Billy Stormfield's Visit to Hell, a novel by Stan Rice, part one. Communists in Hell

 

Stan Rice as just published another novel, Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell. It is based on Mark Twain’s classic book about Captain Stormfield’s visit to Heaven. Here is the author’s description from Amazon:

Billy Stormfield, descendant of Captain Stormfield in Mark Twain’s book, wakes up in Hell. He meets Mark Twain, who takes him on a tour. All the interesting people are in Hell: Moses, Karl Marx (who is funny only when he quotes Groucho), Joe the Cherokee, the Apostle Andrew, and Pope Francis, because they were all what the fundamentalists called communists; Noah, because he was an environmentalist; General Douglas McArthur, because he forgave the Japanese rather than slaughtering them as the Old Testament commanded; and of course Charles Darwin. Thomas Jefferson, united at last with Sally Hemings, tells them how biologically stupid racism and oppression are. The only people in Heaven are the white supremacists and the jihadists, who spend all their time killing each other over and over forever. The young white supremacist Stonewall escapes to Hell, where he meets and loves the Black history teacher Philomena.

Between Heaven and Hell, Jesus eternally suffers the way Job did, dogs licking his wounds. With His friend the Prophet Mo, He watched His mother Mary helping people sneak into Heaven. Together with the crew from Hell, and led by the school girl Malala, Jesus and Mo storm the assembly in Heaven, kicking Henry VIII and Donald Trump (who look almost alike) down to Earth. Stonewall and Philomena celebrate their wedding feast.

Well, of course, fundamentalists would think that all communists go to hell. But this novel has some surprises: There are souls in hell that you would never have guessed were communists in human life.

Of course, Karl Marx was there.

But also, it turns out that all traditional Native Americans were communists. There were at least five hundred tribes, different from one another in many ways. One of the few things they all had in common was that they held their tribal lands in common, rather than private, ownership. They individually owned tools and houses, but the land belonged to the tribe. This caused a lot of problems when the American government took away tribal lands (for example, the Cherokees, as described in some of Rice’s other novels) and tried to allot acreages to each individual or family. Besides the fact that this gave the whites an excuse to steal unallotted tribal land for themselves, it was also inconceivable to the Natives. That’s how Joe the Cherokee ended up in Hell.

But the Apostle Andrew? In what way was he a communist? You may recall that, at the beginning of the book of Acts, all the Christians were living together “in an upper room,” and they held all things in common (Acts 4:32). This was the pattern that Jesus had established among his followers. As a matter of fact, a couple of the Christians got in big trouble (God killed them) when they held some of their possessions back from common ownership. That’s how Andrew ended up in Hell.

And Pope Francis. He believed the rich should be required to share their wealth (not necessarily all of it) with the poor. I guess that made him a communist.

This is just the beginning of the surprises you will encounter in this novel, Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell.

Edd’s Land: A Novel of Four Cherokee Brothers in Early Oklahoma, a novel by Stan Rice, part five. William and Tuberculosis

Author Stan Rice has just published the third of three novels (Edd’s Land) in the series Trail of Tears: Novels of Cherokee Identity. Because Kindle has unreliable availability and formatting, the author has also posted a free PDF download. This third novel is about four Cherokee brothers in early Oklahoma.

Here is Rice’s summary from Kindle:

Four mixed-blood Cherokee brothers, and the white swindler who steals their land and oil allotments, greet Oklahoma statehood in different ways. Edd Hicks loses not just his land but his fiancée to Averd Hargrove, a Claremore banker. Edd remains confident and upright, and brings order to his farmland and family. Frank Hicks learns confidence as he plots his dramatic revenge against Hargrove. Lon Hicks leaves his past behind in pursuit of a failed Hollywood career. William Hicks is ill with tuberculosis when he meets the great Oklahoma socialist crusader Kate Barnard. Frank, to the disapproval of his racist family and friends, falls in love and moves in with Bert Hicks, a black woman descended from slaves owned by Frank’s ancestors. Frank nearly gives up on his plan to scalp Hargrove until he sees Hargrove leading a lynch mob against Bert’s brother. The net effect of the vast wealth of the former Cherokee Nation is that Edd’s daughter Nina finally gets enough money back from the United States government to buy a new pair of shoes.

This part of the book tells the story of a forgotten portion of American history. William Hicks was highly refined and educated, having especially fine handwriting. But somehow he got tuberculosis. This was during a half century of American history when people knew all about bacteria but not what to do about them, the half century before antibiotics. If you got TB, your death was almost inevitable, though slow; and it was dangerous to let you circulate in society.  You would be sent to a sanatorium, where you would rest in dry, cool air until you expired. And this is what happened to William.

As a reader, I wonder if there might have been more to the story. How can you prove that someone has TB? A white government official could declare that a Cherokee, with a minor respiratory ailment, had TB and this would make him forfeit his allotment. This story is told through the eyes of William, who apparently does not suspect this possibility.

The Great White Plague is now almost forgotten, but it killed millions of people. So many that, in fact, Europeans decided to make the best of it. They called it “consumption” and praised the delicate pink features and frailty of the victims, featuring them in operas such as La Traviata and La Bohème in which the divine consumptive soprano sings an aria and falls over dead. It is central to several stories by Andrea Barrett.

Another aspect of history that is almost forgotten is that, when it first became a state, Oklahoma was almost socialist. Today, while most states have become a little more progressive, Oklahoma is as red as a state can get. The test of a true Oklahoma politician is how beloved he or she is of Donald Trump. But one of the great Oklahoma heroes of the early decades of the twentieth century is Kate Barnard (see A Life on Fire by Connie Cronley), openly socialist. She would absolutely not fit into any conceivable modern Oklahoma administration.

What is left today in Oklahoma of the lives and deaths of people, like the four brothers in Rice’s novel? We get some idea of this from the epilogue, written in the voice of the author’s mother Nina Rice. All that remains in Oklahoma is a legacy of corrupt politicians, such as the congressman who takes a bribe to give a postmaster position to an unqualified person. And what remains of all the strife and blood experienced by the Cherokees? The federal government paid the Cherokee tribe for its expropriation of Cherokee Strip land (mostly the panhandle of the state). Nina says that the money she got from this, which was all that remained for her from her tribe’s strife and blood, was just enough money to buy a new pair of shoes.

The Thinking, Walking Biped, part thirteen. Ticks

Of course, walking is not entirely safe. There are numerous dangers on the trail, such as hostile animals. Few of these dangers remain in the walking areas available to most pedestrians, at least, the larger animals such as wolves and bears. But there are plenty of small invertebrates such as mosquitoes, chiggers, and ticks waiting to afflict you. They have no evil intention; it is just that you are, along with other mammals, their major source of food.

Ticks like to wait on the tips of leaf blades near paths. This is where they have the maximum chance of an animal brushing against them. This happens mostly in areas where lots of animals roam, therefore they are unlikely to do this in the middle of your yard. But in a forest or field, where deer and people are likely to pass through, there can be lots of ticks.

A tick bite by itself may not be a major concern, but various disease microorganisms use ticks as a vector to get from one animal to another. A major example in North America is Lyme disease (caused by the bacterium Borrellia burgdorferi and spread mostly by deer ticks). But it is not the only example.

Whenever the weather is warm, some people like to hike. This includes amateur walkers who have little experience with hiking outdoors. As you might expect, it is advisable to wear pants rather than shorts if you plan to leave the trail. During peak vacation times, health authorities often warn people to check themselves for ticks after brushing against grass. Authorities such as the U.S. Forest Service advise a “full body tick check” after you get home from your hike.

A full-body tick check can be done alone when you are naked in front of a mirror. Although this is better than not doing one at all, it is best done with a significant other. (I told my students about this one time. One student asked, where do we find a significant other? I think he must have been a social loser… If I’d been thinking, I would have said, “You can get anything on Amazon,” but I didn’t think of this snappy response until it was too late.) Reasons for this include:

• Ticks love to insinuate themselves into the deepest, warmest crevices of your body, and they will crawl a long ways to find such places. The reasons should be obvious. In deep crevices, they are protected from being scratched or brushed away. This is a real danger to ticks when they get on primates, with dexterous fingers. There is not much a cow or deer can do to scratch away a tick.
• It is difficult for one person to bend around and look in a mirror at their dorsal surfaces and nether regions. You would probably be in a physically uncomfortable position looking closely at your own butt in a mirror.

 A mutual tick-check is a good test for the intimacy of a sexual relationship: Do I trust you enough for a tick-check? The standards of trust for a tick check might even be higher than those for sexual intercourse. Unlike sex itself, the tick-check forces you to look closely at body regions where one seldom looks during sexual intercourse. If you are worried about bad smells, take a shower first; showers seldom dislodge ticks. In the sexual regions of the body, especially if hair is present, there are more surfaces for a tick to hide than you could imagine. And it is not just the nether regions. Ticks—some of which are very small and require close observation—can also hide in the folds of flesh underneath female breasts. But don’t ignore the back, neck, shoulders, and legs, as well as armpits and behind the knees. See the website here.

In earlier centuries, people had so many parasites that a walk in the woods would make little difference in their parasite load. Those days must have been wonderful for ticks.

Edd’s Land: A Novel of Four Cherokee Brothers in Early Oklahoma, a novel by Stan Rice, part four. Lonnie in Search of a Good Time

Author Stan Rice has just published the third of three novels (Edd’s Land) in the series Trail of Tears: Novels of Cherokee Identity. Because Kindle has unreliable availability and formatting, the author has also posted a free PDF download. This third novel is about four Cherokee brothers in early Oklahoma.

 

Here is Rice’s summary from Kindle:

Four mixed-blood Cherokee brothers, and the white swindler who steals their land and oil allotments, greet Oklahoma statehood in different ways. Edd Hicks loses not just his land but his fiancée to Averd Hargrove, a Claremore banker. Edd remains confident and upright, and brings order to his farmland and family. Frank Hicks learns confidence as he plots his dramatic revenge against Hargrove. Lon Hicks leaves his past behind in pursuit of a failed Hollywood career. William Hicks is ill with tuberculosis when he meets the great Oklahoma socialist crusader Kate Barnard. Frank, to the disapproval of his racist family and friends, falls in love and moves in with Bert Hicks, a black woman descended from slaves owned by Frank’s ancestors. Frank nearly gives up on his plan to scalp Hargrove until he sees Hargrove leading a lynch mob against Bert’s brother. The net effect of the vast wealth of the former Cherokee Nation is that Edd’s daughter Nina finally gets enough money back from the United States government to buy a new pair of shoes.

Lorenzo (Lonnie) Hicks, Edd's brother, had a withering sense of humor, by which he humiliated Frank, but which was powerless against Edd. He apparently had no morals other than to just not kill anybody. He stole family money and decided to live as a professional gambler.

At least that is what he planned. But two things happened. First, he found out he wasn’t a very good gambler, unless he stayed in the low-stakes land of rural Oklahoma. Second, he was surprised by his love for a waitress, whom he takes with him to California because she aspires to being an actress. They both get into B movies, and no further. They meet a young Ronald Reagan, who eventually went further in the movies. Lonnie also meets Rudolph Valentino, who hopes that Lonnie’s traditional Cherokee pharmacist brother Frank can cure him.

This part of the book is really funny, especially the fake murder scene.

Edd’s Land: A Novel of Four Cherokee Brothers in Early Oklahoma, a novel by Stan Rice, part three. Frank’s Revenge

Author Stan Rice has just published the third of three novels (Edd’s Land) in the series Trail of Tears: Novels of Cherokee Identity. Because Kindle has unreliable availability and formatting, the author has also posted a free PDF download. This second novel is about four Cherokee brothers in early Oklahoma.

Frank Hicks, Edd’s brother, lost his land because a white government official declared him mentally incompetent. Unlike Edd, Frank was not willing to just make the best of it. He wanted revenge. When he found out who had taken control of his land—the same man who had stolen Edd’s original fiancée—he decided to take matters into his own hands and plot a traditional Cherokee revenge—by scalping.

In the process of planning his revenge, he discovered that it was not just a technical matter of figuring out how to scalp the evil man. (Note, scalping is not necessarily killing, since it just removes the scalp and does not hurt the brain. The intact brain can then spend a lifetime of anger for being scalped.) It required a whole philosophy of life, of how to carry out an act of war without hatred, an emotion that just gets in the way of doing the job right. It takes Frank many years to prepare, and decades before he finally gets the opportunity to do it. Frank is a pharmacist.

Another issue that the author has to confront is white racism. Not, in this case, against Native Americans, since in Oklahoma a lot of people had Native ancestors, but against Blacks. Rice invents (he admits in his author’s notes it didn’t really happen) an intense love affair between Frank Hicks and Bert (Alberta) Hicks, a freedman descendant in the Cherokee tribe. The freedmen were descendants of slaves owned by Cherokees before Emancipation. In this, Frank fights against his family’s deep prejudices. It is a beautiful and touching love story.

September 15. Edd’s Land: A Novel of Four Cherokee Brothers in Early Oklahoma, a novel by Stan Rice, part two. Edd Making the Best of It, continued

Author Stan Rice has just published the third of three novels (Edd’s Land) in the series Trail of Tears: Novels of Cherokee Identity. Because Kindle has unreliable availability and formatting, the author has also posted a free PDF download. This third novel is about four Cherokee brothers in early Oklahoma.

 

 Here is Rice’s summary from Kindle:

 Four mixed-blood Cherokee brothers, and the white swindler who steals their land and oil allotments, greet Oklahoma statehood in different ways. Edd Hicks loses not just his land but his fiancée to Averd Hargrove, a Claremore banker. Edd remains confident and upright, and brings order to his farmland and family. Frank Hicks learns confidence as he plots his dramatic revenge against Hargrove. Lon Hicks leaves his past behind in pursuit of a failed Hollywood career. William Hicks is ill with tuberculosis when he meets the great Oklahoma socialist crusader Kate Barnard. Frank, to the disapproval of his racist family and friends, falls in love and moves in with Bert Hicks, a black woman descended from slaves owned by Frank’s ancestors. Frank nearly gives up on his plan to scalp Hargrove until he sees Hargrove leading a lynch mob against Bert’s brother. The net effect of the vast wealth of the former Cherokee Nation is that Edd’s daughter Nina finally gets enough money back from the United States government to buy a new pair of shoes.

Each adult Cherokee received a land allotment on which to establish a farm. It sounds simple and fair enough, and Edd was willing to make the best of it. But it was the white guardians who had actual legal control over the land, which means they could sell it and keep the money for themselves. They usually did this by having the Cherokee land recipients declared legally incompetent. Clearly nobody could do this to Edd Hicks, who was highly educated by rural Oklahoma standards.

But Edd saw what happened to other Cherokees, including his own brothers (see later essays). White government officials continued to steal land from Natives long after the last shots were fired in the Indian Wars. In one case, Native children who owned land worth millions of dollars (due to oil reserves under the land) were living in a tree, while their guardians lived as wealthy men. This is a shameful part of American history that is almost never taught in courses.

But Edd, an upright man who believed he was doing God’s will, made the best of it.

Better than a Dog Anyhow: Stories of Darwin, by Stan Rice

Author Stan Rice has just published a set of short stories, Better than a Dog Anyhow, based on Charles Darwin. Rice wrote the Encyclopedia of Evolution and other popular books about evolution. He knows a lot of details about Darwin, and this collection of stories shows it.

 

Here is the Amazon description of the book: “The young Charles Darwin wants to believe in an orderly created world. But his experiences of the world—from the death of his mother, to the beautiful ravages of love, to the many exciting adventures during his trip around the world—disrupt this view. For Charles and Emma, his wife of four decades, religious faith has always been a point of quiet but loving contention. Five of these stories are fictionalized accounts of Darwin’s true biography. The others are imaginary stories: about Darwin’s Irish gardener who cannot understand why Darwin is so kind to him; a fantasy in which Darwin is reunited, via interlacing time lines, with his dead daughter Annie; and, what if Darwin, the father of evolution, had met Mendel, the father of genetics? In these stories, you will find a man whom you wish you could have known.”