This is the blog for the Bentari Project.
Saturday, July 03, 2010
“Bentari also knew that Tarmani would mark his trail with a sign that was known and noticeable only by his mother and him. They had made a game of it. For as long as he could remember, he had reveled in the trail following game that the three of them had shared. The elders played the apes; he played the monkey. The hours flew while the hide-and-see...
Read full postSunday, June 20, 2010
My story Bentari is centered on the kind of “strife among men” that so deeply affected Ladis Kristof. In his lifetime, the mortal combat of World War II in Europe could not extinguish Kristof’s faith in the future of mankind. In Bentari , a very young boy is confronted by horrific challenges that his people and his parents could not have foreseen a...
Read full postSaturday, June 19, 2010
“We cannot defeat gloom by spreading gloomy pictures. We conquer darkness by striking one match and lighting one candle at a time. And we stop despair by shining light on heroes instead of on detractors. The works of heroes are beacons for us. By following, we stoke their candles into bonfires.” This is from my Afterword for Bentari . Now I shine l...
Read full postSaturday, April 17, 2010
The story of Bentari came about quite naturally. As a boy, you couldn’t keep me out of the neighborhood trees. The wooded glens of Laurelhurst Park just two blocks from home were my forests, and I was helpless to resist their call. We climbed trees. We scaled them with ropes; we shinnied up trunks; we stretched for the far branches. We even had one...
Read full postSaturday, April 17, 2010
Growing up, I soon learned, or gave into, the frustrating fact of life that industry rules our lives in one way or another. One way or another, we give in, or learn the hard way, that lubrication is required for many forms of freedom that help us to just get by. And we must get by—or suffer the haunting human dilemma taught to us by Shakespeare in ...
Read full postSaturday, April 17, 2010
That drug induced dream of a calm African morning haunted me. I remember describing it to Debra. She was there waiting for me to wake up after surgery that mostly repaired a detached retina. It was as if my anesthetized brain, which is normally lost in unwinnable battles to organize chaos, had somehow managed to take a snapshot with indelible and i...
Read full postFriday, April 16, 2010
Sometimes the calm occurs as the sun first breaks across the eastern sky. Some days it happens after an hour or so when the sun’s heat begins to scald the jungle air. The calm settles like coincidence and, for that still moment, all the birds and morning talkers hush together. The rising heat and humid air melt into an intoxicating perfume. Movemen...
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