Playing virtual catch-up with essays in the February 2012 issue of the Mule. I think you’ll find a bit of greatness in the barn this month. We haven’t posted the FICTION, aside from just a couple, and the stories will be available on the 15th.

You all know the Southern Legitimacy Statement … right …? One of our poets sent us a Southern Literacy Statement. In all these years, over 15 of ‘em, no one’s ever done that. I’ve never even thought of that but now, seeing it – it makes me pause and wonder why this didn’t occur sooner. Or perhaps it did but because we see what we’re trained to see, we didn’t notice.

Living out here in eastern North Carolina, illiteracy is a huge problem. (nice segue, eh?) Our schools have high drop out rates, low test scores, and my county had an illiteracy rate of 60% when I used to volunteer for the local literacy council back in the early 2000s.

Since writer’s thoughts tend to be linear in a circuitous fashion, my conversation with Me about literacy brought me to our dear friend Edward who retired recently. Edward reads at or below a third grade level. He brings any complicated reading (legal correspondence, contracts and such) to us for interpretation and discussion. Edward can fix anything. He can paint a house, wash your car, and rev up a chainsaw and bring down a dead 150 year old pecan tree and use a come-along amd a stump grinder to clean up the trunk. He’s a quality brick mason and a decent concrete sidewalk repair man. If Edward doesn’t know how to work something; he knows someone who can and he’ll get him for you. If you want to sell it, have it hauled away, or put it in the attic of the garage — Edward is your man.

When we went to Costa Rica a few years ago, Edward checked on Mama every few days to make sure she was safe and didn’t need for anything.

Edward maybe can’t read so well but he sure as hell exemplifies a what would constitute a good  Southern Literacy Statement.

Hope that makes sense to you. I’ve been stuck in this here bed for over a week what with the flu turning into strep throat and antibiotics make my brain wonky. And yes, I did get my flu shot. Fat lot of good it did me. Ya’ll need to take care of yourselves through this flu season, you don’t want to get wonky-brained like me.

-Val MacEwan, Editor
on the eve of the February 2012 issue

I’m loading a few new works on the Mule today and will add some more later this week. December always seems so hectic, doesn’t it? Perhaps a few moments reading Jean Rodenbough’s poem “Parable” or a few minutes reading some flash fiction or one of the other new poems on the Mule will help to slow down that pace a bit.

As a kid, the days from the Thanksgiving break through to the first week of the new year represented the best of the best. The brightest smiles, the happiest moments — when Daddy would tell long memories and we sat in the living room with the fireplace crackling (it really does crackle, doesn’t it? it’s not poetic license) and Mom would turn out all the lights except the Christmas tree’s big bold bulbs – no the little sorry ass twinklies we have now. This month, December, carries with it long streams of consciousness, random words and phrases float by in a mist of vapors and will-o-whisp lights. I see my parents out of the corner of my eye, a brief shadow of the way it used to be when holidays really were holidays. I catch a hiccup of anticipation from my grandsons but it’s gone in a flash. For over a decade, in the 60s, we left Arkansas for Ohio on the 26th of December, and returned after New Year’s. We’d visit Avon-scented elderly aunts, loud-voiced relatives with strange foods and cloying fierce hugs, Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Betty and the cousins — we’d compare presents and play with our James Bond spy gear — and grow close and comfortable for a week, a fast brief moment of family – as elusive as the spirits it recalled.

This December, it’s all in my head. “The boar’s head as I understand is the bravest dish in all the land,” my dead Uncle Jimmy whispers in my right ear, “All you men in iron suits, come and play dominoes,” he tells me that’s the Latin translation of the song about to be heard. And my Dad laughs quietly, under his breath when I sing the new lines — bold and confident, standing in the church next to him.

Where’s your holiday? Is it in a tree? A belief system? Family? Mine’s in words and photos of traditions now replaced with urgent needs, complicated wants, and forgotten reason. My thoughts swirl around my head, circling like Saturn rings of memory and I reach for them but they scoot past me into the night.

-Val MacEwan

Helen Losse, our poetry editor extraordinaire, brings ya’ll some unique and poignant verse with this month’s poetry. Each month we delight in posting some of the best poetry found anywhere on the internet… and we have done so now for

GET READY FOR IT

FIFTEEN YEARS TO THE DAY!

Yup, Nov. 15, 1996, we registered the domain name DEADMULE.COM.

A simple “Thank you” just doesn’t seem adequate enough to express all the love and admiration we have for the writers of the Mule. Robert and I never dreamed we’d keep this literary journal afloat for 15 years. It is with a proud voice and a grateful heart that we commend all of you who have contributed to the Mule in some way over these many years.

The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature highlights images found within the Library of Congress.

This month our imagination is captured by the Carnegie Survey of Southern Architecture. Photographing in the 1930s, Frances Benjamin Johnston’s glass slides capture compelling portraits of over 1,700 buildings. Johnston primarily traveled through urban and rural regions of VA, MD, NC, SC, GA, AL, and LA. The collection does include FL, MS, WV photographs.

The photographs of “high style structures” of southern mansions and plantations give us a fascinating glimpse into the detail of both architectural design and functional form. Outbuildings in Johnston’s photographs particularly interest me because of their scarcity here in rural NC in 2011. The demise of the outbuilding is a topic for another day.

When studying southern architecture in graduate school, it took a significant amount of money to print the photographs from my Canon AE-1.  The boxes of slide carousels take up way too much space in the closet but I can’t make myself throw them out. Recently, we purchased an Epson Perfection V500 Photo scanner with a slide mount. Perhaps now I can find time to digitize my own collection. Not that is warrants Library of Congress attention, duh. The digitization of Johnston’s glass slides is a huge commitment by the LoC. Thank you, America.

The survey began with a privately funded project to document the Chatham estate and nearby Fredericksburg and Old Falmouth, Virginia, in 1927-29. Johnston then dedicated herself to pursuing a larger project to help preserve historic buildings and inspire interest in American architectural history. The Carnegie Corporation became her primary financial supporter and provided six grants during the 1930s on condition that the negatives be deposited with the Library of Congress. The Library formally acquired the CSAS negatives from her estate in 1953, along with her extensive papers and approximately 20,000 other photographs.

I humbly bow to the exquisite talent of Frances Benjamin Johnston. Her genius compels one to study the depth of the image, the play of shadow on light, the attention to detail …

Dead Mule readers should check out the over 7000 images in the Survey.

Links to the highlights of Carnegie Survey of Southern Architecture

http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/slidecsas/

http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/fbjchron.html

Next time you’re looking for something more entertaining and informative than what your internet friends ate for lunch or that YouTube video of a kitten chasing a laser light, lose yourself in the Library of Congress website. It belongs to you, but you know that…

Talk to ya’ll later,

Valerie MacEwan
Publisher

This is the sound of our collective :

Poetry:

Sherry Chandler  “No More” (scroll down)

John Riley  “Factory Girl in a Blurred Photograph” (scroll down)

Robert Klein Engler  “St. Mary’s Assumption Church” (scroll down)

Susan Nelson Meyers “Fourteen days”

Kent L. Reichert  “Three Days by Rail from North Carolina” (scroll down)

Pris Campbell   “Consolation” (scroll down)

*

Fiction:

John Tarkov  “Cordillera”

Ed Laird   “Dog Days”

*

Nonfiction:

Natasha Drew “Make It About the Money”

Pierette Stukes   “Tilted Toward Life”

**Thank you, Helen Losse, our Mule poetry editor, for your hard work and determination — you help us to maintain a high standard of excellence in all aspects of the Dead Mule. Without your dedication to the poets out there, the Mule would be a sorry place. Helen formats all the required flim and flap and submits nominations for such awards after we choose the writers. It is a time-consuming and deliberate process. Please join me in giving her a round of applause.

It is Helen whose spirit embodies, in every Dead Mule issue, that we do indeed have The Best of The Net  – every issue, every writer, every day. If there is an Editor’s Prize for online publications, Helen gets the trophy.

-Valerie MacEwan
Publisher

No attachments under any circumstances.

Put poems in the body of your e-mail.  Otherwise, they will not be read.

*We have poetry submissions on submishmash and are working to clear out the backlog. If you submitted poetry via submishmash, it would behoove you to send your submissions via old school (see submission guidelines page) and withdraw your poetry from submishmash. I promise you won’t be thought ill of if you withdraw poetry on submishmash, I’ll know you’re sending it directly to Helen. We tried to overcome the attachment problem by using submishmash but … not yet, so send your poetry submissions via email. thanks. — VMacEwan

Please DO NOT SEND POEMS before July 5.

Now you might recall that I took a sabbatical last summer. During that time, when I wasn’t reading and posting poems on the Mule, I put together my second full length poetry collection.

And now Main Street Rag has agreed to publish my book Seriously Dangerous.  You can read more about it on my Main Street Rag Author’s Page and advance order the book  on the Coming Soon page (scroll down).

Thanks in Advance.

Helen

**

The book is scheduled for release May 17, 2011 and will sell for $14, but you can get it now for $9 + shipping by placing an Advance Discount order from the Main Street Rag Online Bookstore or, if you are more inclined to pay by check, they are $12.50 each including tax and shipping.

If buyers want to pay by credit card, they need to call the card number in to 704-573-2516 between 9am and 5pm (Eastern time), M-F and the same price applies for credit card sales over the phone as sales paid for by check. The mailing address for checks is:  Main Street Rag, PO Box 690100, Charlotte, NC 28227-7001.

Please remember that ordering in advance does not mean you will receive the book prior to the release date listed on my Author’s Page.