The Boy, The Tree, The Sky, The Toy, The Sun, The Song

I was four when I started writing stories. Mom said I would take a piece of college ruled paper, fold it in half, turn it sideways, draw a picture on the front (usually of a boy's face), write a title beneath that (something like The Boy), and then open it to write the story on the two inner "pages" (something like The boy cried love Mom), and then present it to her as the book I'd written for her. She kept each one. I counted them a couple weeks ago. There are four dozen such books, give or take.

I was thirty-two when I first started sending my stories out to journals and magazines. Now I'm forty-nine and I've had a lot of books published - novels, story collections, poetry, memoir - but it's still the same. I'm still writing books and handed them to people hoping they'll like them.

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Mom has my twelve published books on a shelf in her living room. But the shelf doesn't start with my first published book, the 2012 short story collection The Same Terrible Storm. No, sir. It starts with those handcrafted, often crayon-based titles from 1980. 

The Boy, The Tree, The Sky, The Toy, The Sun, The Song.

And that grounds me.

It does. It grounds me every time I see them. 

More lately than ever before, I've needed something to do that, to pull me to the side, ease me into a chair, put an arm around my shoulder, and say, "Here's why you do this. Here's why you do this thing you do by yourself in a quiet room unsure if anyone will ever read what you've written." 

I have to be told, "Don't forget how it felt when you finished The Sun or The Tree and handed it to her and how happy she was to see it, to read it, to hug you when she was done."

I need to know that the reasons I do what I do remain as pure and honest as when I first started. Because if I lose that uncontaminated clarity, the last word I'll ever write will be this one.

My short story "Flipped" appears at BULL today

My short story "Flipped" appeared today at BULL. This has been one of my very favorite journals for more than a decade. Thank you Ben Drevlow; there is no other like you.

"Flipped"

Stumbling Stones: The Story of My Friend

I went to see a play tonight, my first. 

Stumbling Stones: The John Rosenberg Story is about my good friend, and many, many peoples' good friend, John.

I can't relay to you here all that John's done in his life, but it's probably enough to say that he and his family were survivors of the Holocaust. That is, his immediate family, though he, his brother, and his parents were sent to an interment camp before finally boarding passage to New York City.

JOHN ROSENBERG

He's a champion here in Eastern Kentucky. When he got here in 1970 he started foundation for free legal representation for poor people who couldn't afford attorneys. He was also instrumental in getting rid of the broad form contract that enabled coal companies to steal land from hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of Appalachians. Companies in the late 1800s bought mineral rights (for the extraction of coal) from land owners here and later came to collect.

The law gave these fuckers a shield for a long time, but thanks to Rosenberg, the broad form contract is no more. 

John was also one of the civil rights lawyers who was in Mississippi during what would be called Mississippi burning (later made into a film of the same name) that began after three voting registration workers were murdered there.

I could keep going with how important John is to me and to everyone here in my hometown through his achievements as a lawyer and civil rights activist, but the main thing to know about John is that he is a good person, truly good, during a time when the very idea of a good person has been so distorted it's no longer recognizable under the same definition.

How much impact does John have on how I live my life? After the play, I went to McDonald's (only because Hardee's was closed for some reason at 9 PM on Saturday night). Just before pulling up to give them my order, I thought I should throw out my cigarette. I shouldn't smoke, but I also shouldn't throw my butts out the window. I never think about it when I do - never. I won't lie. But I did tonight: I thought about how I shouldn't litter. There is only one reason why I worried about that tonight.

John Rosenberg.

That's what John, now 94, does better than anybody I know. He makes you want to be a better person in every respect.