Representative Akin and graduate school in a high crime area

At first I dismissed Representative Todd Akin‘s weak statement about rape and conception as more political cant like that about abortion.  Another statement about women that sidetracked the real issue of violence in our society.  The candidate had supplied no statistics and yet he gained international attention.

Just a month before, I looked up the statistics of violence against women in Minnesota, thinking of a move.  I had been told that the crime rate was better in Minneapolis.  In 2009, Duluth boasted a zero rate of rape while the rate in Minneapolis was about five times per capita that in New York City.  I lived in South Minneapolis in the 1980s while attending graduate school and, although many women were from outstate Minnesota (towns or small cities), we didn’t know how quickly the crime was rising.

According to this chart, rape and assault increased 20 times in Minnesota from 1960 to 1995.  

Minnesota Law Enforcement Agency Uniform Crime Reports 1980 to 2005 Minnesota Crime Rates 1960 - 2010 Forcible Aggravated Year Population Index Violent Property Murder Rape Robbery assault Burglary 1960 3,413,864 50,049 1,435 48,614 42 81 950 362 12,645 1961 3,470,000 50,370 1,505 48,865 34 94 951 426 13,225 1962 3,475,000 53,762 1,674 52,088 33 124 1,028 489 13,312 1963 3,500,000 59,392 1,983 57,409 41 91 1,186 665 14,160 1964 3,521,000 70,398 2,601 67,797 51 157 1,285 1,108 18,833 1965 3,554,000 71,485 3,074 68,411 50 186 1,433 1,405 18,853 1966 3,576,000 79,893 3,691 76,202 79 261 1,765 1,586 20,713 1967 3,582,000 92,887 4,727 88,160 58 309 2,402 1,958 25,233 1968 3,646,000 108,041 5,111 102,930 81 398 2,959 1,673 29,232 1969 3,700,000 113,836 5,253 108,583 69 424 3,016 1,744 28,836 1970 3,805,069 121,796 5,782 116,014 75 369 3,389 1,949 30,507 1971 3,881,000 137,267 5,993 131,274 95 468 2,987 2,443 34,219 1972 3,896,000 130,674 6,798 123,876 95 571 3,290 2,842 36,124 1973 3,897,000 137,781 6,926 130,855 107 579 3,455 2,785 39,610 1974 3,917,000 153,976 8,119 145,857 118 692 4,079 3,230 43,939 1975 3,926,000 168,766 8,125 160,641 129 730 4,069 3,197 46,842 1976 3,965,000 171,727 7,492 164,235 92 726 3,189 3,485 44,493 1977 3,975,000 168,176 7,705 160,471 106 774 3,413 3,412 45,103 1978 4,008,000 166,096 7,601 158,495 81 797 3,411 3,312 43,837 1979 4,060,000 178,349 8,973 169,376 93 871 3,754 4,255 45,183 1980 4,061,235 194,918 9,250 185,668 106 942 4,025 4,177 50,602 1981 4,090,000 193,731 9,344 184,387 85 1,056 4,266 3,937 52,253 1982 4,133,000 184,110 9,062 175,048 95 938 4,188 3,841 48,855 1983 4,144,000 167,177 7,909 159,268 69 927 3,298 3,615 44,571 1984 4,162,000 159,884 8,802 151,082 74 1,051 2,960 4,717 41,242 1985 4,193,000 173,348 10,751 162,597 88 1,242 3,598 5,823 42,663 1986 4,214,000 183,823 11,991 171,832 105 1,338 4,299 6,249 42,319 1987 4,246,000 195,986 12,118 183,868 112 1,439 4,354 6,213 45,384 1988 4,306,000 185,792 12,490 173,302 124 1,337 4,079 6,950 39,167 1989 4,353,000 190,801 12,549 178,252 111 1,363 4,128 6,947 39,042 1990 4,375,099 198,577 13,392 185,185 117 1,487 4,057 7,731 39,691 1991 4,432,000 199,274 14,006 185,268 131 1,762 4,345 7,768 37,832 1992 4,480,000 205,664 15,144 190,520 150 1,840 4,906 8,248 39,859 *1993 4,517,000 198,125 14,778 183,347 155 1,588 5,092 7,943 38,147 1994 4,567,000 198,253 16,397 181,856 147 2,725 5,370 8,155 36,157 1995 4,610,000 207,327 16,416 190,911 182 2,593 5,702 7,939 36,756 1996  4,658,000  207,891  15,782  192,109  167  2,327  5,385  7,903  35,515  1997  4,686,000  206,833  15,827  191,006  129  2,446  5,373  7,879  35,265  1998  4,725,000  191,197  14,656  176,541  121  2,358  4,371  7,806  32,486  1999  4,775,508 171,802  13,085  158,717 134  2,038  3,917  6,996  27,706  *2000 4,919,479  171,611  13,813  157,798  151  2,240  3,713 7,709  26,116  2001  4,984,535  178,191  13,145  165,046  119 2,236  3,758  7,032  25,496  2002  5,024,791  177,454  13,428  164,026  112  2,273  3,937  7,106  28,034  2003  5,064,172  170,979  13,316  157,663  127  2,092  3,906  7,191  27,698  2004  5,096,546 168,770  13,751  155,019 113  2,123  4,070  7,445  28,048  2005 5,126,739  173,544  15,243  158,301  115  2,258  4,724 8,146  29,711  2006 5,167,101   175,534 16,425  159,119  125  1,947  5,433 8,920  30,173  2007 5,197,621   172,832  15,003  157,829  116  1,873  4,770 8,244  29,670  2008 5,230,567   162,976  13,771  149,205  109  1,805  4,179 7,678  26,483  2009 5,266,214   152,160  12,874  139,286  74  1,789  3,619 7,392  25,580  2010 5,303,925 148,946 12,515 136,431 96 1,798 3,388 7,233 24,415
Note:  The complete chart also includes statistics for Larceny Theft and Vehicle Theft.

Candidate Todd Akin did refer to studies that documented a woman’s physical response to sexual violence.  For what reason?  To diminish the impact of rape?  This, to me, was like heightening the abortion issue after the birth control pill was available.  Control of violence against women is the issue at hand just as abortion should shadow the control of pregnancies for women in unstable relationships.  The first issue improved upon, the second issue is not as critical.  Women living in high crime districts talk of crime, discuss it, and they live very differently from women in safer areas.  Many in 1980s Minneapolis became conservative with men, even reactionary, and not matching the attitudes about them.  Often I discovered that neighbor women left a relationship for school or a career and that they were hardly ready to respond to anything hazardous. The police had less time for complaints that weren’t life-threatening.  Relationship violence could be heard sometimes in apartment buildings, what probably added an invisible statistic.  Violations that would usually deserve a patrol car were neglected and made women vulnerable to the men they knew and to men in general.  After work one day, I made a call to the police about a man exposing himself in an alley.  The police didn't want to spend time chasing him down because such cases were not deemed as harmful as others.  There was so much major crime that the lesser crimes were a part of the environment. When I moved to Duluth, I owned only one pair of shorts.  I didn't show my legs except when wearing skirts, usually below the knee, and now I wonder if women in that high crime area would dare to wear a scoop-necked blouse.  I would say not often while it is the fashion for many women in America.  I kept strange hours and a nightlight on then.  My tastes in literature changed and I didn’t even watch BBC “Mystery” much, my craving for excitement was so much lowered.  I began watching home improvement and nature shows on PBS.  Though I lived in an old building with nice carpeting and light fixtures, cocaine raids were often going on down the street.  I went from reading Anais Nin to reading the early works of Virginia Woolf, an author who hardly ever relied on violence.  Her diaries tell how the bombs during two world wars were dropping on London when she wrote.   It was like learning that Doctor Dolittle began in Hugh Lofting's letters to his children while he fought in World War I. I read nonfiction, Jacques Cousteau and other mellowing influences.  Many tenants were living within their own interior current and in apartments decorated for that.  I read magic, folklore and children’s literature.  At the same time, re-reading  Shakespeare, I developed an interest in the Roman Empire.  The portrayal of violence was fine if it happened and especially if it was in a distant past.  I found graphic violence unsatisfactory.  If it didn’t have the sensitivity to feel for the victim and give the victim pages, it lacked conscience.  My building was broken into twice.  The first time, the window at the back door was smashed and a woman tenant found the burglar in the laundry room after which both ran.  When the police came, they said to appalled women in the hallway, “Maybe he was cold.”  I moved.   There were nights of vigilance held at neighborhood parking lots but as I now see from the chart, the improvement is not great.  I would say that the threat of violence is enough to lower birth rates.  But if Representative Akin took buses in Minneapolis, he might see many young women with children and without a wedding ring.  The city is a place of extremes.  Some of my experiences were sublime but when it was bad there, it was very bad.  I resented the difficulties of living in a large city a hundred miles from my birthplace when the work I did wasn’t so available in smaller cities.  And there were so many advantages there.  Recently I saw that my short collection, Curiosity Killed the Sphinx and Other Stories, was ordered into the Hennepin County Library, Minneapolis.  That thrilled me, its being the central downtown library and a place where I spent many hours.

The Bronte's and the psychology of passion

Interest in Jane Austen has revived these days but, although she was a favorite, I had an enduring fascination with the Bronte's.  In my older sister’s bedroom were Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre in the woodcut editions.  I was fascinated by these illustrations and, seeing the name Kathy in Wuthering Heights, my nickname, I resolved to read these books as soon as I could.

As a used book dealer, I obtained the editions, and again found Fritz Eichenberg’s woodcuts delirious while they encompassed both the 19^th century and modern art.  The books usually sold within months, and then I’d find another.  The Random House editions aren’t terribly collectible, large numbers of them having been published, but they are apparently THE bookshelf editions of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.

Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff

These books made such an impression on me that I didn’t re-read Wuthering Heights as an adult until ten years ago.  At that time, I was stunned at Emily Bronte’s portrayal of domestic violence.  Heathcliffe was brought into a well-to-do family where aggression and disorder prevailed.  When he died after holding up those traditions, I laughed at what I felt was morbid comedy.  Emily Bronte then painted a horizon with words, that of the young couple, Heathcliff’s daughter and her fiancé, the hope of a new future if they could break the pattern.  Although it isn’t depicted in the romantic productions of the book, I felt the ending was a triumph of fiction.

At the time, I lived in a Victorian house cornering a women’s shelter.  Old lady sisters in the nearby gingerbread-shingled house used to tell me about the people on the other side of their fence.  At the end of my yard was a mini-woods, and sometimes I found evidence of night vigils across from the shelter house, cigarette butts and even the remains of a campfire.

I remember taking the woodcut edition of Jane Eyre to an old lady’s house when I was sick and my mother was working.  Off from school that day, I was already enmeshed in the awful Lowood school.  Jane’s relationship with Mr. Rochester made quite an impression on me when I was young.   Somehow it seemed heroic that she could get along with such a difficult man.  Reading the book again, I can hardly believe I tolerated Charlotte Bronte’s style at so young an age, yet I remembered the story well.  I don’t think I saw a movie of it until the 2006 BBC production, which inspired me to read the novel again.

One of the great things about the 20^th century to me is the awareness of domestic distress.  The patterns were mysterious in Jane Eyre, Jane being locked into a room at the beginning and later, falling in love with a man who locked up his wife.  Charlotte and Emily Bronte were first-rate psychologists. 

I read everything I could about the Bronte’s and all of their novels.  Even though I majored in English as an undergraduate, it wasn’t until I worked in a bookstore that I learned that the Bronte family was Irish.  While Ireland starved, the Bronte authors died – so that the Lowood school Jane Eyre attended had force.  I read that Emily, while Charlotte was in Europe teaching, regularly fetched her brother from the local pub.  Their brother was wild.  But if he was that dissipated, perhaps a man like Heathcliff helped Emily bring her brother home.  I imagine him tapping at her window. 

Their father was a rare Irishman to be schooled at Oxford.  He brought home clergymen for his daughters to meet but these small and supremely intelligent girls made fun of them. They refused to consider them as future husbands.

If I went for a PhD., I might have delved into all of this further.  Yet I read Jane Eyre correctly, somewhat, as a girl.  Jane did have an unusual relationship with Mr. Rochester.  Despite that, the author put much store in a horrible dream Jane had, the pattern thing about Mr. Rochester’s treatment of women.  Part of the dream came true when Jane eventually found his manor destroyed by fire.  She married him happily, but in the dream, she was wandering with an infant and Mr. Rochester was gone traveling again.  I found their relationship convincing after their reunion yet the last lines are about St. John, the clergyman who proposed to Jane, and they allude to death.  Charlotte, the only Bronte author to marry, was said to have had an affair with a married man when she taught in Belgium.  She married a clergyman a year before she died.

I guess the two woodcut Bronte editions, books I apparently waded through, became iconic to me throughout all my reading.  The author visions of psychological development were sophisticated for their time and, although Charlotte wrote that she wasn’t sure it was right to imagine a man like Heathcliff, she and Emily were forecasting 20^th century literature.  Theirs may have been termed Gothic but the subtle interior development made them feel realistic.

Three of my short stories in Curiosity Killed the Sphinx and Other Stories confront abuse in the marriage or pre-marital relationship.  Attempting to take characters beyond the relationship, the patterns became plot hurdles.

Soon my poem “Bruised exhibit” will be published in Blood Lotus, an online literary journal.  I wrote the poem after seeing a strange sunset.  

How came my short story collection title - and a review of Mount Can't

GIVEAWAY of Curiosity Killed the Sphinx and Other Stories at Goodreads until August 16  (Click on title)  

When I arrived at the title of the first short story in my collection Curiosity Killed the Sphinx and Other Stories, I meant for the sphinx to be like that at Delphi, a sphinx with riddles.  The first story is about the hierarchy of computer saavy.

The computer was a riddle in the1980s.  While finishing coursework for a graduate degree, I worked in university departments and must have tried the programs of about six manufacturers in one year.  Computers then were not standardized and often, employees in a department were struggling with manuals that to most, were in hieroglyphics.  I can still remember these manuals being handed around and then a group standing around the computer, attempting to interpret.  “Just press Escape” was often a solution, the Escape key having generic magic.

In my advanced creative writing program, I was the only one who wrote some of my work on a computer.  When asked about it, I said that my writing seemed less finished than on a typewriter. I could backtrack, delete, paste, and get myself confused with a new program.  Yet I knew writing with a computer had many advantages. 

The new language and icons reminded me of ancient Egypt although I hadn’t thought about that subject much since grade school.  I’d thought more about religion and one year, I gave up, feeling like the furrowed-foreheaded, trying to comprehend astronomy.  I said to myself, “The human brain isn’t made to comprehend God.  My cat pulls a book from my bookcase, copying me, but a human attempting to understand God might be like a cat trying to read a book.”

At the used antique and bookstore where I worked, The Cult of the Cat by Patricia Dale-Green came across the desk.  Looking through it, I found a papyrus picture of a cat reading hieroglyphics.  On closer examination, I saw that the cat was staring at a snake symbol.  Yet I thought this so funny that I photographed the picture and put it on my eBay used book site.  I didn’t know much about image use but one day, I googled the image.  Finding that I was using a Bodleian Library image in my eBay banner, I wrote to them, saying I was willing to pay the use of it for a few months and that I had removed it.  The permissions person wrote back and said they would like to try lending the electronic image for a year on eBay. They liked my bookstore there and gave me a deal.

So I got used to my Egyptian cat and then I began to read up on Egyptology.  I found it entertaining, like “The Flintstones” when I was a kid.  Egyptologists differed in their interpretations of that three-thousand year nation.  One source said they rubbed noses instead of kissing until the Greek period.  Their children’s illustration of the war between the cats and the dogs looked like Seuss.   Finally I read Herodotus, the only historian who answered the question I couldn’t fathom  - how those great pyramids could be built, using the labor they did.  In 2500 B.C. it would seem easy to flee such a civilization, especially if a person could build a boat.  The ridiculous project of 100,000 people laboring for one, according to Herodotus, somehow happened during the reign of wicked pharaohs.  He obtained this information talking to Egyptians in 500 B. C.  He didn’t say how these pharaohs could force labor but I think it may have been from either promises or fear.  He wrote of a machine they used in moving blocks up the step pyramids.  I’d thought the ancient people might have been impressed with technology and prosperity, that they flocked to Egypt the way people flocked to New York City.  Not so.  Those great pyramid pharaohs had oppressive power, perhaps from having more people on their side than on the laborer’s side.  Apparently, that’s why the pyramids were never built so high again.  Aristocrats leveled the pharaoh’s power by the tenth dynasty.

I made up my book title before I studied any of that.  So I wondered again about the title but liked it still.  The issues with the computer and the internet are really staggering.  I was very impressed at how the computer industry shared so much technology and made it affordable when they could have been elitist.  In the early 1980s, people thought the computer was being managed by dorks who were leading us into robotic life.  Surprisingly, the internet gave us identity after cities made us feel anonymous.

The stories in CuriosityKilled the Sphinx and Other Stories are usually modern dilemmas in which answers could be pessimistic or otherwise.  If we can imagine how to survive them.

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My review this blog is of  Mount Can't by Anne Arlington, for those who like eccentric characters and historical parade.  I agreed with the first reviewer - "Unlike anything I have ever read" - very original!

Eccentric characters clash with government after the threat of a volcano disrupts a quiet village that attracts tourists for the historical interpretation done there. As the history employees try to preserve the integrity of their jobs and to suppress the rumors, they each belie their contemporary interiors. The doctor, the park manager, the funeral home director, despite their proclivities with eighteenth century hobbies, emerge in their desperation as men intent on outwitting the intrusion of the state. Enter Farrell, a woman hired to publicize. Her past relationship with Effen, a harpsichord player, brings on the sort of news that we read today.

The author is brilliant in portraying the odd turnarounds of these characters and she develops their quirks in the mounting tension. The present tense used throughout emphasizes their grasping of a quiet life, built on the colonial past of the village. This book is different, original, and all the while, the action is influenced by the world we know, causing a kind of madness to pervade. It has pathos, is funny, and it typifies our modern age.

My short story collection released! - Curiosity Killed the Sphinx and Other Stories

Curiosity Killed the Sphinx
and Other Stories

Released from Press Americana is my short story collection, Curiosity Killed the Sphinx and Other Stories !!  The book is available at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com besides being distributed by Ingram’s.  Later this summer, the Kindle version will also be available.  At Barnes & Noble, the paperback is currently $7.97, almost half price.

Here is the back cover text about the book: 

“Winner of Prize Americana, Curiosity Killed the Sphinx and Other Stories is a collection of short fiction exploring the complexities of life.  Laying the profound beside the mundane, author Katherine L. Holmes creates rich and complicated characters who search for identity, meaning, and purpose within a world often dangerous and sometimes even cruel.  Her readers relate to such struggles and find comfort as they face similar challenges of the own.”

A couple crashing with early computers, a divorced woman finding her scattered family strangers, a girl running away to the shop where her parents’s antiques were sold, Midwestern college students in weather and water emergencies  - these are some of the conflicts examined.  Past solutions tempt as characters consider contemporary choices.

My tags at Amazon.com are:  antique stores in fiction, computers in fiction, contemporary issues in fiction, domestic violence, drug abuse in fiction, midwest fiction, midwest short fiction, minnesota authors, parent issues, relationships, short stories, short story collections, women s issues.   You can add or reinforce tags when you look up a book at Amazon.

Of course, I want to encourage people to read my short stories.  But I also want to encourage people to read more short stories.   In my used book work, vintage magazines are a favorite to list.  America developed the short story for magazines, many containing three or more short stories in their issues from 1885 to 1930.  The great short story was terse and had a twist at the end.  When I listed and read vintage magazines, I saw people sitting around a hearth, reading short stories on their own or aloud in the way we watch television.  The detective, the romance, and then the literary short story were the fare of thousands.  

Could never forget Thurber's "Catbird  Seat."

The short stories of  F. Scott Fitzgerald, Katherine Anne Porter, D. H. Lawrence, Muriel Sparks, Margaret Atwood, and Alice Adams were, for me, as great in collection as their novels.  Then there were the authors who concentrated on the short story -  James Thurber, Katherine Mansfield, Frank Ellison, Ann Beattie, Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Munro.  Short stories tend to focus more on character than on plot.  But that’s why the story twists and fascinates when the author has captured a character in a situation. 

Today, the public can watch short television dramas or sit-coms without wishing they were movies.  We live in a time when people are busy, traveling from here to there or to work everyday.  Granted, the novel has its movie mesmerization when it’s good.   But reading short story collections, I couldn’t understand why the public didn’t like them as short fiction fare, something they could finish between planes or over a lunch hour.

The internet journal might revive the magazine short story.  I watched them disappear when photographs took over magazines such as Look and Life; a few magazines such as Redbook continued to feature short stories.  In the old magazines, short stories were usually accompanied by illustration.  Internet publishing can accommodate that and attract readers.  I had some published after cruising the journals at New Pages.com.  If the magazine comes back that way, I hope the collected short story book can promise reading satisfaction more than it has.

I’ve lived in Minnesota all my life - in the southern agricultural region, in both St. Paul and Minneapolis, and in Duluth, the region where my grandparents lived.  I meant for my short stories to be regional, portraying contemporary life in the Midwest.  That was because life in the Midwest was changing and still is.

My middle grade loon book to be published!

On April 16, I signed a contract with Silver Knight Publishing for my middle grade book The Wide Awake Loons.

That book felt “meant to be” from the first.  The conception of books is a subject that mystifies.  The Wide Awake Loons is the only book that I planned in my head before writing it down.  My other novels usually began as a short piece or story that developed as I wrote.

An unusual  shot by Steve Cushman

Loons became a symbol of writing for me.  Does a writer travel from here to there or does a writer dive into their material, submerging ideas and experiences before surfacing like a loon?  I never wrote a first draft so quickly again.  And strangely, I hadn’t really learned how to plan a book in my head.  It may have been the hours at work one summer in Minneapolis and the muggy weather that had me planning a book I put off writing. 

Or the reason was better stated by these authors:

"In writing, there is first a creating stage--a time you look for ideas, you explore, you cast around for what you want to say. Like the first phase of building, this creating stage is full of possibilities.”  - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.” - Willa Cather


“To write fiction, one needs a whole series of inspirations about people in an actual environment, and then a whole lot of work on the basis of those inspirations.” -  Aldous Huxley

"Because I don’t work with an outline, writing a story is like crossing a stream, now I’m on this rock, now I’m on this rock, now I’m on this rock."  - Ann Beattie  (from the Paris Review, 2011)

Whether I begin a novel in my head or on paper, I usually write as if I’m on a journey with a map rather than an outline.  Events are starred places, however I’m not sure about how I will get there and what is on the way.  That sultry summer when I planned my loon book, I spent some days in Northern Minnesota where I’d vacationed since childhood and where I always heard loons.  Loons are enigmatic, sitting on the water like ducks, but if you see one and approach it, the loon will tease, diving under and making you guess where it will emerge on the lake. 

The Common Loon by Judith W. McIntyre

I read up on loons and while reading nonfiction, the book took form.  At that time in Minneapolis, I lived one block from a branch YMCA.   While writing my loon book, I swam once or twice a day and sat in a sauna with an after-work group.  Since, I’ve known that if I feel writer’s block, I should swim.   

As a child, I was so enamored with Dr. Dolittle that after reading a chapter, I rewrote it in my head with me as Dr. Dolittle’s daughter, talking to animals and traveling with him.  It was probably my first experience, writing in my head.  Animals communicate; you just have to introduce a kitten to a cat and soon, the cat will tell it where it can sleep and when it can eat, and that it should groom itself before approaching.  Birds intrigue, succeeding at navigation and establishing nest sites that are recovered from one year to the next.  Having read many animal and anthropomorphic novels, I’ve long been fascinated with animal communication and also with telepathy.  The Wide Awake Loons portrays two worlds, that of humans as we know it and that of animals communicating between themselves. 

I’ve already set up my fan page for the book, anticipating the cover, and plan to chronicle the publishing of this middle grade loon book.  Here is the Facebook page address:   https://www.facebook.com/WideAwakeLoons


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