Nelson Farley and Ghosts

One of Nelson Farley’s hobbies is ghostbusting. There have probably been more ghosts in his house than in any haunted house; but most of them weren’t haunting, just visiting. This hobby inspired the license plates on his two Cadillac Sevilles: GOSBUSTR on the yellow ‘83, and GSTBSTR on the blue ‘85.

In the early 1990’s, my girlfriend’s son, Eric, taped a documentary on ghosts for me. One incident involved the Cabot, an American pocket carrier during World War II.

After the war, San Diego used the Cabot as a floating museum. One young woman, after touring this museum, reported that it was haunted by a young American sailor.

During a battle in 1942, the Cabot was hit by a kamikaze. The Cabot returned to service after repairs and finished out the war. It appeared the museum’s ghost died in the kamikaze attack.

By the time I got Eric’s tape, I had been educated by owners of haunted houses: leave their ghosts undisturbed. But I could still sit in my Hilton home on Hopkins Street and do what needed doing. The procedure is simple: I pray and then alter my state of consciousness by meditation. I ask my guides to bring me the haunting soul so I can talk to him. The talk is based on the summary of the law which Jesus cited as the two greatest commandments: You are to love God with all your heart, mind, strength, and soul and to love your neighbor as yourself. Those are three requirements really: love God, neighbor and self, I then explain why haunting is a hindrance to each of the three. It is important to first acknowledge the soul’s predicament, as best you know it. It is also helpful to remind them this is an invitation, and not a command. At the end, I ask them to look around for whomever they want as a guide and to go to the light with them, and then I bless them on their way.

As I finished my discourse, I saw the starboard side of a carrier with about two hundred men looking over the side at me. Many of these men were manning antiaircraft guns. They were smiling, but I was offended. ‘”Why were you hiding? I would have been there for you, too!” They didn’t reply, although I believe they understood. I did not understand: They were not hiding but welcoming their friend home from the war.

As I came out of meditation to the awareness of my room, I saw another man standing in the doorway to my small room. He was about 5′ 10″, and might have weighed 145 pounds if dripping wet. He wore a pilots’ uniform, complete with goggles, but no parachute. Only one country in World War II did not equip their pilots with parachutes, “Would you-please do for me what you just did for him?” He was shy and polite; not a warrior on a deadly mission, but a likable young man. I would, but first I asked my guides to see if there were any more like him. When I finished this second séance, I saw a second pilot. This one was short, stocky, confident, and seemed very much in charge of the situation. Certainly, this was the guide. He had three Zeros, in the early-war gray; and a second young pilot just as tall and skinny as the first. The slim one opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came forth: he was speechless. The message was clear though, and I liked it. The last thing I saw was the three warbirds flying off to their spiritual destination.

W. Michael Farmer Writes About the Old West

W. Michael Farmer was born in 1944 in Nashville, Tennessee. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Tennessee, and has taught graduate students, managed atmospheric instrumentation projects and databases, served as an advisor to the U.S. Army and NATO, published technical books and papers, managed small businesses, and traveled widely in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Pacific Rim countries. Living for nearly fifteen years in Las Cruces, New Mexico, he studied the region’s rich history, lived in its culture, traveled its deserts, mountains, and ranges and learned truth derived from fiction is as valid as any physical theory. He now lives and writes in the Tidewater area of Virginia, in Smithfield.

Read a Mike Farmer short story of the Old West at the link below.

A Charge Clearly Proved

Wil LaVeist and Unemployment

Fired Up: How To Win When You Lose Your Job

“But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive.”

– Joseph

To go to work one morning only to be fired without a clue by the afternoon can be as depressing as any other loss – even the death of a loved one. This is because in America what we do for a living is often intimately tied to who we are. When someone you meet asks, “So, what do you do for a living?” How do you answer when you’ve just lost your job? But like any other major crisis where you’ve been rejected, being terminated can be the defining moment that actually launches you to your true destiny. Fired Up is an intimate account that shows in raw detail how to climb out of a personal crisis.

Fired Up: How To Win When You Lose Your Job offers a concrete plan for coping and climbing back from any crisis, only in this case it’s a blindsiding firing. After being terminated, you will likely go through the various stages of grief, such as denial and anger, before reaching acceptance and hopefully forgiveness. I went through most of the stages, but got stuck at anger. In Fired Up I share the steps I took to cope, recover and eventually forgive, enabling me to move on toward my true career destiny, which, by the way, is what true success is really about. More than 1.5 million jobs were lost in the U.S. in 2008. Those aren’t just statistics, but actually people, some with children in college, or elderly parents they are caring for, or mortgages to pay. Many of them, like me, didn’t see the firing coming. Of course not all terminations are unfair or financially devastating. In fact, many are simply necessary, nothing personal and just business. But when you’re fired without warning, your life can be turned upside down and inside out. Fired Up helps employers realize that being humane when letting people go is better for business, and employees to understand that shock may be just what was needed for them to become who they were truly intended to be.

Barbara Drucker Smith Reminisces

PREJUDICE

In the 1930’s there was a sign at the Cavalier Hotel in Virginia Beach that read, “No dogs or Jews allowed.” In 1942, I was in the second grade at Woodrow Wilson Elementary in Newport News, Virginia. One day in early December, I started singing a Christmas Carol in class along with my classmates. My teacher stopped the singing and reminded me in a loud voice how inappropriate for me to be singing Christmas Carols. I stopped singing, flushed with embarrassment to be spotted singing and to be singled out for it in front of my peers. I knew why she did this as she was Jewish and so was I.

A six-year-old classmate asked me to go with her to a service. I did and it was in a tent crammed with people. Taking center stage was a loud-voiced man giving a continuous damnation and hellfire sermon. When people were asked to come forward, my friend tried her best to drag me to the front to accept Jesus as my savior so that I would be saved. But I repeatedly refused which left her confused and me mortified at even being in the situation.

Another six-year-old friend invited me to go swimming at the James River Country Club.  I ran to get ready. Mother stopped me and said that the club is restricted. Jews are not welcome as members. I wanted to go anyway, but I did not go. Later in my teens, this same girl needed a ride to her tennis date at the same club. I drove her there wearing a
slack outfit. She was in a short white tennis outfit. As I let her out I felt left out knowing that I was not allowed or welcome to play on those courts.

One December, I got out of my first grade class and started walking home. An older boy started throwing stones at me and screaming “Jew, where are your horns”. I ran as fast as my feet would go and blocks later I no longer heard his voice so I looked around, saw no one, and slowed down to a trot. When I got to the curb near my home, I sat down. A car screeched to a halt just missing a dog by a hair. I put my hands in my lap and started crying partially for the dog being saved but mostly for my hurt feelings at the insults, stone throwing, chase, and overt prejudice of the older boy. I later learned that Michelangelo’s sculpture of Moses in Italy does have horns. Michelangelo mistook the Hebrew word that means both sacred light and horns. The Hebrew text reads Moses’s head is surrounded by sacred light.

As a teen, I developed a camaraderie with a non-Jewish boy interested in folk music. He would play his guitar for hours on my front porch and I would sing the folk songs. He asked me out to go on a movie date. My parents refused to let me interdate. I was heartbroken. He felt hurt and could not understand why I wouldn’t go with him. This shows that prejudice is a two-way street. We ended up going to an every-Saturday-night ritual of musicians and artists that gathered at the home of a musical couple so that we could be part of a group that enjoyed music. We both took piano lessons from the same teacher. Eventually, our friendship petered out and we went our separate ways.

When I went to College, there was a quota system at many of the prestigious colleges … At my College only 10 per cent of the freshman class could be Jews.

Shonda Buchanan, Poet

This poem, and much of the poetry I write that deals with family, illustrates to me how the lack of knowing our Indian heritage and legacy led to family dysfunction, and in many cases, abuse. I traced my heritage to the Coharie Tribe of Sampson County, North Carolina and Eastern Band Cherokee in Halifax, North Carolina. On my father’s side, I have Choctaw. My family poetry is a way for me to reconnect with the past and move towards a better future.

VelmaJean

i remember nights when
you pushed my skin
into a blue corner
fanning the Michigan moon
into a white fire

my youth in your fingers
like candle wax

the clock forging ahead
there wasn’t much time

you worked quietly
diligently against the famous
bruises you grew deft at hiding
from your own sisters, unaware
that they were hiding theirs
from you
gifts of hard love, no
gifts from hell

but still, i grew to something

it was that flame you pushed
into me, smoothed it down
seeded it in my navel for later

knowing that i was young
you were older. wiser.
married a third time
seven children from virginhood
one father from innocence
one mother from forgiveness

i remember nights
when you rubbed my back, singing
swing low
sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home
sweet low, sweet chariot

you spilled vicks over my
chest, my mosquito bumps
dime-thin back
humming long into
the dusk
forcing the bronchitis
that almost killed me twice
into a soft wheeze

i lived
bred off plantation prayer
menthol

later, forgetful
i never knew your stiff back
held me
at the kitchen sink
your fingers soapy with dishwater and tears

all the knowing of a woman
in that water as you sniffed, moved
away

i thought you were making it all
look harder then it really was

men, love, holding things
raising us
i said nothing

but i was a child
it was alright
i grew into something

theses memories come
i am folding them away
for my daughter
into her like all good
mother spiders do
while they wash dishes
spin white flames
watch, hum

family reunion, fourth of july in kalamazoo, 1999

i.
tina laughs, hands on belly
crow-black and hard

like her husband didn’t just paint his toenails
red ‘on a dare’ and leave her for another man

rochelle sits cross-legged on ground rocking
back and forth into a sulfur breeze
wrapped in a thin blanket
and her backwoods dreams of peace
bound in a ceremony of missing sons
already begun

firecrackers scatter dust
at her feet, grinning, she tell bobbie ann
‘shut the hell up, trick’
as whistlers pierce air, sing last breath song
pulsing siren goodbyes, finally jumping curb
extinguishing in street

breeze kicks up

children race around us like black dandelions
willowy fingers douse alleyway with inch-worm secrets
hide-go-seek screams reach out
reminding us of other willows and dandelions
in posthumous fields

bobbie ann’s smile spreads wide across her face
like the sahara, she folds all forty-one
years of her life / her famous left hook
her two women into a round planet on her chest
letting no one in
chain smoking the night away

ball up her fist, shake it, tell rochelle
‘das ya mama, ugly’

cigarette smoke settles on my locks like a caul

everything i know about love i learned from them and
mama
seen twisted wrists / noses clotted with blood
their laughter burning a hole in god’s palm

seen tender dark corners their hearts20have held up
like last stands / in waist deep snowdrifts
like the color of rain depended on it/ yes, seen war

ii.
bobbie’s son, david, eats up our small town
in desperate lurch at freedom before
he marries nashville preacher daughter

at twenty-two swaying like ypsilanti timber
above us, determined to remain uncut, all his clippings
his two a.m. love-making with men he has forgotten
the names will be swept neatly under a rock

my youngest brother
popeye’s toffee-hued skin has sprouted a garden of tattoos
as if the paper he usta draw on wasn’t enough

i spin when i try to read their indigo treaties
binding his flesh all at once agreements he made with
manhood before i could save him / agreements broken

under night’s charade of falling i see his eyes winking
in and out of view/ stars behind clouds

he sells weed to pay bills and buy special size shirts
to drape his salty mammoth body
he has been hurt by women
clenching and unclenching
his hannibal fists marching against the air
his brow carved into a totem
i know life isn’t kissing him back

at three hundred pounds a piece
he and my nephew jason
are the proverbial town giants
with hands that could swat us down
like african flies but these two, they hug us instead
in the end, no matter
how much the women yell

iii.
this july fourth night / we shift positions
chill kisses ankles, we move to warmth
congregate on yvonne’s
yellow porch on south side

produce pomegranate stories from
folds of our clothing and breathe

my daughter’s nine-year old legs
float across hazy lawn in game of tag

she, cousins, neighbors’ kids all chant
what children chant when they are
young lions
and it is summer and an undulation of fireflies
have risen for them
in the crushed sapphire
blue dusk

i always / forget how beautiful
kalamazoo is

again, tina’s crow laughter
piles out of her mouth like mama’s
in the darkness/ thinking she has slipped
in among us, unnoticed
i search for the one who pushed
us into this world, wondering if
she knew it would be like this
black indians in a zoo/ no heritage/ no men

we women / howling

Sofia M. Starnes, Poet

One of my poems, The Soul’s Landscape, likens the relationship between the soul and the body to that of a marriage, with the soul pursuing the body, to create a self. The poem’s metaphor applies with equal force to poetry, to the relationship between the text and the body of the poem.

The Soul’s Landscape

Ah, what the soul gives for shape –
to be handled head-first

at the temple, to be cumbered
with cotton, white puffs

from plantations in heat; what it gives,
for the flick, flick elastic

on wrists, loose-leaf palms it befriends,
at its youngest – for the sake

of all this, and this place.
Love me now with your

hands (says the soul, half-exploring its
landscape), better me

with embodiment; come, angle the ribs
where they beach into

longing; come, finger the oval description
of death, smallest hope

for cessation. When the room is redundant
of space, and its walls

wish for closure, thumb my corners
up, inward, wade your lips

through the ridge where they meet,
to allow recollection.

I must love with the tissue and the gloss
that embody: cellule, elegy,

ghost, danger, languish… all those words
out of context for souls,

god-forsaken, whiplash of the neck –
Interim

is the word I would use the most cautiously;
how precarious its hum,

ear to earth, plumbing earth, earthwise.

From: A Commerce of Moments
Pavement Saw Press, Ohio, 2003
First published in Pavement Saw Magazine

(Comment excerpted from http://herecomeseverybody.blogspot.com/2005/08/sofia-m.html)

Thursday Thrills for Writers

Our writers’ series has expanded, and this is what it looks like now:

Writers on Thursdays: A New Program Series for every writer, every Thursday, every month,
October 2008 through June 2009

1st Thursday
Writers on Writing – Invited local authors read and give background on their work, sharing how and why they write. Contact Anita Harrell, 757-315-3702

2nd Thursday
Kinship of Authors – A supportive community of writers, both published and unpublished, with frequent speakers willing to answer related questions. Contact Ann Davis, 757-722-1584

3rd Thursday
Different invited local authors read and give background on their work, sharing how and why they write. Contact Anita Harrell, 757-315-3702

4th Thursday
Thursday Open Mic – An open invitation for readers to share either their writings without public critiques. Contact Anita Harrell, 757-315-3702

All programs are Thursdays at 6:30 PM at the Main Library
Free and open to the public
Co-sponsored by the Community Outreach Dept. and the Friends of the Hampton Public Library

Hampton Public Library
4207 Victoria Boulevard
Hampton VA 23669
Phone: 757-727-1154
www.hamptonpubliclibrary.org
What you want to know, when you want to know it.

Join us! We’d love to see you.

Ann Falcone Shalaski, Poet

Writing poetry can be as difficult as carrying water in a sieve and as rewarding as growing wings.
** Poetry is the chiseled marble of language.
** It uses words that go beyond words.
** It’s in the details that we communicate images.

Two examples from World Made of Glass:

Deep With Roots

Sorrow is my own yard
where new grass never grows.

Flowers, fisted,
sink into time.

Sadness scallops its paws,
pushes me down in the same bed,

and the bones are yours.
I pull on dying,

smell stars,
approach God angry.

Twist of Lime

I remember the night we had
Mexican food. Green chilies sizzle
on porcelain plates,

salty margaritas, smooth as river
rocks. Ceiling fans stir
the amber air,

a man at the bar neatly stacks
empties. Guitars strum,
you slow dance me through

leaving, hum that no one
stays together for long.
I think of you summer nights,

pass the open door of the restaurant,
legs bare, tomato red lipstick.
Cotton soft skirt flaring.

Ann Shalaski was born in Connecticut and lives in Newport News, Virginia, where she serves as president of the advisory council for Christopher Newport University’s Writers’ Conference and Writing Contest. She is a workshop presenter and hosts monthly open mic poetry events. Her poetry collection, World Made of Glass, published by San Francisco Bay Press, is available at ashalaski@msn.com

Nancy O’Berry, writer of fantasy romances

ENCHANTED, excerpted below, is now in a four story print digest called UNDERSEA DELIGHT and as a large print edition by Midnight showcase. It can be downloaded as a ebook as well.

…Later that evening, after leaving the office, Dominic felt drawn toward the parking lot again. Pulling into the spaces, he cut the motor and sat before the waning tide watching the sun lose its grip on the sky.

Slowly, the bright ball was sinking in the western sky casting its long gold fingers across the Elizabeth River. The color reminded him of a ripe cantaloupe. Opening the door, he extricated himself from the SUV. Transferring the keys, he slipped them into his pocket and moved toward the edge of the pavement to stand. Across the way, the old gaslights around downtown Portsmouth twinkled on. He paused placing a hand upon the outstretched arm of the statue.
“How lucky you are,” he whispered. “You are nothing more than fiberglass, a man-made product with no heart. I, on the other hand, must keep mine protected from wellmeaning friends.” He gazed into the blue green eyes. Funny, he thought most of the statues around the city had painted eyes. Again, the great detail of the artist amazed him for the mermaid’s eyes seemed to be made from glass. Even the stone around her neck seemed real for no bauble of cut glass has such a deep blue hue. Could he be mistaken? Did he hear a sigh? Was she almost human?

A fresh wave of melancholy rolled over him. “Yet, in some ways we are very alike, Miss Mermaid, both of us have been put on display. At least you are lucky enough to not feel the pain and embarrassment when family honor is at stake.” Then for no other reason than whimsy, Dominic kissed the outstretched fingers. “Perhaps you will bring me luck.” With a tired smile, he turned away.

Moving further down the pavement, Dominic Theodopolis took his seat upon the park benches under the soft light and watched the young lovers stroll lazily in the dying heat of early evening.

Serena felt what was left of her heart contract. If only she were not hidden behind the metal of this body. In silence, she cursed her ill begotten luck thinking to herself, “if only”. She watched the man as he stretched his long legs out before him. I wonder how he would look in scales. His upper torso was broad at the shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist. With his sleeves rolled to the elbow, she could see the rich tan to his skin like the golden sand along the Mediterranean coast.

The breeze ruffled the dark curls along his head, sending a strong desire to run her fingers through it just to see if those locks were indeed as thick as they appeared. He was one gorgeous specimen. The very type she would be drawn to especially if he was a merman. It was a shame he was one of the human race. Still, Serena could feel her mouth water. The man was nearly good enough to eat.

* * * *

Nancy O’Berry loves a good story. Growing up along the Elizabeth River in the Indian River section of Virginia Beach, she listened to the tales of the ocean at her Grandfather’s knee. So its not a coincidence that her first published story involves the sea. She has been writing for her own enjoyment since 1968 and with encouragement from friends, she decided to try publishing.

ENCHANTED, her first published work for Midnight Showcase, involves a Greek shipdesigner and a mermaid who both must fine love before their parents deadlines or face the consequences. She is currently working on several full length novels and short stories which she hopes will soon find a home.

When not writing in her own little world, Nancy lives in Southeast Virginia with her husband, family, and her pets which include two angus cows. She serves as president of the local Romance Writers of America chapter which meets at Russell Memorial Library, behind Chesapeake Square Mall, the first Saturday in each month.

You may reach Mrs. O’Berry at peanutgallery14@charter.net

Sharon Weinstein, Poet

Sharon Weinstein’s creative vision centers around these ideas:
* Poetry is about the truth bared.
* It also the act of shaping your feelings and observations into a beautiful whole.
* A good poem needs to be aesthetically sound, beautiful on the tongue, and an oral gift to its listeners.

Here are two short examples.

MARRIAGE

He studies his plate.
She studies him.

ON TURNING FIFTY

Actually,
I have stopped
turning;
arrived
somewhere
in a place
I recognize
as mine,
I shape
my mouth
in an O
of welcome
and surprise
and swallow
fifty,
whole.

Dr. Sharon Weinstein (at piano@exis.net) is a Virginia Beach poet who writes poems from an interdisciplinary perspective. She is a classical musician, watercolor and Asian Brush Painting artist, who is an emotionally evocative writer and speaker. She has performed from her book of poems, Celebrating Absences, and given creative workshops at many national venues, including as Keynote Speaker for the International Society of Poets in Washington, D.C.; in Portland, Oregon; Tennessee State University at Johnson City; at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Berklee College of Music in Boston, and many other venues.