Category: writing

Annie, that Pilgrim, whose words I go back to again and again

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn authors, writing

“I can no longer travel, can’t meet with strangers, can’t sign books but will sign labels with SASE, can’t write by request, and can’t answer letters. I’ve got to read and concentrate. Why? Beats me.” – Annie Dillard, from her website

I was browsing through the Poets & Writers website today when I saw that a profile of Annie Dillard, by John Freeman, “Such Great Heights”  from 2016 was displayed from the magazine’s archives.  Freeman writes, “You can almost hear the pops and fizzes of combustion as the flue clears and Dillard’s mind gulps down the oxygen it has been feeding on for years—books. It’s something to behold. Here is the sensibility that emerged from a white-glove Pittsburgh background because she read a novel about Rimbaud and wanted her mind to be on fire too. Here is the writer who pulled it off, chiseling out Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Harper’s Magazine Press, 1974), the Walden of our time, in nine months because she read a book on nature and felt she could do better. And thus Dillard wrote that great, elegant prayer to the seasons, largely at night, in the Hollins College library in Roanoke, Virginia, powered by chocolate milk, Vantage cigarettes, and Hasidic theology.”

Tinker Creek in Virginia

If there were a website where readers who love a writer’s words and philosophy could sign up to become an official kindred spirit, I would have gone there in 1974 when the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek emerged to sign my name on Dillard’s kindred spirit page. He work has influenced by thinking .

In Tinker Creek, she writes, “It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage.
I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus. Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock-more than a maple- a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.”

Yes to all that. And to her words in such books as Holy the Firm, Teaching a Stone to Talk, and Tickets for a Prayer Wheel. She taught for 21 years at Wesleyan University where I wish I’d been a student to audit her classes. If you read a lot, you will most likely find your Annie Dillard, the friendly author you wish lived next door with the porch light on..

We’re about the same age, she and I,  and there’s much we could have talked about.

—Malcolm

Oops, I’ve bitten off more than I can chew

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

I think the first time I did that was when my grandparents insisted that I was to eat a turkey drumstick at Thanksgiving dinner when I was in junior high school. I wasn’t prepared for the size of the thing or the thin bones hidden inside it. But, I finally ate the whole thing. In one meal. Before it got dark.  And, food wise, that wasn’t to be the last time that happened.

This time, it’s the novel in progress which, if I don’t get my teeth sharpened up, could turn into a real turkey and that would tick off my understanding publisher. So, my apologies for the length  of time that’s passing by since the release of my last book, Fate’s Arrows in 2020. Like a turkey drumstick to a guy used to fried chicken, Cornish game hens, and squabs, this book was supposed to be essentially a short novel or a long novella. But once I got into it, I realized that–as a continuation of the story in Fate’s Arrows–it was a lot longer and more complex than I expected.

If I were the kind of person who outlined novels, before I write them, I wouldn’t be telling you why Avenging Angels isn’t ready, or won’t be ready soon. But, I’m not the kind of person who outlines novels before I write them because I don’t know what’s going to happen or here things will go until I start writing them. I follow the stories like a blind man who doesn’t know the size of the drumstick on his plate.

As it turns out, the drumstick on my plate weighs nearly two pounds and comes from an Ostrich. What fresh hell is this? According to  a 2016 story in the Chicago Tribune, “Thirty years ago, farmers and breeders flocked to the ostrich business, oversaturating it. But without consumer demand to match and a vulnerability to scams, the industry plummeted as quickly as it had prepared to take off.” Bottom line, nobody around here sells Ostrich meat. So, I had not reason to suspect that dark angels would put such a thing on my plate.

If Ostrich really tastes sort of like venison, I would like it. So I hope that when I finally get enough spare room inside my mouth to chew what I ended up with, I’ll make better progress with this book. And, when it comes out, I hope you’ll like it even thought it will probably be darker and grittier than Fate’s Arrows. Let’s face it, there’s no good way to write a light-hearted book about the KKK because it’s members in Florida where my novels are set were more cruel than Shortfin Mako Sharks and quite likely lived next door. Your friendly sheriff was probably a member.

So, I’m still here, still writing, and still hoping I’ll finish this drumstick in the near future.

—Malcolm

How to ruin the plot of a TV series

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn television, writing2 Comments

Well, there are lots of ways, actually, but I’m thinking of “1883′ which ran initially in 2021 with great work by actors  Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Sam Elliott, and Isabel May. The series about a wagon train heading west was very gritty, but the dialogue and plot were exceptional. Okay, I’ll warn you that there are spoilers here.

The most interesting plot line was the development of the Isabel May character (Elsa) who was the exact opposite of most young women of the era. She could ride better than most of the men and learned to help move the cattle since there was a shortage of men to manage the herd. She had a love affair with a Comanche warrior (Sam)and planned to return to him when the wagons reached their destination.

This was the best character development I’d seen in a Western in a long time, and I’m sure most viewers anticipated her reunion with Sam. However, in episode eight of ten, she is shot during a battle with a Lakota band that thinks people from the wagon train attacked their camp while the men were gone. Her arrow wound is too bad to heal and she ends up dying in the last episode.

I was furious. The writers and producers spent the entire series developing this character (Elsa) and then they kill her off at the last minute. I cry foul. The series should have given us a legitimate ending rather than getting rid of the woman who became the main character.

–Malcolm

Saving Overcrowded National Parks

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn National Parks, writing

I just finished entering online comments into a Glacier National Park survey about how to do things better in managing the park. If you’ve visited Glacier recently, you know that all roads in the park are controlled by a reservation system that dictates when you can drive from one place to another. I can understand why the plan was tried, but I think it made everything worse.

I believe that the first duty of the National Park Service is to protect the land along with its flora and fauna. Overcrowded parks–such as Glacier–tell me that the NPS’ focus has gotten skewed to (1) providing unlimited access to everyone, (2) managing overcrowding rather than preventing it, and (3) Choosing recreation over the preservation of a pristine area.

I do not think the NPS should create chaos in overcrowded parks by instituting reservation systems about who can use which roads and when. This accentuates the overcrowding and ruins the visitors’ experience rather than improving it.

Since nothing else seems to work, I proposed banning private vehicles on park roads and using a shuttle service, raising prices on overcrowded parks and lowering them on underutilized parks, and not changing the roads/trails to accommodate the most invasive species (man) at the expense of the landforms and natural cycles of the area.

The first duty is protecting the land within the park. Allowing people into it is way down on the list of priorities.

–Malcolm

That old pagan muddle of terminology

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn beliefs, writing4 Comments

I was amused at the semantic chaos a character in a recent novel fell into while trying to explain the various pagan groups to an individual who (a) was a born-again Christian with Baptist-oriented beliefs, and (b) thought anything labelled “pagan” or “witchcraft” was pure and simple “devil worship.”

I blame both the Catholic Church and Hollywood for creating and sustaining the ignorant idea that pagans and/or witches and/or Wiccans and/or hoodoo practitioners all worship the devil. Many of those “charged” with worshipping the devil don’t believe in the devil. The devil is more or less a Christian notion.

I call my series of conjure novels “folk magic” which, in many ways, is like conventional witchcraft. The terms get  muddled because many Wiccans call themselves witches while others mix up Voodoo and hoodoo.

Wicca, like Voodoo, is a religion. Hoodoo and conventional witchcraft are practices usually with a strong link to nature and spells drawn on what is observed in the natural world. Those who practice hoodoo, with its origins in Africa, are often very strong Christians and see no conlflict between the two belief systems.

I find it easy to write stories about conventional witchcraft and hoodoo because they seem to me to be very natural to those who notice the ways and means of the seasons and the natural world. Both allow the practioner to worship the gods and goddesses of their choice, Christian or otherwise.

Creator of Wicca

The Wicca Academy website states that, “Wicca is a contemporary, nature-based, pagan religion. It refers to the entire system of practices and beliefs that comprise the modern pagan witchcraft spectrum. Although people often think that the terms Witchcraft and Wicca mean the same thing, that is not the case. All Wiccans are witches, but not all witches are Wiccans.”

The Green Man website states that “Drawing Witches into a cohesive identifiable group of any sort is truly like herding cats! And Traditional Witchcraft is no exception! So to cover my ass I think it best to state that all I can share is my own perspective based on my own practices, beliefs and understandings. These I have gleaned over more than 4 decades as a Traditional Witch and over two decades of leading a Coven and Tradition as well as teaching and presenting Trad Craft to the general public. All that said, there are many others with valid experiences and credentials who, coming from other Traditional foundations, would present Traditional Witchcraft in quite a different manner. As with all such explorations, look for multiple, diverse sources and find what speaks to you personally. That is in fact an approach that would be perfectly in accord with Traditional Witchcraft practices, as I present it. As Traditional Witchcraft is rooted in one’s personal senses or rather extra-sensory abilities, built upon one’s intuition, we call it “The Sight” aka “The Gifts”. Informed through direct communion with the many forms and expressions of Spirit, a Traditional Witch is then guided by their own sense of right and wrong employing what one might call one’s Ethical Compass. It is this personal and direct communion relationship a Traditional Witch has with Spirit that sets them as a Heretic: meaning outside of all forms of organized religion and circumventing any priesthood authority mediating Spirit or imposing a codified “One and True practice” or belief with regards all things related to Spirit. ”

In general, I like the practices better than the religions because I don’t really trust systems in which others tell me what  I can do or what I must believe. Truth, I think, comes in following what we believe rather than what a hierarchy of leaders and rules say we must believe.

My two cents as a solitary.

–Malcolm

‘A Beautiful Mind’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing2 Comments

Was it a lapse in my education or a personality defect that brought me into the theater in 2001 to see the Ron Howard-directed film “A Beautiful Mind” with absolutely no idea who John Forbes Nash  (June 13, 1928 – May 23, 2015) was, much less the focus of his work? I suspect my lack of knowledge of Nash came out of the rather thin coverage of subject matter in my university’s general education courses. Since I’d never heard of Nash, I didn’t notice the publication of Sylvia Nasar’s 1998 biography A Beautiful Mind on which the feature film was based. The biography is well written and yet, I missed it until after the film came out

Had I known about Nash, I would have known his philosophy (though not his math) through such quotations as “Rationality of thought imposes a limit on a person’s concept of his relation to the cosmos.” I agree!

The movie made quite a splash and won many awards, at the Oscars and elsewhere. Some people didn’t like the way schizophrenia, from which Nash recovered. Others thought Nash’s wife Jennifer Connelly was miscast as Alicia Nash who, in reality, came from El Salvador and spoke with an accent. And then, as Wikipedia reports, “According to Nash, the film A Beautiful Mind inaccurately implied he was taking atypical antipsychotics. He attributed the depiction to the screenwriter who was worried about the film encouraging people with mental illness to stop taking their medication.”

Sad to say, I don’t think the film–as much as I liked it–left me with a strong sense of what Nash’s specialty was. Wikipedia states that “John Forbes Nash, Jr. (June 13, 1928 – May 23, 2015), known and published as John Nash, was an American mathematician who made fundamental contributions to game theory, real algebraic geometry, differential geometry, and partial differential equations. Nash and fellow game theorists John Harsanyi and Reinhard Selten were awarded the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. In 2015, he and Louis Nirenberg were awarded the Abel Prize for their contributions to the field of partial differential equations.”

In the Oppenheimer biography American Prometheus, Oppenheimer is said to have a “forgiving instinct for the frailty of the human psyche, an awareness of the thin line between insanity and brilliance.” He worked with Nash and saw the issues behind the individual.

Of Nash, Britannica writes, “American mathematician who was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize for Economics for his landmark work, first begun in the 1950s, on the mathematics of game theory. He shared the prize with John C. Harsanyi and Reinhard Selten. In 2015 Nash won (with Louis Nirenberg) the Abel Prize for his contributions to the study of partial differential equations.”

My thoughts: the book gives readers a better idea of Nash’s work than the movie. I suspect that most of those who watched and enjoyed the movie had no idea who Nash was before the film’s promotions began and probably forgot the little they learnt in the film within a few weeks of watching it.

—Malcolm

If it can happen, it will happen

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

Is “if it can happen, it will happen” pure cynicism, a long-ago mathematician’s theory, a quantum mechanics idea, a version of Murphy’s law, or common sense? Perhaps it is all of these.

Cox and Forshaw will tell you it’s a quantum mechanics idea in their  book, as the subtitle suggests. I agree with them.

Or maybe French mathematician Émile Borel thought up the idea in 1943. Or maybe it was in Morgan in 1866

Many of us see it as a version of Murphy’s law. When I was in the Navy, we saw Murphy’s law everywhere because that was just the nature of ships, oceans, and wars.

People will always debate where the law came from, but apparently –as Wikipedia says, “Though similar statements and concepts have been made over the course of history, the law itself was coined by, and is named after, American aerospace engineer Edward A. Murphy Jr.; its exact origins are debated, but it is generally agreed it originated from Murphy and his team following a mishap during rocket sled tests some time between 1948 and 1949, and was finalized and first popularized by testing project head John Stapp during a later press conference. ”

Common sense tells us that the old Chinese curse, ” May you live in interesting times” doesn’t really mean “interesting,” but “bad.” I think Murphy would agree. Lately, the times have been playing out abnormally as a cosmic SNAFU as those of us in the military abbreviated “Situation Normal All Fucked Up.” (Parson mon français.) Or, as the Austrians might say, “Fatal but not serious.”

SNAFU is people drinking all night in a bar while climate change is causing the seas to rise up to the doorstep. Hell, maybe “if it can happen, it will happen” is pure cynicism as we see our politicians arguing about how many angels can dance of the head of a pin while ignoring what’s really important.

Actually, I think that everything that can happen has already happened. We just haven’t noticed it yet.

–Malcolm

‘Summer Serenade’ by Elise Skidmore

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, writing

As a disclaimer, I should mention that I have known Elise online since the days when CompuServe was the pre-eminent social, technical, and professional network in cyberspace. Both of us were participants in the very busy Literary Forum where Elise was on the staff for almost ten years.

Summer Serenade was released on August 10 by Heart Ally Books at 112 pages. Skidmore’s previous books (Looking for the Light: Hindsight is 2020, A Dance of Dreams. among others) show us a prolific poet and short story author. She also produces her books’ illustrations.

From the Publisher

“A New Yorker by birth, Elise Skidmore lives on the south shore of Long Island with her husband. Recently retired, they enjoy spending time together and love to travel. Their nest may be empty, and though she misses her two daughters, she is very proud of the wonderful women they have become.

“She has been a writer since childhood, with poetry being her focus for many years. It’s her way of working through dark times and celebrating the joyful ones. SUMMER SERENADE is her fifth volume of poetry. Two of her earlier anthologies were finalists for Epic eBook Awards. She is also an amateur photographer and her original photography can be seen in all her books. While one may summarize Elise in any number of wonderful descriptors, the chief among them must always be a writer.”

Since I grew up on Florida’s Gulf Coast, I appreciate the book’s dedication: “To anyone who has held a seashell to their ear and heard the ocean singing.” Yes, I have. And then there’s the opening story “You Wanted a Story.” It’s a wonderful prelude to the poems that follow.

—Malcolm

I thought I would know everything by now

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Old Age, writing

When I was little, my parents, grandparents, and aunts (one of who lived well past 100) all knew everything. That was how the world seemed to work when I was in kindergarten through junior high school.  Having zoomed past another birthday two days ago, I realize that old people don’t know everything and it’s not because of dementia but because they never broke the code.

One thing I do know is that the person who promised her Bitcoin (whatever that is) dealings had been so successful along with winning a suitcase of lottery money, that she could finally send me  “a car for people who thought they would ultimately know everything.” Sadly, the car never arrived and her phone number has been changed to some communal phone at Sing  Sing in Ossining, New York. Here’s the photo she sent me before entering the slammer. If you have to ask what it is and/or how much it costs, it’s not the car for you.

One thing you discover with age is that the stuff you believed 50 years ago that everyone else thought was nonsense has now become the latest fad. People tell me I’m too old to understand it. I say, “I understood it before you were born.” They reply, “So you’re a guru, then, and know everything.” In response, I say, “Nathaniel Hawthorne was right when he said, ‘A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.”

Other than that, I can’t say that I don’t know anything other than my wife’s name, where I parked the car, and that I can’t keep putting a lot of Tabasco Sauce on my food including the food of love where I don’t play on, I get heartburn.

I strongly suspect that–due to my belief in the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics–that many of us don’t live in the universe where were started out. But I can never quite catch the change happening. The only clue is today’s history classes that no longer teach things I remember happening. In today’s universe, perhaps they didn’t, or else we’ve sanitized it out of existence. The chart shown here seems self-evident, so I won’t waste time going back to the work of folks like Niels Bohr and Max Planck. I’ll note that I really like  Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle because the older one gets, the less certainty s/he has about everything.

I’m certain about one thing. When you’re my age, you don’t know everything such as the speed and location of an electron. I strongly suspect that this is the new way of the world, one (e.g.) when even Senators and Congressmen/Women don’t simultaneously know the location of their asses and the nearest hole in the ground. This has caused a lot of polarization between the two major parties.

So there it is. As you approach my age (classified) you’ll discover that you don’t know everything, contrary to what you thought would happen when you were ten years old. I can tell you one thing: if you embrace uncertainty, you’ll need fewer Xanax or Ativan prescriptions.

I don’t even know where my cat is.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “Conjure Woman’s Cat” a novel that shows us what we know and what we don’t know.

My favorite Review

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing2 Comments

Since today’s my birthday, I’ve decided I have a right for some shameless promotion.

Earphones Award Winner

by Malcolm R. Campbell | Read by Wanda J. Dixon

Fantasy • 4 hrs. • Unabridged • © 2015

Wanda J. Dixon’s warmth and gorgeous singing voice are superb in this story about Conjure Woman Eulalie, which is told through the voice of her cat and spirit companion, Lena. Dixon zestfully portrays Eulalie, who is “older than dirt” and is kept busy casting spells, mixing potions, and advising people–that is, when the “sleeping” sign is removed from her door. Most distinctive is Eulalie’s recurring sigh, which conveys her frustration with Florida in the 1950s, when Jim Crow laws and “Colored Only” signs were routine. Dixon’s Lena is fully believable when she spies around town and reports to Eulalie that rednecks have raped and murdered a young woman. They almost escape until Eulalie persuades a witness to come forward. Listeners will marvel at the magical realism in this story and benefit from the helpful glossary of the charming local dialect. S.G.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine [Published: SEPTEMBER 2016]