The Duarte Festival Of Authors

Time on your hands this Saturday?  Come on out to Duarte and it's festival of Authors.  Steel Cut Press will have a table there and I will moderate a panel on pure fiction.

DUARTE, CA, September 10, 2012  –  Best-selling crime writer, T. Jefferson Parker, award-winning novelist Susan Straight, and celebrated poet, novelist, performer and activist, Juan Felipe Herrera, will headline the 10^th annual Duarte Festival of Authors on Saturday, Oct. 6. The festival will take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Westminster Gardens, 1420 Santo Domingo Ave. in Duarte.  Admission and parking is free.
The Duarte Festival of Authors presents a unique opportunity in an intimate setting for the public to meet and hear from some of Southern California’s top writers as well as exciting, new talents.
More than 50 authors will participate in the festival presented by the Friends of the Duarte Library. The festival showcases a rich sampling of the diversity of literary talents and books to appeal to a wide variety of tastes: fiction and non-fiction, adventure, suspense, romance, travel, mystery, inspirational, spiritual, poetry, educational, historical, young adult and children’s titles.
In addition to talks, panel discussions and book signings all day long, festival-goers are in for a host of other treats as well with an on-site book store and a choice of food and refreshments served up by the popular Pie and Burger Restaurant truck and Duarte’s Lemonade Brigade.
Juan Felipe Herrera is the award-winning author of 29 books including poetry, novels for young adults and collections for children. He will speak and sign his books at 12 noon, of which “Half the World in Light – New and Selected Poems” is his most recent. For nearly four decades Herrera has documented his experiences as a Chicano in the United States and Latin America through stunning memorable poetry that is both personal and universal in its impact, themes and approach. Earlier this year Herrera was named Poet Laureate for the State of California.
T. Jefferson Parker, who will speak and sign his books at 1:30 p.m., is a three-time recipient of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award for best novel, and has won numerous other awards for his novels all dealing with crime, life and death in Southern California. His latest bestseller is “The Jaguar” which features protagonist Charlie Hood, a Los Angeles Sheriff’s Deputy on loan to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms task force working the illegal gun trade along the U.S. Mexican border.
Novelist Susan Straight, whose book, “Take One Candle Light a Room” was named one of the best novels of 2010 by the Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and Kirkus, will speak at 3 p.m. Following her talk, she will sign copies of her just released novel, “Between Heaven and Here,” also “A Million Nightingales,” a 2006 Finalist in the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and “Highwire Moon,” a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award.
Other authors scheduled to appear include: Mystery writers, Teresa Burrell, “The Advocate,” Gayle Carline, “Hit or Missus,” Michael Mayo,”Alex Walker and the Circus of Secrets,” Gayle Bartos-Pool, “The Johnny Casino Casebook,” and Alice Zogg, “Murder at the Cubbyhole”.
There will be lots of good books for children to choose from and special reading and other activities for the young ones. Among the authors participating will be: Alva Sachs, “I’m 5,” Jason Silva, “The Tale of Edgar Trunk” series, Ron Robledo, “How do you Hide a Dinosaur?,” Chani Warnasuriya, “Spooky Tales,” and Evelyn De Wolfe, “Conversations with Madame Zozo”.  Author, Chi Hosseinion’s “U Touch, I Tell” helps children learn how to protect themselves from predators.
Fiction writers include: David McCabe “Without Sin,” Rebecca Woods, “Living Through Charlie,” Lola James, “Bound to Remember,” and M. Adams, “For a Taste of Morgan”. Zuhdi Sardar’s “Between Iraq and Hard Places” paints a canvas of words that – in light of the Middle East’s recent “Arab Spring” – is both a metaphor of our times and mirror to us all.
Author/TV-radio personality, Manny Pacheco highlights character actors of Hollywood’s Golden Age and films telling America’s story in “Forgotten Hollywood,” while Hollywood movie historian, Mark Thomas McGee takes readers behind-the-scenes in the making of the classic “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” and Gerald Schiller, details true tales from Tinseltown’s past in “It Happened in Hollywood: Remarkable Events that Shaped History”. Dennis Sanchez offers a humorous Wizard of Oz parody from Toto’s point of view in “Toto’s Adventures with Dorothy”.
Festival goers will find inspirational stories. “Joseph Borda’s “Across the Seas” is his personal immigrant account of serving in three wars and working on ships to earn the American citizenship for which he strived for years. “Living in the Mouth of the Wolf” by Sal DiVita provides authentic accounts of events as experienced by ordinary people in Fascist Italy during the Second World War. Others include: Chuck Robertson, “A Simple Man’s Story of Esther,” Glen Gibson, “Not the Way You Thought it Would Be,” Loa Blasucci, “All Health’s Breaking Loose,” Jesse Cozean, “My Grandfather’s War,” and Brenda Winner, “Ten Perfect Fingers”. Janie Speare offers advice to teens in “Standing Up, Standing Out,” and author/artist/peace ambassador, Petra Eiko brings her traveling Green Heart project to the festival, inviting visitors to inscribe what’s in their hearts.
Claudia and Alan Heller, take readers on a journey through The Mother Road in stories, pictures and reminiscences of “Life on Route 66,” Tim Poyorena-Miguel shares local history in “Return to Simons,” and Richard Santillan writes on the history of “Mexican American Baseball in L.A”.  Historian, Elizabeth Pomeroy offers a guide to historic and natural landmarks in Southern California in “Lost and Found,” and James Aguirre offers Native American history and perspective in his book “Through Native Eyes – Talking Leaves.
For the latest information about the Duarte Festival of Authors, participants and activities, visit the Festival website: www.friendsoftheduartelibrary.com, or call (626) 359-6413.

Denying Denial

I delivered this sermon to Congregation Atz Chaim in Ramona, California, on Yom Kippur morning, 10 Tishrei 5773 (26 September 2012)

  

I absolutely, categorically, and without exception reject reality.  Well, perhaps there are a few exceptions but for the most part I do, in fact, reject reality most of the time.  Here are some exceptions to my reality rejection rule.  The earth is round.  That appears to be an irrefutable reality that I do not reject.  We’ve seen the pictures from satellites and space shuttles.  And apparently some guy named Eratosthenes sometime between 276 and 194 Before the Common Era figured out that the earth was round by measuring the way the light fell straight down a well in one city but at an angle in another city and somehow came up with the notion that the earth was round.  So I get it that the shape of the earth is real and I accept that.  I also accept gravity not necessarily because some guy named Isaac Newton said that it exists but because when I release my hold on a book it falls to the floor.  So gravity is another reality I accept.  For the most part though, I do reject a lot of reality.  Well not a lot necessarily but some.  I reject some of reality.

            Because of this rejection of reality it might be said that I live in a state of denial.  Denial is an ego defense mechanism.  I utilize denial to help me get through the day.  There are a lot of other defense mechanisms:  Displacement helps me slam a door when I’m angry instead of hitting someone.  Intellectualization allows me to focus on the mechanics of a funeral instead of feeling grief.  When I use the defense mechanism of projection I am able to tell someone else that they are stupid instead of feeling stupid myself.  I use rationalization when I tell myself its okay to eat that donut because I only had coffee for breakfast.  The defense mechanism of regression tells me its okay to throw a temper tantrum when I don’t get my own way.  I can use repression to forget traumatic memories.  I can use suppression to accomplish the same thing.

            So you see, I have a lot of tools to help me reject reality or at least the one reality I have to reject.

            I’m not the only person who rejects that reality.  You do, too.  All of you.  Each and every person here spends a whole lot of time and energy avoiding the reality of our lives because if we didn’t reject that reality we’d have a really difficult time getting through the day.

            I’m not talking about the reality of paying bills or studying for tests or staying on diets or getting regular exercise or meeting work related deadlines though we certainly do our share of avoiding those realities on occasion.

            I’m talking about a much bigger reality and most of us most of the time use whatever defense mechanisms we can come up with to pretend that that particular reality doesn’t exist.  The reality we spend so much time avoiding or ignoring is, of course, our own mortality.  We are each and every one of us going to die.  We will not survive life.  We will not make it out of this alive.

            Knowing this, how can we possibly make it through the day?  Knowing that I will die, how can I even get out of bed?  And so – completely ignoring this hard, cold ultimate truth – I do get out of bed and I do make it through the day.  So do you.

            Death is a reality almost impossible to contemplate.  And yet this holiday, this Yom Kippur, is devoted to death.

            G’mar Ha’timah tovah.  May be final writing be for good.  May I be inscribed in the book of life.  On Rosh HaShannah it is written.  On Yom Kippur it is sealed.  Who shall live this year and who shall die?  Who shall live?  Me, me, me, me.  Who shall die?  Surely not me because I’ve already said that I reject the reality of death.  More specifically I reject the reality that I will one day die so none of those ‘who shall’ things can possibly apply to me.

            Yet here I am in the middle of this day of death forced if only one time each year to face the reality I so studiously avoid.  Here I am facing death.

            The day has given me opportunities to drop my guards – my defenses – by asking me to if not completely fast at least to do the best I can so that as the sun sets there will be little left of my reality rejections – of my primitive ego defenses.  I will if for no other reason simply be too tired to not ‘get it’ that one day I will die.

            And then to really drive that point home I will – as the sun sets on my day and metaphorically on my life – recite the death bed confession that ends Yom Kippur – Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Ehad.  Baruch shame kvod malchuto l’olam vaed. Adonai hoo haeloheim.  Hear Oh Israel.   The Lord is our God.  The Lord is One.  Blessed is God’s Kingdom for ever and ever.  The Eternal Lord is God.

            Perhaps then during that moment before the final gasping blast of the shofar ends this day of dying I may let in the sobering reality that my days are numbered.   And if I can withstand the terror of that moment I may truly as the gates of heaven close dare to walk away from my deathbed confession and my long day of dying to a life more urgent and more real than that lived before this day began.

            That is the purpose of this day of awesome dread.  We begin it proudly wearing our suits of denial like the Emperor and his new clothes and we end it shrouded in the humble knowing that life is precious and oh so very short.

            The gates are still open on this day but let’s go ahead and put aside all of the defenses and denials and rejections that keep us from deciding what we want and must do with our – in the words of the Mary Oliver poem read last night -- one precious life knowing with absolute certainty that it will end.

            Right now.  Let’s put aside all of that and get to the work of this practice dying.  Once a year we get to ‘get it’ and then and only on this day walk away from our death bed confessions to lives hopefully changed for the better.

            Today is our pretend death day.  What we do with it is our choice.  What we do with our precious time after the final shofar blast of this year is also our choice.  We decide our final inscriptions.

            Gmar hatimah tovah.  May my final inscription be for good.  Gmar hatimah tovah.  May your final inscription also be for good.  This dying day belongs to each of us.  So, too, does the choice of how we live our precious days belongs to each of us.

            Gmar hatimah tovah.  May the final inscription be for good.

Testing

The sermon which I wrote and which MWB delivered at Congregation Etz Chaim in Ramona CA on Rosh Hashanah:

 

“Testing”

            The word “test” causes a visceral reaction in us.  Are we prepared?  Will we pass or fail?  How well will we do?  So we can expect to have a visceral reaction to this morning’s Torah portion which begins, “And after these things, God tested Abraham…”

            Are there any words in the Torah which have been studied, argued, defended, attacked, explicated, justified and agonized over more than those of Chapter 22 of the book of Genesis? The God that Abraham has worshipped and loved for decades, and who finally fulfilled his and Sarah’s desire for a son now tells Abraham to take that son to Mt. Moriah for a sacrificial offering.  And without hesitation, Abraham complies.  Is this a statement of Abraham’s faith or of his zealotry?  When does enough become too much? Did Abraham pass God’s test, or did he fail it?

            “And it came to pass, after these things…” What things?  A Midrash says that God was bragging to Satan about his faithful Abraham.  “Why shouldn’t he be faithful”, said Satan, “You have given him land and position and sons.  Test him, and see if his faith holds.”  “And after these things, God tested Abraham”.  Another Midrash suggests that it was a conversation between Ishmael and Isaac that spurred the test.  Ishmael says that, at the time of their circumcisions, Isaac was an infant, and could not choose to partake in the mitzvah, but Ishmael, being thirteen years old, was able to submit willingly.  Isaac replies, “You are talking about one organ, one foreskin.  If God wanted my whole body, I would gladly offer it.”  “And after these things, God tested Abraham.”  When dealing with God, perhaps it is best to be careful with one’s words.

            Although we are told at the outset that God is testing Abraham, isn’t Isaac also being tested?  By the time he asks his father where the lamb for the sacrifice is and receives Abraham’s cryptic reply, we can assume that he might suspect that he is the sacrifice, and yet he gives no complaint or struggle, neither on the way to the mountain, nor as Abraham builds the altar and binds Isaac to it.  Abraham, too, seems unnaturally calm.  The Zohar, a medieval mystical text, suggests that as Abraham built the altar, he had a vision of Jacob, Isaac’s son, and knew that, somehow, Isaac would live to fulfill God’s promise of a line of descendants.  And the commentator Malbim reasons that Abraham was so closely spiritually connected to God that he sensed that this command, to sacrifice his son, was not truly God’s desire. 

            The denouement comes; Abraham’s hand is stopped at the last possible moment by the urgent voice of an angel.  Isaac is released from the altar and a ram with its horns caught in a thicket becomes the sacrifice instead.  God reiterates His blessing upon Abraham and his descendants and the whole thing is over.  Or is it?

            Everyone walks away from the binding of Isaac, but they each walk in different directions.  Abraham goes back to his servants and on to Beersheva.  We are not told what happens to Isaac, but it is clear that he did not go to Beersheva with his father and the others.  One midrashic tradition has it that Abraham sent him to the school of Shem and Eber to study Torah.  In any case, this episode is the last time that the Bible in which Abraham and Isaac exchange words.  At the outset of the next chapter, we are informed of Sarah’s death, and Abraham must go to from Beersheva to  Hebron, a considerable distance, which would seem to indicate that she and Abraham had not been living in the same place.  And even though Abraham lives for some years longer, remarries and has several more children, the Bible records no further evidence that God and Abraham ever spoke to each other again.  And every year, when we read this portion on Rosh Hashanah, I ask myself, “What can we gain from this story?  What can it teach us about dealing with God and with humans?  When we are facing a choice between what we want and what God is calling us to do, how can the story of the binding of Isaac give us any clarity?

            I gained some guidance thinking, not about people, but in the way some gifted people train some very gifted animals – guide dogs for the blind.  The dogs, of course, are taught to guide blind people to walk without human assistance to give them greater mobility and independence.  They are taught to avoid obstacles and they are taught to follow the commands given them by their trainer and by the guide dog user.  But they are also taught something that it is remarkable an animal can understand.  They are taught intelligent disobedience.  They are taught that, if they have been given a command to do something unsafe because their blind person could not see the danger, that they are to refuse to follow that command.

            How might it have been if Abraham had responded to God in the language of intelligent disobedience?  How would this story have worked out if he had said, “God, I know that You have given me everything that I have.  I know that I owe everything to You.  I know that parents sometimes see their children die and somehow survive it, but do not ask me to sacrifice my beloved Isaac by my own hand, even for Your sake.  That is too much.  It will cause irreparable harm to him, to me, to my wife and to my relationship with You.”  What kind of a model would we have then?  Would it be better to follow God’s perceived will to our own destruction, or to speak up and give the story a different ending?

            There is no better or worse in this case.  Each of us must act according to our own nature, in our own time and in our own culture.  There are some tests that are neither passed nor failed.  Some tests simply take the measure of who and what we are.  Abraham was a man of perfect faith, and his decision to follow God’s will with a whole heart brought him whatever consequences it did.  If I were faced with such a situation, I would want to take all my knowledge, my experience, my faith and my questions together and, if necessary, use intelligent disobedience.

         

A Poem For The Day

AT THIS NARROW BRIDGE AGAIN

@MaryWalkerBaron 2012

Here we are again at this narrow bridge

Ready to begin our annual crossing --

Returned to this moment by ancient migratory

Patterns mapped in stone.

For a month we’ve wondered

What to bring – how best to pack and what to wear -- .

Difficult preparations even though

We try to make them every year.

I always over pack and now at this

Pre-crossing liminal moment I wonder –

Will I really need a flashlight?

If I haven’t yet read that issue of ‘Scientific American’

I bought on impulse last year at the Jet Blue

Terminal of JFK maybe I should admit

That I’ll never read it

And leave it behind.

I open my pack for a final inventory before

Stepping on to the bridge.  Does my Zip Lock

Bag of anger weigh too much?  Is my Nalgene

Bottle of tears absolutely necessary?  Did I pack

Enough hope and forgiveness?  Where is that

Stuff bag of patience I meant to take?  Is there

Time to repack before I cross to the other side?

Is anyone less prepared than I?

Rav Nachman -- our tour guide – said that

The important thing is to not be afraid.

I just heard a scream.  No wait.  We’ve heard

That sound before -- our shrieking

Hollow filled with awe horn

Reminding us to watch our steps.

This bridge between our sunsets is, indeed,

Narrow.  Each year we journey together we

Become better packers.  We learn to travel

Lightly.  The anger was too heavy.  Tears once

Shed are gone forever.  Maybe the flashlight is

Still a good idea.  We make these crossings

Together to steady and prepare for the moment

We must cross the bridge alone – comforted by

Our yearly migrations to sacred moments at this

Fearless time.

If You Read About This Cart

All I wanted to do was go down to the hotel lobby, eat some breakfast, and return to my room in time for an eleven o'clock telephone interview with a Florida based magazine.  And yet, as so often happens in my life, someone interrupted that quest to tell me her story.
"I'm sixty-two years old," she said without provocation from me.
I stopped.  No words came from my mouth.
"And I am so sick of this cart that if you read one day that a hotel employee pushed her house keeping cart off the roof you'll know it was me."
"Okay," was all I could say.
"I've been at this, I've been pushing this damned cart from room to room in this damned hotel, for twenty-five years.  I've had enough.  My children are grown.  I put them all each and every one of them through college pushing this damed cart.  My husband says I can retire now so I'm gonna do just that.  Today is my last day here."
"Okay.  Congratulations on your retirement."
And then she stopped and looked at me.  Her angry expression softened.
"I'm sorry.  You're a guest at this hotel.  I shouldn't be telling you my miseries."
Whereupon she pushed her cart down the hallway, turned a corner, and was gone.
Of course she shouldn't have been telling me, a guest of the hotel where she had worked for twenty-five apparently miserable years, her miseries.  Not me the guest.  But of course she had to tell me, the not guest but the person to whom these things so regularly happen, her miseries because that's what people do.  To me.
At this point I'm used to it.  It's been going on most of my life. Generally I don't pay that much attention to this phenomena.
However, should I one day read of a hotel employee pushing her house keeping cart off the roof of a hotel I will definitely think of her and the toll twenty-five years of cleaning up the messes left by others can take on anyone.
However, this day is her last day of pushing that particular cart and cleaning up these particular messes.
Congratulations to her on her retirement.

So Many Brave Souls

And we remember them and we honor them.

A New Line Of Supporters

First of all I need to confess that I know nothing about professional football.  I don't follow it except on Super Bowl Sunday when the national mandate is to care and to put money in the office pool.  However, driving home this evening I heard a news report that left me a new fan of the NFL.  A couple of players have come out in support of same sex marriage -- Brendon Ayanbadejo of the Baltimore Ravens and Chris Kluwe of the Minnesota Vikings.
I never heard of either name before my drive home.
At least for today, though, they are my heroes.