Alice B. Toklas Book Journal

An Embarrassment of Riches

Back in June I experienced the surprise of my life when my piece “Funky Little Blaze Orange Pork Pie Hats” was selected as the first place winner in the FLASH MOB 2013 Flash Fiction Day Competition.

LIke I said then, I’ve won stuff. Lottsa stuff. A bike at a school blacktop carnival. A pie at St. Anthony’s parish festival. A bag of groceries. A two dollar lottery ticket. A karaoke contest in Tokyo. A bonus round on the slots at a casino in Cleveland. An arm wrestling contest. Yeah, I’ve won stuff. Lottsa stuff.

But I never expected to win that kind of honor in FLASH MOB 2013. That was overwhelming enough. Then, unexpectedly, surprises began to arrive in the mail. The surprises were the 1st place prize in the form of the latest books authored by so many of the writers whose work I admire. It is an honor of the highest sort.

Included in this unexpected bounty is a copy of Gears ~ A Collection by Alex Pruteanu, Thank You For Your Sperm by Marcus Speh, Three Squares a Day With Occasional Torture by Julie Innis, The Merrill Diaries by Susan Tepper, and The Cheese and Onion Sandwich and other New Zealand Icons by Vivienne Plumb.

It is with a sense of deep gratitude and appreciation that I welcome these works to my library and accept the responsibility for their care and feeding, but most importantly, for their reading and appreciation! I only hope that some of the genius of these authors might rub off on my work!

Once again, my gratitude and appreciation goes out to the participants, organizers and judges of FLASH MOB 2013, including Christopher Allen, Michelle Elvy, Marcus Speh, Robert Vaughan, Leah McMenamin and Nuala Ní Chonchúir and Linda Simoni-Wastila, and to the aforementioned authors for their work ~ Alex Pruteanu, Marcus Speh, Julie Innis, Susan Tepper and Vivienne Plumb. Thank you one and all. I look forward to paying it forward if I am ever presented with the opportunity to do so!

August 27, 2013 2

In Memoriam ~ Ruth H. Maxwell

Ruth Maxwell was my “Aunt Ruth”. She was brilliant, kind, compassionate, funny and an important influence on my life. I especially cherish the reconnection we made through our shared passion for writing during the past 3 years. Her book “Suicide: Living With The Question” was life changing and I was honored and humbled when she asked me to write a review of it. Her most recent book “The Peshtigo Greenhorn” is a historical novel documenting the Peshtigo Fire which took place the same night as The Chicago Fire and consumed an estimated 1.5 million acres or 2,400 square miles in northeastern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. Thousands of men, women and children perished. Both books are available on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/The-Peshtigo-Greenhorn-Ruth-Maxwell/dp/1490446842

Reading posts from “Ruth’s Blog” shed light on much of my own family history and helped me with my own “Family Tree Project.” I miss her, but continue to feel her presence and somehow, I know that she is really never too far away. She will continue to be an inspiration to me and I will never forget her. Love you Ruth!

Michael Gillan Maxwell

August 2, 2013 0

Driving Home at Midnight in Ibbetson Street #33

My poem “Driving Home at Midnight” is in the current Boston based print journal Ibbetson Street #33. THANK YOU Publisher Doug Holder and Managing Editor Lawrence Kessenich for including my piece with work from so many wonderful writers and literary colleagues such as Marie -Elizabeth Mali, Timothy Gager and Teisha Twomey in this robust and high spirited edition ~ Ibbetson Street # 33!

Available at

http://www.lulu.com/us/en/shop/doug-holder/ibbetson-street-33/paperback/product-21024992.html

July 23, 2013 0

Book Review: Microtones by Robert Vaughan Červená Barva Press 2013

Microtones by Robert Vaughan
Červená Barva Press 2013 Gloria Mindock ~ Editor and Publisher

Robert Vaughan’s 2013 release, Microtones from Červená Barva Press contains two dozen prose poems of varying lengths and a variety of rhythms and structures. From the shortest, just four lines, to the longest, going on two pages; Vaughan’s poems are like songs with a hook that make you want to hear them again. Microtones is like a hand carved box filled with little treasures, a leather album with photographs of people and places you want to know more about, or a double record on vinyl with 24 three minute songs you play over and over.

From the opening piece, The Outlaw, right through to Wrestling With Genetics, the poem that closes the book, the arc and flow keeps the reader moving from one poem to the next. However, you can also pick any poem at random and it shines just as brightly on its own.

Vaughan’s writing is deep and nuanced and evokes both a visual and a visceral response. The poems flow with an ease and grace that is musical and lyrical, in language rich with unexpected images and surprising passages that stop you in your tracks and make you slow down, go back, and read them again.

“You hang mid-air, arms akimbo, glance askance. Resigned. Jubilant.
As we are when any end is imminent.”

Robert Vaughan is a keen and compassionate observer of humanity; his writing, at times, tender, poignant and sad, yet unsentimental and tough when it needs to be. There’s also a healthy dose of irony and humor and a playfulness with language that is unique and refreshing.

“He’s the tetherball attached to my pole, the flying trapeze of my soul.”

You slide into each poem with so much ease, that, before you know it, you’re off and running. Microtones celebrates the predicaments of the human condition and the ephemeral quality of human relationships, and mourns their passing, while at the same time, still holding hope for the future.

Though Microtones is work from a seasoned author, it is also fresh and exciting new work from a writer just really hitting his stride, an artist who speaks to us, in full, with a vibrant voice, and whom we can expect to hear from again.

Microtones is available from Červená Barva Press
http://www.cervenabarvapress.com

Robert Vaughan’s website is http://www.robert-vaughan.com

June 9, 2013 5

My story “Elegy for the Old Republic” is up on Red Fez.

Thank you editor Andy Meisenheimer for including my work with pieces from so many wonderful writers!

http://www.redfez.net/fiction/472

December 20, 2012 0

It’s Not Too Late To Get Real!

My Story “Fly the Friendly Skies” is in “real” the anthology of nonfiction from “Pure Slush.” Thank you editor and publisher Matt Potter for including my work in this wonderful collection from so many terrific writers!

http://www.lulu.com/shop/pure-slush/real-pure-slush-vol-3/paperback/product-20465619.html Real

December 19, 2012 2

Remembering “On The Road” by Jack Kerouac

I was in one of those warehouse sized discount stores the other day when I came across a table stacked with books. One of my old favorites jumped right out at me and I picked it up. I was surprised to see a brand new printing of the Jack Kerouac classic On the Road. That book had a major influence on me as a teenager and young man. I remember finding that and copies of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in a box of my Mom’s books that was stashed in our basement. These books had all been controversial for different reasons and I remember feeling like I had come across a secret cache of some kind of forbidden fruit.

Kerouac had the idea for On The Road in the late 40’s and finished his first draft on one continuous scroll in 1951, although it wasn’t published until 1957. As I held this new edition in my hand I couldn’t stifle my ironic amusement at seeing the latest edition of On The Road being marketed in a discount store with the phrase “NOW! A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE!” plastered all over the cover, along with glossy photos of the 20-something actors smiling with perfect teeth and stylishly coiffed hair who are presumably playing the roles of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady who were, in fact, unwashed, speed addled, pot smoking, besotted, penniless, rag tag vagabonds and not Barbie and Ken Dolls.

I admit to feeling some consternation that one of my own most revered icons from my wayward youth was NOW! A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE! Sacrilege, I say! Not really, but it’s a little like the way I felt when I figured out there was no Santa Claus, or that my Davy Crockett toys had been sold in a garage sale. The death of the 60’s was hard enough to take back then, but do you have to keep rubbing it in in 2012 by making On The Road into Beverly Hills 90210?

So, they finally came out with a film version of On The Road. Well, it took ’em long enough. Kerouac wrote the thing 61 years ago. By the way, what kind of advertising genius still calls films “motion pictures”? The Golden Age of Hollywood is long gone, my friend. A friend of mine told me today that Allen Ginsberg bobbleheads are part of the marketing campaign. Seriously? Must you? That’s just like pouring salt in the wound. If you’re going to do that, then it seems like a Walt Whitman teddy bear would be huge. Or how about a Charles Bukowski doll that smokes, drinks and curses?

I must admit, I am kind of curious about this “major motion picture.” However, I know I’ll be watching this one at home on Movies on Demand, amongst the trappings of my bourgeois lifestyle as I lay draped in velvet and sipping an insouciant cabernet that doesn’t bite back.

December 8, 2012 6

Book Review ~ Suicide – Living With the Question ~ Ruth H. Maxwell – Author

Book Review

Suicide – Living With the Question

Ruth H. Maxwell – Author

We’ve all been affected by the sudden and unexpected death of someone who is close to us or whom we’ve known personally, peripherally or even just cared about from a distance. It is especially perplexing when that person has taken his or her own life, and even more so if they were young and appeared to be healthy, happy and successful. It is all the more horrific if it is a family member and absolutely unthinkable when it is your own child. Ruth H. Maxwell’s book, Suicide – Living With the Question, is an unflinching, honest and poignant narrative of a journey through uncharted territory after the unthinkable has happened, a journey that no parent should ever have to make. The opening part of the book documents the challenges that she and her family and their friends were faced with after her son Bill took his own life just days before his 36th birthday. It is a book that has essentially taken her 23 years to write. Maxwell said, “It took me many years to write it. It was like peeling an onion, layer after layer. A bit like life.”

Suicide – Living with the Question moves far beyond the personal narrative and into the realm of spiritual, philosophical and psychological questions that arise in our attempt to understand such an inexplicable event and find the meaning within. It is written on a personal level in clear, accessible language, and balances the reflective process with research based science. One of the most important aspects of the book is the examination of social norms and prevailing attitudes about the subject. It takes a hard look at the subject of self esteem and the images we project of ourselves and various societal factors that lead to denial and, consequentially, the inability to recognize the signs and signals when someone may be at risk.

I have the deepest admiration and respect for the strength, patience and great fortitude it took to write this important book. I must confess that it also required courage for me to read it, because Bill was my cousin. Reading the book has been a stunning revelation to me and a journey of self discovery that brought me to tears on more than one occasion. I learned of Bill’s death when I was far away from home and had fallen out of contact with much of my extended family. I couldn’t begin to fathom how or why something like this could possibly have happened and never talked it through it with anyone. I still hadn’t completely come to terms with the tragic death of my own younger brother not that many years earlier and now Bill’s death was something I couldn’t really wrap my mind around. I was at a loss as to what to do. Before I knew it, years had passed and I had never taken the time to try and understand it or to fully reflect upon it. Reading Ruth H. Maxwell’s book provided a bridge back to that lost part of my family history and gave me back a piece of myself. It allowed me to emotionally process the narrative of my cousin’s death and the effects it had upon his immediate family, close friends and colleagues. On a personal level, the book also helped me to examine my own questions, and to acknowledge my sense of loss as well as feelings of grief, guilt, shame, blame, regret and acceptance, and a whole spectrum of other emotions.

I think one of the most important conclusions in the book is the significance of post- traumatic stress disorder and clinical depression as critical factors that may contribute to a decision to take one’s own life. The way this book raises awareness and sensitivity to these conditions, and the importance of bringing it all out into the light of day conveys a timely and powerful message. It is a profound reflection about loss, redemption, hope, forgiveness and perseverance and an invaluable resource for educators, counselors, health and spiritual practitioners, parents, friends and all of us.

“When the truth can be told and not judged or evaluated, love follows, for it flourishes in the light.” Ruth H. Maxwell

Michael Gillan Maxwell is a visual artist, writer, editor, teacher and educational consultant. He lives with his family in the Finger Lakes Region of New York State.

November 24, 2012 10

Healed from Chronic Lyme’s Disease: My Journey [Kindle Edition] Stephen Leslie (Author)

Stephen Leslie’s book “Healed from Chronic Lyme’s Disease: My Journey” depicts the author’s personal journey, in which he battles and eventually overcomes, this insidious tick borne illness. The author is thorough, and while he takes an analytic approach that is well founded on science, research and fact, his message is conveyed in an easy-flowing, conversational writing style that is highly accessible and easy to understand. I especially value Stephen’s exploration of time honored “alternative” healing practices, the human energy field and the relationship between body, mind and spirit. The author does not dismiss modern science or western medicine, but rather, takes steps to integrate it with a holistic and homeopathic approach to healing and over all health and well being. It is an important book for anyone who wants to take control of their own well being and offers pragmatic, applicable tools based on experience. It is a must-read for anyone who is interested in ways of overcoming, not only Chronic Lyme disease, but any “dis-ease”. I highly recommend it. It is available on Amazon.com.