a photograph by Sonja Bingen
Four Windows Press re-Releases Salt Bear
I wrote a novel for young adults, 9-14 and up, a long time ago. It was completely sold out, so Four Windows Press is re-releasing it. I am hoping some of the followers of this blog might consider purchasing it in amazon or at their favorite local bookstore.
Salt Bear is a story taken from the mythology of the American west. It is filled with mythological animals such as salt bear, jackalopes, cactus bucks, blind ravens, a snow owl, bears, and an evil mountain lion. At a recent WFOP meeting I was informed by a young attendee that it was one of his very favorite books ever. I’ve had quite a few young people tell me that since its first release.
The wild tale begins:
Salt Bear did not like the idea. Not one little bit.
Buddy, a jackalope, one of Salt Bear’s best friends, had started calling him George.
“Salt Bear’s a kind of bear,” Buddy had explained when he first started using George. “It’s not a name.”
“But why George?” Salt Bear had asked. “That doesn’t fit a salt bear. Why not Salty?” He brightened up. “That could be a good name for a salt bear.”
Buddy had scratched behind his right pronghorn just above his big, floppy ear. He looked like a jackrabbit. His brownish-pink nose was set off by a handsome set of whiskers, and he had powerful hind legs. Two slender black horns stuck out of his head above his ears.
“Salty’s a name for a bird,” he had said scornfully. “Besides, I would have liked to have been called George. Not Buddy.”
Salt Bear had shaken his gleaming white fur, and then blinked tan eyes in bewilderment. For a bear he was small, although he was full grown. He stood a little over three feet high. . .
I’m pretty sure you might remember the excitement you had reading The Wind in the Willows, Watership Down, or the Redwall books. I certainly had an enormous amount of fun writing the tale down.
Filed under Published Books, Thomas Davis
Blackberry Moon
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Blackberry moon,
moon of the blackberry month,
snags at me,
rips at my skin.
Star-gazers come
and get caught
in her sweet clutches,
but are overtaken
by a storm
with brittle, scratchy fingers
of lightning
that blackens out the moon.
Now we must wait
for the harvest moon
as she ripens
on top of the waters.
Note: This is Ethel’s contribution to the moon-night organized by Francha Barnard and Write-On Door County.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
Lost
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
“Who were these people?”
“They were people
who overpopulated their planet,
depleting all its natural elements.”
“They were at continuous war
with each other,
never satisfied with their treaties.”
“Eventually they lost their atmosphere.”
“Then nothing stayed on the planet.
Everything blew off.”
“Yes, in just a few thousand years
their life and their planet died.”
“They called themselves Earth, I think.
Earth.”
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
Leo
a photograph by Alazanto, Kevin Davis, our son
What Ethel and I remember the most about Leo is a day at the hospital in Poughkeepsie, New York when Kevin was struggling to even move. The nurses at the hospital moved him downstairs in a wheelchair, and Leo, a cat he’d rescued who had hid in his car’s engine on a cold day, was there. Leo curled up next to Kevin as if he knew how ill his young rescuer was, and Kevin’s whole demeanor lost some of its pallor and, for a brief moment in time, the world seemed brighter than it had just a few moments before.
Filed under Art, Photography
Navajo Technical University Project
One of the projects I have been working on, along with a lot of other people, has been a new educational model centered on the Bond Wilson Technical Center in Kirtland, NM. Kathy Isaacson, who has been key to helping put the project together, created this video of the project. I appear in it toward the end of the video.
Filed under Essays, Thomas Davis
Beside the Cottonwood
a villanelle by Thomas Davis
“Beside the cottonwood,” I start to say.
She looks at me. Words fade out of my head.
What now? I think. I focus on the way
She’s standing by the massive tree, the gray
Streaked through her hair a halo that has wed
Her essence to the glinting interplay
Of light and shadow dancing leaves that sway
And flutter in a breeze that seems to tread
Out from the tree into the fields of day.
The sudden silence morphs into dismay,
Confusion, even, maybe, just a hint of dread.
What if, inside a moment, disarray
Has somehow found our lives and cutaway
The passion in our hearts that’s always led
To moments that are glorious and fey.
But then she smiles. The tree’s roots dig through clay
And living sustenance flows to the spread
Of branches reaching to the sky, the play
Of light her spirit as my spirit’s quay.
Filed under poems, Poetry, Thomas Davis
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