Upcoming Fall Book Reviews

The Dew sent out a little note to the publishers that it works with on a regular basis and to authors that it corresponds with reminding them of it's little ol' self now that the Summer rush of new books is past.

Well, all I can say is - "Wow!"

Right away I want to thank everyone for their overwhelming response - the Dew now has a nice little pile of books for the Fall Review Season!

Below are some examples of the books you'll be seeing starting in September. I have more coming that I haven't posted yet. The Dew puts up new reviews on Wednesdays.

Keep your eyes out for the new reviews and learn about some really fantastic books that are out there in the world just waiting to be read.

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Tennessee Scenes

More wonderful shots from Poopie @ Pecan Lane. She does keep us surrounded by beauty doesn't she?

Obituary for a Farm Cat

Obituary for a Farm Cat

Jacobs Farm is grieving a great loss with the passing of Whiskers, their 5-year old black & white, tuxedo farm cat. Though not the eldest, Whiskers was upheld and regarded as the Matriarch of the Farm’s feline pride.

Born in the early spring of 2004, she was adopted by the Jacobs family along with her 3 littermates in May of 2004. Affectionately known as “Ma` Ma”, she was the quintessential farm cat. While lovingly devoted and loyal, Whiskers was fiercely independent and the open pastures remained her preferred domain; she was never to be a house cat.

A proud mother of two litters of kittens and skilled as a master huntress, Whiskers was best known for her tenacious mousing. She took great pride in her work – all too often sharing her prized kills with her beloved humans. She lost the first of her nine lives to a mad swarm of wasps that had nested behind a window shutter on the Jacobs’ front porch requiring three days of Benadryl treatments that would eventually see her closed eyes and softball sized head returned to normal. The next of her nine lives was taken by the Jacobs’ garage door resulting in a fractured tail. The 3rd loss was a narrow escape from being locked inside a parked vehicle on a long, long hot summer’s day along with the 4th life being taken from a possible coyote or wild dog having treed her resulting in rear leg injuries. But it would be an untreatable and fatal blood parasite that would ultimately claim what remained of her lives and now having left a huge hole in the hearts of her human family.

On May 26, 2009, Whiskers was laid to rest in the shade of the Oak and Pecan trees that cascade over the large granite outcroppings on the upper 26 acres of Jacobs Farm where she so loved to watch and hunt from. She was buried alongside her first born son, Oscar-Duke of Meyer. She is predeceased by her sisters Misty and Diva, her brother, Professor Button, her daughter, Possum and her son, Oscar as well as other nieces and nephews including the Brer Brothers: Brer Fox, Brer Bear and Brer Rabbit, triplets born to her sister, Misty. She is survived by her two daughters Miss Georgia “Peaches” and Savannah Lucille (“Lucy”), nephews St. “Simon” La Rue and Rev. “Billy Bob” Clyde, nieces Skidaway and Charlotte, great nephew One-eyed “Rowdy” and great niece Princess “Patches”. Max, the eldest of the Jacobs Farm cats and of no familial relationship to the deceased, remains indifferent to the passing of Whiskers.

She will be greatly missed seen frolicking and pouncing in the upper pastures as well as hearing her raspy mews expressing thank you’s for an early morning’s saucer of milk. This writer will deeply miss her all too familiar, gentle rubs against her legs while gathering eggs in the hen house – the comfort of her purring companionship while weeding the garden. But I know that somewhere her spirit lives on here along the Dirt Road and while on my early morning walks, I will likely feel her presence woven within the breezes that surround me along my trodden path.

And just beyond my footsteps in the earliest morning sunlight, perhaps I’ll catch a glimpse of a distant silhouette of an elegant cat sitting proudly atop an aging fence post and it will likely bring a renewed sense of comfort reminding me of a farm cat’s lifelong devotion and unconditional love for me.

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Post Script:
Following the burial of Whiskers on the upper 26 acres of Jacobs Farm, the writer was driving the Farm’s truck back to the house and, due to an unprecedented amount of recent rainfall, miss-navigated the pasture and became stuck in an all too wet low area that required a long walk back to the house and having to have the Gladiator pull her out with the tractor.

It just wasn’t her day.

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Harriette K. Jacobs

South of the Gnat Line

Copyright 2009

http://southofthegnatline.blogspot.com

southofthegnatline@gmail.com

Comfort Food for the Southern Soul

Comfort Food for the Southern Soul

By Cappy Hall Rearick

As much as I loathe and despise hot weather, without the dreaded heat there would be no summer vegetables. There would be no reason for me to beg Charleston friends to stop by Stono Market and bring me some Johns Island Better Boys; no reason to ignore those extra pounds I put on while gobbling up BLT’s smeared with an inch of Dukes Mayo on Miss Sunbeam bread.

I have lived many places in this great country of ours, but I have never eaten a ripe summer tomato as wonderful as those large red beauties grown on John’s Island soil in South Carolina. I am not in the habit of doling out free Yankee kudos either, but I am obliged to admit that New Jersey tomatoes come somewhat close to ours --the operative word being "somewhat." Like their Carpetbagger ancestors, however, I figure those Jersey growers marched down to Charleston and stole some of our tomato dirt to take back up north. History tends to repeat itself.

When I was growing up, summertime meant that local backyard gardeners came to our door each day selling quart jars of shelled butterbeans, Kentucky Wonder string beans, field peas, okra and ripe tomatoes.

Mama kept dollar bills and some change in the proverbial cookie jar earmarked for vegetables. It was always a woman who came, usually with a kid shyly peeking around her skirt tail. Ever grateful that she wouldn’t need to sit on the front porch in the South Carolina summer heat and shell butterbeans, Mama never haggled over the price. She cooked ham flavored butterbeans and a steamer of white rice almost every day, daddy’s favorite food. He would rather have another helping of butterbeans than Mama’s chocolate layer cake, the best anybody ever baked.

When I took my then husband, the token Yankee in our family, to meet my relatives, he dared to bad mouth okra. He might just as well have peed on Robert E. Lee’s grave.

“What did he say,” hollered Aunt Polly who claimed to have a hearing problem until the subject of food came up. “Sounded like he said okra was slimy.”

That’s exactly what he’d said. And to make matters worse, he ignored me kicking the daylights out of his shin and kept on digging deeper holes for himself, ones I wanted to crawl into. “I’ll never understand how you people can put those slimy things in your mouth, let alone swallow them.”

You people?

I looked around my mother’s large round kitchen table where six of my Southern born and raised relatives were staring holes straight through him. Uh oh, I thought. The South is fixing to rise again.

Aunt Polly swallowed a mouth full of butterbeans and rice, pointed her empty fork at him and warned, “You watch yo’ mouth, boy. Thems fighting words.”

I shoved a dish of macaroni pie at the Yankee. “Have some of this, Sweetie. It’s great.”

Oblivious of the hostile glares being directed at him from around the table, and not knowing that Southerners don’t serve macaroni pie as the entrée, he proceeded to fill up his plate.

“I love Mac and Cheese,” he said, making almost the same Southern social blunder as when he’d asked for UN-sweet tea.

“Um,” I murmured. “That’s what we call macaroni pie. It’s Mama’s and Aunt Polly’s secret recipe that everybody in town would kill for.”

“Oh,” he said as though disappointed. “I prefer the kind that comes in the blue and white box. Make a note of that, Wifeypoo.”

Wifeypoo? Could things possibly get any worse? I waited for Aunt Polly to say something and she didn’t disappoint. “Is he talking about that boxed up Kraft crap?”

Mama, playing the detente card, glared at her and changed the subject. “Polly, did you eat the only pulley bone on the fried chicken? I told you it was for company.” My aunt put on her sanctimonious lizard lips and smiled. “Pass the okra,” she said, “and some more of that delicious, creamy macaroni pie.”

Anytime the temperature hovers over a hundred-degrees and smothering humidity makes the barometer stick at ninety-nine, I depend on fried chicken, butterbeans, okra, sliced tomatoes, homemade macaroni pie, collard greens and gallons of sweet tea to keep me from spontaneously combusting. That kind comfort food is air conditioning to the true Southern soul.

Oh, in case you’re wondering what happened to the token Yankee? You don’t want to know.

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Author: Cappy Hall Rearick

What’s Left of the Plantation

What’s Left of the Plantation



The Southern aristocrats, once their money

finally ran out, seeped into the middle classes,

still with a genetic memory of glory days

of brandy of linen napkins; but their children

became indistinguishable from the humble

brethren they’d joined.



I can smell the good whisky in those darkened

rooms, darkened from night, darkened from the road

that led to here. And outside, the choirs of dead slaves

harmonies like parts of a whole sing across

these rolling pastures. It’s quiet tonight but for them

and their scars.



My birddogs worship me, but I’ve not earned it.

I bought it in the breeding. So even though the

world is cooling (everybody knows that now) my foliage

of magnolia oak poplar maple cedar flourish

in freedom and lack of attention. And there are

barely even traces of the Big House that survive.

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Poet, composer of music (Max Able / Abel, Rawls & Hayes), lawyer and spoken-word performer (Scapeweavel), L. Ward Abel lives in rural Georgia, and has been or will be published at The Reader (UK), The Yale Anglers’ Journal, Versal, The Pedestal, Pale House, Kritya, OpenWide, and many others. Abel has recently been nominated for “Best of the Web” by Dead Mule. He is the author of Peach Box and Verge (Little Poem Press, 2003), Jonesing For Byzantium (UK Authors Press, 2006) and the recently released The Heat of Blooming (Pudding House Press, 2008).

Thursday

Thursday

it’s raining again and I primadonna

can smell the neighbors barbecue next door, to

step outside and invite myself over would be wrong, another

day, perhaps. The scene of red meat floods

out onto the lawn, through sheets of downfalling illuminating

water. I can spoil even this early morning storm—exploration

of this day, I am so tired of being a human barometer, versus

all the things I once was. Heads pounds as clouds, too,

collapse, released joints sigh in relief as another

clap of thunder lets loose more pressure.

The first drops fall, illuminating

the birds chirping crazy outside, exploring

fresh mud for worms and beetles, singing of the glory of sunshine versus

this rain, and now I, she is loosing inside me, that hungry primadonna.

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Holly Day

Short bio: Holly Day is a travel writing instructor living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband and two children. Her most recent nonfiction books are Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies, and Walking Twin Cities.

SUPPERTIME

SUPPERTIME

Bettye Hudson Galloway

Julie sat under the shade of the pear tree beside the muddy stream and selected a pear which had fallen to the ground. She ate down to the core on the good side of the fruit. She edged her way around the pear toward the decaying portion and stopped nibbling only when her tongue touched the fermenting stickiness of the rotted side. She examined the core, noticing the opaque seeds exposed to the light, and allowed a bee to settle into the space dug by her teeth before she tossed it with an underhanded motion into the ditch. The bee left its refuge and droned upward as the remains of the pear sank into the muddy stream. Julie got up and plodded her way down the path to the house. She opened the ragged screen door that provided no barrier for the flies that swarmed around and through the house. At the back of the hall she heard her mother in the kitchen, and she made her way to the sound of activity. She crawled onto the backless bench and popped her elbows on the faded red-checkered oilcloth covering the table.

"Move your elbows, Julie. Murray and Marie will be through with the milkin' in a minute, and I've got to get supper on the table."

Julie watched as her mother placed a pot of peas in the middle of the table. She walked back to the stove and returned with a black skillet filled with cornbread. "It's a cryin' shame we ain't got any buttermilk," said Estelle. "Sure would taste good with this hot cornbread. Julie, run out and get us a few of them big red tomaters off the far vines. I'll slice up some of them, and we won't even miss the buttermilk."

"Okay." She slid off the bench and held the door open as her brother and sister entered, each with a foaming milk pail. The door slammed behind her as she made her way to the garden.

She selected four firm ripe tomatoes. Holding them cupped in her skirt, she made her way around the house to the pear tree. She carefully let the tomatoes slide to the ground, stood on tiptoe, and picked a pear for each member of the family. Folding them in her skirt, she replaced the tomatoes, one by one, and returned to the house with added touches to the family's meal.

Murray and Marie were already seated at the table. Her mother finished pouring glasses of milk before sitting down at the head. "Bring a knife before you come," she said to Julie as she saw that the rest of the supper had arrived, "and we'll slice up some of these for our plates."

"Momma," said Julie as she slid back into her place on the bench, "the ditch has got water in it and it didn't rain."

"I know it," said Estelle, "that's 'cause I spent half the day pourin' it in there."

"I helped, too," added Murray, indignantly. 'Yep, we drawed water all evenin' and poured it out."

"What were you drawin' the water for?"

"Well," said Estelle as she bit into a hunk of cornbread, "you know how bad the water's been tastin' and how bad it's been smellin' lately? Well, today, when I pulled up the bucket it had part of the old tomcat in it. I guess that's why we ain't seen him around lately!"

"Yep," said Murray. "We had to keep drawin' for the rest of him with the well bucket. We had to get him all out 'cause I hate to get cat hairs in my mouth when I drink out of the dipper. Julie, hand me the peas."

Julie picked up the pot by the still-warm handle and moved it across the table to her brother. She picked up her fork and shoveled the peas from her plate onto it. She glanced at the fork as she raised it toward her mouth and stared at two peas, side by side, that stared back at her, just like the eyes of the old tomcat when he dared her to bother him while he was lazing in the sun.

She hesitated, the hot bile rising in her throat. She looked around the table. Estelle, Murray, and Marie were fully attentive to the food in front of them. They ate on, paying no attention to Julie as she gagged and slid from the bench. She made it to the screen door and to the edge of the back yard before her stomach cleansed itself, spewing its contents onto the ragged grass.

She leaned for a few minutes against the post supporting the hit-and-miss barbed wires that served as a clothesline.

Although still pale and weak, she felt better and re-entered the house. She walked past the family, still zestfully gorging themselves, through the kitchen, into the back room, and lay down on the bed she shared with Marie. Nobody noticed her as she passed through the kitchen; in fact, nobody had noticed her absence from the table.


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Bettye Galloway was born, reared, and educated in Oxford, Lafayette County, Mississippi. She has now retired from Mississippi state service (primarily the University of Mississippi) and as executive vice president of a drug testing laboratory.

Chickens

“Grampy?”

“Yes son?”

“What’s that funny noise those chickens are making?”

“Well son, those chickens are laughing,” answered Grampy.

“Laughing?”

“Yes son, that’s right.”

“What are they laughing about?” the boy asked.

“Well, its hard telling, for all we know, they may be laughing at us,” Grampy replied, pausing a second to watch them in the yard, “You see son, chickens, well they don’t have the easiest lives in the world.”

“What do you mean Grampy?”

“Well chickens have to laugh and try and make themselves happy because they don’t have much to look forward to. Look at them, they’re out there right now scratching around for worms and anything they can find to survive on. They’ve got it tough see, because what if they can’t find any food? Well then the poor chicken’s just got to go hungry I suppose. And when it gets cold at night those chickens don’t have a blanket to wrap up in like you and me. And when the momma chicken has her little babies out running around, she always has to worry about a big hawk coming down from above and taking them away from her. You see son, they’ve got all those things on their mind and then we come along and don’t help out the situation at all.”

“What do we do to them Grampy?”

“Well, just like those chickens, we get hungry too, and our bellies start grumbling and we have to figure out a way to fix that, so what do we do? Well, we look out in the yard and see a chicken and figure that’ll do just fine for supper. So we go out there and catch one and chop its head off and start it cooking.”

Startled at Grampy’s words the boy asked, “Grampy, why do we do such a thing?”

“Well son, I’ve lived a long time and that’s certainly a tough question to answer. I figure we’ve all got to eat for one thing, but then somebody would just say not to eat the chickens. That’s what makes it tough I suppose. I like those chickens, I like watching them, but when the sky doesn’t give us enough water for the garden, we have to make ends meet somehow. There have been folks killing animals long before you and I came along, and I expect it’ll be going on long after. I guess its all part of a circle that just keeps going round and round.”

“Grampy, do you think those chickens can hear us talking up here?” the boy asked as Grampy rocked him on his knee on the front porch.

“I sure guess they can son.”

“How do you know Grampy?”

“Well son, I don’t guess you can ever be for certain about anything, but I expect those chickens can hear us, yes sir. See, if you watch them close, they’re watching us. Now they aren’t running yet, but that’s because we’re sitting here not bothering anything, but they’ve got an eye on us, trust me.”

“Grampy, do you think chickens can talk to one another?”

“Why yes I’d say they do son. They’re already laughing at us, see, just listen to them out there cackling and clucking away. They’re just trying to pass the time, just like you and me out here on the porch. Why I’d bet one of them out there right now is saying, “Look at them funny things sitting up there, why, they’re the dumbest things I’ve ever seen,” and I’d guess another one asks him, he says, “Why do you suppose that?” and then the first one says, “They’ve got to be for not getting out and trying to find something to eat.””

“Grampy, don’t they know we eat them and if we were looking for food we might come after them?”

“Yes, I think they know that son. In fact, I’d say they know a lot more than most folks give them credit for.”

“Grampy, why can’t we understand what they’re saying?”

“Now that’s another good question son, but I figure it’s because they don’t want us to hear what they are saying.”

“You mean you think chickens are that smart Grampy?”

“I do. If we don’t want folks to listen to us talk, why then we can point with our fingers, plus we can mumble and whisper and also use our eyes. Now I say if we humans with all of our problems can do all of that mess, why then so can a chicken. So I think if they ever want us to hear them, why then, they’ll just speak right on up. Until then, they’re just going to walk around and laugh at us or whatever else makes them happy.”

“Grampy you sure know a bunch about chickens.”

“Well son, I’ve never claimed to know much about anything, but I guess I can say I’ve been around chickens for a long time.”

“Well Grampy I think you’re pretty smart.”

“Thanks son, that’s nice to hear. I’m not much of a smart man, but I figure smart ones are the people who think for themselves and ponder on things while still getting the work done.”

“Well I think you’re one of those people Grampy.”

“Well thanks. Listen, it’s starting to get supper time and your granny’s probably about got it all ready. Plus your momma and daddy will be back soon from the neighbors so you better get on inside and get cleaned up.”

“Yes Grampy,” and with that the little boy jumped off Grampy’s knee and took off into the cabin.

Grampy sat on the porch just for a few more minutes and watched the chickens. He then got up from the rocking chair, slowly, and took all seventy some odd years of his thinking, pondering, and hard work into the cabin much like his grandson had done earlier. Not long afterwards, the rest of the family returned when the boy’s momma and daddy showed back up from the neighbors. Everyone then proceeded to eat supper. Granny had really outdone herself this time; she had made squash, okra, beans, collards, and biscuits. After the meal was over, Grampy gradually rose from his chair and told his family that he was going to retire early for the evening, the day was done for him and it had been a long one. Grampy hugged and kissed his wife, son, and daughter-in-law each on the cheek. He then patted his grandson on the head and told him he loved him. A few years earlier, Grampy would have picked the little boy up and squeezed him tight, but he couldn’t do that anymore. In fact, Grampy hadn’t felt right for quite some time. Shortly afterwards, Grampy sat on the side of the bed, took off his boots, hat, belt, and other bits of clothing he didn’t need to sleep in, said his prayers, slowly lifted each leg up onto the bed, stretched back, and closed his eyes. Grampy knew he would fall asleep that night and never wake up again, at least not in this world. When the sun had rose and Grampy wasn’t at the breakfast table, Granny sent in the boy to wake him up.

With his eyes closed, Grampy had a smile on his face. It had been a good year.

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Written by: Jeremy Burris

Jeremy Michael Burris is a senior studying English Education at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina. Growing up in Marble, NC, he plans to pursue a high-school teaching career after graduation with the aspiration to begin work on a Master’s degree in English. Jeremy enjoys reading, writing, playing guitar, and spending time with his friends and family. For more information about Jeremy's short stories, you may contact him via his personal email address: jmburris3@catamount.wcu.edu