Are You Stirred by Solidarity?

Invitation to Read Poetry at Second Saturday
On the Theme of Solidarity
With Featured Poet Phillip Bannowsky

Poets, tell of Solidarity; what it is or what it’s not.
Is it the bell that laughs with every tongue, the storm that weeps with every drop?
The common hope for a brighter dawn,
or a contagious yawn?

Are you stirred by multitudes pulling tyrants down?
The hands, the shoes, the shouts, the risking all
for victory? Or do you check what scrapes your ass?
Would the fate of your 401(k), the price of your gas,
not to mention brown skins and head scarves more you appall
than all their hearts stopped in their mouths, their brains upon the ground?

When the earth tumbles to her knees
and shakes loose her seas
Do you open both your heart and wallet
Or just click the videos on Facebook “Like it.”

Do you upon the brink of personal release
like Bodhisattva pause recumbent
and with your finger in the grease
compassion choose for all the sentient?
Or do you cry, I’m all right, Jack, and snatch enlightenment?

Would you sing Solidarity in the Old Union Hall,
chicken dinners, picket lines, all for one and one for all?
Blood and sweat’s our gender, our race, of broken backs,
barricade of all nations, when capital attacks.
Pay your monthly dues and rise with the other guy.
Or would you, had you just one wish, if shared, lose one eye?

So poets, tell of Solidarity,
What it means, choose voluntarily:
If it’s the history of our species in every cell and myth,
Compassion, inspiration, or some kind comradeship.
Tell it for the ages, or tell it for the date,
April 9, at Shenanigans, 5 p.m. Don’t be late.

Second Saturday Poets, 2nd Saturday of every month at 5 p.m.
Shenanigans Irish Pub and Bar, 2nd and Market Sts., Wilmington, Delaware
Free Parking across Market

Finding the Ghost of William D. White

She called him a ghost. A good term to use. What trauma, what injustice causes him to haunt us? His work remained, but it was hidden. Some of it was smashed.

Ghost is what happens to pariahs, after amnesia has run out of time and aliases are assigned to hide the evidence. A friend of mine, an artist, and I spent the day together as detectives hunting down the ghost of Delaware artist William D. White. My artist friend knew White when she was a girl. My father and White were friends from their days on the WPA.

The stories about William D. White are both spurious and legendary, anecdotal and difficult to trace. Yet, they persist. Stories of White railing against the extravagance of the local ruling class during the depths of the Great Depression, then turning around to buy up coats at the Goodwill, giving them away to Depression era homeless.

The mural that White painted for the Federal Artists Project (FAP) of the WPA was thought lost for years until recently rediscovered languishing in a building belonging to the Methodist Church in Dover. Much of White's works of art have been scattered in the effort to pay back corporate debt. A collection White painted about the mining industry has found a home in Arizona. Sometimes something spectacular by White comes along and just as rapidly disappears, haunting us. Sometimes one of his paintings pop up in plain sight and is misidentified and mishandled. They are that ghost calling out.

Between my artist friend and me, we've gathered a nice body of White's work. Finding information about White's life has proved daunting. People who knew him are gone. Yet our intent is to make an eventual public display of William D. White's art. He was arguably the best of the group of FAP artists, and an equal of Edward Loper who was also an early FAP artist.

Might it be said of William D. White on some future Antiques Road Show, that his work is rare. Because of professional differences with some of his peers and most agents of patronage, his work has become rare. The composition is tight. If more of White's work is found we'd be recognizing themes. Certainly he had an affinity with the poor working class and minorities. He liked painting children. His paintings today are most certainly worth more than White made when he was living.

If there's anyone out there with a bead on any of White's paintings, drawings or writings we'd like to hear from you. We also like to to hear any credible stories about William D. White as well.

Steven Leech's Literary Manifesto

Because we believe this work is so important, we are offering this excerpt from The Wedgehorn Manifesto and a special opportunity to obtain a PDF copy free.
-Phillip Bannowsky, BT Blog Editor

About the Cover

On the cover is a map that accompanied the 1938 publication, A Guide to the First State. Produced by the Federal Writers’ Project, the map does not show I-95. You can almost see all the old roads on which flowed life in this part of Delaware in the late 1930s. Later, after World War II, came what we would call—in some neighborhoods—“Dupont Driveways,” those roads and highways that seemed only to lead to the various Dupont plants, laboratories, and offices that dotted the area. Even later, the great wealth of our post 1950s world flowed through Delaware on I-95 which resulted in the great suburban sprawl that began to cover northern New Castle County.

The addition I’ve made to this map is to illustrate the portion of land that was held in dispute because of the inexact science of geography and cartography in the 18th and 19th centuries. Mason may have made a chronometer that in Delaware literature is still ticking, but he wasn’t able to get Delaware’s unique border exact.

That piece of inexactness on the Maryland side of that border is called the Wedge. As an author I have exploited the Wedge’s potential for telling a story—a story which has included elements of Delaware’s literature. That sliver along Delaware’s arcing border with Pennsylvania has not inspired me. Much of it runs through “Chateau country.” A few remember it as the Horn.

What inspires me is that I’m always conscious that I’m walking the same streets in Wilmington as those that F. Scott Fitzgerald, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Clifford Brown and Nikki Giovanni once walked, to name but a few of the illustrious. I still see the rooms they once occupied even though the buildings are gone. In some cases the rooms are still there. Dunbar-Nelson left a living legacy in Wilmington. I see in the same kind of way an artist would, but the paintings are in books, like Biggs’ Seven Days Whipping, where I see a unique vision from a part of my own neighborhood just south of Wilmington. In two of Charles Wertenbaker’s novels I see familiar scenes where stories have provided me a different perspective from those which I’ve been led to believe. Now I know where all those “Dupont Driveways” really lead. Some essential parts of Wilmington from the turn of the last century in novels by Henry Seidel Canby, Christopher Ward, and in one important story from Alice Dunbar-Nelson are saved in the annals of American literature. All of this, including the story of Wilmington’s artists and musicians and the sounds and sights from them that are still around us, inspires me. A little like Paul Herbert Fricke from Christopher Ward’s One Little Man, I see through this world into other worlds that are depicted from so near by through our local literature. I also remember how, in the 1950s, I had been entranced by the cultural presence in Arden and wondered why the community in which I lived, Richardson Park, where Delaware artist J. D. Chalfant once lived and work, couldn’t be more like what I perceived Arden to be.

I am inspired by the history and existence of these locations under the unique crown of the Wedge and the Horn. In concert with the towns of Newark and New Castle, there are greater stories to be told from these places, and stories help us to see. 

To read more, obtain a free PDF copy of The Wedgehorn Manifesto at publisher@brokenturtlebooks.com.

Are We Making Progress in the Culture War?

Since the midterm elections many with whom I've discussed the outcome have shared the dismay regarding the gains of the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party. My response has been that at least in our northern part of Delaware we seemed to have had better sense. As the results came in, I examined the voting trends by consulting those maps of Delaware provided by various media that displayed the red and blue areas of our state. Delaware was pretty much divided into a blue northern part of the state with a rim of red that ran across the arc that borders us with Pennsylvania where the wealthy live in chateau country, and a mostly red southern portion of the state except for an enclave in the vicinity of Lewes and Rehoboth where there is a large population of retired well educated professional people and artists.

Seeing this blue enclave in a sea of red downstate where I have a growing circle of friends in the burgeoning cultural community was heartening. It made me wonder if our efforts in the northern portion of Delaware with regards to our cultural activity over the past thirty years has paid off.

In 1984, when Ronald Reagan was reelected, I kind of saw the handwriting on the wall and backed away from the intense direct political activity in which I'd been engaged and sought a kind of cultural rapprochement. Part of the reason was connected to personal survival, but the major reason was to broaden the struggle into a larger social arena. That initial wave of extreme right wing lunacy seemed to be riding the crest of cultural initiatives that I perceived to have reactionary content.

In short, direct political activity might be good for winning the minds of people, but cultural activity might be better to win their hearts.

In general, I concluded that cultural activity added social value that both is ineffably valuable to the quality of our lives and comes closer to inherent truths within our individual selves. While the corporate and banking ruling circles in our country were using the ascendancy of the right wing to impoverish us economically, I felt it important to add cultural value to provide cohesion to those inherent truths of who we are and who we've been, and based on these, who we could become.

Considering all this, my conclusions still insisted on taking the form of questions during the course of reassessing my previous cultural activity. As far back as the late 1970s, when I became involved with Wilmington's Black press, I gained an innate understanding of the cultural component of a community and the value for social cohesion it embraced. This had been an important element in our efforts to undermined the Marshall machine and to begin to elect Black candidates to city offices and to pave the way to electing Wilmington's first Black mayor. After 1984, and after the ruling circles in Delaware conspired to crush The Delaware Valley Star, my writing in the local Black press reflected issues related more to social and cultural ones, like the effects of the "drug war," along with matters of music, literature and other aspects of local cultural history, and the social and cultural need for the ruling circles to pay reparations for the damage incurred by slavery and the institutionalized racism that has followed. But, to return to the subject, would the Black community at large have voted for right wing lunatic fringe candidates? I think not!

Nevertheless, questions of my work on behalf of providing cultural value to our local community persist. Has my work contributed to at least some people thinking more deeply, clearly and more critically about our environment? Has my work, under the aegis of the Dreamstreets project, on behalf of local literary artists, both from the past and in the present, improved our social and cultural environment? Has my broadcasting work on behalf of our local literary history and community, as well as our history of jazz artists, had an effect on protecting our ignored cultural history from those right wing lunatic fringe elements who would wish to belittle that legacy in order to gain some cultural hegemony based on Delaware's tired old legacy of cultural mediocrity, which serves the interests of the ruling corporate and banking circles that seek to control our lives? Have any of those who have joined in on performing this kind of cultural activity contributed even some small modicum of difference? I'd like to think so, even in some minuscule, intangible way so that people in this part of Delaware can think more sensibly about the political decisions made in the voting booth.

Even if I'm giving myself too much credit regarding my role in social and cultural progress, what matters most is that whatever it takes to counter the intent of the lunatic fringe from negatively influencing our lives is helpful. I don't intend on stopping. Never give the bastards an inch because they will take a mile.

Comments to Fear/Sanity Comments

To David:
I agree, and disagree. Yes, you deserve to be mad as hell that the world is as evil as it is, and that the Obama administration has meaningfully failed, and even betrayed, some of its campaign promises. But, what are you going to do, throw a tantrum? The pear is not ripe right now for revolution, even if you want one-- but only for sensationalist rebellion that hardens hearts to no good end. Acquiescence is not the only alternative. Old saying: Don't get mad, get even. Translation: Don't rage, get civil, and under that cover be crafty as a cheshire cat.

To Phillip Bannowsky:
All that I called the Fear/Sanity event was "good medicine," much humbler than "medicine for all that ails us," as you phrase it, which I don't claim. And yes, Stewart and Colbert are, finally, just centrist show-bizzers. But so what, if, as you say, it's up to the rest of us? I do not suggest we bow down before our tools, just the opposite. We should pick up all available tools to our purpose. These brilliant and sophisticated commedians are available instruments. I say avail.

To Anonymous:
You say he, Obama, needs to "start kicking some ass." I agree. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're seeing the Fear/Sanity event (at least as I've portrayed it) as a self-defeating harmonizing with Obama's, as you put it, "transcendental coolness." Although I personally admire his professorial tone, I see how it fails in our anti-intellectual, wild west political culture. Picture Obama: "Now, class, let us all turn to page 34." So we do, except half of us tear page 34 out of the book, so we can't all be on the same page anymore. You're right, Obama is far too civil. But he is the President, and the rest of us are not. So, different rules. If little old me is going to kick ass in a land of already too many combat boots, it's going to have to be done with an old soft shoe.

Fear and Sanity

What the?... Yes, my thought exactly on last weekend's Colbert/Stewart Fear/Sanity party on the Mall in Washington D.C. My wife and I attended-- attended?-- showed for the duration. And "show" is the operative term.

Well, it was the most populous D.C. event I've ever been to. I missed Obama's inauguration, but even the anti-Vietnam war Pentagon March of 1967 was out-populated. The train ride into town (we left our car on the outskirts) was so packed you could only have slid in more people horizontally against the ceiling. And yet the mood was fabulous. The crowd, mostly young people (My wife and I are in the old category now) laughed and joked, and frequently broke into song that infected the whole car, often songs from the '60's and '70's, songs popular decades before most of the singers were born. Who would have thought the spirit lives on?

When we got to the Mall we couldn't get on it-- too many people. We got only as far as the famously last-minute available batteries of port-o-potties. Spry youngsters climbed trees for a better view, but I doubt they saw more than head tops. So we never got to see-- or even hear-- the stage deal. All we got was: one another.

So I guess that was the point: it had to be, none other was available. We'd bothered to come to the Capitol for a show, and got one, ourselves. It was quite a party, and decked out with costumes and signs that were dedicatedly playful, politically a blearly crayon-scape, when political at all. Bear in mind the next day was Halloween, and the adult trick-or-treaters were testing out their equipment. Election Day to follow 3 days later. Who's your favorite ghoul? Vote with your candy.

Only later, at home, on TV, did we "see and hear" the official event. It was a pleasant and appropriate enough pop show, and after all it was finally just a theatrical event. Or, was it, despite itself? How can you ever, no matter how hard you try, not be everything you are? How can you not, even by brushing your teeth, tell the world what you care about? Jon Stewart made a terrific serious speech. My take is this: We are invited to enjoy the god-given right to be afraid, which implies the god-given imperative to be awake and alert; we are also invited to understand that sanity requires a no-pain no-gain grunt attitude, and that in our consumerist society sanity is not a luxury item, but one shelved next to the rice and beans.

But Jon Stewart already made this speech, and his was better than mine.

Did we do any good? I valued learning what I can only hope others learned also, that there are so many people of good will who "get it" that their numbers can crush you half to death in a wide open space, even in these politically ugly times. I valued seeing that this has not changed since 1967: Americans have the capacity to behave in a responsible and orderly way, even under stress and running amok. I almost feel sorry for the D.C. cops: they looked so bored.

The whole deal was good medicine, even if only in the sense that it did the patient no harm.

Preamble to the Contradiction

Dear Christine O'Donnell, kindly follow my thought thither and hence. The bread on the waters will return to you.

WE THE PEOPLE, in order to form a more perfect union? Wait a minute. Isn't more perfect a little like more pregnant? Of course, if you want to be pregnant, and become so, you are from day one beginning with a kind of perfection. Then, as you grow larger, you can be said to be becoming more perfect. So, okay, let us grant that, under some conditions, one may have degrees of perfection.

Well, I have just re-read the Constitution of the United States, and I am dismayed. If it were a house, it would be a log-cabin without thatch or mortaring. Open to the rain and wind. The fire would not keep much heat in. Founding Fathers, ha!, thank you? And yet. And yet I say yes thank you because all that rain and wind somehow built a mighty estate out of that log cabin. Our Founding Fathers, who were, among other things, monsters, somehow stumbled into securing for posterity significant blessings of Liberty. A more perfect pregnancy, conceived often in what most of us would rather not think about, but giving birth to significant Liberty.

And so, O'Donnell? Running for office here in Delaware? You and your fellow ultra-strict constructionists? Do you really want to go back and live in that log cabin? Don't you understand how well the evolution of constitutional meaning has served to ensure the domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and not only secure the blessings of liberty but of anti-biotics and central heating as well? Invention rights protection is in the Constitution. And these last two really do help during child-birth.

Okay, granted, philosophically and politically, there will always be conflicting interpretations of the Constitution. This is necessary. The framers are all dead, and the world we live in is one they couldn't know. And what they framed was the necessity of only their moment anyway. And that's my point: interpretation means that fundamentalism is impossible. In the beginning was the Word. The Word is a baby: you love it, but would you let it drive your truck?

Don't you understand that even though the moon does not love us, the tide it elicits has raised all our nation's boats? Lucky us: History has handed our Society the moon, in our constitutional evolution. Even rich white males are better off now, despite all the effluvial dispersals of wealth and rights to disenfranchised classes, than were their counterparts of 200 years ago. Everybody is winning. And women too. Hmm...

Which means, Christine O'Donnell, I just noticed something. You're a woman. Oops... Now, strictly speaking, strictly as in strictly constructionist, going back to a fundamentalist beginning, you strictly speaking as a woman had no right to vote, much less run for office. If you're such a political purist, shouldn't you be back home washing dishes, barefoot and pregnant? After all, by your own ideals, you're just a girl. Unless you're also a hypocrite who wants to ordain and establish whatever she can grab.