Carman Tilelli with Eagles cap featured on the cover of my book, DOWN BUT NEVER OUT. Carman worked at Cherry Hill, NJ’s City Hall as a custodian for 28 years before retirement in 2005. His father a world champion middleweight boxer helped Eunice Shriver launch the Special Olympics.

Wounded Knee trivia, poem

Trivia: Michael Blake told me that reading Brown’s, “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” was his inspiration to write “Dances with Wolves.”  Brown borrowed his title from a poem, “American Names” by Stephen Vincent Benet.

Wounded Knee Remembered

by Charles Redner

Tears frozen on lovely faces

owners’ of harden-hearts

slaughter a Nation’s promise.

Anonymous my ...

Watched “Anonymous” last week and while taking umbrage with the plot, I rather enjoyed the period movie. Enjoyed, even though the director made a valid attempt in crafting a Shakespeare the buffoon depicted of Mozart in “Amadeus.”  However, a real fright came when the popcorn counter person blindly accepted the premise of the film, that Shakespeare never wrote any of the works attributed to him.   Like “Shakespeare In Love,” the film creates a buzz about the Bard, but does this one do more harm?

A Perfect Blend

By Charles Redner

Van Morrison wails,
daisy petals wave.

Maroon cousins wink

mustard centers ablaze.

Warm rays ride a swift breeze
brushing along receptive skin.

Music on nature’s canvass
paints a sunny, cool and content creature—

a perfect blend.

Luis Urrea in San Diego

San Diego (LaJolla), Friday, Dec. 2, Warwick’s Bookstore could hold no more. Packed house listen to Luis Alberto Urrea talk about his newest novel, “Queen of America” (A stand-alone sequel to Hummingbird’s Daughter). I arrived late and had difficulty getting in the door. Much love and hugs all around.

A Photo More Scary than Godzilla’s Bad Breath

Swabbed in a greenish-glow worthy a “B” horror movie, Allen Ginsberg, far right, traveled to Japan with poet-friend Nanao Sakaki (next to Ginsberg) to tour an atomic energy plant and warn of the dangers of messing with Mother Nature. Plant workers, Tenseki Ildaka and Sogu Fukumura escorted the poets during their excursion. Sakaki walked the earth preaching environmental conservation. He lectured against nuclear power. Having observed the very moment the atomic bomb exploded over Nagasaki, he knew first-hand the destructive power of the atom. Thirty years before the earthquake, tsunami and accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Sakaki said, “Fifteen nuclear plants north of Kyoto … already the [Japanese] government thinks five-million will die if something happens to a power plant like an earthquake.” Two poets made their appeal but then who listens to poets—what could they know?

Another Nanao friend, Kazu Kawamoto, stated in 1981: “… most Japanese still seem to believe that humans can control nature. One tenth of all earthquakes on the Earth occur on and near the Japanese Islands. But 52 nuclear power plants are in operation and 20 more are planned … It is just stupid. I wonder how we can change this situation before the catastrophe. Not much time left.”

Earth slides slightly

Mother Nature burps
Mankind bows.
--Charles Redner

Photo:The Allen Ginsberg Project - http://ginsbergblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/nanao.htmlby Hitomi Watanabi. Nanao's Collected Poems is due out next year from Blackberry Books, Maine.

Terror Travels the Devil's Highway

“Terror Travels the Devil’s Highway”
–the first Maggie Lopez, Border Patrol Agent novel.
Shorty after moving to Tucson in 2000, I learned firsthand what it was like living near the Mexican border. I heard for the first time, the term, “illegal alien.” I perhaps saw them, or at least, the trails they left behind in the desert. Maybe one made up the beds at the resort where I maintained an office. Maybe my wife and I actually hired one, Maggie, to help us organize our new house when we moved in. She was the sister of a national car rental firm employee. It never crossed our minds to ask for papers.
Then came 9/11.
For me, that changed the border issue from one of slowing or stopping illegal immigration of undocumented workers to one of stopping potential terrorists. I fathomed that most people could not tell an Arab from a Mexican, if the Arab lost the beard, kept the mustache, and arrived at the border speaking fluent Spanish.
Now I wonder, what if hundreds, if not thousands arrived in the U.S. alongside the undocumented workers? I also imagined the potential assistance and protection that could be afforded by the drug cartels.
What terror would we face then?
A cry went out after 9-11 concerning border security but little has changed over the past years. More agents have been added, a few more miles of fence constructed but basically, I believe, the border remains wide open.
Armed with my theory and a good laptop, I began this novel for an audience of one—Senator John McCain. I had been warned by a senator’s aide that I would never get a copy into his hands.
I wrote the book anyway.
This novel concerns a fictional plan to spread terror beyond the east coast at the same moment the Islamic fundamentalists were hitting the WTC twin towers, the Pentagon, and the failed, surmised target of the White House.

Charles Redner
August, 2011