Christmas Began at 1104 South Linwood

My mother, 1939

Since I interviewed my mother a few years ago, hers has become the most popular post on What She Might Think. Because of this and because I won't see her this Christmas, I wanted to interview her again. 

To prepare, I searched online for images of the house where she grew up in the 1940s and '50s, and where I would spend many of my Christmases through the 1980s and '90s.  

I located the house on google maps, and stood in front of it in a virtual world. A junk car was parked outside. A destitute grocery cart was kicked up on the curb. The tree blocked most of the porch where a swing once hung and my grandmother's plants grew in heavy planters, and where I roller-skated back and forth one visit. The house like a gravestone, a wind-block for someone else's faded flowers.

Built in 1915, only a few years after my grandmother was born, my grandparents' house was first my great-grandfather's, Great-Grandpa Steffee. Evidently, when my great-grandmother died of tuberculosis, my grandmother decided that, as my mother says, great-grandfather "couldn't boil water", and so she insisted that she, her husband (my grandfather) and their young family move in with him. 

Q. Often, I feel like many of my Christmas memories take place in Evansville, and I don't know if that's because we went to visit your parents every Christmas or because I would imagine Evansville when you told me stories of your life. Do you have a similar experience in that you have memories of Christmases that your mother would tell you about? What were Grandmother's Christmases like, as far as you know? Do you remember her telling any stories about them? What about your father?

My mother, her father, her grandmother

A.  . . . Mother. . . We did not talk big time in the family. The most talking we did was when we were doing dishes. If we wanted to embarrass mother, we'd ask embarrassing questions. Neither parent talked much about their past. I think mother's past was like ours. The Depression started in '29 when Dad was about to graduate high school, but I think things were already bad. No, Dad didn't talk about that anymore than he talked about World War II.

I remember you talking fondly of your childhood Christmases. I remember you saying you would get an orange in your stocking every year, and I think you also got candy. It seems that one year you got a doll but weren't very impressed with her: I think you'd wanted something else. Can you describe your Christmases more? 

Probably the expectation of everything-Christmas was as wonderful, if not more so, than the actual opening of gifts.  According to Mother, my dad started our tradition of opening our gifts on Christmas Eve. Then, while we slept that night, Mother filled the stockings with the above fruit, candy, and tiny gifts wrapped in the previously used wrapping paper from Christmas Eve.  I'm sure we went to Grandma Ryan's house on Christmas Eve (before the late-night worship 
service at church) or Christmas Day.


Part of the preparation was going to Dalton's grocery store a block away--before supermarkets were 'invented'--to choose a scrawny, short-needled pine tree for our Christmas tree.  Each tree was set in a block of wood (also prior to tree stands) and usually had one side with branches fuller than the other side--the one we put against the window so we wouldn't have to look at it! Mother also managed to buy or gather additional greenery to...

From The Child's Shelf: Feel Santa Claus' Beard

Of course, over the many Christmas years, a plethora of good Christmas books for children have been made, read, remaindered but still read.  No doubt, her favorite Christmas book from her childhood is the 1940 book Feel Santa Claus' Beard, though it's no rival for the elegant The Polar Express.

Whereas The Polar Express ends to twist the heart because the older one gets, the harder it is to hear the bell from Santa's sleigh, Feel Santa Claus' Beard ends, if she remembers correctly, with a happy white family in their colorful pajamas opening presents by a Christmas tree.  It is, as everyone knows, a holy image. And if the social critics are right: a terribly despondent family behind their smiles, just come from re-hiding failure in the attic and God in the deep freeze.

It is the 1950s Caucasian-American Christmas reality ideal, brought to us by the same people who brought us the Pilgrims and their beloved Natives, and set in what is likely the placeless-place we all know as the Midwest: her birthplace, and where Abe Lincoln split logs and walked with muddy feet on the ceiling (have you heard that one?).  Lincoln who, like Santa, wore black boots.

Feel Santa Claus' Beard is one of those sensory books, a "Touch and Feel Book": feel his beard, which really is quite soft and fluffy, and as she remembers, an effective hook into opening the pages to the annual disappointment that no other touch-illustration was as interesting.  For example, there are his black boots, but they are rather shiny.  Then there is the chimney, which is pasted with gravel.  At last come the presents, gold-foiled and much like the feeling of his black boots, which have no especially distinguished feeling.

But it's a durable book, cardboard pages that have lasted thirty years and of the size made to empower children readers because it fits their hands and is image-heavy, useful on the snowy days when children idle about the house in quiet exploration and sometimes belly-down to flip through private worlds made just for them.

She loves this book.  Maybe because this is the Santa image from which all are based on for her, or because he looks like the cardboard Santa face she would tape to the living-room mirror every year, or maybe just because this was part of the Christmas box of books that would be tucked away all year then brought out with the tinsel her mother had dutifully removed from last year's tree and re-packaged in a ziplock bag for next year's tree.

--Along with the ornate silver ball that plugged into the wall and, every ten seconds, chirped like a bird.

Relanguaging: Toward a Definition, Of Sorts and a Bird

Thanks to Jack Kaulfus's recent flash review of Curio by Lauren Ellen Scott , she read "The Brewsters", which is a really smart little thing, a delightful re-languaging romp.   What does re-languaging mean?  It's a word she just made up as a way to describe what Scott is doing.  What Scott is doing is re-languaging.  Although Scott is not the first to relanguage, "The Brewsters" is, for our purposes, a very effective example not only because it's well done, but also because it's SO very well done.

The Jumblies

Edward Lear re-languaged, too.  For an example of Lear's re-languaging (or to figure out more how she's defining this new word), read his poem "The Jumblies".  She thinks you'll find that Ellen Scott and Lear are linguistic friends.  If you enjoy "The Brewsters", then you'll definitely want to read "The Jumblies"--aloud, of course, aloud.

Re-languaging may be a synonym for Nonsense-verse, but it should be clear that relanguaging may not be set on a metered line. But! re-languaging, as a descendant of nonsense-verse, requires syncopation.

Re-languaging is to nonsense verse what early jazz was to blues.

Re-languaging may cause whimsy but the whismy may offset, or collide with, the deep questioning of reality or the suggestion that deep questioning is occurring; although, in fact, due to the effects of re-languaging, the presence of deep questioning may be more an aesthetic effect of the collision between language and meaning.  The aesthetic effect, however, can cause deep questioning in the reader.

It may be the case that re-languaging is more applicable in its use to fiction. If not, and only if, because poetry has a full dictionary of words to describe itself with, and poetry may not accept fiction that re-languages as a poetic form.  It could be argued, and likely someone will (and why not?), that "The Brewsters" is a prose poem and not flash fiction.  The argument, if proven valid, may lead to the conclusion that "The Brewsters" is not re-languaging but doing [insert poetry term].  This person who argues to such a conclusion will likely like clam chowder with a sweet potato on the side.

Re-languaging should not be, however, used as a synonym for experimental writing since experimental writing does not imply or guarantee interesting rhythm--although pieces that re-language may be defined as experimental, and the most interesting experimental writing may re-language.  See Michael Stewart's A Brief Encyclopedia of Modern Magic for an example of this, or Ben Marcus's The Age of Wire and String.  Susan Steinberg re-languages in many of the stories in The End of Free Love, but she is of the held-note variety of re-languagers.

Rain, by Marc Chagall (1911)

(Held-note relanguaging: a distant cousin of Ben Marcus and Ellen Scott, like the compromise between the two, although nothing has been compromised. Style typified by circular, rhythmic language that, as it both circles and progresses, creates a narrative.)

In visual art, re-languaging is closest to this painting by Chagall (when it is worn as a song that sits as a bird on one's heart, clutching):

Perhaps.

!

Writerly Tip: Organizing Story Submissions

Her first submission log was a bag she'd sewn from a jeans pants-leg and then affixed with an iron-on image of an old-fashioned girl.  Here is where she collected all her rejection letters.  Likely the bag is still being stored by her mother, in her old bedroom, in a box full of other rejection letters and notebooks.  No doubt, for a keepsake, this is a lovely way to keep no-track-whatsoever of the writing you have submitted for publication.

Typically, she uses a spreadsheet to track the submissions.  She finds it best to keep everything as simple as possible so that she's more likely to use the log/calendar. 

Story	Magazine	Submission Type	Notes to Self	Date Replied
11/12/11
Every Road	New Fangled Review	submishmash - pdf from August 2010 folder	query after four months	11-13-11, form letter, don't send again, response too quick
Every Road	Next Journal	email to editor, Jane Doe	pays penny/word
The Snow-Cone Stand	Lulu Story Contest	Contest requires e-book creation, uploaded on site	mid dec results announced

She places the date submitted in the story column and highlights it.  This is also helpful for tracking the last time she did a large batch, and it's easier to compare response times of journals.  

Until a magazine rejects a story, she keeps the row in bold.
When a magazine accepts the story, she highlights the row in purple.



Why keep a submission log for writing?

• To know when it's time to query about a submission that's been held longer than the magazine's stated response time.
• To have the information necessary to write a professional query, e.g. I'm checking on the status of my story, "The X to the Y", which I submitted on such-and-such date.
• If you're a gambler, to keep track of how much money drained in contest entry-fees.
• To keep track of postage, envelopes, paper for tax purposes (or in hopes that one day these can be claimed on taxes)
• To keep track of writing; for example, sometimes she'll subconsciously give up on a story, forget about it, then find its title in the submission calendar
• To rally one's spirits or realize that the number of a rejections a piece of writing has had may mean you need to open it up for revision.
• To keep track of editors - a cordial or personal note from an editor means that, even if rejected, this is a person you would want to work with in the future and, thus, to submit to again.

For an article regarding rejections, 

how to interpret them, and 

the current situation 

with online rejections, 

 see "Editor in Oz: May be human, 

only behind curtain"

Happy Human Day!

One must try not to imagine what will be served at the dinner these turkeys are going to (or what they've already eaten).


Happy Thanksgiving!

"The Skydivers" Forthcoming in Emrys Journal, Spring 2012

Emrys Journal has accepted her story "The Skydivers" for publication in their Spring 2012 issue. This will be her first publication with Emrys.

"The Rabbit" Forthcoming in Big Pulp, March 2013

Her mini-story "The Rabbit" (not to be easily mistaken with her story "Rabbits" from The Floating Order) will be published in Big Pulp in March 2013. This will be her third publication with Big Pulp, which is lovely because it's one of her favorite venues.

Pringle-Toungate's previous publications with Big Pulp are "Every Good Girl Does Fine" and "Palestine, IL".

Update 3/30/13: The Rabbit is now available to read. Click here or copy/paste this link into your browser: http://bigpulp.com/issues/2013_03/pringle_therabbit.html#.UVeb9hemiAi 

E-story Experiment: The Snow-Cone Stand

With the rising popularity of e-readers, she has now and then considered self-publishing a single story. She has romantic ideas of photocopying thousands of copies of a story and dropping them on a city or handing them door to door. It's ridiculous, of course--that much paper.

Certainly, the music industry has been changed by the user's ability to download single songs, and she has wondered how that might bleed into the publishing industry--or how that might provide her a little more control, now and then, of getting her work to her readers by self-publishing a single story. She found her valid excuse with Lulu.com's 600-word short-story contest.

Basically, writers submit a story of 600 words or less, convert the story into an e-book, and upload it on Lulu. Later, Lulu judges will declare whatever story the winner.

The contest is not dependent on how many times the story is viewed, and she also couldn't find anything about not charging people for a contest story (so Lulu will be making money off contestants who do sell their contest entry). Regardless, she's giving her story away for free.

After taking several hours to format a tiny story, she thinks she'll go back to her old-fashioned route of letting editors do their jobs and she hers. But that doesn't mean that she wouldn't like you to have it, dear reader.

Download and read "The Snow-Cone Stand" at Lulu.com, iTunes, or Barnes & Noble.--Especially since she might have disqualified the story by putting an image on the cover. Ah, well.

Cover photo by Keoni Cabral,

used under a Creative Commons License

***

Post Update 4/20/12:


Project Retired

"Winter's Wooden Sparrows" in Lake Effect

The first time he felt a need to walk, he was a boy of six or seven. He had awoken one winter morning with the urge to be outside, alone. And so decided to go, and felt the good feeling that decisions often have. He zipped on his snowsuit, wrapped his face in his scarf, and left the house while his parents slept.

The early sun was somewhere behind the bright gray sky, and the snow was so bright he couldn't look at it without forcing himself, but he forced himself and felt the strange, pleasing feeling of snow-dazzled eyes. The snow in front of the house was not new, mussed with boot-tracks filled with gray water; but the snow in the back still followed its own created planes, on and on, untouched—and it was this that guided him to take his walk in the back. He walked and listened to the crunch of his boots and felt the cold air. A few black birds crossed the sky like a meaningless thought. Beside him trotted the ghost of the old dog that had died recently enough to still follow him.

Read the rest of "Winter's Wooden Sparrows" by Erin Pringle-Toungate in Lake Effect, due out in January 2012  Now available

Photo used from Getty Images, with permission/

Dirk Wustenhagen Imagery

Writers Run, Too

Her friend and a fellow writer, Stephanie, will be running as part of the Komen Race for the Cure in Austin, TX. To donate to the cause, via Stephanie's running shoes, follow this sentence to her donation page.

She thinks this is worthwhile. The number of graves due to breast cancer, among other cancers, is more than wearisome.