By Jonathan Rogers, on September 2nd, 2010 No comments
My cousin Jason worked for an heating and air conditioning company when he was in high school. They took care of the huge air conditioning units that sat atop the local mall. The mall had pigeons. Looking up through the skylights, a shopper could see them bobbing and strutting on the roof. They were picturesque, but when they took up residence in the air conditioning units, they played havoc with the interior climate of the mall.
Jason, the youngest (and, presumably, the least skilled) of the company’s employees, was assigned the task of discouraging the pigeons. So one summer morning he carried a BB gun to the mall and climbed through the roof hatch with it.
Jason was popping away on the roof of the mall when a shopper looked up and screamed at the sight of a young man aiming and shooting a gun.
By Jonathan Rogers, on September 1st, 2010 No comments
Andrew Peterson is so smart and thoughtful and and gifted and insightful that I drop his name every chance I get. Have I mentioned that we’re friends? And not just on Facebook. I commend to you, dear reader, his essays on wealth, work, creativity, and calling at the Rabbit Room. I hope you’ll read them. Today’s piece, “The Extravagant Gamble” explains some of “the nitty gritty nuts and bolts behind trying to make a living as an artist.” You may not be trying to make a living as an artist, but you still ought to read it. Here’s a sampling…
…It is my job, in the words of George MacDonald, “to better what I can.” Look around you. See the sorrow and weariness in the world, in your own community and church, under your own roof–in your own heart, for Heaven’s sake–and better what you can. Let Christ lead you; he’ll show you how. If you’re wealthy, keep your job and fling the money at those who are bringing water to the thirsty. If you’re not wealthy, better what you can. Work your field. Tend your family like a garden. Write a song about your story. Write a story.Better yet, live a story. Makesomething beautiful, and make something beautiful of your life. There’s so much in the world that’s falling apart, so put something together. Find a way.
By Jonathan Rogers, on September 1st, 2010 2 comments
Okay, this is awesome. This week’s featured feechie is Ray Cason. To quote Mr. Cason, “I aint never seen so many gators in my life.” I bet you aint either.
What would a proper feechie do in the midst of so many alligators? Easy: “I just eased through ‘em and went fishing.”
By Jonathan Rogers, on August 31st, 2010 4 comments
The Charlatan’s Boy releases five weeks from today, on October 5. By way of foretaste, I offer up the chapter titles for the first half of the book. They should give you an idea of what you can expect. So might the illustration to the left. It is the frontispiece, done by the exceedingly talented Abe Goolsby. Here’s something you probably didn’t know about Abe: he taught himself Latin, which he speaks with an Italian accent. And why shouldn’t Latin be spoken in an Italian accent? If you’re a publisher, you need to know Abe. He does great work.
Now, for those chapter titles…
Chapter 1: In which I jump out of a box and play the Wild Man of the Feechiefen Swamp
Chapter 2:
In which we get out of the feechie trade and I begin my formal education
Chapter 3:
In which I take up a new trade and get flabbergasted
By Jonathan Rogers, on August 30th, 2010 6 comments
Note: This is another re-run from The Rabbit Room. This piece originally ran in that august website in February 2008.
Fifth grade wasn’t kind to Susan O’Farrell. No longer an undifferentiated mass of squirming humanity, our class at Miller Elementary began to sift itself into the social haves and have-nots, the in-crowd and everybody else. Susan O’Farrell, a plain and unremarkable girl, suddenly found herself on the outside of friendships she had never had reason to doubt.
And even I, oblivious as I was, became aware of the growing sadness that seemed to be the central fact of her life. The angles of her face got sharper, and the dark circles under her eyes got darker, giving the impression that she was sinking more deeply into herself. I was a nice boy, and I tried to be nice to Susan. I imagined myself one of the few rays of sunshine in this girl’s darkening existence.
By Jonathan Rogers, on August 25th, 2010 11 comments
For this week’s FotW we have to go way back into the archives, to the man who inspired Dobro Turtlebane. When I was a graduate student at Vanderbilt, I went back to my hometown in Georgia to work on a remodeling crew. One of my crewmates was a boy named Jake. He was seventeen and skinny but tough as beef jerky. He was so country that the dash and bustle of Warner Robins, GA made him gape the way you might gape at Times Square, and any time we went to a restaurant for lunch, he had the unsettling habit of telling the town girls how pretty they were.
By Jonathan Rogers, on August 24th, 2010 No comments
I love that moment in “The Ugly Duckling” when the poor, persecuted duckling, set upon on every side by ducks and hens and cats and henwives, sees a flock of swans:
“The duckling had never seen anything so beautiful. They were dazzlingly white with long waving necks. They were swans, and uttering a peculiar cry they spread out their magnificent broad wings and flew away from the cold regions to warner lands and open seas. They mounted so high, so very high, and the ugly little duckling became strangely uneasy. He circled round and round in the water like a wheel, craning his neck up into the air after them. Then he uttered a shriek so piercing and so strange that he was quite frightned by it himself. Oh, he could not forget those birds, those beautiful birds.”
Was there ever a better depiction of what it’s like to be a child? The duckling, so full of self-doubt, marvels and trembles at the thing he is destined to become. We know what he doesn’t know: he will be that beautiful someday.
Beautiful someday. The duckling’s great revelation is that he is himself a thing of wonder. He admired the swans, but it never occurred to him to aspire to swanhood. When he finally comes face to face with the swans, he assumes that they will kill him for his ugliness. Bowing his neck for the fatal blow, he sees his reflection in the water. And there he sees a swan.
It’s the divine comedy. Our wildest dreams turn out not to be wild enough. Our fondest hopes turn out to be pale beside the truth. And we long and ache for that which turns out to have been true all along.
By Jonathan Rogers, on August 23rd, 2010 9 comments
A while back I gave the keynote address at the induction ceremony of the Houston County (GA) Educators’ Hall of Fame. Here’s part of that speech…
I once had an ice cream cone with the school bully—a fifth-grader named Jay. I don’t remember how this came to pass exactly—maybe he and I just happened to be at the ice cream shop at the same time. But I remember that he and I and another boy ate our ice cream cones outside, in the grimy hindparts of a shopping center, among the dumpsters and discarded pallets. And I remember Jay swiping the last crumbs of the cone off his hands, then balling up his hard little fist and punching me right below my left eye. I remember the hot shame that burned on my face as I pelted home as fast as my bike would take me.
By Jonathan Rogers, on August 23rd, 2010 2 comments
It occurs to me that some of you may wonder why you aren’t seeing The Charlatan’s Boy on store shelves. The release date, after all, was supposed to be August 10. The release date is now October 5. This is a good thing. I turned in the manuscript very late–so late, in fact, that Waterbrook’s sales, marketing, and publicity teams didn’t really have time to pave the way for the book in the way that they would have liked to. So they moved the date to give themselves more time to do what they need to do–getting reviews, lining up bookstore orders, etc.. The people at Waterbrook and Random House might have said “Too bad” and let the book limp out into the world. But they believed in The Charlatan’s Boy enough to back up and take their time. For which I am very grateful.
By Jonathan Rogers, on August 20th, 2010 No comments
One Mother’s Day my cousin Todd went out to see our grandmother, who at the time lived halfway to Hawkinsville. The visit was uneventful enough, but on the drive home Todd saw something he had never seen in his life: a roadkill alligator. He stopped the car and got out to get a good look at the poor alligator. It was a big one–eight or nine feet long with a great scuted tail and the same dreamy smile in death that it had worn in life. Todd marveled at the thing for a while, then got back in his car. His friend Brad was expecting him.
My cousin Jason worked for an heating and air conditioning company when he was in high school. They took care of the huge air conditioning units that sat atop the local mall. The mall had pigeons. Looking up through the skylights, a shopper could see them bobbing and strutting on the roof. They were picturesque, but when they took up residence in the air conditioning units, they played havoc with the interior climate of the mall.
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