Chautauqua Literary Magazine Call for Submissions

Here's some news from the Chautauqua magazine that you should note. If you're working on something from the class, consider submitting it. You could be published and win money, too. Hope that happens to all--KK

Dear Chautauqua Literary Arts Center Faculty,

Recently, we made changes to our contests and wanted to let you know about the new Editors Prize. Beginning in 2014, Chautauqua will award these prizes to recognize the writing we feel best captures both the issue’s theme and the spirit of Chautauqua Institution. Three prizes will be awarded: $500, $250, and $100. All submissions made via our Submittable site are considered as contest entries. The entry fee is a reasonable fee, just $4.00.

The first place winner will automatically be nominated for the Pushcart Prize. To be eligible, writers must submit using our online submission process—and all online submissions, regardless of genre, are contenders.

As a member of Chautauqua's Literary Arts Center Faculty, we wanted to be sure you knew about this change. We hope you'll consider submitting before the November 15th deadline for Chautauqua Issue 11, Wonders of the World. 

All the best,

Dina Greenberg

greenbergdina7@gmail.com

dinagreenberg.com

Managing Editor, Chautauqua

609-560-3500

Lara wins a prize for an essay about our class.

Lara wrote an essay about our class and submitted it to the Chautauqua Writers' Center contest--and won an honorable mention! It's about our shared experience, and she'd love to hear your reactions.--K

I Heard a Story Today

I heard a story that hasn’t yet been written and isn’t mine to tell, but it is a story so beautiful and so moving I cried when I heard the outline for it. I heard a story that will be one of the greatest stories of this decade, a story that will become celebrated and remembered as one of the most important stories of our time, and I was one of the first to hear it.  I got to hear this story before it was written, in a hot humid room in the middle of the rainiest summer I can remember.

I came to this place to tell my own stories. I knew I had important, meaningful stories that deserved to be told properly and that the world needed to hear, and I had come to this room to learn to tell them properly.  I did not primarily come to listen to the stories other people had to tell.  I took my writing very seriously.  I vowed to wear a skirt every day and try not to shock my fellow students too much.  I failed at both endeavors; I cannot contain who I am for very long, certainly not an entire week.

“You are all great listeners,” the teacher exalted on the first day of class. The implication was that we were probably not great writers, but she was wrong.  I knew I was a great though unpolished writer.  As a listener I’m no great shakes.  Honestly, I have to force myself to pay attention most times, and my listening is more about politeness than interest.  I knew I would surprise her with my great literary skill.

There were fourteen of us writers, plus our instructor and her assistant, making sixteen. There were only four men. Two attorneys, one doctor, one something else – I don’t remember if I asked what he did for a living or if he answered. I did not care who my fellow studiers were or had been, only what they wrote, and if it was beautiful or skilled or made me see the world differently.

One man I wrote off right away. He was tall and had thick white hair, the kind of person to whom life comes easy.  Our society rewards tall, thick-haired white men with fast career advancement and higher paychecks, particularly when they have advanced degrees as well.  He did not look like someone who struggled or had much insight.   He looked like he came to write a sweet sentimental tribute to his mother, or a memoir about a life that would be of no interest to anyone but his grandchildren.

We got into a fight on the fourth of July, he and I, about mothers and their obligations to their children.  He was old-fashioned, sexist, and most certainly a Republican, I could tell just by the two sentences he uttered and the look on his face when he said them. He had absolutely no idea about how the world really worked, but how could he, when society had handed him a nice life of thick hair and Anglo-Saxonism? It wasn’t his fault he wasn’t blessed with the hardships I was that have formed me into the complex and insightful person I am.

After our in-class fight the instructor sent us all out on break to cut the tension.  On our return I listened to a classmate read a beautiful piece she had written, a lyrical essay on sisters that was just right for cooling heated debates. I was impressed that the teacher knew to call on her to read just then.  Next, I got to read my own assignment and was proud of its feminist leanings, and glad that I just happened to write something the night before that was the perfect retort to this close-minded man’s arguments against mothers. I hoped he was listening hard, with both ears open. 

Finally it was his turn to read, and I self-righteously gave him my full attention, magnanimously listening with my whole body; my feet rested firmly on the ground, toes lined up and pointed towards the reader, knees together with closed notebook balanced on my lap, chin on hands, elbows on knees, forming a sturdy foundation for rapt attention, should it be required. I was prepared to show what a good and open-minded listener I was. I was not going to yawn or lean back with crossed legs or anything that might imply disrespect; I was the consummate aspiring professional writer supporting her fellow students striving towards truth and perfectly-formed sentences.

Then the world changed.  He read his outline, a timeline really, with a strong quiet voice.  It took me a few sentences to understand that he was talking about his wife, and a few more to understand the woman of which he wrote was complicated and strong and beautiful, and I knew from listening that she was going to have to die before he got to the end of the story.  By line five I knew he wasn’t the man I thought he was.  By the halfway mark I knew I wasn’t the woman I thought I was when I entered the room.  By the time he had turned the corner to final stretch I was crying with the strength and beauty of this man’s story.  I wanted to go up to him after class and thank him, tell him what it meant to me to be able to hear it, but I had lost my words, and I filed out of the room silently without taking even one extra minute to speak to him personally. I longed to ask him if I could see the picture of her that I knew with certainty he must carry with him, but I did not ask that day.  It was enough to have heard the story, and I didn’t have the right to intrude further.

 I wanted to tell him that his story, which he has not yet written, made me feel small in the way religion is supposed to make you feel, but never has for me. I wanted to convey the awe I felt in hearing of greatness, and I wanted him to know that I understood what he was trying to say, that the beauty of the story was in the contradictions, that I would never forget the woman who died changing the world and threw toast at her husband.

I came to this classroom with its rattan chairs and big old windows to tell my own stories to a captive audience.  I did not know the most important part of the week would come from listening to someone else.  I left that classroom bigger and hollow and filled with wonder and clear sunlight because I got to hear a story that has not yet been written, but when it is, it will change the world.

New work from Zoe: Please comment

Greetings fellow writers.  I"m finally getting past work deadlines and getting to writing.  I've reworked the piece I read in class, I trust having fixed things from your comments. And I've changed the end because I"m thinking I'd like to send it to Sun magazine under the topic 'security'.  Please do send comments.  Zoe

When our daughters were 4 and 2 we accepted a challenge to move to Chicago’s west side ghetto and join a community engaged in urban renewal. I struggled hard against such a choice. I could hear my parents’ voices: You are moving to a ghetto with our young grandchildren? I was terrified for our safety. When we were first married we had lived on the south side of Chicago and I taught at the Lab school. It was north of the Midway, we lived south – and until I made it across the Midway each morning I watched every person on the street and glanced behind every bush or tree. Cars were routinely stolen and apartments broken into – including ours. The nearest thorofare was 63^rd street. It ran under the EL, and had an active life of drugs, prostitutes, and gospel mission storefronts. But we could buy ground “meat” for 10 pounds for a dollar. Now I was going back to that life with two small children?

We packed up our belongings dog and all. This was the 60’s. It was a hot, tense summer in Chicago. It took four men to haul our nine foot sleeper sofa – with twin beds – to the attic of the old dormitory. There was no space for it in a dorm room. What were we thinking? The group had moved to a former seminary campus when the seminary fled to the suburbs. The first week there was an uprising on the block. Families housed in buildings off campus came to stay on campus until it blew over. It wasn’t as much for their safety as to protect the black neighborhood from being incited to riot if something could be blamed on a whitey. Our girls watched from the window as a man was shot on the street. Our 30 or so mostly white children walked to the public school down the block. We had them walk together and they were always accompanied by one or two adults. When there were rumors of trouble the neighborhood mothers would come by to ask if we were sending our children to school that day. If so, they would send theirs. Those 30 little white faces stand out in the class pictures, a few in each class. 

We arrived in 1966, in 1968 all hell broke out. Many in the neighborhood joined us for a horribly sad gathering the evening of King’s assassination. Then the fires began and moved west. Riots – sometimes urged on by the Black Panthers – started near the Loop and spread toward us. We watched from upper floor windows. Then we gathered everyone in the main building on campus. Our daughters watched the fires reach the building used for after school activities. When they came and set fires in our buildings, the Blacks among us refused to leave. The rioters left and we put out the fires. The local gang showed up ready to defend us, they said, but an altercation between them and the more organized of the perpetrators could only come to grief. The next day Mayor Dailey moved the National Guard in; we relocated the children to friends in the suburbs and settled in to help the neighborhood recover. All the convenience stores had been burned. Cars were trashed on the street and we all - white and black - felt violated.

From then on security had to be tightened. No one walked alone. We closed the campus except for the main entrance and hired a guard to sit at the door with the receptionist. He wanted a gun. But the gun was a high level commodity in the area and was a frequent target for a quick snatch. What to do? It was decided to keep the gun inside where it could be brought to the guard when needed but wouldn’t be there for easy picking.  Somehow my husband was chosen to keep the gun. After a few middle of the night calls for the gun, the absurdity of this means of security became clear. Was he, whose only experience with guns was hunting rabbits on the farm, to come blazing into the reception room to defend the guard? Should he toss the gun to the guard and dash back inside? The gun was the attraction. Better to forego security on these terms.

Hi Friends:

I'm just back from a two-week rail vacation in Canada. Pittsburgh-NewYork-Montreal-Quebec City-Halifax. You can get there by train! It was wonderfully relaxing; the trains are slow, allowing one to read a lot of books. The most impactful, for me, were In the Garden of the Beasts, by Erik Larson, and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. Not new books, but ones I've been meaning to get to. Both nonfiction, both turning over rocks, revealing a real world beneath my nose that I never knew was there. That's one of the great pleasures of reading for me.

I hope you're all having a productive summer. I understand Brian O'Donnell has published an essay in his college mag. Looking forward to seeing that.

Feel free to continue to share and comment and put down what you know that no one else knows. Turn over those rocks. Warmly--Kristin

Some work from Sonya

Some work from Sonya:

Open Doors
My father died many years ago, on December 23.  Before you imagine that this sad
memory mutes my Christmas joy, let me assure you that because my father was a
Hindu, there are actually no warm Christmas memories involving him.  In fact, he
scolded us every year for killing a perfectly healthy tree, and wondered how we could
eat that "stinking" meat (turkey).

My dad was the catalyst, however, for the most formative story of my life, and it's a story
that might serve a purpose at Christmas time in particular.  My parents met in 1960 and
my mother was immediately smitten with this handsome foreigner, he with a vivacious
young woman looking for adventure.  They wanted to get married, but my father was
unsuitable in so many ways.  This was the Midwest in 1960 after all, and he was from
another country, not Catholic, and worst of all, the wrong skin color.  My mother's
parents tried to have him deported, but my father was a well-educated professional,
highly respected at the large civil engineering firm where he worked, and simply not
deportable. 

The family stopped speaking to my mother.  She was cut off from her four siblings and
her parents, and during those years of silence she gave birth to me.  I was two when my
grandfather lay dying of brain cancer and my headstrong, brave young mother decided
she would go to the hospital to see her father one last time, whether she was welcome
or not.  She walked into that hospital room, and into the welcoming arms of her mother.
They never talked about the silence that had ostracized my mother during the early
years of her marriage.  Nothing was buried.  It was simply forgiven, with actions instead
of words.  The family came to love my father, to seek his wisdom, to appreciate his
kindness.  For his part, my father never said one unkind word about the family that had
wanted to deport him.  He assured my mother during those early years that her parents
were acting out of love for their daughter, and he was never anything except loving and
respectful to my grandmother in all the years that followed.

I learned about these powerful acts of acceptance and forgiveness as a young adult, but
surely they hung over my childhood, indefinably coloring it.  As we know, Christmas is
notorious as a time of family squabbles and hurt feelings, and hearing those kinds of
stories makes me especially grateful for the life lessons given to me.  The lessons that
taught me to keep the door open to the possibility of change and growth in those who
may have wronged me, and maybe in myself too.  Words aren't always necessary. 
Forgiveness can be spoken with open arms.

A door was left open to a stable and God was changed into a baby.  That baby would
grow into a vessel of forgiveness and love.   It can happen.

We the People
I was able to visit that repository of American ideals, the National Mall in Washington,
D.C. one summer evening with my husband and mother-in-law, who is King's exact
contemporary in age and part of that great migration of African-Americans from the rural
south to the urban north.  She had fully lived the unique American journey of sharecropper to middle class comfort.  We were there to see the latest addition to the line-up
of greatest American dreamers, a memorial dedicated to Martin Luther King.  It was
dusk and the lights were just coming on.  And it was crowded, but though deep thoughts
were clearly moving behind reverent faces and faraway looks as people moved quietly,
as though in a cathedral.

I had seen pictures in the newspaper and read about the controversies that surrounded
the memorial's creation, and wondered if it could possibly represent all that King gave to
this country, all the while thinking that it certainly hadn't broken any new ground
artistically, and in fact looked rather Stalinesque in the photos I had seen.
How good to be surprised.  The quotes were strong and sadly, just as appropriate for
our own time as they were 50 and 60 years ago.  My mother-in-law, Aleen, studied the
statue's face for a long time.  Maya Angelou's harrumphing criticism of that stony face
had been mentioned in every article.  Aleen finally nodded her head and said, " he looks
like a man who doesn't like what he's seeing around him and is ready to do something
about it."  We continued around the memorial, reading each of Dr. King's quotes
carefully, and mourned the lack of such soaring rhetoric in our own time.

On the way out a park ranger heard our conversation and stopped to ask us what we
thought about the memorial, and we in turn asked him about his impressions.  He told
us that when he had first come, weeks before it opened, he wasn't very impressed.  But
as soon as it opened to the public he realized that it had been missing something -
people.  People walking and thinking and quietly conversing, as we had just done. 
People teaching their children and asking their elders.  That's what made the memorial
a success in his opinion.

People make music come alive and people give purpose to the stones of our churches, 
just as people give meaning to King's memorial.  "From the mountain of despair, a stone
of hope", so the memorial is called.  "We the people"...so begins the U.S. Constitution. 
The people, each of us one stone of hope in the great migration forward.

New work from the class

And here's a "list" essay from Lara she was working on last week:

The Contents of my Purse

 

I have a red sparkly vinyl purse everyone comments on.  Most people comment on its resemblance to Dorothy’s slippers, but that’s not why I bought it.  To me it looks just like a red plastic booth in a 1950’s diner, except with leopard print satin lining.  It was expensive but hasn’t held up well, and at first I tired to fill in the cracks in the vinyl with red nail polish, but I’ve since given up the endeavor. I decided the flaws made it look more authentic and hip.  It has metal feet, each shaped like half of a bullet, and they are pointy-sharp and the shoulder strap is just long enough for the feet to scratch the top of my eldest son’s head if we walk hand in hand, which we always do.

My purse needs only to contain my sunglasses, wallet and occasionally my cellphone, if I don’t have adequate pockets that day.  It doesn’t need anything else, but it is often so overflowing that it is hard to snap shut with it’s old fashioned metal “kiss snap.”   It accumulates bits of forgotten memories, snippets of half-intended dreams and old sticky gum. 

Here’s what’s inside, besides my sunglasses and wallet:

Clinique Almost Lipstick in Black Honey, which I first fell in love with at age eighteen and have recently rediscovered, though I never remember to put it on before I go or re-apply it while I am out. I keep it in my purse because I mean to wear it more often.

Chapstick, which I do apply regularly, several kinds of gum and RedHots. I don’t really like cinnamon candies, but I like how the shapes of the candies –each with a bite taken out of the corner – mimic the shape of the container, which was molded to look like something chomped the bottom.  They amuse me and sometimes come in handy. Besides, I got them free from a goody bag one of the children brought home from a party.  The kids don’t mind me having them; they hate hot things that burn their mouths. 

I have a pretty tin of hand crème – Nivea – that smells like my mother used to when I was a child.  She has since changed brands but I can’t resist buying the round blue tin that smells of love and good things. My hands are always dry, but I rarely use the cream because if I do my hands will be greasy on my steering wheel or cell phone’s touch screen.  It remains in my purse just in case I need something to do in a waiting room or boring meeting – neither of which I find myself in with any regularity.

I have a pen I stole from a fancy hotel and a plastic bottle of store brand hand sanitizer.  I remember a cousin of a guy I dated once worked for Purell, and promised me all the free hand sanitizer I wanted.  I met her at a funeral for the boyfriend’s father.  I was sad that the boyfriend and I called it quits before I ever got the hand sanitizer.   I believe the pens in hotel rooms are allowed to be stolen; I don’t think it’s a crime.  This one is from the Waldorf Astoria, and I keep it in my purse in case anyone ever asks to borrow a pen.

For some unknown reason I have a two-year-old pay stub from an employer I haven’t worked for in over a year, though my replacement there still asks me questions via text with some regularity.  I don’t know why I haven’t thrown it away.

In the secret zipper pocket I have the things I am embarrassed for people to see; several tampons of a brand I don’t like but don’t throw away because they do cost money, and in a feminine hygiene emergency they will come in handy. I also have a tampon of my current brand.  I have another pen, this one just a regular pen bought in a ten-pack of boring blue pens, and a lighter left over from when I smoked.  It’s orange, my favorite color.  It’s handy to have a lighter, in case someone else needs one or I decide to smoke again, or for children’s birthday parties where no one smokes and therefore no one can light the candles on the cake.

I also have an old single serving foil packet of sexual lubricant, a free hand out from a gay pride festival I went to years ago.  The package is old and starting to split, and I should take it out of my purse before it leaks all over the pretty satin leopard print lining of my sparkly purse, but I don’t.  I want to be the kind of person who is ready for some sort of strange sexual escapade without warning, though it has gone unused for several years now.  I am ready, at any moment, to be more exciting than I am now, to be as exiting as I used to be.  I keep it hidden away in the secret zipper pocket so my sons don’t ask what it is for.

I don’t carry this purse much when I have the kids anyway – the straps are uncomfortable and its feet scratch my oldest child’s head.  You only need a purse to carry your wallet and sunglasses anyway. All the little memories and dreams and sexual escapades are best left safely at home.

Thanks and another essay

Hi Friends:

I so enjoyed our brief time together at Chautauqua. I do hope you felt you've begun some important work, as I certainly feel you did. I came home to Pittsburgh and stumbled upon this lovely little essay from Richard Ford in Sunday's New York Times. Maybe you saw it, too:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/opinion/sunday/the-song-of-the-suburbs.html?_r=0

The quotation that jumped out at me, that I would have brought to class, is this one:

It's a fair measure of ourselves as adults--of our empathy, at least--that we try to achieve a view of our parents' lives more as they viewed them, and less in the ruthless, tunneled vision of childhood (not that our parents' view would necessarily be clearer).

Best wishes for a productive summer. Thanks again for your own empathy and intelligent contributions to our class. --Kristin