Tag Archive for: T.K. Thorne

Watch Out for Falling Heroes—T.K. Thorne

/in /by

 Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

 

 

The past few months, heroes have toppled under
the sledgehammer of truth. I’m not talking about the confederate statues; I’m
taking about personal heroes. Among the fallen are L. Frank Baum, author of The
Wizard of Oz books, who advocated
exterminating native Americans; John Wayne, who made disturbing
remarks about blacks and Native Americans: J.K. Rowling, who has made
remarks some
interpret as transphobic; and Dr. Seuss’ —of all people—whose cartoon art
included racial
stereotyping.  Classics like Tom
Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and Gone with the Wind are coming
under scrutiny for racial stereotyping. 

 

This is really nothing new. Gertrude
Stein, an American poet and literature icon, sympathized with France’s Vichy
regime (a puppet state for the Nazis). Ezra Pound, a major American poet, became
a fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. T.S. Eliot, a famous British essayist and poet was an
elitist, writing that “a large number of free-thinking Jews is undesirable.”
He did not espouse tolerance or even traveling widely and thus, presumably,
exposing oneself to other cultures. 

One of the real angsts about the historical book
I am writing now is that one of my heroes stumbles on his pedestal. When he
visited Birmingham sometime in 1963, his brother set them up with prostitutes
(both were married). I worried about putting in that chapter, but the story was
true and germane to the book. I grappled with whether to cut it or leave it. In
the end, I decided it was true, and the truth was more important to tell.
 Is he still a great man? A man to be followed and listened to?

I stopped drooling over actor Sean Connery when he
said he thought it was “absolutely right” to hit women when they wouldn’t “leave
things alone.” The “father of our national parks,” John Muir, had no place for indigenous
peoples in his “pure” wilderness and was clear about his racist opinions about
them and about blacks. Bill Clinton led record job creation but sullied the
office of president with his shenanigans. John F. Kennedy was just as bad in
that department, yet his words still inspire. Nixon created the Environment
Protection Agency (EPA) and opened China, but also dishonored the office he
held. Thomas Jefferson had slaves. Abraham Lincoln plainly said he had no
intentions of freeing slaves. And the paragraph above regarding prostitutes refers
to Martin Luther King. Even Mahatma Gandhi, surely an icon of peace and
civility, said the Jews under Hitler’s heels “should have offered
themselves to the butcher’s knife.” 

What? 

What, indeed, are we to do? Everyone has flaws.
No one is perfect. If you think someone is, you just don’t know about theirs. And
one person’s “flaws” is another person’s “strengths of character.” Judging
people is simultaneously harmful (“Judge not, lest ye be judged”) and
necessary. We can’t choose a better path without acknowledging and turning away
from ideas and behavior that will harm our social, cultural, and personal
evolution . . . or our world.

Should we separate the person from their
creations (art, writing, leadership) or do we turn away and disregard their accomplishments
or creations because of the creator’s flaws? Is it a matter of strict
lines in the sand? Should we make allowances for time, context, and culture?  Is justice  about punishment or mercy? Does it matter if
the theft was a loaf of bread and the thief was hungry?

I suspect dealing with this is akin to the
concept of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not about forgetting, turning from what
is true, or acting like something didn’t happen. It is about letting go of the
grip wrongs have on us; letting go of our own
emotional angst and moving forward.

So maybe the answer is not to ban books or art
(because ideas are next) or even to shun the art, works, or accomplishments of
the flawed (because ultimately that is everyone), but to be aware and negotiate
the complexity. What young children with forming ideas are exposed to may need
to be more strictly scrutinized than what adults read. It’s important they be
exposed to material that reflects the diversity of the world. Confederate
statues are still art and reflect historical people and events, but do they belong
in public squares as “heroes?” Can we appreciate the beautiful and charming aspects
of Southern culture while remaining clear-eyed about the racism that dominated that
way of life? Can we admire the stunning culture of the Japanese, while
rejecting the blood thirst of feudal rulers and war mongers? Can we accept and
understand structural racism can exist along with good, decent police officers?

This is hard. We are not wired to do this very
easily. We are wired to want simple choices—good/bad, dangerous/not. We want
(need?) our heroes to be perfect. And if they aren’t, we want to put our hands
over our ears and shut our eyes. But they aren’t perfect. We aren’t. Our
country isn’t. We can be patriots and criticize. In fact, we must if we are to continue
making things better and stay true to the ideals that  many have given freedom
and blood for. At the moment, we are so polarized, that one side cannot imagine
saying anything good about the other, no matter what it is. Picking a path
through this jungle is hard. It is much easier to stay divided, to cheer only
for our team. But life is not like that. Life is change. It is complex and contradictory, even our
heroes. We must make decisions as we pick our way through stony, thorn-filled
paths. We must make choices. Sometimes they are obvious, but often they are not
clear or perfect.

Sometimes they will just be the best we can do.

 T.K. is a retired police captain who writes Books which, like this blog, go wherever her interest and imagination take her.  TKThorne.com

 

 

 

Susan’s Story –by T.K. Thorne

/in /by

 

 

Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

 

 

 

Susan had never told her family about her experiences. In fact, before Louisa Weinrib called her in 1990 for an interview, she she had never talked about what happened to
anyone other than those who had gone through it with her. Hers is a true story of
amazing strength, resourcefulness, and friendship.

 

Susan Eisenberg’s childhood was full of promise. An only
child, she was born in 1924 into a family that proudly traced their Hungarian
lineage back a hundred years. She grew up in the small town of Miskolc, where
her father had a successful business buying and exporting livestock and grains
for a farming cooperative. 

 

Susan was aware of anti-Semitic sentiment, but it didn’t
touch her early life. The Jewish community was well integrated into Hungarian
society, and she had many Christian friends. She spoke Hungarian and German, loved to ice-skate and ski,
and wanted to go to college, but by the time she was of college age, Jews could
not attend.

 

Her loving and close-knit family gathered after synagogue at
her home, where they also celebrated the Seder. On weekends, they offered a
tradition of high tea for family and neighbors. 

 

Trouble began in 1938 with a small Hungarian Nazi party that
grew in strength, paralleling the party’s growth in Germany. After Germany’s
invasion of Poland in 1939, Polish refugees fled into Hungary, bringing what
seemed unbelievable stories of what was happening in Poland. Without a birth
certificate validating birth in Hungary, officials shipped the fleeing
civilians back to Poland. An army friend confided to Susan that, in reality, the
Poles were taken across the border and shot. Even when people began wearing
brown shirts with swastika armbands and spouting slogans, Susan recalled, the
Jewish community just ignored it. 

 

In 1940 Hungary became an Axis power. Hitler, who invaded
the Soviet Union in 1941, demanded that Hungary join that war. Susan’s uncle
died when he was forced to walk with others into a field between the German and
Russian armies to test for the presence of land mines. Her father was taken to
a work camp. Released the following year, he was ill and depressed and died soon
after at 44. After his death, Susan and her mother moved to the city of Budapest
to live with relatives.

 

Although the Jews in Hungary suffered under tightening
restrictions, Hungary’s regent protected them for a time from Hitler’s “final
solution”—extermination—until Hitler discovered the regent was secretly
negotiating an armistice with the US and the UK. On Easter Sunday in March
1944, Susan was having coffee with a friend on a cafe terrace and saw German
panzer tanks rolling over the bridges into Budapest. The Germans occupied and
quickly seized control of the country.

 

The Nazis rounded up her family members who were still
living in the countryside. The relatives sent postcards—which Susan and her
mother later learned the Nazis forced them to write—advising they were well and
going to Thersienstadt (a concentration camp/ghetto in Terezin). All of them
perished in that camp.

 

In Budapest, Allied forces regularly bombed the city.
Everyone carried bags of food at all times, never knowing when they might have
to run into the air-raid shelters. Jews were required to wear a yellow star patch
on their clothing and live in designated housing. Restrictions dictated when
they could leave the house and forbid them to go to public parks or even walk
on the sidewalks. They could work only in manual labor positions. Jewish professionals,
doctors and dentists, could only practice on Jewish patients.

 

Susan was 19, with light blonde hair and blue eyes. She pulled
off the yellow star from her clothes and snuck out into the country to get
food. Once, on her return, Germans soldiers in a vehicle, not realizing she was
a Jew, picked her up. They asked for a date. Heart pounding, she agreed, lying
about where she lived, and promised to meet them later. Safely home, she looked
down at her clothes and realized that a closer inspection would have revealed
the stitch holes from the star she’d removed. 

 

When the Russian army was approaching Budapest, the
Hungarian Nazis ordered Susan to report for labor with her age group and sent them
to dig foxholes. Their Hungarian Nazi guards were 14 or 15-year-olds. When a
young girl working at Susan’s side sat down and cried for her mother, those
guards immediately shot her.

For two days and nights in the cold and rain, with no food, the guards ran them
back to Budapest to work in a brick factory where she met two girls her age,
Ferry (Ferike Csato) and Katherine (Katherine Goldstein Prevost). Susan pretended to be crippled and part of a group of sick and injured destined for
Budapest and death. She escaped and made it to her aunt and uncle’s house, but
the following day Hungarian gendarmes (police) rounded her up with others. The
gendarmes forced even mothers from their babies to join with those in the
streets.

 

Their Hungarian guards told them they were taking them to
Germany to die. “The one who dies on the road is lucky,” they said. Over a
ten-day period in October, they walked in rain, ice, and cold from Budapest to
the German border (125 miles) to Hegyeshalomover. Thousands were shot for
lagging behind or collapsing. A few country people along the way gave them a
piece of bread. Others stripped them of their clothes. Guards kicked them. They
slept in flea-invested hay. 

 

Anyone who had anything of value traded it to the peasants
for food. They fought for a share of rare carrot or bean soup.

 

One night, the guards packed them onto a barge on the Danube
River. Overwhelmed by the press of dying people, Susan escaped by swimming to
the bank in the freezing river. She begged a man she encountered to help her or
just get her something dry to wear. He agreed but instead returned with police
who escorted her back to the prisoners.

 

At the German border, they marched another ten miles to
trains. Jammed into cattle cars, they traveled for days but couldn’t see out
because black slats covered the cars. She was only aware of repetitive stopping
and starting. 

 

Finally, in October 1944, the trains arrived at Dachau
concentration camp in Germany, their destination. The smell of the crematorium
camp would stay in her nostrils for the rest of her life, as would the shock of
her first sight of the skeletal prisoners who mobbed them, begging for bread.
Guards beat the prisoners back.

 

The newly arrived assembled in a large open field, waiting
to go in. But even with bodies being constantly cremated, there was no room for
them in Dachau. Susan and her two friends, Ferry and Katherine, went with other
girls to Camp Two and then Camp Eleven (nearby work camps). They slept in
bunkers below ground on a wooden floor and a pallet of straw. Camp Two, they
quickly learned, was the “sick camp.” The next stop for Camp Two occupants
would be the crematorium in Dachau.

 

At the satellite camps, they were given striped uniforms.
About 500 people lived in each barrack with a block leader in charge. Food came
once a day in a big wooden barrel with hot water and big hunks of sugar beets.
At night they received a piece of bread that “oozed sawdust and a piece of
artificial marmalade.” At first, she couldn’t swallow it. The older inmates
encouraged her to “eat it, no matter what.” 

 

Each day, the prisoners were called out to stand, sometimes
for hours, in the cold for a count and work assignments (Appell). “If you fell
out, you were beaten or shot. If a friend was dying, you made sure that she
stood up, no matter what, and wasn’t left in the barracks.” 

 

In the first Appell, Susan was picked to work in a kitchen where
she peeled beets. Germans brought in prisoners for punishment, hanging them
from rafters and beating them. She and the kitchen workers constantly cleaned
the blood from the floors. She hid beets inside her baggy shirt and shared it
with her camp mates and the Muselmann—the starving, skin-and-bones
prisoners resigned to their impending death.

 

Susan was transferred to different camps for work
assignment. At one, German engineers of the Wehrmacht (Armed Forces), instead
of SS troops, ran the camp. More humane, their military task masters distributed
pieces of food to the workers, food that kept Susan alive. Barehanded and
dressed only in the thin striped uniforms and sockless wooden clogs, Susan and
her fellow prisoners pulled wagons of wood in the Bavarian winter mountains.
Sometimes she was taken from the camp to wash clothes for German housewives.
She also worked in the Sonderkommando (work groups at crematoriums) to
remove teeth from the corpses of the murdered for the gold fillings.

 

Her health was deteriorating. She had lost weight and
suffered from reoccurring high fevers. Typhoid broke out in the camp. There was
no medication. To isolate the prisoners, the guards stopped letting them leave,
throwing beets and bread over the fence. 

 

In early March 1945, after the epidemics, a female guard
beat her for speaking defiantly to a camp commander. People all around her were
giving in to despair, but she refused to do so, vowing she would survive. 

 

At another work camp, Susan joined women prisoners building
an underground airplane hangar. They were forced to carry 100-pound bags of
cement across a catwalk several stories high. The Muselmann went down
instantly under the burden, falling to their deaths. “There was,” Susan said,
“as much blood and flesh in that hanger as cement.”

 

An inmate orchestra played as she and other workers left the
camp and on their return. Guards made the orchestra watch and play during
beatings and hangings and while starved prisoners–who had tried to grab
potatoes from a wagon—were strung up between the electrical barbed wire, potatoes
stuck in their mouths.

 

Once, the Germans spruced up a barracks, putting in
furniture and stocking it with people they found “not in terrible shape” for
the Swiss Red Cross, who had come to inspect the treatment of prisoners. As
soon as they were gone, the Germans took the untouched piles of canned foods,
condensed milk, and chocolate the Red Cross had left for the prisoners.

 

One barrack’s occupants were expectant mothers. They were
allowed to give birth to their babies and tend them. Then one day, without
warning, all the infants were taken away and the women sent to the work
groups. 

 

To use the open trenches to relieve themselves, Susan had to
walk through knee-deep mud at night, sometimes stepping on top of the bodies of
those who had fallen there and died in the mud. Survival, she knew, depended on
not allowing yourself to feel and thinking only of the moment.

 

Her last assignment was in a dynamite factory. By this time,
the air raids were almost continuous. Landsberg, a nearby town, was under siege
by the Americans. In April 1945, guards took her and her friends to the main
camp in Dachau. They spent a night in the showers at Dachau, believing they
would next be taken to the crematoriums, which were still “going strong.” But
the next day, with thousands of young people, they were marched out of the
camp. As they left, they could see the trains that continued to bring prisoners
from other camps [to keep the Allies from discovering them], many already sick
and emaciated. When the doors opened, dead bodies fell out. Inmates stacked
them like mountains in front of the crematoriums to be burned. But the Germans
had run out of time. The American guns were days away. 

 

They marched from Dachau, walking at night and hiding in the
woods during the day. Allowed to dig in the fields they passed for roots and
potatoes, they ate them raw. All understood the guards’ orders were to march
them into the mountains and kill them in the forests where the Allies would not
discover their bodies. Guards shot in the head anyone who lagged or fell. Susan
was sick and feverish. She could not walk on her own, but three friends,
Katherine, Ferry, and another supported her, keeping her from collapsing.

 

As they struggled through the mountains and meadows of
Bavaria, guards began deserting in the cover of night. American planes flew low
enough Susan could read the insignia on the wings. The pilots, who surely saw
the striped uniforms, refrained from dropping bombs.

 

Five days later, what remained of their group arrived at a
work camp for Russian prisoners in the small German town of Wolfratshausen. The
first task of their remaining Nazi guards was to take the Russian prisoners of
war and shoot them. Knowing they were next, Susan lay on the roadside, too sick
and exhausted to react. Then she heard a roar—the first American jeep of the
Third Army coming down the road—liberators.

 

The German guards fled, but the liberators were combat
troops, unable to care medically for the freed prisoners. The Americans moved
on, and the liberated were left to fend for themselves.

 

Typhoid once again thinned their ranks. Her friends held out
tin cans for food the passing American soldiers threw to them. Survivors that
were able, brought supplies from the town and cooked soups. Reports that
Americans fed and clothed German prisoners, playing baseball and basketball
with them in the prison camps, ignited bitterness and anger. Many Jews took
abandoned weapons and hunted the German SS who had tortured them and killed
their friends and families.The sound of gunfire in the surrounding forests
peppered the nights.

 

They spent the summer in the woods, slowly regaining their
strength, then Susan, Katherine and Ferry trekked to a displaced persons camp.
Although her friends wished to immigrate to Israel, Susan wanted to go home to
Hungary. And they chose to go with her. 

 

They walked to Prague, a journey of 145 miles, where a
Russian troop train allowed them to ride. Arriving finally at their destination
of Budapest, they found it devastated. Susan couldn’t find her house in the
rubble . . . or her mother. They tried to find work. Inflation made money
worthless. A friend of her uncle finally gave her a job in the ministry [government]
which paid the workers in potatoes and bread. They lived in a room open to the
elements; bombs had destroyed the windows and doors.

 

Ferry convinced Susan to go with her, Katherine, and two
Sabra (Israeli) agents who were attempting to get fifty Polish Jewish children
to Israel. The children had survived by hiding in Christian homes. Susan and
her friends rode with them by train to the Hungarian border where they had to
walk about 200 miles.

 

The friends, with the two Sabra agents and three other men,
accompanied the children through heavy snow in the fields and woods. Twice,
they paid off Russians who stopped them, but the third time, at the German
border, they had to make a run for it. They abandoned all their belongings in
their dash for freedom. Older children carried the younger ones. Russian
bullets followed them. Once safely across, the children continued through
Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Cyprus and then into Israel. But Susan still did
not want to go to Israel. 

 

Later, Susan said she regretted that decision and felt pride
in what Israel stood for. “You know, even if you have to die, if you die on
your feet fighting, it’s a heck of a lot different than to be shoved into a gas
chamber [to] die like mice or cockroaches, or whatever.”

 

Susan lived in Germany for three years, then married a GI
and came to America in 1948, becoming a U.S. citizen. She had two children,
Diane and Leslie, and lived on Long Island, NY. Struggled with multiple health
issues, she worked in various factories to pay her medical bills before getting
a clerical job on Mitchel Air Force Base, which turned into a civil service
career of 30 years. 

 

She divorced and eventually married another serviceman. With
his transfer to Maxwell Air Force Base, they moved to Montgomery, Alabama.

 

Ferry and Katherine joined relatives in America, and the
three friends kept in touch for the rest of their lives. Finally locating her
mother, who had returned to Budapest, Susan brought her to Montgomery in
1956. 

 

Susan Petrov Eisenberg died in Montgomery, Alabama, in 2008.

 

 

Note: I had the privilege of compiling Susan’s story. She was one of the survivors who made Alabama their home
after WWII. Others’ stories and a wealth of educational material about survivors and the Holocaust is available
at the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center website—bhecinfo.org

 

 

 

T.K. is a retired police captain who writes books, which, like this blog, go wherever her interest and imagination take her.

 

 

 

 

The Eye of the Beholder —T.K. Thorne

/in /by

  

Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

Some things have confused me for a long time, such as why flowers are beautiful and spiders are not. 

What is beauty anyway? And is there any importance in asking or answering that question?
Obviously, there are some people who find spiders beautiful (yes, really), so the quality is not inherent in the object. I lost my father  after a long illness and was thinking about my loss while walking to the mailbox. A crop of slender blue wildflowers on the road’s edge caught my eye, their beauty an instantaneous salve to my grief.

How? Why?

Somewhere in the heart of a forest, an exquisite orchid is blooming, and no one is there to see it. Is it beautiful? No. Beauty is, indeed, in the eye of the beholder. Without the eye, it does not exist. The orchid exists, of course, but it is not “beauty” to the creatures that see or smell it. (I should caveat with “as far as we know,” because we are learning that our ideas of awareness and even intelligence may extend in some manner to the plant world and certainly to the animal world, but let us assume that the concept of “beauty” is a human construct. )

This means if no human notices the wildflowers and deems them beautiful, they are just wildflowers doing their thing.

A sense of responsibility follows this thought. 

Nature is harsh relentless change. It is “eat and be eaten.” A frog makes no distinction between a caterpillar and a butterfly as far as lunch is concerned.In our stellar neighborhood, two galaxies are colliding, gravitational forces ripping apart whatever life may have painstakingly evolved. Our own galaxy is destined to collide with another, our sun to die, our loved ones, ourselves, our species unless we figure out how to move to another galaxy.

We may learn that whales or elephants or other animals share our awareness of mortality, but again, as far as we know now, people are the only creatures to seek meaning to life, perhaps because of that awareness. It is a burden. It is a privilege. In this chaos of change we call life, humans seek meaning, personal meaning. 




The concept of beauty may be one of the unique perceptual structures of the human brain. Why did it evolve? Of what evolutionary value is it? Is it just that spiders pose a threat, so we instinctively recoil from them, while flowers pose no threat and may signal a source of food? Perhaps, but some people truly find spiders fascinating and beautiful. There are spider enthusiast groups. Honest. And I have to admit I found one that gleamed with gold on a spectacular web yesterday. So beauty is a learned thing.



Perhaps the concept of beauty is just an odd byproduct of the complexity of our minds, our thought processes. Or perhaps not. Perhaps it came into being to give us something we crave—meaning. 

I have been told that my book, Noah’s Wife, was “beautifully written.” This was welcome feedback, but puzzling. The story is told from the unique perspective of a young woman with what we now call Asperger’s Syndrome. She sees the world in literal terms. Looking at her straightforward words on the pages, I was befuddled at how they could be considered “beautiful.”

But perhaps it is not the words themselves, but the fact that they create meaning for some readers, truths about being human and that renders them beautiful in the same way that Picasso’s art is beautiful to some eyes. His paintings force us out of our typical perceptions, whispers in ways we may not be able to voice, even disturbs, but speaks the language of meaning and (some) find that beautiful, even in the harshness or starkness of his lines, just as some find beauty in abstract art or different types of music . . . or spiders.



Woman with Mandolin



Beauty is observable by all our senses, including our ability to see a beautiful act of kindness or a beautiful scientific formula. If we are uniquely capable of determining beauty, then we have a responsibility to see it, to open our eyes to it, to find meaning in it, our uniquely human meaning.


 T.K. is a retired police captain who writes Books that go wherever her interest and imagination take her.

Breaking the Code of Silence—by T.K. Thorne

/in /by

Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

We are living History, a moment of angst and hope, of isolation and involvement, a time to look deep.

In the beginning of my novel, House of Rose,
my police officer heroine shoots a man in the back. I deliberately
placed Rose in that situation, because it put her in trauma, and that is
how character is built. I wanted readers to experience that from her
perspective, to be uncomfortable. Having to pull the trigger is not a
comfortable place. I am a former police officer, and, like my fellows, I
always dreaded having to make such a decision and having to live with
it—right or wrong.

My fictional shooting is a circumstance very far from the blatant
lynching of George Floyd, which—along with a dark cloud of other racial
encounters and shootings—have stained the badge that so many wear
proudly and with honor. For the first time in my memory, law enforcement
officers have broken their “code of silence” and stepped forward to
voice their outrage, some to walk and pray with protesters.

I am proud of those voices, but I understand they do not make black people feel safe.

I am not black and not trying to imply I understand what it feels
like to be, but I am listening and trying to imagine that and to relate
it to my own experiences. I am Jewish.

Recently, I watched a documentary on the growth of anti-Semitism in
the world, including the U.S., and it awoke in me something that I try to ignore in my daily life, an underlying fear of being different
and what might happen to me or those I love because of who I am and
what I believe. The outpouring of sympathy and expressions of horror at
the Tree of Life massacre did not make me feel safe either.

How are we not beyond this? I yearn for there to be no need
for police to have to make awful decisions or even to be armed, only to
perform their highest calling—solving problems, protecting and helping
people. I yearn for soldiers to put down their weapons and say, “Ain’t
gonna study war no more.”

I also research and write about history and know we have moved the
needle significantly from the past, but we have not left the darkness
behind. It is a chasm looming before us. I fear we are on a precipice as
a country and world.

What can I do?

I am a writer, so I am doing what I do—writing about my pain,
confusion, my passion for justice. Sometimes I do that through my
characters, but sometimes I just have to struggle for the words in my
own voice.

T.K. is a retired police captain who writes books,
which, like this blog, roam wherever her interest and imagination take
her.  Want a heads up on news about her writing and adventures (and
receive two free short stories)? Click on image below.  Thanks for
stopping by!

https://tkthorne.com/signup/

Wisteria Wars and Creativity in the Time of Covid—by T.K. Thorne

/in /by

    
         

     Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

Most people assume, as a writer, that I’m eating up the hours a little virus has bequeathed to us by WRITING. They would be wrong. Yes, I am working on a novel, but it’s in the editing stage. That means I’m calling on some craft skills, but mostly just plain old boring, repetitive checking for errors.
This piece is the first thing I’ve actually tried to pull from the creativity well, and I have no idea where it will go. But that is okay. I give myself permission to ramble and see if anything worthwhile will arise. (I encourage you to do the same.)  So here we go.

I’m fortunate to live on several acres of property surrounded by beautiful woods. Our nearest neighbors are cows. For the ten years before we moved here, I lived in the city, and tried to grow on a tiny patch of land what I felt was the most gorgeous of plants—a wisteria vine. For whatever reason, the one I planted with hopes of it gracefully climbing the crosshatch wood panel on the side of my front porch and spilling grape-like clusters of blossoms—never bloomed. When we moved, I dug up a piece of the root and planted it in my front yard, determined to keep trying. The ground was so hard, I ended up cutting off most of the taproot and throwing a small piece of it into the woods on the side of my house.

Thirty years later, that little piece of discarded taproot has been . . . successful.  That is like saying a virus replicates. It did bloom, draping glorious purple curtains from the trees.

At first I told it, “Okay, as long as you stay on that side of the path.” It didn’t. Then, I rationalized, as long as it stayed behind the fence in the backyard. (I didn’t actually go in my backyard very much, being busy with life stuff.)  But I looked one day after covid-19 hit, and it had eaten over half of the back yard.  I couldn’t even walk to the fence line. Two huge trees went down, strangled, and too close to the house.

It was time for war.

This engagement, like those in the Middle East, will never end. Wisteria sends out shoots underground and periodically forms nodes that may change the direction or shoot out its own horizontal and/or vertical roots, so each section can survive independently and pop up anywhere.  Of course, I have the most pernicious variety, the Chinese kind that takes over the world (challenging even kudzu, which fortunately, hasn’t found my house yet.)

My first priority was to save the trees near the house. The vines were so thick at the base, no clippers would suffice. I girded myself with a baby chainsaw and determination. It hurt to cut into those old, twisty vines, to destroy something so beautiful, but the trees were more important. I imagined that with each cut, the tree could feel the release from the vine’s embrace, the reprieve.  I was taking life, but I was giving it too.

I sprayed the growth in the yard and pulled up (some of) the root systems.  If you want a mindless, exhausting, frustrating, impossible task—pull up established wisteria roots. It will take your mind off anything, even a pandemic.

One side benefit of the fallen trees was that a little more light found its way into the yard, and I decided to try growing vegetables. Another feature of my backyard is an old fashion clothesline with rusty steel posts. Periodically over the past decades, I’ve thought we should take them down as they are eyesores, but another part of me (the part that worried what young girls with flat stomachs would do during the famine) worried that we would have a pandemic one day or some kind of disaster that would require actually hanging clothes out to dry, so I left them, as well as the abandoned rabbit hutch in the far corner.  We would be ready, if not attractively landscaped.  And worse case scenario, maybe the hutch, in a pinch, would hold chickens.

I thought my creative well was dry, but looking at those old steel posts, the pile of wisteria roots, the vines I had pulled up and cut down, and a package of bean seeds that has been sitting in a drawer for a few years, something started stirring. Beans need something to climb.  One of the fallen trees had taken out actual wire lines of the clothesline, but the poles were set in cement. They will be there when I am dust. The pole surface might be too slick for a bean to be able to curl up, but maybe—
And so, as a product of WWI (Wisteria Wars Episode I) and covid-19, I found that the outlet for creativity isn’t always words on a page. If my beans grow, they will be beautiful and feed me, and if they don’t, I will at least have a couple of funky art pieces in the backyard.

Foreground: Metal pole with wisteria roots and vines. Background logs
from tree felled by wisteria, the carcass of another felled tree, and
old rabbit hutch.

T.K. is a retired police captain who writes books, which, like this blog, roam wherever her interest and imagination take her.  Want a heads up on news about her writing and adventures (and receive two free short stories)? Click on image below.  Thanks for stopping by!

https://tkthorne.com/signup/

The Woman Who Danced Down the Grocery Aisle–by T.K. Thorne

/in /by

Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

The woman—dark hair with hints of auburn, the back scooped up in an invisible comb—dances down the aisle of the grocery store between the boxes of cereals and the baking goods. Pushing her cart, she sways to the store’s muzak, oblivious that the young girl beside her slows her pace and pretends to study the canned soups to put as much distance as possible between them.

I didn’t want anyone to suspect the dancing woman was my mother. It didn’t matter that I knew no one personally at the grocery store. Other than the two of us, the aisle was empty, at least for the moment. I held my breath, praying that the music would change to something less jaunty, and she would lose her enthusiasm for kicking out a leg or bouncing from foot to foot.

Even so, beneath my embarrassment, down in the dark, secret earth of girlhood, a seed now nestled—Would I ever dare to do such a thing—a brazen dance of joy in inappropriate places without thought of who was looking? Though my feet dragged, my heart glimpsed a possibility where one dared to be and to express that being.

In childhood, I dared this. I would sit in the middle of a busy sidewalk to examine a dandelion or an ant or cry in front of company to protest something I didn’t like. As a teen, I lost this freedom, submerging it to a craving to be like others, to be accepted, to be the daughter of someone who walked their cart down the grocery aisle. 

My mother addressed the world with humor (“I like to generalize without specific knowledge.”) and quiet wisdom. She was the fixer, whether it was “kissing better” a scraped knee or advising how to handle a frisky boyfriend. When her father died, she comforted me, not shedding a tear on her own behalf, at least in my presence. I can’t remember her being upset or even angry. How can that be? In my memory she danced through life, beaming light on all those in her path.

Between making meals, making dresses, and shuffling me to ballet classes, horseback riding classes, and the library, she did significant things for the community. Those things earned her posthumous recognition, but from my self-centered perception, they were peripheral to her main job of “mother.”

Now that I am well into adulthood, and she is gone, I realize that she did not have the perfect, carefree life of my assumptions. I can only imagine her pains, but I learned from her that pain does not have to define my life—that I get to do that. I can dance down the grocery aisle.

T.K. is a retired police captain who writes Books, which, like this blog, roam wherever her interest and imagination take her.  Want a heads up on news about her writing and adventures (and receive two free short stories)?–Click on image below. Thanks for stopping by!

https://tkthorne.com/signup/

A Moss Walk–by T.K. Thorne

/in /by

Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

About 35 years ago, on a trip to Japan, I had the opportunity to visit a Buddhist monastery. I’m sure there were many beautiful objects there, but what has remained in my memory over all those years was a moss garden off a patio looking down the forested mountainside. Made of many different types and shades of moss, it was perfect, not a leaf, a stick or a non-moss plant disturbed the emerald carpet. “How does that happen?” I asked.

“It is tended by hand every morning,” was the reply. 

There is something about moss I find calming and, hence, I’m reluctant to clean it off the old bricks of our walkway. But it is far from perfect. Today, with the coronavirus raging through our world and lives, I decided to put on my monk hat and tend the walkway. It was very slow going because if you just rip out the plants growing in the moss, you rip out chunks of moss as well.  It usually requires two hands, one to hold down the moss and the other to gently extract the opportunist clump of grass or florae.

As I worked, I didn’t think about anything but the patch in front of me, getting satisfaction as each one cleared. I have no idea how long it took because it wasn’t about time.

I say I didn’t think about anything. Not quite true. It occurred to me—not for the first time—that in order to bring about my goal, I had to destroy what was not wanted. Moving toward what we want in life requires dedication, patience, and being willing to pull out the unwanted, even when its roots are wrapped deep.

T.K. is a retired police captain who writes BOOKS, which, like this blog, go wherever her interest and imagination take her. Want a heads up on news about her writing and adventures (and receive two free short stories)? Go HERE.  Thanks for stopping by!

Of Mice and A Girl –– by T.K. Thorne

/in /by

Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.




A mouse propelled me into crime. I was twelve years old, and I didn’t like what I was seeing . . . or smelling. Most sixth grade science classes use frogs to dissect, but for whatever reasons, our teacher decided on mice, little white mice to be exact, with pink noses, tiny paws, and bright eyes. The mode of demise was to drop them into a large, acrid jar of formaldehyde and watch them drown in the awful stuff. Then we got to cut them open, a nasty business, but by then they didn’t feel anything.

By José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53959809

It was the jar thing that got to me. It never occurred to me to confront the teacher.  I was way too shy. Most of the time, I felt disconnected from my classmates who viewed me as a bookworm, and therefore, suspect and strange. I failed cheerleading in the second grade, not able to comprehend why I was waving a pompom and jumping up and down. Reading and horses were my passions. The lone friend from third grade who fit that bill had been sent to a private school.

Boys were simply alien creatures, far beyond my ken or reach. Not so for the girl who sat behind me in science who opened my astonished eyes to the existence of a new world. Science was definitely not Sheryl’s forte. She majored in boys. In exchange for science homework answers, she let me read the carefully folded, passionate letters from one of her multiple boyfriends. One, I recall, left me breathless, if not from the content, simply that he wrote it in the middle of the night inside a closet by candlelight.

Sheryl was as disgusted at the mice, both the dissection and mice in general, as I was impressed and awed by her romantic exchanges, but I didn’t have the chance to plot with her. Instead, I debated internally with my discomfort, eyeing the box that held more victims waiting for torture in the following class periods. Not acting would make me an accomplice to more killings. But stealing was wrong, right? I balanced on the edge of a moral dilemma.

With the ringing of the bell signaling the end of the period, I made my decision. The teacher stepped outside into the hall to take up his monitoring duties. I dithered with my books and papers, nothing that would arouse suspicion since I always seemed to be the last person ready to go anyway. The rest of the class poured out, eager for the next period (the end of which they would just as eagerly await). Heart kicking in my chest, I casually walked behind the teacher’s wooden desk, squatted, opened the case, snatching the first ball of squirming white fur that came to hand.

The rest of the day, I sweated, certain my theft would be uncovered, but the plump little guy curled up in the pocket of my sweater and slept.  I didn’t dare share my crime with anyone, even Sheryl, maybe especially Sheryl, who was a node in the school communications network.

When I finally got home with my illegal gain, I officially named him Copernicus—after the 16th Century astronomer who proposed the radical theory that the planets revolved around the sun—giving homage to his science origin, and put him in an old birdcage. My father, as usual, was oblivious, and any objection could have been easily overcome by claiming mother had already approved, a tactic I had perfected on both of them. But my mother only raised her eyebrows at the new pet. I glibly lied, telling her the science teacher had purchased too many and didn’t mind me taking one home, and she didn’t ask too many questions.

Copernicus spent happy days crawling from one hand to the other, his tiny paws tickling; or curling up at the back of my neck under my hair for a nap while I read; or exploring the vast landscape of my bed. My dog, Samson, a collie mix, was fascinated, watching him down his long nose without blinking as long as the mouse was in eyesight, seeming to understand that any overt move would break the spell. Gradually, Copernicus seemed to lose his fear. At once point, they actually touched noses. I watched Samson almost as carefully as he watched the mouse, but Sam never gave any indication of aggressiveness. In fact, I think he was in love. 

Then one day, things went terribly awry.

Copernicus was missing from his cage. I saw movement in the corner under some scraps of newspaper he had torn from his bedding. To my surprise, it was a nest containing several tiny, naked things, and I realized that Copernicus had been Copernica all along.  With the births, she had lost her girth and squeezed through the bars of the cage.

Alas, I found her under the bed. Cause of death was a mystery. Other than being wet, there was no sign of any wound or broken bones, not even her neck. She was just dead. She had to have crawled there on her own, because Sam was too big to fit under the bed. I suspected at some point, however, he had put his mouth on her, perhaps to try and bring her to me. She may have had a heart attack or a problem related to giving birth. I will never know and only hope it was a better death than drowning in formaldehyde.

The episode was life changing. Although I liked science, I opted for Latin to avoid having to kill and cut on animals. The following year, I required major surgery to take out an appendix that had grown around my spine. It took two weeks to recover, and I did poorly on a Latin test. I did well in Latin, but it wasn’t because I could translate. Instead, my classmates and I were the recipients of a fellow student’s translation copies. Not sure where he got them and highly doubted he translated them himself. He would never say. In any case, since we knew in advance what excerpts of Julius Caesar’s The Gallic Wars we would be tested on, I simply memorized the hard parts and was a consistent “A” student in class. The hospitalization and recover period, however, cut off my access to the translations.

Whether the teacher knew what was going on or just put my poor performance off on my illness, I never knew. For whatever reason, she offered me an independent reading project as extra credit, which I eagerly agreed to. The book was A Pillar of Iron by Taylor Caldwell, a historical novel about the Roman philosopher, orator, and statesman, Marcus Tullius Cicero, who stood up to the corrupt politicians of his day, refusing to be bought off or to dishonor his beloved country or abandon his ideals.

He was assassinated. The story and its ending, which occurred while I was sitting on my bed—still my favorite reading spot—sent me into a bout of hysterical weeping that scared even my little sister. She ran upstairs for mother, who was not available. Reluctantly, I am sure, my father responded to the crisis.

Sitting on my bed, he approached the problem logically.  “What is wrong?”

I was unable to answer.

“What is wrong, baby?  Whatever it is, we will fix it.”

More crying. Probably snot running.

Becoming more and more concerned at my tears, my gasping for breath, and inability to respond as to the source of the problem, my father’s worry was evident. Being an engineer by education and mental alignment, he was ill equipped to handle his daughter’s distraught emotional state. Finally, he gave voice to the worst disaster he could think of, the nuclear option. Although I had just turned thirteen, he asked, “Are you pregnant?”

I shook my head and managed to say in halting gasps, “They . . . killed . . . him!” 

Appalled that the worst scenario he imagined might, in fact, not be the worst, that we might be dealing with a murder, possibly in my presence or, at the least, of someone I knew, he demanded, “Who?  Who was killed?

“They  . . . killed . . . Cicero!” I sobbed.

“Cicero?  Who is Cicero?”

Eventually, I was able to explain, but I never forgot the power of words and story. It sparked within me a desire to be a writer, a flame that has continued to burn for many years. Now it is a habit and passion I doubt I will ever forsake.  And if not for a mouse, I might have never have realized it, or perhaps I would have chosen another path, hopefully not a life of crime, but you never know.

Still, the mouse episode remains an illustration of life’s complexity and mystery.
Copernica had good days, days she might not have had. But maybe she was lonely without her fellows, in spite of her rescue and Sam’s attentions. I also don’t know why she decided to try a jailbreak.  Perhaps she wasn’t ready for motherhood. Who can know the mind of a mouse?  But she died because of me. I wasn’t able to save her newborns. I couldn’t decide if I had done the right thing, stealing her and being the proximate cause of her death. With all good intentions, sometimes things go wrong. Does the end justify the means or nullify the intent? Is a good deed still good if the consequences are not? Is a crime a crime, or is it—as everything else seems to be—entirely relative?

I’m still pondering, a fact that works its way with regularity into my writing.

T.K. is a retired police captain who writes Books, which, like this blog, roam wherever her interest and imagination take her.  Want a heads up on news about her writing and adventures (and receive two free short stories)? Go here.  Thanks for stopping by!

The Forgivenss of Whales by T.K. Thorne

/in /by

Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

Until recently, scientists thought humans were the only species with the specialty brain neurons responsible for higher cognitive functions like self-awareness, a sense of compassion and language.

They were wrong.

Fifteen million years before humans, whales began evolving these special cells*, and now a strange phenomenon is occurring off the Baja coast of Mexico.

Humans have been slaughtering Pacific whales there for a long time, first with harpoons, now with sonar from Navy ships. Whales live a long time, up to a hundred years. Some whales alive today still bear the scars of harpoons. Many scientists believe that it is implausible to think the whales do not remember this or associate humans with death and anguish.


Yet, in the same area where humans hunted them nearly to extinction, then tortured them with sonar, whales are approaching humans and initiating contact. A  N.Y. Times article detailed the experiences of the reporter and the stories of locals who tell about mother whales approaching their boats, sometimes swimming under it and lifting it, then setting it gently down. Almost all the stories involve the whale surfacing, rolling onto its side to watch the humans–reminiscent of the surreal moment in the movie, Cast Away, when a whale rises from the night sea to regard Tom Hanks with an eye cupped with starlight, an eerie intelligence, and a gentleness that moves us, for we know the massive creature could kill the castaway with a nudge or a flick of a tail fluke.

These real grey whales off Baja swim close enough that people invariably reach out to touch them, and they allow it. One person, reflecting on the experience said, “I have never felt more beheld.” It seems reasonable–given the position the whales place themselves in–that they seek the contact. In many cases, a mother whale will allow her calf to do the same. There is no food involved in these exchanges, only a brief interlude of inter-species contact and rudimentary communication:  I come as friend.

Why?

Where will humans be in another hundred years? I suspect we will be technologically advanced, but emotionally pretty much the same, even in a thousand years or ten thousand. But what about a million years? Can we evolve (if we survive) to a more sane, more rational, more loving species with a broader sense of our place in the universe and in life itself? Is it possible that these creatures with 15 million years of intelligent evolution on us, might regard us as a young species, children who don’t really know better,  and grant us leeway for our mistakes? Grant us . . . forgiveness?

If we humans could only do such a thing!  Beat our swords into ploughshares, at least among ourselves. It’s unlikely, but we might yet be targeted by alien invaders, so we shouldn’t throw away all of our weapons. Even whales have enemies, and they do not hesitate to defend themselves when attacked and even take the battle to the enemy! Recently, there are increasing reports of whales, specifically humpbacks, who are defending not only their own against attacks of orcas, but other mammals, such as other whales, sea lions, fur seals or walruses. They only attack mammal-eating killer whales, not orcas that primarily feed on fish. They feed and fight in a coordinated manner, communicating with each other.

There is proof that we humans are capable of realizing the power of peaceful cooperation and partnerships. Not long ago, for example, a team of over 2,000 scientists representing six countries worked to determine the human genome, all 3 billion parts, and then made that data freely available on the Web.

Perhaps one day we will stop slaughtering the fellow creatures on this blue-and-cream jewel that is our world; perhaps we will make friends and share discoveries, meeting whales on the mutual ground (or sea) of respect.

Our survival may depend on it.

*New research is indicating that glial cells may be responsible for imagination, creativity and probably play a role in consciousness. Einstein’s brain had an abundance of these cells, especially in the area responsible for spacial awareness and mathematics. Mice injected with human glial cells became 4x smarter. Glial cells can communicate with each other (via calcium waves) and with neurons, even signalling neurons to fire. Although whales don’t have all the “levels” of a human brain (and so their thought processes are probably distinctly different), whales have a much higher ratio of glial cells to neurons than humans in the neocortex, the area thought to be responsible for intelligence.

T.K. Thorne’s childhood passion for storytelling deepened when she became a police officer in Birmingham, Alabama.  “It was a crash course in life and what motivated and mattered to people.” In her newest novel, HOUSE OF ROSE, murder and mayhem mix with a little magic when a police officer discovers she’s a witch.


Both her award-winning debut historical novels, NOAH’S WIFE and ANGELS AT THE GATE, tell the stories of unknown women in famous biblical tales—the wife of Noah and the wife of Lot. Her first non-fiction book, LAST CHANCE FOR JUSTICE, the inside story of the investigation and trials of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, was featured on the New York Post’s “Books You Should Be Reading” list.


T.K. loves traveling and speaking about her books and life lessons. She writes at her mountaintop home near Birmingham, often with a dog and a cat vying for her lap.


More info at TKThorne.com. Join her private newsletter email list and receive a two free short stories at “TK’s Korner.”



It’s a Dickens Christmas Y’all!–by T.K. Thorne

/in /by

Writer, humanist,
          dog-mom, horse servant and cat-slave,
       Lover of solitude
          and the company of good friends,
        New places, new ideas
           and old wisdom.

It’s a Dickens Christmas Y’all!

 
Every December, I hide. This has nothing to do with the fact that it’s Christmas and I’m Jewish. Like many Jewish families in the South, I was raised with a Christmas tree and presents in addition to Hanukkah traditions with beautiful menorah candles lit each night and (yea!) more presents.  What kid can complain about that?

No, my allergy to December has to do with my husband. He is a beyond-the-pale Dickens fan. Every iteration of the more than two dozen versions of A Christmas Carol plays on our television repetitively all December.  I head for the hills . . . or at least another room.

But last year at the Left Coast Crime Conference (that’s crime writers, just so you know), someone mentioned a Dickens festival in California.  My ears pricked. (Okay, I wish my ears could prick because it’s so expressive, and I’ve always wanted a fluffy tail too––can’t you just imagine having it drape saucily over your shoulder?  But I digress).

This year is hubby’s 60th birthday and our 30th wedding anniversary.  Seemed like going to a Dicken’s festival would be a great surprise gift. The problem was we live in Alabama and the festival was in California.  I angsted for months about how to plan a secret trip to California. Finally I broke down and told him what I had up my sleeve.

“I’ll arrange the whole thing, if you want to go.”

“I would,” he says, “but why don’t we just go to the one in Tuscumbia, Alabama (2.5 hours away)?

“What?”

He pulls out a brochure he had put in his drawer (thinking the last thing I would ever want to do was have a Dickens-immersion experience) with info about Tuscumbia’s 9th annual “It’s a Dickens Christmas Y’all!” (And I thought it was just the birthplace of Helen Keller.)

Yes!

A few days later, he shows me a dapper Victorian costume of Ebenezer Scrooge online. It was so spiffy!  Hubby communicates in code, and it  dawned on me that maybe he was feeling out what I thought about him actually getting it and wearing it to the festival.

If he is going to dress in a top hat, vest, and coat, I am all in. What girl does not want to be Cinderella? Found a red and black gown with black lace sleeves, foo-foo hat, lace white gloves, and a bustle (as close to a tail as I am likely to ever get) and we are going to the ball . . . or 1843 London in Tuscumbia!

Christmas Present, Christmas To Come, Christmas Past, Mr. and Mrs. Scrooge, and Marley’s Ghost
Festivities began Friday night with a feast, a reading from A Christmas Carol, music, and a chef-prepared dinner. Saturday, the streets were closed to traffic, sporting gift venders, snow machines, and horse drawn carriage rides. Scones and hot chocolate (or coffee) awaited with the spirits of Christmas and Marley’s ghost at “Scones and Moans,” poetry readings and song at a mid-19th Century church, a high tea, and cookies with Tiny Tim at the beautiful Cold Water Bookstore.

Such a charming town and charming, warm folks!  We had the best time meeting people and couldn’t walk but a few steps without being asked to pose for a picture with someone.  Paparazzi! 

“There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.”––Dickens

Ironically, sometimes this is a very difficult time of year. Whatever your faith, whatever your situation, I wish you peace and joy now and in the coming year.

––TK

T.K. Thorne’s childhood passion for storytelling deepened when she became a police officer in Birmingham, Alabama.  “It was a crash course in life and what motivated and mattered to people.” In her newest novel, HOUSE OF ROSE, murder and mayhem mix with a little magic when a police officer discovers she’s a witch.


Both her award-winning debut historical novels, NOAH’S WIFE and ANGELS AT THE GATE, tell the stories of unknown women in famous biblical tales—the wife of Noah and the wife of Lot. Her first non-fiction book, LAST CHANCE FOR JUSTICE, the inside story of the investigation and trials of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, was featured on the New York Post’s “Books You Should Be Reading” list.


T.K. loves traveling and speaking about her books and life lessons. She writes at her mountaintop home near Birmingham, often with a dog and a cat vying for her lap.


More info at TKThorne.com

Join her private newsletter email list and receive a two free short stories at “TK’s Korner.”