Read the winning short stories and poetry from Rotary Club of Summit County's high school writing contest - Summit Daily News
Read the winning short stories and poetry from Rotary Club of Summit County's high school writing contest - Summit Daily News |
- Read the winning short stories and poetry from Rotary Club of Summit County's high school writing contest - Summit Daily News
- Fierce, passionate NMSU English professor lit fire in student writers - New Mexico State University NewsCenter
- Acclaimed Romance Novelist Judith Krantz Dies at 91 - TIME
- Recommended Summer Books - Tufts Now
| Posted: 25 Jun 2019 09:22 AM PDT  Courtesy photo First-place poem"Ice" by Freya Schlaefer it is the dangerous slickness it is the light glinting it is the pattern of frost it is the hard casing it is the wall you yet all ice must Second-place poem (tie)"My Mom" by Isabelle Tarrant "No mud, no lotus." Second-place poem (tie)"White" by Audrey Anderson White is emptiness, White is like sorrow, White is loneliness, White is like hopelessness, White is a feeling, First-place short story"The Cavern of Gods" by Katerina Lee A man will go his entire life searching for fulfillment, some never find it, and some come away from it changed in a way they had never expected. Fulfillment: a vague word handed out to optimists as lollipops are handed to children. We seize upon it, devoting time to it without considering the meaning until afterward. Men devour it, teenagers dream of it, and old codgers wish that they had found it. For me, fulfillment was the label I gave to what I sought, but it was only a small portion of what I found. Since the beginning of western culture, we have sought for our history, something to tie us to a world before, something to ground ourselves, and to prove that we are more than just specks of dust in an unforgiving universe. This insatiable need to know the past carried on through history passed down from the world of Europe to its cultural child in Mexico. In my youth, I was an avid learner; devouring stories, legends, and the true stories of history. It was unexpected, then, when I followed my passion to study anthropology and history in Mexico City. My career flourished and with every passing year I became more devoted to my studies of the Mayan culture in the Yucatán peninsula. My name is Víctor Segovia Pinto, and this is my tale of search, discovery, excitement, despair, and fulfillment. • • • There is a now famous city in the Yucatán peninsula; the city of Chichén Itzá. As a relic of Mayan culture which is beautifully preserved and full of cultural importance, it draws archaeologists from around the world. In 1965, I was presented with the opportunity to not only go to the famed city but to also search the surrounding area for evidence of Mayan presence. I arrived in June with a handpicked team of graduate students from the university I taught at and was warmly received by the site director. In no time we were scouring the land around the city. For days we walked through the jungle, looking for a hint that any piece of ground would be worthy of excavation. Our hours were spent hiking, looking for snakes, and avoiding the dark corners which every dense forest presents. Days turned to weeks. We began camping for several days at a time before returning to the city, occasionally setting up long enough to excavate an area and prove that there was nothing there. Weeks turned to months, and we had found almost nothing of importance. Our efforts had been rewarded only with dust and dirt. It was with disappointment that we had just abandoned our latest failed excavation and were hiking back to Chichén Itzá when we found it. A water break requested by a student who leaned on a rock wall quickly turning into a celebration among a group of academics who had worked hard for a discovery of any kind. Little more than a mile from the main city, we found Balamkú, "The Cave of the Jaguar God." The cavern was immediately recognizable as a site of Mayan importance. There were carvings in the cliff face lightly covered with lichen and greenery. Just inside I could see traces of artifacts: small pottery shards half buried by sediment. I immediately sent word to our patron in Chichén Itzá via two of my graduate students, telling him of our discovery and asking him to furnish the two students with extra supplies. In the meantime, the other students and I began to set up a temporary camp at the cave entrance. Four small tents with an additional tent for shade in the center created our own mark of civilization in the midst of an untamed jungle. Just before nightfall the students I had sent ahead returned to our cavern bearing rope, flashlights, archaeological tools and a number of other small items. That night we planned our first expedition into the cave, the seriousness of planning quickly dissolving into an impromptu celebration. At first light, our preparations began. It had been decided that I, as the most experienced archaeologist of the group, would enter the cave while the rest would remain outside (there was scarcely enough room for one man to crawl on his stomach, let alone multiple). If I ever found anything of archaeological importance I would return and guide the students to it. One student would remain outside holding the rope to ensure that I would not lose my way. After a short period of time, however, it was determined that the cave was too large for this method to work for long, and so I began to map the cave instead. Days were spent in this manner as I mapped the cave, only venturing forward as I became familiar with the paths of the cavern and could be sure that I would not lose myself within the seemingly infinite maze. I was certain that every corner held a new mystery, a discovery of immense value, something more than the carvings on the wall outside. On the seventh day, I was rewarded. I had been crawling through the cave system for what I measured to be three or four hours before I emerged in a suddenly large cavern. Among a multitude of stalactites scattered across the floor were Mayan bowls, statues, incense burners, plates and so much more. I stood up shining my flashlight across the floor in wonder and excitement, but I scarcely had time to process what I was seeing because in that same moment the walls around me began to shift. It was as if paint was flaking from the cave walls, revealing something which had always been behind them. Light sprang into the room as torches appeared on the walls. Dark rock shifted into carved brick as beautiful as the Mayan pyramids. Stalagmites and stalactites reached to one another and formed columns, sturdy and square. Before I was aware of what had occurred, the transformation was finished and I stood in a room which looked as if it had been finished yesterday. Artifacts sat lightly on the ground all around me, renewed and painted in vibrant reds and blues. "I thought you might enjoy this place as it had been before," a soft purring voice said behind me, stirring me from my shock. I whipped my head around only to be confronted with a sight nearly as strange as the shifting walls. A jaguar sat calmly on his haunches looking at me with a cocked head, waiting for me to respond. "It's beautiful is it not?" he said, prompting me. "Yes. It truly is, but I must ask, who are you?" The jaguar laughed jovially. "I am the jaguar god of the people whom you have labeled the Maya. I have made myself known because you trespassed and I would like to give you a chance before I kill you." I was startled at how calmly he spoke of killing me. He laughed and gave me the gift of seeing this cavern as it was, and yet he threatened my life. "You see," he continued, "I sensed you had entered this cave several days ago. I was intrigued by your curiosity for culture, but I will tell you that it is one of my many duties to protect this sacred place. I would ask you to explain why you have come here." "It is a long story," I said, bowing my head to the god. "Then come. Sit, and we will speak." Drinking chocolate in intricately painted mugs materialized in front of the jaguar and he gestured with a paw to the place in front of him. With that, I began to explain the concept of archaeology. Everything from the concept itself, to my involvement in it and how I had come to be here. As I spoke animals filtered into the cave and watched me with rapture, enough for me to be convinced that they too were gods. A large cobra sat coiled upon itself in from of the opening through which I had entered, its head lifted to regard me. Several parrots and rabbits grouped on the edge. Another jaguar and a black panther also appeared. By the time I had finished my explanation the room was crowded. I finished speaking and the jaguar stretched out and then looked towards the sidelines before returning his gaze to me. "Your people are grave robbers. You call your graves sacred and yet desecrate ours to remove our people and examine their bones. You call yourselves explorers of a noble cause, and yet you disregard our ancient laws on which nobility is based. You seek knowledge, and yet you ignore all wisdom. You seek to protect, and yet you kill. All this I know from the time before, when your people first visited mine," the jaguar paused at this, looking to his fellows. "Despite all this, I sensed an innocence within you. You exude curiosity and it was for this reason that I allowed you to speak. Do you truly seek to understand our culture and nothing more?" I decline my head, feeling for the first time guilt for tracing my roots to Europe, "Yes. That is what I wish." The jaguar looked once again to his fellows and I felt as if a conversation was taking place from which I was excluded. After reaching what I believed was a conclusion, the jaguar spoke. "Very well. I will allow you to continue your research, but with several stipulations. You will remain in this room for only one hour, after which you will depart. You will keep anything you learn to yourself and your fellows outside of this cave. When you leave Balamkú, you will not return and you will seal the entrance. We reward curiosity, but we cannot have this place harmed. This room is sacred to us, and to the people who lived here long ago. Archaeology, as you have explained it, I may support, but I will not permit you to remove the relics from here. If you do, you are no better than a thief or grave robber." I felt immense relief wash over me as I realized I had been holding my breath. Up until that point I had done my best to stifle my fear, hoping that the jaguar would not have killed me. Despite his relaxed demeanor, however, I feel certain that had my answers to his questions been unsatisfactory, he would have. I quickly expressed my thankfulness to him. Slowly the other gods drained the room until only the initial jaguar remained. Just as he was about to leave, I felt the urge to ask one more question. "You said you rewarded curiosity. Will you explain your culture to me?" The jaguar turned and I could almost see a smile on his face. "Certainly," he responded warmly. The two of us sat together in that room for the allocated hour as I questioned him about the relics, the people, and the cave itself. When my time was spent, he guided me back to the entrance of the cave before disappearing back into the darkness. I watched him as he went, his paws padding silently, his tail swishing. I felt at that moment, joy for having been granted such an opportunity, but also sadness for never being able to return. I greeted my graduate students and told them the story. I'm certain that more than one of them thought that I had gone mad, but they helped me to seal the entrance out of loyalty to me and the year we had spent together. That night I returned to Chichén Itzá with a story a failure to tell the site director, who was more than disappointed but was understanding. My time in the Cave of the Jaguar was short-lived, but my life pursuit was reaffirmed and I continued to research the lives and culture of the Maya. There is a power residing in that cave, one which I feel humbled to have interacted with. Despite this, I feel that at the same time there are few who would have obtained the jaguar's mercy in today's world of hateful, greedy and power-hungry. • • • The cave of Balamkú is a true place located just south of Chichén Itzá. Víctor was also a true person who discovered the cave in 1966. He, however, sealed the cave entrance and left very little record that the cave ever existed. In March of 2019, the cave was rediscovered and contains over 150 of untouched Mayan relics. This has been my attempt to explain why Víctor sealed and mysteriously left the cave. Second-place short story"Muscle Memory" by Jack Kliegerman Admiral Urian Neilos had sat at his command throne for several hours, staring into the void that lay before him, the monotony interspersed by the occasional administrative dealing or junior officer coming to him with communications from other ships. It was a dull time and one in which very few events, naval or civilian, had occurred. The bell tolled, four distinct cracks above the din of the bridge, signalling a shift in the time, and therefore, one of the few times out of the day where he was granted a short reprieve. One, two, three, four, the bells came, and in that same rhythm, Neilos brought himself to a stand before being relieved by his newly arrived executive officer and making for his cabin. The metallic fingers of his right hand closed around the inner door of his cabin, bringing it to a close as he sat down and undid the top buttons of his uniform, breathing deeply as he closed his eyes and relaxed for a moment. It was times like these that his mind went backwards. Times when there was nothing to occupy his mind when his past returned to his thinking. He looked down to his right arm, torn fully from the socket, a prosthetic had remained in its place for well over twenty years. It was all well and good, he figured, as long as they both functioned the same. Indeed, there was very little difference in function between the two that he could remember. The replacement did not require months of recovery from injuries. The flesh and bone version would tire and pain when it was overworked, while the steel addition could act as long as possible. By any accounts, it was superior to the original. Neilos, however, had never thought of it that way. The arm was never used for anything besides basic tasks. It was stable enough to hold and use a pen, unflinching during target practice, yet it was never given anything of a true test of its ability. Neilos himself had not done much to challenge himself in any area for months. His eyes darted to the corner of his room to a black rectangular case which sat against the wall by his cot. Frayed edges displayed the wood which made up the hard case, color faded beyond resemblance of its original, yet it was not the case that mattered to him. He rose from his chair and took hold of the case. As soon as the metal latches were undone, the real value of the case was laid before him as it had so often before, although the frequency had waned significantly as the years drew on. Simple, it was. Simple, yet beautiful nonetheless. A violin, his violin. The faded varnish and worn down fingerboard all outfittings and traits that he had come to know and identify with over the years they had been together. The case was airtight and did not allow for moisture to seep through the cracks, so the wood was always in the same condition as it had been when his parents had purchased it. The tone, as a result, had not changed a jot, despite the appearance growing more haggard and shabby as constant playing had worn down the neck and parts of the body where his hands had frequently eroded. Months had passed since he had even picked it up. As a result, a quick pluck of each string revealed them all to be terribly out of tune. The best was a half step out, and the worst was such that it had gone slack as the peg had slipped from the headstock. With thumb and forefinger he slipped the peg back into its holes and twisted it forward, tuning the string and embedding the peg into the headstock. The rest of the strings were simpler and easier to fix, and before long, the open strings rang out, an open fifth as he plucked them back and forth, grinning with satisfaction. He breathed a sigh of relief as he looked up now to see he had the good sense to loosen the bow before placing it away. His old teacher's constant nags had not gone to waste and the bow, besides lacking in rosin, was otherwise in perfect condition. He wrapped a metal finger and thumb around the screw before tightening the bow until its alabaster hairs grew taught. He removed his rosin from the case, scratching it and bringing out the dust before running it over the bow hairs. Thoughts of the past and memories of times long gone drew further away as he brought his violin up to his shoulder, standing to his full height in the proper and dignified yet relaxed posture that had been embedded in his memory since childhood. His muscles remembered the position and sank into a familiar ease once he had taken the stance. A reserved smile crept over his face as he raised his bow. Though it never felt as natural as with the real thing, the prosthetic arm grasped the bow in the same way. A deep breath brought his entire torso up to before releasing as he threw his arm around in a circle, bringing the bow down swiftly, striking an open A before a slur brought the piece into a rapid succession of the scale, finally ending the phrase on an elongated D#, a wild vibrato accentuating the note for a spare moment before the rest of the piece began to take shape. It was an older tune, one he had learned shortly after joining the Navy. E major was the key, and 4/4 was the time. The piece continued from the last phrase with a rapid succession up the scale, shifting between strings and repeating phrases as it went. One, two, three, four , the notes came, two, two, three, four a grace note sang out along a high E before the piece moved back along it's upwards dynamic. Three, two, three, four , a half note brought the song to a halt for a spare moment. Neilos closed his eyes as he let the note ring for its allotted time. When the rest of the measure, and the rest of the piece followed, he did not open his eyes. His hands knew the piece. The ghost memory of his right arm was still retained in his metal appendage and his eyes were not needed to guide either. He reached a rapid successive phrase on his E string and remembered a horribly flat note which was followed by a half measure rest. The incorrect sound echoed throughout the hall and turned his cheeks red such that he was terribly out of time when he picked it up at the end of the rest. One and two, three, four and … his mind sang as the same phrase flew from his hands. The error was a long memory, and one not maintained by his muscles any longer. Memories of the his long practice hours correcting that very phrase leapt back into memory, vivid and real, as if his younger self were in the very room. One, two the rest ended, three, four , it picked up with a new melody. The lower strings now received extended treatment as the piece dropped in tone. Elements of the first melody still rang out, but they were shadowed, darker and richer in sound. They fell from his G string with biting and rapid notes flowing from an anchor note which formed the bulk of this section, always the phrase returned to it, and all the subsequent parts flowed from and around it. His memories traveled and danced with the violin as he played. More memories of his times practicing in engine rooms so as to not disturb the other midshipmen brought him a quick chuckle in between a string crossing. Gruff and portly senior officers complaining about the racket as he found time to practice as a Lieutenant. It was this final memory which finally gave way to a different thought, one he had avoided for as long as possible. A flat note rang out like a nail on chalk as a familiar, uneasy feeling fell upon him. It was the same feeling as had plagued him when he first sat down and his mind fell to wandering earlier. He could not stop playing, he felt, so he continued counting, more clearly this time, as he regained his place in the piece. His timing was impeccable as always, though now that the memory was at the forefront of his mind, there was little that counting could do to save him. One. The ship jolted as an auto cannon raked the hull. Two. A hastily loaded cannon exploded to his left. Three. Shrapnel tore his Gunnery captain in two as the ship's bulkheads screeched and collapsed. Four, silence. Only silence followed as a short tremolo section ended in a measure of rest. Neilos opened his eyes as the memory came to play out. Not even visual stimuli could distract it. He continued playing after the rest. One, two, three, four. One, two, three and four and… One foot fell in front of the other in a staggered waltz as he struggled to get to his gun. The majority of his crew lay strewn about the gun deck, body parts trapped and torn across every section of the deck itself. His gunner remained, crouched behind the firing mechanism, knuckles white as they gripped the massive weapon desperately as the ship burned around him. Four and… One, two, three, four armsmen sprinted past Neilos, shouting commands and terrified warnings to anyone still living. The majority of the cries were drowned out by the moans and high pitched whines of the broken ship, but what he could hear, he wished he hadn't. Out of the mix of shouts and screams, a single word could be discerned, "Boarding." Three, two, three, four. Another round of shells splattered against the outer hull, sending three of the armsmen sprawling to their stomachs on the blood drenched floor as the fourth held on tight to one of the guns. He opened his mouth a final time, though whatever he had to say was never heard. One metallic smash rang above the cacophony. Two. Three. Four. The firing upon the hull ceased. What followed was even worse. The Admiral reached a key change and the entire piece began a new section, beginning with a measure of detached, short, middle notes. The song stumbled along with the same original melody coming back to accent the new direction of the piece. Five, six, seven, eight creatures burst forth upon the gun deck. They were humanoid in shape and stature, but were not men. The creatures in front of him were torn and mutated shapes, far beyond any mortal recognition. Their legs were bent backwards and ended in flesh covered talons. Their armor was all different colors of magenta, gold, and black, though not made of any ballistic or metal material. Chitin like bone and flesh adorned their bodies. The carrion armor moved and twisted with every motion, shifting its very structure and shape with every passing second. Red, purple, the blood which flowed like a fountain from their armor. Gold, the out of place finery which ribonned and bordered their cloaks. Black, the dead and festering flesh which grew from their armor. Black, he closed his eyes and saw nothing but it. Screams forced his cowardly eyes back to view the scene as his gunner was torn away from his weapon before being thrown across the room with the strength of a giant. An armsman howled a challenge before firing a single burst from his lasgun. The beam of light scorched the warrior at the head of the group, turning a violet pauldron a darkened shade before the beam passed. The flesh screeched and blood boiled as the beam scorched it, and a new layer had grown up and replaced it within a second. The armsman would not get a second chance to renew his attack, a lightning quick repeater round punching through his skull and reducing his head to naught but his lower jaw and wriggling tongue. One, two, and three , the remaining armsmen, regaining their footing, began firing short and rapid bursts at their armored opponents. In response, one of the boarders leapt from his group, violet and gold shining like a sunset as a wickedly curved blade flew from his scabbard. His weapon, carried by superhuman speed, sang as it cut through the air, blood and pus dripping from it like an endless fountain. The center armsman's intestines spilled from his open torso. He screamed, but was silenced when the selfsame blade pierced his temple. The two remaining armsmen backed away before raising their weapons. The left was quicker, and it was him that the corpse wrapped warrior chose as his next victim. His left arm flew forward and knocked the lasgun's barrel off target, a red burst splattering onto the deck below. A thrust carried the monster's blade through the man's lung, snapping through ribs as it did so. A short choke followed before the killer tore his blade upwards and freed itself after cleaving through the armsman's shoulder. Four. Only one remained now, and as the false human turned to face him, it was with stunned terror that the final armsman fell. Frozen and unable to act, he proved the perfect plaything. It took him by the throat before closing its fist and dropping the armsman. Lying flat on his back, arms tearing at his crushed windpipe, he was only able to look up long enough to catch a glimpse of the creature's clawed foot as it came down and flattened his skull. Neilos closed his eyes, though terror and curiosity forced them open again. His fate lay before him, his final judgement waiting mere meters from him. He opened his eyes just in time to hear a final flat note screeching across his E string, a final, out of place and out of tune note to finish the piece. His breathes became gasps and his hands trembled at the memory, though he knew there was far more to it than that. There were some events in his life that, no matter how vivid or horrible, could never be remembered completely, and this one was no different. He did not desire to remember the rest, though a certain part of him knew he needed to. What he recalled as he played however, was the most complete of the memory as he could recall, and that alone was something significant. Always fractured and segmented before, but now they lay before him like an almost completed puzzle. One The piece echoed throughout his mind. Always, the same notes out of key, and always the same memories ringing out as they never had before. Third-place short story"Goodbyes" by Ian Hans Part 1: Collection The delicate shell lays on a green leaf. I don't know where they are from, Mom says they come off of some insect but I don't really care. All I want is the shells, knowing where they come from ruins the fun. They could be from some tiny monster from another dimension that leaves behind its skin in ours. Or they are some creature that gets scared of me and tries to turn invisible, but I still see it because I am clever. Ever so carefully I pick it up, I learned my lesson to be careful after breaking so many. My favorite part is holding it in my hands. I have it, it's mine now. I can do whatever I want with it. In this case, I will bring him back home to add him to my growing collection. I need something to put it in, but what? Grandma probably has something. She has lots of things. Mom said she is kind of a hoarder whatever that means. I think when you get older all the things you get you don't want to get rid of. I'm only 7 and have plenty of things, like the wood fire truck I got for Christmas. I don't ever want to get rid of that. Walking through the porch door I can smell that smell. I don't know what it is but it is always around old things. Maybe it is just the smell of old. I love this smell because grandma and grandpa smell like that and I love them. "Grandma!" no response. She must be in the basement or upstairs. I should try the basement first. I don't run down the stairs, they scare me and I don't want to wake up the ghosts. The basement has a wonderful smell. Laundry is all done down here so the smell of soap is heavy. "Grandma?" whoosh whoosh click click, the dryer is running. "Grandma?" whoosh whoosh click click. I'm getting scared, I know there are ghosts down here. I don't want to be here alone. Whoosh whoosh click click. "Yes?" Oh, thank goodness, I'm safe she appears from around a corner. "What do you want?". "I need a something to put this in" I lift the shell to show her my prized possession. "Oh well I think I have just the thing for it," she said this slightly disgusted but still happy. She leads me up the stairs in a slow fashion but I don't think it's because she's scared. If she is she would not live in this house. In the kitchen I see Mom making something for lunch but I don't care all I want is that container. We turn to go up the curvy staircase, this one reminds me of a castle staircase. Grandma's going slower than I would like on this staircase but I don't mind. She is giving me a gift after all. Turning the corner of the stairs we begin to speed up. The shell lays delicately cupped between my hands like it is a secret that only Grandma and I know about. Finally, we reach the bedroom. Grandma sure does have a lot of things. In her closet, she has clothes on clothes and many drawers with who knows what in them. There's even more stuff in the attic where I sleep with the squirrels in the roof, or is it more ghosts? "I think I have it in here…" Grandma says as she looks through a drawer. I try to peak over there but can't get a clear look at what she's got in there. "Here you go," she says pulling out a small red box. It's the perfect size for the skin of my insect husk! "Thank you, Grandma," I say reaching for the box. This thing is awesome! " do you have any more?" I can't have just one because it wouldn't be much of a collection. "Well sure, I just have to look some more". She is so awesome, always giving me stuff. I guess it's because you get so many things in life that you can't help but share what you have got with other people. When I am older I guess I would want to do the same thing. Part 2: Chess "Can we go to the bookstore?" I love going to the bookstore with Grandpa he always gets me something. "Do you want to play chess?" Grandpa always wants to play chess. It must be because he does not have a lot of other things to do. He doesn't have to go to school, lucky. But it must get pretty boring. "Sure grandpa," Mom says I should play with him because it helps exercise his brain. I like chess but don't love it. I am not very good at it like my friends are. Grandpa must be pretty good though seeing that he always wants to play it. I don't like losing but I'll do it for grandpa. "Do you want to play chess?" He has Alzheimer's, Mom says that's why he forgets things a lot. It can get annoying but I know it is not his fault. "Yeah, I'll get the board". I think it is in the drawer behind the table. Yes, there it is, I hope all the pieces are still in there. 'Let's play". "Oh yes," he is really excited. I know I should play chess with him more but he can forget the rules and he always beats me anyway. I hear old people are wise and I am only ten so what chance do I have of beating him? Putting my last pawn on the edge of the board I see that grandpa has not started. "Here, I can help." "No I got it," he says as he puts the rook in the wrong square. How can I remind him without upsetting him or making him feel bad because he can't remember? "I think that piece goes here." "Oh yeah, thank you" his eyebrows raised for a second putting on an expression of confusion. I offer to help put the pieces in place so we can play. I should not be inpatient it is not his fault anyway. "There we go" the last piece goes in the right place, I think that jogged his memory because he looks excited again. His first move is his pawn in front of the queen two spaces up. I always have trouble deciding my first move so I copy him. Next, he moves his left rook out, I do my right. The game slowly advances with grandpa taking his time on every move, perhaps he is trying to remember the rules. He tries to move his bishop like it was a knight. "Oh, you can't do that Grandpa" "Right, right," he thinks about it for a while and moves it correctly taking out my knight. A stupid mistake on my part but it seemed to lift his mood more so I feel good about it. As I play I start to think does my grandpa having this disease put my mom at greater risk for it as well? It is really hard to see grandpa go through this but for my mom, that would be terrible. Thinking about it more I never really knew my grandpa before the disease, except when I was very little maybe. Mom says he was a lot different before. I wish I could know him that way. He is still a great Grandpa but not the person he was. So what if my mom gets it. Will she become totally different, I really hope she doesn't. What if I get it? What will happen to me? Will, I not be able to play chess? Maybe I should focus more on the game. I have his king in a corner and I still have my queen. I could really win against him for the first time! Just a few more good moves and I could get "checkmate." "What? Hmmf!" I did it I actually won. I would like to play chess with him more. Even though he lost he stills seems really happy. Maybe I made his brain better. "Good game" I offer up my hand and he shakes it. "Can we go to the bookstore now?" "Sure" Grandpa likes the bookstore also, he could spend hours in one looking for books he might never read. I think going to the bookstore helps his brain as well. Mom is always saying how good reading is for me so it must be good for him as well. Part 3: Goodbyes This is the last time I will be at this house. Grandma has passed away and grandpa is moving farther away mentally. All my family is here to help move things or take things that they want from the house. A good thing about this I guess is I get a lot of things for my collection of knick-knacks. I will probably be like Grandma, having a lot of things when I am older. Going through photos is the coolest part I think, seeing Grandma and Grandpa's life progress. I was only able to witness the ending but their stories are so much longer than what I know. We watched a tape where Grandpa was playing with my mom and Aunt, that's the first time I saw him as a father. It was a glimpse of the man I was never truly able to meet. Going through the basement, we find all of their zither things. Music, strings, even a few zithers which I will have to learn to play. I still wonder if there are ghosts down here. I was convinced when I was little, probably due to the night we spent down here during a tornado. It kind of hurts to think about that, but it also makes me happy. Happy that I can remember these things. I love this house and all the memories within it, summer days spent looking for cicada shells or playing chess with Grandpa. Making my way up to the attic, I can hear the squirrels rustling about up there. I knew I would have to say goodbye to this house sometime so why does it hurt so bad? I guess I am worried that I will forget. Without the reminder of these things then how will I remember. It's time to go but I don't want to leave this house. I don't want to leave Grandma and Grandpa. In the car Dad is pulling out of the driveway, "Goodbye Grandma" I say to myself. But why? Just because we are leaving the house doesn't mean I have to leave her. I can hold onto those memories without the house. Just like the knick knacks I took from there. The house and those memories can stay alive in my heart even if they go away in real life. I can carry Grandma and Grandpa wherever I go, all I have to do is keep them in my heart. Keep them where they have always been and always will be.  |
| Posted: 25 Jun 2019 07:54 AM PDT Date: 06/25/2019 Lee K. Abbott's impact on students was indelible. After a lifetime writing award-winning short stories and teaching creative writing at universities across the country, Abbott returned to Las Cruces, where he grew up. His life ended in Columbus, Ohio where he was undergoing medical treatment. Abbott lost his battle with leukemia on April 29. He was 71.  Lee K. Abbott, NMSU distinguished visiting professor of English, returned to Las Cruces in 2014 to teach creative writing. (Courtesy photo)  Award-winning short story author and NMSU English professor Lee K. Abbott seen here talking to students in April 2017. Abbott died Monday, April 29, 2019. (Photo courtesy Las Cruces Sun-News/Josh Bachman) Abbott is remembered for the energy and inspiration he gave his students. New Mexico State University students were among the last to benefit from his teaching. "He was quirky – a tall drink of water, loved his bourbon, loved a cigarette," said NMSU Master of Fine Arts graduate Barry Pearce when describing Abbott. "Words like gallant and gentleman come to mind. He was old school in some ways, but also utterly progressive, passionate about civil rights, women's rights, income inequality." Abbott attended Las Cruces High School and graduated from NMSU with a bachelor's degree in 1970 and a master's degree in English in 1973. He met his wife at NMSU and went on to receive a master's of fine arts from the University of Arkansas. In 1989, he became a professor of English at The Ohio State University, where he remained until he retired in 2012. "What set Lee apart was his national reputation as a master short story writer, as well as the fact that virtually every one of his short stories is set in Las Cruces, Deming or El Paso," said Rus Bradburd, NMSU English professor and author of several books. "He dearly loved New Mexico and was proud of his ties to his alma mater." What Abbott didn't tell students is that he was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. "Just shows how modest he really was," Pearce said. "He never bragged, never brought up his own work or his many honors. He preferred talking about you, your story, your work." Another of Abbott's master's of fine arts students, Em Haymans, recalled his intensity. "He loved fiercely," Haymans said. "He carried stories of all the people and places and books that he loved with him wherever he went, and he loved to share them. Abbott's short stories and essays appeared in Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, The Georgia Review and The New York Times Book Review among others. His fiction was often reprinted in The Best American Short Stories and The Prize Stories: The O'Henry Awards. His last collection of stories, "All Things, All at Once: New & Selected Stories," was published by Norton in 2006. Abbott's colleagues remember his talent, his humanity and his obsession with his craft. "Lee could be both blunt and generous, open-minded and rigid," Bradburd said. "He conjured up the oldest kind of magic in storytelling, focusing on the human heart, yet his sentences were fresh, lively, and energetic. He has to be considered the greatest New Mexican short story writer in history."  |
| Acclaimed Romance Novelist Judith Krantz Dies at 91 - TIME Posted: 23 Jun 2019 08:01 PM PDT  LOS ANGELES (AP) — Writer Judith Krantz, whose million-selling novels such as "Scruples" and "Princess Daisy" engrossed readers worldwide with their steamy tales of the rich and beautiful, died Saturday at her Bel-Air home. She was 91.Krantz's son Tony Krantz, a TV executive, confirmed her death by natural causes on Sunday afternoon. He said he'd hoped to re-create the "Scruples" miniseries before her she died but it is still in the works."She had this rare combination of commercial and creative," he said. Krantz wrote for Cosmopolitan and Ladies Home Journal magazines before discovering, at age 50, the talent for fiction that made her rich and famous like the characters she created. Her first novel — "Scruples" in 1978 — became a best-seller, as did the nine that followed. Krantz's books have been translated into 52 languages and sold more than 85 million copies worldwide. They inspired a series of hit miniseries with the help of her husband, film and television producer Steve Krantz. "I always ask myself if what I'm writing will satisfy a reader who's in a plane that can't land because of fog, or who's recovering from an operation in a hospital or who has to escape to a more delightful world for whatever reason," Krantz said in 1990. "That is the test."  The Brief NewsletterSign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now. View Sample While her work was decidedly less than highbrow, Krantz made no apologies for the steamy novels with titles like "Princess Daisy," "Mistral's Daughter," "Lovers," "I'll Take Manhattan" and "The Jewels of Tessa Kent." "I write the best books I know how," she once said. "I can't write any better than this." She filled her stories with delicious details about her characters' lavish lifestyles — designer clothes, luxurious estates — and enviable romances. And she spared no specifics when it came to sex. "If you're going to write a good erotic scene, you have to go into details," Krantz told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. "I don't believe in thunder and lightning and fireworks exploding. I think people want to know what's happening." So appealing were her sensational stories of high-powered heroines that each novel was reimagined for television as an episodic miniseries. Steve Krantz, a millionaire in his own right through such productions as the animated film "Fritz the Cat," helped translate his wife's work for TV. The author was also famous for living a glamorous life that paralleled that of her characters. Her home in Los Angeles' exclusive Bel Air community featured a soundproof writing room flanked by an immaculately kept garden. In her closet were many of the same designer-label clothes the characters in her books wore. The eldest of three children, Krantz was born Judith Bluma Tarcher in 1928 in New York City. Her father owned an advertising agency, and her mother worked as an attorney. Her brother, publisher Jeremy Tarcher, married the late ventriloquist Shari Lewis. Growing up, Krantz was a precocious student at New York's exclusive Birch Wathen school, once describing herself as the youngest, smartest and shortest girl in her class. After skipping two grades, she enrolled at Wellesley College at age 16. She was also by her own account an indifferent college student. She said she only enrolled at Wellesley "to date, read and graduate" and claimed to have set a record for her dorm by once dating 13 different men on 13 consecutive evenings. "I got only one A-plus, and that was in English 101," she told The Boston Globe in 1982. "I had a B-minus average in English, my major, and made C's and C-minuses in everything else. But I didn't come here to get good marks." When she could earn no better than a B in a short story class, she decided she wasn't good enough to write fiction. "Just in time for my 50th birthday, I discovered that I could write fiction. My husband had urged me to try fiction for 15 years before I did," she was quoted in a profile on Wellesley's website in 2001. "I believed that if I couldn't write 'literature,' I shouldn't write at all." "Now, I would say to young women, do something you have a true feeling for, no matter how little talent you may believe you have," she added. "Let no masterwork be your goal — a modest goal may lead you further than you dream." Krantz had met her husband through her high school friend Barbara Walters, who introduced the two in 1953. They married the following year. "I fell in love with him the minute I saw him," she once said. Her husband died in 2007 at age 83. The couple had two sons, Tony and Nick, a stockbroker, and two grandchildren. Krantz's family requested that donations be given to the Library Foundation of Los Angeles in lieu of flowers. Her memoir, "Sex and Shopping: The Confessions of a Nice Jewish Girl," was published in 2001 and it reflected on her penchant for telling sex-drenched tales about the pretty and the privileged. "In my opinion, there are two things women will always be interested in — sex and shopping," she said in 1994. "And if they're not, they've left out a large part of the fun in life." ___ This story includes biographical material compiled by former AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen.  |
| Recommended Summer Books - Tufts Now Posted: 25 Jun 2019 09:28 AM PDT At the start of every summer vacation season, we ask members of the Tufts community to tell us about books that they've read and recommend to others. This year's offerings are as extensive and eclectic as ever: a fantasy reimagining of the 1890s, a hard-boiled mystery, a Greek myth, a fetching love story, a journey through post-apocalyptic America, and a World War II intrigue, plus nonfiction about everything from shipwrecks to DNA tests, a graphic memoir of surfing and loss, a history of the Hub, as well as biographies of a couple of poets from the past—and ancient past. Dive in and enjoy. And for faculty, staff, and students, don't forget that many of these books are available at the Tufts libraries. If you have other suggestions, let us know at now@tufts.edu, and we'll post an update. FICTION
Transcription, by Kate Atkinson. Juliet Armstrong is a very young woman in a London that has just entered World War II. Without realizing what has happened until it has happened, she finds herself recruited by the MI5 intelligence service, where her job becomes transcribing—hence, the title of the book—secretly recorded conversations between an undercover MI5 agent posing as a member of the Gestapo, and a cell of ragtag Nazi sympathizers who think they are helping to undermine the British war effort. Juliet's wartime life, her fellow spies, friends, and acquaintances—both those she knows "in real life" and those she meets when she's released from her typewriter to go undercover—and London itself are vividly and engagingly portrayed. If you've read Penelope Fitzgerald's Human Voices, also set in London during the war, some of this may be familiar territory—and, interestingly, Juliet also finds herself working at the BBC (the setting of Human Voices) after the war ends. This is not a slight story—there are twists and turns, and every character, no matter how seemingly slight, requires attention, because he or she may turn up later. In fact, reading carefully is the key to making sense of the ending of this novel—there is one gigantic plot twist before things are done, and, to be honest, I didn't pick up on any of the clues leading there. Like a good spy, Atkinson left them hiding in plain sight. —Helene Ragovin, senior content producer/editor, Communications & Marketing
Where Reasons End, by Yiyun Li. This spare and cerebral book—Li's new novel of intense retrospection—takes the form of a back-and-forth between a writer and the writer's son, who has died by his own hand at age sixteen. He comes to the writer intermittently to discuss his life and afterlife; she attempts to locate him in space and time, or to accept the impossibility of location, or to maintain his attention, or to accept his attention's ebbs and flows. It's a taut, protracted exchange that reads sometimes like a theater piece, sometimes like a Socratic dialogue, and sometimes like a fully solitary treatise on art and loss. —Natalie Shapero, professor of the practice of poetry, Department of English
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Into the Raging Sea, by Rachel Slade. Are you ready for an excursion likely well out of your everyday experiences? This book, Into the Raging Sea, could be such a diversion for you, taking you into the current world of merchant shipping which is largely out of sight and out of mind for most of our population. It is the
P Working, by Robert A. Caro. In this slim volume, Caro tells us how he writes his insightful books and why he does so. It is understandable for a reader to think that in his  |
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American Hippo, by Sarah Gailey. Gailey's series of novellas and short stories, set in the 1890s and collected in American Hippo, imagines an alternate history where hippopotami were imported and released into the bayous of Louisiana. Hippo cowboy and dapper conman Winslow Remington Houndstooth gathers an all-star team of cons, assassins, and outlaws to pull off the ultimate job: reclaiming the enormous swamp that was once the Mississippi River from the deadly feral hippos who now rule it. Alternately brutal, exciting, bleak, funny, and tender, American Hippo is a rollicking adventure. The setting is novel, the hippo facts are engrossing (and alarming), and the heists, tricky schemes, and action scenes are as wild as they are satisfying. But the collection's true heart lies in its diverse cast of characters. Though most members of Houndstooth's team previously knew each other by reputation only, they find themselves beginning to build life-changing connections. The tentative romance that blooms between Houndstooth and nonbinary demolitions expert Hero standing out as a particular highlight. All hippo shenanigans are just a bonus. —Lynne Powers, senior communications specialist, School of Engineering
Circe, by Madeline Miller. Thousands of years before she becomes a foil in The Odyssey, Circe is born and raised in the halls of titans, but possesses powers unlike any of them. Her witchcraft threatens the powers of both the gods and titans, and she is exiled to the deserted island Aiaia, where she creates her own lawless kingdom. Circe's immortality allows Miller to cast an eagle's eye view over millennia of Greek mythology. Circe witnesses the transformation of Scylla into the famous leviathan, the birth of the Minotaur, the craftsmanship of Daedalus, Madea's obsession with violence, and, finally, Odysseus' arrival at her shores. Unlike her fellow gods and goddesses, she harbors an affection for mortals. Famously, that can never end well. Miller, a former high school classics teacher, re-examined The Illiad in her debut novel, Song of Achilles, which viewed the Trojan War through the travails of Achilles' companion and lover Patroclus. Here, she finds a fresh perspective on another 3,000-year-old Homeric text. In this compelling novel, Miller makes Circe, who once seemed like a footnote on Odysseus' decades-long journey home from that same war, seem like the true heroine of the whole epic. —Robin Smyton, A09, media relations specialist
Electricity, by Claire Gem. Mercy Donohue moves back to New England with her son Reagan to rebuild/repair their lives after a traumatic divorce. Daniel Gallagher has resigned himself to a life without romance after his fiancé's tragic death. While working together on the re-wiring of an old, haunted mental asylum that has been taken over by a school—sound familiar, Cummings School folks?—they find the electricity that flows between the two of them to be irresistible. As an avid fan of the writing of Claire Gem—pen name for Frances Brown, supervisor of histology at Cummings School in Grafton—I had been highly anticipating the release of Electricity. As expected, I was not disappointed. The chemistry between Mercy and Daniel is electrifying—no pun intended. The mysteries that are unraveled sent chills up my spine. I loved how effortlessly the paranormal suspense is intertwined with such intense passion, and on so many levels. I'll be recommending this read to anyone interested in a love story or a suspenseful thriller, guaranteed to give you chills. —Sarah Ducat, histotechnologist, Cummings School
The Lady in the Lake, by Raymond Chandler. After visiting LA earlier this year, I've been rereading Chandler's novels, and though his first two Philip Marlowe mysteries (The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely) get the most praise, The Lady in the Lake, his fourth, is to my mind the strongest. Taking place over three long days, it's taut, driven, classic Chandler, filled with corrupt cops, the grime of late night on the wrong side of the tracks, gigolos, a sleazy doctor serving up morphine and worse to his clients, and tough, wise-guy banter that propels the story forward. Private eye Marlowe is mostly away from his usual haunts in downtown LA—he's at a mountain resort eighty miles away, where a rich businessman's wife was last seen a month before. The puzzle of where she is gets more complicated at each turn, the violence more vivid with each blow Marlowe takes from rogue cops. Unlike in his early novels, which are sometimes warped by a farfetched love interest, Chandler keeps the narrative tight and focused as the bodies pile up; it's also refreshingly free of the slurs against every group that's not straight-WASP-males that litter those earlier books. In this novel, Marlowe can say to one man who earlier beat him up, "I'm all done with hating you. It's all washed out of me. I hate people hard, but I don't hate them very long." —Taylor McNeil, news editor, Tufts Now
My Brilliant Friend, by Elena Ferrante. The first of the four "Neapolitan Novels" that took the world by storm in the original book form and, more recently, in an HBO series, this is a story that reels you in and never lets you go. Two young girls living in the same gritty, violent neighborhood in Naples, Italy, become both friends and rivals. Lenù, who narrates the story, is quiet and studious; Lila is impulsive and combative. Together and individually, they must navigate academic, familial, cultural, economic, and social challenges. As they grow up, their lives weave in and out of each other's, and a multigenerational cast of characters influences—and is influenced by—their actions. As you read about the girls' lives, you become intimately familiar with the streets, buildings, businesses, crime, poverty, politics, and values that define their insular neighborhood and its various inhabitants. I was so immersed in this series that it was pretty much all I could think or talk about during the couple of months in which I was reading it—a fact to which some of my co-workers and family members can attest! —Carol Lidington, J81, A15P, campaign management associate, University Advancement
Red, White & Royal Blue, by Casey McQuiston. College student Alex Claremont-Diaz hates Prince Henry. That wouldn't be a problem for most people, but Alex isn't most people: his mother was elected president of the United States in 2016. Under orders to stage a fake friendship with Henry for the sake of British-U.S. relations after he causes an international incident at a royal wedding, Alex slowly begins to realize that Henry isn't who Alex thought he was. Alex is brilliant and ambitious, itching to follow in his parents' successful political footsteps, but he has a lot to learn about himself—including the fact that hatred may not have been what he was feeling for Henry at all. Red, White & Royal Blue's alternative universe is a hopeful one. The book centers Alex's multiracial Texan political powerhouse family, surrounded by a delightful cast of supporters, and the biggest impediment to Alex and Henry's happiness is their fame and other people's expectations. McQuiston writes sharp, funny, modern dialogue, and her use of texts, emails, and internet memes rendered into prose is especially charming. While some of the plot twists didn't feel fully earned in the end, the journey to get there was so delightful that it was hard to care. —Lynne Powers, senior communications specialist, School of Engineering
The Road, By Cormac McCarthy. Post-Apocalypse America. A man and his young son on a journey. They are not really sure what they are looking for, but they keep on moving through the ash, past other pathetic and threatening people and scenes of devastation. There's no living off the land, but there is some leftover food from before the end. It's grim, to be sure, one desperate moment after another. While there is clearly no hope, there's something that drives them forward. The relationship between the man and the boy feels true and makes you consider what you would do in such circumstances—even well after you have put the book down. —James M. Glaser, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, professor of political science
The Time of Our Singing, by Richard Powers. It's important that I first read this book in Philadelphia. I was on summer break from my job as a public school teacher. Like other books by Powers, The Time of Our Singing is a tapestry—to borrow an image from a pivotal scene in the novel—stitched together by science and art. Delia, a gifted African-American singer, and David, an exiled Jewish physicist, form an unlikely bond after meeting in Washington, D.C., at the historic 1939 concert given by Philadelphia-born and transcendent vocalist Marian Anderson. The story unfolds through the eyes of Joseph, the couple's middle child and pianist for his brother, Jonah, a prodigious tenor. Mixed-race, they straddle white and Black worlds, trusting there are answers in the classical music of the past just as their sister, Ruth, laments her brothers' race politics and sees a future for herself with the Black Panthers. As the title suggests, the book is a meditation on time, especially as time is refracted through America's original sin: how music promises an escape from the slow tempo of racial progress, how racism denies opportunities to talents ahead of their time, how science alone can't help us bend time and bring full liberation now. I returned to the book five years later, now as a researcher of racial inequality in public schools. I read The Time of Our Singing with a pair of turn-of-the-twentieth-century books by W. E. B. Du Bois in mind, themselves animated by the power of music and science: Souls of Black Folk—reflections on how the "sorrow songs" of slaves haunt the present—and The Philadelphia Negro, an empirical study of Black life in the City of Brotherly Love. I saw in The Time of Our Singing how science and music can be allies in racial struggle. We should listen to the truths they reveal. —Freeden Blume Oeur, associate professor of sociology, School of Arts and Sciences.jpg){kind=spacer}
Transcription, by Kate Atkinson. Once again, Kate Atkinson's prose has shapeshifted. Known early on for procedurals featuring detective Jackson Brodie, she defied expectations with an award-winning formalist novel, Life After Life, which kept re-starting its narrative. Transcription charts yet another course, navigating a path between spy conventions and existential reckoning as it tracks the life of mild-mannered British woman Juliet Armstrong from 1940 to 1981. From her job on a children's television show to her secret employment by the MI5 as a typist recording the words of British fascists and Nazi sympathizers, we witness Juliet coming into her own, wrestling with what—or who—is worth trusting, even as she and we wait for the proverbial shoe to drop. Meanwhile, Atkinson builds a portrait of wartime England that brings the era vividly to life, inviting readers to imagine what they might have done in Juliet's shoes. —David Valdes Greenwood, lecturer in English, School of Arts and Sciences
Where Reasons End, by Yiyun Li. In this short novel, a grieving mother recounts conversations with her young son, who has just taken his own life. Nikolai was only sixteen years and twenty-two days old when he died. His mother is filled with a profound sadness, and discovers him in what he calls the aftertime; soon they are talking again, picking up where they left off before his death. Nikolai is still arguing with his mother—a writer—over words, over meaning, over perfection. Neither mother nor son is religious, and these conversations both are and aren't real. Mostly they are a way to keep the thread of connection alive. Li writes what she knows: her teenaged son took his own life several years ago, but he lives on in this book—his cleverness, his asperity, his kindness: the boy who knit, the boy who played oboe, the boy who baked, the boy who called his mother Mommy until the end. He's also the young man who shocked his friends by leaving far too soon, and the mystery of that departure is always floating like a cloud, just out of reach. This poetic book is achingly real; I know because my own son left this world at age fifteen and a half, and while every loss is different, Li's and mine are enough alike that her book touched me deeply. This is how it feels. Li's book, like her other novels, is also a tribute to the beauty of language—so many turns of phrase that seem more like poetry than prose, and all the more remarkable considering her first language is Chinese. —Taylor McNeil, news editor, Tufts Now
White Elephant, by Julie Langsdorf. Maybe Thomas Wolfe was really right: you can't go home again. Because these days "home" is more likely than not a place that changes with the whims of the market. White Elephant, Julie Langsdorf's debut novel, tells a tale of shifting real estate markets, shifty marriages, and how the changes in housing in suburban America often reflect changes in relationships. Sometimes they even cause them. Allison and Ted Miller and their young daughter live in the home where Ted grew up, a small house in the fictional D.C. bedroom community of Willard Park. The town is being fundamentally altered by changes in the people who come to live there, and older homes are dwarfed by the McMansions being built by sleazy developer Nick Cox and his trophy wife, Kaye. The plot thickens when someone in Willard Park begins to decimate its trees and a contentious building moratorium movement divides the town. It's just not safe to go get a latte at the local coffeeshop anymore. Langdorf's clever parody of suburban excess will remind some of Tom Perotta. Her characters, while well-drawn, don't ultimately have the same kind of dark or deranged depth that make Perotta's suburban skewering so compelling. Still, White Elephant is a promising first book and a very good summer read—especially if you're sipping something refreshing while listening to your neighbor's ongoing construction. —Julie Dobrow, senior lecturer, Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development
Apollinaire in the Great War, 1914-18, by David Hunter. When I think of the poetry of World War One, I think of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Robert Graves—but the English, obviously, weren't the only ones writing about their wartime experiences. The French poet Guillaume Apollinaire spent time in the trenches, too, an often-overlooked aspect of his life. Apollinaire—Wilhelm de Kostrowitzky at birth—was a fascinating character, born of a freewheeling mother and unknown father. He never stayed too long in any one place growing up, but came to call Paris home. By the outbreak of the Great War, he was lauded in literary circles for his poetry and art criticism (he was an early champion of Cubism) and was good friends with many in the avant-garde movement, such as Picasso. In the late summer of 1914, he volunteered to serve in the French armed forces, full of misplaced enthusiasm for the war against "the Huns," and headed eventually to the trenches. Hunter follows Apollinaire's life—and loves—during the war, often through his poetry. Even in the trenches, Apollinaire continued to write, and his war poems sometimes take on radical forms—visual art with words. At the front lines, he's appalled by the horrors of war, which is reflected in his poetry. Suffering a head wound in 1916, he was in Paris as the war ended, writing feverishly (plays, poetry, criticism—coining the term surrealism). But like millions of others, he succumbed to the deadly influenza that swept the world in the fall of 1918. He was just thirty-eight years old, but left a legacy that lives on to this day. —Taylor McNeil, news editor, Tufts Now
The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai, by Ha Jin. The poet Li Bai lived in turbulent times in Tang-dynasty China, from 701-762, and yet, somehow, not only are his poems still widely read and recited in China and abroad some 1,300 years later, his life story can be vividly told. Ha Jin, a novelist and sometime poet who has lived in the U.S. since the mid-1980s, brings Li to life in this masterful biography that is also, appropriately, a primer on his poetry. Li was likely not pure Han Chinese. His father was a trader who lived in the western regions outside of China proper, but recognized that his son was bound for better things, and Li got a good education. Brilliant at poetry, with its complex meters, Li desired above all else for much of his life to receive an appointment at the emperor's court. Unable to take the exam to qualify for the royal bureaucracy because he was too low-born, he constantly traveled the country, networking to get civil appointments. The difficulty was that he was obviously brilliant, which made lesser men wary of him, and he was a bit of a loose cannon—he was a heavy drinker. But he kept traveling even during his two marriages, never content to settle down, renowned for his poetry and ballads throughout the country. For a brief period, he did land that coveted position—and it at least temporarily disillusioned him of his aspirations for rank and success. Jin translates many of Li's poems that form the basis for much of what we know of his life; it brings this biography to a very personal level. All these centuries later, we marvel with Li about nature and beauty and pain and sorrow. —Taylor McNeil, news editor, Tufts Now
The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630-1865, by Mark Peterson. Boston loves to think of itself as the "hub of the solar system." A new book helps get past Oliver Wendell Holmes' self-satirizing comment to suggest that Boston not only thought about itself differently but operated more as a sort of quasi-sovereign city-state with its own interests and agenda well into the nineteenth century. While part of the British Empire, the willful city would create a hinterland in New England and cultivate Atlantic and global connections that both supported and underlined its distinctiveness. The stern self-concept of the Bostonians always made it hard for the British crown to impose its will, and it would be the ornery New Englanders who would inspire a revolt against that rule. However, in joining the new republic growing around them, the city-state would find in the United States forces that would eventually bring its long age of distinctiveness to an end. —David Ekbladh, associate professor of history, School of Arts and Sciences
n Waves, by AJ Dungo. Published in June, this book is unlike any I've ever read. It is a graphic memoir about surfing and surfing history intertwined with the story of the author's first love, Kristen, who develops and eventually succumbs to osteosarcoma in her twenties. The drawings are beautiful and emotional, and each page surprises me. The artist makes unique choices, distilling his experiences and transforming them. I was moved to tears many times, not out of sadness and grief, but from an appreciation of what it means to love and be alive. I was also moved by Dungo's history of surfing, which is not something I ever thought I wanted to learn about, because the history is told through the story of specific people, in particular Duke Kahanamoku and Tom Blake. I've been reading more graphic memoirs recently, especially by authors like me, of Filipino ancestry, including most notably Malaka Gharib's I Was Their American Dream, which is another coming-of-age graphic memoir that I loved, set around the same time and place as In Waves, but so completely different. Dungo is also Filipino, and while In Waves isn't about typical themes of immigration, race, and culture, it feels Filipino. I recognize the family relationships in a deep way. The book is gorgeous and moving—and hard to describe. It's best to ride the book's waves and experience it for yourself. —Grace Talusan, J94
Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love, by Dani Shapiro. Shapiro did what many of us do: she took a DNA test on a lark. Because she was able to write a book about what happened next, it isn't a spoiler to tell you that what she eventually learned was that her father wasn't her biological father—shaking her sense of self and identity to its core. Not that there weren't clues. She was a pale blonde in a family of dark-eyed, dark-haired Ashkenazi Jews; as a young adult, Shapiro learned that she had been conceived when her parents went for "treatments" at an early fertility clinic. Shapiro's brief memoir is a tightly written and well-informed look at the implications of DNA testing; the evolution of fertility medicine; and the ease with which a long-ago medical student sperm donor was discovered with a minimum of internet sleuthing. More so, it's a very human story about creating relationships, families, and love. —Helene Ragovin, senior content producer/editor, Communications & Marketing
story of a container ship, El Faro, which in late September 2015 left Jacksonville loaded with sustenance for Puerto Rico, sailed into the Bermuda Triangle, and vanished into the maw of a category 4 hurricane. El Faro and an equally aged sister ship provided a lifeline of foodstuffs and manufactured goods for the island via a three-day run they alternately made on a regular schedule from Jacksonville. This story relives the short last voyage of El Faro, its deficient loading by inattentive stevedores, equipment and maintenance shortcomings owing to a neglectful owner, and the ship's steady travel to a rendezvous with volatile Hurricane Joaquin. Slade digresses early on to describe what remains of the U.S. merchant marine—in decline since it girdled the globe at the end of World War II—to sketch the professional situations and predicaments of today's merchant mariners, review the physics of tropical cyclones, and depict colorfully the main characters aboard El Faro. The ship's demise, taking with it thirty-three mariners, was due to a confluence of factors, including unreliable weather prediction and ship design deficiencies. It was possibly also due to the ship captain's obstinacy, pride, and foolhardiness, and the fact that he was essentially unchallenged by deferential subordinate officers. This harrowing account is supported by abundant research and interviews by a first-time author who generates a very easy read and adventurous tale; it is also supported by twenty-six final hours of bridge conversation extracted from the ship's "black box" that was almost miraculously snatched from the ocean floor 15,000 feet deep. It makes for perhaps the most substantial of three books on the same subject that were released within seven days of one another in mid-2018, after the conclusion of USCG and NTSB hearings into the loss of El Faro. Those board hearings made starkly apparent the incompetence of the ship company, where lines of responsibility disappeared into groups and were never traced to individuals. Yet the overriding question of this saga is why a large merchantman would steer so determinedly into a major hurricane. In the conclusion, Slade invites the reader to speculate whether this tragic event could have been a deliberate suicide by a professionally disillusioned master. That is yours to decide. —Robert W. Barry, A63
My Brother, by Jamaica Kincaid. Spoiler alert: Antigua-born Jamaica Kincaid writes about her brother, Devon Kincaid, dying of AIDS. "I had expected him to," she writes. From that beginning passage and throughout the entire book, there is a raw, uncomfortable sense of dread. Although knowing how this ends, I hoped, foolishly, that there must have been a mistake. Jamaica is writing fiction, and penned the book's ending, choosing the life option. Nope. He died, and he died painfully. "I heard about my brother's illness and his dying, I knew, instinctively, that to understand it, or to make an attempt at understanding his dying, and not to die with him, I would write about it," writes Kincaid, who received 
One Nation, Indivisible: Seeking Liberty and Justice from the Pulpit to the Streets, edited by Celene Ibrahim. In this timely anthology, Ibrahim, the current Muslim chaplain at Tufts, has collected impactful stories from social justice leaders across the country who are working to build a more pluralistic society. The book contains poetry, essays, sermons, and other reflections that reveal the many ways people from across religious and intellectual spaces can work—and are already working—toward pluralism in the United States of America. Whether you are looking to be rejuvenated, nurtured, educated, or challenged, you're sure to find entries in this thoughtful text that will resonate. The text is grouped in seven sections: Eclipsing Hate, Crossing Thresholds, Healing Divides, Seeking Liberty, Celebrating Feminine Wisdom, Beyond Comfort Zones, and Standing with Resilience. Many of the pieces selected by Ibrahim feature the voices and stories of people who identify as Muslim. In a time of increased bigotry and bias against Muslims and Islam, this volume works to counteract what novelist Chimamanda Adichie calls "the danger of a single story" by sharing stories that reveal the practices and civic commitments of lived Islam. The result is an inspiring volume for all who seek a more indivisible country and world. I'm sure to be working through this text for challenge and support in the months to come. —Zachary Cole, program manager, University Chaplaincy
osing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today, by Denise Murrell. The exhibition Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today was a deserved hit when it was on display last winter at Columbia University in New York. The show's power derived as much from its forceful art-historical argument as from the outstanding works on display, so the resulting catalogue stands on its own. Murrell pushes us to focus on the image of the black female figure—hidden in plain sight in Manet's groundbreaking Olympia (1863) and thereafter a recurring but overlooked character in the history of modernism. Murrell's argument combines research in social history with smart visual interpretation, and I was fascinated by both her insights into the little-known community of black Parisians in the nineteenth century and her assessments of individual pictures. From the late nineteenth century Murrell moves forward to the Jazz Age in both France and America, juxtaposing Matisse and the Harlem Renaissance. Throughout the catalogue, as in the show, we are asked to reconsider works we thought we knew, and introduced to new ones well worth knowing. The image of the black female model remains a powerful one in contemporary art, and in her final chapter Murrell shows us how the figure of the maid from Olympia appears today as a participant in our own era's dialogues about race, sexuality, and colonialism. The past, Murrell knows, is not done with us, in society or in art. —Michael Baenen, chief of staff, Office of the President
biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson, Caro is trying to tell the life stories of two individuals who shaped America in the twentieth century. What he is really doing, he says, is painting a portrait of political power and how it impacts ordinary people. For example, Caro examines the lives of people whose lives were ruined when Robert Moses destroyed their communities. His account of interviews with these individuals years after their worlds were shattered is heartbreaking. By sharing these stories, Caro reminds us how political power can impact our lives—for better or worse. The second part of the book focused on how he learned to do research. Caro starts out by telling us the lessons he learned along the way. Most eloquent of these is the one from his editor at Newsday: "Turn every page. Never assume anything. Turn every goddamn page." Caro offers fascinating accounts of digging in the archives and turning up hidden information—such as how Robert Moses forgot about his carbon copies and how Caro found them. In addition to his archival research, Caro tells us how he works to understand his subject. For example, he tells us how he spent a night in the Texas Hill country sleeping under the stars to understand the isolation Johnson experienced. The only drawback to this book is that it will make you impatient for Caro's next volume on Johnson to come out. —Martin Burns, A81, AARP manager of political intelligence | You are subscribed to email updates from "famous short story,short stories for high school" - Google News. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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