SASEBO SHI

I had written this in a notebook as an exercise in tandem with my Creative Writing students right after Spring Break. I read it again today when I had them share some of their polished poems. I didn't even really remember writing it, that's how hard the muse was moving my pen those few days after returning from Japan.

SASEBO SHI

Walking through the arcade of Hiroshima's

Okonomiyaki district I am struck with

the sweet pang of remembrance of things past

our sweet first years of love

Began in a city in that same country

the flashing lights of pachinko parlors

The Mister Donuts sign marking the 

narrow stairs to my place of employment

The train station at the end of the arcade

marking the journey to yours

We went through the weeks together

though apart except for Friday

and Saturday nights when we prowled

the arcade starting first at the video store

Next to the movies or bowling alley

where we laughed at the dancing rabbit

Who told you that you sucked

at bowling, or got three strikes

in a row. Those days were 

filled with flashing lights and

Walking down a hill to a shopping

street and bar district where

our early dreams were made

and we sang songs together into the night

over beer and sake or hot cans from

vending machines. These are the 

images and textures conjured by the new 

shopping street, in a new century

where I walk next to a child 

born of the love first kindled in

Sasebo Shi.

An Ode To Lucy McBath

After being asked to prepare a poem for our school's Annual VDay Presentation, I was listening to Georgia Congresswoman Lucy McBath speak on The New Yorker Radio Hour and was awe-struck by this woman's poise and story. I knew my poem would be about her.

AN ODE TO LUCY McBATH by Leslie B. Patient

I sing an ode to the freshman

Congresswoman from Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District

Who lost her only son seven years ago

To gun violence

In a parked car at a Florida gas station

His music too loud

His looks too threatening

And in three and a half minutes

A fearful grown man who felt he had to

Stand his Ground
shot ten times into the car

of an unarmed seventeen-year-old whose music was too loud

I sing an ode to the murdered boy’s mother

Lucy McBath

Who made an appeal to the judge

Who held the life of her son’s murderer in the balance

“Do not seek the death penalty,” she said.

“I do not want his family to suffer as my family has suffered.”

“I will not bear the burden of playing God.”

“I believe in forgiveness.”

I sing an ode to Lucy McBath

Who campaigned for Congress on gun reform in a district full of hunters

Whose constituents heard her story and the Millenial vote resounded

We seek common sense

We seek communication over violence

Georgia's 6th District Congresswoman
Lucy McBath

We seek change

I sing an ode to Lucy McBath

A two-time breast cancer survivor and a grieving mother

Who said she wanted to look beyond her own tragedy

To represent all those suffering in her district

To listen to all her constituents

Black and white

Men and women

The healthy and the invalid

The elderly and the young

I sing an ode to Lucy McBath

Who is the face of a New America

Who recognizes the paradoxes of life

Who knows pain

Shanequa Gay's "La Pieta"

And doesn’t hide it

Who realizes the sanctity of life

But values choice.

Who wants gun reform

But upholds the Second Amendment

Who looks at life through a rational lens

But is not afraid to show emotion

Who knows real struggle

But uses her pain to inspire hope

She lives paradox, a mother with no earthly child

She embodies the suffering Madonna

Raising her dead son in her arms

A Pieta

For a new century

This mother in pain

Turns her tears into testimony

There is a reason Liberty and Justice

Take on the form of a woman

And now she sits in the congressional chamber

Among other mothers who

Know heartache

Other women who know the bitter taste

of oppression, injustice, disrespect, assault

But who believe in the power of the people

To look beyond the horizon

Women who know patience is an essential virtue

Women who know patience is the key to making lasting progress

She had the courage to campaign

She had the wits to win

And I have faith that Lucy McBath

With her sisters in White and Red and Blue

will transform a chamber

That has been an echoing cavern off inaction

Into a body of beating, living, mother’s hearts.

Short Story Contest 2019: Clarity On Spruce Knob

So, it's been a good long time that I just sat down and "wrote for fun". Thank you to NYC Midnight's contests, I took a "vacation day" all day and wrote this story from about 1pm to 11:53 pm. With a few breaks along the way, but not that many. Never really get them just the way I want them, but they are infinitely better out here in the open than staying in my brain. :)


ASSIGNMENT 61: Genre-Political Satire, Topic-Hygiene, Character-A Fortune Teller


The first Chief of Staff had made fun of her for, among other things, driving a “Dyke Car”, but Hannah was grateful for her Impreza’s excellent mileage and strong traction in this four-hour trek. Now she was just at the snowy base of Spruce Knob.
Old Bertie Bright had said it would “all clear up” if Hannah just “said her peace” and “went to her mountaintop”. “The Peace” having been said, Hannah wasn’t sure if Spruce Knob was “her” mountain. But as she pulled up the sleeve of her parka and then her pant leg, Hannah saw her smooth clear arms and legs, no blotches, no marks. So, clearly it was.

Hannah Sullivan Hudson noticed the first blemish in late November 2000 as assistant communications director in the office of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Hannah had sat for hours watching bug-eyed and stale-breathed Broward County officials holding ballots up to the buzzing fluorescent lights. In retrospect, of course, she could pinpoint the moment that first blotch formed, but at that time she was oblivious to the causes of her skin condition. Broward County’s rectangular shape was only an oddly square freckle on the back of her hand. Had she remained silent about an official pulling off the hanging chad in the more oddly shaped Osceola County, well, then, Hannah might have been suspicous sooner.
Hannah Sullivan Hudson, was an underling most of her time in Florida,though,that was before she had any clout and well before she ever met Berthelma Bright.

She had been poring over a map of North Dakota for several hours daily in those first few weeks of the new administration so when she saw the distinct formation of a red Missouri River on the inside of her right arm, she thought she was just seeing things. She scrubbed extra hard with her loofa at the faint thin lines, still revelling in the fact that she was living in D.C. now. Deputy White House Press Secretary, something her parents could really boast about. WVU had already contacted her about being Mountaineer Alumn of the year and she had only been on the job for a few weeks.
Hannah had issued a few statements about Dakota Access to some smaller news organization that day. Primarily the line was “the administration is looking into it.” After three days of a regimen of loofa and sugar scrubs, Hannah thought the lines had disappeared. That was until the day the Press Secretary had laryngitis and Hannah was called upon to brief the White House Press Corps. That was the day the President signed an executive order to complete the pipeline and scrap the environmental impact study. The first Chief of Staff, the one who ridiculed her car, gave Hannah the statement from the White House on a half-sheet of computer paper.
“Is this true?” Not that it had to be, but it needed to be close. The Chief of Staff’s response was “Do your job, honey.”
Hannah took a deep breath before approaching the podium that first time. She had watched the Press Secretary after the inauguration get skewered by reporters. She knew she was stronger than that “Pansy Boy’, as the President called him, after the Crowd-count fiasco. Hannah would never use that derogatory language about a colleague, but she did believe she had more grit and determination to deliver the President’s message.  Her steely composure, a by-product of growing up on the edges of Appalachia, gave Hannah the stature to unblinkingly issue the claim.
“The current administration is simply executing an order already set in motion by the previous administration. No further questions.”
The tributaries flared up so severely on Hannah’s arm that rather than take her usual vigorous mile power walk back to her apartment, Hannah went to Farrugut West rubbing the itchy skin through her blazer and waited for the train.  Hannah sat on the bench next to an elderly black woman who had the unique ability to appear both eccentric and unassuming in a bright purple wool coat and yellow cloche hat. Hannah reached into her handbag and took out some make-up wipes while slipping her right arm out of the blazer sleeve. The bright red Missouri River meandered down the length of her forearm like someone with a switchblade was slashing at her from the inside.
“Ooooh-wee. That sho’ looks bad.”
Hannah smiled and pushed out a nervous chuckle. “I think I might have thrown my blazer on with a red pen inside the sleeve or something.” The lines on Hannah’s arm seemed to brighten in a glowing pulse and she shot a look at the woman then noticed the bluish film of severe cataracts across the woman’s blinded eyes.
“Don’t say such things, sugar. It only makes it worse.” The old woman’s Caribbean lilt hung in the air as she rummaged through a leather duffle bag. Before a very confused Hannah could respond the train arrived. The woman stood up straight reaching out for Hannah’s shoulder feeling down her arm for Hannah’s hand then placed a small vile into Hannah’s palm holding Hannah’s hand until she entered the train.
“Put this on a washcloth and rub it in twice a day. But you gotta live in the light, honey. Don’t do the Devil’s bidding.”
The older woman stayed on the platform as the doors closed and Hannah watched the purple figure disappear, still feeling the warmth of the brown shriveled hand in hers. Hannah looked down at the small bottle in her hand. Bright purple and gold calligraphy adorned a lime green label, Berthelma Bright, Soothsayer of the Subway.

Hannah would have filed this bizarre occurence away into the annals of other strange people she’d met in public transport centers, the Hispanic man who used to flash everyone outside the Southwest terminal of Miami-Dade or the tall bearded man with the piccolo outside of 30th St. Station who Hannah used to give half a cheesesteak to every Monday, Wednesday and Friday when she was at Annenberg for grad school, but whatever the stuff was in the vial, after a week of twice daily cleanings, Hannah’s arm was back to normal. That is, until the Press Secretary’s “laryngitis” got more regular and Hannah was called upon to step in often enough that everyone knew she was the heir apparent to a soon-to-be-vacated throne.
Deputy Press Secretary Hannah Sullivan Hudson issued the statement about the firing of the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“He was not doing a good job.”
The next day, Hannah Sullivan Hudson was the acting Press Secretary. And as her predecessor handed Hannah the keys to his former office, he said to Hannah, “Now you get to do the Devil’s bidding.”
The resonance of that pronouncement became lost in the excitement of parents finally celebrating their daughter. Hannah’s achievement stalled the endless matrimony questions that had been the topic of every holiday for the last ten years.
Two weeks later Hannah audibly screamed when she cleared the steam from the mirror in her bathroom, seeing a dark circle on her left butt cheek. Closer inspection with some awkward yoga positions and a magnifying mirror showed the blotch to be the undeniable red and white stripes and golden circle of stars of the FBI insignia.

Hannah started to take the Metro everywhere. She wanted to find that crazy woman with the cleansing solution. Luckily those first few weeks the blotches stayed in discreet locations. Right next to the FBI insignia a stupid polar bear on an iceberg started to form.
“The President has pulled out of the Paris Climate accord because it is not good for America.”
The Broward County freckle started to redarken on the back of her left hand,and a distinct Cuba was forming just beneath it.
“The President is dialing back relations with Cuba to make it clear to the communist regime that America will only support free and open democracies.”
She tried Farrugut East and West, Federal Triangle, Eastern Market. Hannah went as far as Chevy Chase and Alexandria searching the Metro platforms for that bright purple coat and yellow hat. Berthelma Bright or “Soothsayer of the Subway” had no presence on the Internet. Hannah thought she had some kind of lead when she found a scan on Weird D.C. of an article from a defunct District weekly called Hidden Government claiming a New Orlean Creole fortune teller who had been a housekeeper in the White House had frequented Daniel Ellsberg’s apartment only weeks before he leaked the Pentagon Papers. There was no additional commentary on the page.
The Press remained brutal, but Hannah had become an expert in the deflect and twist. She became deft with retorts like “that’s insulting” or “what a ridiculous claim”. The President invited her to speak directly with him, especially once the second Chief of Staff resigned. There had been a lot of turmoil and she was becoming a constant. She wished the President did not put his hand on her shoulders or back when they stood in photographs. She was not a fan of the creepy squeeze or rub. But she also was becoming increasingly alarmed when people stood too close to her. What if they could see the growing sleeve of unintended countries, states and organizations? Hannah had always known how to live with secrets, but they had never bubbled up to her skin before.
Hannah was becoming more desperate when she overheard one of her interns talking about a deep clean skin treatment she had recently gotten at a little spa in Northwest near Silver Springs.
“This Caribbean lady got every blackhead out of my nose. My face has never felt so smooth.”
“Was she kind of a cute little wrinkled old blind woman?”
“Um, no.” The intern squinted at Hannah. “She was a kind of tall Nubian princess.”
On Friday morning after categorically calling a respected Post reporter a blathering fool, revoking the credentials of a CNN reporter for his belligerent attitude, and openly questioning the motives of the Special Counsel, Hannah Sullivan Hudson felt a strange tingling in her forehead. Rushing to the restroom in the press wing, Hannah could see the very faint lines forming along her hairline. “Oh god,” she thought, “that’s Russia across my forehead.” Later that evening, in a frenzy, Hannah headed to Brightwood, at least she’d be able to get some good jerk chicken and oxtail if nothing else.
Coming up the steps of Georgia Ave-Petworth, Hannah’s heart was beating rapidly. She could feel the tingling down her ears. Siberia was already well formed on the crown of her head, though her brunette hair concealed most of it. What she was not going to be able to hide was Saudi Arabia coming in a sickly shade of green, as if she was holding a shiny broccoli head right under her chin the way children do with buttercups in the sun. The way she once did with a beautiful girl named Lindsey at summer camp.
“You must like butter.” Lindsey had held the flower under Hannah’s chin, their teenaged faces close enough to kiss in the warm July sun.
Hannah found herself running up New Hampshire Avenue into Rock Creek Cemetary and past the grave of Upton Sinclair. She had read his novel Dragon Teeth once. Something about Nazis and selling out to save a friend? Suddenly Hannah saw a purple flash. It was her!
“Hey!” Hannah’s voice sounded ragged. “Berthelma!!” But the old woman had vanished around the side of a mausoleum.
Hannah pulled back vines and brambles revealing a cold metal door. As she cautiously peered into the structure the smell of incense and a low chanting greeted her. Suddenly the chanting stopped.
“I’ve been waiting for you, Miss Hannah Sullivan Hudson.” The old woman, her back to the door, sat on the floor among velvet pillows stirring a small bubbling cauldron.
“Can I have more of that cleansing salve, please? They’re on my face now.”
“And your back, and your buttocks. You didn’t listen to Ol’ Bertie, did you?”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Live in the light. And don’t do the Devil’s bidding.” The old woman stirred the cauldron vigorously.
“Are you saying the President is the Devil?”
“Why, no, child. Dishonesty is the Devil.”
“But my job . . .” Hannah knew there were consequences to any job. She knew media and communications would challenge her integrity, but she now longed for her simpler self, the self that once believed in human goodness. “Won’t your potion make it go away?”
“I just gave you wool wax, child, only your truth can give you clarity.” Bertie Bright held her hands over the cauldron. “I see you will say your peace. I see you will find your mountaintop and all will be clear.”

Hannah’s resistance to the truth remained steadfast for close to another week despite her encounter in the cemetery. But when North Korea and South Korea started to connect on the bridge of her nose, and no amount of Sephora foundation could cake it over, Hannah knew exactly what she had to do.
Hannah Sullivan Hudson let that fiery snit from CNN, Kaitlan Collins, ask the first question. Collins was a little startled by this courtesy, having only just been reinstated after a three-week revocation of her White House press pass for “impolite behavior.”
“I, um, oh . . .”
“Go ahead, Kaitlan. Ask your question.” Hannah was planning her escape route through the side doors.
“How does the President feel about the latest arrest of someone on his campaign?”
“He’s scared shitless.” The room went silent. “Next question.”
Major Garrett spoke up. She knew he would. “Did you just say, the President is ‘scared shitless’?” The room remained uncharacteristically silent.
“Yes. Yes, I did. Ok, look,  I’m going to keep it brief, people. The President is a bald-faced liar, his cabinet is filled with, at best, incompetent people, at worst the criminally manipulative. There were and are still shady dealings with the Russians. Um, there is no deal with North Korea. Justice Cavanaugh did not assault that woman but he is a raging alcoholic. The President is a misogynistic racist who believes it’s ok to pat attractive women on the buttocks and to call black people ‘monkeys’.  We good? Because I’ve got to bolt. Oh, one more thing. It’s important you understand the whole truth. You know, you all are responsible for this Presidency, right? All the free publicity you gave this man. He wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t given him the enormous platform. Let’s see, anything else? Oh, yeah, Al Gore won the vote in Florida, and I’m a raging lesbian. It’s been nice knowing you all. Wait, no, it hasn’t, you’ve treated me like shit. Hasta luego.”

Hannah breathed in the crisp cold air at the top of Spruce Knob then let out a long and resonant yell into the valley. When the echoes died down, she understood nothing and she understood everything.

If a woman roars in the jungle does anyone hear

By Leslie B. Patient

Confession Time

#Me Too bewildered me

As it began to flood my Facebook Feed

Women who I knew to be strong and remarkable

Powerful and accomplished

Hashtagged stories of harassment

And I was bewildered

Because these were my contemporaries

My compatriots growing up with Gloria Steinem and ERA marches

Pre-empting Sesame Street

We were young girls who wore bell-bottomed jeans and hair short like Dorothy Hamill

Or long and stringy like Jaime Somers the kickass Bionic Woman

We knew we could be an astronaut, or doctor, or lawyer

And the Convent clad warrior nuns of our Catholic school only confirmed for us
that we had purpose and that purpose had nothing to do with pleasing a flesh and blood man.

So I could not figure out

Why my contemporaries had so many #me too stories

When I decidedly could not say

“me too”

Because when the large and in charge curly haired bully tried to touch my leg on the bus

I punched him in the face

And he learned to respect and fear the kindergarten girl at the Parry Road stop.

In my universe when Bobby B. said I had to play spin the bottle at his soccer party

Because I was a cheerleader

I told him he was full of shit and I walked home

But we still shot baskets at the park that weekend and he stopped asking me to do inane things

When creepy Mr. Stankiewicz tried to rub my shoulders the way he did so many other girls
in our Bio class,
I said in the loudest voice I could

“You had better stop touching me. Now!”

And the class grew deadly silent as he bolted out of the classroom,
but I wasn’t afraid because he knew I was right and he never touched me again
and I still got a legitimate A+

And then there was “Giles” the suave London rugby player my Junior Year Abroad who thought
all Americans girls put out on a first date.

Silly Giles.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have posted my “Ode To A Raging Asshole” on the dorm board
but I didn’t name names.

So why did my incubation in the American 70s teach me to be a lion and roar
while my peers and
later Facebook Friends found themselves in “deer in the headlights” situations?
This was my conundrum and then I realized

I was raised as my father’s son

Out on the diamond hitting fast balls

Side by side tightening lug nuts on the pool filter

Scraping grass muck off the mower’s spark plug

Chopping and hauling wood from the field across the street

Pushing the handtruck with cases of beer down the warehouse loading dock

I learned I was strong in mind and body.

I learned I should demand respect

But maybe that’s because I was raised as my father’s son

And not a dainty defenseless “deer in the headlights” daughter

I am not victim blaming. Please do not misconstrue

I am only trying to organize the discomfort I felt when #Me Too blew up my Facebook

I am lucky, I know that,
never having been trapped in a hotel room or a dark office with someone
who wielded a financial or career-potential power over me, someone for whom
a punch in the face or a scathing ode would do little to deter

The truth is I think there will always be those whose power corrupts
and makes them feel entitled to take whatever they want.

There will be men like this.

There will be women like this.

But a part of me just wanted to say

THIS IS NOT NEW

We have fought this fight

In 1848 when Elizabeth and Susan B., Lucretia, Sojourner said “It’s time!”

And it took another 72 years

In 1920 when Harry Burn’s mother said “Hurrah and Vote for Suffrage”

Though less than 20% of the candidates have ever been women

In 1923 when Alice said Equal Rights for All

But then it was almost 50 years later

In 1972 when Gloria railed with her tinted sunglasses and said Equal Right for All

Again. Still the amendment is not ratified

In 1991 when Anita stood up

But the accused got confirmed to the Supreme Court anyway

So this, I guess, is why my discomfort grew

It’s the bizarre non-linear movement of history that too easily falls into the proverbial

One step forward, Two steps back, fifty-two steps back

I guess it angered me that in 2018 we even have to have a #me too movement

My discomfort is really with my own naivete

Thinking that we already fought that fight

Remembering, we are always fighting that fight

Because it requires

Vigilance and perseverance and systemic and paradigm shifts

This Change moves at glacial speeds every hundred years or so

My Impatience and naivete made  #me too disconcerting

Because I thought we had already all learned to roar

But then I realized that I was only in a very small part of the jungle

The Rebirth of American Circus

2017 marked the end of an era in American Circus when Feld Entertainment opted to close "The Greatest Show On Earth" to focus on their more lucrative markets: Disney on Ice and Monster Jam. (Collective eyeroll and sigh. I know.) It's not that the RBBB circus was ever necessarily valuing art over profit, but with our current digital times, it's justifiable to claim that most skilled live variety entertainment, just might be a dying art. But last night, in a renovated church in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia, I witnessed a resurrection at the Gala performances for Circadium, the first state-licensed higher education program for the arts in the United States.

The brain-child of long-time circus arts student/performer/enthusiast Shana Kennedy, Circadium, is a kind of ultimate artistic iteration of what once was a small aerial arts program she and husband/performer, Greg Kennedy, hosted in their Mt. Airy home in early 2000. That first iteration, AirPlay, soon grew larger and became The Philadelphia School of Circus Arts, offering children and adult classes in juggling, aerials and other circus skills out of a small Germantown warehouse. This Fall, what first became just a dream in Shana Kennedy's mind as a young circus student at Circomedia, a circus training school in England, has come to full fruition. The Gala last evening was a way to show the public the Kennedys and their brilliant faculty and board mean serious circus business.

Walking up a Christmas-light glittering slate path at the "Circus Campus" at 6452 Greene Street there was already an air of mystery and magic as the purple glow and mix of electronic and acoustic music emanated from the former house of worship windows. Guests were guided through the dreaming "brain" of the building in an ingenious method to maintain traffic flow and show off both the space and some of the performers in a very intimate way. Our "professor" explained the different states of dream sleep in quite accurate scientific terms as he guided us through the dim theatrically lit hallways. Our first stop was a retro chalkboarded classroom where an oddly caped and gyrating Noa Schnitzer did some hilarious interpretive dance to Beth Eisenberg's fully improvisational song "Here, You Take The Keys", a line suggested by an audience member when asked, "Tell me something someone said to you today." 

We were quickly whisked up two flights of stone stairs to a full-cement attic where Mark Wong and Caoyang Wang (one of the inaugural Circadium students) did a kind of break-dancing interpretive movement piece lit by only our cell phones. Aside from being amazed that these men were spinning on their heads on concrete, the eerie quality of the beams and shadows made this a favorite little space.

From there we sat on the ceramic foyer steps watching one of the most impeccable ring juggling acts performed by Circadium students, Delaney Bayles and Zak McAllister, both IJA award winners. Their stone-faced perfection contrasted delightfully with the quirky live music/vocals of performing artist Eppchez.

Descending next down into the gymnasium underground of the building we were greeted by some strong aerial artists, among them instructors, Megan Gendell and L. Feldman who used percussive accompaniment to show incredible power and poise on the static trapeze. We were ushered to the other half of the gym to witness a theatrical static trapeze piece through a shadow scrim, a beautiful way to close out the "guided tour" whereupon we ascended a small but sturdy metal spiral staircase that opened up onto the main floor. Once an altar and church proper, now a tremendous open space, it was a scene of Bohemian splendor: Tightrope walkers, Silk Aerialists, Parisian flare jazz and a delightful spread of hors-d'oeuvres among the most eclectic mix of Philadelphia artists and arts lovers under the vaulted ceilings of this new house of Circus worship. 

Circadium is seeking to give a place for America's new circus artists to learn, to perform and to go out into the world and bring new pieces to an audience hungry for substance. If last night was any indication of their direction, Circadium will continue to ascend the heights to put American Circus back into the entertainment vernacular, only, like the dream world our guide took us through in those shadow halls, American Circus is not going to look anything like we're used to. And that's very exciting.

May 9, 2017

National Teacher Appreciation Day

Dear Leo Braudy:

I asked my Creative Writing students today to write letters to a teacher they felt influenced them in their short seventeen years on earth. It could be a classroom teacher, a coach, a relative, anyone who made a significant impact on their learning in some way. We then started to discuss how “Teacher Appreciation” takes on a whole new meaning when considering the new French President Emmanuel Macron’s affair and then marriage to one of his teachers from high school. We had some good laughs until one of the students asked me if I ever had a teacher with whom I was genuinely in love. And it took me no time to answer. While I’ve respected all my teachers and coaches immensely, while almost all of them have made an impact on my life in more ways than one, there is only one teacher in all my years of formal and informal schooling for whom my infatuation never waned, never ceased. You are that teacher, Leo Braudy. And today’s the day for you to know that you are appreciated, and yes, loved.

I first walked into your classroom in the Spring of 1985 after finishing my first semester at USC. A wide-eyed and curious Dean’s and Trustee Scholar from New Jersey, I soaked up all that my Thematic Option courses laid before me. In the fall Dr. Nyomarkay introduced me to E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful and I still remember a map of Yugoslavia I drew in my notebook. Mostly because years later there was no Yugoslavia anymore. I had another professor that fall but I can only remember her name was Barbara, she wore Birkenstocks and gray pinstripe trousers every day, and she was very disappointed that we didn’t understand the importance of the dynamo in The Education of Henry Adams. She also made us read the Oresteia, which had a huge impact on me as I studied Greek Theatre years later in a Master’s Degree. But it wasn’t until I walked into your class, Leo, that I felt the muses sing and I first swooned over a real live idol.

I had plenty of fictional character fantasies. My sophomore year of high school Huck Finn and I traveled down the Mississippi River together hundreds of times. Then when Roger Rees portrayed Nicholas Nickleby in the nine-hour RSC/PBS Special of Dickens’ novel, well, I had an infatuation to last another two years. Then the summer before heading to USC I saw the play The Keeper by Karolyn Nelke and Lord Byron pushed aside Huck and Nick for my affections. But then, that Spring Semester at USC I had my new Thematic Option Symbols and Structures course and I thought somehow the literary gods had crafted me my very own Lord Byron Nickleby Finn hybrid when you walked into that classroom in Taper.

I will admit, my devotion to you did not always translate itself into fervid or thorough completion of all your assignments. I know that I showed incredible interest in the Wife of Bath one Canterbury Tales class day because The Summoner and The Clerk just didn’t get much of my time the night before. But you always indulged our musings and helped us see how very alive English literature could be, even if it was from the fourteenth century. You were finishing your work on Frenzy of Renown and while you helped us understand how Alexander the Great was a rock star as big as Madonna, you had no idea of the literary dream idol you had become in my eyes.

I wanted to have you in class so much again, but I was not an English major. I was a Religion major, the only one in the Class of 1988, actually. Lots of minors, but only one major. The claim to fame that garnered me the honor of carrying the Humanities Flag at graduation. Thank you, Donald Miller! But I needed to have a Leo Braudy class before I graduated and the only way I could do that was to petition to get into your graduate level Literature in Film class. Watching the zillion papers I needed to get signed and the paragraphs upon paragraphs extolling my eligibility, my roommates asked me why I didn’t just sign up for any old class, it was our last semester, after all. Precisely, was my reply, and I must have Leo Braudy in class again. And those literary gods shone upon me again and I got to revel in your film analysis as you opened my eyes to a whole new way of seeing. We had read Frankenstein and I fantasized that I was Mary Shelley telling my story to you, my friend Lord Byron. There were, of course, not the James Whale images at all. I had a fuzzy memory of a made for television film I saw when I was in first grade, something where the “monster” was a handsome man at first, the way he was in Shelley’s novel. It was a film that started with Mary, Percy Bysshe and George Gordon sitting at Lake Geneva. I asked if you had ever heard of such a television movie but you had not. I knew I had not just dreamed it, so I started my first true research quest in a pre-Internet world, an exciting endeavor of research that drove me through several years of graduate school both in the 20th and the 21st centuries. Lucky for me I was at one of the premier universities for cinema studies because after much time in the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature looking up TV Guides from 1972 and 1973, I found it! Christopher Isherwood’s teleplay Frankenstein: The True Story. My pride in my accomplishment on the subsequent comparison paper was fueled by your authentic and genuine interest in the teleplay and wonder at how I remembered such an obscure but ultimately relevant moment from first grade late night television.

When I left USC, I returned to the East Coast joyfully. I was never very comfortable in the centerless world of Los Angeles. But I still took my memories of you to every used bookstore I ventured in Philadelphia, my new adopted city as I was at Villanova University studying for a Master’s in Theatre. At one of the largest used book stores on South Street I finally found a copy of Frenzy of Renown that I could call my own. That was 1989. And in 1993, on a particularly gloomy and rainy weekend, I was sitting in my small apartment in Sasebo Shi, Japan watching CNN International because it was the only English Language television I could get. I’m watching Crossfire and they are eager to talk about Michael Jackson who was becoming an increasingly bizarre celebrity and there you were! “Discussing fame on Crossfire today, Professor Leo Braudy from the University of Southern California.” My heart swelled and while you would never know it, that little piece of home and familiar smile sustained me several more months in Japan.

Decades passed and the seeds of interest in literature planted by you in 1985 burgeoned even more as I pursued a second Master’s Degree, this time in English at Rutgers University in Newark. And as fate would have it, in 2007, I happened on campus to get a library book for one of my classes and I saw flyers announcing a keynote speaker: Leo Braudy speaking on “Secular Anointings: Fame, Celebrity, and Charisma in the First Century of Mass Culture.” The irony was you have been the only “celebrity” whose charisma has ever made me do silly fan-girl things like cart my eight-year-old and two-year-old daughters to a university lecture so I could finally get my copy of Frenzy of Renown autographed.

My secret love for you, Dear Leo Braudy, is no longer secret on this Teacher Appreciation Day. I will shout it from the blog-o-sphere and I promised my students that I would e-mail it to you as well. I almost even called you today when I easily found that you are still a professor at the ol’ alma mater, USC. (Thank you, Internet.)

It’s time you knew that for over three decades you have affected the course of a life. Your genuine love for learning in a wide variety of genres and your authentic interest in the minds and thoughts of your students are qualities I know I’ve tried to emulate. I never really thought I’d be an English teacher back then in 1985. I could barely get through Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49 without a headache. But here I am, making students read Shakespeare and Chaucer, Dickens and Austen. And talking to a Creative Writing class about teachers I would have considered having a Macron-like affair with shouting as I graduated “I will come back someday and marry you.” While that boat has likely already sailed, Leo Braudy, please know that you have made an impact on my life and will forever remain my deepest and longest crush.

HAPPY TEACHER APPRECIATION DAY, LEO!!