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This Is Stag Country
Bubbles Ketchum was raised in Mott, cheer-led for the Mohicans, moved here when she had little Madison — cute as a bug. Madison has been a standout for Lady Stags volleyball since eighth grade.
Grady Marlow swore Madison wasn’t his child when she was born, but Tiny Ketchum, Bubbles’s daddy, talked to him about it. Bubbles wore white at the wedding. They parked Madison with Tiny and Fabrice and honeymooned somewhere, then Grady went to work
dispatching vehicles for Ketchum Trucking.
No more kids since then. Bobbi Gail says Fabrice told her Bubbles said Grady tested low for sperm count. Bubbles makes Grady wear boxers on account of it, says men should stay cool down there. They’re trying for a boy now, but it may not be in the cards.
My Monty — rest in peace — didn’t lack fire power. I had my tubes tied after Trojan come caterwampus and scared us to death. Monty took one look at that poor baby and said, “This boy will lead us to Bi-District! His head looks just like a football.” I said, “Monty, shut up!” and busted out crying right there in delivery.
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
Written in the 70s — reviews / Monroe
reviews / Monroe
“Most of the important things never get communicated in words anyway.” Robert Wilson.
There seems to have been something fragile or defective in my makeup that has not lent me to enduring love. I look back with grief and embarrassment over much of the recent past; there is the sense of failure. Of course, it wasn’t all black. Perhaps whatever I have gained from it and whatever good I did will become more apparent [in] time.
My writing period: such a flap to connect with so little. It was hyper-earnest play, if such a juxtaposition makes any sense. It has become difficult to say anything on paper that doesn’t sound mannered and false.
Wisdom entails an adjusting downward of one’s expectations. But having lived so much in my head I’m forced to be skeptical about any “adjustments” (increments […]
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
- Written in the 70s, 70s-13a. (Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
Written in the 70s — Salem 01970
Salem 01970
Coutín
Anything too dear in your odd affection spirits toward mirth and issues to air. Your white teeth open, the dear thing dies in laughter. Then your face is whole again.
Washed in the soul-splitting grin of the black-man: “Look at her[,] she won’t wave back. Treat everybody nice. I get on better with you folks [whites] than I do with my own.”
“Surfacing,” Margaret Atwood
“No gods to help me now, they’re questionable once more, theoretical as Jesus. They’ve receded, back to the past, inside the skull, is it the same place. They’ll never appear to me again. I can’t afford it; from now on I’ll have to live in the usual way, defining them by their absence; and love by its failures, power by its loss, its renunciation. I regret them; but they give only one kind of truth, one hand.”
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
- Written in the 70s, 70s-13. (Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
This Is Stag Country
Arden Lutz was one of the honchos behind the development west of town. He and Bo Dunaway and Wink Hufstetler bought the old Decatur farm that runs along Soledad Creek. They chopped it into three-quarter-acre lots and sold “creekside vistas” for home sites. Darcie Lutz named it Purling Rill Prospect — she got that name from a poem by Woolworth.
Nobody had ever seen Soledad run much until that storm blew up from the Gulf five years ago — “Darlene” or “Dorothy” it was called. Seven fine ranch-style homes out there were flooded bad. The Travisburg bank that backed the loan pulled out and left Bo and them holding the bag. But he and Wink and Arden always land on their feet. Five of the families washed out in Purling Rill bought property here in town from — who else? — Dunaway and Hufstetler Realty.
Wink’s wife Harmony said Wink got death threats for a while over the Purling Rill mess, but they wound up being prank calls from his brother.
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
Didactic Doggerel
This Makes No Frankin Sense
The boswellia papyrifera,
A tree that grows in Ethiopia,
Produces frankincense, a curious resin
That has a bitter smell but isn’t poison.
In Africa and in the Middle East
It has embellished many a fine feast.
It’s used, you see, to make the air smell sweet.
For something bitter, that trick’s pretty neat!
They put it in the perfume lady’s dab
Behind their ears when they go out to gab.
In China it is said to cure a sneeze,
A cold, a colic, or a worse disease.
With all these uses you won’t find it funny
That frankincense is worth a lot of money.
Boswellia’s a scraggly, scrub-like tree.
It wouldn’t rate a glance from you or me.
They knife its bark to make the resin bleed
To where the blade has done its dirty deed.
Once and twice it strikes, and one more time.
The tree is overtapped to make a dime.
Its seedlings are consumed by cattle herds,
Reducing the supply by halves and thirds.
Collectors burn grasslands for greater ease.
They kill the saplings to get at the trees!
The lunacy defies belief. Good gents,
This positively makes no frankin sense!
Reference:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/story/2011-12-20/frankincense-endangered-
ethiopia/52130102/1
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
Five Quotes About What
Fried okra is not a vegetable. It’s cornmeal in drag. (jmn)
He’s determined to shoot himself in my foot. (jmn)
The student decided I wasn’t serving his needs and resolved to take it out on himself. (jmn)
It’s hard not to feel the way you do. (jmn)
“Nothing slowly happens.” (Pound)
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
Written in the 70s — On the Song
*On the Song of Songs*
Bernard of Clairvaux
B
You are my subject, scraped from the womb.
Will we cross in Limbo, sad progenitor and aspiring heir?
Who will survive?
I have been scoured from your mother’s eyes
as resolutely as the tides tear their pound of continent.
You came in a blush of sheets[,]
A curious tongue fathomed her, found you between her lips[.]
Do you get me or shall I father you?
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
- Written in the 70s, 70s-12. (Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
Written in the 70s — Can peace
Can peace and beauty (opulent) be immoral? Grosse Pointe Shores. Lake Ste. Claire.
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
- Written in the 70s, 70s-11a. (Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
EthicalDative 
Minor Pentatonic Scale (1) [7-6-2012]
Minor Pentatonic Scale (1) [7-6-2012]. (Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
(b) This is a process I personally have to go through, however. The uses to which we put our sources are highly subjective. My own urgent need is to become more aware of the notes I play. In serving this need I will invariably translate any pattern of dots that I see in a guitar book into the names of notes.
(c) The book by Clements promises to be quite useful. I’ve owned it for several years, but have not given it a good look until now. Clements’s presentation of the “warped W” pattern for locating notes couldn’t come at a better time. I’m absorbing it with delight. It may render obsolete some of the fretboard views that I’ve posted!
(d) Back to the “box patterns” depicted above: Clements observes that, common and useful as these scales are, it can take a long time to memorize them because “there are no memorable visible repeating patterns.” She provides a remedy in the pages that follow, and I’m engrossed in that material now.
(e) I noticed that each of the five box patterns has a different root. I’ve added to each box pattern the major scale for its root, and the minor pentatonic scale that can be derived from that major scale using the formula 1-b3-4-5-b7. (This formula is provided by Clements in a “theory nugget.”) I use the asterisk (“*”) to mark the root note, also called the tonic note, in each box pattern.
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)