Driftwood Monologue 

My life is a drifting, a constant shuffling forward. Who holds the cards? I do not know the name of the god who is in charge of this, the gambling god, the one with the quick hands at the table. In ancient times, there was a god in charge of everything, from the crops growing to the rain falling, to the children coming.

What has happened to them, those figures shrouded in dust, age, and wisdom? Are they skimming leaves in a pond somewhere in eternity, with new bleach-blonde hair? Have they become baristas (it surely seems to be a growing market)? To whom can I address these celestial questions? Whenever I ask them, I only get blank stares or, worse yet, a half-hearted, half-construed answer. I have discovered that I may be the proverbial one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind, and perhaps this is a promethean curse. 

Perhaps I assisted my fellow human in one way or another, and am therefore drifting without memory of my true purpose. Or perhaps this is the purpose: To drift, the floating, the finding, to ascend on the sands of the beach, stumble forward, go on and multiply. Then divide. Then factor. Then learn the FOIL method. Clearly, I am just troubleshooting here. Clearly, the map of some deity would make all this much more clarified. Clearly.

JD DeHart

A Trick My Father Learned in Prison

I’m not saying my father hated the English, God forbid. If he were still alive, he’d hate to hear me say that. He’d correct me right away and say he didn’t hate the English. Truth be told, he despised the English, especially the Black and Tans. They were the troops the English sent to take over Ireland before, during and after the Troubles in 1916. That was the time when the Irish first fought seriously for their independence.

My father would tell me often about what the Black and Tans did to him in 1920 at age 16 when he was captured while running guns for the IRA through marshes in rural Ireland. He knew the marshes in County Kerry very well because he was reared there as a farm boy. The IRA thought a boy like him would never get caught. But a boy carrying guns was not a common sight in the marshes of County Kerry.

The Black and Tans put him in a cell with a dirt floor. He sat on that dirt for a month after they broke both his legs with rifle butts. They were in no hurry to summon a doctor.

A cellmate gave him a pad of paper and he would sit on the dirt writing his name backwards with his left hand until his signature matched the normal one written with his right hand.

Decades later in America, after he had been expelled from Ireland and had married my mother and settled down with a job in Chicago, I heard many stories not only about his life in a jail cell but his life milking cows and goats on a dairy farm as a young boy. He had to do that if he wanted his oatmeal for breakfast.

I was in grammar school in the Forties when I heard a lot from my father about the Irish seeking their independence. His stories were a lot better, I thought, then paying 25 cents on Saturday afternoon to see a Western with Gene Autry at the local movie house, even if the movie was followed by 25 color cartoons. 

One day after school I had some friends over at the house. My father, a man of many moods not identified yet as PTSD, took a pad of paper and with a pen in each hand signed his name forward with one hand and backward with the other simultaneously. He then held the pad up to the long mirror in the hallway and, of course, the signatures were identical. My friends and I, crowded around him, were very young but even if we had been adults we would still have been amazed.

After my friends went home, I asked my father how he learned to do that and he told me about the Black and Tans, their gun butts and that pad of paper the cellmate gave him. Rather than write letters to his family and upset them by letting them know he was in prison, he practiced writing his signature backwards with his left hand. This was one of a number of odd things that my father had mastered, all of them interesting to a child, but not worth going into at the moment or I’d be typing for a long time. 

Eventually I grew up, went to college, married and moved to another city and my father wanted to come and visit us and see his first grandson. Fine with me, I thought. I just hoped his affable mood would last and not disappear during the visit. I didn’t want to impose on him the nighttime crying of an infant since he had lived through that with me as a colicky child and my mother said he didn’t weather it well, having to get up early for work the next morning. So I decided to get him a room at a nice hotel. However, I picked the wrong one.  

I made the mistake of making a reservation for him at the Henry VIII Hotel, named after the English monarch. I can still hear my father yelling when I mentioned the Henry VIII Hotel over the phone.

Indeed the Henry VIII was a nice hotel decorated in an English style that would truly have enraged my father. It was torn down not long after he died. But he had never been a guest at the Henry VIII, having stayed at another hotel free of any English taint. And his visit went well, all things considered. No outbursts or commotion.

Had he lived long enough, however, my father probably would have been far more upset to learn years later that his grandson, after graduating with honors from the University of Chicago, went to England to study at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. 

Tuition, room and board and books were free but Oxford, of course, was in England. And it was England that had sent the Black and Tans to Ireland and it was the Black and Tans who had broken my father’s legs.

Sometimes I think about what it might have been like had he lived long enough to learn that my son had won that scholarship. I imagine calling him to tell him the news. And suddenly I can hear him yelling louder than when I told him about the Henry VIII Hotel. This time he would sound like a muezzin in a minaret on top of a mosque. Only he wouldn’t be summoning the faithful to prayers. 

Donal Mahoney

Internment Camps in the United States

Miyuki is old enough to have been a child during World War II. Indeed, some of her students are that old as well but they are eager to learn and listen to her carefully.

She is a teacher of floral arrangements in the Japanese style of Ikenobo but her face always seems sadder than the flowers in the beautiful arrangements she makes. Her life has been a mixture of grief and joy. 

Her parents emigrated to the United States from Japan before World War II and Miyuki was born in Seattle. Her parents owned a newspaper there but it was confiscated by the government when they and their children were sent to an internment camp during the war. 

After the war Miyuki’s parents did not get their newspaper back nor were they compensated for it. But they found another way to make a living. They opened a flower shop and their daughter Miyuki dealt with customers after school. Bilingual by then, she spoke beautiful English. 

Between customers she would watch her parents make arrangements and in time learned the art of Ikenobo, arranging flowers in the spartan Japanese style that proves less can certainly be more. She has been teaching Ikenobo now in America for more than 50 years. She is certified as a professor of Ikenobo by the society that overseas the Ikenobo school in Japan.

Every once in a while Miyuki pauses in her classes to discuss different aspects of Japanese culture with her mostly Caucasian students, ladies of similar age and above-average means. They seem to enjoy these interjections as much as learning how to arrange flowers in the Ikenobo style.

One day Miyuki took time to explain that because she was born in America to Japanese immigrants she is classified in the Japanese community as Nisei. Her children, born here as well, are classified as Sansei and her grandchildren as Yonsei. She did not say much more about that but her students realize that she is often as spartan in her comments about Japanese-American life as she is in the Ikenobo arrangements she makes on her table in front of the class.

Some of her American students were children as Miyuki was during the war with Japan. They have a vague memory of President Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many think Truman did the right thing, a few think it was a mistake, and the rest aren't sure.

But many of them wonder if putting Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II had any merit. Perhaps they think about it even more now as the tumult in America grows over the conflict with ISIS and its verbal threats toward America. 

In the aftermath of Nine Eleven, everyone remains wary. What next? But so far, there has been no talk of internment camps for Muslim Americans, which in effect would be an encore of what happened to Japanese Americans during World War II.

Perhaps some day a student will ask Miyuki what she would think as an American citizen about establishing internment camps for Muslims in America should the conflict with ISIS continue to grow and begin to present a very real threat to the United States. She might have mixed feelings as many of her students do now when they think about not only the atomic bombs dropped on Japan but also the disruption in the lives of Japanese Americans during and after the war. 

It’s obvious this small group of people interested in learning how to make beautiful flower arrangements has much to think about regarding what has happened in the past, what is happening now and what may happen in the future. In this respect they are no different than every other citizen in the United States today. 

Donal Mahoney

Agent Orange Is Still Killing Veterans Slowly

This is a true story told to me recently by a friend who wishes to remain anonymous. It explains his experience with the legacy of Monsanto and Dow and the ongoing effects of its product, Agent Orange, the lethal spray used in Vietnam during the war. 

My friend’s brother died a slow death from the effects of Agent Orange. And the other day while at the mall he met someone now going through what his brother went through prior to his death. 

He said a man stepped out of a store wearing an orange T Shirt.  On its back was, "I was killed in Vietnam I just haven't died yet.” 

Roy walked up to him and asked if his shirt pertained to Agent Orange. He said that it did, and he began to tell Roy his story. He was just out of high school when he joined the service and was sent to Vietnam. He said he was in the Highlands with the Big Red One.  Fighting was intense, snipers were everywhere and Operation Ranch Hand sprayed Agent Orange day after day.  He finished his tour, came home and thought he was safe.

But all the symptoms of Agent Orange poisoning except diabetes soon appeared: breathing problems, cancer, genetic problems that he passed on to his children and heart attacks. He has fought the cancers for years. Now the cancer has returned in six locations.  

He said when he first reported his health problems, the Veterans Administration denied, denied and continued to deny that they were due to Agent Orange. Finally, they admitted, after analysis proved the danger of dioxin, that he had indeed been poisoned. By this time, he had accumulated debt, had a checkered work record because of all the health episodes and had suffered for years without adequate medical care.

As Roy listened, he found it to be the same refrain other veterans had told him, including his brother. The VA knew about Agent Orange, but they felt if they kept stonewalling, the Vietnam Vets would die or just give up on getting the care they needed and deserved.  

Roy said this man at the time didn't question the morality of the war in Vietnam. He went and fought, got a biological injury he did not get a purple heart for and returned to a nation that turned its back on him. No veterans in the history of this country have been so maligned.  

As the man Roy met in the mall said, "The only parade my fellow Vietnam veterans got to honor them started with a hearse and ended up at a graveyard.”  

Roy didn't get much sleep that night as he thought about the truth of that man's statement and remembered as well the agony of his own brother’s death from Agent Orange.

Donal Mahoney

---

Harry Tompkins and the Art of Forgiveness

Harry Tompkins hadn't been to church for many years. He still believed in God but going to church didn't interest him. Then on a warm Saturday afternoon in August, he met Jayne, a lovely woman, at a company picnic. He liked Jayne a great deal and he thought he might improve his chances with her if he accepted her invitation to go to church on Sunday morning. Jayne had a way about her that Harry liked. Besides she looked like a woman who would bear good children.

"What time should I pick you up?" he asked her. She told him 9:30 would be fine. "That will give us plenty of time to get to the ten o'clock Mass." 

The priest's sermon, it turned out, was about the importance of forgiveness and that was a topic Harry knew something about. He had not made a lot of enemies in life but the ones he had made, he cherished even if their infractions had occurred decades ago. Forgiving them would never enter his mind. Enemies are enemies, Harry thought, but he could understand where the priest was coming from. 

Harry had spent many years of a considerable education in Catholic schools. And one of the basic mottoes in those schools was to forgive your enemies as you would want Jesus to forgive you. He didn't want to be disrespectful to the Son of God but Jesus had grown up in Nazareth, after all, which was quite a bit different than Harry's neighborhood in Chicago back in the 1950s. In Harry's youth, fights were not a daily occurrence but a week seldom went by without at least one good fight occurring. Fights were always fair back then because to fight dirty was the lowest thing someone could do. You would be branded for life as a dirty fighter. If you couldn't get the job done with your fists, then don't fight is the way Harry looked at it.  

Chief among Harry's enemies from the old neighborhood were Elmer and John. They were two boys, older than Harry by a couple of years. Decades ago they beat the Hades out of him in an alley in Chicago. Harry at that time was in the 8th grade and he was going home from school when he got jumped. The nun had been happy with Harry that day, even if that was a rare occurrence, because he had won the all-school 8th grade spelling bee, no small feat in a class where verbal skills outdistanced math skills. Besides, it was usually a girl who won the spelling bees. But Harry could always spell. He'd look at a word once and it was memorized. This time he won because he could spell "ukulele" and Barbara O'Brien, "Miss Goody Two Shoes," couldn't even come close and had to settle for second.

His enemies Elmer and John were high school sophomores the day they pounded Harry, who though big for his age was still only an 8th grader. Elmer and John were small for sophomores but the two of them together were more than Harry at the time could handle. It was a beating Harry never forgot, perhaps because he had won all the other fights he had ever had in grammar school and would have later on in high school. Besides, it sure wasn't easy explaining to his parents that night how he had managed to get a black eye and split lip coming home from school. 

"I pay the nuns at St. Nick's good tuition," his father had said, "to make sure you grow up right." He wanted to go down to the school and discuss the matter with the nuns but Harry somehow talked him out of it. He explained that the kids who beat him up didn't go to St. Nick's. In fact, Harry said, they looked like Lutherans. His father said to tell him if Harry ever saw the boys again. 

Two years later, when Harry was a sophomore in high school, Elmer and John were seniors at a different high school. Harry was now 6'1" and about 180 lbs. He'd been lifting weights on a regular basis, hoping to gain weight for the football team. Elmer and John, on the other hand, were still relative runts, perhaps 5'6" or 5'7" and maybe 140 lbs at best. Harry hadn't seen either one of the boys since his throttling. But he had always remembered the beating and he assured himself that if he ever had a chance to make things right, he would do so.

It so happened that around that time Harry met a nice girl at a school dance and it turned out that meeting her led to renewing old acquaintances with Elmer. The girl's name was Margaret Mary and she lived in a wealthy neighborhood. She invited him to a graduation party that her parents had arranged. She didn't know that Harry was only a sophomore. 

Harry decided to go to the party because he liked the girl despite her living in a fancy neighborhood, one that he had visited only once before when his high school basketball team had defeated the team from Margaret Mary's school. Besides, Harry remembered that Margaret Mary had said her parents had hired a caterer to provide the food. That sure beat hot dogs, the main fare at any party in his neighborhood. 

There were a lot of kids at the party that Saturday night and they were all from different neighborhoods. At first, Harry saw no one he knew, certainly no one from his blue-collar neighborhood, which was just as well because with him in a suit and tie he would have had to take a lot of razzing if any of his friends spotted him. Later in the evening, however, Elmer walked in, still short and skinny but decked out in a nice seersucker suit. 

Harry recognized Elmer immediately but Elmer did not recognize him. When Elmer decided to go outside to have a cigarette, Harry followed him. He let Elmer take a few drags before he walked up and asked Elmer how life was treating him now that graduation was near. 

"You going to college, Elmer?"

Elmer still didn't recognize Harry. It was no wonder, then, that he never saw the uppercut coming. Down went Elmer with Harry on top of him. Many punches later, one of Elmer's teeth lay on the sidewalk and he was gushing blood from his left eye. The other kids heard the ruckus and came poring out of the party but Harry, by that time, had taken off. Elmer had gotten his, Harry figured. There was no need to hang around and complicate matters.

Besides, Harry figured the cops would be scouring the neighborhood looking for a kid that fit his description so he spent the five bucks his mother had given him to take a cab home. He had never told Margaret Mary his real name, just that his nickname was "Skip." She wouldn't have been able to tell the cops where to find him. And he didn't think Elmer would remember who he was. 

And so that was one reason why in church that Sunday with the lovely Jayne--at least thirty years after pummeling Elmer--Harry found the priest's sermon on forgiveness resonating. At age 46, he had acquired a couple of college degrees, had held a good job for many years, but had never met a woman he wanted to marry. It wasn't that he hadn't met some lovely women over the years. He had met a number of them and enjoyed them all but found them disposable. 

"Most women are like Kleenex," he'd once told a friend who had inquired why he had never married. But Jayne seemed different. He thought right way she'd make a good wife. 

So Harry listened to the sermon and even prayed a little. He remembered all the words to the Lord's Prayer. Having been raised Catholic, he knew when to kneel, stand and sit which can be confusing to someone not Catholic attending a Mass. He also thought his prayerfulness might impress Jayne, who was obviously a very spiritual person. But he didn't join her in going up the aisle for Holy Communion because he had been living in mortal sin for years and as a Catholic he knew he should not receive Holy Communion in the state of mortal sin. He might be a sinner, Harry thought, but he wasn't about to commit a sacrilege to impress Jayne. A few rules even Harry wouldn't break.

After Mass, Harry and Jayne went to a nice restaurant for brunch. She took the opportunity to ask him how he liked the Mass and the sermon--or as she called it, "the homily." 

Harry said he liked the Mass in that it brought back memories of his younger years in Catholic schools but the sermon, he said, had upset him a little. 

"Why," Jayne asked. 

Harry then told her in great detail the whole story about Elmer and John beating him up when he was in grammar school. He also told her how he had managed two years later to pay Elmer back with a good thrashing at an otherwise nice party.

That's when Jayne asked him if thumping Elmer wasn't enough. Couldn't he now forgive Elmer and John for beating him up? 

Harry said that maybe, just maybe, he could forgive Elmer at some point in his life but not now, even though it was 30 years later. Besides he still hadn't found John. He had even thought about hiring a private detective to get his address. Harry didn't care what city John lived in because that's why they have planes and trains. And as he told Jayne over their last cup of coffee, when he did find John he would beat the hell out of him, worse than he had beaten Elmer at that party. 

"I'll bounce his filthy skull off the concrete," Harry told Jayne, wiping the corners of his mouth with his napkin, "if the opportunity presents itself. And I'm pretty sure that some day it will. What goes around comes around. Even Hitler found that out." 

He wouldn't kill John, Harry assured Jayne, when she finally came back from the lady's room. "But if possible I'll leave the schmuck laying there in a puddle of blood, wishing he were dead."

Schmuck was a Yiddish word, of course, and he wasn't sure if Jayne knew what it meant. It would be just as well if she didn't. Harry seldom used the word but if he started to get riled up about something, it sometimes fell out of his mouth. 

If he got the chance to meet John again and settle matters, Harry told Jayne, then afterward it might be time to talk about forgiving him and Elmer but he'd have to give it some thought. He didn't like to make commitments if he wasn't sure he could keep them. Then Harry drove Jayne home and told her he'd like to see her again. Jayne smiled but didn't really say anything except good-bye when she got out of the car. 

As time went on, Harry never saw Jayne again even though he continued to call her for several months. She was never at home, it seemed, or maybe she was a hard sleeper. 

Finally Harry quit calling her and started going out again with different women. 

"The flavor of the month," as he told another friend. 

He never found another woman like Jayne but as Harry liked to say, "any port in a storm.”\

Donal Mahoney

Margaret Mary Kelly, 82, Wants to Marry Paddy Regan, 84

Father Brennan had been pastor of St. Ignatius Church for 20 years, a long time for any one priest to remain at one parish. Usually the archbishop would transfer a pastor after he had served seven years. By that time, parishioners might have needed a fresh face and fresher homilies and the pastor, truth be told, might like to see a few new faces himself in the pews every Sunday morning.

That wasn't the case with Father Brennan, however. St. Ignatius was a parish in decline in terms of parishioners and he loved those who were still there, the ones who hadn't moved or passed away. There were only about 60 people left now, most of them widows and widowers as well as one nice elderly maiden who had never married, Margaret Mary Kelly, who studied early in life to become a nun but ultimately decided that life as a nun was not for her. She moved back home to care for her aging parents and did a fine job. Her father died at 84 and her mother at 81. 

Margaret Mary herself now was 82. That's why Father Brennan was surprised to hear--word travels like a rabbit in a small parish--that Margaret Mary was thinking of marrying a widower older than she was, a man named Paddy Regan, 84, who lived in another parish a few miles away. She had never in her life shown any interest in marriage. Nor did she ever have to fight any men off. She was a fine woman not known for her comeliness as much as for her wit and her holiness. 

Father Brennan didn't know what to think.

"Well," he said to himself over a cup of tea, "if Margaret Mary wants to get married, we'll do our best for her. I just hope the groom-to-be is in fine health. The two of them may not realize that in the Catholic Church a couple must be able to engage in sexual intercourse or the marriage would be null and void. I know they have all these medications now to give a man a boost but at 84 a man might need a rocket to get the job done."

Sure enough, two weeks later, Margaret Mary rang the rectory door bell and asked to see Father Brennan. He was about to eat lunch but asked her to come right into his small library where they could sit and talk.

"I'm planning on marrying Paddy Regan, Father, a widower one parish over," Margaret Mary began, "and I thought I should come see you to make the arrangements. At our age, Paddy and I would like to get married as soon as we can. Even though we have no serious health problems, God might call either one of us any day now. So we'd like to take our vows and, as they say, start living happily ever after, however long that might be."

Father Brennan didn't know how to begin to approach the potential problem of the couple's physical readiness to engage in the conjugal act, the Church's official term for sexual intercourse within a marriage. Even if Margaret Mary had brought Paddy Regan with her, it wouldn't have been any easier to approach the subject of Mr. Regan's potency or lack thereof. Father Brennan figured Margaret Mary might be marrying for companionship as might Mr. Regan. Every once in awhile, however, another Hugh Hefner pops up but that had happened only once before at St. Ignatius parish and the man, a legend in the neighborhood, died on his honeymoon, blissful, Father Brennan hoped, at age 87. 

"Well, Margaret Mary," Father Brennan said, "you say you and Paddy are both in good health. Does he get out and about or sit around all day watching TV?"

Margaret Mary didn't know what to say except that Paddy Regan had struck her as being in fine shape, no matter the fact that he was into his eighties. After all, he had been a widower for three years so he must know what he wanted to do. Besides, he had been married twice before and both wives had died of natural causes. The first one had given him six children and the second one had given him another five. All of the children, well into adulthood now, were married, had good jobs and were a joy to Paddy. Besides, he didn't drink or smoke and could dance much younger women to the point of being too tired to continue. Light on his feet, Paddy was. 

Father Brennan's reluctance in getting down to business had a lot to do with knowing Margaret Mary had once studied to be a nun and had spent the rest of her life taking care of her aging parents. She was a very spiritual woman. When possible, she used to bring her parents to daily Mass until they got too sick to come. After both had died, she herself attended daily Mass at 6:30 a.m. and had been doing that for at least 15 years. He doubted Margaret Mary knew much about sex, never mind the Church's requirement that any man seeking to marry had to be capable of having sexual intercourse. There would be no pass for Paddy Regan if he couldn't deliver the goods, as Father Brennan liked to think of it. God bless Paddy if he's up to it, Father thought, and then chastised himself for the unintended pun.

"Well, Margaret Mary, I know that you and Paddy won't be having a family but tell me are you sure he's looking for a wife and not a housekeeper?"

This comment did not sit too well with Margaret Mary, who rustled in her seat.

"Father, I told Paddy Regan there would be no messing around till I had a ring on my finger and we had said our vows. I told him I was a virgin and I would remain a virgin if we didn't get married. The man has had two wives, Father, and 11 children. I don't think he's looking for a housekeeper. He has a daughter who comes over twice a week to clean his house and she does a fine job of it. No, he's looking for a wife, I can tell you that. We have only kissed and hugged but he doesn't kiss me the way he might kiss his sister who, God bless her, is still going strong at 90, having been widowed twice herself. If I had a brother, I'd introduce him to her. A very nice woman."

Father Brennan decided he probably had to get to the point.

"Margaret Mary, your intended has had sex for most of his adult life and this will be something new for you. I imagine you have some idea what to expect if Paddy is still able to make love. Some men at his age aren't capable of doing that any more. You are probably aware of the physical aspects of marriage, I'm sure, and what will be expected of Paddy in the marital embrace." Marital embrace was another term the clergy used when discussing sexual intercourse. 

Margaret Mary took a deep breath, uncrossed her legs and looked Father Brennan right in the eye.

"Father, all we have done is kiss and hug but on his birthday Paddy asked me to sit on his lap and give him a big kiss. Well, if he's not healthy enough to have sex, Father, I wish he had taken that crowbar out of his pocket. Scared the dickens out of me. I almost jumped off his lap. Can we get down to business now and set the date. Paddy and I aren't getting any younger." 

Father Brennan coughed, looked at his desk calendar and said "How about four weeks from now? That will give us time to announce the bans of marriage in church and do everything right. And, of course, I'd like to meet Paddy Regan myself so I'll recognize him at the ceremony. I'd hate to make a mistake and marry you off to the best man."

Margaret Mary Kelly left the rectory that day happy to have the date for her wedding set. 

That night, Father Brennan called another priest a few parishes over and told him about the upcoming wedding without mentioning any names.

They both had a bit of a chuckle and marveled at how hope springs eternal in the people of God, whatever their age. 

Then the other priest, before hanging up, said he'd bet the flower girl will be at least 65. 

Donal Mahoney

Petty Literary Money Grubbers

by

Jane Doe

The two most prominent non-performing arts are painting (a genre term that includes all the fine art forms) and writing. An art gallery is a vital business that links the artist to the buyer. Almost all galleries are for profit, paying the artist a percentage of sales. The more well known and desired the artists, they naturally get a larger percentage. The other type of galleries are either not-for-profit, or collectives, with different structures of remuneration. Some artists feel that galleries take an inordinate share of earnings. Many artists resent the semi-closed world of galleries that do not readily accept new artists. This is a relatively traditional arts business, since artists ceased being artisans in the second half of the 19^th century and acquired agents, rather than patrons to promote their work. Of course, except for dealers in old masters, a gallery’s selection of artists to represent is purely subjective.

Writing, until the advent of electronic publishing, was not entirely dissimilar to the art business. Publishing houses issued the books of their writers and paid them royalties. Invariably, except for successful commercial fiction writers, it became difficult for serious writers to earn a livelihood by their craft. This certainly urged many of them to seek refuge in hospitable academic environments that offered a modicum of security and captive audiences. Then came the proliferation of emags.

In an amusing historical note, in the 1970’s, the eruption of Off- Off Broadway theater ventures allowed, for the first time, inexperienced youngsters to start their own companys with little or no professional or business know-how. At this time, the average life span of a new theater company was three to four months. This confirmed the good sense of the National Endowment of the Arts that required a group to be in existence for at least two years before requesting funding. Then they would face the standard of artistic excellence, and if they were denied grants, they believed it was for not belonging to an old boy’s (or girl’s) theater network.

Then the children of the publishing arts multiplied. And no longer had to serve demanding, underpaid apprenticeships at traditional publishing houses to learn the publishing business. While everyone else is struggling in America in the twenty first century of economic malaise for the diminishing middle class, the liberal arts college degree finally had its era of utility. Formerly, the most useless preparation for the future, now the lib-arts grad could use simple computer skills, simple art skills, simple writing skills to start a magazine. By 2015 there were over 5,000 emags, most of them run by well-meaning, but ill-prepared dabblers.

Many of the nouveau arrivistes pressured their writers to subscribe to their magazines, thus hoping to pay for their new business. At the same time, tens of thousands of new writers, urgent for publication, collaborated with their new publisher by paying for subscriptions. In the 1930’s, if a writer self-published, or was published by a vanity press, it was either a joke, or an embarrassment. Now this phenomenon, a torrent of writers and a host of epublishers, formed a low-yield symbiosis. This was a union of true ignorance. The publishers believed they were entitled to money from the writers. The writers thought it was normal to support the magazines that published them.

The worst offenders in this pay to play arena are the contest sponsors. Even the well-established, supposedly responsible literary magazines and the university publications reap income by offering contests with an entry fee, that attracts participants hoping for recognition far more then prize money. Many of them also yearn for the cash. The practice of charging writers to be published is unprincipled, exploitive and deleterious in the effect on the mentalities of writers and publishers alike.

In an era of dominant visuals in entertainment, and unrestricted access to the internet, the performing arts are fading. Painting (including all the other facets of fine art) has become so diverse in form and technique, that it is no longer accessible to the basic culture seeker. Writing has expanded more then any other art form because it requires the least skill, the least investment in materials. Great writing has faded away in the publishing climate of mass market sales. Throughout history, culture has arisen and departed, often linked ot the life and death of empires. It is no tragedy that opera, ballet, classical music, classical theater are fading away in our society. Change in cultural values is inevitable, despite the reluctance of certain participants to accept the new reality.

It is appropriate for writers to realize that they should be paid for their work, rather then paying to be published. There should be some kind of standard to determine remuneration. Certainly the merit of the work should be considered. The reality is that very few of us know the difference between good and bad art, let alone good and bad writing. Liberal arts graduates, deluded into assuming they are educated, do not comprehend that if they want to be publishers, it’s like any other arts venture. It’s a business. If someone wants to be a publisher, they should learn how to finance their business, not expect to be funded by writers. Writers should learn not to participate in publication’s allurements, where they pay to be in print. It is improbable that either group will have the common sense to reverse their erroneous behavior patterns, but they should certainly be made aware of the impropriety of payment for publication.

An amusing afterthought. In semi-professional and community theater, where there is scarcely any money to pay artists, musicians insist: ‘Musicians must be paid’.

Jane Doe has an M.A. in poetry from an Ivy League University. She teaches English and writing at a community college. Her poetry has appeared in a number of literary magazines. She recently ended her association with a magazine over the issue of charging fees for reading submissions.