Exterminating Angel Press

Creative Solutions for Practical Idealists.

Todblog

EAP Editor/Publisher Natters on About This and That.

On Beasts of All Kinds.

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Fairy tales are great for so many things, I couldn’t even begin. But one of the best is how they blend the human and the animal. Humans and animals, in fairy tales, are constantly in close communion, helping and hindering each other, even changing places, with startling results. ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ for an obvious example. Helpful animals abound. My personal favorite is ‘The Emperor and the Nightingale’, where a bird helps the emperor back to life, while refusing to come to court. A great many unsung heroes of our own day are like that – helping others back to life, but refusing to be ‘honored’, if honor it can be called, at our own particular version of court.

So it isn’t surprising that this issue’s EAP contributors to ANIMAL DREAMS move dreamily in and out of the region of the human and the region of the beast. Tom Ball’s Talking Ape Man. Ever enigmatic contributor Jim Meirose’s How I Broke My Nose.

And then there’s my mother’s fairy tale at the end of her life, as she died, there was her memory of a dog as present to her then as he was to her as a child: Mudd (from “My Life with Dogs”).

Human animals in all their confused but well meaning glory show up in Cal LaFountain’s fascinating piece Exploring America’s Libraries, Churches, and Casinos. And Brian Griffith, as usual, gives us some hope in Africa’s Private Animal Worlds. David D. Horowitz put in a word for cats in Catalysts.

There are animals who warn us, if only we could listen. Listen, then, to poet David Selzer and his A Piecemeal Crisis.

Welcome back to our favorite translator of poetry, though usually the poems are his own. Charles S. Kraszewski returns with poems from two different poets: Foul weather (a parable), by Artur Grabowski. And the blooming meadows, by Jakub Pacześniak.

And as long as I’m passing out welcomes . . . welcome fall. And welcome back to you.

 

 

Beyond Physics.

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In my Snotty Saves the Day, from The History of Arcadia visionary fiction series, Arcadian physicist Devindra Vale points out that all the biological truths of human beings are found in fairy tales. Which naturally makes total sense. Story comes from the unconscious, which is a part of our biological make up. How then could […]

Everyone Needs to Make a Living, Nobody Needs to Make a Killing.

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I ran into an EAP contributor the other evening at the first Happy Hour for Ashland.news where I’m a board member. He asked how long EAP: The Magazine had been going—seemed quite shocked at hearing ‘since 2009’. He commented that it had never been, as he said, ‘monetized’, and this seemed to make him feel […]

Desire Paths R Us.

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Really, there can’t be a better introduction to the ALL OUT TO SEA issue of EAP: The Magazine than The Ship of Theseus by EAP resident philosopher Bruce E. R. Thompson. He writes about the spirit animating the renewable body. That’s what I think best to focus on as we head into a renewable year. […]

Pick Yourself Up.

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When you want to know what’s going on under the surface of the culture, just check out what its writers, poets, and artists are doing. Especially the ones flying under the radar: that’s where to look. You’ll see agitation now, and pain. David Bolton, “A Letter to Humanity.” Jim Meirose, “Last Words of a Deteriorating […]

Old Friends, Good and Bad.

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Let me start by looking at the old friends, good. My favorite piece this issue, Rue Matthiessen’s “There Was a Time,” is a beautiful paean to old friendship, to the joy and mourning that go with having and losing such a friend. I also love the short essays always faithfully contributed by David D. Horowitz, […]

Keeping My Head Above Water

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Anyone who knows me, knows I’m not just a Glass is Half Full kind of a person, but a Glass is Half Full and I Don’t Want to Hear Anything But How to Fill It To The Brim kind of a gal. But even I, these last couple of months, have felt my head disappearing […]

Circle Back.

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It’s another year, and a new chance to refresh our origins—rather than the present cultural activity of driving them into the ground. When does real life begin? As the old joke goes, when you ask a priest, a minister and a rabbi, the first says, “At conception.” The second, “At birth.” The rabbi, though, in […]

Visionary Future.

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When the Newport Public Library suggested I do a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, I was delighted. Of course. But I also had a secret hope for it. The present Emergency calls for as many of us who can to envision a way forward to a better world to get together and get […]

World on Fire.

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This morning we all woke to a world wide environmental crisis. Other crises, sure, yeah, but they stem from the first one. When danger threatens from an uncontrollable source—weather, fire, earthquake, flood—anxiety rises exponentially. There is a biological response. For humans as animals, the biological response is fear. For humans as human, the response is […]