CELEBRATING THE ARTS AND SCIENCES

It seems natural that a man who says that he respects people “who pay attention to their minds and bodies, appreciate life, are present in their daily tasks and are thoughtful and selfless” would continually be expanding his work and seeking ways to communicate ideas to a growing readership. I refer to Gary Entsminger, editor and publisher of Pinyon Publishing in Montrose, Colorado, who recently expanded the publications of his Indie press to include a magazine, Pinyon Review, Celebrating the Arts and Sciences.

The magazine features a line-up of poets and short story writers, computer programmers, and nature enthusiasts, and includes an essay on fractal geometry by Larry Fogg. Gary’s sidekick, Susan Elliott, an accomplished artist and ecologist, contributed several watercolor images to the issue and designed the front and back covers of Pinyon Review.

The Pinyon Review is a handsome journal, and I’m happy that it includes two of my poems alongside those of another Louisianan, Ken Fontenot, a native of New Orleans now living in Austin, Texas. Pinyon recently published a volume of his work entitled In A Kingdom of Birds.

I was fascinated with the Mandelbrot Set Fractal by Larry Fogg that appears on the title page of Pinyon Review, although I found his essay on fractal geometry not-so-easy to understand, except from the standpoint of fractal art: “Fractal geometry has been called ‘the geometry of nature’ because it does a good job of drawing objects like galaxies, mountains, trees, and blood vessels. Fractals are infinitely detailed and self-similar. That means that as you zoom in on the image, the smaller details resemble the large scale shapes…,” Fogg writes.

I'm partial to poetry about crows and was drawn to Don Thompson’s poem about this raucous bird. Don lives in the southern San Joaquin Valley of California, and his most recent book, published by Pinyon, is entitled Everything Barren Will Be Blessed. The poem is simply entitled “Crows.”

Crows never make excuses,

unlike us — but like us

complain bitterly about their blessings,

This one beside the road,

dissatisfied with the leftover rabbit

I killed for him yesterday,

squawks at the cosmos without thinking

anymore than we do,

how easy life is for him—

compared to rabbits, so undemanding,

for whom every run is a risk

neither man nor crow would take.

Coulter Country is the featured non-fiction article that appears in Pinyon Review and was written by Dr. Gerald L. Brody, a pathologist, an amateur ornithologist, and fly fisherman, who writes about his early adventures as a newly married person when he and his wife hiked in the remote wilderness of Wyoming.

The fare in this journal is varied and showcases quality writing selected by an Indie publisher who lives on the Uncompaghre Plateau at 7,000 feet in the southern Rocky Mountains. Gary works in a cabin where east-facing windows bring in light and where he can see the Buckhorn Mountains nearby. He’s a writer, publisher, naturalist, musician, and computer programmer who has written over 100 scientific/technical articles and computer software that helps scientists understand patterns of biodiversity and biogeography. From this brief biographical note, you can see why Pinyon Review contains a plethora of diverse writing for a universal audience.

Congratulations on Volume 1 of the Pinyon Review,Gary and Susan (Managing Editor) — may your readership increase with each new publication!

Pinyon Review can be ordered from www.pinyon-publishing.com/books/html or Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO, 81403.

SOME CHATTER ABOUT CLABBER

Grandpa Paul – Clabber enthusiast & 
grandchildren not so fond of the drink

Yesterday morning after preaching a Pentecost sermon at St. Mary’s, the Episcopal Convent here on the bluff at Sewanee, Tennessee, I went into the refectory to breakfast with the congregants and Sisters and got into a conversation with Henry Hamman, publisher of Plateau Press. Henry had begun searching for his wife Kathy because he said that he had to get home and build a fence around his tomato plants – the ubiquitous deer on the Cumberland Plateau had been sniffing around his garden. I immediately went into a déjà vu about homegrown products; namely, the tomatoes that my Grandfather Paul used to grow in his backyard at Franklinton, Louisiana (the town where I was born)… and the memory lengthened into one about supper feasts in the “country.”

When I visited my grandparents during summers of the 40’s, the supper table often contained simple fare of thick slabs of Big Boy tomatoes, sliced cucumbers that I helped my grandfather pick, butterbeans left from lunch and warmed up, fried cornbread, and clabber. My grandfather’s supper consisted of only a tall green glass filled with clabber and crumbled cornbread, a concoction he drank throughout the summer.

At the age of nine, my appetite centered more on the vegetables than the strange concoction Grandfather Paul drank because I thought that clabber was a medicinal food he endured as a remedy for his condition of Bright’s Disease. Years later, I tasted clabber and agreed with the moniker it acquired through the Ulster Scots in the Appalachians – that of “bonny clabber.”

Clabber is simply curdled milk, or unpasteurized milk that has been allowed to turn sour at a specific temperature -- room temperature. As the milk curdles it develops into yogurt-like consistency. In this age of pasteurized milk regulations, the drink isn’t too popular anymore, and the pasteurization process kills the bacteria necessary for it to sour. The closest we can get to a clabbered drink is buttermilk. I’m told that if you heat clabber a little, the curds in it separate and become cheese.

Some farmers use clabber to feed their chickens as it provides calcium and protein for the chickens – the farmers claim that if chickens are fed this concoction, their meat is softer and they become better layers.

I have no idea where my grandfather got his raw milk because he didn’t own cows, but Washington Parish abounds in dairy farms, and he may have obtained milk from the owner of a cow that grazed on an open lot on 10^th Avenue in Franklinton, one that I skirted on the way to visit my Aunt Kathryn who lived about a block away from the cow. I’d get off the sidewalk and wade through weeds to avoid the harmless cow who kept her head lowered and had no interest in a frightened, nine-year old girl. My mother had a phobia about cows and passed on the fright to me, along with fear of lightning, tramps, and a host of other senseless anxieties. A contradiction to this phobia was my liking for the verse in Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verse about the “friendly cow, all red and white/I love with all my heart…”

A few decades ago, perhaps a thousand dairy farms abounded in Washington Parish, and I understand that today there are less than two hundred; however, the three parishes of Tangipahoa, St. Helena and Washington parishes have the largest concentration of dairy farms in Louisiana. I don’t know how much of the milk is used for curdling purposes, but in many rural areas, people still enjoy their milk soured to the stage of a firm curd. Remember the old nursery rhyme, “Little Miss Muffet /sat on her tuffet/ eating her curds and whey?”

I recently read an article highlighting Russel Creel, who owns a dairy farm five miles east of Franklinton. Creel received the title of “Dairyman of the Year” from the LSU Dairy Science Club (once known as the Cow and Cream Club!), and I bet he knows how to make a good bowl of clabber since he has been in the dairy industry for over forty years.

By the way, clabber can be eaten with brown sugar, nutmeg, or molasses. However, my grandfather was a purist and ate it unsweetened, flavoring it only with fried cornbread (no sugar added). A Greenlaw, of Scots lineage, Grandfather Paul thought it was “bonny clabber.”

WIT, WISDOM, AND MOSTLY TRUE STORIES

In my last blog, I talked about the writings of aspiring authors who had published some of their memoirs written in a Life Writing Class taught by Kim Graham at the New Iberia Library in New Iberia, Louisiana.  The book, Let Me Tell You A Story, has been selling like a Dave Robicheaux novel since its publication — it seems that the town of New Iberia turned out for a recent signing at the New Iberia Library, and class members may be doing a second printing.

Instructor Kim Graham has been teaching a similar class sponsored by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette since the 1990’s, which was originally taught by Joan Steer, an English teacher, and the late Ida Neezy who worked at Lafayette General Hospital.  This class has also published a volume of their reminiscences entitled Wit, Wisdom, and Mostly True Stories and can be ordered by clicking on the title.

The book includes memories of Hurricane Betsy, World War II experiences, Guatemalan adventures, travels in the Mideast, a family camping trip, and many other life experiences written after students received instruction in dialogue, character development, and other writing techniques.  Kim Graham calls her class members “incredible authors.  Through humor or tears, a story will emerge… with references to the past, ones that will be recognized by family or place…”

The authors include teachers, legislators, doctors, geologists, farmers, and people representing other vocations.  Many of the stories feature photographs, even paintings, to illustrate their memoirs.  The biographies of the writers at the conclusion of their stories are as intriguing as the stories themselves.

 

I was drawn to a story entitled “Texas Plumes” by Jean Sellmeyer Smith who included a poem at the conclusion of her vignette.  Her story is filled with sensual, concrete detail; e.g., her description of an old-time country meal prepared by her grandmother: “Three meats – clove-studded ham, crispy fried chicken, a pot roast with smooth dark brown gravy – every kind of fruit and vegetable in season, or in the storm cellar …bread and butter pickles, crisp and cold from a big clay crock – sweet tea in a frosty pitcher – fresh hot bread topped with home-churned butter molded in the glass swan mold…and from the wild muscadine cascading high over the back fence, a grape jelly as clear and deep purple as a brilliant amethyst…”  This story evoked memories of my Grandmother Nell’s country spreads that included plump butterbeans, sliced Big Boy tomatoes and cucumbers, and fried cornbread.

As I’ve written many poems and stories based on my life experiences, I can appreciate the feeling of “closure” a writer sometimes gets when he/she has spun a vignette that “places value on a moment in time,” as Kim says.  There’s something cathartic about penning a memoir.

Life Writing Classes provide a kind of creative synergy for students who long for self-expression, and some of the classes have been around for four decades.  However, in the last few years, advances in printing technology have allowed the publication of memoirs to burgeon — valuable life stories are being preserved for many generations.

Brava Kim Graham — and your students — for producing two colorful anthologies!

www.createspace.com/3849786