. That's how and why I write.

As for Rainmaker, he desperately needs editing. I'm getting help along those lines from generous friends. And I will rewrite the denouement because I have never been satisfied with that. But, other than that the story is Done. I've said what I set out to and I've given my characters a fair shake. There may be things wrong with the story on many different levels. There may be ten thousand things wrong with the story. But it will not be belabored. I gave it life but I refuse to nurse it.

As for holding on to it: I guess I just can't stand the process of selling it. My dream would be to self publish and self promote my books one day anyway. And I"m very, very busy right now. I don't want to spend my precious spare time doing something I hate, like sending out inquiry letters.

I'm getting ready to have my fourth child. I'm getting a real estate license at my husbands request. I'm going to get licensed to teach Yoga. I'm decorating my kids' bedrooms. I'm carpooling. Life is too full with good things to exchange them for a bad job I can't stand.

I'm going to start another book in the Fall. It will not fit neatly into any genre. It will be about Christ's redemption but it won't be suitable for the Christian market. It'll be a horror story of sorts.

That's what I like to do. That's what holds my interest.

And besides, I have tremendous faith in the universe altering force of creative energy. I'm no more "stuck" with this book than a farmer is stuck with seed for harvest. Latent in every act of creation is a power that works on its own behalf seeking self expression, freedom and fellowship. This is true of my stories as well. I can not be stuck with something that exists apart from myself but only with something I never delineate from my own thoughts. My thoughts belong to me. Rainmaker's Wrestling no longer does.

In short, write for your own reasons, but know what they are. And never be afraid of what you finish. Be afraid of what you never start.

by C. C. Kurzeja
2006 All Rights Reserved

On Birthdays

2007-07-06T11:19:00.000-04:00

"Figlio, you're turning three soon. We're going to have a party to celebrate and invite the cousins. Won't that be fun? What would you like to do for your party? Should would get a Star Wars cake?"

"I want you to invite the men [meaning the landscaping crew] back. I want you to give everyone a big shovel and dangerous saw and we can go back into the wood and chop down trees."

"Honey that's not happening. How 'bout baseball. You want a baseball cake?"

***************

"Figlio, you're turning four soon. What would you like to do for your party?"

"I want you to give everyone a big shovel and we can dig big holes in the grass."

"That's not happening. How 'bout dinosaurs? We could have a dinosaur pinata."

Groan. " I hate dinosaurs!"

****************

"Figlio, your going to be five soon. Have you thought about what you want to do for your party?"

"Well... I know you're not going to let me have a fire birthday where we could start little fires all over the yard and give everyone a hose and let us put it out."

****************

"Fgilio, how 'bout for your sixth birthday I buy a whole bunch of water guns and water balloons and we can invite all the kids from the neighborhood and break up into teams and have, like, a war only with water."

He rubs his chin. This is how he thinks. "All right."

***************

"Figlio, you're turning seven soon. How 'bout we have a baseball party? Baseball is your life, after all."

"Mom, I've thought about this long and hard and I really, really want to do this. I want to take a car engine and stick baseballs in it. Then I want to light the balls on fire until they shoot off into the air. Of course, the engine will probably also catch on fire. But that's okay because we'll do t in the cul-de-sac and give everyone hoses.

"What? Why are you laughing?"

by C. C. Kurzeja
2006 All Rights Reserved

Baby, Hit Me One More Time

2007-06-17T19:44:00.001-04:00

So first I was, like, called into a meeting at school concerning my son. I met the principal in his office with my son's teacher, the reading specialist, the language specialist, some other specialist and the school psychologist.

"See" the language specialist explained showing me her charts and graphs, "Figlio scored way above average in every area we test for language development."

I looked. But her assessment tests were meaningless to me. Besides, I already knew the kid was verbal.

"That's good. And how 'bout his speech?" My son has an open "r" and drops some of his blend sounds. "Is that normal for his age or does he need speech therapy?"

"Oh, no. " A woman assured me, "His speech is completely normal for his age. We aren't worried about that at all."

"Great." I said.

But the room felt heavy and glances were exchanged and nobody made a move to dismiss the meeting. My stomach flipped.

"It's just that," his teacher explained, "sometimes Figlio doesn't finish his seat work."

He pushed some worksheets in front of me as evidence. They were barely touched. And where work was completed it looked like a two-year old had scribbled on them.

Sometimes [heart-thump] Figlio [heart-thump] doesn't finish his seat work? [Heart-thump. Thump Thump]

Six professional stared at me with very concerned faces. My blood went cold.

"Well," I told his teacher, "make him finish his seat work. Or, I'll come in and make him."

His teacher squirmed. "It's just that, he's very difficult to keep focused in class."

"Extremely difficult." The language specialist agreed. "In fact, I retook all these tests while he was in his class and the results were way below average."

This sounded very bad to me. I panicked, started babbling. A slew of inane excuses flew off my tongue. "I home schooled him." "He's young for his grade." "My brother's dyslexic."

And then I turned on the water works. Not on purpose, mind you. I don't consider bawling an effective negotiating tactic. It's just that they came, big springs of water that dripped from my eyes, down my cheeks and off my chin. They are like a Roman invasion, my tears; I will be conquered.

Figlio's teacher, a young, single guy, was so embarrassed for me that I thought he was going to die or self-combust or something. At least, that's what he looked like he was trying to do with the way he turned red as a crushed tomato from the neck up and stared at his thumbs in the most desperately, pleading way. And even though he was sitting directly to my right, he could not turn his head to look at me. He couldn't even direct his eyeballs my way without flinching.

I felt so badly for the guy. I really wished I could stop the torrent just to make him more comfortable. But then I thought, "Nah, this will be good training for when he gets married someday."

The other men in the room, married fathers both, were apparently well acquainted with the peculiarities of the weaker sex. They handed me a box of tissues and let me have at my emotional release as we all discussed successful "strategies" for my son.

And then I was, like, in court attempting to reason my way out of a speeding ticket with the most adorably jejune earnestness.

The judge cut me off mid-sentence.

"Look. I have no ability to decide your guilt or innocence. If you want to plead not guilty you'll have to hire a lawyer and go to trial. But, to be honest, right now you're looking at three months suspended license and up to a thousand dollar fine."

I think I must have put a dent in the wood floor my jaw dropped so fast and hard. I'm a mother. I have three children to shuttle around, obligations, a life my husband depends upon me living. I simply could not not drive.

"The officer didn't tell me I was looking at a suspended license." I stammered.

And then came the flood. Huge, splashy teardrops that fell off my chin and watered the judges bench. I did not want to cry, but there I was.

There is a little, rational man who lives in the back of my brain who tried to get me stop.

"Get a hold of yourself, Flicka." He hollered in his sergeant's voice. "This is a racket. Your brother-in law served on the county board. You know how this works. They need revenue to make up for the tax base their missing because of all the businesses that have gone under due to their incompetent, lengthy road construction. Take out your checkbook and suck it up."

But I couldn't listen to reason. I just felt so vulnerable and abused at the moment. A fine, upstanding citizen like me who hasn't so much as had a parking ticket in over sixteen years being treated like a common criminal. Imagine! My feelings were very hurt.

So I flowed with the torrent and dripped tears while negotiating my fine, thanking the judge, standing in line and paying the clerk. No shame in that.

And then I was, like, hungry and nothing, nothing, sounded good. Until, a taste clawed onto the back of my pallet. I couldn't immediately discern its identity but I knew it was there. I stopped, tilted my chin to the the sky, and searched for it.

[Smacking my lips] "I feel like..." [Delicately touching the back of my jaw. More smacking. Trying to articulate.] "Spicy, blackened, grilled shrimp." I announced triumphantly. "With lime."

And then I was taking a shower and sudsing up my long hair when an invisible oppression sought to bring me down. The walls closed in. My hands dropped limp to my side. And I knew I had to vomit, NOW, in order to live. I barely had the strength to rinse my hair. Didn't bother with conditioner or combing out the tangles. I found that just toweling off and getting dressed was enough of a challenge for the day.

Later, I made an appointment to cut my hair -almost nine inches donated to Locks Of Love - into a chin-length bob. Very "au courant" I was told.

"Your head is so hot." the hairdresser repeatedly informed me. "You're like a furnace."

So then I did the perfunctory to confirm what I knew full well. I took a pregnancy test and passed with flying colors.

Baby number four will arrive just in time for the holidays.

by C. C. Kurzeja
2006 All Rights Reserved

Book Review: The Wrath Of Angels

2007-04-03T11:25:00.000-04:00

In, The Wrath of Angels, the third novel in a series of angelic adventures written from a Christian world view, Theodore Beale has given us a fine piece of fiction.

At the core of this story is the spirit-realm throne of Albion, the ancient name for Britain, and those Fallen who would rule from it. The over-arching, pressing danger is that Diavelina, the treacherous daughter of Moloch, would come to reign upon that coveted throne. Moloch or Baal, as he is also known, is a Cannanite god who is always associated with fire and child sacrifice as he was worshiped by followers who passed their children through fire to appease him. According to Wrath mythology, it was Moloch who orchestrated Hitler's rise to power and then stoked his passion for incinerating Jews. Diavelina desires another such fiery winnowing across Europe.

What is not explained is why Diavelina would need Albion to accomplish such mortal destruction. One would think she'd be making a play for the principality of Germany, for example. A clue might be found in Prince Lucere, also called Gog Sheklah. A Shadow Sarim like Moloch, Gog is the biblical name for Russia, but is also found in ancient literature as one of two giants who protect the city of London. The giants, Gog and Magog, are Twice-Fallen. They are the offspring of Alba, the wicked daughter of a Roman emperor from which Albion is named and fallen angels. Perhaps the holocaust Diavelina desires is directed specifically at the children of London.

Whatever her reasons, Diavelina's intention is to war against the current ruler of Albion, a twisted and degenerate creature known as the Mad One, or Maomoondagh, and ascend to the throne in victory. But a winsome Fallen by the name of Robin Goodfellow, also known as Puck, conspires to dash Diavelina's plans by reinstating Oberon, King of the Fae, long deposed and imprisoned, upon his rightful throne assuming that the only divinity Diavelina would fear to oppose would be the newly regenerated and at once beloved Oberon.

In Puck, The Wrath of Angels, unfolds. It is primarily his story, his effort and machinations we follow as he travels across the Atlantic searching out swords, Mortals, Fallen and Divine, enlisting their aid to restore Oberon to his throne. And it isn't until the very end that Puck's stunning motivation for restoring Oberon's throne is revealed.

Theodore Beale describes himself as a writer of Christian Fantasy, and certainly The Wrath of Angels can fit into that category. I think that if you do not consider the Bible to be absolute truth then you will enjoy this tale as fantasy. But any student of God's word will immediately recognize within the characters and story a comprehensive theology through which the doctrines of angels, sin and forgiveness are illuminated, fleshed out, and animated. And as such, The Wrath of Angels,is more Christianity-Imaginatively-Expressed than Christian Fantasy.

In one telling scene, Christopher and Holli - adorable, teen, mortal protagonists - witness angelic beings during a church service. Christopher is overwhelmed by "the great web of divine light that bound together the people of God throughout all time and place. Man and angel, rock and beast; everything in creation that had freely chosen to submit its will to that of the Most High was linked together in a glorious and unbreakable chain of power." Indeed, Beale sees the Fallen world linked with a similar unbreakable chain of power. All myths, all gods, all places, religions, and objects that oppose Heaven's Most High are categorized and classified under the great canopy of Shadow World and Eternity in, The Wrath Of Angels. It is when and where those two great, warring webs of Divine and Fallen light intersect that I find this tale most delightfully thought provoking.

In Puck, fallen-Tho-He-Be, Beale manages to create a surprisingly comfortable and familiar protagonist. And he does so without erring towards blasphemy or common disrespect. I think it is his fresh and brilliant perspective that keeps him from that trap; that maybe, just maybe, we fallen mortals are more like fallen angels than not.

According to Beale, God is not in control on Earth in the way that, or how, many Christians assume. His understanding allows angels to act according to their own judgment based upon the desires of the Most High and is what brings the mortals, Fallen and Divine together to work towards a common goal. In one pivotal scene, Khasar the guardian angel explains to Holli the angel-whisperer, "We're God's hands, my dear. And do you know what else? Most of the time, He leaves us free to do as we think best. Some angels are serious about their responsibilities, some aren't. That's why you'll be judging us one day."

I enjoy Beale's wonderfully descriptive style. His narrative is like the fluff of beautiful imagery sandwiched between hard slices of fast-paced action scenes. He has an impressive and thoroughly enjoyable vocabulary and brandishes words as deftly as The Lord Of Chaos does his sword. Thankfully, missing from his style are the ubiquitous fragmented sentences just to make a point, and the one sentence paragraphs as though every statement were a profundity, and the italicized sentences to reveal the mind of the charatcter that litter so many pages in contemporary fiction. Out of the midst of the many references from sources as varied as archaic literature to contemporary rock bands, along with the thoughtful, observant unfolding of his tale, emerges a unique and strong voice.

Finally, Beale, an entertainer at heart, does not finish his tale with the perfunctory, "The End", but with "Closing Time". To which I reply, "Good show."

************************************************************************************
I can not mention this book without mentioning K & B Booksellers, the only place on Earth to purchase a copy of The Wrath of Angels for yourself.

"K&B Booksellers deals in used books. We carry the odd, the eclectic, and the unintentionally humorous. Being somewhat odd, eclectic, and at times unintentionally humorous ourselves, we stock what is perhaps an inordinate amount of science fiction, but are by no means limited to that genre. A good book is a good book, and when we find something interesting, unusual, and (this is important) in good condition, we will cheerfully make it available to you."

I was extremely impressed with the attention and service "k" gave to my order. I purchased my book on December 23rd and received it on the 24th. I almost fell over when I found it on my door step. I had written it off until after the New Year. She must have mailed off my book seconds after getting my order. I'm certain she'll show you the same thoughtful, professional attention.

K & B Booksellers.com can be found at The Ranting Room along with many wonderful insights, engaging conversations, fun contests and some really fine, sharp writing.

C. C. Kurzeja
2007 All Rights Reserved,

Figlio Spumoni

2006-12-24T10:46:00.000-05:00

My son, 6 anno, has written me a Christmas Story for my present this year. It wasn't his idea. It is a tradition at the school he attends that all children write one every year in the first and second grades. They have to make a first draft, edit it (with help), and then copy it in a hard-back book where they finish it off with their own illustrations.

"What's it like being an author?" I asked him.

"Hard." He replied. "I even had to spell all the words correctly. And I think I did." He added.

I share it with you this Christmas. And I know he's my son and all, but I think the part about going cross-eyed a spark of brilliance. Merry Christmas to all and may God richly bless you in the New Year!

"For my eyes have seen Your salvation, Which You have prepared in the presence of all peoples, A LIGHT OF REVELATION TO THE GENTILES, And the glory of Your people Isreal." Luke 2: 30-32

*****************

Thunderbolt Strikes

There once was a fireman named David. He was ten feet tall with brown hair. His eyes were blue and his skin was dark brown. David was a good man who saved a lot of people in fires. He lives in California, in the southern part.

It was the day before Christmas and everybody was getting ready. David was at the fire station waiting to go home. He wanted to spend time with his son, Cole, who was 21 years old.

David got in his firetruck and went home. He was just about to bring his son to get some ice-cream.

They got in the firetruck and picked up Cole's grandma, in from New York. They went to the ice-cream place and all of them got lemon custard with sprinkles.

They got back in the firetruck but just about then they saw a bit of lightning on the street in from of them. There was no fire on the street.

When they got home, they saw another bolt of lightning strike their house. It had a lot of static and started a big fire. First the windows came down and then the bricks started turning to ashes. Then the bolt hit the neighbor's house.

He ordered his son Cole to take out all of the water from the fire hydrant. Each moment he shot gallons of water. But the fire grew. He thought this was crazy.

He decided to drop down a water bomb on each house because each house had a big fire.

David called and told all the people to get out of their houses. He put all the fire out with the last two water bombs. David had seen many fires, but none as bad as this. As a result of the fire, three boys went cross-eyed and four girls broke their ribs.

David has a lot of gold. So, he passes out 100 bars of gold to each person. David has two bars of gold left.

He decides to take Cole and his grandma to the best hotel ever. In the hotel there is a secret passageway.

At the hotel, Graham, Kyle and Justin bumped into David. They found 100 bars of gold. David asks the boys if they found the gold in the passageway. They say, "Yes. We found gold and silver."

David asks for the gold. The boys show him where it is. David asks the boys what they want for Christmas. Sam wants a Game Cube with Star Wars. Graham wants a flying saucer and Justin wants the same. Kyle wants some Nintendo chips. David buys them what they wanted.

David takes the rest of the gold and gets a new house. He goes back to his old job to save more lives.

The End

by C. C. Kurzeja
2006 All Rights Reserved

Emily Dickinson on Winter

2006-12-22T17:03:00.000-05:00

LXXXII
There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
'T is the seal, despair, -
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 't is like the distance
On the look of death.

LXXX
The sky is low, the clouds are mean,
A travelling flake of snow
Across a barn or through a rut
Debates if it will go.

A narrow wind complains all day
How some one treated him;
Nature, like us, is sometimes caught
Without her diadem.

by C. C. Kurzeja
2006 All Rights Reserved

More Excellent Than Equal

2006-10-24T11:49:00.000-04:00

Paul, a Jehova's Witness, quotes scripture and points out the irrelevant: Hebrews 1:3 says Jesus is "the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person," and none of those words mean equal to anything.

He argues that since this verse fails to assert that Jesus is equal to God then it also fails to prove that Jesus is God. But his argument is as fallacious as it is unbiblical because he does not fully comprehend the meaning of the word "equal" and therefore misses the polytheistic implications latent in that word.

The problem with "equal" is that things can be equal and not be the same. For instance, I can have one nickel and five pennies in my hand to equal a dime in your hand. We both have ten cents. Our handfuls can rightfully be described as equal and yet they are clearly not the same. Or, a young lady can work at the watch counter in Wal Mart for ten dollars an hour and an old man can work the same exact position for the same wage. The young lady is equal to the old man in responsibility, wage, position and title but she is clearly quite different than her counterpart in every other way.

So, you see, there are many different ways a person or thing can be as great as or the same as, in other words equal, to someone or something else. However, merely asserting their equality does not explain how or in what way. And it's easy to see how confusion would ensue if a person were limited to being defined merely as equal to someone else. For instance, would a potential suitor to the young lady working at Wal Mart object if, when arriving to pick her up to go out on a date, he found the old man waiting for him instead? It would be impossible for the potential suitor to accept the old man as a substitution for the young lady. All appeals to him about their equality would be meaningless because equal does not begin to define who they are in essence. The lover is rightly concerned with who his beloved is and not what her value is compared to another.

The theological implications of this are obvious and grave. If Jesus were to be described as equal to God then, hypothetically, it would be possible for Him to be something other than God. He could then be, as the J. W's heretically conclude, a spirit being that is equal to God in authority, power, position and preeminence but not God. And if one spirit being can be equal to God than all can, fallen or otherwise. Under this scenario, God would cease to be all powerful because He could only be as powerful as His equal counterparts. This scenario destroys God as He is revealed in scripture and so can not be true.

Yet another errant possibility with a Jesus who is equal to God is that it would be possible for Jesus to be a God without being The God. As a matter of fact, being equal to God requires being separate from Him because equality exists by comparison but not by itself. In other words, if there were only one apple pie submitted in an apple pie competition, equal is one description that would never apply when grading the quality of the pie. Equal is a value in the same way more or less is. If there is only one God, as the bible clearly and repeatedly teaches, then He can not be equal to anyone as there would be no one to compare Him to. He is the only apple pie in the contest, so to speak.

But if Jesus were equal to Him, then Jesus would have to be other than Him, separate, his own God in order to be compared to Him. Instantly, we have a bitheist universe which would immediately give way to polytheism because if it is possible for one god to be equal with Him, the same would be possible for all gods. The writers of the New Testament, surrounded on every side by cultures steeped in polytheistic paganism, would have been fully aware of the trappings of equality and so wisely avoided that term.

But what we have in Hebrews 1:3 is far more excellent than equal. What we have in, "exact representation of His substance..." is a concrete definition of who Jesus is apart from any comparisons not to mention a brilliant glimpse into the Triune nature of God.

Exact means: strictly accurate or correct; precise; admitting of no deviation. Substance means: that of which a thing consists; the actual matter of a thing.

So what this verse states is that Jesus is the strictly accurate, precise, and without any deviation representation of that of which God consists or God's actual matter. It would be impossible for Him to be thus and not be God. Because God, duplicated perfectly would be God again. So what we have here is God of God, not a god compared to God. We have in this divine illumination, God and God in the second person of the trinity. We have, as Jonathan Edward's opined, God and God's thought of Himself.

And so in a few words, the writer of Hebrews by the power of the Spirit, makes an irrefutable reference to the deity of Jesus as He exists in the Trinity keeping in perfect harmony with the totality of scripture.

Truly, this goad is hard to kick against.

by C. C. Kurzeja
2006 All Rights Reserved

Justine Olawsky is Brilliant

2006-09-26T21:28:00.000-04:00

And, furthermore, she looks dazzling in print.

If you have not already picked up the October issue of Liberty magazine, I urge you to do so before they sell out. Liberty is a smart monthly brimming with thought provoking articles and clever cartoons about the subject of freedom or lack thereof in our society and is a good read in and of itself. But when Justine contributes, this fantastic magazine is made even better.

For her debut article she treats us to, of course, a book review. Desperately Seeking Shakespeare examines the issue of authorship of the entire cannon of plays and poems commonly attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon by reviewing two books on the subject that come to the same conclusion but use widely divergent approaches to do so.

Like always, peering into her generous mind is a pleasure and the reader - I - am left both informed and, in an odd way, grateful. I love the way she fluidly links her thoughts for the reader so deftly that by the end you not only know the facts as she's presented them but you feel her passion. She leaves you with a bit of her heart beating in your hand. She is not a great writer because she can put pretty words on a page, although she can. She is a great writer because she possesses authentic, original thoughts that she expresses with the grace and panache you'd expect out of a true artist.

Here's to you Justine, and your growing readership.
by C. C. Kurzeja
2006 All Rights Reserved

2006-08-11T11:12:00.000-04:00

Yes. Do.

Because You're Not A Muskrat

2006-07-24T20:24:00.000-04:00

More From My Continuing Frontier Education, or, In Order to Better Understand Freedom: The Ingalls' are now in Dakota, packed up and moved from their farm in Walnut Grove, Minnesota. This will be their last move, Ma insists, because the girls will have a formal education.

The government is giving a homestead, 140 acres, to anyone willing to brave the untamed, uncivilized frontier and farm the land for four years. Pa takes the bet and claims a beautiful patch of land. He plans to raise cattle on it. Buffalo once dominated that part of the country. They are gone, but their wallows still pock mark the prairie. He figures if the land was so good for buffalo, it will due for his cattle.

Mary is blind. Scarlet fever took her sight and her long, golden locks. Her head was shaved to bring down the fever, but it was too little too late. And that is that. She doesn't complain.

And so now, Laura is expected to become the school teacher. The money she makes will help put Mary through college for the blind. Laura can't stand schools, tight places, or strange faces. But she will go to school and learn because she has to for Mary. And that is that. She doesn't complain.

One day in late summer while Laura helped Pa stack hay, she spotted what looked to her another hay stack. Pa pointed out that it was a Muskrat house and then invites her to check it out with him. He explains the ways of the Muskrat to her and then says: "We're going to have a hard winter."

"Why, how do you know?" Laura asked in surprise.

"The colder the winter will be, the thicker the muskrats build the walls of their houses," Pa told her. "I never saw a heavier-built muskrats' house than that one."

"Pa, how can the muskrats know?" she asked.

"I don't know how they know," Pa said. "But they do. God tells them, somehow, I suppose."

"Then why doesn't God tell us?" Laura wanted to know.

"Because," said Pa, "we're not animals. We're humans, and, like it says in the Declaration of Independence, God created us free. That means we got to take care of ourselves."

Laura said faintly, "I thought God takes care of us."

"He does," Pa said. "so far as we do what's right. And He gives us a conscience and brains to know what's right. But He leaves it to us to do as we please. That's the difference between us and everything else in creation."

"Can't muskrats do what they please?" Laura asked, amazed.

"No," said Pa. "I don't know why they can't but you can see they can't. Look at that muskrat house. Muskrats have to build that kind of house. They always have and they always will. It's plain they can't build any other kind. But folks build all kinds of houses. A man can build any kind of house he can think of. So if his house don't keep out the weather, that's his look-out; he's free and independent."

I'm launching a movement to make the entire Laura Ingalls Wilder series part of every public schooled child's education. Every boy and girl in this nation should be made to not only read the series, but discuss this profoundly American family and their lives- how they lived them, why they lived them- in classrooms, ponder the implications of the actions and choices made by the Ingalls and identify the philosophy motivating them.

But to stop there would be to stop short. Every child should also be required to identify opposing world philosophies and demonstrate how they motivate people and to what end, and for what purpose.

I am firmly persuaded such an education would eradicate the disease of socialism that infects our society to death inside of a generation and, more importantly, teach us what it means to be free and how to go about living in that freedom. It's not too late. It's not over till the trumpet sounds.

Contrast Pa's attitude with the demands from entitled socialists running our institutions today. Recently, with Israel at war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, our military rescued Americans living in Lebanon from the dangers of war. We hauled our naval ships over to the coast of Lebanon and ferried our citizens by helicopter to the island of Cypress where they were free and safe to make arrangements to get home.

You'd think they'd be grateful, but no. Many of these rescued proved what brats they were by complaining that the war ships took too long in getting to them, and besides the long delay, they asked with indignant fury "Why should we have to spend our own money getting ourselves home, anyway?"

The answer should have been immediately obvious to everyone: Because, you're not a muskrat. And taking care of yourself is as American as the Declaration of Independence. (See how easy life's most pressing questions become when placed into Pa's paradigm?) You're free to roam where ever you want over God's green earth and upon her blue waters. So, if you choose to locate near vermin and get caught in the cross-fire between terrorists and a sovereign state, that's your look out; you're free and independent.

by C. C. Kurzeja
2005 All Rights Reserved

Ode to Mom

2006-05-14T14:55:00.000-04:00

I have the world's best mother.

We all say that, don't we? At least those of us who have great mothers.

"But it's true!" I say, and you say when you read this, "My mother is the best!"
And it is true. Your mother is the best- to you. And, I have the world's best mother. We can all be right on this matter.

The thing I most appreciate about my mom is the spiritual guidance and support she gives me as an adult. I can always count on her to lead me in the paths of righteousness for His name sake. Not for my sake, or my over fed ego, but for His name's sake. You can never go wrong submitting your life to God's word and my mother knows this. So whatever the issue, whatever the obstacle, my mother always points me like a beacon back to God's word and His will for my life and buttresses me while I walk in the Way. Because, sometimes it can be tough.

But, nothing is too tough, or too long, or too high, or too wearisome when you have a constant friend by your side, and that is what my mom is to me.

I love how goofy she is and the way she makes me laugh when we embark on an adventure with my kids.

I love the way she teaches my children truth and loves them. They are so lucky to have her. They are as blessed to have her as a Grandma as I am to have her as a mom.

I love how youthful and spry she is. She is not only beautiful and young looking - "Oh, my gosh! Christy, that's your mom? I thought she was your sister!" - She is full of boundless energy. She can keep up with any toddler with a dirty diaper, any baby who wants to go to certain places but only when she is on your hip, and any five year old who's forcing you to listen to him count to a "google". And still be able to say to me at the end of the day, when the kids are in bed and I'm like putty that needs to be scraped off the floor, "I've got two more days here. I can tear that wall paper down and prime the walls if you let me."

I love that, at fifty-something, she's just getting started. God is growing her, every day, every year. She's like a one woman evangelizing machine. Every time she flies (she is a flight attendant, The-Flying-Nun) she witnesses, prays, shares the Gospel. It is truly faith building to see the people God brings into my mother's life, and the way she is faithful to her calling. I expect exciting things in the future.

Her mother rises up and calls her blessed, her husband rises up and calls her blessed, her employer rises up and calls her blessed, her friends rise up and call her blessed. It is no surprise that her children should also.

Mother, you are wonderful, lovely, an example to strive for. You not only gave me life, you make my life something special.

Happy Mothers Day!

by C. C. Kurzeja
2005 All Rights Reserved

Sweet Home of Mine

2006-04-25T22:06:00.000-04:00

The move is over, is over, is over; And, I feel like crying.

Tired, like an empty barrel with legs that shake underneath me.

Sore.

Bruised.

The move itself was horrendous, a lesson in abject incompetence. Being Good Friday, there was nothing to do but grovel at the feet of the bully with the truck and entreat him to complete the job with as little damage to our possessions as we could manage.

Having come through to the other side of the great tumbling cyclone, I am changed.

But the home is lovely, is lovely, is lovely; It makes me want to sing.

I have been twelve years homesick for Southern California. Every day desiring for her sun bleached, boulder strewn hills and the rolling thunder of the deep blue Pacific, and night blooming jasmine, and archways trained with fuscia, sand squishing beneath my toes and salt in the air.

That was then.

But, my how things have changed. Now I own a classic California ranch in the heart of country that speaks comfort to me. Laden with architectural detail and pretty, elegant, with a good dose of artsy-fartsy thrown in, this home fills me.

I feel like God has given me a piece of my heart back.

At the walk-through, I opened what was-not-yet-but-was-soon-to-be my front door to see four boys, one of them in his pajamas, and two men on the front lawn going through the trash. It seems the owners were throwing away some good stuff with the move. They were casual, unhurried, and very relaxed, smiling and waving.

I thought: There are little boys running all over my lawn. What a gift!

"Hey, you look really familiar." I said to the one guy, my soon-to-be next door neighbor. "Are you a doctor? I think you gave me a couple of cortisone shots in my shoulder."

Turns out he was.

His wife joined our circle. She's tall with dark hair and eyes, olive complexion, trim, very beautiful and giggly. We told her of our connection.

She said, "Great. For our first get together you can bring the main course, we'll bring the steroids."

I liked her immediately. Turns out she's a dermatologist. Dr. Mom and Dr. Dad.

Three of the boys belonged to them, including the one in pajamas. Our home is on a cul-du-sac and it seems the street belongs to the neighborhood children. They ride their bikes, play ball, chase eachother.

I thought: I'm going to love it here.

We discovered that one of my daughter's little friends lives only a few doors down from us, a delightful bonus. Her parents had a barbecue on the second night of our move and invited us. When I declined because we were still getting our furniture into our home, they told us to send the kids over anyway. They could play with the gazillion neighborhood kids, they'd feed them, and then send them home.

I thought: My neighbors are awesome.

Later, as I was hiding out in my car, hair wet and in my pajamas, waiting for my mother to retrieve my children for me from the barbecue, the father of my daughter's friend sauntered over to my car.

I rolled down the window.

"Hi." I said sheepishly. "I'm just kind of hiding out here waiting for the kids 'cause I changed into my pajamas already." I crinkled my nose, trying to look cute instead of incredibly stupid.

It was late. We had been moving for two days. I was beside myself with exhaustion. That's my excuse.

"Well, they're in there having ice-cream. It's gonna be a while." He warned me.

"That's okay." I said, feeling like a big jerk. "I'll just kick back here. It's just a good thing you don't have a digital camera with you." Ha, ha. Nervous laughter.

Just then, the neighbor across the street joins him. Now I'm looking like a jerk in front of two guys.

"Hey," He asks the neighbor as he pulls out a digital camera, "what's the hazing initiation for new neighbors?"

I screamed like an animal caught in a trap as he snapped dozens of pictures of me looking like a felon trying to avoid the camera. I should have just posed but I freaked out instead. I'm sure he and his wife laughed themselves to sleep that night. I know I did.

I thought: What a great welcome.

They are going to do something artful with the pictures for the progressive dinner being held soon.

Ahhh.....

by C. C. Kurzeja
2005 All Rights Reserved

Heidi

2006-03-02T22:53:00.000-04:00

I was a young child when I lived at the house on Clarendon Hills Road and I recall that time as if viewing an impressionist painting. Vivid emotions are applied to my memories in unmixed primary colors with details that are like small strokes reflecting the light of my perspective.

The home was the middle one of three in a row built by an architect in the early 1900's. Mrs. H. lived in the biggest home of the three. It had a coach home that she rented out. Inside the coach home was a great room with cathedral ceilings that had floor to ceiling bookshelves lining one wall. Once, I asked her if she'd read all those books. She said she had and that her father had even written one of them. It was all about the time he stumbled upon Abraham Lincoln in a wood praying by himself all through the night during the Civil War.

I thought to myself: How divine to know each of those words like a friend in that great quantity of books.

Our home, which we rented from Mrs. H., was delightful. It was a white, cedar-plank cape cod in the English cottage tradition that was situated on three and a half acres. The sloping roof had a most feminine curl at the lip and upon it perched twelve wrought iron American eagles in array, wings outstretched. It has been my desire since childhood to reclaim those eagles and establish them on my own adult home, a desire not yet fulfilled but not to any degree palliated. Climbers, with beautiful seasonal flowers of drooping fuchsia bells, enhanced the outer walls but modestly, like a sophisticated lady who knows how to apply her makeup.

The garage was a recording studio. My father was in a band called The Ides and The Shames during those years. After his band, The Cryan' Shames, broke up and Jim P. left The Ides of March for a solo career, remaining members of each band hooked up and - Voila!

The home was crawling with skinny hippies in faded bell bottoms. People were constantly renting rooms and hanging out. I couldn't walk through the living room without being picked up by my ankles or thrown over someone's shoulder. It was lots of guitar strumming and enormous amps, microphones I was forbidden to touch, beautiful roach clips with feathers on the end that I wanted to be old enough to own, and lot's of smoking: the good cigarettes and the bad kind, the kind we had to leave the room for when people lit up.

I told my kindergarten teacher that we lived in a home with fifty-six people and that I wanted to be a rock and roll singer when I grew up. She was very concerned.

We had a fabulous tree house and a wood out back with a stream. We spent our lives in that wood, exploring, being tough. The ground was covered in arrowheads thick, like clover covers a field. The earth gave up her treasures cheaply.

I was serenaded every morning by bird song and at the end of every summer day, as the sun set behind an ancient golden oak, it illuminated the second story reading room in fairy dust for magical minutes.

My brother and I made a habit of climbing out of the second story bedroom window and playing on the roof. The roof had fabulous character and plenty of sloping terrain. From there we'd catch a limb on a mature tree and climb down to the back of the house. For a while, my parents just thought we had some scary, big raccoons living near us. They eventually caught on.

Once Boon, the mighty hunter cat, killed and ate a field mouse so quickly that my brother and I were able to watch the tiny, beating heart, laying in the grass amongst scattered bones as if in a nest, beat out it's last.

Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom; the end.

And then there was Heidi.

She was my age and lived in the third white house that the architect built and was our neighbor on the other side. Their home was meticulously landscaped and both her parents were professionals. They had a flagpole in the middle of their yard and proudly flew the American flag. Heidi's mother made her jumper dresses that were reversible and sent her to school every day in pigtails. Each pigtail was a single, curled spiral. I stared at them in awe.

We met Heidi on a winter morning. My mother was brewing coffee in the kitchen when she noticed a hairy mound under a pile of snow on a table in the screened in porch. It was Heidi. She was wearing her pajamas, a thin robe and slippers. Heidi had snuck away in the middle of the night to escape her abusive mother and had sought the shelter of our porch, using the rug, dusted with snow, stored on top of the table as a blanket. In the safety of her hideout, she had fallen sound asleep.

When I came to the table that morning, there was a pretty girl sitting there.

"Heidi will be visiting us often." My mother explained cheerily. "We won't always know when she's coming but she can come whenever she wants. Kind of like this is her home now, too. And when she does, she's going to sleep upstairs with you kids in one of the beds."

It was like getting a sister when it wasn't even your birthday.

I remember her mother, a total drunk and strung out on pills, coming over for Heidi in the mornings after she'd discovered Heidi missing. Heidi would cling to my mother and beg to stay. Often, her mother would drag a sobbing and hysterical Heidi home by her hair.

There was nothing my parents could do. They wanted to adopt her. But, the state wouldn't intervene unless the police reported an incident of abuse and catching Heidi's parents in the act of abuse was an impossibility. That was the law back then.

One day in late summer, Heidi came bounding happily across her yard over to our home.

"My mom just bought fresh corn on the cob and said you can come over and have it for dinner with me." She told us.

My brother and I were excited. We loved corn on the cob. We quickly received permission from my father (What?!?!?!?!!!) who was "watching" us at the time and ran next door for dinner.

Her mother was drunk, nothing knew, but really nice. She had the table all set with a plate of hot something and of course, corn, waiting for us. We ate eagerly, in good spirits, talking about summer stuff and kid thoughts.

We had no sooner begun when her mother came into the kitchen swinging a broom over her head and screaming.

"Get out. Get out! All of you. Go!"

My brother and I popped out of our seats like they were on fire and headed for the door. Whacked out mothers were entirely foreign to us. It didn't even occur to either of us to ask questions. However, Heidi began to cry and protest.

"Mom, we just got started. Please, let us just finish our meal." She pleaded.

"All right." Her mother agreed nervously. "But you get goin' as soon as that corn's finished. All of you. You here?"

My brother and I were about as comfortable with this compromise as a cat in water. We shoveled the food down our throats without chewing, sitting with one foot extended towards the back door .

Minutes later, her mother came back more vicious than ever.

Swinging the broom above her head again in great circular sweeps, she screamed, "Get out! Get out! Get out now!"

We ran like rabbits. No sooner had the door closed behind us, Heidi and I were still on the door steps, when we heard four thundering, cracking noises in quick succession behind us.

Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

I will never forget this. Heidi turned to me and with terror etched across her face and tears streaming from her eyes said, "It's my mom. My mom just shot my dad. I know it."

I thought: What in blazes made her jump to that conclusion? And anyway, why would she assume it was her mom doing the shooting when it was her dad who was the hunter?

"No Heidi. Your mom just got upset and picked up a hammer and banged it on the counter to get your dad's attention. My mom did that once when my brother and I were fighting." I reassured her.

"No!" She was adamant. "My mom just shot my dad. I know it."

My brother decided to solve the argument by standing on some cinderblocks that were underneath the kitchen window and taking a peak.

He flew back from the window like a great force had cast him off and, running, yelled behind to us, "Blood everywhere! Run!"

We told The Hulk, that's what we called him because he had curly hair and big muscles, when we got home because he was the first person we ran into. He set up the equipment for the band and was renting a room at the time.

The police were called.

Heidi's older brother, who had Down syndrome, was fetched and brought to our home.

My father went over to investigate, along with some other members in the band. They were cuffed based on their questionable looks, and then released.

The police questioned us later that night as we played in our room.

Someone came to take Heidi and her brother away and I only saw Heidi once after that. Once, in my whole life, and never more.

Heidi's mother had indeed shot her father, just as Heidi knew. But in her inebriated state, missed his chest where she was aiming and hit every extremity instead.

Her father lived and later went to jail.

Oddly enough, charges were dropped against Heidi's mother. And after she sobered up, was awarded full custody of her children.

Heidi's mother was the abuser. She shot her husband. And yet, he's the one who goes to jail. I was confused by those facts.

"Her father was a very bad man, very mean, even meaner than her mother, and the police found this out. That's why they put him in jail." My mother explained every time I probed.

This answer was sufficient for me until I became a grown woman with two children of my own and brought the subject up yet again one day, when my mother and I were having a nice coffee chat. Heidi lurks always in the shadows of my thoughts.

"Oh, Christy." My mother leveled with me. "Heidi's dad was molesting her. He had set up fantasy rooms in the basement with a whole bunch of sick stuff you don't need to know about and had intended on bringing you three down in the basement that evening. Heidi's mother was protecting you."

I owe that woman, imperfect as she was, a world of gratitude. I can not imagine how damaged and shattered my brother and I would be today if Mr. Sick-and-Evil had had his way with us that night. She stepped in between horror and innocence with a gun and made of herself a threshold that could not be breached.

...Who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth...And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed?

I owe that woman a lot. I thank God for His mercy.

And I pray often for Heidi...

by C. C. Kurzeja
2005 All Rights Reserved

An Eggnog Tale (Because it's good with a glass of eggnog)

2005-12-09T23:44:00.000-04:00

The man, a husband and father in the prime of his life, placed one hand over his mouth and chin and stood perfectly still. His pounding heart drummed in his ears, but the house was silent except for the relentless ticking of the Grandfather clock.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock. You-can't. Find-it. You-don't see-it. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

Think, Greg, don't blow this!

If he didn't find it soon, he was going to miss it. He would miss everything entirely.

He raced from the kitchen back up to his bedroom taking two steps at a time. He tossed aside the credit card bills and department store receipts that buried the top of his dresser and then dropped to his knees, patting the ground like a suspect. But it was not to be found among the bills.

He threw open the door to his closet and systematically examined and sorted through the pyramid of presents his wife had hidden. But, it wasn't among the presents, either.

He ran to his daughter's bedroom and shook out the reindeer costume strewn across her bed. It was not there. Neither was it to be found in his son's violin case or under the sheets of Christmas music for his son's recital.

He checked his watch and then rubbed his clammy hands together. Not to warm them, but to steady them from shaking. His stomach flipped and then sank to his feet. Time was marching forward faster than he could catch it.

I can't miss this. Not this year. Not again.

Suddenly, a new idea set his feet on fire.

He scrambled out to the garage, his feet sliding across the smooth wood floor as he rounded the corner. In the extra refrigerator were neatly stacked boxes of home made cookies and breads that his wife had made for the church's food pantry. He opened every lid hoping to find it there, but was disappointed. He should have known it wouldn't be in the fridge.

Suddenly, an idea sprang upon him. He snapped his fingers and stabbed the air.

Ahah! That's it! That's where I'll find it!

He ran back into the living room, to the handsomely adorned Christmas tree. That's where they kept the pile of presents that they gave to the needy. They were a generous family, so there were a lot of presents to look through. Certainly, it would be found in there.

But as he made his way to the tree, he tripped and fell. The great, big lug of a man crashed to the floor and smashed his face into the nativity set. Underneath his nose was the baby Jesus, wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger of straw.

And he beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Finally, his soul stopped searching. He had found it, the meaning of Christmas. It was there with Jesus and in Jesus. And, it had been under his nose the whole time.

A deep sigh of relief escaped from him. Having the meaning of Christmas embedded firmly in his heart, he was ready to move on. He went to the mirror and pulled himself together and then grabbed the keys from the dish in the foyer.

Swinging wide open the heavy front door, he stepped out into the bright sunshine of a glorious winter's day.

Merry Christmas!!!

by C. C. Kurzeja
2005 All Rights Reserved

November Night

2005-11-24T00:00:00.000-04:00

Adelaide Crapsey

Listen...
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

2005-11-23T23:53:00.000-04:00

Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house in in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

The little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely and dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.

Remembering Grandma Blue Eyes

2005-11-23T23:29:00.000-04:00

Grandma Cathy left us a little more than a year ago. She was Scottish and I'm certain I inherited my love of story from her. I miss her. She walks among giants on God's downs now, casually, as if she had eternity to think it over. I dedicate this poem to her.

My Heart's In The Highlands
Robert Burns

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.

Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birthplace of valour, the country of worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands forever I love.

Farewell to the mountains high covered with snow;
Farewell to the straths and green valleys below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods;
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;
Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go!

Living Under Segregation

2005-11-09T00:18:00.000-04:00

From The Souls Of Black Folk By W.E.B. Du Bois

Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. (p.38)

Within the Veil was he born, said I; and there within shall he live,-a Negro and a Negro's son. Holding in that little head-ah, bitterly!-the unbowed pride of a hunted race, clinging with that tiny dimpled hand-ah, wearily!-to a hope not hopeless but unhopeful, and seeing with those bright wondering eyes that peer into my soul a land whose freedom is to us a mockery and whose liberty a lie. I saw the shadow of the Veil as it passed over my baby, I saw the cold city towering above the blood-red land. I held my face beside his little cheek, showed him the star-children and the twinkling lights as they began to flash, and stilled with an even-song the unvoiced terror of my life. (p. 160)

The Troll, The Flute, and The Forbidden Music - Part 4

2005-11-04T00:43:00.000-04:00

continued from part three...

Up in the tower, once her soul returned into her bosom, our lady sat upright in bed fresh as rose with dew on it’s petals.

“Hello, husband.” She greeted him, startled as he was by her recovery. He stared long and hard at her, making her wonder. Does he hate me for my absence? Of course, our farmer did not hate her. He simply could not bring himself to believe.

But when he kissed her lips, and felt the heat of her breath, and the wine of her tongue, he knew it was no dream.

“You have been my wife.” He proclaimed, “But now you are also my gift. For it is no small thing to be able to love you twice in one life.” And then he tenderly led her by the hand and assisted her to the table by the fire.

“Come. Let me fry some fish and cabbage for you and I will tell you of all the happenings you’ve missed these last weeks.”

And so our lady sat at the table and nourished her bones on the dinner her sweet husband set before her, washing it all down with goat’s milk and finishing up with figs rolled in sugar. He told her of every well wisher who’d stopped by and she was shocked at how many people cared about them. And she laughed at the folly of the candle maker’s wife and was scandalized by the relationship between the pastor’s daughter and the black smith’s apprentice. But, mostly she was satisfied. Her husband was holding her close and she delighted in that place.

From that time on, our fair lady was careful to never give her affection or talents to any man other than her husband again. She renewed her commitment to the care of her home with pride and passion. Indeed, she excelled at the art of homemaking. Theirs was a gay abode founded upon understanding. And soon, the rooms were filled with the patter of tiny feet and the cacophony of family. Thus, they lived out their days in peace on the farm her husband’s family had planted for generations.

Even still, she would ever be haunted by the river. A moan escaped it’s depths like a groaning, an inexpressible longing. The villagers noticed and were baffled, but not our lady. It was not because she witnessed the fate of our troll before she flew through the tower window, but because the moan coming off the river was familiar to her. They were her flutist’s melodies, only changed. He now played his love songs in a minor key.

She would pass the night sitting by the open window in all seasons, listening as she did her needlework. And in her soul she would vow, “I have not forgotten, my flutist. I shall never forget.” She was confident he heard her, wherever he was.

“Why do you love that sad sound, so?” Her children would ask her.

“It is not sad to me.” Was her invariable response.

Our fair lady lived to be the oldest person in her village by many years, and happy were most of her days. One morning, as the wilting flower lay prostrate on her bed, as her surviving children kept a death vigil by her side, a thick and oppressive fog rolled off the river enveloping the small, stone house with it’s tower and the surrounding countryside. Never had such a fog been seen in that country before and never has it appeared since. So thick was this fog that villagers reported not being able to see their own hand in front of their face even when touching their nose.

Remarkably, by noon of that same day an unseasonably hot sun seared that cloud-on-earth away. And it seems that with the fog, went our lady. For, when her children went to her bedside to tend to her, they found her gone.

Vanished!

Not a trace she left behind, nor footprint to follow. A woman who was quite simply too weak to lift her head from her pillow before the fog came, had disappeared without a trace by the time it left.

The villagers reported strange sightings and sounds down by the river after her leaving. Once the river only made a low, bass noted groaning when the wind whipped over the water. But after, a high noted whistle could be heard atop the groan. It was almost harmonic, some villagers insisted. And then there was the lady, who seemed oddly bathed in light no matter how dark the night, who many witnessed walking the banks of the river alone. Generation after generation, people would report this lady, always giving the same description, and yet oddly, she never seemed to age.

Vanishing made her legend.

Those who do not know, who cannot understand believe that the ghosts of two lovers haunt the river. But they are wrong. Our lady and our troll do not dwell with the dead but with the eternal.

Love never dies.

Goodnight! Finis! It's Over! The End.

by C. C. Kurzeja
2005 All Rights Reserved

The Troll, The Flute, and The Forbidden Music - Part 3

2005-11-02T00:02:00.000-04:00

Continued from part 2...

And then, one day as autumn approached, the flute made her move. They were back in the mud hut, biding time till night arrived and their liaisons resumed. The troll stood by the hearth stirring brain stew, unsuspecting. Leaping out of the cupboard where the troll kept her, she hurled herself across the room and beat him viciously about his backside.

“What are you doing?” He yelled. “You’re a maniac. You’re unstable, I tell you.” And all the while he skipped and howled due to the ensuing attack. “Stop that.” He pleaded in between cries and curses. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Establishing exactly who’s in charge here.” The flute replied with cool calculation. “Any questions?”

Her point was made convincingly and the troll cowered accordingly.

"What do you want then?” He asked the flute, full of suspicion and dread.

“I must have that bird.” The flute demanded.

“She has an ‘usband, you know.” The troll protested. “He fancies her too, I bet.
We’ll not easily persuade the bird to come with us. We won’t.”

“I don’t care.” The flute had of sudden adopted the sensibilities of a spoiled royal. “She’s mine and I want her here with me, all the time. She became mine once she made harmony with my music and our notes became one, and now I won’t share her.”

“She thinks it’s me making that music, you know.” The troll informed her. He had an ego, like any other. “Besides, I can’t just snatch her. The last time a troll tried that his entire village was butchered and burned to the ground by those angry humans. They get funny about things like ‘at.”

The flute aimed her mouthpiece towards the troll’s lips and, with a zap, turned them into two striking snakes that hissed and sank their fangs into him, biting him all about the face and neck. The troll, wide eyed with panic, pulled and yanked at the snakes in an effort to subdue them, all the while doing harm to his own face as they were as much a part of him as his own lips had once been. And then, in a blink, he was returned to normal, although, breathing heavily and shaking like a leaf.

“I can do worse.” The flute informed. And the matter was more or less settled from that moment on.

That night, when the bird was getting ready to return to her farmer in the stone tower, the troll tried a direct, if lame, approach.

“Come with me.” He said. “ I will take good care of you and then we can make music whenever we please.”

The bird looked at him as if he were daft, laughing lustily at the notion.

“Don’t be silly.” She dismissed him. “Our music belongs to the night, but the day to my husband. And I will never leave him.”

And then she started for the heavens, pointing her beak beyond the tops of the trees and into the – dirt, brown eyes of the troll who was breathing his horrible brain breath all over her. He held her carefully, yet firmly, by her little bird legs. And it became crystal clear to her that in less time than it took to breathe out, she went from being a companion to a prisoner.

“Fast as lightning.” The flute spoke in the bird’s presence for the first time, very pleased with the troll’s skill.

“What have I done?” The bird breathed out, heavily.

The flute barking orders like a general and cackling with delight, the troll trudging diligently behind doing as he was told, the unfamiliar forest rushing past her in a whirl, and the night sky dawning purple and orange; These are the things of which our bird took note before she fainted away in the troll’s hand.

Back at the stone tower, day broke. Our farmer yawned and reached for his wife to greet her with a kiss but found her absent. Bolting upright in bed from the shock of it, he saw her standing strangely still at the window and called to her.

“Fiore! Fiore! The morrow has come and have you been so observant as to meet it at the window?”

But she answered not; She was not.

He grabbed his wife by the shoulders. They were cold, like the waters of the river and while her eyes were open, staring, they were blank and vacant. The magnitude of his wife’s condition came crashing down on the farmer’s head. His life shattered.

“Fiore! Fiore!” He begged, “Return to me, Fiore, bloom once again.” He carried her body in his arms to their bed and covered her with the quilt to warm her. “You are withered and have faded away. Your fragrance is gone but yet your beauty remains. Oh, Fiore, Fiore, may life return to you again.” Throwing himself over her body, the farmer drenched their bed in tears.

It is true that he became undone. But, it is equally true that his pure devotion would eventually undo the spell. For, this maxim is sure and tested and can be relied upon, that in the end, love wins.

Back at the hut, the victory the flute was so certain she’d secured in stealing the bird, quickly turned into defeat. For a mysterious illness descended upon the tribe, affecting the bird worst of all. She lay in the cage the troll had crafted for her in a state of fever-induced delirium and could scarcely lift her head.

Down at the well, where our troll was drawing water for the feverish bird, he heard his troll mates talking.

“I tell you it’s those blasted watermelons.” Said one, “They are bad news, those fruits, full of fever-n-ague. Every time the fever-n-ague comes along, you can bet some worthless troll’s been filling his hairy stomach with that melon.”

“Well, I ate some of those watermelons.” Said another, “And I don’t have the aches. How do you explain that?”

“Maybe, it’s all that bog whiskey you drink killing off everything that would kill you first.” Said the first one.

“I like watermelons.” Said a third.

“Besides, fever-n-ague don’t account for all the trees that are dying and the frogs and lizards that are turning belly up by the bog.” It was an odd, and terrifying fact that if one took time to notice, it was apparent that not only were the trolls in the tribe sickly and some unto death, but that the very earth around where the trolls lived was under some kind of attack from disease. “No, something altogether nefarious is come upon our tribe,” The second troll rightly concluded, “And if there’s not a malefic and powerful spell behind it, I’ll give up whiskey. I will.”

“You’ll give up breathing, before you’ll give up whiskey.” Said the first.

While they continued to bicker, our troll hurried back to his mud hut with his bucket and attempted to drop sips of water into the bird’s mouth with a tiny spoon. But, it was no use. Our bird was fast becoming non responsive. She would be dead soon, as would his whole tribe, and perhaps even the whole forest if he did not return her to whom she belonged.

The troll thought hard about his present predicament and this is the way he saw it. The witch had taken what was not hers because she was greedy and just plain mean. The flute had demanded what was not hers because she was power hungry and full of pride. The troll had taken what was not his first because he was greedy and then because he was afraid. The bird had given away what was not hers to give because she was lonely and miserable. And even our farmer who, back at the tower, attended to his sick wife in an unbroken vigil, praying for her recovery, was not innocent for he did not give what he should have because he was afraid.

Our troll assessed the damage and in a moment of raw bravery, counted the cost and accepted the bill. He set his jaw and determined in his heart that although he was not alone in the sin that caused this disease, he alone would take the consequence, however terrible. Choices, it seems, make or break people. What happens after is for destiny to sort out.

He was to return the bird to her tower that night. But first, he sought out his bed to rest and gain strength for the mission looming large only hours away. When he slept, he dreamt of Viking ships and foreign shores.

Unbeknownst to the troll, the flute was becoming rapidly weak and feckless. Her power was derived from the sound the bird’s song had upon her melodies. But because the farmer’s grief was making the bird ill and unable to sing these many weeks, the magic was quickly dissipating. So, when evening settled upon the tribe and our troll, readying to go, grabbed our flute and stuffed her into one of his shirt pockets, she was helpless to do anything about it.

The troll carried the bird gingerly to the river in the cage meant to constrain her. When he came to the banks, it became quite clear that our bird was too ill to fly away home. He would have to cross the river and brave the crocodiles with their chomping jaws, and fight the currents that licked at his ankles wanting to drag him to a muddy death.

Before he began, he said goodbye to the bird, whom he loved. They might not live to see the other side of the river, after all.

“Forget me not, my song bird.” He said, laying bare his heart. “Or I will go down to my grave in grief.”

Barely conscious, yet somehow aware of the sacrifice her troll was making for her, our bird responded, “I shall keep the music we made in my heart, my flutist, and take it with me into eternity.”

Of course, by “flutist” she meant “love” and that is exactly the way he heard it.

Having settled that matter, the troll was careful to spy out where the crocs where hiding, they looked like logs but different and he knew the difference. Presently, there was a nest of them about a quarter mile upriver, but that was only a matter of minutes away with the way a crocodile can swim. And, then he found a natural bank in the river where the waters didn’t look over his head. This was important because our troll was a poor swimmer and it was vital for him to cross the river quickly, as it was his only chance against those dreadful lizards.

Carrying the cage high over his head, for he knew the bird would not survive the temperatures, he quickly slid down the side of the bank into the icy water of the Red River. The water was intensely cold and felt like fire on his skin and a hammering to his marrow. It sucked all the breath out of him, sucking it like a vacuum and not letting up. His heart felt like it was exploding and he thought he would die. But then he caught his breath and found new focus. He was alive, he was still holding the bird above the water and other side of the river was large in his vision. So he trudged onward.

Trolls are big, lumbering brutes and this was to his advantage. A smaller creature would have succumbed to the river’s death call. For the currents were indeed strong. So much so that our troll had to concentrate and fight to keep his feet on the narrow bank where the water was shallow. Exasperating the struggle was the fact that the bank was built up by many shells and rocks made incredibly smooth from erosion and he found it nigh impossible to find sure footing. One slip and he would be done for.

At one point, still several feet away from the other side, he was splashed in the face with a huge wave of water and was blinded momentarily. It was the tail of a crocodile swooshing the water as it turned away from him. And that’s when he noticed a low rumble, that familiar bass noted hum emanating from his chest. It was the flute, still nestled safely in his shirt pocket. She was using her magic against the crocodiles. And here he thought he had been doing this all alone.

At last, when our troll was reaching to grab hold of the solid roots of a willow growing on the side of the bank and pull himself out of the river, his foot failed. Swiftly, the currents dragged him along, like a leaf blowing in the wind. The troll clawed the earth, desperate for something to hold onto. The muddy riverside was rough with broken limbs, and exposed roots and stones and his hand quickly became cut up and raw. But, the troll ignored the pain and continued to grasp for something to save his life. Our bird was submerged once, twice and over again, each time gasping for air and feeling her death near her bosom. The river moved him with startling speed and determination and as strong as he was, he was no match for her. Finally, mercifully, his shirt snagged on a protruding limb rescuing him from the claws of the currents. He was able to catch his breath and set the birdcage on solid ground. Groping clumsily, he opened her little door and set her free. Looking up, she saw that she was underneath her window at the stone tower.

Home. Her spirit revived within her.

“Go!” The troll yelled through clenched jaw when she looked back at him, hesitating.

With all the strength she could muster, our little bird flew up through the window and back into her body where she was instantly made whole.

In the water, our troll’s shirt began to tear away from the limb. The currents were unrelenting, like a ghoulish army pulling him down to Hades. Suddenly the shirt ripped in half from the force of the water and the flute fell from his pocket into the river. The troll saw it, a tail of copper darting downstream but due to the frigid water and the incredible pull of the river, what he could otherwise do so easily, so mindlessly with poison lizards and birds, he was unable to do this time, the only time his life depended on it.

And so the flute was swept miles away before it finally found a place to rest in the watery deep. There it would dwell for millenniums until a mountain-altering earthquake would change the course of the Red River forever. Then, the half brother of Prince James would stumble upon the flute partially encased in a boulder made from the river bottom clay hardened in the sun. And that discovery would alter the subsequent histories and kingdoms far more than the any earthquake ever would.

As for the troll, after he witnessed the flute escaping his grip, he had no time at all for remorse. Being no longer protected by the flute’s power, a snapping crocodile not a man’s length from the troll, opened wide his mouth and shut it tight over his middle. He was dragged under water, into a murky world where he saw only in shadows and perceived that his body was being shaken back and forth like a toy in a dog’s mouth, but was not certain. Maybe he was completely still and the earth was swirling around him. In his state of shock, he thought that might be the case. Soon, he felt a surge of warm, thick water enveloping him like a lovely blanket. This is my blood, he thought without passion. He was glad to have so much blood that it could keep him warm in this icy grave. And he was pleasantly surprised because being eaten by a crocodile doesn’t hurt at all.

But before he closed his eyes forever, the face of the witch came before him. And he knew, with a flash of pain, that the curse of the witch had been fulfilled that day. The witch cackled and flew away on her broom into the night, the dark, eternal night absent of stars or moon.

To be -I can not believe that a silly little troll story that kept me up one night and that I thought I could write in five pages, is going to need a fourth part - continued.

by C. C. Kurzeja
2005 All Rights Reserved

The Troll, The Flute, and The Forbidden Music - Part 2

2005-10-28T22:12:00.000-04:00

Continued from part one ...

As for the troll, without the treasure, he had no means to buy passage on a Viking ship. His long held dream of distant shores spoiled in the same manner that most dreams are, because of a single encounter and in an instant of time. Realistic about his options, but far from dejected, he returned to the clearing in the wood and his circular, mud hut amidst the tribe, slipping back with nary a troll noticing he had been absent from their presence.

At home, he was content to hide the flute in his cupboard, taking it out when he was safe to admire it alone for he was wracked by paranoia and obsessed with protecting his prize from wanton eyes.

But, the flute would not be ignored and placed a strong burden on the troll, tormenting him in mind and spirit and affording him no place of refuge, till she be filled with the breath that gave life to her notes once more, till she subdued another soul under her spell.

Seeking a private liaison with the flute, for he wanted to share her with no one, our troll snuck to the banks of the Red River under cover of night. There, with gusto and abandon, he made music under the stars, undetected.

Or, so he thought.

Now, the Red River was treacherously deceptive for it looked calm on the surface but below, deep currents ran swiftly. Lore had it that the river was named for the amount of blood spilled into the river from hapless victims who were dragged down into the miry, river bottom by hungry crocodiles to feast on. For the waters were infested with those terrible lizards and many villagers told the tale of a loved one who had gone to the banks of the river for a picnic or to collect the excellent spearmint that grew there, and were never to be seen or heard of again.

And, on the other side of the river, arose a cliff high into the sky. On top of the cliff, overlooking the river and wood below, was a snug, little home with a high tower, all made of stones.

In the tower lived a bride, fair to look upon.

She was the wife of a farmer who lived his life pragmatically and void of passion as he found tremendous comfort in the familiar and peace of mind in temperance. He was gentle and spoke softly, treating our fair lady kindly but failing to treat her well. For, he regarded her as somewhat of a mystery and lived in constant fear that she’d break somehow. And so, he kept her at a safe distance, a place she abhorred.

Now, it was pure folly for that troll to believe he could send forth music from the flute and contain the magic through isolation. That flute was endowed with all the wicked proclivities of her maker the witch, and the spell was her spirit. The music would certainly not return void, but accomplish it’s purpose. And, it’s purpose was simple and unrelenting. First, master someone, and then everyone, and then everything.

Alas, folly is common to both man and troll.

As soon as the notes left the flute they sought out our bride’s silent soul and began igniting a fire within.

“Do you hear that, husband?” She was drawn away from the bed where they’d already retired for the night, to the window overlooking the river and the wood beyond. The unmistakable sound of music, a gay and lively tune, was visiting their abode.

“Hear what? What is it?” The farmer strained to listen, but could hear nothing.

“That.” The lady insisted. “Why, it’s so lovely it makes my feet want to dance!”

The farmer cocked his ear towards the window and furrowed his brow, trying very desperately to hear what his bride did.

“It’s nothing but the wind moaning over the river, my dear.” He finally concluded.

In a flash of enlightenment, she realized that she owned a connection, a strange and wonderful fellowship with this music, her husband was incapable of sharing. It was as if this flute took care to serenade her alone. No, it was as if it were speaking to her alone. Her vanity immediately allowed her to indulge her feelings of privilege.

“Yes, it is as you say,” She said, practicing deceit for the first time in their marriage. “Silly me, I have overreacted, I’m sure.”

“Of course you have.” The farmer agreed. “Now, come back to bed, dear heart.”

“But if it is all the same to you, the crisp air calms my stomach. I will spend a few moments here at the window.” She continued in her deceit. “Do not fret over me, husband. Go to sleep.”

In the silver light cast by the full moon, she was like a pearl on a string, beautiful and refined. Her hair cascaded down her back like rose petals tinged gold at the tips and her shapely figure was outlined in iridescent, moon glow. The farmer gladly drank in the sight of her by the window and so did not object. He watched her till his eyelids closed with heaviness and slept, her body filling his dreams.

She listened to the wind delighted at the secret it held for her. The music rose and fell, rose and fell, the notes swirling and chasing each other in a language she understood.

Why? The music asked.

Because. Her soul answered.

Why? She toyed back.

Because. The music bantered.

What a queer, and most brilliant flutist, she thought, who can hear the music of my soul without me having to make a sound. Within the magical melody they shared, her strangled soul breathed again.

Suddenly, her tower seemed less a prison to her and her day seemed less interminable than it did before. Instead, daytime was but was a brief prelude to the opera she shared with her invisible tenor, the whisper like flute on the wind. Every night, after her farmer slept soundly, she stole to the window and waited for her music to come to her, and it never disappointed. She longed to be able to give voice to the song in her soul, to sing in harmony with her flute.

My flutist discerns my desire, she thought, and will come to me in due time.

Sure enough, when the fullness of the magic dwelt in her, her desire became manifest, taking the form of a bird with fancy, rose plumage tinged gold at the tips. Her soul emancipated, she left her stone tower and flew for the great beyond, unbidden. Swiftly she soared into the night sky, higher and higher, a crescendo in air.

By the window in the tower, her body still stood, a mere shadow of her former self, hollow and vacant.

“I am no longer sad.” She thought with a giddy twitter. “How light I feel!” And immediately her song, in trill and warble, escaped from her throat and met the flute’s melody in perfect harmony.

Across the river, on a boulder for a chair, the troll heard the quavering harmony and wondered. It was as if the melody of the flute, and this mysterious harmony had met up together in the air, together. Intertwining and cleaving, the two became one.

Suddenly a chill scampered down his spine. Deep calls unto deep, he knew. And this music had sought out it’s own.

Our lady circled high over the land that had just that afternoon seemed her confinement. Suddenly, she was staggered by the beauty of it all. Over the river, once so threatening but now a festive red ribbon tying the green earth as a Christmas present, she circled and swooped, flying ever closer to her flutist until, at last, she spied him through the leaves of a great oak. Seeking a handsome limb on which to land, she waited for our flutist to notice her.

“You’re a troll!” She threw her beak into the air and let out peals of laughter, once his eyes met hers.

“Aye.” Admitted the troll. “But you are no bird.”

“At night, when your music calls me out, I am.” She responded defiantly.

This all seemed mysterious to the troll but he accepted it as so and promptly began playing the flute again. To which our bird joined in happily making beautiful music with him.

And thus, they passed the summer.

To be continued..

by C. C. Kurzeja
2005 All Rights Reserved

The Troll, The Flute, and The Forbidden Music - Part 1

2005-10-26T20:42:00.000-04:00

Once there lived a troll, amidst a tribe of trolls, whose nation had settled in a clearing in Moss Wood. They lived in circular, mud walled homes with very steep roofs made out of fronds from the fannywillow tree and were renown for their distinct flatulence that, once expelled, hung in a green cloud about them for hours before dissipating. This was generally attributed to their diet, which consisted almost entirely of brains from the poisonous lizards that populated the bog behind the clearing. This culinary specialty was peculiar to their nation and was as difficult to procure, as it was easy to prepare. Many were who tried to capture these rare lizards but because they possessed limited qualities of invisibility, none but this tribe of trolls succeeded. Due to being genetically endowed with lightning-fast hand eye coordination these trolls found easy what eluded everyone else. They would simply grab a lizard by the tail, and after beating it dead over a rock, shove a straw through it’s nose and suck the delicacy out in that manner. Or sometimes, albeit rarely because it was generally considered more work than needed to be done in order to eat, they scooped the brains into a cauldron of bowling stock to make a delicious stew. Beyond that, little else is known of this troll tribe other than it was considered fact amongst the villagers that lived on the border of Moss Wood that they were gentle folk, living peaceably within the wood and from the wood.

Our troll had a head as round as a cheese wheel and as big as his body by half. With his burnt orange hair, bulging eyes and hooked nose, he was entirely unremarkable. Unremarkable, in appearance, that is but not in wealth. For by trickery and deceit he had amassed a great fortune and by it intended to steal away to the ocean and sail for foreign lands on a Viking ship.

One night, under a full hunter’s moon during St. Luke’s Little Summer, he had his chance and seized it.

“So long, suckers.” He said when he was a safe enough distance from the settlement to escape detection, but not so far that he couldn’t still see the orange glow of the campfire in the distance, small now and flickering gaily. And without sentiment or reserve, he slung the sack of treasure over his shoulder and walked toward the setting sun gladly leaving the only world he’d ever known forever behind him.

But along the way he met a witch whose wiles surpassed his own. She had uncovered the truth about his sack through her amazing powers of divination, and determined to have his treasure. While he was yet afar off, she laid a snare. Making haste to a hallowed cave in ancient hills, she extracted ore from which to smelt copper and crafted from this a flute. Knowing that her spell would need to be uncommonly strong against the clever troll, she decided to deliver her magic not through long forgotten languages or potions, but through music. In this way her spell was layered and constantly evolving. The very frequencies of each note carried distinct and focused power, but when those individual notes were strung into a melody they held as many different powers over the hearer as there are melodies to be made. Furthermore, when those notes were combined in harmony – well, the brilliance of this system and the unsearchable limits of it’s power would be fully realized and dully feared when possession over it would, in the distant future, cause kingdoms to war and countless legions to perish, after all.

But, that is not our story.

Upon completion of the flute, the witch made herself into a comely peasant girl carrying a basket of eggs to sell at market and set herself upon a log, not a half days journey from where our troll tread. With her light brown hair pulled neatly back in a gray scarf and her cheeks rosy, she looked the picture of loveliness as she held the flute to her lips and let her fingers glide nimbly over the length of the tube. As soon as the music left her flute the notes traveled in waves, intelligently guided and searching, to find out our troll’s ears.

He was done for even before he recognized the first note. An irresistible attraction to the sound skipping upon the wind pulled the troll toward his destiny. So beguiling was the magic that the troll was convinced he was the one pursuing the music, never fathoming that the music had pursued him. And so, when he stumbled upon the witch on her log, he felt the conqueror and was quite satisfied with himself.

“Ho!” He said, because the witch, in her cunning, stopped playing moments before she let herself be found by the troll and the magic had already worked in him to such a degree as to be made desperate for it’s sound. “Play, girl.” He ordered, with all the refinement of a troll, “Don’t fear. I promise I won’t crack your skull.”

“I am poor.” The witch replied, “And my family goes hungry, even now. I’m afraid I have no time to play my flute as I must take my eggs to market and sell them for profit.” With that, she tucked the flute under her arm, gathered the basket of eggs and proceeded to leave.

The troll became panicked; ringing his hands and breaking out in a terrible, stinky sweat. Suddenly, loosing the music seemed a fate worse than death to him.

“No. Don’t go.” He pleaded. “What can I give you to stay and play?”

“I know not,” the witch intoned, “what you could possibly give me as I will sell my eggs at market for a gold piece each, and you have naught.”

Worsted by desire he slavishly met the witch’s price. Turning his back on her, in a ridiculous attempt to keep her from seeing what she already knew, he opened the sack a wee bit and carefully pulled out one gold piece, glimmering fantastically in his hand.

“Look ‘ere, girl. I have a gold piece. I’ll buy one of yer eggs from you, if you promise to play me a song.”

He thought to himself and was convinced in his heart: I will hear just one more song; Then, I will be satisfied; Then, I will go to the sea and sail for distant shores.

Thus the witch played him, laughing all the while at the dribbling fool her magic had made of the troll. On egg for one gold piece, all night long. And always the troll told himself: I will hear only one more song and then be on my way.

Until, at last, the witch saw her desire fulfilled, and with the last gold piece in her basket proceeded to pack up and simply, cruelly, walk away. But, one moment she was walking with her basket in one arm and the flute tucked under the other, and then in a twinkling of an eye, was not.

“Easier than catching a lizard by the tail.” Said the troll, rapturously. He held the flute up, firmly in his hand, for the witch to look upon.

She did so and was dashed to pieces.

A low hum, a bass noted vibration, permeated his entire body and the troll was imbued with it’s power. At that moment, it was clear to both who held the greater treasure.

“Ahhhhhhhhhh!” The peasant girl shrieked as she reverted into the vile witch she truly was. All the power and magic she possessed was vested in that flute and without it she would be quite ordinary and useless. Quickly, she assessed the situation and realized, quite accurately, that she would not be able to recover the flute. But, she had her wits about her enough to impart a curse on the troll before her magic dissipated entirely. And that she did readily.

“You,” She cackled, pointing a crooked finger at his eye, “will live forever in love with your music. Yet, your death shall come upon you suddenly.” And then she fled into the forest with her treasure of gold; cursing the day she first laid eyes on it.

As for the witch, she returned to the cave where she first mined the ore for the flute, and lived out her days in solitude and regret. When she died, her body was abandoned to decay in the very corner where she breathed her last, not a single mourner to be found for her in all the world. In a cauldron, where once her potions brewed, was the treasure. Every last gold piece she stole from that troll jealously hoarded and worthless to her. For, it seems, that because of the devastating impact loosing her flute had upon her, she was not able to part with anything she owned ever again.

To be continued...

by C. C. Kurzeja
2005 All Rights Reserved

2005-10-23T22:36:00.000-04:00

Our troll had a head as round as cheese wheel...

Rainmaker's Wrestling

2005-09-18T17:33:00.000-04:00

A sketch; A rough draft; Chapter one, in progress.

Rainmaker Ishmael walked with a limp.

He was born in a warehouse above the L during a fearsome storm. His mamma was a whore but she didn’t start out that way. First, she was a young girl in pig tail braids, golden yellow like corn turning ripe, that ran down her back stopping just below her shoulders. Her granny, for she was raised by her, always made sure to tie a blue ribbon to the ends, cornflower blue, to match her eyes. Her poppy liked to hold her face in his big, calloused hand, just under her chin, and stare hard into them. He made up a little song that he sang to her often. The tune always changed and that didn’t matter much. It was more the way he spoke the words, hopping them off his tongue to make just the right rhythm that made it a song more than the tune did.
“Penny-Lu your eyes are blue,
And my how they sparkle;
Like diamonds in the sun,
Like moon shine on a lake,
Like snow caps on mountains,
Penny-Lu your eyes are blue,
And when they sparkle,
They are a dagger,
What breaks my heart in two.

And then when she was a little older but still a young girl she was abused in a horrible way by her Great Uncle. Every Saturday Granny and Poppy dropped her off at his apartment near the tracks so they could go betting and he would serve his passions, hideous desires and near insatiable, on her. He savaged her soul and dragged it down to Hades with him, his place of transparency, where flames licked up all but the tiniest piece of Penny-Lu’s invisible self, that who she was. But Penny-Lu hung on tight to that tiny piece, protecting it for all it was worth. And in the end she kept it because she was a fighter and worth her salt, but the rest was burned to ashes. And every Sunday when Granny and Poppy picked her up less of her was there than when they left her but they never suspected. When that worthless crap died on account of a pitch fork being rammed through his left eye all the way to the back of his brain from someone who felt irremissibly insulted by him, weren’t no one too upset, least of all Penny-Lu.

After that she was a teenager on the cheerleading team and popular, too. She dated the captain of the football team. He was a nice boy and they made a real handsome couple. She was in love and thought it was forever, but he didn’t. He was from a nice family with money and left for college right after graduation and didn’t bother writing Penny-Lu any after that. She made up every excuse in her mind why he hadn’t written or called. But then, the following spring, she ran into him at the local hardware store and was so relieved at his sight that she went to kiss his lips with passion without mind to who saw them. But he pushed her aside with a curt, “Pardon me, miss,” and acted like he didn’t know her. When a real pretty brunette wearing expensive looking clothes stepped out of the aisle and took his hand he quickly led her away. Later she learned that she was his fiancée and they were to be married on the East Coast, where her family lived, that summer. Granny had always warned her to never let a boy put his hand above her knee ‘cause they wouldn’t marry you if you did. Which made no sense to Penny-Lu considering the voracious appetite he had for her privates and the way he reveled in diddling her all those times when they were supposed to be on an errand for his daddy’s business. Penny-Lu imagined granny fainting away if she ever knew where her football star went on her. But after he left for college and broke her heart by his silence, it seemed to Penny-Lu that granny was right after all. Then it was not just the crushing rejection and loss that she had to deal with because of his scorn, but the shame.

And then poppy passed on, peaceful, in his rocker on the front porch. They’d all said goodnight and gone off to bed but poppy wanted to stay up because, as he put it, the night was particularly entertaining. He grabbed Penny-Lu’s hand just as she’d turned for the door and she in turn rested it on his shoulder as she often did when he spoke. His hand remained on hers, taking comfort in her dainty bones and soft skin, as they both turned their eyes towards the heavens. The harvest moon was low and brilliant all burning copper like a shield just pulled from the fire for the mighty hunter Orion waiting just below the horizon in the northern hemisphere, to charge into the winter sky.

“Look at it tonight. Just look at it. If I was a cowboy I’d lasso that moon and drag it across the plains on my mustang all the way to the Pacific and then I’d throw it into the middle of the danged ocean.” He laughed at his folly. And then with increasing enthusiasm added, “And then I’d build a dingy out of Palm leaves and sail away to Moon Island where I’d be crowned king by moon people and waited on by mermaids. Ha, ha, ha.”

He turned to look at Penny-Lu to see if she was getting as big a kick out of him as he was and then his breath caught in his throat.

“Why, Penny-Lu, you’re as pretty as a vision. I swear! This moonlight has made an angel out of you, an angel. All the constellations of the heavens are reflecting off your hair and it’s like you’ve caught the stars in your orbit and their light is dancing all around you. Why, if I was an aborigine I’d make you my God and fall down and worship you this minute. Ha, ha, ha.”

He took the stogie out of his mouth to take a swig of his Jim Bean. Poppy never took his stogie out of his mouth to talk, just to drink. Penny-Lu thought that Poppy was daft and wonderful at the same time.

“Night, Poppy.”

She reached for his glass of Jim Bean and took a sip, licking her lips as the burn slid down her throat. Poppy’d let her swipe sips since she was a kid. And then she kissed his cheek and turned into bed. When they woke up the next morning he was still in the rocker, only stiff like a starched shirt, with the stogie still hanging from his lips. His face and neck and arms were covered in a hundred red welts. It seemed the mosquitoes had a feast on his defenseless corps in the night.

He had a fine funeral, buried in a plot next to his brother who died in the Great War and his only son who passed of a savage flu when he was a wee boy. It was a nice plot on the other side of a gently sloping hill with a view of a stream that wasn’t much more then a puddle, except during a hard rain, but that somehow made it all the way to the Vermillion. Someday, granny would be buried right next to him, which struck Penny-Lu as profoundly right somehow. They had been together in life and would be together in rest with the same sun that smiled on their births warming the ground that concealed them. It was a nice thought.

At the wake Penny-Lu had stroked his hair and kissed his forehead and told him she loved him. That was her way of saying goodbye. She didn’t blame him for anything. He didn’t know and if he did he would have saved her. She liked to pretend in her mind that it was her poppy what drove the pointy spike of the pitchfork through her Great Uncle’s eye, even though the police caught the man who did it and he readily confessed because he was so indignant about the perceived attack on his manliness. That and he was stinking drunk. Sometimes at night, mostly in the summer time when a low pressure system hung above their little town creating an oppressive heat and clinging humidity that kept sleep far from her, she’d lie in bed listening to the owls hoot in the wood nearby and imagine what life would be like if her mamma hadn’t died. She imagined that her mamma was beautiful and always smiling. In her dreams her mother liked to do things for her like brush her hair and make hot chocolate after school so they could sit while Penny-Lu would tell her about everything that was on her mind. And in her dreams her mamma would always kiss her cheek and tell her what a special little girl she was. If her mamma had lived that monster never would’ve laid eyes on her that was certain. She imagined how much energy she’d have if she didn’t have to work so darned hard all the time fooling people into thinking she was normal and clean. Because she was just so danged damaged and dirty like smelly trash and she lived in sheer terror of anyone uncovering the truth about her. She imagined what it would feel like not having a secret to keep at all times. She imagined feeling happy, but it was fleeting.

It was after the first frost had left it’s feathery signature on the windows that Penny-Lu left home for good. She awoke to the clattering of granny making breakfast in the kitchen. Black coffee was set out in a mug at her place and two strips of bacon were resting on a plate.

“You left the clothes on the line.” Granny informed her without looking up from her plate. Granny always hung her head over a plate when she ate and only looked up with her eyes, if at all, to hold conversation which was almost never. Poppy was the talker, the grand storyteller. The man hardly shut up. When his eyes opened so did his mouth and since he talked in his sleep not even that could stop him, although, it did slow him down considerable. But granny hardly said two words all day and left you wondering what she was thinking or if she was thinking at all. She said it was a trait she inherited from her father. Apparently, she came from a long line of stingy talkers who hold on to their words like it was collecting interest in a bank. Penny-Lu figured that might be why she never met any of granny’s family. Weren’t much use in a visit if you couldn’t manage a half decent conversation to save your kitten.

Penny-Lu cinched the belt on her robe tighter and ran out back to take down the clothes. The chill air burned her cheeks and legs, freezing her fingers stiff and making it difficult to do her job. It was while removing the frozen under garments, unbending and glistening with powdered ice, that an uncommonly strong impulse to grab the nearest sharp object she could find and slit her wrists surged upon her. She became very still staring at the ground before her. There she saw herself as plain as day sprawled unconscious on the ill tended lawn in her robe and slippers bleeding out amongst the light dusting of snow. But no such sharp object was near at hand and then the urge passed so she continued to take down the laundry. By the time she’d made it back to the kitchen she’d made up her mind to move to the city.

That day at the diner, where she waited tables, the gentlemen with brown eyes and thick, curly black hair came in and requested her table again as he had on a weekly basis for months. This time when he offered to take her to Chicago to make a print model out of her, a big star, for the umpteenth time she gave him directions to her granny’s farm and told him to be parked out front after midnight.

Her granny was sleeping on the couch, curled up like a child in a crocheted throw, when Penny-Lu came home making it all the easier to avoid her. Her tiny body was a willow wisp and it seemed to Penny-Lu that her granny was as ancient as the hills even though granny was barely in her fifties at that time. This is what aging is, Penny-Lu thought as she gazed upon her.

She spent the night in her room. Packing what precious little she owned took minutes. Composing a letter of explanation took hours. She sat at her desk grappling with what to say but words failed her miserably. The fact was that Penny-Lu was incapable of explaining because she didn’t understand it herself. She was in flight mode and only one truth drove her and that at the most visceral level: I’ll die if I stay here. In the end the letter was simple and unsatisfying by every standard.
Dear Granny,
You are getting on in years and I don’t want to be a burden. I’m going to the city to be a big star. I can make lots of money letting people take my picture. I will write when I get settled. Please understand.
Penny-Lu

Penny-Lu was sitting on a step on the front porch with a shawl wrapped around her to ward off the chill autumn air when Russell LeFave, true to his word, pulled his Packard Clipper up in front of the farm. It was maroon and missing the bumpers. It seems they were sacrificed for the war effort and never replaced. Even still, Penny-Lu had never ridden in such a fine vehicle. He didn’t bother getting out of the car but was good enough to lean over and push the passenger side door open from the inside for her. After heaving her luggage into the back seat and getting comfortable in her new surroundings, the cream colored leather interior of a car she’d only seen in magazines owned by a man she barely knew, she managed to find her voice, although, she completely forgot her manners.

“You showed up. I guessed you would.”

She was wearing the only store bought dress she owned, a blue and white nylon print that Penny-Lu thought was as sophisticated as Hollywood. She imagined needing it for the swank parties and important people she’d be meeting in the film industry. It was very sleek with a cinched waist and one inch pleats that started just above the knee and ended mid calf. The sleeves stopped just above the elbow with cuffs that flared ever so slightly and the neckline was daring, “new for now” the saleslady said, with a v-shaped, deep plunge. She accessorized with a long, fake pearl necklace that dangled to her hips which she tied in a knot just below her bust, white silk gloves that buttoned at the wrist, black shoes and nylons. Her golden locks were pulled off her face, fastened with a blue bow that matched her dress, and curled in the fashion of the day. And on her lips was siren red lipstick the kind of which granny did not approve. She was a pretty little thing, far prettier than she ever realized.

He was wearing a zoot suit: black baggy pants that came up to his ribs and were secured with thin black suspenders, a cream colored dress jacket that reached down to his mid thigh, a white shirt, black bow tie, and most comically to Penny-Lu, a sliver chain that clipped in front at his waist and reached down to his black, leather shoes before making it’s way to his back where it was secured at the waist again. Penny-Lu couldn’t imagine doing anything but playing skip rope with it and yet it wasn’t quite long enough for even that. But it was positively too ridiculous looking to not have some important purpose, she was pretty certain.

“You’re a picture.” He said as he drove away from the farm that had been her entire world for almost nineteen years. “What’s your name, you said?”

“Penny-Lu”

“That’s ok. We’ll have to do something about that. Maybe Lola or something.” He had a jittery way about him as if his mind was racing faster than the car he was driving. Perhaps he read the shock that was washing across Penny-Lu’s face because he quickly changed the subject. “That’s alright. We can think about that later.” He kept looking over at her and grinning a sickening grin, Penny-Lu thought. But then, she tried not to think about it. And then he put his hand on her thigh and gently caressed it, like he’d known her forever. Penny-Lu stiffened, but deep inside she knew how it was going to be.

“You’re so pretty. You look just like Betty Grable. But, you’re even prettier. People say I look just like Billy Eckstine. One girl even asked for my autograph once.”

Well, if Billy Eckstine had bad skin and a gold tooth, I can see how that statement would be true, thought Penny-Lu.

“We can make a lot of money with your looks.” He said. He couldn’t stop ginning that stupid grin and shaking his head like Penny-Lu wasn’t really a girl but a treasure chest full of gold and he was the lucky pirate with the only key.

“Where’re you taking me?” Penny-Lu asked when his Packard turned onto a secluded country road.

“Not so fast now.” He replied.

He parked off the road behind a bank of silver birch, just out of sight in case a car should happen by. But of course, being visited by President Truman himself was more likely than a car driving by on that country road at that time of night. Penny-Lu didn’t fuss. Weren’t no use. And besides she had suspected that her freedom would come with a cost. He took her to the back seat and had his way on her. Penny-Lu’s only regret was that in his eagerness he tore her strand of pearls and ripped her dress.

Afterwards, when they got started on their way again, he offered her a Chesterfield and they sat in silence, smoking for a long time. Penny-Lu realized that, as she glanced at him furtively, that rubbery grin of his was a permanent fixture. It stretched across his face from ear to ear like two red bananas pushing his round, apple cheeks into glossy eyes. My God, Penny-Lu thought with a queasy realization, his eyes are as red as the devil’s. She had a mind to wipe his face with that grin and then shove it down his throat through his teeth. It would be the last time she was in her right mind. But then, she did what she knew how to do. She adapted to his nauseousness until it felt like normal. Soon he started humming, “A fellow needs a girl”. Penny-Lu recognized it immediately. It was a real popular song and she had a pleasant voice, so she sang along.

“I guess you’re the girl I’ve been needing.” He said as he rubbed her thigh.

Penny-Lu accepted it as so and that’s when she became his woman.
She never did make it as a model. It weren’t her fault but Russell didn’t see it that way. He took to beating her about the face and on the back when he couldn’t sell her pictures. He would rough her up awful, swelling her eyes closed for days and causing her to go into a fever. Penny-Lu felt real bad about not being able to sell any pictures. She figured she deserved it. He had a habit of booze and pills and influenced her into acquiring the same habit. Sometimes he made a lot of money pushing drugs. But most of the time he stayed broke. When he couldn’t make rent he borrowed her out to the landlord for restitution. At first it was on a monthly basis, and then the landlord got greedy, even though he was married, and demanded it once a week. Finally, Russell worked out an agreement with the landlord. He got her twice a week and they got to stay in the apartment as long as they wanted with no hassles. Russell was thrilled with the agreement and it suited Penny-Lu just as well. What started out as a way to make rent soon blossomed into a booming business. If sex was good for rent, it was even better to purchase drugs to sell and use. And if it was good for that, it was good for a quick buck on the side, too. Soon, Russell had a steady stream of johnnies lining up for her.

As for Penny-Lu she became an exceeding reprobate in record time. Boozed up and half naked day and night, she made it easy for Russell to pimp her out. She was an addict. And worse, she was unrepentant in her lifestyle.

Fact was, she was a dead woman in every way but body temperature. Really, she died with poppy, the only man who ever truly cared for her heart. And before that, she died when her no-good football star used and then dumped her. And really, she died a little every week in her uncle’s apartment near the tracks when she was most innocent and unprepared. And further still, she died way back when, when she was still a baby in diapers and her mamma never came back to her no matter how hard she cried.

She died in pieces and all at once.

She couldn’t stand to live with herself and didn’t have an ounce of energy to try anymore. Life as a whore was who she was and at least she never had to go to the trouble of hiding it anymore. All she wanted was to swallow her handful of pills with a mouthful of whiskey and lie in bed to make her living. And that’s when she became a whore. And that’s what she was the night Rainmaker was born.

It was a day that didn’t move, certainly not the air, nor drapes in front of open windows, nor dogs in the streets, nor clouds in the sky. Even people, adults and children alike, were still, conserving energy. For over two weeks a stifling heat had strangled the life out the city. Humanity responded by hunkering down and doing all it could with ice blocks and fans to beat that double headed monster, soaring temperatures and high humidity. It was late August and Penny-Lu was great with child. The clouds teased for days with the promise of a thunderstorm to break the neck of the heat spell but hadn’t come through as yet. One of her regulars had just left and she swaggered out of her bedroom for a glass of water. She was parched something awful. The way her tongue felt, all swollen like a bag of cotton, would stick with her always. She was at the sink drinking a glass of water when her bag of water broke and gushed to the floor between her legs. At first she thought she dropped her glass, ‘cause she was doped and all swirley headed. But when she took a good look at her glass still in her hand, she realized that her time was upon her.

Russell, who was sitting at the table dividing up pills and counting his pimp money, cussed a long line.

“Now look what you’ve gone and done. No good hussy. Pick that up.” He threw a towel at her and she responded by dutifully dropping to her knees and wiping.
Just then, the sky went from day to midnight. A hurricane over the gulf was pushing tropical winds over the lower Great Lakes and a cold front was pushing back from Canada just as hard. The resulting collision turned the heavens into a battlefield. Thunderheads flexed their muscles and shut out the sun like an uninvited guest. A forceful wind, with autumn in it’s teeth, swept through the window, swooshing paper off the counters and ushering in a sense of foreboding. This here is a witch-y baby what’s brought the storm with him, thought Penny-Lu. Russell thought it too ‘cause he was riddled by paranoia and a slave to voodoo and superstition, but didn’t dare speak it.

“I ain’t taking care of that bastard.” He howled. “You get rid of it, here? You get rid of it or you ain’t comin’ back here with me!” Then he grabbed her by the hair and threw her out of the apartment. He couldn’t get rid of that black magic fast enough.

Out in the hallway, a lone bulb dangling from a wire cast her shadow, long and dark, down the hall and against pockmarked plaster walls.

“I’ll walk to the landlord’s apartment,” she thought, “his woman will know how to birth me.”

But then, a sharp contraction wracked her body and laid her low. In the next second she found herself gasping for air on the wood floor. What followed was an otherworldly pain. Strong hands clawed at her insides with fire, squeezing the life out of her, and she could only retreat to a small place inside her head and think to herself: breathe. She fought panic. This was the kind of pain that could make your whole world go black forever and she didn’t want to go to there. The contraction left and she mustered what strength wasn’t sapped from her and snaked to a spot under the stair well. There she labored. She pulled a dirty tablecloth, that she found inexplicably draped over the stair rail, down and clutched it near her face in a desperate attempt at finding comfort. Outside, hail furiously battered the building.

Across the street Detective O’Dowd sat in a new issue Squdrol sipping coffee from his thermos. His partner wasn’t with him. This assignment was a favor for his father, the police chief of Chicago. His stepbrother, “That Woman”, as he referred to him because he was the most comfort seeking, preening creature he’d ever met, was stepping in it and his father asked him to clean up. They could take no chances with the family’s reputation and his stepbrother’s anticipated run for state office. It was while tailing his unctuous stepbrother that he uncovered the scurrilous activity in the warehouse, and the whoring was the least of it. For months had been meticulously tracking the activity inside, covering every angle so that when the time came he could throw the book at them. Well, the time was now. The only problem was That Woman who hadn’t a molecule of reason floating around in his vacuous skull. He was inside, getting his jolly on with that whore whose unusual beauty was beaming a red light from the L to Milwaukee. His job was to see to it that the bust didn’t happen until That Woman had left. Having to baby-sit this dribbling idiot put Detective O’Dowd in a fowl mood. He was just hoping that the storm, imminent and threatening, would hold off till after the bust was over. No such luck. As soon as his brother left the building and drove away the sky turned black as beans and angry clouds growled, throwing their spears of lightning into the city.

“Aye, Crimmeney.” O’Dowd muttered under his breath. Having to wipe up after That Woman was bad enough and it didn’t help that the day was vomiting out every last vestige of summer it had been gorging on for weeks. He radioed the district unit for back up and made a run for the building. The sky, for malicious fun, waited until the exact moment that he stepped out from the cozy squadrol to unleash a furry of walnut sized hail upon his head. With his back to the wall and pistol drawn he silently ascended the stairs to the floor where Penny-Lu labored and Russell, in his rat whole, still counted his money.

Penny-Lu saw the cop from the stair well but she was cloaked by darkness and shadow and couldn’t have made a sound even if she wanted to. She was in the grip of a bully pain and could not muster the energy to utter, or move, or lick her lips, or cry even. She could only be still and count out the intense agony. And with all the cacophony of the storm and nearby train, Officer O’Dowd walked right past her without taking notice. But she watched that cop raid her apartment. And then she watched when the back up came. She watched and heard it all as she labored out that baby.

“This here baby brang the storm and trouble with it.” She thought and was so convinced.

It didn’t take long before Russell was lead away in cuffs, an officer ushering him right past her down the stairs. And still she labored, undetected. The cops went through the apartment for hours, looking for and labeling evidence before hauling it away in envelopes and boxes.

Finally, the time came for Penny-Lu to push and mercifully, that baby broke through in a hurry. Penny-Lu was squatting and barely caught the filmy bundle before wrapping him loosely in the tablecloth that was on the ground. She stared at him as her after birth fell out.

He was gray and all covered in white cheese and he looked at her with intimidating intelligence. His blue eyes locked on her without shame. He was silent and not afraid. He just looked and kicked his legs, and as he looked he turned pink all of a sudden. First he turned pink in his lips, and then everywhere. Penny-Lu was out of her gourd what with the trauma of childbirth and intense craving for her next fix. And she was sore afraid of him. She didn’t dare touch someone who had so much black magic that he could call in hail and lightening like he owned the dark clouds.

“You rainmaker, boy.” She hissed. “You brought the storm and keep it. Where you keep it, huh? Where you keep the storm, boy?” An overwhelming desire to strangle him dead came over her. She went for his squat neck to strangle the life out of him but collapsed instead.

There was a storm, a mighty and fierce uprising in the winds and they brought with them a boy. He was unwanted by his mother and unknown by his father. He was born from adversity and to adversity. His was a lowly beginning, humble and forsaken. And in that he shared in the suffering of Jesus. Angels did not herald this event, but God watched over it none-the-less. And that’s the story of how Rainmaker got born.

But, that’s not telling you why he walked with a limp.

by C. C. Kurzeja
2005, All Rights Reserved

Just Another Word

2005-09-15T11:38:00.000-04:00

More on my continuing education from "Farmer Boy" by Laura Ingalls Wilder: (Were that every American should be thusly educated as I believe it would prove far more useful and go further in preserving our liberties than would a piece of paper from some university in the hands of it's graduate.)

"Farmer Boy" records a slice, a little more than a year, in the life of the boy who grew up to be Laura Ingall's husband, Almanzo Wilder. Almanzo's childhood, and therefore his experience and contribution to the settling of America, was as different from Laura's as the rolling hills of upstate New York are different from the grassy prairies and low skies of the Midwest. While Laura came from a pioneer family of humble origins, Almanzo came from a prominent and wealthy farming family in upstate New York.
Laura's family left a log cabin in the big woods of Wisconsin for the unchallenged Kansas plains hauling all they owned in the world across rivers and the great unknown in a covered wagon. There, they dug their own wells, made their own nails, timbered their own logs for house and furniture, and sustained themselves from the wild earth all for the sake of being the first in a land they knew would someday be civilized. They cheated death by wolves, death by rivers, and Indians, and malaria to forge a path for others to follow.
Almanzo, on the other hand, lived on one of the largest and most respected farms in the state of New York. His home had a parlor with upholstered furniture and a dining room decorated with wallpaper. He had donuts every day for breakfast and pie every night with dinner. His mother's butter was considered to be of the finest quality in the state and garnered a high price. They raised cattle and trained horses, selling their colts for the highest going rate. They farmed corn, soybeans, wheat and hay and sold from their abundance, taking money to the bank often. They timbered their own wood, and cut blocks of ice from a nearby lake, storing them all year round in their own ice house. Because of this Almanzo frequently enjoyed ice-cream for dessert in the summer, an exceptional indulgence for the time.
But while their childhoods were very different, they shared a common heritage. They came from families that understood what it meant to be American and how to go about living in freedom. It used to be that all of America was defined by our common heritage. It was our salt. But somehow over time our vision has become splintered and so we are loosing our heritage by decades and years, and by cities and families.
Almanzo was only nine at the completion of the book. If he lived today, no doubt his parents would still be tying his shoes, wiping his nose and suffering his tantrums. But he was fortunate to be born in a time when people were dedicated and submitted to a life of hard work. They were convinced that it was good to burden a man with a heavy yoke in his youth, allowing the stress and strain of responsibility to mold his character. Back then, people understood hard work in an almost sacred way, achieving a kind of salvation on earth through it. By hard work they secured their dignity. By hard work they obtained the imperishable riches of self worth and reaped an abundance in spirit. By hard work they enlarged the borders of their kingdoms, that is, they expanded into their experience of freedom. They understood that freedom wasn't something you stood around and waited for someone to plop in your lap, like a warm biscuit. Freedom was a claim that you staked out and since it was inherent in your soul, it was up to a man to draw it out and make manifest. And that wasn't easy, it took hard work.
Now, Almanzo was an amazing young man. At nine, he was skilled at his chores and responsible for tasks of which the function and performance of the farm were dependent. He was not sheltered from the elements. He was not coddled when hurt. He was not spared when the task before him was overwhelming. He was responsible for the preservation and protection of his own life in dangerous situations and could expect a terrible thrashing if he behaved foolishly. All this wrought a sobriety in his spirit and maturity beyond his years. And I am convinced that if his life had taken a tragic turn and he had been orphaned and left to survive on his own, he would have had no trouble living autonomously with the skills he possessed at nine.
Mr. Paddock, a merchant in town took notice of Almanzo. He was a wheelwright, which is someone who made carriages, and was very wealthy. But, not having a son of his own, he had no one to pass his business on to. He wanted to apprentice Almanzo to his trade, thereby securing a life of wealth and relative ease for him. One night at dinner, Almanzo's father discussed Mr. Paddock's offer with Almanzo and his mother. "He'd be a rich man, with maybe half a hundred workman under him. It's worth thinking about." He said. Her response is revealing.
"Oh, it's bad enough to see Royal [Almanzo's older brother] come down to being nothing but a storekeeper! Maybe he'll make money, but he'll never be the man you are. Truckling to other people for his living, all his days- He'll never be able to call his soul his own."
To her, it wasn't important how wealthy you were, or how much a person could afford. Her definition of success revolved around the degree of freedom a person experienced or how much of your soul you could call your own. Almanzo's father was, likewise, dismayed by the thought of Almanzo being dependent upon selling to people to make a living, but he had enough respect and faith in Almanzo's character to allow him to make that decision for himself even at that young age. And so he gave Almanzo an honest assessment of what life would be like as a wheelwright as opposed to a farmer.
"With Paddock, you'd have an easy life in some ways....A farmer depends on himself, and the land and the weather. If you're a farmer, you raise what you eat, you raise what you wear, and you keep warm with wood out of your own timber. You work hard, but you work as you please, and no man can tell you to come or go. You'll be free and independent, son, on a farm."
To those early Americans freedom was obtained through independence and the two ideas could not be divorced one from another. To be dependent upon anyone for anything was to infringe upon personal freedom. And since freedom was valued above all else, earthly possessions were not the measure of a man. Because, if you were the master of your own soul then you were rich in the blessings of God to which He added no sorrow. That is, there is no sorrow inherent in owning all you have by the work of your own hands. But, there is sorrow crouching at the door of debt and dependence and it's desire is to master you. Contrast that with what we see today in entitlement societies. Contrast that with the shackled souls who languished and suffered in New Orleans. They are poor in spirit and institutionally dependent and so they experience bondage, not freedom. They live in America, yet they do not live in freedom. They do not stake out the claim, that cry of freedom in their soul, on a daily basis. They choose not to work for their sustenance and so choose not to partake in the liberties endowed by their creator because they are waiting for someone else to create their liberties for them. But freedom can not be described in terms of what a person has and certainly not in terms of what a person has been given. Freedom is rather the manifestation of how a soul exists. That is, created in the image of God and endowed with inalienable rights. That is the claim. When a person stakes it out by the sweat of his own brow then that is the pursuit of happiness.
What we learn from the "Farmer Boy", what used to be as obvious to the average American as putting apples in pie, is that freedom is closely related to how well a person provides for themselves and their families. Janis Joplin sang these famous lyrics: "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." But, in fact, the abundance or paucity of possessions has nothing to do with freedom. If it were the millions of people starving each year on the continent of Africa should be the freest people on the planet. It's not what you have but how effectively you take care of and provide for your own needs that matters. In practice it could be said that it's not what you have but how hard you work. Freedom is contingent upon self reliance and that doesn't come easy. Janis was wrong. Freedom's just another word for independence.

By C. C. Kurzeja
all rights reserved, 2005

The Olympian

2005-08-13T22:42:00.000-04:00

Travis is a handsome guy. He has a thick head of dishwater blond hair, deep set eyes, a chiseled chin and a great physique. His arms are huge and rock solid, his shoulders broad, his waist whittled. He's also very accomplished. At 24 he's just bought his first home, has a nice career as an actuary for a big company, and has two gold medals, won playing basketball for Team Canada at the Sydney and Athens Para-Olympics, to his name which explains the big muscles.
"My goal was to make the national team by '98, and I did. And that lead me to Sydney. Sydney was just the most jaw dropping, tear jerking, amazing experience of my life. I can argue that Athens may have topped it or may have gotten close, but Sydney was just incredible.
"In the world of disabled sports, obviously you don't get the publicity you get or the marketability you get for able bodied sports. So, our crowds when we play here or in Canada are friends and family, as well as sometimes you get a few other people. But, our opening ceremonies for the Para-Olympics, which is just right after the Olympics, had 120,000 people. That would be the first part of the experience, to walk out there. You're [waiting] for eight hours just to do the opening ceremonies. And you get out there, and [I'm] feeling kind o' cocky. I'm feeling kind o' excited, smiling. 'I'm here. This is awesome!' But then, when you get out there, you see 120,00 people cheering for you as they announce Team Canada and the first thing you do is cry. And then, for the next five minutes, you're just on cloud two million. That walk around that track was unreal.
"Our gold medal game had about 13 or 14,000 people [watching it]. To play in front of that many people and have that support was an experience I hadn't had before. I didn't think it was possible."
Travis sees life and all it's myriad aspects as a journey, or a working through. His means is to work hard because his purpose is to glorify God in all he puts his hands to. If his potential was to go to University of Illinois, then that's where he needed to go, never mind the obstacles in his way. When he played the classical alto-saxophone, he practiced four hours a day. He is dedicated to excellence and motivated by love and gratitude towards the God who created him. If Travis had been born physically perfect and had lived a charmed life, his attitude would not be exceptional, but that is not the case.
He was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba on January 16, 1980 to a father who was a second generation, Lutheran pastor and a mother who taught piano. He was, inexplicably, born completely missing his left leg and with only half his right leg.
"The doctors could not give any explanation or reason why. It was just God's will. That's the best way to say it because there was no actual physical ailment or anything like that that went on."
When I ask him to describe his family he swells with pride and it is apparent that he is anchored therein and finds those relationships to be a deep reservoir of strength and comfort to draw from.
"It was very fortunate to be born into a loving, supportive, Christian home where we had those morals very much installed in our every day lives right from the get go. My mom [was] the most loving, supportive, amazing mother ever. My sister and I have just been best friends. And right now she is my life partner, outside of a marriage. [She is] my best friend I could ever imagine for. We're so similar in terms of our goofiness, our ability to have fun, scream, yell and cry in the car as we listen to music. Our Christian walks are in a very similar stage. Emotionally, we lean on each other. We need each other."
His early childhood was idyllic and filled with wonder. If he was sad at all it was because he couldn't move around as quickly as other children. He spent his days running around on whatever bikes or chairs he had at the time, and loved to be outdoors. In fact, he spent most of his free time outside. He would go out to the woods every night after school and build forts in the trees. He remembers spending up to four hours a night dragging wood to his fort and feeling completely satisfied and hungry to do more. In the winter, he'd make snow quinzies. With all the snow they got in Winnipeg, he could pile up a huge mound of snow. And then he'd pour water on it and ice it out. After that he'd dig out the inside and light a fire. All in all it was about a week long process, but the reward for his effort was another fort, this time made of ice. Travis seemed to relish space all his own as a child and the great expanse underneath the boundless sky.
When he was in about the fourth grade, he sat in a chair for the first time and took to it like a fish to water. Up until then, he'd been walking on his one shortened right leg and a prosthetic left leg. He could walk without crutches but the process was laborious and slow.
"But for me it wasn't worth it to walk like everyone else. It wasn't worth the loss of momentum. I was always somebody who wanted to get up and go, get up and go, and I still suffer from that. Walking was just too slow for me.
"When I first sat in a sports chair [and experienced] how quick it was, and how much more freedom it gave me, I gave the legs up right away. It actually ended up being quite a kerfuffle because the school system and social workers were very much against me going in the chair a hundred percent because they thought that one day down the line I'd want to be able to walk again".
It was his stubborn insistence to remain in a chair that lead to his involvement and passion for wheelchair basketball and ultimately his two gold medals. But about the same time he decided to forsake walking in favor of a chair another significant development occurred in his childhood, this time heartbreaking. At the age of twelve, Travis lost his father to heart cancer.
"My father was probably one of the healthiest people you'd meet. Ninety percent of his food came from his garden and he had a very extensive garden. We were not the family to go to Wendy's or McDonald's. My mother made juices twice a day. He was very healthy, very fit. The doctors could find no medical reason for it."
I asked him how he was able to still trust God, how he could get past the pain.
"It hurts and it continues to hurt. It hurts a lot. But he taught me very quickly and I learned very quickly that the Lord just had another purpose for him in His kingdom. And as part of my testimony, through my father's death and through my disability, is that I fully believe a hundred percent and always have from a very young age, in Romans 8:28 that in all things God works to the good for those who love Him and have been called according to His purpose. So, there have been times where I have been upset or sad, or slightly angry with God. But it is very few and far between when that happens, just enough to be healthy about it. Other than that I've never really challenged it, and I've always thought it's been for the good, and I've always trusted the Lord in that. Which is a blessing, I think, that the Lord has given me that ability, that spirit to be willing and trusting and excepting of His will."
When he came of age, he chose to go to the University of Illinois because it had the top wheelchair basketball program in North America as well as the top three actuarial science programs in North America. But because he could in no way afford it, he sent out letters and videos to about 250 companies and corporations asking for help and money. In this way, his first year of university was paid in full and the last three years were partially paid. But God sent him to U of I to forge an important relationship and bond with his coach, Mike Frogley, who is also disabled. Mike is paralyzed from the waist down due to a car accident.
"The Lord took me to the University of Illinois for the reason that my father wasn't around and I needed a male leader and something to substitute for my father's leadership. Mike Frogley was the coach of the University of Illinois and also the coach for the Canadian National team. And when I got there, he took me under his wing not only in terms of his expectations of me as an athlete, but his expectations of my personal life, my personal growth and the accountability he gave me on and off the court.
"It's just amazing how the Lord continues to seek you out and provide for you. Mike was what He provided me with at that time in my life and that's exactly what I needed. He held me accountable to a different level than a lot of coaches would to their athletes, personally, academically, spiritually. I grew so much in those four years and I attribute a very large portion of that to Mike's leadership."
He revved up his training in college, but he had been dedicated to the sport since junior high when he would regularly train four hours a day. Even in highschool, he was going to extreme measures to mold his body into that of a world class athlete.
"Winnipeg was really snowy. I remember there were a couple of winters where me and one of my buddies would actually get in chairs and go for a four mile push through non plowed sidewalks. I mean, some of them were plowed but you'd have to hop-skip around all the ice, get out, pull your chair up. I mean it was just an incredible workout. And that was when I got a lot of my physical strength and speed and power and endurance in the chair was around those years when we were doing stuff like that.
"Getting to U of I, [there was] three and a half hours of team practice a day, plus lifting and personal shooting and cardiovascular as well as traveling every second weekend. Behind the stadium seating would be all these ramps that the cars would use and you go to the top [of those] and use different kinds of pushing styles and patterns and timed circuits with that. We really work on your muscle fibers and how quickly you can get them to twitch and quickly you can get them going. [We worked on] chair skills in the gym where there was 8-12 different exorcises between learning to balance on one wheel and sit like this for five minutes." (Travis takes his sports chair and pushes it on it's side so that it is resting on one wheel at an angle of about 45 degrees from the floor by way of example. It looks like he's defying gravity or like a stunt you'd see in a car chase where you hold your breath because you don't know whether the car is going to make it back down to four wheels or flip over and crash. You can't imagine someone holding the position he demonstrates on his chair for five seconds let alone five minutes.) "You do stuff where you strap yourself into your chair and you fall down, completely on the ground, and then I have to be up, in like, a half second. So you do that for five minutes: up, down, up, down, for five minutes.
Every child dreams of that moment when the gold is put around your neck, so I wondered what it felt like to someone who has twice had that pleasure.
"It was like the moment where everything just came together as worth it. Because, there was a lot of heart ache, there was a lot of pain, there were a lot of sacrifices that went into the training. Our coach was in the army, and early on his coaching career he was very militaristic. Going into Sydney we'd be training twice a day for three hours a day, plus video sessions, plus meetings with our sports psychologist. They were very long days."
I learned a lot from my conversation with Travis. I learned that stubbornness can sometimes direct destiny, that trusting God for His will is a blessing and I should pray fervently for it, and that there is a reward at the end of hard work. Therefore, dear readers, "Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary."
I asked Travis what was next on his agenda. What does a person do after he's climbed the biggest mountain?
"Because I've come from such a loving family, if there is one thing the Lord can give me as an earthly gift, the one thing I want more than anything is to marry and have children. There is nothing I want more than that on this earth."
Calling all single ladies: On your marks, get set, go!
by C. C. Kurzeja
2005 All Rights Reserved

What Baby Knows

2005-08-02T12:13:00.000-04:00

Basking in the fuzzy, lemon rays of sunshine pouring through the window sits the Mama. And sleeping in her rounded arms, nestled like a dove in satiny tufts of pink on pink lays the baby,
the beloved baby,
the baby of her delight.

Bounding around the corner with dirty face and sticky fingers comes the big sister,
her pride and joy;
the first born.

She crawls onto the couch and, snuggling close, flops her dolly across Mama’s lap. She licks her lips and then asks, “Can she play dolls with me?”

“No,” Mama answered, “baby doesn’t know about dolls yet.”

“Can she talk?”

“No,” said Mama, “baby doesn’t know words yet.”

Big sister wiggled, then kicked and squirmed. After a great deal of thought she asked, “How does the baby know we love her?” A little bird that was perched on the windowsill spread her wings and flew away, carrying that question straight to heaven.

Mama thought, and thought some more. And while she thought her free hand brushed silky ribbons of hair off her eldest daughter’s sweaty forehead. Finally, she caught the answer.

“Baby knows,” she said, baby knows.”

“In the morning, in the rose hued, dew glistened morning, when baby is quiet and alert, I look deep into the blue pools of her eyes. And looking back into my eyes, she coos. And then I coo, mimicking her baby song. We stare and coo, and stare and coo, as I softly caress her sweet cheek with the crook of my finger.

“And so baby knows I am hers and she is mine.

“Baby knows she is valued. Baby knows.”

“And in the afternoon, in the work-play-work-play-go-here-go-there afternoon, when baby is lonely and afraid, I clutch her close to my chest. The familiar bass noted thumping of my beating heart comforts her and I feel her tense body relax into a bundle of warm, snuggly calm.

“And so baby knows she is not alone.

“Baby knows her world is safe. Baby knows.”

"And in the evening, in the family-gathered-around-the kitchen-table evening, when Mama is distracted by the task at hand, baby turns her interest elsewhere. Reaching out with her whole fist, She grabs Papa’s finger, and gazing intensely at his brown eyes and broad face, she smiles. Excited by her big sister’s animated chatter, she kicks her legs and gurgles.

“And so Baby knows she is one part of a bigger whole.

“Baby knows what family is. Baby knows.”

“And at night, in the dark gray, softly humming night when Baby’s frantic cry pierces the silence, I bring her to my bed. And, curling her legs into my warm stomach, she nurses until she is filled. Satisfied, she sleeps once more.

“And so baby knows when she is hungry she will be fed.
“Baby knows her needs will be met. Baby knows."

“You see, words don’t teach baby what love is, our actions do. Love is what builds her universe. Love is what she understands through experience. Love is what she feels as her life unfolds.

“And so Baby knows love is something much bigger than herself.

“Baby knows she is the object of great affection.

Baby knows.”

By C. C. Kurzeja
2005 All Rights Reserved

Silver Star

2005-07-02T19:45:00.000-04:00

Staff sergeant Adam R. Sikes earned a Silver Star for his heroics during the Battle of At Tarmiyah on April 12, 2003 in the Iraqi War of Liberation. In his recommendation for the Silver Star, the 2nd Lieutenant, 1st Platoon Commander wrote of Adam, "SSgt Sikes inspirational and courageous acts under intense enemy fire raised each Marine in his presence to a higher level of proficiency. His tireless devotion to duty motivated Marines of the 1st Platoon to achieve a level of fearlessness and discipline that allowed them to take the fight to the enemy without reservation. His courageous acts demonstrated that one Marine can and will change the tide of battle." This is his story.

***************The Grunt***************

Adam grew up in a very patriotic family where he attended Boy Scout meetings and Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and the Fourth of July were honored as important holidays. Both his grandfathers served in WWII, but he credits the grandfather on his mother's side, who was a Navy C. B. in the South Pacific, for influencing him the most.

"I knew I wanted to go into the Marine Corps because they had the whole mystique about them being the finest, the best. They were always the first ones in, they were the toughest and I wanted to be the basic infantry man. I went in specifically to be a front line troop. When people think of the Marines, that's what they think of. They think of the guy walking down the street with the rifle, with the helmet. You don't think of the guy turning wrenches on a plane. Whether it's a good idea or bad idea, I wanted to be in a fight. Maybe it was a test to prove myself. Maybe it was that young adult idea of doing something exciting. I don't know but that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a basic grunt, as we call it."

In July of 1995, Adam went to Boot Camp in San Diego for three months. Marine boot camp is the longest of all the services.

"The second day I was there, I remember sitting there and wondering what the heck I'd gotten myself into. The whole idea about brainwashing and stuff like that, it's not brainwashing in a bad sense, but what it does is it shapes you for how you have to be in the military. And it's a very emotional, psychological and physical, stressful environment. Everything you know, that you're familiar with, that you're accustomed to, is wiped clean. I mean, your head is shaved, they take all your clothes, you have nothing that you could possibly associate with your life back home and they keep you so busy so much that you have no time to think about it. I mean, you're just a zombie walking through the day half the time just reacting to what they're telling you to do. People are constantly breaking down crying, you forget your name, you don't know what's going on half the time. Yeah, they'll ask you your name and you'll just look at 'em dumbfounded."

Adam graduated Company Honor Man which means he graduated at the top of his class in a class of 540 Marines. After a 10 day break he was off to Camp Pendleton for four months of infantry training where he did a repeat performance graduating as Company Honor Man. He guaranteed his specialty as infantry man going in and there he was trained in Light Armor Reconnaissance which is a vehicle similar to a tank except it has wheels and can carry infantry troops in the back. He became skilled with a M16A4, semi automatic assault rifle, with a 30 round magazine. It can accurately hit a target up to 550 yards with a maximum distance of about 3000 yards, not to mention stop a car with a round placed in the right place.

"It's a very good bullet for the type of missions we do. It's not overly large so it's not extremely heavy. It's light. It's accurate. It tumbles which means the bullet spins when it comes out to make sure it's accurate and it basically chews things up like a buzz saw. We can put a lot more gizmos on top of it. We can put all kinds of scopes, lights, blazers, all kinds of super sonic speed stuff. I carry a 9mil pistol as well, which is a barrette, like Mel Gibson shoots."

After that he went to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and joined the 2nd Light Armor Reconnaissance Battalion.

"What we did is we drove out these vehicles in front of everybody and we deployed, [and we would] find things. We were the advance guard. We were the early warning. Or we could be a screening force. These vehicles could go upwards of 70 miles per hour and they had cannons on 'em. We packed a pretty good punch. We were also a raid force. Let's say we wanted to attack Walker Brother's or something. [Walker Brother's pancake house is across the street from where we are sitting in a Starbucks cafe.] From the time they would hear the engines of the vehicles to the time we had gone in, blown everything up, cleared through, swept out, we could be off the site in 17 minutes."

From there he went on a MEU, or Marine Expeditionary Unit in the Mediterranean Sea, also called going on a float. A MEU goes with an Amphibious Ready Group, which is three ships they call an ARG. They go over seas for six months and they are kind of like the 911 force.

"If something goes down and they need troops there, like yesterday, that's what the MEU does. It's not the 82nd Airborne, it's not the 101st. It's the Marines that are on these ships and they are deployed in seas all over the world."

In March of 1997 when Albania erupted in Civil War, Adam was on a MEU off the coast of Greece. He was out in town having a good time when they started shooting red flares up from the ship in the harbor and circling helicopters overhead, signaling him back to the ship. In 18 hours they were on the shores of Albania and in 2 days they evacuated about 2000 American civilians. After that he spent some time running patrols in the Sylvania Alps where he acquired frost bite on one of the small toes of his right foot. And then he did Marine Security Guard Duty or Embassy Duty which falls under the Department of State, Diplomatic Security. He went over seas and lived at embassies in foreign countries. He was the protection of classified material, personnel, and equipment in an embassy. He spent one year in Moscow and two in Portugal. During that time he was on the security details of Bill Clinton, Vice President Cheney, Madeline Albright and others.

"And this brings us to the war..."

******Call to Duty******

On September 11, 2001 Adam was living in a 15th century manor house next to the embassy in Portugal where he had his own room. But before that day ended he would be living in windows in the embassy for the next several weeks.

"Before September 11, I was actually getting out of the Marine Corps. I was going home. I wanted to get out. I was done with everything in my life. I was on my way to George Town University, I was going to get my degree, Undergrad in International Relations. Then I wanted to go back to work in one of the government agencies. And I had everything set up. I had been accepted. I had an apartment. I had a car. I had a roommate. Everything was on my way out. You couldn't have found someone more ready to get out than I was."

He watched his buddies go into Afghanistan on TV. And by September of 2002 he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we were going to invade Iraq. He was due to be out of the Marines a mere four months later in February of 2003. In a 24 hour period he changed his mind and dropped everything. He called his monitor and told him that he wanted to get to Iraq immediately. He wanted to be the first one in.

"When September 11 happened, the whole world changed. And I had done some real world operations and stuff like that. So I'd done the real deal, but not a war. That was the whole reason I had joined. You train and do this stuff all the time, you're getting ready for the inevitable. You don't know when it's coming, but you're just trying to get ready for it. So, ok, now it's coming. So I realized that this is what my grandfather had felt when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and he joined the Navy. Our country was under attack. [I felt] I need to go to Iraq because I'm a Marine and this is what we do."

His monitor came through and Adam was dropped onto a dessert in Kuwait on February 2, 2003 with the 1st Platoon, Gulf Company, 2nd battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division.

"Where we were, we were the last line between the Iraqi border. We were ten miles off the border just waiting to go, to invade. It takes a preparation stage. When we first got to Kuwait, we got issued some ammunition and our chemical defensive kits. We head out to the Kuwaiti desert and we get dropped in the middle of nowhere. And there is nothing. All we have is our packs on our backs and that's it. There was no facilities. We were eating meals in a bag, our rations, that can last through a nuclear war, pretty much. We still lived out in our holes in the desert, but every once in a while we'd go back to a major camp and it looked like a city had been built from nothing in the middle of the desert.

We dug holes and sat there looking at the desert for a month and a half. We had no phones, no mail, no connection with the outside world. We had no idea what was going on. Rumors would fly. The biggest rumor that flew was that J.Lo had died. A lot of people were depressed. Think about it. You're out in the middle of the desert and there's nothing there, no buildings, just sand. Sand is everywhere and in everything. Sandstorms hit ya' every few days. They just suck the life out of ya'. You could see the wall of sand coming at you. You're just getting pelted and stung with sand. You're breathing in sand, it's getting in your clothes, every crevice of your body, in your nose, in your eyes, you're just covered and coated. It just hits you. You become so numb to things.

We were the first unit into Iraq. I made it. Our first mission was to capture the Ramallah oil fields to make sure they weren't going to be burned or blown up. Well, we started getting intelligence reports that they were burning up and the Iraqi's started launching scud missiles at Kuwait. They said they needed [our battalion] to go now. So we went and we were alone in Iraq for nine hours 'cause nobody else was ready to go. We just shot up to the Ramallah oil fields. I was in what's called an AAV which is an Amphibious Assault Vehicle, and it's a big bullseye. It can hold twenty Marines and it's a track, like a tank. As soon as we crossed the border it was a light show. Everyone thinks the war started on March 20th, but we left for Iraq the evening of March 19th."

Eventually, he crossed the Euphrates and was one of the first into Baghdad. He was surprised at how clean and beautiful the city was. Baghdad is decently modern, as he described it. They have power, they have lights, they have houses as opposed to mud huts, they have bridges, cars, busses, and even coffee shops.

"When we got downtown Baghdad, they were receiving us like a New York Thanksgiving Day parade. I came home and I was so disgusted when I saw the news. Thousands of people were lining the streets, cheering us on. We are rolling through in our vehicles, popped up and waving, like it's a parade."

And that about brings us up to that fateful day...

*******Battle of At Tarmiyah*******

After Baghdad became semi secure, the Marines kept moving. On April 12, Adam's battalion was making it's way north to Samara. Echo Company and Fox Company had been sent out East to search for POW's. Adam's company, Golf Company, was the reserve. They were to stay on the main road and be the reactionary force to maneuver in case there was trouble. But Echo and Fox weren't turning up anything so they decided to send Golf Company West to see if a bridge over the Tigris River could support tanks. Adam's platoon consisted of about 60 ground troops and they took 3 AAV's out to the Tigris.

"In the back here, inside the vehicle, this is where you have all your ground troops. [He pointed to a sketch he had drawn of the AAV] We could fit 20 in each. The book says you can fit 18, but you can always fit one more. The back will drop down with a little ramp thing. You can run out the back. The top can also open up so you can look out the side. The crew operates the vehicle. 'Cause we don't operate the vehicle. We're just passengers. They control the driving and they have a 50 caliber machine gun [up front]. I sat in this little hatch right here, where I could get a panoramic view. Everybody else, your back there, it's black. You can't see anything. You don't know what's going on. You're choking on diesel."

At approximately 800 Zulu, 1st platoon reached the pontoon bridge and after deciding that it would sustain tanks, two of the AAV's crossed over. They were greeted on the other side by a traffic jam. People and cars are everywhere and Adam thought he was going to be playing traffic cops again. Welcome to At Tarmiyah. Directly to the left is a little bridge house, made of stone, that Adam thought looked like something you'd sell ice-cream out of. To the South-West the city spread out comprising of three and four story buildings and houses.

"It was a very docile environment. People are trying to sell us goats. That's what it was like. [Those who weren't stationed as defense] were kind of hanging out in this building in the shade and I'm actually walking along cutting pieces of salami off with my knife and giving it to Marines for something to eat. And we're just hanging out. We got all our stuff on but it's relatively docile."

His recommendation and summary of action records what happened next. "At approximately 0900 Zulu, 1st Platoon minus was caught in an enemy Iraqi ambush of unknown size orienting from the north and south of the town, creating cross fire."

"I think it was 8:56, actually. I remember looking up. I kind of looked over this way and, like, the cars are gone, people are gone. And it's just one of those things where you kind of look up and it's like everything is in slow motion. You just looked up and, like, everybody was gone when a minute ago you had heard and seen everybody. And I remember looking around at one of my friends and stuff and they just kind of looked back at me. I have no idea how many came at us. But, they were coming at us from all different directions. Two of 'em hit my track. [They] went through the nose of my track, basically through the headlights. Blew the heck out of my track. Covered me in dust and smoke. I got peppered with stuff. Nearly knocked me over."

I asked him if he was afraid. I was hoping to come to a greater understanding of the psyche of fear vs. courage. I have to keep hoping, because after my interview with Adam I have to admit that I understand acts of heroics and undaunted bravery even less than before my interview with him.

"Didn't feel anything at that point, still in shock. I went deaf. I got covered in smoke and debris. And you're trying to think, 'What is going on.' It's like everything is in slow motion. You kinda hear things but you don't hear things. You only know what's going on, like, from me to you. That's as much as you have, are aware, at one moment. After the initial beef of everything you start to get more aware but it's still very tunnel vision. There is so much going on, so much you're thinking about, so much you're worrying about, so much you're trying to do that, literally, you could have somebody walk on your back and you'd have no idea sometimes."

In the first few seconds of the assault, Adam was nearly blown off his feet into a wall. He starts swinging his way into the bridge house when he realizes that he still has his knife and salami in his hand. Once inside, he returns fire. He thinks he blew off 60 rounds within the first two minutes.

"We were surrounded. They're shooting at us from both directions and straight. So, at no point when I was outside was a bullet not coming near me. They were zinging by your ears. You can tell a distinct difference when you hear bullets come at you how close it is. The guys that were in the vehicle, they kind of pile out of the vehicle. I just saw them skid by me, nubs for legs, blood streaking all over the place. We've got a corps man there and he kind of pulls 'em into the house, throwing tourniquets on them and stuff like that."

They couldn't retreat back over the bridge because they would have been sitting ducks and, like wise, no one could cross over to their aid. They were completely cut off. It took them a few minutes, but they started returning organized fire on the enemy.

"We've got these little ear piece things. They're only good for about five hundred yards. So, this is how we're talking to each other. This is how we're talking across the river. Well, this is bad because kilometers away is where your help is. We had no air support. We had no artillery. Nobody even knows we're in a fight. They didn't know we were in a fight until about thirty minutes into it. We're slugging it out over here. I'm looking at our situation and we're stuck. The only way to finish a fight is to get into a fight. We had to go straight into 'em.

I ran across the street. Find these guys, they had hunkered down in some holes just kind of grabbing their butt and praying to God. This whole time I was never not getting shot at. There was always bullets hitting over my head, hitting at my feet, whizzing by my ear the whole time."

From that vantage point Adam identifies his biggest threat, where a lot of the rockets were coming from. It was a three story building in town. They need to cut them down before they get cut to shreds.

"I call over and I say, 'Hey, I'm going into town. I'm going to the three story building. I'm gonna mark it. Get the guns up. Which basically means, get the machine guns rockin' and rollin' just to cover me as I run across. I tapped [a Marine] on the head, he has a machine gun. He looked up. I said, 'Cover me.' He said that was his scarriest moment. He thought, 'Oh my God, what's he about to do?"

Adam ran about 70 meters of open terrain, by himself, to make his way to the side of the building.

"At one point, when I'm about to run across, I'm thinking to myself, 'Am I really going to do this?' And that's when I took off. [Once there, he] Threw colored smoke over the side to identify the building 'cause now we have air support. This is about thirty minutes into it. They basically called out the distress signal: We got a unit in some serious trouble. Everything in the world come here. It was up close and personal. Close enough where you could see their eyes."

Later his lieutenant would recall seeing Adam running up to the town, shooting.

"He said it was one of the most spectacular things he'd ever seen but he also said, 'Well, I guess he's gone."

Adam was shooting his way into the building when things began to quite down. That's because there was a bunch of them hiding around the corner waiting to spring on him. By the grace of God, Adam was forewarned and was able to throw a grenade around the corner to take care of them that way. By this time air strikes were coming in. They were dropping rockets. They always run parallel to their unit so that they don't drop on you if they drop short.

"They're dropping missiles right over my head. They called me and said, 'Get down. Air's coming in.' So I just grabbed some dirt. And as the missiles are dropping and the explosions are going off into buildings over here, like, my body's lifting off the ground. You feel it in your lungs. They compress real quick. And you actually jump. You whole body feels the compression."

Adam was up in that building about thirty minutes by himself when he called to his buddies for some help because he was running out of ammo. He carried 360 bullets and he'd blown through most of those. But, the good news is that planes are finally coming in and artillery is starting to drop.

"I can see into the town so I'm calling this stuff in, I'm like, 'Yep, bring it closer. Bring it closer.' Danger close for artillery is like 650 meters. 700 is fine. 600, no good. Just because of short rounds or shrapnel or whatever. Well, we were dropping this stuff within 200, 250 meters in front of me. We broke all the safety rules that day."

Finally, three guys make it up to Adam in the building.

"At the two hour mark I was thinking, 'Oh my God, when is this gonna end.' I've been in combat environments that have lasted 48 hours, but that's intermittent. We were in a shoot out. Four straight hours of shooting. This was four hours of no rest, can't hear anything because bullets and things were exploding. I don't know how we made it out. I don't know how we walked away."

The battle is hot and heavy now. They are shooting their way deeper and deeper into town.

"We're shooting rockets. You name it. Everything we can, we're firing. Artillery is goin', planes are coming in, reinforcements have finally made it across about 2 hours into it."

Due to garbled communications, Adam thought there were Marines down across town.

"I just stood up on the building and said, 'Who wants to go dodge some bullets?"

Amazingly, two Marines volunteered. They grab a track and head towards the sound of the gunfire. They ran ahead of the track, jumping in ditches and dodging bullets the whole time. When they make it there, they throw the seriously wounded in the track.

"I get a call saying, 'Hey, move back we're about to level the town. Which basically means, we're going to pull back and artillery and airplanes are going to come in and turn the whole town into dust. It's like a fighting withdrawal. We got people dropping as we're running back and we're picking 'em up, dragging 'em through."

After they count everybody they head back over the river from whence they came and the town is smoked like Gomorrah. Later, they would learn that Saddam Hussein had been in the town the day before and the people they were fighting were his hard core fanatics.

O beautiful for heroes proved/In liberating strife/Who more than self their country loved/And mercy more than life!

A million thanks to you, Adam, and to your brethren soldiers, for your faithful service to our country.

Happy Birthday, America. God mend thine every flaw/ Confirm thy soul in self-control/Thy liberty in law!

By C. C. Kurzeja

Torgny's Story -or- Things I learned From Torgny

2005-05-26T19:48:00.000-04:00

Torgny is 95 years old and still working as a soil engineer in this area. He is spry with alert, blue eyes, an easy laugh, and a spattering of freckles that brings to mind Alfalfa from the Little Rascals. His parents came to this country from Sweden in the 1890's when they were about twenty years old. His father was a Swedish Methodist Minister and settled in central Texas, about 30 miles north of Austin, to serve the rural communities there. Torgny was born in 1910 the third of four boys.

He remembers life as a young boy in the pre-modern era. Danger and toil were ever present then, but so was wonder. His father served several churches in the area because the congregations were too poor to have their own pastor. So, Sunday morning he would preach at one church and Sunday afternoon another and so on. Sometimes these churches were as many as twenty miles apart and the only mode of transportation was horse and surrey. His father would sit on the front bench holding the rein with his two older brothers next to him and his mother would sit between he and his younger brother on the back bench with an arm around each of them, holding on tight. The surrey had no rails and the traveling was bumpy. If the little ones were to fall asleep they could topple right out.

"When I think of my mother..." Torgny lets escape a crushed sigh and shakes away tears at her memory when telling how it was.

Do you think times were better back then? Would you ever want to go back to the way things were when you were a little boy, I wondered.

"No. You wouldn't want to go back to that." He doesn't hesitate to answer. His speech is clear and his thoughts are lucid although his voice is faint as if his vocal chords have lost power somehow. "We have such tremendous advantages now, opportunities. Even the kids in those days were required to work. They were required to help the family, meet the needs."

Back then, he explained, Texas was mostly agricultural and the crops were mostly cotton. Farmers grew cotton until the soil wouldn't support it anymore and then they planted soybeans. Children 8, 9, 10, years old were expected to pick and chop cotton. This was grueling, bone aching work. If you stood you had to remain hunched over to pick the cotton out of the bowls and if you kneeled, well, each row was about 100 feet long and you better be sure to be wearing leather pads. Either way put a substantial strain on the body. That's men's work, or work that'll make a man, I thought. Back then children worked hard and grew up when still young. Now, kids play lazily and are lucky to reach adulthood by middle age.

But when he remembers the tremendous value an apple had back then or how rare ice-cream was he is glad to have experienced life when it was so simple. He tells of the first time he ever saw an airplane. He was twelve and word had gotten around that a plane would be flying over his town and landing in a certain dairy farm. The whole town came out to the field to see the plane land. Life went from nothing, as he described it, to everything.

When he was thirteen his father moved the family up around Chicago where he's lived ever since. He received his master's in civil engineering from Armour's Institute of Technology named after the man who made his fortune in meat packing. Today it is known as Illinois Institute of Technology. In 1935, he married Lillian, then 23. Today they have been married for 70 years.

"I'm so glad I have a spouse. " He tells me. "I can't stand the way people get divorced now days." I can only agree.

In his life he has worked for the railroad, as an engineer for Douglas aircraft during the war, run a turkey farm, and built about a dozen churches in and around Chicago. It was while building churches that Torgny discovered his avocation: whittling.

The Albanian Orthodox Church he was building wanted their chancellor furniture to be carved. So Torgny hired someone trained in Sweden in the craft of wood carving to do the job and was fascinated by what he saw. He asked the man if he would sell him some tools to get started and when the man did, Torgny had a craft. Perhaps not skill, not then, that would come later. But he had a craft and it would become part of who he is. Today he has dozens of chisels most of which are made in England. Among them are the ones he first received from that Swede long ago.

Tupelo wood is the medium he works in. Water Tupelo is a swamp tree with an attractive cream-colored wood that grows down south. Torgny likes it because the surface shows almost no grain and so doesn't interfere with the delicate details he invests into every piece and because he can carve it to a fine point, such as found at the end of the beak of a sparrow, and it will not break off. The scientific name for Water Tupelo means, "water nymph." There is indeed a goddess trapped in the core of the wood, her spirit it beautiful, and Torgny calls her out.

"I started out with ducks." He explained. "And then I shifted over to birds. I like them better." I wondered why. He squirmed in his seat in an attempt to verbalize something that he primarily understood viscerally. Finally he threw up his hands. "I don't know." He said. "I think they're prettier." And then he laughed heartily at his admission. And this truth came shining through to me: God made man to be moved by beauty.

His artist loft is a large, square room with brown linoleum floors and tan walls, an addition put onto the home just for his passion, this past time of his. Tools hang on magnetic strips against one wall and consume half his desk that is pushed into a corner of the room. Half finished birds line shelves behind his desk. I assumed these were the ones he was working on but learned that he was unhappy with them for one reason or another. I noticed that he doesn't destroy them or rid of them, but puts them behind him where he doesn't have to look at them while working. Every so often he'll go back to the reject pile, pluck one up and redeem it, making something beautiful out of what was a mistake. The verse, "And the grace of God makes even my mistakes to prosper," comes to mind and I think it is the God kind of creativity that an artist exorcises when he makes good out of something that went bad. Against three walls are shelves with his finished pieces. They are crowded together like a large family posing for a picture at a family reunion. My camera can not capture all of them in one frame. They are too many. Collectively they are a splendid display. Individually they are priceless in intricate detail and unique character.

I wonder why he's kept at it for so long. "What do you love about it?" I ask. He answers immediately seemingly certain of what drives him.

"I guess it's the satisfaction of doing what you set out to do 'cause I'm never satisfied with any one of 'em that I've finished." I am startled into laughter by his confession.

He pauses as his eye searches the room and finally gestures towards a hummingbird he's just completed. It's wings are pulled way back, suspended in flight, and it's needle-nose beak is thrusting into a trumpet shaped flower to draw nectar. He captures the motion and energy of the moment spectacularly.

"No. I don't like this. You say, 'Oh, why don't you like this?'" He asks himself the question and answers, "Well, in the first place I think this is too heavy and too thick." He is pointing to the stem of the flower. "And my kelly green should have some brown in it." Again, referring to the stem. He shakes his head, bothered by the flaws. "No. I'm not happy with this but the composition satisfies me. This is the composition that I like. But I guess if you were to be satisfied with what you do you wouldn't do it anymore."

His conclusion strikes a chord that resonates loudly within me. It is a revelation to me. I am a person who struggles. I am not satisfied and that is why I seek out my art, my craft. Torgny understands this and is at peace with this. He has made me to understand, too.

The Fairie Pipe

2005-04-12T17:34:00.000-04:00

A daffodil and fairie pipe

This is a daffodil from my garden but it also doubles as a smoking pipe for lazy house elfs. I know because I caught one puffing from it the other night.

It was late and everyone was sleeping. And I, being depleted of dreams and exhausted from the hard work of trying to fall to sleep, got myself up to fix a cup of warm milk. And that's when I heard it. The unmistakable crystalline sound of fairie laughter.

Being right tricky myself and compelled by curiosity, I slithered like a thief into a corner of our family room that was cast in blackest shadow. From there I took in a long sip of the pudgy, little fellow with apple cheeks and scraggly, white beard that grew to his knees, witnessing with my own eyes his daffodil foible.

He hopped onto the stone ledge of my fireplace letting his legs swing freely, back and forth, beneath him. From his pocket he pulled out a wire tool that I didn't think looked like much. But with one adroit twist and then jab of his wrist he gutted the stem of my daffodil creating a perfect tube for a pipe. After he removed the stamen with his fingers, much like you or I would clean out the heart of an artichoke, he carelessly threw the flower parts on my floor leaving yellow dust all over an otherwise clean surface.

That was the first mistake that little fool made.

Humming an elfin song, he took from a silk pouch what looked like ordinary tobaccy and firmly packed the steep daffodil cup, lighting his pipe with fire that shot out from his fat, little pointer finger.

But the smoke that rose from the pipe was the color of lilacs blooming in the garden and possessed the quality of light. And with each puff the little fool grew more and more wanton and buffoonish. It became clear to me, being knowledgeable about the ways and customs of the flower people, that this tobacco was anything but ordinary.

That jolly idiot is practicing magic in my house, uninvited, I said to myself. And this when he was supposed to be washing my floors and folding the laundry! Fuming in the corner and stunned by the rude behavior of my fairie intruder, I had it in me to brain him on the spot and teach him a lesson good. But I found myself transfixed by his oddness and littleness, and for reasons unknown to me could not take my eyes off him, nor move to hurt him.

So I watched as the elf puffed away. And with each puff he grew more silly, giggling and snickering all to himslef, celebrating himself in a horrible poem, and dancing a queer jig. Finally, when I surmised that the tobaccy was all smoked away, the daffodil itself began to burn. The fairie smoked the flower from the top of the petals to the end of the green stem until nothing remained but ashes. When the messy, little creep ground the ashes into my hearth rug, I found my ire.

Leaping out from under the cover of darkness I grabbed that round fellow by the ankles and shook him till his tiny teeth rattled inside his head.

"I'll not have you cavorting and what not in my house if you"ll not earn your keep. You'll do well to tithe next time you think to throw yourself a merry little, fiarie party on my hearth."

He turned himself around and looked hard at me, square in the eye. His ice blue eyes turned red and flamed and his teeth became strangely wolf-like. He rattled off something in an ancient language I felt certain was a spell, and a nasty one at that. But I, being a daughter of the first Adam and covered in the blood of the second Adam, was impervious.

"Ha!" My defiant laugh infuriated him and I took pleasure from that fact. Holding him by the back of his pants I opened my back door and threw the bugger out. I watched by moonlight as he ran howling and cursing in Gaelic into the thick of the wood.

I can't stand sloppiness in a fairie, won't tolerate it.

I haven't seen hide nor hare of him since. But sometimes, at twilight, I catch a glimpse of a curious, lilac colored smoke rising above the tree tops in the wood.

By C. C. Kurzeja
2005 All Rights Reserved

Signs of Spring

2005-03-31T12:12:00.000-04:00

A leisurely walk to the end of the block with my children and their red wagon. Wearing no coats or sweaters, we were hot even with the wind that raced continually past us on its endless journey southward.

A downy, gosling feather, smoky grey with tan fringes, captured by the bark of dead wood lying amidst last years fallen oak leaves, gently removed by my daughter and kept as a treasure in her collection.

The constant trill and chatter of busy birds nesting in the canopy of tree branches above us. The busyness, in general, of all the woodland and prairie creatures.

Cotton fingernails budding on the slender, drooping branches of my towering willows. They are a splendid lady, swishing her fine frock and swaying her ample hips as she waltzes with the wind, full of feminine sensuality and proud of it.

A bee sting, a welt the size of a blueberry with a bright pink center, on the bare bum of my son who sustained the injury while passing water in the bushes.

Green spears cutting through black soil, as daffodils, tulips, and daylillies wake from icy slumber and seek the sun.

A rain shower with small, scattered, gun smoke clouds casting dark shadows over there, but leaving a pitcher full of sunshine pouring down on the ground in a giant gush, splashing puddles of glistening light over here.

The result was a remarkable rainbow. And this, just when current events had cast me so low that I was having a hard time looking up. Just when my heart had dried up within me and turned my tears to ashes over this Terri, this Precious Braveheart, that sweet baby, who, being condemned to die of starvation though innocent, drank heartily from Christ's cup of suffering before withering away; God sent His sign and I was surprised by joy.

O wondrous love that watches over me. You overwhelm my days with good. O wondrous love that will not let me go.

The rainbow shone like gemstones, like yummy sherbet bands, only luminescent, in every flavor and waxed unbroken from one end of my property to the other arching high into the bruised sky. Above it was an echo, a larger rainbow, less brilliant and broken but almost heralding the brilliance of the other. They were royal brothers, half-deities, leaving their celestial thrones for a rare, earthly procession.

As night approached, the temperature dropped suddenly and the constant clanging of the chimes hanging outside my kitchen window alerted me to the rowdy weather that was on its way. From the west a herd of buffalo, in a line of thunderheads, charged with their heads down, kicking up dust and shaking the ground beneath them. With them came hail, and lightening, tornados, and strong winds.

I love a rainy night. Ooh,ooh. I love to watch the thunder and the lightning as it lights up the sky. You know, it makes me feel good.

With the morning came a return to wintry weather and news of Terri's death. Both were welcome.

by C.C.Kurzeja

Traditions

2005-03-28T22:43:00.000-04:00

I had been married a few short months when my husband and I shared our first Easter together. With my family in California, we spent the afternoon with his.

My husband is fifteen years my senior and he is ten years younger then his closest brother. The result being, as I stepped into my in-laws kitchen, was that I was surrounded by old people.

"Oh, good." My brother in law, who looks a lot like the banker on the Monopoly game board, said when he saw us. "You're just in time for Grandma's Polish soup."

"What's that?" I asked innocently. I had no reason to be suspicious. Our families had a long history that began over a breakfast of pancakes, fresh squeezed orange juice and bacon. I knew my brother-in-law was a great cook.

"It looks gross, and it sounds gross, I know," began my husband, "but it tastes great."

"What's in it?" I asked with growing skepticism.

"Just try some." Was my brother-in-law's cagey response.

"After you tell me what's in it."

Looks were exchanged all around the room.

"Well, you start with chicken soup."

"You know, just plain chicken soup." My husband, sounding defensive, looked at me like I was supposed to respond. "Chicken soup."

"I got it."

"Then you add polish sausage, chopped hard boiled egg and chunks of rye bread."

"Without caraway seed." My husband clarified. "Seedless Rye bread." The way he said it suggested the whole soup would be ruined by the presence of that seed, but it was hard for me to imagine the soup wasn't ruined already.

"And then you top it off with horseradish." My brother-in-law said, setting steaming hot bowls down on the kitchen table. "It's delicious."

My in-laws began to slurp it up like wolves sucking marrow out of a bone.

"Why do they call it Polish soup?" I asked.

"I don't know." Replied my brought-in-law with a shrug.

"No. I mean: Where does it come from? Is this an ancient soup served among the royal line? Did it originate with the peasants in the countryside? Was it a result of communism? Why is it Polish?"
"I think Grandma just made this up herself." My mother-in-law added. "The boys just always called it Grandma's Polish soup because she's Polish and she's the only one who made it."

"Oh." I stared at the steaming soup placed before me like my death was at the bottom of the bowl.

My mother-in-law sensed my trepidation. She is a little, robust Italian lady with lips like the curl at the tip of a rose petal, skin like chilled cream in a porcelain bowl, and light chocolate truffles for eyes. A perpetual frown announces her sanguine personality and a shrug of her shoulders coupled with upturned hands could mean any one of a million different things. It's her language.

"When I first got married. I thought this soup was weird." She did her shoulder/hand thing. "But I ate it. And year after year," she shrugs again, "I started to, you know, get accustomed to it. And you will too, get accustomed to it."

Like heck I will!

It was as if, in that moment, sitting at that table surrounded by my new family who also happened to be old friends, with the diffused Spring light coming in from the window catching dust and cat hair in it's streams, with noses running from the horseradish being patted and wiped, and with the sound of hot soup being sucked off a spoon ringing in my ears like ocean waves, my mother in law pulled back the curtain and showed me my future.

I tried, honest I did. I psyched myself up, and then backed down; psyched myself up and then backed down. Finally, I just gave up.

"It looks great. If I weren't a vegetarian I'm sure I'd love it, but I just can't bring myself to eat meat." I said as I gently pushed the bowl away.

It's been eleven years, and I haven't been a vegetarian since before my first child was born, but I have yet to bring a spoon of Grandma's Polish soup to my lips. Although, I have managed to get it half way between my chest and my chin before backing out on several occasions. And while I may never learn to appreciate that soup, it remains a very important part of the way my husband and his family celebrate Easter.
by C.C.Kurzeja
2005 All Rights Reserved

My Why

2005-03-01T20:31:00.000-04:00

I ran across this little ditty as I was cleaning out my files. I wrote this for an assignment I was given in a script writing class I took over the internet. The intent was to help us grasp the concept of "why" in a movie, what it's all about, or the reason behind it. I thought I'd put it out there for public consumption before deleting it forever.
A little background is needed in order to put my assignment into context. Richard is the instructor as I've already stated and Judith was my sole classmate. Richard had submitted his "why" as an example for us to look over. His was several pages long, began hundreds of millions of years ago in the primordial swamp and was imbued by post modern thought.
Don't try to sing this though, you'll only end up hurting yourself.

Dear Richard,

You are very philosophical and complex and I am not. "See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ." I've been taken captive according to Christ. I'm sure you'll find me to be simplistic. But if you want to know my heart and soul, here it goes.

Why? Because He first loved me, as the song goes. I am because I am thought me, and before the foundations of the earth were laid, predestined me, and called me according to His purpose, and justified me and glorified me.

I cannot over emphasize this: I am a person deeply changed be the love of God in Christ Jesus. I have been touched by a heavenly Father who, "watches me with His eye upon me, and instructs me and counsels me in the way I should go." He heals my deepest wounds, and He restores my soul. I love Him. I simply cannot talk about the depth of the riches of His grace towards me in Christ Jesus, or His abundant mercy towards me, or the gentleness of His rod of correction on me without crying. This sounds totally corny to you, but it's true.

And my why animates my every thought and deed. I am compelled by the love of God and I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ for it is the power of God unto salvation, first for the Jew and then for the gentile. I can attest to that power.

I live to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever" as the Westminster Shorter Catechism goes. I didn't write it, but I own it. I've adopted it and it is my purpose.

But it is only my broad purpose. I am persuaded by scripture that I have a distinct purpose, that God created me with talents and interests for a reason. For: "...you are His workmanship...created...for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them." And, "I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord..." And, "Show me the work of my hands, O Lord. Yes, confirm to me the work of my hands."

And so exploring my talents, using my creativity is an act of worship for me. And being known by you and Judith and knowing you and Judith is acting in the very image of God. It is an act of love.

And love is my ultimate truth.

And so that's my why. What's yours? Do tell.

Wait Upon the Lord

2005-02-24T00:52:00.000-04:00

In my daily reading, I came across:

"I waited patiently for the Lord;

And He inclined to me,

And heard my cry.

He also brought me up out of a horrible pit,

Out of the miry clay,

And set my feet upon a rock,

And established my steps.

He has put a new song in my mouth --

Praise to our God;

Many will see it and fear,

And will trust in the Lord.

Psalm 40:1-3

Waited Patiently

It's in the waiting, I've learned. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

I have been weary, oh, so weary; Bone dry in spirit, emotionally empty, physically exhausted. Jackals have haunted the hollow places of my soul, a barren, desert land. My heavens have been bronze and my earth like iron.

And I have cried out to the Lord, even pleaded, begged. Lord, renew my strength, my foot slips.

But God slept while the storm raged around me.

It is in the waiting and through the waiting that God does His work, not in the immediate delivering.

And we are to wait patiently. Build homes and live in them, plant gardens and eat of their fruit because this captivity is going to take a while. But God will remember His promise and bring His beloved back to the promised land in due time.

He inclined to me, And heard my cry. He also brought me up out of a horrible pit,

Praise God, He is good. He did not allow His Holy One to see decay, and neither will he suffer it with you. God will deliver you from your doubt and fear, heartbreak or despair and set your feet upon a rock, The Rock. He will make your feet like hinds feet, and set you upon the high places. In time, He will do this. It only takes time.

And then, this is my favorite part, He will put a new song in your mouth. Sing to me a new song, our God demands. Out of the suffering we patiently endured, He forms a new song of praise in our soul and brings it forth from our lips through joy. He works a new work of faith in His believer, a new understanding of love, a new experience of forgiveness and it becomes our song, a precious melody, a joyful noise unto the Lord.

Praise God. Many will see it and fear, And will trust in the Lord.

But the secret is in the waiting.

by C.C.Kurzeja