The California Incident by Charles Pellegrino

Walk into my home office and  you will know I’m a great fan of Charles Pellegrino because I have all his books displayed with a framed photo of both of us, meeting for the first time in NYC. Some of my favorites are his Dust, his Titanic trilogy, The Killing Star  and the one closest to my heart: Last Train from Hiroshima. He is a brilliant scientist and writer;  I consider Charlie my writing mentor through his writing. I can easily point out his influence on my writing. ( While writing my Kapoho book, I remember saying, “I must do a Charlie here,” and added a paragraph or two.)

This week, his The California Incident  Kindle book was released and I finished it  in a few hours. The Californian was one of the ships near the Titanic that historical night.

This is a bonus, a great bonus to all the Titanic books by Pellegrino. I still don’t know whether the presentation of the story, in its reader friendly font and spacing added to this feeling that I was reading an illustrated book. How he used all his research to present them  in such a freeflowing, easy reading story is fascinating. That’s part of his brilliance, using words  to create images  like photographs or a running film.

In the book,  Walter Lord was asked if he might want to visit the Titanic if he could travel back in time. He  said he “ would love to be a fly on the wall aboard the Californian.”  Pellegrino does just that, for Lord and his readers, putting  us on the wall as a fly. He doesn’t stop there and takes us to all the other ships who were reported to be around the Titanic that night.

This story is a heart-breaking history of men…men who were human in their weakness:  their inability to speak up for truth and to have the courage to go beyond authority.  All  would have saved lives. They were later chained to their own history of grief and shame, as documented by their descendants.

It’s obvious that when Pellegrino does research and writes what he knows, he accomplishes  this with the human reader in mind, with all of his/her senses .

This is also a story of the mysteries of that night, of the numerous ships sighted  around the Titanic.  If there were so many sightings, why didn’t they rush toward the Titanic? Pellegrino  takes us through that mysterious fog.

So the Titanic sank in 1912. Yet, interwoven in the telling are people familiar to us: descendant of lawman Bat Materson, Ian Fleming; one of my favorite books “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” A nice touch. Like ships in constant movement on the sea, he moves the reader through different time – lines with dialogues and compelling  people accounts.

I have read all of his Titanic books and didn’t dream there would another story to tell. I think I know his secret. He has tons of information, but will use them only as needed. There were a few times  I felt, “Oh, this is so good, why didn’t he tell us this in his other books?”
I hope he’s writing another story until his files are all empty.

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Move Aside, Van Gogh

 

Now tell me, which self portrait would you put on your wall?

Mira is a new friend of mine and I hope to meet her someday in person. I met her through my book Wordsworth Stop the Bulldozer. She has been giving Wordsworth a run for his pen with one poem after another and someday I may share some of her work. Her poems are as delightful, introspective and beautiful as her portrait.

To Mira

Move aside, Van Gogh

Mira’s portrait brings on smiles

In dreary winter.

 

To Van Gogh

You spell cold winter

Without the magic of snow

Smile, Vincent Van Gogh.

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AARP Conference:Hawaii

It was a privilege to give the keynote address on Dignity in Caregiving at the Hawaii AARP conference yesterday. The poetry writing workshop I conducted after giving the address led to very deep probing by caregivers. Those who have attended my sessions in the past are familiar with my one blade of grass  to get ink on paper. One caregiver discovered as she wrote, that her mother was the blade of grass.

Following is an email from Linda Nagata, a former caregiver- member of my poetry writing support group in Honolulu.

Aloha FOF (Friends of Frances),

 

It was my honor to attend the above conference yesterday and hear our favorite keynote speaker. Frances, in her boa, once again had the crowd spellbound.  You could have heard a pin drop in the conference room.  She read her poems and talked about caring for her mother -and even things I had never heard her talk about before.  It is always emotional to hear her, and as usual there were tears in my eyes.  Frances truly does a great service for other caregivers by letting them know what they are thinking, feeling and doing all have value. 

 

Frances inspired me to come home and read more of our poems from Breaking the Silence.  I still laugh over Elaine’s “More Glimpses of a Daughter and Mother”,and Jason’s always are so deeply felt and thought out.  It has now been 21 years since my mother departed.  Last night was the first time I was able to read my own poems and not cry.  Imagine – 21 years it has taken me to get to this point! At least I have reached it, and I consider that an accomplishment. 

Thanks Frances for all the encouragement along this bumpy road.

 

Care giving, as Linda points out, does not end when our loved ones are gone. Linda explains this in her poem written after attending our poetry support group.

 

Sensei (Teacher)

She came notebook and pen in hand

To lead me out of my morose state,

Encouraging, cajoling, insisting

Write, write, write.

Others spoke of current dilemmas, emotions.

I was stuck in the past —a dozen years gone by.

“Why am I so emotionally delayed?” my mind asked.

Then the wiser voice said, learn and move on.

Sensei says write, write, write,

Write about one small thing

I try to focus on one small thing

Dredging up the aged memories

Like buried garbage they are not pleasant,

Helplessness, anger, resentment.

Write, write, write

A miracle happens

The bitter emotions, softened, turn

Into acceptance and peace.

Write, write, write.

        By Linda Nagata: from Breaking the Silence: A Caregiver’s Voice

Linda, after exploring her grief through poetry, left the group saying she was now ready to move on. It looks like she finally did.

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Wordsworth & Frances in NY & Charlottesville

From Wordsworth`: On the subway in NY

Hi Everyone,

. I got some good news from the subway: It was my transportation for 7 days and

I told Frances, “I don’t see anyone reading a Kindle or any other e-books on the subway.

They’re all  reading real books.”

Frances said, “Yes, and wouldn’t it be great if we saw someone reading one of our books?”

I went around the trains, hoping there would be at least one person reading my books but no such luck.  Maybe I should ask Charlie Pellegrino or Sets to read my book on the subway.

We’re off to Charlottesville, VA where Frances has a lot of work to do.

In Charlottesville: You should have seen Frances run to catch her next flight at Dulles Airport in D.C. She could have won a medal at the Olympics!

What a beautiful city. Here are two poems I wrote during some sight-seeing:

  Blue Ridge Fog

Ah Carl Sandburg,

Fog along the Blue Ridge

Comes on hippo hooves

Blocking my view.

           Trees Trees Trees

Ah,  Omar Khayyam,

If you were in Charlottesville,

You would have added trees

To a glass of wine, a loaf of bread and

Me beside you in Paradise Anow.

This trip is all about Frances’ work so I better do some reporting:

Frances was honored by a dinner and reception at the Univ of VA, School of Medical and Nursing last night. I’m glad I didn’t wear my Aloha shirt because

I would have been out of place. It was  a fancy sit down dinner and Frances was asked to read her poetry on caregiving and to explain

how poetry can be used to humanize the medical world.

The following day, she gave a lecture , poetry reading and poetry writing workshop at a luncheon for caregivers. She read a poem from one of my books so I’m feeling good that we  both made a difference.

We  had to wear a different hat one evening when she read from her Kapoho book  at WriterHouse and talked about memoir writing and poetry. There was someone wearing the  Honolulu Advertiser shirt. Wow, I quickly asked if he knew our friend Wayne Harada and he said yes. Small small world.

We went to Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson and I must say, it was a pretty emotional tour. We stood on the exact spot where Jefferson stood as he watched the U of VA being built.

I didn’t know he was responsible for this university. We both felt the presence of Mr. Jefferson throughout our visit. Except at the shopping malls, which is a must stop for Frances.

My next book is called Wordsworth! Stop the Bulldozer! so  I kept thinking how Charlottesville loves trees just as I do. My book will be out in October and I hope all the places in the world will someday  look like Charlottesville.

I’m going to L.A. with Frances on Friday so I hope to meet some friends in Torrance. She’s talking about her Kapoho book.

Stay tuned, maybe there’s a poem in Torrance.

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Dementia or Poorly Selected Books?

Is it my brain or is it the book?

My brain has been a source of worry these past few months because there are a dozen books I’ve purchased with bookmarks in the first third of each book.    I didn’t even finish the last two selections of my book club and they were no Nora Roberts.  Is this the first lunge into dementia?  Is my brain interfering with one of my great passions in life?  Or could the source  be poorly selected books?

I didn’t need a neurologist to tell me the slightly manufactured Frances truth. Mark Arax, Charles Pellegrino  and Linda Urbach took me through their books to the last page without long pauses to prove that those Amyloid Plaques and Tangles have not become uninvited guests. Not yet.

Linda Urbach’s easy to read novel, “Madame Bovary’s Daughter” led me to reread Emma Bovary by Flaubert.

Rereading  Pellegrino’s earliar books such as  ”Dust”  itched me all over, but  taught me to look at our six-legged critters through different lenses. I’m reading his earliar published books (” Return to Sodom and Gomorrah”)  as I impatiently wait for his new edition of Last Train from Hiroshima, a book that changed my life drastically. Pellegrino, in my opinion, is a master story writer and has affected my writing deeply.  My review of Pellegrino’s various books are on my blog.

Mark Arax’s “In My Father’s Name” is a must read, folks, for story told and how it’s told.  His  friendship with William Saroyan as a youngster,  reminded me of the first adult book I read as a kid…My Name is Aram by Saroyan. Is it coincidence that Mark’s grandfather was Aram Arax?  “My Name is Aram” is now on my reading list. I added the following review on Arax’s book on Amazon.com. with slight editing.

A web of pure silk, July 5, 2012

By Frances H. Kakugawa
  

This review is from: In My Father’s Name (Paperback) …

Between the pages of this excellent book, I sent quotations from Saroyan to members of the Northern CA Publishers/ Writers. Imagine having a personal relationship with Saroyan. To my writing support group of caregivers, I sent quotations from his grandfather who suffered from dementia. One reader called it a “capsule of humanity.”  To a former resident of Fresno, I bought this book for her birthday. And for myself, I ignored housework and other to-do lists long after I read the last page. Arax is a craftsman  of language;  he weaves different time and historical periods, people, places into his search to dignify his father. Life is not linear in reality and this is carefully presented in the telling of his story. I paused often to relish the use of language.  I sit here stunned over the ugly life that is part of  Fresno’s history and in awe how Arax turned his story into an art form. At the end, he was the one on the white horse.

So for as long as there are well written books out there, I won’t worry about my brain cells. They definitely know good writing when they see it.

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Ray Bradbury

Farewell Summer

Some  people ought not to leave us at all.  Ray Bradbury, who died on Tuesday, is one of these people.

My first contact with Bradbury was in the early 70′s. I saw him being interviewed on national television and I was so intrigued, I wrote him a letter, addressed to the TV station. Lo and  behold, he responded. We corresponded for a while, exchanging our own writings and thoughts on writing. He told me to never leave my childhood. To always preserve that magic of not always having the answer.

I had written a rough draft of my Enemy Wore My Face story that appears in my newly published, Kapoho: Memoirs of a Modern Pompeii. He liked it immensely.

Fast forward: I was a literature curriculum writer for the state of Hawaii and presented a few lesson plans at the English Institute in San Diego. Bradbury was there and I was tongue-tied.  He was delighted to see how we had incorporated some of his books into our curriculum.  He told me then, why he doesn’t fly at all. “If we were meant to fly,” he said, ” we would have been born with wings.”

Fast forward: Nimitz School. Hawaii.  Sixth grade class. 1980′s.

The State Culture and the Arts produced one of his plays, The Halloween Tree. I took my class to the stage production and sent their reviews to Bradbury. My students were very honest and added  suggestions on how to improve his play, in addition to telling him he did a good job. One suggestion was his title needed to be changed.  Once again, he expressed total delight in hearing from us, saying he would seriously consider their critical analysis.  My 6th graders added another hero to their list on the day his letter arrived, snail mail, as it has always been.

I recently read my favorite, Dandelion Wine and the sequel, Farewell Summer, 2006. No, I guess writers like Bradbury never really leave us. Thank you,  Ray Bradbury.

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Hawaii Book & Music Festival and KAPOHO at Kilauea

I’ll be heading to Hawaii at the end of the month for some events I’m excited about!

I have been invited to appear on a panel discussion on Memoir and Biography at the Hawaii Book & Music Festival, alongside authors like Janny Scott (who wrote A Singular Woman, a biography of President Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham), Julia Flynn Siler (author of Lost Kingdom, about Queen Liliuokalani and the fall of the Hawaiian monarchy) and Sydney Iaukea (who wrote The Queen and I, another book about Liliuokalani, but it’s special because it is about her own family’s role in the queen’s government). Impressive, yeah?

The Hawaii Book and Music Festival is May 5 and 6, and the panel I am on will happen on Saturday, May 5, at 4PM.

I am also going to the Big Island to read from Kapoho in the Hawaii Volcano National Park. Chicken skin to talk about the volcano burying Kapoho under all that lava while I’m sitting in the Park! That event is before the Book Festival, on Tuesday, May 1. The doors open at 6:30pm if you want to get a good seat to hear me, and I start reading at 7pm.

Here is the announcement that my publisher put in their newsletter:

KAPOHO at Kilauea

Author Frances Kakugawa stands in a Big Island lava field — all that remains of the village where she was a little girl.

Author Frances Kakugawa grew up in the small Big Island village of Kapoho. In 1960, Kapoho was claimed by lava; today, not much remains to indicate a town was ever there.Life in a small village with no indoor plumbing, just outhouses, no hot showers, just boiled water for baththubs, is not easy. It’s even less easy when you are a second generation Japanese-American girl and the Japanese have just bombed Pearl Harbor.

These are the experiences Frances will share as she reads from her newest memoir, Kapoho, at the Kilauea Visitors Center on Tuesday, May 1, as part of the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park “After Dark in the Park” program. Your $2 donation is requested to help continue programs like ADIP. Doors open at 6:30PM, reading begins at 7PM.

Connect with Frances:

Facebook: facebook.com/FrancesKakugawa
Blog: franceskakugawa.wordpress.com

Join us at the 7th Annual Hawaii Book & Music Festival

Frances Kakugawa (Kapoho, Wordsworth the Poet) and Christine Thomas (Don’t Look Back: Hawaiian Myths Made New) will be among the panelists featured at the 7th Annual Hawaii Book & Music Festival.

Frances joins authors Janny Scott, Julia Flynn Siler and Sydney Iaukea in the Authors Pavilion at 4PM on Saturday, May 5, to discuss “Agendas in Biography & Memoir.”

Christine will be joined by fellow contributors to Don’t Look Back, Robert Barclay, Marion Lyman-Mersereau and Victoria Kneubuhl, in the OHA Alana Pavilion at 1PM on Sunday, May 6, to read selected myths from the collection and talk about the enduring power and importance of myth.

Visit us at our booth to the right of the Main Stage for great deals on new books and deep discount bargains on gently used bookstore returns. All books are priced 20-80% off!

See below for a coupon good for $10 off your $25 purchase.

For more information and a full event schedule, visit the Hawaii Book & Music Festival website.

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Farewell Titanic: Her Final Legacy

Book Review:I’m honored to share the newest book by Charles Pellegrino.

Farewell Titanic: Her Final Legacy

AT long last, the final book to Pellegrino’s Titanic Trilogy. It was worth the long wait. What a master storyteller.  This is what a successful writer does, he takes you along with him, in this instance, down to the Titanic and  introduces you to many of the survivors and those who didn’t survive. You are given the privilege of knowing the lives of the passengers; they are not statistics nor a list of names. He recreates the scenes with words and leaves vivid images in your head. He shares his scientific knowledge, not only with  facts but presents them,  interlaced  with poetry and the humanity of what his story is about. He makes you  weep, gulp and reread many of his passages, wondering how in the world did he come up with such sentences. On page  233, I came to a pause at this sentence:

” The bones of one child, yet to be born, lay caged beneath his mother’s ribs.”

Pellegrino is a great teacher. He came to certain conclusions in his  first book, “Her Name, Titanic,” and  being a scientist, he reveals in this third book, how previous conclusions  needed to be re-analyzed and revisited and be proven wrong during later expeditions.  In his own words, “to change that would have been to alter history. In all three books, the Titanic acquires more detail and color, and how, as scientists saw the Titanic change with the addition of new details, so does the reader.” There is even a letter of apology to one of the members of the crew.

Pellegrino lives the scientist life by showing us the true nature of the scientific process. What a great lesson to students of the sciences or even to current scientists, that only with an open and curious mind, will new discoveries be made.  Science is ever changing and to hold on to the old  wrapped with  one’s ego, does more damage than good. Old knowledge often needs to be replaced with the new. The Scientific mind is an ever moving, ever exploring mind. High school science teachers , put  this book in your classroom library because this is illustrated so clearly in the book.

English teachers, teach your students about writing by exploring Pellegrino’s masterful use of language. I find myself constantly Pellegrino-ing my own writing.  His structure of the time line shifts from below the Titanic to World Trade Center to Hiroshima back to the Titanic. This keeps the story on the move, taking us close to how a mind works. He is certainly a master craftsman of our language.

I often told the following anecdote  to teachers in my teacher training workshops to remind them that a teacher teaches students, not subjects.

A teacher walked into the teacher’s lounge and said, “That John. He is so brilliant. I never had a student so good in math and science.  Today I handed him a flower and instead of smelling it, he began to count the petals.”

Readers, meet a scientist who smells the flowers as he counts the petals. In the Introduction, Tom Dettweiler states: Charlie’s ( Pellegrino) questions were coming from a place  different from that of the questions we had been bombarded with at home. The question we had grown especially tired of was , “Did you see any bodies?”  Charlie was different. Instead of the morbid question about bodies, Charlie asked, “Did you(we) see the humans?” Farewell, Titanic is certainly a story of humans which will stay with you for a long long time.

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Poets for Peace

Poets for Peace

Each time a poet

Puts pen to paper,

There is a sliver of hope

For Peace.

 

I was privileged to read some of my war and peace poems at the annual Poets for Peace event for Peace Action in downtown,  Sacramento last night. Here are excerpts from my readings, focusing on our children for they often seem to have a clearer understanding of our quest for the intangible, than adults.

 

FromCharles Pellegrino’s Last Train from Hiroshima with my own notations:

 

Masahiro Sasaki: brother of Sadako and the Thousand Cranes, and a survivor of Hiroshima, gave a lecture in Vienna.

 

A little boy about eleven, asked him: Mr. Sasaki, who dropped the atomic bomb?

 

Mr. Sasaki answered:

 

 It’sbeen more than 60 years since the bombs were dropped. God made everyone equal. So, I forgot who dropped the bomb.

The boy nodded understanding, and gave Mr. Sasaki a thumbs-up.

 

To the adults: It does not matter who dropped the bomb. It’s not an issue. It should never be an issue for any country. It’s an issue for all humanity. If the feeling of Omoiyari…think about the other person first…can be taken to heart and passed down by just a few of you in this room today, it may, in time lessen the dangers in the world. This is my wish: We pass this simple philosophy of Omoiyari to the next generation.

 

Mr. Sasaki looked at the boy who asked the question and said: Children, teach your parents.

 

The following is lifted from my collection of  short stories that will be published this Fall.

In this scene, Sonny and I, both 12, are on our backs, looking up at the sky.

 

 “Eh Sonny,” I said, lying on my back, looking up into the sky, “Did you see Charlie Chaplin last night?”

“No, I’m goin’ this Saturday to see The Lone Ranger.”

“Charlie Chaplin was funny. He was so hungry, he boiled his shoes to make soup. He ate his shoe lace like spaghetti.  They keep showing the same war  news.”

I watched the clouds, white chiffon gowns of the wind, swaying against the clear blue sky, wedding gowns, lacy veils and silk trains, flowing and moving like brides down the aisles.  An ache of unknown source filled me to the brim. Sonny saw faces of fat Churchill and the Lone Ranger.

“Eh Sonny, I bet if Truman and Stalin got on their backs like this and looked at the clouds and the skies, they would think of peace, not war.”

“Yeah, this is better than sitting around a  table, that’s for sure. Hard to make war when you look up to  the sky.”

“Yeah, a Peace Conference outside in the fields or out at the beach. All the leaders on their backs like this, looking up at the clouds and feeling the wind on their faces. For sure, they wouldn’t make war.”

“And they shouldn’t wear shoes.”

“Yeah, and they better not have toe jam.” We lay there, laughing, wriggling our toes in the air, far removed from the war news on screen.

It became obvious as the years went by, that no one heard Sonny’s and my idea of  the “Open Air Peace Conference.” War clouds with different names continued to float past us throughout the years. 

 

My life’s passages are identified by wars for we are still fighting the first war under different names and it’s time for a change.

 

 

When Will I Know Peace?

 

When will I know Peace?

“She is at Peace,” they told me

When my mother died.

Is that the only way I will know Peace?

When I die?  and you will say,

She is at Peace?

 

NO! I want Peace now.

I want to see it on children’s faces

All over the world.

I want to taste it, lick it, swallow it

Like chocolate ice-cream in August.

I want to hear it, I want to hear it.,.what is the sound of Peace?

I want to bathe in it, feel it wrap around me

Like skin. I don’t want  it after I’m stiff and dead.

I want Peace now.

           

 

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Dangerous Women

Poetry to Music

UBerDavid of Oregon
set my Dangerous Women to music.

Check this out…wow…

Just click here and play!
Dangerous Women

Here are the lyrics – You can Sing Along!

(or Karaoke good, too!)

Dangerous Women

We are the dangerous women…
Who never say no to sunsets, sunrises,
Evening strolls or double martinis.

We are the women who speak to you
In supermarkets over apples and cabbages.
Making you wish you could follow us home.

We are the women taught by mothers,
To make you feel we could be yours
No matter what your age, color or size.

We are the women who seek
Extraordinary days out of the ordinary
Leaving aches and joy and empty spaces.

We are the women who write poems
And send you copies without permission
Capturing moonbeams in your name.

We are the gatherers of dreams,
Fantasizing scenes
In private places where secrets live.

We are not easy to be with
After sad movies, romantic novels,
And on Sunday afternoons.

We are so damn demanding
You wish we had never met,
Yet you know, we are the poetry of life.

Yes, we are the dangerous women: vulnerable,
Ageless, poetic, passionate, living life with two feet
Slightly off the ground.

We are the women you should avoid
If you don’t believe in Peter Pan, Never Never Land
And the first star of the evening skies.

But pour us wine, as the sun sets low
And we will hand you the key
To our inner souls.

- fhk

(UBERDAVID is a techno-acoustic music duo. They are David Rolin…(drums, percussion and vocals) and David White…(keyboard/synth).”*

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