January 2013 – Snopes

The New Boy Scouts of America

R.T. Smith

I hated being a Boy Scout for no reasons related to their recent and applaudable decision not to exclude gay Scouts. I hope they’ll also promise not to allow bullying or torturing the gay members once they’ve enlisted, and I do know a little about old-style bullying and torture in the noble arena of scouting.

When I was twelve or thirteen, spindly and timid, I was exiled in July to Camp Steere to master archery, canoeing, Indian lore and mess hall deportment. I did learn how to play “Soupy, Soupy, Soupy” on a bugle, construct a wikiup, tie a bowline on a bight, paddle with a J-stroke and hit a towed cardboard white tail with an arrow from my trusty Bear recurve bow. I was assigned to share a cabin (a three-sided Adirondack, to be exact) with a trio of older boys who were longtime running mates with all the wit and panache of Larry, Moe and Shemp but who had a vast vocabulary of insults and ultimatums. They were big and rough, unkempt smokers and spitters, cussers and head-slappers, all with a taste for arson. They turned my life into a combination obstacle course, stealth experiment and shame-assessment retreat. I was no angel, mind you, but I was ill-equipped to handle even one of them physically (a single try persuaded me). It didn’t help that I was bookish and wore specs.

My tormentors called me Whistle, because I did that a lot, perhaps “against the dark,” and they made me their lackey. All I could do was set occasional traps and snares for them which could not be traced back to me, deny all accusations and snicker on the sly. (The Texas Pete kick in the Kool-Aid? The copperhead in the shower? Yeah, Three Musketeers, that was me, Edmond Dantes.) My vengeful gestures were pretty much unsatisfying, and they were the worst part of scouting, even more horrible than the next scoutmaster I served under with his shaved head, jackboots, swagger stick and a terrier’s voice. After a few months under his tutelage, B.S.A. meant something entirely different to me, and I soon, as they say, left the organization to spend more time with my family.

I’m sure the BSA has evolved and improved, making it difficult for boys like my tormentors to thrive, but the recent announcement of tolerance has set me to thinking what other changes might be called for to create a true organization for Our Time. No doubt they’ve revised their merit badge menu, but I’ve thought up some new (and pretty obvious) merit badge options, because given our current cultural climate, who knows what will be necessary to follow the motto and BE PREPARED?

Blogging
Facebooking
Poetry as Self-Healing
Sports Team Management
Gator Rasslin
Reality Show Development
Hard Drive Dynamics
Lose Weight Overnight!
Mortgaging
Thumbsmanship for Marbles and Texting
Sportscasting
Pirate Web Design
Storm Chasing
Locksmithing
Atheism
Extreme Cell Tower Scaling
Scrapbooking
Deconstructing the Beatitudes
Sommelier
Foodie Travel
Apocalypse Forecasting
Apps for Survivors
Industrial Espionage
Zombie Control
Art Restoration
Auto Detailing
Pawn

What ideas do you think the B.S.A. needs? Post a comment below.

R. T. Smith has edited Shenandoah since 1995 and serves as Writer-in-Residence at Washington & Lee. His forthcoming books are Doves in Flight: 13 Fictions and Summoning Shades: New Poems, both due in 2017.

The Blackfriars Playhouse

mcleodc13

Last Sunday, thirty students traveled the short distance to the nearby town of Staunton, Virginia to view Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Drooping eyelids and lackluster stares caused by late night festivities characterized the majority of the group. The class’s enthusiasm paled in comparison to the professor’s. I drove to Staunton dreading a two-hour performance with a plot that I couldn’t follow in language I couldn’t understand. Renaissance Literature isn’t one of “my favorite things.” In other words, I avoid it at all costs.

But my initial – and less than enthusiastic – attitude was overcome by a very different reaction. The Blackfriars Playhouse’s simple wooden railings and a hand-painted stage generated intrigue that countered my earlier feelings of woe. My history major tendencies engulfed me as I thumbed through a pamphlet I snagged in the lobby.

The Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton is the only recreation of Shakespeare’s Blackfriars Theatre, the first indoor theatre in the English-speaking world. At the Blackfriars Playhouse Staunton, the American Shakespeare Center performs Shakespeare’s works under their original staging conditions, which I learned meant on a simple stage without elaborate sets and an audience that shares the same lighting conditions as the actors. I was expecting an intricate set and ornate, Elizabethan costumes only to realize that I knew nothing about the true essence of Shakespeare and his techniques.

So, how does this apply to literature you ask? Shakespeare’s works, specifically his plays, build upon basic, yet classic, principals that are still prevalent in modern literature. His literature matches the simplicity of the theaters they were preformed in. Julius Caesar stresses conflicts that force the reader to contemplate what separates a passionate martyr from a greedy tyrant? Are Brutus and Cassius noble executioners or butchers? What is Caesar’s ambition? Was he virtuous or evil? Or was Caesar simply a victim of humanities weaknesses?

Shakespeare echoed building upon basic fundamentals in order to communicate the magnitude of his literature to audiences and readers. Simplicity governed his approach to his writing and productions. Unlike his original theatre, his literary techniques survived the test of time. I wonder if he would be as impressed by Staunton’s version of The Blackfriars Playhouse as I was.

Writing as a Way of Healing

mcgintyc13

For centuries, the oral tradition of storytelling has kept myth and legend alive in the hearts and minds of humans. The story’s cathartic ability to strike a chord in humanity transformed the experience of life onto the page. The rise of popularity of the memoir, part personal history but delivered like fiction, in modern times is no small part due to the audience’s identification with the facts of life melded seamlessly with the captivation of a novel, a story. In her book Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives Louise DeSalvo delves into the emotional and physical health benefits that writing regularly can have on a person. If we write about past traumatic experiences that our subconscious spends energy to suppress, our body’s defenses are improved by removing subconscious stress.

“Creative energy tends to be self-renewing, and to produce its own chain reaction of health, and further effort.” – Colin Wilson

DeSalvo hones in on a study done by James W. Pennebaker’s record of experiments performed while teaching at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas with his associate Sandra Bell. In this study, students who wrote for 20 minutes a day, for only four days, experienced deep rooted negative emotions connected to their past traumatic experiences. However, and here is the remarkable discovery, four months later those same students reported a significant improvement of their emotions toward past traumatic experiences which helped them resolve difficult issues like the death of a loved one, sexual abuse, or a parent’s divorce. Their present discomfort significantly impacted their spirits long term.

Now, back up a second. You might be thinking, “I am not a writer,” or perhaps, “I have no time, no desire to confront my past, no [fill in the blank] to write.” This anxiety for amateur and professional writers is completely natural, especially when writing (not just journaling!) about past traumatic experiences can bring back emotions that have been shut away and effect our immediate state of mind. The more days that people write, the more beneficial the effects from writing are. And here is the great part: these positive effects are not dependent upon sharing your writing with others or getting feedback! To be clear, while writing is cheap and easy, it is no substitute for professional help.

After reading DeSalvo’s Writing as a Way of Healing, I was taken aback. I had always heard that writing, the act of recreating our story, has cathartic value for our hearts. I had never seen any evidence that writing about our experiences could actually improve physical health! Right now, I am sitting in bed with the flu after re-reading parts of DeSalvo’s book and all I can think about is this: “If it has health benefits, I’m up for it!” Are you? Post your thoughts on Pennebaker’s study or on DeSalvo’s take on the emotional and health benefits of writing in her book Writing as a Way of Healing below!

Christopher Marlowe’s “Doctor Faustus”

mcleodc13

Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus recounts the tragic tale of a man who sells his soul to Lucifer. Religious controversy in the play reflects the early seventeenth century Reformation. Doctor Faustus appears to readers as an educated but ordinary man. Faustus changes into an extreme example of a human being when he must choose between being satisfied with wisdom he already attains or selling his soul in exchange for power and knowledge. From this predicament, Marlowe reflects the religious debate of free will versus predestination that surfaces in Christianity.

The conflict compels Faustus to either take control of his choices or be subjected to fate. Three questions beg to be answered. Does humanity have the ability to choose his destiny or does God control who is and is not damned? Does an individual have the choice to repent or do the heavens conspire against him? Must one subject to a predestined fate in order to relieve themselves of the burdens of their consequences? Marlowe portrays the weakness of humanity and alludes to Faustus’s ultimate decision of accepting God’s damnation through the dialogue between Faustus and the Good Angel and Evil Angel in Act Two Scene Three.

Good Angel: Faustus, repent yet, God will pity thee.

Evil Angel: Thou art a spirit. God cannot pity thee.

Faustus: Who buzzeth in mine ears I am a spirit?
Be I a devil, yet God may pity me;
Ay, God will pity me if I repent.

Evil Angel: Ay, but Faustus never shall repent.

Faustus: My heart’s so hardened I cannot repent.
Scarce can I name salvation, faith, or heaven
But fearful echoes thunders in mine ears:
“Faustus, thou art damned!” Then swords and knives,
Poison, guns, halters, and envenomed steel
Are laid before me to dispatch myself
Had not sweet pleasure conquered deep despair.
Have not I made blind Homer sing to me
Of Alexander’s love and Oenone’s death.

Faustus reveals an important aspect of his character by choosing to sell his soul to Lucifer and settle for the theory of predestination. Faustus convinces himself that he is chosen to be damned so that he isn’t forced to bear the guilt for his choices. By claiming he was doomed from the beginning, he avoids the consequences of his actions and transfers the blame to God. The Good Angel reveals Faustus’s blindness by reminding him that free will is possible if he chooses it. Marlowe used Faustus as an anecdote for a larger trend he viewed during the early seventeenth century.

Marlowe distinguished between those he considered enlightened and those he deemed stubborn and obtuse by classifying the enlightened as those who chose to exercise free will and bore the consequences of their decisions and those who simply resigned themselves to their predestined fate and excused themselves from penalties amassed by their choices.

A new term begins…

Tyler Van Riper

It seems so unreal to me that a new term at Washington and Lee University is already in full swing. Didn’t we celebrate Christmas just last week? Has New Years’ even happened yet? For some reason, it has taken an unusually long time to get reacquainted with going to class every day, getting my reading done each night, finishing my writing assignments, things that, as a junior English major, should come as naturally as breathing. Maybe the difference is the variety of courses that I’ve enrolled in this semester. For example, I have never taken anything quite as hands-on as this editing internship with Shenandoah, Washington and Lee University’s literary magazine. I feel like I’m killing two birds with one stone: on the one hand, the internship amounts to a 400-level English class, which I can count toward my major and Creative Writing minor; and additionally, I feel that I have already gained important insight into how literary editing works, knowledge that will hopefully give me an edge over other applicants when I try to break into the publishing world after college.

Another exciting benefit of interning for Shenandoah is that it gets me off campus for an entire afternoon on Tuesdays and Thursday. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Colonnade as much as the next W&L undergrad, but there’s something about leaving campus and walking up Washington Street to the office that makes this course different from your average English class. On the first day of class, I was admittedly a little apprehensive about leaving the comfort of Payne Hall. The syllabus described completing a full-dress book review, presenting on other literary journals, and writing weekly journal assignments on my experiences throughout the term. I had never done anything like this, and my nerves started to kick in as I walked through the door of 17 Court House Square, an old attorney’s office that Shenandoah has only recently called home. I stepped inside to find a fairly small building with offices for the interns, our professor, R. T. Smith, and the work study student for Shenandoah as well as a little kitchen and bathroom. The space looks like most old buildings that the university has painstakingly renovated to maintain both its initial charm and its functionality. In fact, the strangest features are the large walk-in safes built into the foundation, which the previous owner obviously had more use for than a literary journal ever could. The classroom spaces are fairly tiny, filled with bookcases of old editions of Shenandoah and other reviews, a few computers, and a new large screen television that our professor uses during class to explain the technological features of the online review. In just a few short days, what began as a nerve-wracking spot far away from the comfort of the Colonnade has quickly become one of my favorite places in the Lexington community.

We’re two weeks into the term, and the two new interns and I are still learning the ropes: how to read essays for quality and content; how to write concise but informative blog posts; how to recognize the role of different literary genres. I also believe that the course’s assignments will also be helpful tools for learning to navigate Shenandoah. Within the month each of us will present reports on different print and online journals, which will give us various points of comparison with our own literary review. We will read Toni Morison’s novella Home during the term and will use this book to learn the art of crafting a well-written book review. On top of these tasks, each intern will compose a few pieces for the Snopes blog throughout the next few months, bringing you thought-provoking posts about books, authors, and many other literary topics. Until then, do yourself a favor and scroll back through our older posts. One compares J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous book The Hobbit with Peter Jackson’s upcoming film trilogy of the same name. A few of the past blog posts discuss if certain forms of the written word (comic books, social media, children’s fiction) really qualify as literature. Many focus on specific genres, such as gonzo journalism and flash fiction, and if you feel like going all the way back to the beginning of the blog, there’s an interesting series of posts about Shenandoah’s transition from a print journal to an online literary review. Every single post on our blog is sure to make you stop and ponder literature in a new and imaginative way, which makes my new student intern position as Snopes blog editor so exciting! Check back frequently to join me on this exciting new journey!

Sentry

Madeline Thorpe

By Brendan Galvin

Thistle, you look like another
of evolution’s jokes, impossible
as a great blue heron seems
impossible, though you both
are brilliant survivors.

Still, mixed metaphor,
it looks like someone
hung you all over with
shaving brushes nobody
soft-handed could wield,

then loaded one of those
salad shooters they
used to hawk on TV
and fired green sickles
and scimitars at you,

until, sentry at my door,
you look like a gallowglass
loyal to no one but your own
stickle-backed containment.

I dubbed you Captain Barfoot,
though I know from long
acquaintance that a change
of air will turn you to a mentor

white and silken, proof
that the pilgrim in us all
must cede his spines
and hackers to endure.

Maddie Thorpe has twice served as a Shenandoah intern, once as Poem of the Week Editor and once as Social Networking Editor. She is from Southern California and will take a degree in English from Washington and Lee in spring of 2014.