An acknowledgement to Hildegaarde Flanner

The White Bridge, the title of my newly published novel by All Things That Matter Press, is not unique in the annals of American literature, though it may well have been. Just yesterday, a very small, yellowish-bound, but otherwise perfectly preserved copy of a one act play arrived indelicately by post from San Francisco. It cost me seven dollars, and gave me, in my hands, the connecting link with my own history. The White Bridge-A One Act Play, written in 1938 by Hildegaarde Flanner. Turns out, Hildegaard was quite a conservationist, planter, essayist and poet and did some prolific work. Also, the copy sent me has to be rare because it was signed by her as a greeting to a reader. The date also was perhaps prophetic: December 7, 1938.
So, it was with an eerie feeling that I began reading Hildegaarde's vision of what I thought was solely mine. Now, those who know my family understand our love for the southwest, Indian territory, Albuquerque, and the ever quirky Gallup, New Mexico. One day, I will write only about the Gallup anomalies that are about ready to surface in my simmering brain. Indeed, just now, while dreaming of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, I opened the delicate white pages of my little rare find to read Hildegaarde describing her bridge as mythical; hey,like mine; as vast,hey, like mine, as white,  what the ... And her bridge is a connection over a canyon in ...the southwest. Whaa? Not only that. It involves a crime and newsboys and newspapers and selling the news ... like mine.
I know after reading Herman Hesse's Magister Ludi  (The Glass Bead Game) that connections between two events are very likely in the universe of matter. But I am beginning to think that people through history, unbeknownst to each other, are compatriots of the spirit and suffer from similar visions. Hildegaarde, by signing her copy to a reader three years to that most fateful day in American history until, perhaps, 911, was foreshadowing events of the war to come ...that spectacle that created the events and Raison d'être of my The White Bridge.

Coincidences, I am not certain. Six degrees of separation; yes. In the infinite plane of existence,  love and beauty may turn to naught, but the sweet voice of settled history, the good and the bad, will remain our sole companion through the silence of time.They say King David could pluck psalms from the holy air. Maybe that is what we novelists do. We take ideas, metaphors of yesterday, and re-interpret them, give them our perspectives. Breathe life through the nostrils of time. Nothing dies; never my secret loves. Dear Natalie Wood and Emily Bronte.

So thank you, H.F. I wonder, when I finish your play, will the white bridge stand or, eventually crumble to dust like ...that bridge in southeast Asia, over the river ...Kwai, that, like your spirit and mine, are kept alive through the history of our common, ever human imagination.