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By Ron Rash (2010)
"It's a lot easier to have a conscience about something if you figure it all the way right or all the way wrong."— from Burning Bright
Ron Rash has been called "a national treasure" (Seattle Times), a "writer of quiet and stunning beauty" (Huffington Post), and "one of the best writers in America writing about Appalachia" (San Francisco Chronicle). A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and award-winning author of numerous volumes of poetry and prose, Rash "gathers several of the finest stories anyone could hope to read" (Irish Times) in his collection, Burning Bright, winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. "The feral [and] beautiful stories in Ron Rash's Burning Bright evoke Appalachians of a Civil War past—and a meth-blighted present—with the haunting clarity of Walker Evans photographs" (Vogue). The collection is "a slender set of spare and menacing depictions of the unforgiving ways of life in rural Appalachia," noted the Washington Post. It "finds a narrow sweet spot between Raymond Carver's minimalism and William Faulkner's Gothic." Highlighting the "purity and precision" of Rash's writing, Booklist calls the stories "deceptively easy to read as they are hard to forget."
Introduction to the Book
"The characters in Burning Bright are flawed … but they're not monsters, even when their actions lack compassion or are downright criminal. The worst you can say about them is 'They're trying.'" – Pop Matters
Though the 12 stories in Burning Bright cover a wide swath of time from the Civil War to the present day, collectively they tell a story about Appalachia. And though they take us along the winding roads to the old homesteads and subdivisions of the American South, where "the region is a character in and of itself" and "myths and legends and history permeate every story" (BookPage), they also pulse with universal human emotions.
The collection lets us glimpse the lives of farmers and office workers, soldiers and war widows, pawnbrokers and old bar musicians, all struggling to exist in the world. "Rash's characters…act as they believe they must to save what is dear to them—family members, a marriage, a heritage, a nation, and even a neighbor's child" (Booklist). They "rely on gritty fortitude, shadowed compassion, and a bone deep alliance to the land and the people they came from to carry on, day to day" (Huffington Post).
The book opens with "Hard Times," a story set during the Great Depression in which an impoverished farmer and his wife find some eggs missing from their henhouse. In their search for a culprit, their minds wander to their neighbor, a proud, honest man whose family has fallen on even harder times. A thinly veiled accusation prompts a swift, shocking response and ultimately a heart-wrenching revelation. "Any writer knows how to startle. Few can flesh out a simple story of, say, egg theft with the enormously effective understatement used here" (New York Times).
Following "Hard Times" is "Back of Beyond," a story set in the modern era about a man who discovers the devastation that has befallen his brother and his brother's wife as a result of their son's crystal methamphetamine addiction. "These two stories, like everything in the collection, are peppered with essentially good people fallen on hard times; good people struggling to make ends meet and make sense of the world around them; good people trying to hold onto their humanity and dignity in the face of overwhelming pressure" (Independent).
Sometimes the pressure characters face comes not from the outside world but from their own beliefs, fears, and desires, especially if they conflict with the beliefs, fears, and desires of those around them. In "The Woman Who Believes in Jaguars," an insomniac visits her local zoo and mistakenly accuses a passing woman of kidnapping a child that has reportedly gone missing. No one knows that the accuser once had a child who lived for only four hours. In "The Corpse Bird," a father sees an owl and, remembering the lessons of his youth about nature's signs—what others call superstitions—he becomes vehement in his attempts to persuade the parents of his daughter's sick friend that she must go to the hospital or she will die. In the title story, "Burning Bright," a newly-in-love, 60-year-old woman refuses to support her neighbors' suspicions that her young husband may be an arsonist. Her "two-page trip to the grocery store where all of the town's malice is embodied by one checkout cashier is yet another instance of Mr. Rash's tactical precision" (New York Times).
"Highlighting the continuity of the human struggle over the ages," Rash uses "a focused spotlight to illuminate a wider truth about society and our place within it" (Independent).
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Photo courtesy of Clemson University
Ron Rash (b. 1953)
"You go deep enough into a place and you're going to hit the universal, because you're hitting what's true of people." —Ron Rash in Electric Lit
Ron Rash's ancestors have called the southern Appalachian Mountains home since the mid-1700s. His parents worked in a textile mill in Chester, South Carolina, where Rash was born and lived until the age of eight, when his family moved to Boiling Springs, North Carolina. His father was "a remarkable man," he said, a "kid who dropped out of high school at 16 to work in the mill, then through incredible perseverance got his GED, went to college while working full-time, and eventually became a college art teacher" (from an interview with Shepherd University).
Rash was encouraged to embrace language and stories from a young age. Though his grandfather couldn't read or write, he was—like many of Rash's older relatives—an entertaining raconteur. "I grew up hearing an Appalachian dialect that you don't often hear today" (Authors 'Round the South). Both of Rash's parents were voracious readers. His mother took Rash and his siblings to the library every week. But he had a special relationship with his grandmother, who had been a schoolteacher in the North Carolina mountains before she married his grandfather and turned her attention to their farm. After his grandfather passed, he'd visit his grandmother at her place in the woods. "I was like Huck Finn. My grandmother would let me go, let me wander. It was a gift. I was not afraid. I just reveled in it. The connections I made with the natural world stayed with me" (Publishers Weekly). He spent a lot of time by himself, daydreaming. "I would make up narratives, telling stories to myself. It was either storytelling or a kind of madness" (Authors 'Round the South).
He also spent a lot of time reading, though he didn't start writing until he attended Gardner-Webb University, from which he received a BA. He earned an MA in English from Clemson University and met his wife there. "A book that probably changed my life as much as any was Crime and Punishment.... I remember feeling an almost out-of-body experience. It was so intense, and I think it occurred to me then how wonderful it is that you can do this with mere splotches of ink" (Deep South Magazine).
Following his studies, Rash worked as an instructor in a rural high school in Oconee County, South Carolina, then for 17 years as a teacher for the Tri-County Technical College in Pendleton, South Carolina. Currently, he holds the Parris Chair in Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University, where he teaches poetry and fiction writing. "My years teaching high school and technical college made writing difficult, but I've always believed if writing is important enough to a person, he or she will make time. I got up early to write a couple of hours every weekday, wrote weekends and holidays" (Shepherd University).
In 1994, Rash received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry and published his first book, a collection of short stories called The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth (Bench Press, 1994). Since then, he has written pieces that have appeared in more than 100 magazines and anthologies, as well as numerous critically acclaimed novels and collections of poetry and short stories, including One Foot in Eden (Novello Festival Press, 2002), named Appalachian Book of the Year and winner of Foreword Magazine's Gold Medal in Literary Fiction; Saints at the River (Henry Holt, 2004), named Fiction Book of the Year by both the Southern Book Critics Circle and the Southeastern Booksellers Association; The Cove (Ecco, 2012); Serena (Ecco, 2008), a novel that was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and for which he learned how to hunt rattlesnakes with an eagle (Financial Times); and Burning Bright (Ecco, 2010), winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.
"I think writing a poem is like being a greyhound," said Rash when asked how he approaches writing in different genres. "Writing a novel is like being a mule. You go up one long row, then down another, and try not to look up too often to see how far you still have to go. Short fiction is the medium I love the most, because it requires that I bring everything I've learned about poetry—the concision, the ability to say something as vividly as possible—but also the ability to create a narrative that, though lacking a novel's length, satisfies the reader" (Daily Beast).
Writers Corner (2006 Prose Fellowship)
The collection begins with "Hard Times" (p. 3), a story of life during the Depression when compassionate impulses and matters of pride sometimes conflicted with survival instincts. How do the adults in this story differ in their approach to surviving during hard times? Which of them do you think you'd be most like in such circumstances?
Rash begins "Back of Beyond" (p. 19), "The Ascent" (p. 75), and "Return" (p. 127) with a description of a cold, snowy landscape. Why do you think he began these stories with a description of the setting? Why might he have chosen this specific environment?
"It's a lot easier to have a conscience about something if you figure it all the way right or all the way wrong," says the narrator of the story "Dead Confederates" (p. 53). What do you think he means by this in the context of the story? In general, do you agree with the statement? Can you think of times in your own life when it was either easy or difficult to have a conscience?
The stories "Back of Beyond" (p. 19) and "The Accent" (p. 75) explore the tragic impact that methamphetamine addiction can have on family members. In "Back of Beyond," both the son (the addict) and his mother claim his wrongdoings are not his fault. Whom or what do they blame? Whom or what does the main character, Parson, blame? Who or what do you think is to blame in these stories? Why?
By the end of "The Woman Who Believed in Jaguars" (p. 91), something "comes unanchored" inside Ruth, the main character. What do you think has come unanchored? Why?
"Why couldn't she act her age?" asks the daughter of Marcie, the main character in the title story "Burning Bright" (p. 116), echoing the sentiment of others in her community. What does it mean to act one's age? If you were Marcie, would you have married Carl, despite your suspicions? Would you have told the sheriff what Marcie told him at the end of the story?
Why do you think Rash chose the title of the story "Burning Bright" (p. 107) as the title for the full collection? What other story titles might also have worked as a title for the book? What story title would you have chosen as the title? Why?
It has been said that the region in Rash's writing often acts like a character in and of itself, such as in the story "Into the Gorge" (p. 133). What do you think this means? Do you agree? What are some of the characteristics of this region?
The story "Falling Star" (p. 153) gives voice to a man who feels increasingly distanced from his wife when she goes back to school, fulfilling her desire to "make something" of herself. If you were to advise him on a different course of action—one that might save his marriage, his confidence, and his dignity—what would you tell him?
In "The Corpse Bird" (p. 165), the main character, Boyd Candler, believes in the folklore of his ancestors and acts on those beliefs despite the disapproval of his community, most of whom believe such superstitions are not rational or enlightened. Would you have done what he did? Do you have myths and legends from your own family, or simply beliefs, that surface in your daily life and are different than those of others around you?
How do the characters throughout these stories try and hold onto their humanity during challenging times? Do they succeed? Did you find as you were reading this collection that you were surprised by the choices they made? Or did you feel as if you'd have made the same choices?
The bar patrons in the story "Waiting for the End of the World" (p. 181) are entranced with the song "Free Bird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd. Why? Can you think of something in your own life that gives you that same feeling?
The last story of the collection, "Lincolnites" (p. 193) takes readers back to the Civil War era where a woman struggles to survive while she waits for her husband to return from service. In what ways does this story work as an ending to the collection? What does it leave you thinking about?
Did this collection of stories confirm, illuminate, go against, or in some ways change your views about the Appalachian region and its people? If so, how?
Author and NEA Literature Fellow
Ron-Rash-Podcast-Final-092216.mp3
Music Credit: "Annibelle June," composed and performed by Abigail Washburn and Bela Fleck.
Ron Rash: I've just always been fascinated with what happens when you have characters in their landscape and how they react to it and how the landscape impacts them. And certainly the culture I write about, the Appalachian mountain culture, I am convinced of the psychological impact. I hope when a reader reads my books that the landscape feels like a character.>
Jo Reed: That's author Ron Rash and I'm Josephine Reed. You're listening to Art Works the weekly podcast produced at the National Endowment for the Arts
Ron Rash is one of those rare writers who moves effortlessly from poetry to short stories to novels. In fact, he gotten literature fellowships from the NEA for both poetry and prose. On the poetry front, he's written Eureka Mills and Waking; his short story collections include Burning Bright and Something Rich and Strange,while his longer fiction includes Serena and The Cove. But whatever the genre, Ron's focus is the geography and culture of the southern Appalachian Mountains. And he brings to both to an intense immediacy with some of the most beautiful writing around. And as anyone knows who's read, say, Serena—Ron Rash also knows how to construct tight plots and create vivid characters.
We see all his skills at work in his latest novel, The Risen, a mystery where the choices made by two brothers while young have unexpected and unsettling repercussions in the present. It's hard to give a plot synopsis of a mystery because you don't want to give anything away, so I think I'll just let Ron Rash tell it.
Ron Rash: The novel's about two brothers who grew up in the North Carolina mountains. In 1969, one of the brothers fell in love with a young woman who had come from Florida. She was kind of the first sense of an alternative lifestyle that they had ever seen, but now 46 years later her body has been found in that same area and one brother realizes that the other brother covered up the murder and he's in a situation where he has to decide should I go to the police, should I confront him or keep my mouth shut because it's been so long. And the novel works in that way in the sense of the decision whether to confront the older brother or not.
Jo Reed: And the two brothers are Bill, who's the older brother, and Eugene, who is the brother who is conflicted about what to do.
Ron Rash: Exactly.
Jo Reed: And the girl's name is-- pronounce it—Ligeia?
Ron Rash: Li-ja-a, Li-gee-a; it could be either one but that name was very significant because it means "queen of the mermaids" and in the novel she's associated with water and kind of something magical about her, so I felt like that was the apt name and also it evokes Edgar Allen Poe's short story "Ligeia."
Jo Reed: There are real differences between the brothers, between Bill and Eugene. Can we talk about their characters and who they are?
Ron Rash: Eugene is the younger of the two brothers and in the decades that have passed in the novel between the murder and the present day has pretty much wrecked his life. He's an alcoholic, he's lost his marriage, his job, and pretty much so much of his life has gone wrong while his older brother, Bill, has become very successful as a neurosurgeon now, very prominent in the area. And so a kind of rivalry that developed early on continues to be played out I think and also just the idea of-- I thought that idea of the two brothers-- there's always a kind of archetypal tension between siblings and I thought that would be interesting to play off that and also the idea that who's right in this situation, who do we admire, and I hope the reader feels as ambivalent about that as I do. I deliberately in this novel wanted to create two characters that the reader has conflicting views of. Is one more admirable or less admirable than the other?
Jo Reed: Yeah, and as a reader one keeps going back and forth. I mean the more you get into the book you're thinking one thing and then you're really quite not so sure anymore as more gets revealed. There's also the character of the grandfather who sort of hovers like a dark angel over the book. Tell us about him.
Ron Rash: I think he in some ways maybe is as frightening a character as I've ever read and partly because he has this control over the two boys-- their father's died and also their mother who's married into the family-- and he's a man who feels omnipotent and very cruel, manipulative and his ability to impact these two boys' lives is very significant. And I think that once again makes the boys and their reactions to the world and to life more complex because how much of it is this man's cruelty as opposed to some personal responsibility.
Jo Reed: He certainly is controlling about those boys, but he's also controlling about the people in the small community in which they live because he's the town doctor and as it's implied in the book he knows everybody's secrets and he's perfectly willing to use them to get what he wants.
Ron Rash: Right. He's ruthless, and I grew up in a small town and fortunately my doctor wasn't like that but I remember thinking one day as I saw him on the street that he sees everyone in this community in a way probably different than I would. He remembers what's happened in their lives, what's been covered up, what's been hidden, and I thought if a man were manipulative or mean enough, whatever word you want to use, what power that would be in a small town because no one would ever feel completely safe from something he might say or reveal.
Jo Reed: Indeed you created a character who did just that. It's interesting about the archetypes that you talked about in The Risen between the brothers, Bill and Eugene, because there are kind of those archetypes that have appeared in other of your books and I'm thinking of for example Above the Waterfall. We have the two narrators, Becky and Les, Becky who is a forest ranger and Les who's the sheriff, and then probably most dramatically in Serena where you have Serena and Rachel. Can you talk about how you play with those throughout your books and what the appeal is?
Ron Rash: For me the appeal as a writer and I hope for the reader is the sense of that you're setting up certainly a conflict because those characters tend to be very different, and to me so much of the tension in the novel comes from those situations that I set up between those two people, and very often sometimes they kind of balance between darkness and light. Though I hope the characters are always more complex than that, they're not that simple, but I think their tendencies tend to conflict and I find that to be a very rich way to enter a story and to tell a story.
Jo Reed: Well, another way you certainly enter and tell stories is through the landscape and the effect of the North Carolina mountains most specifically has on the people themselves, and you've said that you think landscape is destiny. Can you talk a little bit more about that? I agree and I find it fascinating.
Ron Rash: I've just always been fascinated with what happens when you have characters in their landscape and how they react to it and how the landscaping impacts them, and certainly the culture I write about, the Appalachian mountain culture, those mountains I found can be both -- giving great solace in the sense the solace as if they're womb-like, the valleys, the people inside, the inhabitants, are being protected, yet at the same time those mountains can loom over the characters. There's a timelessness to those mountains that can make the characters feel trapped, insignificant, and so I am convinced of -- the psychological impact. And one thing that's been interesting about my books as they've been translated into other languages is how many people from other mountain cultures whether it's the Andes or the Pyrenees have written me or when I've been on a book tour internationally and said, "You get that sense of those mountains and the same feelings I have." And I thought was very interesting as far as how landscape would impact people not just in Appalachia, but any culture that's mountainous.
Jo Reed: Yeah. I was going to in fact ask you that about what you write about is about Appalachia very particularly, but how much it really is about mountain culture and that mountain culture happens to be set in Appalachia.
Ron Rash: Yeah, and my kinship to other authors includes writers such as John Giono from France and Mo Yan from China, and one reason I love those writers among many reasons but-- is the way the landscape and character become inextricable. They're just tied together so closely and to me that adds another level of depth to a novel. I hope when a reader reads my books that the landscape feels like a character to the reader.
Jo Reed: Oh, yeah.
Ron Rash: And a couple of novels I've really wanted the landscape to be the dominant character, certainly in Saints at the River and also in The Cove so to me that just adds a deeper sense of the place but also of the people.
Jo Reed: Your books often also look at who stays and who goes and who goes and who comes back.
Ron Rash: Yeah, and I think that's always one of the questions about growing up in a rural area as I did there's the pull of home but at the same time there's a sense that a person may be stifled, and I found that conflict that I think either way you end up wondering if the right decision was made to leave or to stay, and it's something that I think many people feel but particularly people who grow up in a small town or a rural area. I know from personal experience a number of my friends stayed, others felt like they had to leave and I was actually one of them, but I think that conflict is very rich for literature.
Jo Reed: Yeah. A lot of your books also deal with dialects, turns of phrase, kind of specificity in the narrative voice and in the dialogue, and I would imagine as somebody who wants to sort of portray the wholeness of that area it's like a tricky line to walk so that it doesn't become a stereotype, but that it rather is authentic and I'm just wondering how you grapple with that.
Ron Rash: Oh, yeah, and I think -- I've actually got a theory about this. It's almost as if you're giving a translation instead of a rendering of the way these people speak, and by that what I mean is if I attempted to mimic exactly the way someone in the mountains would have spoken in the 1950s you're absolutely right; it would have come off cartoonish, almost something out of "The Beverly Hillbillies." And so what I've found I have to do is it's almost like seasoning with cooking. I sprinkle in some, enough to give a sense of the language but to the point where it doesn't start to draw the reader away from the book. I think that's the danger, that it starts to pull the reader away, the reader notices it too much, but at the same time you want to be true to the way these people speak and. And one way I tend to do this, to give a sense of the-- what makes that language unique is through the use of simile and simile has two purposes. One, it is a way of showing a distinctive culture. I mean if a character uses a metaphor about farming or a simile about farming then that in a sense reveals something about that character's place in the world, but the other thing is it does the very thing we're-- that we're-- you're bringing up. To create a good simile, a person has to have intelligence because the person is taking two unalike things and making a connection so to me it's a way of also showing people that might be uneducated in the sense of how much time they've been in schools yet at the same time have an intelligence. So, I can remember one time my uncle who was a tobacco farmer once said a young woman didn't have enough clothes on to wad a shotgun and that's a very sophisticated use of simile. I had to wait three novels to get it in, but I finally did.
Jo Reed: Now, tell me about your growing up. You grew up in North Carolina in the countryside.
Ron Rash: Yeah, a small town in western North Carolina and I spent so much of my childhood and early adolescence on my grandmother's farm in the mountains and there was no vehicle there, no television, just she and I were there, and it was just this wonderful childhood and as I say early adolescence where essentially she would just let me run the land to the border to Blue Ridge Parkway so sometimes I'd be gone five or six hours not really going-- sometimes I might take a fishing rod with me, but it was just that chance to be out there not only kind of learning about the natural world but also imagining, making up stories. And it's not a childhood I think is even possible now, it'd be very difficult, but I think it had a lot to do with my becoming a writer and also my interest in nature and the older ways of the storytelling.
Jo Reed: Yeah. I was just thinking about that, about just giving kids that freedom just to be able to discover what's around them but also the way that has to ignite their imagination--
Ron Rash: Yeah.
Jo Reed: Because if they're alone they're telling themselves stories or if there are more than one of you it's "Let's play pretend."
Ron Rash: Right, and I think it was just great training to be a writer because so much of writing is about solitude.
Jo Reed: And were you on your own? Did you have any siblings with you when you went?
Ron Rash: No, and that-- looking back on it-- I was talking to my brother and sister about this-- they never once went with me on these trips; they liked to stay home and go to the swimming pool. They were much more extroverted than I was <laughs>
Jo Reed: I want to talk about fishing because clearly trout means a lot to you--
Ron Rash: Well—
Jo Reed: --I think.
Ron Rash: Oh, yeah.
Jo Reed: Does it? How does fishing factor into your life and trout most specifically?
Ron Rash: Well, it all goes back to my grandmother's farm. One of my very, very earliest memories was my grandfather taking me across the road into the pasture and there was a small stream there and I saw him catch a trout-- I caught my first one I think when I was six, but there's something else about those; particularly the trout that I was catching there are called brook trout and speckled trout. They're the only native trout in the Appalachians, but they've become very rare. Only a few very isolated streams hold them now and to me there's a kind of resonance in the fact that you have these fragile creatures that are backed up into the furthest reaches of the mountains. And they tend to represent a lot to me, but I've just always been fascinated with the water and the beauty of those fish and it just evokes so much for me. I guess Proust had his biscuits; I've got my speckled trout.
Jo Reed: When did you begin writing?
Ron Rash: I started later than many of my writer friends. I didn't really start writing until I was a freshman in college. I think I was preparing to write. I was always a voracious reader and as I've said I was very used to solitude, my-- using my imagination, but when I was 15 I read Crime and Punishment and obviously at 15 I missed a lot of the depth of that book, but I can remember when I read the scene where the pawnbroker is murdered that for the first time in my life it wasn't so much I'd entered book-- entered a book, but the book had entered me. And I remember just being so amazed that just splotches of ink on a page could affect me that much so I think there I started to realize that I want to do this too; I want to see if I can do this. And Dostoevsky has continued to be probably the most important novelist to me I think particularly in this book, The Risen, because the questions I think Dostoevsky raised are, "Can one redeem oneself after something-- doing something or participating in something terrible?" Those kinds of questions have always fascinated me, troubled me in the sense of how does someone live after doing a terrible thing. And at least some of those questions are being asked in this book.
Jo Reed: And that's a lot of what you examine and work through in so many of your books, certainly in The Risen.
Jo Reed: You're a poet, a novelist and a short-story writer so where did you begin?
Ron Rash: I began with some short stories and-- but pretty quickly after that I was trying poems. I wrote some short stories in my late twenties that I felt pretty good about, eventually got published, but as I turned-- got into my thirties I pretty much spent about five or six years almost completely writing poetry before I went back to short fiction and ultimately to novels. And I think in many ways it was the best thing I could have done for my prose for my short stories and novels because it has made me so attentive to language and to the point where when I'm doing my last revisions on a novel or a short story it's purely about sound. It's about what syllables to stress, the play of vowels off consonants, and sometimes that may sound a little bit tedious but to me that's my favorite part of writing and it's ultimately where the magic comes from in writing because it's those things-- it's that kind of attentiveness I think that draws the reader in and helps to create the dream that is a novel. I mean there are certain rhythms, prose rhythms, that kind of induce a sort of altered state. I think when I read Cormac McCarthy for instance or Faulkner there- there's a kind of rhythm in those books I think that draws the reader in deeper and I hope I achieve some of that in my own work as well.
Jo Reed: To be practical, because I'm always interested in how you were supporting yourself as you were starting out.
Ron Rash: I taught. I taught high school, then I taught at a community college 17 years, and unfortunately I had to make a living <laughs> or not so I mean I enjoyed teaching and-- but that's always the dilemma, but what I found was to be able to write particularly when I was teaching five classes a semester at the community college was I had to do away with everything else in my life pretty much except my family. I had no social life, I didn't go out to parties, and it was a choice. I got up early. I'd teach night classes at the college so that I could have my mornings free to write. I'd get up an hour early. One <laughs> semester when Daylight Savings Time either came or went I stayed on the old schedule because somehow psychologically it made me think I had another hour, I mean just weird stuff like that, but yeah, I think it was just that I wanted it that bad. I'm not a well-rounded person; I've only wanted-- intended to want maybe to do one thing well. It started off being fishing when I was a kid but I pretty much focus my energy in one direction, which is why when my air conditioning goes out or I have a flat tire I'm hopeless.
Jo Reed: I'm of the belief based that every artist needs one person, just one person to believe in them absolutely I mean to keep on going, not necessarily huge public acclaim. Everybody in the world can be against you but just to have that one person in your corner really can make all the difference in the world and I'm wondering if you had that.
Ron Rash: Oh, I have, but it- it's really been all family members that did that that—
Jo Reed: Well, yeah, that's what I mean.
Ron Rash: Yeah. Yeah.
Jo Reed: I mean it doesn't need to be a famous person I mean but just one person who is like "Yes"—
Ron Rash: Right,-but at first I didn't let anybody know. No one knew I was writing; I didn't let anybody, even my siblings, know because I was-- I wasn't sure if I could do it. But once I started kind of showing my work a little bit to members of my family they were hugely supportive, and my sister did this amazing thing for me that I can never repay her enough and this is exactly what you're talking about. When I was teaching at that university my sister paid the college to-- so that I could-- I only had to teach three classes in the spring, so I could write more. She did that four straight years when I was teaching there.
Jo Reed: Wow.
Ron Rash: I mean that's to me the ultimate act of faith. It's funny. My brother and I were English majors, she's an engineer, but she believed in my work and believed I could do this and also knew how badly I wanted to do it, that two-course reduction made a huge difference particularly 'cause I was starting to write novels then and it really allowed me to write my first book-- first novel.
Jo Reed: So what's the story behind the publication of your first book?
Ron Rash: That was interesting because I had written a couple of novels that weren't any good so I just threw them away but when finally I wrote One Foot in Eden, my first novel, the first one I really felt worked. I was able to get an agent, but the book ultimately didn't sell, got some nice rejection letters, but there was a contest for North Carolina books, a small press in North Carolina, and it won the contest and was published as a hardback and I got very lucky. NPR happened to somehow find out about the book and gave it a good notice and a couple of national newspapers did, which was pretty amazing because as I say it was such a small press and only had like a 3000-print run, but that got attention in New York, got me a new agent who was very helpful, and one of the ironies, once it had shown that it could be successful this book, the hardback One Foot in Eden, two of the publishers who had turned it down bid on the paperback rights.
Jo Reed: And that's how you moved to a major publisher.
Ron Rash: Exactly, yeah. This was when I was in my late forties so it took a while and I've never regretted the fact that what attention has come to my work has come later because it was a real gift not to have the distractions that can come once you achieve a certain level of recognition. I mean nobody was really interested—
Ron Rash: --in what I was doing outside my family and so I was really able to study my craft.
Jo Reed: Will you read a little bit from the beginning of The Risen?
Ron Rash: Sure. "She is waiting. Each spring the hard rains come and the creek rises and quickens and more of the bank peels off silting the water brown and bringing it light-- she is waiting. Each spring the hard rains come and the creek rises and quickens and more of the bank peels off silting the water brown and bringing to light another layer of dark earth. Decades pass. She is patient, shelled inside the blue tarp. Each spring the water laps closer, paling roots, loosening stones, scuffing and smoothing. She is waiting and one day a bit of blue appears in the bank and then more blue. The rain pauses and the sun appears but she is ready now and the bank trembles a moment and heaves and the strands of tarp unfurl and she spills into the stream and is free. Bits of bone gather in an eddy, form a brief necklace. The current moves on toward the sea."
Jo Reed: You've said your stories usually start with a single image and I'm wondering what that image was for The Risen.
Ron Rash: It was an image of a wooded area and a mound of leaves, but I could tell from the way the mound was shaped that a body was beneath it.
Jo Reed: I thought it was something like that.
Ron Rash: Yeah. <laughs>
Jo Reed: You write – as we said – poetry, novels, short stories. Does your approach differ when writing in these forms or is it pretty much the same? Do you start with an image for all your work or how do you approach them differently?
Ron Rash: Yeah. It almost always starts with an image and I really don't know where that image will lead. I mean sometimes it does lead to a poem, sometimes to a short story, sometimes to a novel though whenever it's a novel I just groan because I know the next three years of my life I'm going to be thinking about this thing, carrying it around with me.
Jo Reed: You have the image and you decide it's going to be a short story or a poem or a novel. What's the next step? What's the routine? If it's a novel for example, do you outline it all? Do you have a sense of where it's going to go or what the endpoint is going to be?
Ron Rash: No, I never know and early in my writing I would always know where the story was going. Sometimes I would outline it, I'd know pretty much how it was going to go, and those stories never worked so what I've come to believe is that I just have to let those characters move about in my head and they start to kind of develop and become more real, but very often I don't know where a story's going. And particularly with novels there's always not just a moment but sometimes months -- and it almost always happens after a year. Where it just seems like the story's stalled and I'm unsure how it's going to work. Very often as I say I just go in every morning trying to figure a way out but I'm convinced that it's that sense of not knowing that allows a kind of surprising moment-- and I think Robert Frost said, "No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader". In a way, it's almost as if a character says, "Okay. Hold it. You haven't heard my side of this" or "I'm the one in control of this story." It's funny. Whether you believe in free will for human beings you have to let your characters have it.
Jo Reed: You say, you write every day?
Ron Rash: I try to, yes, and usually do. Sometimes on Sundays I won't, I'll be thinking about it though, but I've learned to write on the road. I can write in motel rooms now, hotel rooms. To me it's a matter of just sitting down and saying, "Okay, I'm going to sit here for several hours. If I don't write a word, I'm still going to sit here for several hours."
Jo Reed: What's the hardest part about writing for you at this point in your career?
Ron Rash: Oh, wow. Well, I think not repeating myself is something that's very important. But always for me the hard part is that first draft. Once I can get the draft down I'm fine, but it's the first draft that I dread and I've learned the only way I can do it is just to write as rapidly as I can, and the story may-- will alter drastically of course.
Jo Reed: You've written so much, and this is, this is a hard question: If you had to choose a book to give to somebody as representative of your work or something that you're particularly proud of, what would it be?
Ron Rash: Oh, wow. That is a tough one.
Jo Reed: I know.
Ron Rash: Well, I'm going to have to give you two answers. I would give—
Jo Reed: Okay, good.
Ron Rash: Yeah. Something Rich and Strange is my selected short stories that came out about two years ago and I think that book would be the one that I would give for the short stories, but if I had to pick a novel I would do Serena. I think that's my most ambitious book and the one that I'm personally most proud of. I've never gone as deep as I did in that book. I mean in a way it was almost scary; I felt like I was coming a little bit unmoored because I was so obsessed with it. But it's a book that yeah, I felt very good about, continue to feel good about, and I suspect it'll be the best novel I ever wrote.
Jo Reed: It's a wonderful book. Ron, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Ron Rash: Well, thank you, Jo.
That's author Ron Rash. We were talking about his recent novel, The Risen. You can meet Ron at the National Book Festival on September 24—he's reading in the NEA's poetry and prose pavilion at 1 pm. Go to loc.gov/bookfest for details. You've been listening to Art Works. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I'm Josephine Reed, thanks for listening.
No one tells stories embedded in Southern Appalachia with more grit or more beauty.
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At Sin Heng Aerial Lifts Pte. Ltd., we specialise in the Mobile Elevation Work Platforms ("MEWPs"), including Boom Lifts, Scissor Lifts and Spider Lifts, as well as spare parts and related value-added services.
Headquartered in Singapore, we are a wholly-owned subsidiary of SGX-Mainboard listed Sin Heng Heavy Machinery Limited (stock code SGX:BKA). Through our parent group's established presence in Asia, we are ready to serve our customers wherever they may be in the region.
Our customers are our utmost priority. We are committed to deliver optimal solutions to answer to all our customers' demands for Working at Height, Safely and Efficiently.
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text:
Q: How to build .NET 4.6 Framework app without Visual Studio installed? Until now, I could build .NET 4.5.2 using command line
c:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\MSBuild MySolution.sln

The only what I need to install on a computer was .NET Framework and Visual Studio 2010 shell.
Now I consider upgrading to .NET 4.6., but I cannot find a way how to build a solution without Visual Studio.
I don't want to install Visual Studio 2015, because it is too big for this hosted virtual machine. I hope some MSBuild or Microsoft package installation could be sufficient.

A: Install:

*

*The .NET 4.6 Framework

*The Microsoft Build Tools 2015

*The .NET Framework 4.6 targeting Pack
Then call a different version of MsBuild to build your solution:
 C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\14.0\Bin\MsBuild.exe MySolution.sln

Note, this may not contain all bits pieces and sdk's that ship with Visual Studio, so you may encounter "missing .targets files" or other problems building your application. Other SDKs may alleviate that problem:

*

*The Windows 10 Platform SDK

*The Azure SDK

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The Community Conversations Cafe is a series that engages neighborhood residents on the topics most important to you in an open discussion with leaders from the local scientific and medical community. This program showcases the research being done in our community on the topic of Mental Health and Aging. You are invited to bring your ideas, experience, and questions on this topic into an open conversation with a few of the scientific minds from New York-Presbyterian-Cornell and The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Postdoctoral Association.
Space is limited. Please RSVP here.


text:
Back-To-Back Storms And No Pay For Federal Weather Forecasters
Jae C. Hong, AP
Lake Elsinore, Calif., on Thursday during a storm that dropped rain and snow across much of the state. The National Weather Service is providing forecasts and warnings as usual, but employees are working without pay.
Rebecca Hersher
The weather clearly does not care that the U.S. government is partially shut down.
A series of storms have thwacked California, the Midwest and large portions of the East Coast in the last week: dropping rain, downing trees, coating roads in ice and burying cities in snow. An ongoing storm is expected to drop up to two feet of snow in parts of New England this weekend.
Of course, we know all of this because, despite the government shutdown, the National Weather Service is still publishing timely forecasts and warnings that newspapers, television meteorologists, weather websites and local emergency officials rely on.
"We are basically doing the same job we were doing before the shutdown. We just haven't gotten a paycheck," says Ray Martin, a senior meteorologist for the weather service's Sterling, Va., office and the office's union steward for the National Weather Service Employees Organization. "I can't tell you how many times in the office I've heard the comment, 'Just going to work like usual, not getting paid!' It's definitely taken a hit on the morale."
Under the best circumstances, working for the weather service often means working long hours or many days on end. Every office is staffed 24/7, including weekends and holidays. Local emergency managers can call anytime of the day or night to ask for the latest weather information, and get help planning ahead for what that weather might mean for their communities.
Martin personally worked 13 days in a row around Christmas, without being paid. He says he doesn't mind the work — in fact, he really likes his job and is happy to keep doing it during the shutdown. But, he admits, "It is a bit disheartening to realize we don't know when we're going to get paid again."
Recent storms have only added to the weather service workload. "It is the season," says Alicia Miller, a hydrologist and union steward at the National Weather Service office in Pittsburgh, Pa. "January and February can be very active to us."
That means a lot of time at work, without pay. "I do have two children, and it has been a bit difficult for daycare," she says. "It's very hard to explain to daycare that I'm working, and they have to watch my children, but I'm not going to be able to pay them." For now, Miller says she has been cutting back on other expenses to afford daycare.
Miller says employees will likely be working overtime this weekend to keep up demand for information about a snowstorm. And, while National Weather Service forecasts are still reliable, there is some weather information that forecasters have to do without during the shutdown.
For example, Miller says she hasn't been able to access ice and temperature data from the Great Lakes, which can affect snow forecasts in Pennsylvania and other states east of the lakes. And one of the agency's weather prediction models was supposed to be updated at the beginning of January, but hasn't because of the shutdown.
In California, where rain and wind caused car crashes and flooding in some areas, local officials have less flood information than they usually would. Stream gauges maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey aren't being calibrated, which means they aren't necessarily making accurate measurements of how much water is flowing in the river.
That made at least one local official nervous this week. "We use stream gauge data on a moment by moment basis," explains Christopher Berry, the watershed manager for Santa Cruz, Calif. He usually relies on USGS data to know if the river that runs through the city will flood.
"This it the first time I've ever had to say I'm cautious about whether we can rely on the data, because there's no USGS staff working right now," he says. The storm downed trees overnight on Wednesday, and the river rose significantly, but it didn't flood.
"I would say we basically got lucky," says Berry. And, because trees fell in the river and sediment moved around, the stream gauges are even more in need of calibrations they won't get until the government reopens. "The next big storm, the gauges will be that much more unreliable," says Berry.
federal shutdown
Winter Blizzard Skirts New York City, But Still Walloping Northeast
Why Your Local Weather Forecast Is Going To Get Better
Storm Leaves Thousands Without Power In Pacific Northwest

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Chef Paul Mattison, executive chef and proprietor of Mattison's, announces a nine-course Titanic Wine-Pairing Dinner at Mattison's Forty-One, 7275 South Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, FL 34231 telephone 941.921.3400 on Sunday, November 11, 2012 from 6pm. The dinner is organized by the esteemed Chaîne des Rôtisseirs and non-members are more than welcome to attend the dinner. The price is $125 per person plus tax and gratuity. The distinct menu is modeled after a dinner menu on the Titanic. Seating is limited. Reservations are required and can be made online at mattisons.com or by calling 941.921.3400.
Mattison's™ A local, chef-owned restaurant and catering company presenting exceptional service, fresh ingredients, and innovative cuisine while supporting our local farmers, culinary suppliers and the community.


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Klášter San Juan de la Peña (česky Klášter svatého Jana ve skále) je nejznámější aragonský klášter v provincii Huesca, na předměstí Jacy v severním Španělsku. Jsou to stavby dvou klášterů v patrovém spořádání nad sebou, zčásti zahloubené do skály v dříve těžko přístupném horském masivu Pyrenejí v nadmořské výšce 1200 m. Nejbližším sídlem je asi tři km vzdálená vesnice Santa Cruz de la Serós, ve které býval ženský benediktinský klášter Santa Cruz de la Serós.

Horní klášter (a)

Má dochovány románské základy: základem je kostel (5) se třemi apsidami, gotickou kaplí sv. Viktoriána (7) a mozarabským portálem (6). K němu přiléhá románská křížová chodba (8). Na jejích sloupech se dochovalo 26 románských hlavic s figurální výzdobou. Na některých jsou vytesány motivy ze Starého nebo z Nového zákona, na dalších mytologická zvířata a rostliny, pocházejí od anonymního sochaře, nazývaného Mistr ze San Juan de la Peña. K chodbě přiléhá kaple svatých Vota a Felixe (9). Barokní portál pochází z4. čtvrtiny 17. století. Je zde umístěna menší část klášterního muzea (4), z někdejší klášterní pekárny je výstavní sál (1).
V roce 1071 zde byla zásluhou francouzských benediktinských mnichů z reformního kláštera v Cluny zavedena bohoslužba římského ritu, namísto dosavadního mozarabského. Po ovládnutí celé oblasti křesťany byl klášter rozšířen a mniši pověřeni správou královského pohřebiště. Barokní novostavba z roku 1675 se zde projevila jen zřízením královského panteonu, ostatní stavební činnost probíhala na zelené louce asi 1,5 km odtud.

Královský panteon (2)
Úzký vysoký prostor kaple s oltářem Ukřižování, zaklenutý valenou klenbou, vznikl přístavbou a dostavbou ze sakristie středověkého kostela. Má pozdně barokní až neoklasicistní interiér z roku 1770, objednal ji král Karel III. Španělský. Stěny sálu člení pilastry a štukatury. Po jedné straně jsou do zdi vsazeny čtyři mramorové reliéfy s válečnými výjevy z aragonské historie Španělska. Po druhé straně je 27 původních hrobových výklenků, jež byly použity do barokního prostoru ze sakristie, ale jsou kryty barokními náhrobními deskami. Jsou zde pohřbeni příslušníci královské rodiny, aragonské a navarrské dvorské šlechty, oslavováni jsou především první tři aragonští králové:
 Ramiro I. s manželkou
 Sancho Ramírez s manželkou
 Petr I. s manželkou a dvěma dětmi

Panteon šlechty (3)
Druhé pohřebiště je na nezastřešeném dvoře, který vznikl násypem na dormitáři. Dochovaly seněkteré gotické náhrobní kameny místní šlechty.

Dolní klášter (b)
Dvě nejstarší stavby jsou menší, situované v přízemí pod horním klášterem a více vtaženy pod skalním převisem. Založil je roku 920 aragonský hrabě Galindo Aznárez II. jako poustevnu eremitů, křesťanský asyl a úkryt před muslimskou invazí. V 11. století zde žil například baskický mnich Ignác (Eneko, Íñigo) z Oña (1000-1068), později svatořečený.

Nejstarší ze všech staveb je dvoulodní kaple mozarabského ritu (10), která byla v 11. až 12. století přestavěna na románský kostelík mužského kláštera benediktinů. Z kláštera se zde dochovala část prostoru dormitáře mnichů (11), sklenutá na dva sloupy, později využívaná jako kapitulní síň.

Legenda a poutě
 Podle legendy sem byl uložen svatý grál, aby ochránil Aragonské království před muslimy. Legenda se odvolává na zdejší chrámový  inventář se zápisem ze 14. prosince 1124, který sepsal Carreras Ramírez, kanovník ze Zaragozy. Údajně to je týž kalich, který roku 1437 nebo 1438 odvezl král Alfons V. Aragonský do pokladu katedrály ve Valencii, kde je nyní vystaven v samostatném muzeu. Podle dalších verzí legendy náležel kalich jiným kostelům ve Španělsku nebo v italském Janově.
 Od 12. století tudy vede severní trasa poutní cesty z Jacy přes Pamplonu do Santiaga de Compostela, tzv. Camino Aragones.

Moderní klášter
Omezené prostory dolního a horního kláštera nebylo možno rozšiřovat směrem do svahu ani do skály. Proto byl asi 1,5 km odtud na zelené louce v nedalekém Llano di San Indalecio v roce 1645 položen základní kámen novostavby třetího  kláštera s kostelem. Následujícího roku stavba byla zahájena.

Tyto klášterní budovy obsadila a zásadně poškodila vojska Napoleona Bonaparta, proto ve 30. letech 19. století následovala rekonstrukce a dostavba podle projektu architekta Miguela Ximeneze ze Zaragozy. Přitom byly využity portály, brány a obvodové zdi z barokního kláštera. V roce 1889 byl starý klášter prohlášen za národní památku Španělska a v roce 1923 královský panteon opraven a modernizován. V současnosti je v moderním klášteře multimediální expozice o životě v historickém klášteře, o jeho dějinách a umění Aragonského království. Byly sem také přesunuty ohrožené sochařské a architektonické fragmenty. Je zde rovněž ubytovna pro turisty a poutníky, restaurace a obchod.

Galerie

Odkazy

Reference

Literatura
 Ana Isabel Lapeña Paúl: San Juan de la Peña (1. vyd.). Zaragoza : Mira Editores 2000; ISBN 848465012X, ISBN 9788484650126

Externí odkazy
 Stránky kláštera San Juan de la Peña
 Galerie obrázků kláštera
  Studie o panteonu, s. 54-59

San Juan
Pyreneje
San Juan de la Peña
Peña
Klášter San Juan de la Peña
Camino Aragonés
Pena

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