The Stars and the Cookie Jar

Yeah, these people showed up tonight. I know where they live (in my Neverwas Massachusetts, in a harbor town) and what happens to them; and yes, for those who love to find the breadcrumb trail and will someday write the concordance for my fiction, the drowned woman is Finn's wife.

And for those who haven't read my work since the Dread Thesis (groans, calls to cowled minions to burn all copies) ...well.... it's still queer lit, but I think I've put a bit of polish on since then.

( 1015 wds, from a one-word spec; shouldn't offend anybody, I don't think, unless you find homosexuality on principle offensive. )

Well. It goes to the Nazgul (I mean, my peers! There just happen to be nine!) tomorrow morning, so I hope it's something. If you read it, do tell me what you think. I may post more here, as long as there's a hard paper copy in the department office first; I'm still so tetchy about that, for all friends of mine do e-zines all the time.

Based largely on the fact that there is an Ani diFranco version of 'l'Internationale', I am writing about May Day in the Ghetto. There is a Geto-Yedies for 05/01/42, I think, and a Kruk entry for... let us haul out the enormous cross-referenced pencil-defiled Kruk... the same day. Kruk was, after all, a flaming Bundist. (Wait, I seem to remember the Soviets hates the Bund, my precious... but whatever. History is so confusing when you start picking sides.)

I imagine my ancestress got a little drunk, wore a red carnation until somebody smacked her around for it, and participated in an act of civil disobedience, to the tune of the following:

"Today began with most of the Judenrat employees coming to work half an hour late... In some departments, that demonstration was 100 per cent, for example, in the Department of Health, Provisions, Library, etc. In the schools, classes were interrupted an hour before the fixed [dismissal] time." *

Little enough to say on paper, but what it means is that they ground the Ghetto to a half-hour screeching halt because everyone rolled over and hit the snooze. :) The Department of Provisions ain't here yet! Sorry about that soup kitchen ruckus!

*Kruk, Hermann. The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania. New Haven: Yale University Press/YIVO, 2002.

edited: Raissa's entry for 05/01/42 is "The horse and rider He has cast into the sea." No idea! But it gives me an idea...