Full disclosure, I’ve been a fan of Tina Jackson since first reading her wonderful novel, The Beloved Children. That novel, like this one, brings history to life with characters so real, complex and interesting you find yourself compelled to keep reading to learn their full story.
Spirit Burns takes a rich and transformative moment in British history told from the point of view of the Suffragettes, an often neglected driving force for change that fueled cultural and class upheaval in early 20th century Britain. The lives of the woman portrayed are offered in relation to the shocking need for women of that period to be released from the bonds, legal and cultural, that kept them subservient and far poorer than their male counterparts in British society.
Spirit Burns focuses on the lives of three women who represent Britain’s stagnant class structure of the period in question. These women—a mill worker, a stage performer and a young lady of the upper class—all suffer from British society’s endemic lack of opportunity for those of the “fairer sex” to express themselves, manage their affairs and grow as active partners and competitors to the males who dominate and control their lives. Their at-times militant struggle for the vote serves as an apt metaphor for all the power they were consistently denied on a day to day basis. Nothing holds them down more than the lock-tight grip of poverty and reduced opportunity that was the lot of woman up until the 1920’s.
Miss Jackson is as deft with words as she is in building characters and events you can believe in. And most especially skilled, the reader will discover, in allowing language and common parlance to clearly portray distinctions in class and lifestyles.
Spirit Burns is literature at its finest! I recommend it unhesitatingly.
Christmas was the favorite time of year for Old Overwatch. The Humans exuded a sense of joy and cheer on this day unlike anything exhibited any other time of the year.
Any other day, for that matter.
Best of all, the Humans took a day off from their usual occupations and haunts. That meant fewer carriages running through the forest with the stamping hoofbeats of horses and the clamorous jingle jangle of leather and buckle harnesses.
“Even better,” thought the Ancient One, “there would be no foresters or woodsmen tramping through the woods with their axes and saws.”
Just to think of their sudden absence gave the Wise Old Oak a sense of peace and well-being unknown to him on any other day.
“Hard to believe,” Old Overwatch silently mused, looking out from a treetop height above the younger and shorter Trees that blocked out the damp chill and whistling winds, “an entire day without a single Tree in the forest being sacrificed to the needs of the Humans and their fragile bodies.”
Not that the Old Oak resented or begrudged Humans the felling and taking of his Brethren Trees to build their houses, fuel their fires and fashion their ships. It was in the nature of things for trees to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. Not that Humans were better than Trees, but that Humans were sorely in need of that which only Trees could provide, and there existed an unwritten agreement that Humans would only take what was needed.
There was only one exception to this unwritten rule, and Old Overwatch observed with eye askance and troubled thoughts as far below a man and his two children trudged across the unbroken sheet of fallen snow, their sunken footprints the only sign that an invasion was taking place.
The invaders stopped at the edge of Old Overwatch’s copse, next to a small Evergreen that was only nine or ten years a member of Old Overwatch’s tribe.
Suddenly, a new sensation traveled through the woods, racing from one Tree’s roots to the next until finally its steely vibration reached Old Overwatch.
Fear.
Yes, Fear had come to the forest. And rather than diminish with each stroke of the hatchet—for the father was city bred and unfamiliar with the swing of such an implement—Fear pulsed out in ever stronger waves till it touched every Tree in the surrounding woods.
Till finally, the deed was done and the family walked off dragging the small Spruce in its wake.
“Merry Christmas,” Old Overwatch silently called to the visitors as they walked off.
“And please,” he added, “remember to honor the gift you have just been given.
When I was 6 years old, I broke one of my mother’s favorite teacups. It wasn’t a big break. The main tea chamber remained whole and unbroken, though the cup’s thin curly handle had broken free, so to speak, and refused to ever hold up the cup again.
Refused, that is, until my mother took the breakaway handle and deftly applied a tear of glue to each of its uneven ends.
Quickly fitting the errant handle back into place, she smiled and said, “There!” with that special smile of hers.
“No reason to cry,” she added softly, holding up the resurrected cup for my inspection. “Now, dry your tears.”
Which is exactly what I did.
When I was 12 years old, I broke my bicycle, thick fabric from my pants leg accidentally getting chewed up in the bicycle’s chain.
“It wasn’t your fault,” My mom said soothingly to once again quell my tears.
It took mom two hours with scissors and sewing sheers to free the chewed up corduroy fabric from the jammed bicycle chain. Thus, rescuing both my frazzled emotions and, most happily, my broken bike.
True to form, Mom smiled softly and told me to dry my tears
In looking back, I see there were two items in my mother’s repair kit she repeatedly applied to whatever broken items she faced in her life.
Love, of course, was the first of these two essentials. Love sent out in all directions. Not only towards her son whose brokenness was directly tied to the injuries suffered by cup and bike, but also the love in which she held her world and all within it. The same love that made her stand up for those women rejected by others in her retirement community. A love that caused her to be the best Mom she could be, also the best friend and the best human being. Talk to my cousins, Mom was the aunt they remember with the most affection. Same with my friends.
A world filled with my Mother’s love was a world always on the mend.
The second critical ingredient in Mom’s repair kit was time. Time for my Mother’s love to take effect. Time for the glue to harden. Time to snip away and release all the trapped fragments of corduroy. Time for her son’s pain to fall into distant memory, as wounds always will. If you give them enough time.
Today, I search for meaning and direction in the turns my country has recently taken; turns that make no sense to me. Worse, they frighten me and clearly indicate a tear in the fabric of our wholeness.
My big question is what can we do to mend the breach? And do it in a way that prevents further damage?
In simplest terms, we need to heal the wound as we repair the break, just like my Mother once did for me.
For me, the answer lies in doing what I love, which is writing. And while earlier I felt obligated to sound a warning, to write about the coming dangers and tragic consequences we faced if Trump won the election.
Now I feel compelled to let others fight the fights we clearly see coming, and to consciously bring light, joy and love to anyone who chooses to read what I have to share.
Which brings me back to my Mother, a wonderful human being who made her world a better place, and to offer you her two essential ingredients to help you recover as I will.
With Love and Time.
Whatever you do, whether you’re a writer, butcher, waitress, train conductor, chef or teacher, do it with love. And let your love inspire others. You see where this is going?
Let’s combine our energies to create so much love there won’t be room for anything that makes us sad, lessened, frightened or unhappy.
Yes, I agree. It sounds like a third-grader’s recipe for fixing the world. Brightly colored band-aids of love and good feelings. Pasted everywhere, up and down this crazy country of ours.
And so I dedicate myself through my writing to add smiles, laughs and as much enjoyment as can be crammed into a two or three page blog essay. Like this one.
You can see them nightly on the evening news. Riding angrily across America’s skies like agents of intractable doom.
HATE, LIES, TREACHERY AND FEAR. The four horsemen of Donald Trump’s dreams. Demons unleashed daily in service to his lust for power, riches and revenge. Their shadows race across our great land seemingly unstoppable, provoking discord, division, and destruction in their wake.
You can hear their malevolent injunctions thundering across America’s storm-filled skies: “Hate your neighbor,” “Fear anyone who is different.” ”Worship me.” “Believe everything I say.”
And their demands grow louder as the hoofbeats draw ever closer. They disturb your sleep, upend our daily lives, and destroy any sense of security or stability we once enjoyed.
No matter that lives were lost, others destroyed, on January 6th; or that 250 years of the peaceful transfer of power was peremptorily upended in Trump’s failed attempt to subjugate the will of the voters, and the soul of the Constitution, to keep himself in power.
Just as it apparently doesn’t matter to Trump that the lives of innocent Haitian families living legally in Springfield, Ohio have been thrown into turmoil in response to a lie he voiced, and refused to retract after learning it was debunked.
Those of us who can see Trump clearly for what he is, cannot understand why his followers seem so blind to his fecklessness, his cruelty, or his narcissistic need to elevate himself at the expense of others. Yes, he’s a racist and misogynist; as well as a convicted felon, sexual predator and stealer of his country’s most sensitive secrets.
So obvious are Trump’s faults and weaknesses, it seems almost biblical that someone that evil and weighted down with the Devil’s baggage could be embraced and worshipped by legions of followers like a golden calf.
One look at the devastation Trump left behind after his first—and God, please, only—term as president should evoke a gagging response to the idea of his ever returning to the Oval Office. Under Trump’s inept management of the Covid crisis, America’s death rate ran 40%-60% higher than all other industrial nations, making him responsible for the deaths of more than 400,000 of the million Americans who died.
DEATH, you’ll recall was one of the bible’s original Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
You can look it up in Trump’s bible if you don’t believe me.
These words rang out from the interior of our shared sitting room where, through the smog of his acrid pipe tobacco, I could see Sherlock Holmes stooped hungrily over documents at his desk.
“What’s the problem, Holmes?” I inquired.
“What’s the problem?” he laughed back. “If I knew that, Watson, I would scarce have a problem!”
“And those papers . . .?” I asked with pointed interest.
“Both the source of the puzzle and the key to its solution, I suspect.” Derisively, he lifted four or five sheets of paper, remarking, “I refer, of course, to these, our notes – yours and mine, Watson — taken during the initial interview with our overwrought client, Paul Steven Stone. And never a more inconclusive set of notes have my eyes traversed.”
“And what exactly are you looking for?”
“A reason, Watson – any reason will do – to explain why a perfectly good writer like our client should suddenly run out of election-related blog posts to write about. And, perhaps, a reason to explain why, of all the possible resulting actions he might undertake, he chooses to confide his difficulties in me.
“Why me, Watson?” he queried sharply. “I’m a consulting detective, not a spiritualist, literary muse or election pundit. On the surface of things, it appears quite inexplicable.”
“Inexplicable, indeed!” I affirmed, recalling the frightening loss of ideas and inspiration described by our client only yesterday in these very rooms. And recalling, too, my sense of utter incomprehension as to how Holmes and I could possibly be of service to him.
But our client saw nothing of our ill ease as he continued to detail the scope of his affliction.
“Just look on the front page of The New York Times,” he challenged, standing up from his chair and offering the paper in question for our review. “Read it for yourself, gentlemen. Sadly, it is the same story that’s been told since the day Donald J. Trump first rode down his golden escalator and into America’s presidential politics. Quid pro quo deals with foreign enemies, the shameful self-emasculation of weak and corrupt Republican politicians, the building of immense personal fortunes at the public’s expense.”
“Yes,” Holmes replied, “it appears there is much these days, as there always is, for a writer to write about.”
“And think of all the lunacy that surrounds us!” our client exclaimed. “Should Donald J. Trump win in less than two weeks time, America will have her first fascist president living in the white House. And with Trump as Commander-in-Chief our army will be led with no sense of moral purpose; our federal giovernment will be staffed with lackeys who pledge their allegiance to one clearly confused, bitter and ignorant man. Not only that, but lobbyists and religious zealots will take control of our national agenda while millionaires in all branches of government will decide how best to serve the interests and assets of their fellow millionaires. In ordinary circumstances, Mr. Holmes, I should be able to write a dozen of my commentaries with that kind of inspiration waiting to be tapped. Yet, here I am a week late and … ?”
“You are bereft,” Holmes finished dryly.
“Yes, bereft,” our client affirmed. “That is a very good word to describe it. I have already written so many posts highlighting Trump’s ignorance and cruelty that I find myself losing my capacity for indignation. And that, just when my readers are about to make the most critical voting decision of their lives. There is no shortage of good subjects for a new Trump expose, Mr. Holmes , but I have no inclination to write about any of them. I am here before you, sad to admit, bereft of any inclination.”
And here we were but a day later, feeling bereft of answers, Holmes and I, as we ponder the curious parade of events that brought our client both to his state of desperation and to our set of rooms at 221B. Baker Street.
“Forgive me, Watson,” Sherlock Holmes said, walking over to the window, “but I feel the need to restate the particulars of our case. I know you will forbear me your ire or impatience.”
“Impatience!” I puffed as a protest through my pipe. “Not at all, my good man. No such thing.”
“As you say, good friend,” he smiled back. “But as to the facts, allow me to postulate . . .
“Our client is a writer with a variety of possibilities for the subject of his next blog post.
“’A Stone’s Throw’ being the name of his blog,” I offered.
“Yes, very clever how he injects his last name into the formal title of his blog post. But enough of these incidentals…
“Our client, Mr. Paul Steven Stone, comes to us because an apparent writer’s block or severed connection with his muse has left him going weeks without publishing a suitable essay to describe—and help combat—the frightening peril in which America now stands. Yet, even though he laments his woeful lack of inspiration, he still finds he has no inclination to author a post that might help America’s voters wake up in time to avert disaster. He makes no claim to understand the changeable nature of his normally aggressive muse or why he would suddenly start acting in this timid, unhelpful manner.
“But there’s the funny thing, Holmes,” I interrupt. “Mr. Stone does not ask us to divine the cause of his writer’s block…”
“About which even the simplest of theories must consider the poor man’s emotional and physical exhaustion.,” Holmes interjected. “This is a man under great stress, Wason; a writer wound ever so tightly as he tries to produce a series of blog posts that would sound the alarm. And sound it loud enough for all to hear.
“But, no, you are correct, Watson. Paul Steven Stone does not ask us to unearth the cause of his difficulties, but rather to help him prevent a mystery that could arise as the result of his difficulties.”
“And what mystery is that, Holmes . . . ?”
“It is a mystery in the minds of Paul Steven Stone’s readers, Watson, as his tardiness continues and they begin to worry about his state of mind; and especially worry that they might have lost one of their most trusted voices for sanity, moral probity and correct action. That is why Mr. Stone encouraged us to create a document that could slyly—and ever so deftly—take the place of a missing blog post, with no one being any the wiser. A course of action, Watson, we not only have taken, you may notice, but in fact are near to completing. By the way, for your future notes, you may wish to file this as “The Case of the Missing Inclination.”
“And what would you call it, Sherlock?”
“I’m a little more practical, Watson. I’d call it, ‘Better late than never.’”
