Manic Frustration “If I do not write to empty my mind, I go mad.” ~Lord Byron

On October First Friday, there will be a gallery of my photography opening at the Scranton Cultural Center in Scranton, PA. This gallery will serve as a way to raise funds for the restoration of the Dietrich Theater in Tunkhannock, PA, my home town. All of my work will be for sale and, if purchased on the first night of its showing, every penny will be donated to the Dietrich Theater. Donations other than the purchase of my photography will also be accepted up until 10p.m. Here is the information about my upcoming gallery:


WHO: The Scranton Cultural Center featuring artist Dale Wilsey Jr.

WHAT: First Friday Exhibit: to benefit the Wyoming County Cultural Center at the Dietrich Theater

WHEN: October 7th, 2011 5-8 p.m.

WHERE: The Scranton Cultural Center
420 North Washington Avenue
Scranton, PA 18503
4th Floor, Shopland Hall Lobby

TICKET PRICE: Free
FROM ONE CULTURAL CENTER TO ANOTHER: SUPPORTING ARTS IN NEPA: Scranton, PA -- Sept. 20th, 2011 -- The Scranton Cultural Center at the Masonic Temple will host a benefit exhibit to raise money to help restore and rebuild the Dietrich Theatre in Tunkhannock. The Dietrich Theatre (the Wyoming County Cultural Center) was recently devastated by record flooding. Estimated costs to restore and repair are close to $100,000.

The exhibit will take place Oct. 7th, in conjunction with Scranton's First Friday, as well as, the kickoff of the SCC Electric City Listen Local series. The free exhibit will begin at 5pm on the 4th floor Shopland Hall and run through 8pm. Money will be raised through individual donations, sale of artwork and a bake sale. Donations will be accepted until 10pm.

Photographs in the exhibit were taken by writer/photographer and Tunkhannock native, Dale Wilsey Jr.

All proceeds will go directly to the Dietrich Theatre.

It's been a long, stressful, busy and, most of all, wet month(s). On the surface, in Tunkhannock, everything seems back to normal since the flood. The roads are clean and clear of mud and people go about their normal business.

Look closer.

Brick's Market is "Closed until further notice". There's still a drooping barrier of caution tape strung across the parking lot of Gay's True Value. In small corners, I find caked mud. Stains of oil. Ghosts of the flood remain on stalks of corn and trees in pale shadows left by the water.


While driving around, I've felt I've been sailing. Waterfalls are still pouring down the side of Avery Mountain and the Susquehanna runs muddy and high along its banks. Route 92 was closed for a second time just last week.

The weather sways like an erratic pendulum taunting me with shining, beautiful days only to pull blankets of dark, miserable clouds across the sky dumping sheets of rain down over hills and across my face.

Leaves are beginning to change and fall, covering my lawn in speckles of reds and yellows. I find myself closing my window at night to keep the chill out and, in the morning, it's harder to leave the comfort of my blankets. Even the sun finds it hard to come out. I smell winter coming.

Jack, my niece's horse who stands quietly behind the weathered wood of the old barn, will grow thick with a winter coat. Snow will fall, clinging to the lashes around his dark eyes. His breath will billow out in gentle clouds around his snout.

Watch the trees grow naked. Feel the crisp retreat of another summer. Another year. Unpack the jackets and mittens and store away the memories created in the passing months. Pick pumpkins from the field and cut character into their face while you drown in cider. This is the winding down of time.

The deep slumber of the land is coming. The hollow winds of winter. Blank canvases of land lit by the moon and pinpoint stars.

Another year is just beyond the banks of snow to come. All is reborn when the last bits of ice melt away and hearts begin to beat faster.

Tioga Street, downtown Tunkhannock.

Through the years, my love for the town where I've grown up and lived most of my life has grown with me. The subtle nuances and quiet, easy life has become a treasure when I search for peace and calm. Its history and age reveal gems through weathered buildings oozing with character and stories, the sprawling forests where maple, birch and evergreen trees mingle whispering amongst winds that roll over the soft undulations of the Endless mountain ridge lines. Some of my best memories were constructed amongst brooks and creeks that carve paths across the face of the land.

But now, the Susquehanna was carving a memory through me that would last until my final days like it did in '72 to my father and his sisters. My grandmother. All of those who have called Tunkhannock home their entire lives.

Down among the brick buildings of town, I could hear the rushing roar of the river as I walked east along Tioga Street. The water had come up to the main light, wrapping around the corner from Bridge Street into Tioga. The scent of diesel fuel was heavy in the air and a slick, rainbow sheen colored the surface of the muddy water.As I stood in front of the Prince Hotel, I looked across the street.


The Dietrich Theater seemed as though it were anchored to the sidewalk floating in the current of the river. Standing in the doorway of The Second Wind, a man sipped a beer behind sandbags protecting the entrance to the bar. It was all too surreal.

I made my way around to a back alley where I could see the True Value hardware store. The first floor was completely submerged beneath the river and its weathered white paint and the uneven lines of the roof  seemed like the aged, wrinkled face of an old man. On any normal day, the beaten soles of work boots would be walking along the warped floorboards shaped by every flood the town had ever lived through. Now, the river filled the aisles and burdened the ancient store once more.


The sun was beginning to fall low in the sky and exhaustion was taking over my body. By now, it would be too late to travel back along the narrow mountain path that had brought us into town safely. It would be a night of half-sleep on my mother's uncomfortable couch just outside of town.

Newswatch 16 glowed on for a few hours while I sat up watching images of surrounding downs along the river engulfed and swallowed like my own. Residents and officials in Wilkes-Barre waited nervously as the waters rose higher and higher up the levee walls that had been built to avoid another tragedy like '72. They had not been put to the test like this since being built. No one was absolutely positive of their strength and resiliency.


A video of the house I had seen crash into the river bridge looped over and over between aerial shots of West Pittston beneath water. The Bloomsburg fairgrounds. The river was cresting. The level gauges had stopped working hours ago. And I was falling asleep. When I awoke, the waters would be slowly receding and we'd all begin the process of returning to normalcy. The river would return to its banks. Mud would be washed from the streets but the memories would always remain coursing through our minds.

Part 1
Part 2

Rt. 6 East out of Tunkhannock.

From the mountain, we could see how quickly the water was rising. Once-visible trailers were now completely submerged beneath the muddy river that crept further and further into Tunkhannock. My father was watching the shop where he worked along Tioga Street and the waters that moved closer to the front door. It was only around one o'clock and the news stations kept saying the river wasn't going to crest until late night or even the next day. How much higher could it go? How much more of my town could it swallow?

As the crowd gathered around us, my brother and a few of his friends arrived. Chatter about the rising water evolved into questions of when everything would be back to normal. When could we work? When would we be able to make it off the mountain and back into town? My brother's friends had the answer to at least one of those questions for anyone willing to take a bit of an adventure.

There was a way to town, we found out. I had kept mentioning how much I wanted to get into town to document anything I could. Get a closer look at things. Be there to help in any way I could. All conventional ways to anywhere were blocked by flood waters for those of us living at the base of Avery. Four-wheel drive and a bit of off-roading provided another route, however. My brother's friends explained the way and then left to try and make their way further down the ridge line. I was determined to make it to the downtown area.

We began our descent along the rocky, washed out trail that wound down along the backside of the mountain. By now, the rushing torrents of water had slowed a bit and the rain had finally tapered off. My boots we covered in reddish, slick mud and my pants were soaked dark below the knee.

The local P&G credit union.

Batron's Supply and "The Skidder Shop" in Tunkhannock.

Rt. 92 South of Tunkhannock. Sept. 8th, 2011.

Thursday morning, I woke up to the constant sound of rain against pavement. The same white noise I had fallen asleep to. On Wednesday, people were talking about flooding. Serious flooding. Irene had just slipped through causing damage all over NYC, New Jersey and portions of Eastern Pennsylvania. A few small towns around me had been severely flooded by their small streams.

With the ground saturated and the skies pouring oceans of water over northeastern Pennsylvania and southern New York, we began to see the streams and creeks, something Pennsylvania has an abundance of, rise and spill into each other until finally feeding into the Susquehanna. The way things were shaping up in the storm system and the rapid rising of the waters, it was beginning to look serious. Hushed whispers of a tragedy not seen since 1972 filled the voices of many.

While my coffee brewed, I watched the news outline what was happening. Binghamton, NY had received ten inches of rain in approximately two days. A fact that was repeated over and over by meteorologists on the local news. Three months of rain in such a short time. Towns upstream from Tunkhannock like Meshoppen, Towanda and Wyalusing were already experiencing major flooding.

I called my boss to find out what was happening in town. He and other employees were moving equipment from the shop to higher ground. There was already a foot of water in the building. New comments began to saturate the news coverage: "Worse than Agnes." "Record crest for the Susquehanna." We were in for a disaster the likes of which I had only heard stories.

The Susquehanna swallows Tunkhannock.

When I finished my coffee, I decided I'd walk to town since all road travel was being discouraged. There were actually rumors of $500 fines for those caught driving. As I made my way down the road, I could hear the roaring of the Susquehanna over the hill. I had never heard it this loud in all of my years spent in Tunkhannock. There had been plenty of floods that I had lived through, but this was a new beast and the river roared.

The muddy water was already lapping the banks just over the edge of route 92 and, around the corner, as the road dipped down along the edge of the mountain, the river had already crawled up and over the pavement. There was no way I'd make it to town on foot.

My father and I decided that, since we were seemingly trapped between two flood plains, we'd hike Avery Mountain and look out over the valley from Hangman's, an area near the top of the mountain where hang-gliders launch. Hiking up, the waters spilled down across rocks and ledges, mixing into a slippery, muddy mess. Fog rolled through the trees thick and heavy and the humidity made our trip more difficult than it should have been.

As we reached the top, the picture below us was beyond anything I had ever seen. The river had swelled and spread across the valley, engulfing and swallowing everything within its path. Houses and buildings lay surrounded by its muddy waters and round-bales of hay, that once sat in fields undisturbed, began floating downstream.

Slowly, other people began to join us at the top of the mountain to watch as our town was inundated with the rising Susquehanna. While we all stood and watched, each of us remarking on the unfolding destruction, a woman spotted something floating down the river. It was large and moving fast. I heard someone ask, "Is that a house?"

A house floats down the Susquehanna.

Lifting my camera, I focused the lens and zoomed in, finding the object in the rushing water. There, floating along like a toy, two windows were visible. A sharp-angled, green roof. It was surreal, but it was happening right before my eyes. My father had told me stories about the flood of Agnes in 1972 when he and his friends stood on the old, metal bridge and watched as house after house floated down and splintered into nothing against the heavy steel girders.

People on the bridge watched as the house floated closer and closer to the river bridge, colliding into the side and splintering, almost exploding, into a floating pile of rubble. The sound was so intense that we could hear it at the top of the mountain. This was only the beginning.

Downtown Tunkhannock as the waters rose quickly.

This summer marks the 5th anniversary of the Boston Literary Magazine and the 2011 Summer issue is now available for purchase from Big Table Publishing. Two of my poems, "It's Raining Outside This Neon Brothel" and "Fear of Heights", are included among a jam-packed issue.

The issue is $12 plus shipping. Big Table also offers other chapbooks available for the same price or less. I ordered four copies myself, but I'm hoping I wont be the only one reading it. Grab a copy today and get your hands on some great contemporary poetry.

Many thanks to Robin Stratton, editor of the Boston Literary Magazine, for accepting my work and the many kind words she's offered.

Check out Robin's new book "On Air", available at Amazon. It's a great summer read. Watch for a review here.

Harold Camping predicts the end is here.

Tomorrow is the end of the world. It has been prophesied by the great Harold Camping. This man has never been wrong about anything pertaining to religion in his long career at Family Radio. He has studied the Bible from cover to cover. Word for word. He's crunched the numbers and he's predicted that tomorrow is it. On May 21st at 6:00 p.m. in each time zone, the rapture will occur. Good, God-fearing Christians will be beamed into heaven like holy Batsignals.

Families have been divided. Some have budgeted their savings to have absolutely nothing left come tomorrow. Evangelists are preaching from their piles of cash to save the world and atheists are cashing in on post-rapture pet care. No need to empty the shelves at the local grocery stores. This isn't Y2K. This is the god damn (pun slightly intended) rapture. Tomorrow, the man with the wavy hair, carefully crafted beard and birkenstocks will be knocking on your door and telling you whether you've been naughty or nice. Hint: if you suddenly end up near the largest bonfire you've ever seen, chances are you weren't nice. Or, at the very least, you didn't put enough folding money in the basket when it was passed around during mass. Pearly gates aren't cheap.

After all the pious folk are shot up into their sky-condos, we immoral, corrupted, non-believing blasphemers will have to endure Hell on Earth until October 21st. I could have sworn we've already been experiencing a bit of it here, but this will be the time when God turns it up to 11. It's going to be a vacation created from the pages of Dante. At least people will have no use for spray-tans anymore. Their flesh will be a lovely shade of charcoal. And, on October 21st, God will play Freebird and pull the plug. Lights out. Earth done. Humanity gone.

Or, on Sunday, we'll all sit back and watch Mr. Camping backpedal for the second time. He'll say he must have missed something in the Bible. Families who've torn themselves apart over this ridiculous concept will, at the very least, share awkward moments or be completely torn apart forever. People who've quit their jobs will be scrambling to find another, in an economy where it's nearly impossible to find anything decent, since more level-headed individuals scooped their old positions up the moment they left. And those who've budgeted themselves to have nothing left will be filing for bankruptcy or applying for loans to keep themselves from living on the streets.

Either Camping is right and tomorrow is the end of days. Or, he's simply another religious lunatic who's ruined the lives of many as he sits comfortably upon his cash. Either way, I plan on lounging around on Sunday (towering infernos or not), sipping a beer and probably caring about the passing "apocalypse" as much as an atheist can. Maybe I'll try to buy a house on the post-rapture market.

Submitting work, writing new work and getting involved in a new and exciting happening in the Scranton area. The first ever Scranton Zine Fest will be taking place in June and I've been invited to read some of my work at Anthology, now a part of Pages and Places.

What is a "Zine Fest" you may ask? Well, I asked the same question. This is what the site has to say:

The Scranton Zine Fest will be a celebration of zinesters, zine distros, artistic press publications, crafters, workshops, and live entertainment under one roof for the community to enjoy.

The festival will be a great place to learn something new, get inspired, discuss, interact, meet friends, connect with local writers, and get involved with accessible media.

 Jessica Meoni and Dana Marie Bloom are the brains behind the operation.

Joining me at the reading are fellow writers and poets Rachael Goetzke, Charlotte Lewis, Amye Archer, Alexis Czencz Belluzi and Brian Fanelli. I'll be sure to post more about this event as the time draws near. For now, visit the links provided to find out more about the Zine Fest. 


http://scrantonzinefest.com/
Facebook Event Page for the Reading