KZine Vol. 1, Issue 5 - The Hometown Issue

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KZine Vol. 1, Issue 5

The Hometown Issue

Kris Hartley

Submissions: send an email to khartley76@yahoo.com or visit www. facebook.com/kzine4 for more details.

Subscriptions: $20.00 for one year (6 issues). Send payment to khartley76@yahoo.com via PayPal or email me at khartleyphoto@gmail. com for other payment methods.

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PHOTOGRAPHY • GRAPHIC DESIGN

Publication

Yo! Here we are again, my loyal readers. Have I told you lately that I love...oh, wait. That’s another artist’s line. But seriously, I truly appreciate each and every one of you who have taken the time to pick up an issue of my zine and take it in through your eyeballs.

This issue is the long-awaited Hometown Issue. I hope it’s been worth the wait! I also appreciate all of my contributors who have made this possible.

My questions for this issue’s featured artists are as follows: 1) What is your favorite thing on which to reminisce from your past?

2) What thing(s) remind you of your hometown/childhood/ past? (music, food, smells, etc.)

Okay, without further adoo-doo, here is the Hometown Issue! I hope you enjoy it!

-Kris

Kris Hartley

Hometown (hohm-toun) noun A hometown the town or city in which a person lives or was born, or from which a person comes.

Quotations (Quotes courtesy of www.brainyquote.com) “It’s not necessary to go far and wide. I mean, you can really find exciting and inspiring things within your hometown.” -Daryl Hannah “I really had to imagine the kind of person that I would have been if I had never left my hometown. I don’t think I would have been a very pleasant person.” -Patton Oswalt “As a child, I wanted only two things - to be left alone to read my library books, and to get away from my provincial hometown and go to London to be a writer. And I always knew that when I got there, I wanted to make loads of money.” -Julie Burchill Songs About Hometowns (list courtesy of “Charm City Jukebox”) “Birdhouse in Your Soul” by They Might be Giants “You Ain’t Going Nowhere” by the Byrds “Baltimore” by the 5 Chinese Brothers “Dance Tonight” by Lucy Pearl “Uncle John’s Band” by the Grateful Dead

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Reminisce [rem-uh-nis] verb To reminisce is to talk or write about old times, past experiences, etc.

Quotations “The digital camera is a great invention because it allows us to reminisce.

Instantly.” -Demetri Martin “I like to reminisce with people I don’t know.” -Steven Wright “Make the best use of your golden opportunity now, be naughty when you are young; fly high with the knowledge, because if you don’t there will be nothing to reminisce about in the twilight of your life.” -Kemmy Nola Songs About Reminiscing “1985” by Bowling for Soup “AM Radio” by Everclear “Man on the Moon” by R.E.M. “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?” by Paula Cole “Nightswimming” by R.E.M. “Photograph” by Nickelback “Graduation” by Vitamin C Books about Reminiscing “Reminiscing About Retail Confessions of a Cashier”

by Becky Corwin-Adams “Reminiscing In Tempo: The Life And Times Of A Jazz Hustler”

by Teddy Reig “Sunday Drives: Nostalgic Reminiscing with the Best of Burma-Shave”

by Michael Larson “Larbalestier’s Guide To Jersey: Being The Reminiscences And Impressions Of A Six Days’ Tour (1862)”

by Philippe Larbalestier

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Jana Butcher a2zphotography@sunflower.com 785.691.7856 www.facebook.com.a2zphoto www.a2zphotography.etsy.com

What is your favorite thing on which to reminisce from your past?

There is nothing more fun than sitting around with old friends or family, telling stories about the past! It usually leads to lots of laughter.

What thing(s) remind you of your hometown/childhood/past? (music, food, smells, etc.)

There are so many things that remind me of home from the way hearing different songs will take me right back there, or how so many special recipes have been made with love by my mom or grandma’s for years!

Even though I haven’t lived there in almost 20 years, everyone is so welcoming, like I have never left.

No matter how long I will be gone from there, it will always be home!

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Anne Haehl Burcham Park Across the river the trees glow pastels, soft orange, brown, yellow, green flashes of while, where the leaves have gone.

I feel the warm sun on my back, the cool breeze in my hair and on my smiting hand.

My heart knows this may be the last chance this year to sit in the park before the cold overtakes us.

So far, spring has always followed winter.

I expect it will again.

Some spring I will not sit here to see the river rush by, feel the warm sun, feel the wind.

Our city is here because the river bends.

Settlers landed their rafts hauled up the wood to build A-frames.

Ahead is the bridge and our city hall, which says, “City Hall,” the theory being you ought to know which city you are in.

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The trail between seems empty today but it’s filled with memories.

I see a little boy playing Pooh Sticks on the bridge, throwing twigs on one side, running to the other to see them there— laughing.

I see a flash of tail and a wolf grin— Cunka’s favorite walk, digging, digging, looking for something I couldn’t see.

Taking her out one last time watching her joy, a last time before we said good-bye.

I thought we’d never get another dog, but I see a black dog who decided she could swim in the river and the little boy grown pulling her out.

Down the path there are makeshift tents of homeless people.

The city would not have them there.

Are they so different than those first settlers setting up their A-frames?

The river brought us here, gave us power, sometimes rebels.

Day by day, went higher, covered the railroad tracks, carried off the giant cottonwoods as though they were never there.

“Are you sure you should go out driving the first time by yourself?”

“Yes.” From under the white hair and the beetling eybrows spoke the flat-topped teen I once knew still resisting parental control.

He threw the walker in the pickup and did not wave good-bye.

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Vigil

Anne Haehl (cont’d)

Gathering and greeting not as promptly as once when we thought our logic— and love— might prevent the war— still, with caring each to each.

Liturgy is to select a sign that suits today’s mood from the artistic creations Anne and Mel bring.

Mike brings his own, though, standing, with his Uncle Sam hat and ragged micro-mini shorts he waves, “I want YOU to honk for peace.”

Since we learned of the torture more honk fewer cuss at us; some flash peace signs.

They are cozy in their cars.

This is Kansas—sometimes the hot wind drains us; in winter our feet lose feeling in our boots.

Nothing to what the soldiers know.

Allen brings the American flag (we will honor they symbol the powerful defame).

Louise brings the peace flag; Sally, has the peace dog.

Bob is a World War II vet; Mel and Paul served in Vietnam; Chris in Gulf War I.

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Saunny and Sam are Quakers; we include Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Moslem, Buddhist, Hindu, Wiccans, with pentagram t-shirts,

non-religious and atheist even those whose creed is Anarchism Our ragged band has no hymns but Joe’s guitar rings out: “The President may think that he can bully all the world . . .

But millions stand together and our banners are unfurled . . .

Together we are strong.

And we joyfully respond: “Solidarity forever . . .

For together we are strong.”

No coffee hour at the end.

But we have tasted hope.

Thanks to Joe Douglas for the selection from his version of “Solidarity Forever.”

Honeysuckle threads touching my tongue wild sweetness === Mostly I remember my mother telling me not to bother my father, but somehow I always did, and he screamed, and said this was the worst time of his life,worse than the war or the hospital, and he reported my ill deeds to Santa Claus.

But I remember one day in the garden by the old house, my mother pulled out a honeysuckle and showed me how to pull out its strings and find the wild sweetness.

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Kari Tervo

beehat2013@gmail.com • wemakezines.ning.com/profile/KariTervo What is your favorite thing on which to reminisce from your past?

Being alone in the middle of the autumn woods, feeling completely safe and content.

What thing(s) remind you of your hometown/childhood/past? (music, food, smells, etc.)

Finnish flags and Say Ya To Da U.P., Eh? bumper stickers spotted on the 405 freeway.

EVE’S BERRY Strawberry Shortcake lived in a berry, and I lived in a trailer. That’s why Mr. Herley wouldn’t let us in his house. My older sister and I played with his red-headed daughter sometimes. She loved Strawberry Shortcake dolls, too. But her dad said not to come into our trailer, and we weren’t allowed in their house on the next block, one of the biggest in our dilapidated old copper-mining town.

We were somehow invited to the Herley daughter’s birthday party. Girls in skirts and ribboned pigtails flowed in and out of the Herley house. But my sister and I, K-Mart clad, were banished to the steps out front, waiting while they played inside. I was too young to comprehend the insult: I was not good enough to participate in this party, though my gift had been readily accepted. I was used to waiting outside, anyway.

The summer I was seven, the 10-year-old Herley daughter unexpectedly brought us inside to show off her collection of Strawberry Shortcake miniatures. Her father wasn’t home, she said. Quickly, she said.

We climbed the steps to her room. I stealthily glimpsed around the house: It was decently-appointed and modest. Her bedroom, though, blew my working-class mind. Didn’t kids have such nice things only in the Sears catalog? The space was bright and sunny, inviting, with a pink and white canopy bed. The lucky girl had her own pink phone! Wow, and a strawberry-shaped throw rug!

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A second-hand bed, donated Barbie dolls, and cracked wood paneling lined my bedroom. In here, small wooden curio boxes hung along the walls, each compartment bearing a tiny plastic member of the Strawberry Shortcake family. She had the whole collection. I had only seen that in the commercials. I gasped and reached. “Don’t touch them,” she warned. “My dad will get mad.” But I knew it wasn’t just her dad who would get mad.

I had felt the superior looks of her pigtailed pals as they filed down the front stoop. And this red-haired girl, like a snobby Strawberry Shortcake, was the head of that hierarchy. I withdrew my hand.

We heard a shout at the door. Mr. Herley was home. We hung our heads and padded back down the stairs, out past his Purple Pie Man glare. I couldn’t understand how the Herleys were better than me, just because they lived in a house. I worked hard in school, tried to be generous, and overall, was doing okay. So I was confused the next day, when my sister and I were accused of swiping the miniatures we refrained from touching at all. In Mr. Herley’s mind, if we couldn’t buy it, we’d steal it: judge, jury, jail.

I never caught another glance back in, but I couldn’t forget the Herley daughter’s strawberry space. Maybe being banned from that house had been, in practice, a kind of favor. The one time I glimpsed what I didn’t have was the first time I ever wanted.

My desk at work a few years back.

-kh

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Heather Anne Steiger Facebook.com/punkrockpixie • hsteiger@gmail.com A Busy Little Bee How did I find peace? I got sick. I am not sure many people would say the same thing, but my story is pretty unique. This may end up being a long story although I will try to be brief. I tend to take the long way around.

I have worked since I was nine years old. Whether I was babysitting, waiting tables, or working at my mother’s businesses, I have always known how to make a buck.

After I became a mother, I had the mantra, “someone has to feed the baby”, which kept me motivated to “soldier up” and do what I needed to do. There was no time to cry; someone has to feed the baby. There was no time to get sick; someone has to feed the baby. There was no time to be tired; someone has got to feed the baby.

In the beginning of 2005, I could not have been busier. I was a single mother, trying to make a better life for my little family by going to college. I was taking 18 credit hours of classes. I had just changed my major from Social Work to pursue a double major in the fields of English and Music. I had four jobs: I was a hairdresser, a hotel maid, work-study for the English department, and was also a work-study for the Music department. I worked bartending at the local VFW on occasion, as well. I was an active member of the college show choir, volunteering to alter the costumes or whatever my instructor wanted to have done. When I wasn’t at work, or at school, I was volunteering for local organizations as part of my obligation as president of Phi Theta Kappa honors society or volunteering for the VFW Ladies Auxiliary. As the “icing on the cake”, I had just ended a long-term relationship. I really thought I was happy.

If you got overwhelmed reading about my life at the time, you aren’t the only one. I get overwhelmed whenever I think about it...and I was living it. Now, thinking about that time, I get a little queasy thinking about how miserable I didn’t know I was.

I had been having terrible headaches for about a year. When I would go to the doctor, I would tell her about the headaches. Her solution to the problem was to add more pills to the litany of drugs she had me taking. I am not a medical professional, and I was taught 11

that the doctor was the expert, so I did as I was told. I was taking more opiates and barbiturates than most cancer patients take, all in an effort to abate the pain. Amid all of the medications, the pain, and the fatigue, I was pulling a 3.75 GPA while working…then I got sick…very, very sick.

It was April of 2005 when everything changed. I woke up one morning feeling so sick to my stomach that I could barely crawl to the bathroom. My head was throbbing, but I couldn’t keep the pills down. I had been fighting a sinus infection for a few days, so I assumed that I was just worn down from the infection. I called my salon and asked them to reschedule my appointments and laid down on the bathroom floor to sleep. I was too sick to crawl to my bed.

When I woke up on the bathroom floor, I noticed that something wasn’t right with my vision. When I covered my right eye, I could only see grey with my left eye. I had a dull ache behind my left eye. I knew something was wrong.

After I saw my ophthalmologist, an MRI was ordered. The doctor’s receptionist called me to tell me that he needed to talk to me. I was terrified; doctors don’t make a person go into the office to talk unless it’s bad news.

I sat in the opthalmologist’s examination seat, growing more and more horrified with every passing second. He came in, sat down, looked me in the eye, held my hand, and said, “Heather, there is a 97% chance that it’s MS.” I broke down, thinking about a woman who I had taken care of who had just died of complications from MS. I bawled into his shirt, “I don’t want to die like her!” He cried with me for a good thirty minutes before he and his wife (who has MS) told me what I needed to do.

I went to a neurologist who subjected me to a myriad of tests which I found out later were completely unnecessary. The worst test was the spinal tap. The tap didn’t hurt at all; it was the week of being relegated to laying on my belly to prevent my spinal fluid from leaking out of the site where it was tapped. If I so much as sat up, the pain became excruciating. Because I could not get up, I was completely dependent on friends and family for everything I needed. This is when my life took a turn for the better, ironically.

My friend, Charles, had just lost both grandmothers to cancer within the span of a month. He needed someone he could talk to, and I was, essentially, a captive audience. He brought Chinese food for me one night, not knowing that it was one of my favorite things. That week, we ate together, watched television together, and talked about everything and nothing. He teased me all week about being so lazy that I wouldn’t get out of bed to get the door for him. He told me about the grandfather, his namesake, 12 who was lost without his wife of almost fifty years. We talked

Heather Anne Steiger (cont’d) about how beautiful it was that his grandparents loved each other so much.

We talked about everything. I had always thought that Charles was a beautiful person and I loved his company. It was the week of my spinal tap that I fell in love with him.

I had to ask my son what he thought of our friend, Charles, before I felt secure enough to say anything to Charles about my feelings for him. It took me almost two weeks to tell him that I had a crush on him. We began dating on the night I told him how I felt. A week later, he proposed. A month later, we were married.

Our son was the best man and his sister was my Maid of Honor. Charles adopted our son as his own eight months after the wedding.

By learning about my illness, I learned to prioritize. I learned that, just because other people might “need” my help, they could make it without me. I continued to work the job that I loved the most, being a hairdresser, and quit the rest.

I decided that I was never going to settle for “good enough” again. “Good enough” is rarely good, and is never enough. I made myself and my family my number one priority. Because I got sick, I learned to slow down. It was difficult for me to acknowledge that I was just as replaceable as any other person; I struggled with that concept for quite a while. I found freedom, love, and peace by letting go. I fell in love, got married, have a family, and have been happier than I can put into words…all because I got sick.

What is your favorite thing on which to reminisce from your past?

My son’s life is my most comforting, happy memory. When he was born, I finally came to life.

What thing(s) remind you of your hometown/childhood/past? (music, food, smells, etc.)

My little sister was my best (only) friend. Playing and fighting with her was the closest I came to being a kid. The smell of my son’s skin after a bath was my favorite smell. My Nenna’s bread was another smell that made me feel better when I was sad.

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Heather Anne Steiger

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A Special Event From Childhood

Heather Anne Steiger (cont’d)

It must have seemed to anyone else like child abuse: cramming four children and their harried mother into a 1982 Chevy Chevette, but for us it was a trip to wonderland. We set off driving for six hours—eight if we took too many bathroom breaks—for Cawker City, Kansas. The trip to my Great Aunt Edna’s (Nenna’s) was a trip outside of our normal existences. All of the things that made my life exhausting disappeared with every mile. There were no dishes to scrub, dinners to cook, no clothes to clean and hang on the line, no floors to mop, and best of all, no neighbors screaming through paperthin walls in the middle of the night. As the little red Chevette pulled into the driveway of Nenna’s house, I became a normal child.

The most special thing in my childhood was visiting Nenna’s house. Nenna and Ted, my Great Uncle, were the most gentle, genuinely loving people one could ever have the good fortune to meet. Nenna and Ted were the closest semblance to grandparents I had ever had. The smells, tastes, sights, sounds, and whimsy were parts of the magnificent summers I spent at her home in Cawker City.

When a person walked into Nenna’s, the first thing they would notice was the scent of her home. The only way I can adequately describe the smell of Nenna’s house is to say that her house smelled like love.

This, for some people, is a difficult concept to grasp, but to anyone who had ever visited her home will tell you that the smell of love is a very real thing. It was a delicate perfume that was created over years and years of perfect, unconditional love and service to her fellow human beings. It was an aura that surrounded the tiny, elderly woman and her home. Everyone who knew her said that the scent brought up a different connotation; some said the smell was roses, some said it was freshly baked bread, but the only agreeable point was that Nenna and her home smelled just like love. The next thing one would notice upon arriving at her home was the veritable feast laid out on her table. Every time a person would come to visit, Nenna would create a spread of downhome delicacy that would put even the best of culinary artists to shame. Breads made from scratch, cobblers made from freshly picked cherries, pot roasts, creamed peas with new potatoes, apple butter and apple sauce made from the apple tree that decorated her front drive, and home made pickles were common fare.

Everyone was welcome at her table. Each meal prepared by Nenna was like a symphony for the mouth. Every morsel was a wonderfully orchestrated delight, created solely for the person who was enjoying it. My brother, two sisters and I would go out and harvest fruit for Nenna. This ritual usually consisted of us sitting under the fruit trees filling our bellies with bing cherries and green apples, still warm from the sun. Whatever we managed to bring inside (that wasn’t half eaten) would become fresh apple pie, cherry cobbler, or another similar confection. By the time the treats were ready, our stomachs were already aching from the mountains of fruit we had already eaten.

Although we would miss out on the delicacy that Nenna had made that day, it was magical for us to watch her create those things from scratch.

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At Nenna’s house, I was more than the knowitall child. As soon as I walked into her home, I was the favorite. Nenna never really had favorites, but I felt that way. She would listen to me like no other person would. She regaled me with stories of her experiences as a oneroom schoolhouse teacher.

Every story was a history lesson, and every history lesson was a connection to a past I could only dream about. I would look at pictures while she told me stories about relatives I had never met.

I would read aloud to her from Little Prudy’s Dottie Dimple while she recited aloud with me. She had read that story aloud to her students so many times that she knew each page by rote. Volumes andvolumes of classic literature were easily conjured for recitation by Nenna. She knew each and every book by heart. She loved to listen to me read them while she recited along. Her eyes had gone bad long before I was born, so it was a special joy for the both of us to delve into a book together.

Nenna would allow us to crank up her Victrola and listen to records that were popular in her time. She would sing along with the songs or move her finger like a conductor’s baton in time with the music while we danced around and sang for her. Our personal favorites were Maurice Chevalier singing “(Up On Top Of The Rainbow) Sweeping The Clouds Away” and “Blue Danube.” The old record player never played a rock and roll tune, and we never wanted for it to. It was so much more fun to see the light in Nenna’s eyes while she remembered things from her life.

The old toys, clothes, and music at Nenna’s house fueled our imaginations. My little sister, Karrie, and I spent hours playing dress up with Nenna’s vintage clothes and pillbox hats. We played with toys our mother played with as a child at her house.

Nenna had toys at her home that were hers as a child, and every toy was welcome for us to play with and use. Every thing we played with, although antiquated, was a new thing that captured our imagination. We were schoolteachers in a oneroom schoolhouse, we were shopkeepers selling old perfume bottles for buttons instead of cash, we were tailors who made fancy ballgowns out of paper using Nenna’s treadle sewing machine.

There was no limit to the fantasy. Karrie and I would dress up and create elaborate plays for Nenna and Ted. Around their anniversary every year, Karrie and I would dress up like a preacher and an organist. We would “recreate” their wedding for them.

The mockrecreation usually consisted of my sister (who usually played the organist) getting whacked on the head by something… usually the book I (who usually played the preacher) was holding. Of course, this never happened at their actual wedding, but it elicited howls of laughter from Nenna and Ted. For all of these reasons and more, visiting Aunt Edna’s house was a special event. I still invoke the memories of playtime at Nenna’s when I am feeling sad or alone. It is a great comfort to me to think about how innocent those times were, and how innocent I got to be at her house. Although Nenna is gone, her memory and the memory of the times I spent at her house are still alive and well. Aunt Edna’s compassion, wisdom, patience, and devotion to service are things I aspire to. I am who I am today because of the summers of my childhood, spent at Nenna’s house.

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Speech Communication Tips: Volume 5 This section is dedicated to the invaluable information I received in my speech communication class back in the summer of 2009. This was the class that I most dreaded in my college career. It turned out to be the most useful, not only in the area of giving speeches, but also in the areas of listening and communicating with others.

Methods to Improve Listening Ability • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Withhold evaluation Defensive listening makes you stop listening Critical listening takes time, effort, and energy Motivate yourself to listen Recognize different levels Evaluation Enjoyment Understanding Empathy Get Ready to listen Listen actively Paraphrase things Remember key things

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Draw on Me Do it, send it to me, and I’ll post it on the KZine Facebook page!

Seriously, give me zits, facial hair, a pope hat, whatever.

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D. Wilson

redefined71.wordpress.com

What is your favorite thing on which to reminisce from your past?

One thing that reminds me of life in my hometown is the sound of trains. I’ve always lived within earshot of trains rumbling down the track. Roadtrippin’ in the countryside always brings to mind my childhood trips to my great Grandpa Wilson’s farm.

I also think about laying on the den floor, at my childhood home, where I listened to a hella lot of The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, and many more amazing musicians.

What thing(s) remind you of your hometown/childhood/past? (music, food, smells, etc.)

I love to reminisce about childhood fishing adventures with my Pop, helping my Mom cook, spending time at Dickerson Park Zoo, and listening to my Pop practice playing his steel guitar. I very fondly remember spending a summer, out in the garage with my Pop, helping him refinish a gorgeous Gretsch guitar.

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I realized that I gave you a one dimensional answer because simplicity blocked my conflicted connection to the place which I call home.

My hometown is like an underclassman trying to sneak into the big kid dance, all awkward and greasy, hormonally-challenged and charged with churning undercurrents.

Springfield is the destination of growing families wishing on a 1950s fairy tale star.

It rests comfortably on the Ozarks Plateau (the better to look down on you, my pretty).

Its history is a layer cake, ingredients gleaned from indigenous tears, border war bloodshed and the death sweat of public square lynchings.

It is the home base for the churches of the new inquisition, where you’re better off drowning your inner child in baptismal waters than let her survive because these starched asses, stung by church pew splinters, do not condone your non-conformity: don’t you know we beat the Hell out of our unruly kids with a Bible belt??

Your mistakes will be duly-noted by the youth pastors, the sandwich-board evangelists, the elephants haunting every room, you will learn to become what you are not by denying who you are, the very things that make you glow unique will be the things that place cross hairs on your back. you will come to realize that silence is golden: ask the women who’ve disappeared without a trace,

the kids orphaned into foster care by their parent’s meth habit, the murdered 9 year old thrown away in the sinkhole, the epidemic of shaken babies in ICU...

And I feel you asking, without the question spoken aloud: why do I stay?

Again, the answers seem complicated as I make excuses so no one mistakes me for martyr, citing my family, my posse of badass friends, the familiarity, all that is left to sift through... but as my family unit dwindles and my friends plan for futures far away, maybe I have to admit that there is comfort laced throughout my loathing, that the devil I know is preferable to the unknown... or maybe, just maybe, I hold hope like a butterfly, tenderly, because I believe that there is still good work to be done in Springfield, that there are many things worth fighting for: like the lives of queer kids, caught between ecstasy and Exodus programs, like the betterment of race relations, so no one feels less than for being anything other than Caucasian, like telling the whole story of this place, ‘fessing up to future generations about past transgressions, like the hearts and minds of the very people who would condemn us, because in the end, isn’t everyone worth the effort if it means dawning compassion and personal evolution?

I could balance these scales, regale you with all the good of this land... but that poem doesn’t belong here and it is best saved for another day.

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Jenn Howell

What is your favorite thing on which to reminisce from your past?

Sitting outside on my parents back porch in Round Rock, Texas having adult beverages aka alcohol while my dad grilled some tasty meats. Playing with Penny my four legged sister. Even though this memory is only two years old, living with my parents after my divorce was an awesome time. I got to know them better now that I am an adult. Sitting on their back porch I was able to reconnect with them, nature and myself.

What thing(s) remind you of your hometown/childhood/past? (music, food, smells, etc.)

What will always that me back there is the smell of wood smoke from a fire pit.

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This is my four-legged sister Penny. She and I bonded one day shortly after I moved to Texas. I was laying on the bed, crying, when she crawled down to where I was laying and licked my face and snuggled with me.

We became instant buddies. She is an awesome dog.

This was taken in my parents back yard. This is a Texas star hibiscus, it was one of my favorites.

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Jessi Honeycutt jessi@sustainablehappyness.com security blanket from summers smelling of fresh picked tomatoes climbing hay bales rustling Iowa corn lullabies blowing dandelioned wishes on the wind waterless creek wading four leaf clover expeditions barefoot toe tipping densely cool carpeted green hide-n-seek giggling dusky firefly night-lighted dusty dirt roads lined with cattails and queen anne’s lace fading into turquoise sifting through sandboxes rain dances fiestas and catholic church field trips lizard hunting sand duning tumble weed stampedes cracking thunder bolting shocking life outpouring desert rain sidewalk frying eggs for fun in the Albuquerque sun O’Keefe outdone in real time backyard magnificence staining me in gang sign graffiti snow cone trucks and minority skin mountain top views expanding glittering black blankets mirroring the same night sky my kindergarten teacher mapped Orion’s permanence

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What is your favorite thing on which to reminisce from your past?

I love recalling the summers I stayed with my Grandma in Iowa. She baked her own bread and drug my lazy city kid butt around the farm as she dug at weeds and hung clothes to dry. She taught me how to embroider and encouraged me to draw and entertain myself. It was both hard work and heavenly.

What thing(s) remind you of your hometown/childhood/ past? (music, food, smells, etc.)

I grew up moving every year or so back and forth from Missouri to Albuquerque, so dying rainbow leaves rotting, sombreros and Mexican guitars, sopapillas and homegrown tomatoes, rustling corn and lake dock lappings... I was lucky to be raised amongst such diversity, though I didn’t feel that way at the time.

Michelle Nimmo mbnimmo@gmail.com What is your favorite thing on which to reminisce from your past?

Sisters What thing(s) remind you of your hometown/childhood/past? (music, food, smells, etc.)

Listening to the eagles, any movie scene with a desert, and dust.

The tumbleweeds are there their bristles against asphalt a childhood hopscotch song The sky there is brush stroke falling star clear A speckled night of Milky Way dreams The grass there is blowing mad in dust touch song sweet with sage My father is there a sleepy poet who use to paint his breath a sonnet he sculpts as he sleeps nightmare heavy My sister is there tender and mirroring sensitive emotive her voice sounds like mine I am here remembering a desert home Ozark wind-chimes falling brain laden with memories feeling like I am home

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Earl Crown pollockjohnny@Gmail.com • www.facebook.com/CrownEarl What is your favorite thing on which to reminisce from your past?

Old girlfriends and crazy adventures.

What thing(s) remind you of your hometown/childhood/past? (music, food, smells, etc.)

Crime I grew up in Baltimore and in a suburb of Baltimore called Sykesville.

Baltimore Bonapartes, Nurse Ratchet Days, and the Martin Gross Neglect Napoleon Bonaparte had a brother named Jerome, who briefly visited the United States in 1803 as the captain of a French Naval frigate. One of the cities Captain Jerome Bonaparte visited was Baltimore. During his short stay in Charm City, Jerome Bonaparte met and fell in love with Betsy Patterson, the beautiful, underage (15 at the time) daughter of a wealthy local merchant and farmer, William Patterson. This Belle-of-the-Baltimore so enchanted Jerome Bonaparte that after a whirlwind romance he married her, in Baltimore, and without the consent of his powerful brother Napoleon.

Jerome sailed back to Europe on his French ship, with his new bride Betsy Patterson Bonaparte in tow. When the couple arrived at the port of Lisbon they were met by Napoleon’s representatives. Napoleon was furious with his brother Jerome. The First Consul (and later Emperor) of France had other plans for his brother, and refused to allow the marriage to move forward. Napoleon personally declared the marriage “non-existent”, and attempted to pay-off the heart-broken Betsy with a pension of 60,000 Francs per year. Although the Pope never officially sanctioned the annulment of Jerome and Betsy’s marriage, Napoleon would not change his mind, and the marriage was forcibly ended.

Jerome Bonaparte was coerced by Napoleon into marrying a plump German princess, and Betsy Patterson was sent back to Baltimore without the last name “Bonaparte”.

Betsy Patterson spent the rest of her life broken-hearted over her doomed marriage to Jerome Bonaparte. Betsy’s ocean voyage to Europe, and the time spent by Jerome trying to appeal to his brother, amounted to a wasted effort to save a love that could never be. Betsy wasted considerable (and wealth) over the years trying to re-assert what she 25 time considered to be a rightful claim to the name “Bonaparte”. She

lived well into her nineties, wasting decades of intense emotion on a brief, doomed marriage.

The Patterson family had intended to contribute one of their country estates, Springfield, as Betsy’s dowry. Springfield’s sprawling farm acreage and stately manor house lay in the Patapsco valley, just west of what is now Liberty Reservoir, and could have made a fine home for the ill-fated couple, a home worthy of a Bonaparte and a beautiful Baltimore baroness. Instead the Springfield Estate stood as a tragic reminder of a wasted love.

In 1894, the State of Maryland needed to open a second “Hospital for the Insane”, since its one and only facility was becoming overcrowded.

Maryland’s Governor Frank Brown, another descendant of William Patterson, owned Springfield at that time. In a move that would certainly be considered too obviously corrupt to happen today, the sitting Governor sold the BrownPatterson Estate, Springfield, to the State of Maryland. Springfield Estate became Maryland’s second State Mental Hospital, with the first patients arriving in 1896. Initially the original Patterson House (which later burned down and was rebuilt) and the other original farm buildings were used to house the patients.

Over the next six decades, Springfield’s facilities were expanded, with numerous buildings and complexes constructed to house an ever-increasing patient population. By the 1950’s, there were approximately 3000 resident patients living at Springfield Hospital Center. Springfield Hospital became like a self-contained town for both the patients and staff. It boasted its own Police and Fire Departments, its own power plant, a hog farm, grain fields, a chicken farm, barns, a chapel, surgical facilities, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, swimming pools, cafeterias and canteens, a cannery, auditoriums, dormitories for the nursing staff, cottages for the doctors and a series of tunnels connecting many of the buildings. Springfield even had its own railway spur to allow supplies, patients, and staff to move in, and agricultural products to move out of Springfield. Many of the patients themselves toiled in Springfield’s fields and barns, providing the hospital with most of its own food needs.

Hundreds of staff, mostly from the neighboring towns of Sykesville and Eldersburg, found employment at Springfield Hospital Center. Obviously doctors and nurses were among those staff. But Springfield also employed dietary workers, groundskeepers, full-time 26 police, farmers, carpenters, electricians, and a host of other

Earl Crown (cont’d) types of professionals. Springfield had a close, symbiotic relationship with the surrounding community, providing an economic foundation for these Baltimore suburbs long before suburban sprawl, before the national highway system made commuting the norm among the middle class.

The residents of Springfield represented a wide range of mental illnesses, from the mild to the severe. But at a time when there were few effective treatments or medicines available to the mentally ill, thousands of these suffering people languished at Springfield, their lives wasted because of a lack of basic understanding about mental illness. In the decades from the 1900’s through the early 1970’s, many of Springfield’s patients suffered from illnesses that would be easily treated today without the need for institutionalization. During that shameful era, some of the patients were simply street drunks and common criminals from Baltimore. With the help of two semi-retired doctors who would commit just about anybody they were told to commit, the Baltimore City Police Department routinely used Springfield as a dumping ground for undesirables.

Still more Springfield patients were simply elderly people that had become an inconvenient burden for their younger family members. While there were patients at Springfield that, to be sure, were so severely mentally ill that they needed constant care and supervision, a large percentage of that population probably did not need to be institutionalized. Springfield was a dumpster for the unwanted, and a receptacle of wasted lives.

In fairness, Springfield did provide care for thousands of people who would otherwise not be able to care for themselves. Over the years, through innovative techniques and the development of improved treatments and medicines, the conditions for Springfield’s patients did gradually improve.

As public consciousness about mental illness expanded, and as the public’s sympathy for the mentally ill increased, the “Nurse Ratchet” days ended, and conditions for the patients at Springfield did improve. Changing professional attitudes, and a commitment to patients’ rights, also helped to improve the situation for Springfield’s residents from the 1970’s through to the present day.

Just as advances in the treatment of mental illness began to improve the plight of Springfield’s patients, another set of problems arose that would render Springfield under-funded and partially obsolete. The biggest enemy of Springfield, and other similar facilities in the 1980’s was Ronald Reagan. As President, Reagan and his Administration pushed for 27 the reduction of funding to the states for health care services,

especially the funding for mental health care. Reagan’s budget cuts led directly to an increase in Baltimore’s homeless population in the 1980’s. As a result of these draconian budget constraints, combined with the push to move away from institution-based mental health treatment, Springfield’s patient population dwindled from thousands to just a few hundred people. Just like with any other ghost town, reduced population leads to empty buildings.

While the staff-to-patient ratio moved from around 30-1 to approximately 4-1, which led to an increase in staffing, the State was forced to further reduce the number of patients at Springfield. Reagan’s budget cuts, the push to improve staff-to-patient ratios, and the increased costs of patient care, all worked together to sharply reduce the number of residents at Springfield Hospital Center. Whole buildings and complexes at Springfield were gradually abandoned. The revelations regarding the dangers of asbestos forced the administrators’ hands, leading to the abandonment of some the oldest, most gorgeous, but most asbestos-laden buildings on Springfield’s campus.

One of the complexes that was partially abandoned and left to decay was the Hubner complex. The “old Hubner” building was a monument to Victorian architecture, with detailed woodwork and stone porches and a rather spooky tower that had been Springfield’s on-campus surgical facility. This beautiful (and some have claimed haunted) old building was actually a labyrinth of multiple buildings connected by covered walkways above ground and a series of tunnels below ground. The Hubner building also had a series of laundry chutes and dumbwaiters running through the structure like dingy veins. At night, the staff would sometimes use over-sized meal trays to slide through the chutes like a filthy luge course.

I remember walking through Hubner as a child, accompanied by a family member that was a Springfield employee. The cold corridors echoed with the sharp percussion of footsteps on old tile and the low moaning and babbling of the chronic residents. The place always smelled like a mixture of piss and cleaning fluids. The memories of old Hubner have stuck with me, thirty-some years later, as a vivid reminder of what Springfield used to be. As a teenager I used to come to visit my family and friends who worked on the staff, and shoot pool with them in a basement room full of ancient, dusty billiard tables, tables that were at one time meant for the amusement of the patients.

The Hubner complex was fascinating to explore, inside and out. It was Springfield’s version of a Gothic Castle. I would love

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Earl Crown (cont’d) to show you photos of this magnificent building. I would love to show you how much the old surgery tower evoked Dr. Frankenstein’s lab when silhouetted against a raging summer storm. I would like to show you these things via photographs, but the State of Maryland has “remade” the building to look just like any other modern, boring government structure. They have destroyed the façade and replaced it with a giant glass and steel mediocrity that now houses the State’s Public Safety Training Center. Maryland’s government has wrecked one of its most wondrous structures with a soul-crushing renovation, and the old Hubner complex is barely recognizable. But at least the building is being used.

At least it is not being wasted.

The Martin Gross complex of buildings at Springfield, on the other hand, are nearly as interesting as the old Hubner complex, but unlike Hubner they have laid empty, abandoned, and crumbling for over a decade. The Martin Gross Area is a group of twelve buildings built by the Works Progress Administration during the Roosevelt Administration. The buildings are solid brick structures with slate roofs and magnificent wood trim, the centerpiece being four buildings connected by a crossed, covered path and a round porch where the paths cross. From an aerial point-of-view, these four adjoined buildings look like a slate-covered star.

Sadly, the Martin Gross Area has been abandoned for years. These buildings housed hundreds of patients at one time, and were bustling with activity for decades. Now the only sounds you will hear at Martin Gross are the creaking of old, broken screen doors, the lonely cries of the birds that have invaded its attics, and the scurrying feet of little mammals that have invaded the ground level. Vines and weeds grow up the face of its buildings, and broken glass panes in many of the windows reveal rusted wire caging that was meant to keep the incarcerated from escaping into the woods that surround Springfield. The inside of these buildings are riddled with debris from decades of use, as well as asbestos.

The asbestos throughout the Martin Gross ghost-village has been the main impediment to redevelopment. The asbestos has been the excuse for wasting these lovely buildings. The Martin Gross buildings look as if they could have been lifted from one of Baltimore’s grand old neighborhoods, as if they might have been an apartment complex in Charles Village or Roland 29 Park. These buildings are certainly far more attractive and more

solidly built than the newer, ugly cookie-cutter housing complexes that have grown like fungus all over the Baltimore metro area during the last forty years.

The neglect of these buildings, the wasting of such fine structures, is downright criminal. The Martin Gross complex should be restored to its former glory.

Removing the asbestos is a challenging task, but it is also a task that would create jobs. Workers would be needed to remove the asbestos, to repair the damage from years of neglect, and to renovate the buildings in the Martin Gross Area. Such job creation would benefit the entire surrounding community.

Further, once Martin Gross was restored, it could be utilized as housing for the homeless, or perhaps as a treatment center of some kind. It could even be converted into a commercial office or retail space, or perhaps be divided into what would be some interesting condominiums. The Martin Gross complex could be a branch campus for a local university.

Regardless of what it would be used for, it is important that the Martin Gross buildings and the other empty buildings on Springfield’s campus be put to some sort of use. We have a cultural habit of abandoning older, stronger, more aesthetically pleasing structures simply because they are old and require repair, then building and occupying shoddy, ugly structures. We have repeated these wasteful patterns time and again, and this waste has led to more sprawl and still more problems. The crumbling glory of the Martin Gross Area at Springfield Hospital Center is a prime example of this type of waste. But Martin Gross also provides us with an opportunity to restore something beautiful and use it for a common benefit.

Many would say that Betsy Patterson wasted her life. The Bonapartes certainly wasted her time. The old methods of “caring” for the mentally ill were ineffective at best, and barbaric at worst. Springfield Hospital Center was, for many years, an institution that wasted lives. Today, Springfield Hospital has a staff and administration that genuinely cares about providing decent care.

Over the last thirty years, Springfield has at least partially redeemed itself.

But the waste at Springfield continues, namely in the continued neglect and non-use of many of its facilities. We cannot redeem Betsy Patterson or Jerome Bonaparte, and we cannot restore the lives wasted during the first eighty years of Springfield’s existence as a mental hospital. What we can do, right now, is redeem the Martin Gross Area. This generation has a chance for redemption in many areas, and Martin Gross is a good 30 place to start.

Ossaín Ávila Cárdenas www.lunablueartcollective.com • facebook.com/lunablueartcollective What is your favorite thing on which to reminisce from your past?

As a youth, I was always wondering about my death.....when, how...why?

I am older now, and that has yet to change.

What thing(s) remind you of your hometown/childhood/past? (music, food, smells, etc.)

MUSIC!!! Music fills the air, and the heart. Thank you, music.

Westley is surrounding by PEACHES, almonds, apricots....

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Westley is small town. Pop 500, and swell up to 1000 during harvest season....

Westley is government property..... westley has stayed the same since long long ago.... the town doesnt grow..... but patterson, thats a different story.... patterson has been a booming city for the past decade...... housing, jobs, commercialism, walmart, amazon.... compared to the little town of westley, patterson is the BIG city.

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Lisa Y. Mendez unofotoart.com

What is your favorite thing on which to reminisce from your past?

I love to reminisce over old family photos, mainly due to the fact that I don’t think we (my family) have enough.

What thing(s) remind you of your hometown/childhood/past? (music, food, smells, etc.)

My hometown of El Paso, TX has a very distinct culture, namely Mexican, since it’s right across the border from Juarez, Mexico. A hot sun, dry heat, menudo on Sunday mornings and cold tile floors remind me of home.

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Kris Hartley

Um, yeah. You already know me.

This one’s a little ditty I wrote right after moving to Kansas from my native New Jersey. there’s only one thing I’d like to do when the weather hits me this way-perhaps you’d like to meet me...

I’m trying to reach deep in me for resistance; however, with love like this, my rationale is no equal to aqua’s ocean pull. the rules don’t influence an orange moon’s forever; the fear doesn’t apply when an early spring breeze seduces. the only thing I’d change right now is the distance of the shore; I can’t think of another thing, other than you, that I’d need near me. a beautiful way of expressing a short night’s splendor can be put quite simply-the guarantee of sleep in a shining sapphire water’s lure.

I’ve let the dream of a countryside take me; I almost can’t believe that I’m feeling the ecstasy already...

I’m falling quickly to the sound of an early circling of morning. of my next steps, I am uncertain; of impending certainty, I am still undecided. the plains haven’t promised me patience, and the slower moving time hasn’t given me a chance to rectify my miscalculations, but the memories of blue did once swear to me that my uncluttered nights ashore have enough to guide me... even when there’s nothing but missing you in my soul, and similar to the hour when sleep abruptly renounces, some promises possess the atmosphere to go along with me for the entire drive...

-feb 15, 2003 2:22am

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Ford Street, Pittsburg.

Minnie with the itchy stripes (my best friend, Lindsay’s cat)

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Kris Hartley

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All Rights Reserved.