UNMENTIONABLE

Published May 1, 2024 by Nan Mykel

HAVE YOU WONDERED ABOUT THE BOOK MARKET RECENTLY?

I’m not privy to the entire story, only my part. There must be several different things going on. I can talk about what I know. Bookstores are happy to publish news stories on self-published books because it’s good for their business; because the local library refuses to add them to their collecttion.

I can empathize with the flood of local authors’ donations (much of it admitted crap) and their (our) expectations for sharing with the public via our local library. When I donated my book Fallout, A Survivor talks to Incest Offenders to a library staff member she said thank you and I discovered it went directly into our Saturday Library Sale. Thinking that I had not made myself clear, I submitted another copy for the library stacks to another library staff member. I never checked into it further, believing it had been made available in the stacks.

Later I discovered that Picking Fleas, Writers Grooming Writers, a 299-page book by the library’s writing group in 2002 and whose proceeds went to Friends of the Library itself, was not available in the stacks. When I asked, first it was that books without flat bindings carrying title and author info could not easily be displayed. Over the years (since at least 20 years ago), self-published books are assumed to be inferior.

I think I understand the problem. Local “authors” of self-published books include some doozies that would diminish respect for the library’s holdings. So a broad spectrum of the public might be alienated, while a much smaller untamed slice of self-published authors might be gratified. Drawing up guidelines for what’s acceptable would be setting such a big fracas in the face of the world’s other causes so as not to be worth it.

So why did I happen to blab about it here? Because I’m a stickler for hidden truth, I guess.

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After decades of efforts to change a provision of state law shielding people who rape their spouses from prosecution, the Ohio Senate has voted unanimously to remove that loophole. Sen. Stephanie Kunze (R-Hilliard) said the gap in the law has suggested that either spousal rape isn’t taken as seriously as other sexual violence or that it doesn’t ever happen. “This is especially concerning, as a spouse should be the most trusted person in a marriage,” Kunze said on the Senate floor. “And it is even more egregious to think that in our state in 2024, it is lawful to to rape your spouse.” The only “no” vote was from Rep. Bill Dean (R-Xenia). https://www.statenews.org/people/karen-kasler.

According to Google, Dean is married.

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UNITED METHODIST CHURCH REVERSES BAN ON GAY CLERGY

In a meeting on Wednesday, church leaders also voted to allow L.G.B.T.Q. weddings. __n.y.times

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Quote for the Day:

As Robert Morgenthau, a former Manhattan district attorney, liked to say, “You cannot prosecute crime in the streets

without prosecuting crime in the suites.”

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REFLECTIONS

Inside, nestled into a corner of the brain, lies a chapel tucked away just in case we need it. Tear ducts have been installed for weeping. We have fingers for painting and sometimes pointing. When ecstasy or glee overtakes us, we are provided outlets for dancing or singing. On those long dark days of need, there is our inner chapel, the God gene. “You wish!”

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SERENDIPITY AND SYNCHRONICITY

Since I was alerted to something by Word Press (Maybe my pages were all going Private), I read through to see what we would be missing, and was reminded of my first recorded:

My daughter Lili was curious about the IChing so I threw one for her. Of all the possibilities of syllable pairing, it came up with LiLi, so I threw one again and it, too, came up with LiLi….

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IN SEARCH OF A HORSE

Published April 14, 2018 by Nan Mykel

The horse should ideally pull

the cart. Agreed? But if the horse

is not in sight you’re left with

the cart part, and must envision

what kind of horse will pull your

poem into the light of day.

Problem is, most cart-pullers are

tired, worn out and hacknied, lacking

sufficient strength to bear the load.

Love, death, flower, tree, even Trump

won’t do it today. The backside

of an eyeball? Ingrown toenails

seeking freedom? The charley horse

that sets you dancing? Or the rat

poison under the sink?

What’s common to all of us?

Hate? A drag. Sorrow? Too close.

Hope? Delusional. Denial?

Not me! Revolution? Not yet.

Pain? Love my oxycodone.

Truth? But doesn’t that depend on

where you’e standing? Reality!

Let’s hear it for reality!

Really? I’ll vote for Make Believe:

Two golden butterflies pull my

cart through rainbows in the sky.

Oh my! Curly tresses, rosy cheek,

music charms when ere I speak.

A published author!

Published May 4, 2016 by Nan Mykel

It has been more than a year since I published my first book, FALLOUT: A Survivor Talks to Incest Offenders (And Others), plus her dream journal and drawings. Watch my April, 2015 author interview on Kaleidoscope:

And don’t forget to check me out on .

MY METAPHOR

Published January 25, 2016 by Nan Mykel

Come jump into my arms, you furry-feathered verse!
I’ll know you when I see you, either wordy or terse.
Let your metaphor roll in like an occupying force;
sit up high in your saddle on your literary horse!
A shining black stallion, he snorts and passes by
leaving a desolated mule who gives a piteous sigh.
My metaphor has four legs and is not a happy guy.
He does not jump into my arms or even give a try
but nuzzles me as though to say,
“Thanks for waiting for me today.”

HOME IS THE WRITER

Published January 23, 2016 by Nan Mykel

My computer desk is not well lit. I don’t know why, unless it’s to keep company with my flailing vision. I know it’s “failing,” but if a writer can’t have a little fun, who can? Surrounding me, floor to ceiling, are remnants of my former craze for genealogy. In the new digital robotic age, nobody cares, not even me. If we should meet ancestors in the sweet by and by we can introduce ourselves, surely!

And my books! They say writers should read, but… three copies of a book because I like it so much?

So much personal history! Who gives a hoot, as the old owl says. My old report cards—with comments from teachers— Mrs. Arvesons’ two A-pluses on my term paper in ninth grade, my National Honor Society certificate from high school and my tennis team letter, not to mention a drawer full of Christmas cards and correspondence from friends and acquaintances for more than 50 years; at least 100 videotapes shot by me for Public Access line my shelves—many shelves. Last week I came across a letter of congratulations for a forensic evaluation I did 25 years ago, which brings me to the question of why am I in two writing groups and maintain a busy blog and volunteer for public access when I need to spend a year dispensing with my junk?

Given my propensity for hoarding, how can I write anything, you might say? Well, it has to do with escaping the melee I have created and continue to create. And oh yeah I forgot to mention my blind deaf cat who requires his sanitary floor sheet changed daily.

After having an earlier computer fine-tuned at Staples, I lost it when I put it on top of my car and drove away. Now I have an hp guaranteed to last a year, most of which has expired. My huge blonde computer desk sits more or less inside a vacant closet, whose doors are stuck under my bed in another room ..

Self-publishing three books last year was a step forward; I had file folders full of short stories, journal entries and info from the last job I held, so I published them to get rid of them.

Due to short cords and other unknown factors, I have to type—such as I am doing now—with my keyboard in my lap. As I survey the top of my computer desk I see the dregs of a glass of a cocoanut rum mixture, reading glasses from Dollar Tree, two new pairs of socks that are too small for me, a pack of hearing aid batteries, 4 paperback books, three flash drives, a screwdriver, a Diet Coke bottle top, a computer cord that I don’t recognize, an antique toy rolling pin I bought as a gift but never gave, and a green pair of pliers left from loosening a recalcitrant bottletop. Oh, then on the pull-out lap computer shelf there is a banana peel sans banana, a checkbook, a journal and a free copy of a book by Bill Cosby.

I do love to be able to start writing at midnight if I like, or groggily tap out a dream early in the morning. See, it is 1:15 a.m. now. Nan