Biography of La Sonora Matancera

 

Biography of La Sonora Matancera

 

The history, life and musical legacy of La Sonora Matancera

Who is La Sonora Matancera?

La Sonora Matancera is a group of Cuban and Caribbean popular music.

 

It was formed in 1920 in the city of Matanzas, Cuba.

Getting into Sonora Matancera was a goal for many singers and musicians in training in the mid-20th century, but the orchestra also grew with those voices and those performers. In its most splendor stage, there were singers or musicians who shone with the orchestra, to later develop a successful career as soloists or with other groups. Among many other outstanding artists, mention can be made of Celia Cruz, Daniel Santos, Myrta Silva, Leo Marini, Miguelito Valdés, Bobby Capó, Vicentico Valdés, Alberto Beltrán, Carlos Argentino, Celio González, Dámaso Pérez Prado, Carmen Delia Dipiní, Ismael Miranda, Justo Betancourt, Yayo El Indio, Olga Chorens, Toña La Negra and Víctor Piñero.

Beginnings of La Sonora Matancera in Music

 

 

 

In 1924, Valentín Cané had the initiative to create a musical ensemble, forming the group Tuna Liberal. In that group, the strings predominated, due to the rise of the son, for which four acoustic guitars were needed. The musicians at that time were nine Valentín Cané in tres and conducting; Pablo "Bubú" Vásquez, on double bass, Eugenio Pérez, singer, Manuel Sánchez Jimagua, timbalito; Ishmael Rules, trumpet; together with the guitarists Domingo Medina, José Manuel Valera, Julio Gobín and Juan Bautista Llopis.

 

 

 

With the departure of two members, in 1926 they changed their name to Septeto Soprano, but soon there was a change to Estudiantina Sonora Matancera. Then they traveled to Havana, where they contacted the RCA Víctor company, presenting their first recording in 1928.

 

 

 

In the thirties, the group began to embrace different rhythms of popular dance music of the time, with the incorporation of various instruments, such as the grand piano, which allowed it to expand its range of sounds. In 1935, the name changed definitively to La Sonora Matancera.

Musical genre of La Sonora Matancera

 

 

 

In her long musical journey, La Sonora Matancera has interpreted different genres and variants of Cuban popular music, such as guaracha, son, guajira, bolero and mambo, among others. According to specialized critics, in its beginnings the group achieved its own style based on the roots of Cuban music, which became evident in the way of playing, in the phrasing and in the rhythmic sense of its singers. This particular way of interpreting their songs was possible, because the musical arrangements were made especially for the style of each singer.

 

 

 

Over the years he was incorporating other musical rhythms, until he reached salsa in the eighties. At that time, some critics say, La Sonora Matancera changed its style, losing originality. That foray into salsa was mainly due to the entry into its ranks of musicians trained in New York.

 

 

 

Trajectory and Legacy of La Sonora Matancera

In 1944, La Sonora Matancera premiered two songs entitled "Pa' congrí" and "Coquito caramelado". That same year, he released the single "La ola marina" and signed a contract with the label Panart Records. During that decade of the forties they made different presentations in dance academies, cabarets and the Radio Progreso Cubano station.

 

 

 

In 1946, La Sonora Matancera experienced its first change in orchestra conduction, its founder Valentín Cané began to have health problems, which forced him to gradually move away from his activity in the group. He took over as director Rogelio Martínez. Before the musical group signed with Panart Records, he recorded three songs for the Varsity label, which were "Se formed la rumbantela", "Tumba colorá" and "El cinto de mi sombrero".

 

 

 

There is a consensus among those who know the history of La Sonora Matancera, in which the twelve years that go from 1947 to 1959 were its golden age. In 1947 he signed with the Stinson record company under the name of Conjunto Tropicavana, because they had an exclusive contract with the Panart label, that year the song "A little house is sold". In 1949, they recorded for a short time with the Cafamo label, later signing for Ansonia Records, a company with which they presented twenty-two songs, one of them being "Se romó el muñeco".

 

In 1950, they recorded again with RCA Victor, but it was the last time they worked with that label. After six years they ended, signing with Seeco Records, a company with which they spent fifteen years, their first song together being "Knocking on wood". In those years La Sonora Matancera made several live presentations.

 

 

 

Throughout the group's musical career, there were many artists who made history inside and outside of La Sonora Matancera. Celia Cruz, was one of them, she began to sing in the group at a very young age and her first song was "Cao, cao maní picao", her interpretations of "Yerbatero moderno" and "Burundanga" were also successful. She remained in the group until 1965.

 

 

 

In 1951, La Sonora Matancera premiered the song "Se forma el rumbón", written by Calixto Leicea. That same year, she also published "Luna yumurina", a bolero with mambo mixes. The following year, she released the singles "Choucouné" and "Cuando muere las palabras". In 1953, Daniel Santos left the group, who for a decade and a half increased the group's international fame.

 

 

 

In 1954, he left the Bienvenido Granda group, which was also there for almost fifteen years, his last recording being "Hold your tongue." In 1955, the group published the song "Si no vuelves" and toured Colombia. They also presented the songs "Una canción", "Yambú pa' gozar", "El muñeco de la ciudad" and "Las muchachas".

 

 

 

In 1956, the singer Celio González entered, who debuted in La Sonora Matancera with the song "Quémame los ojos". The following year the group made a concert tour of several countries, such as Peru, Chile and Argentina. That same year the singer Johnny López recorded the chomba-calypso "Linstead Market", in August, the Uruguayan Chito Galindo recorded the bolero "Consuélame".

 

 

 

In 1958, La Sonora Matancera had the collaboration of the Venezuelan Víctor Piñero, with a guaracha titled "I don't want anything with his wife". So did Reynaldo Hierrezuelo, known as Rey Caney, who recorded his first song in October, the bolero he wrote "Quiero emborracharme." That year, several members left the musical group, leaving only Celia Cruz as a staff singer, who performed the last album they recorded in Cuba.

 

 

 

In 1960, La Sonora Matancera left Cuba and traveled to Mexico, knowing that there would be no return trip to her country. That year the group premiered the songs "El Baby", "I'm crazy", in 1961, they published "I don't know what's wrong with me". In 1962, Víctor Piñero recorded "Puente sobre el lago", to commemorate the inauguration of the General Rafael Urdaneta bridge in Maracaibo, Venezuela.

 

 

 

La Sonora Matancera, ended its contract with Seeco Records in 1966, adopting a new style for its own label M.R.V.A. At that time, the singers Elliot Romero, Justo Betancourt, Máximo Barrientos and Tony Díaz joined. From that year, until 1980, there were several changes in its formation, which blurred part of the musical identity that characterized it for so many years, but giving way to more modern sounds, by using electric instruments such as bass and piano. In 1981, he signed with the Fania Records label, who included him in their new subsidiary called Bárbaro Records, with which they remained until 1984.

 

 

 

In 1982, an emotional reunion with Celia Cruz led to the recording of the album "Feliz encuentro". Two years later, they released the single "El tornillo", from the album "Tradición". In celebration of the sixty-five years of La Sonora Matancera, an event was held in Central Park in New York, United States, on July 1, 1989. They also performed at Carnegie Hall, the famous concert hall of Manha

members of La Sonora Matancera

 

 

 

Currently its members are Valentín Cané, Pablo Vázquez Gobín "Bubú", Rogelio Martínez Díaz, Ezequiel Frías Gómez "Lino", José Rosario Chávez "Manteca", Ángel Alfonso Furias "Yiyo" and Carlos Manuel Díaz Alonso "Caíto".

 

 

 

They passed through the group Bienvenido Granda †, Pedro Knight †, Calixto Leicea †, Celia Cruz †, Humberto Cané, Daniel Santos †, Myrta Silva †, Leo Marini †, Miguelito Valdés †, Bobby Capó †, Nelson Pinedo †, Vicentico Valdés † , Estanislao Sureda "Laíto", Alberto Beltrán †, Carlos Argentino †, Celio González †, Pérez Prado †, Manuel Sánchez "Jimagua", Ismael Goberna, Domingo Medina, José Manuel Valera, Juan Bautista Llopis, Elpidio Vázquez, Carmen Delia Dipiní † , Javier Vázquez, Willy Rodríguez "El Baby", Alfredo Armenteros "Chocolate"†, Ismael Miranda, Justo Betancourt, Linda Leída, Gabriel Eladio Peguero, "Yayo El Indio"†, Welfo Gutiérrez†, Olga Chorens, Gloria Díaz, Tony Álvarez , Chito Galindo, Toña la Negra †, Bienvenido León, Elliot Romero, Emilio Domínguez "El Jarocho", Gladys Julio, Hermanas Lago, Israel del Pino, Johnny López, Jorge Maldonado, Kary Infante, Manuel Licea "Puntillita" †, Martha Jean Claude, Máximo Barrientos, Miguel de Gonzalo, Pepe Reyes, Raúl del Castillo, Reyna Ido Hierrezuelo "Rey Caney", Rodolfo Hoyos, Tony Díaz, Víctor Piñero†, Vicky Jiménez, Alfredo Valdés, Albertico Pérez.

 

 

 

La Sonora Matancera has been much more than a group of performers of popular Cuban and Caribbean rhythms. It is a musical institution, like very few in the world, that remains active after almost a hundred years. Under the direction of two exceptional musicians, first its founder Valentín Cané and then Rogelio Martínez, it was a training center for talented musicians and singers, who in turn gave brilliance to the orchestra.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dean of Cuban ensembles, as Sonora Matancera is also called, it has been one of the most famous musical groups in America. His music has made several generations of fans of popular music from the Caribbean dance and enjoy it all over the world. He had a golden age, where he knew how to interpret music such as guaguancó, guaracha, jíbara song, merecumbé and cumbia, as well as bolero and mambo, to make it universal. He adapted to the times and came to be identified as salsa, another of the great rhythms of Latin Americans. For several decades, many musical groups emerged following in the footsteps of this unique orchestra that has known how to make history.

 

With affection,

Ruben

 

 

 

 

Benito Juarez

 

Benito Juarez

Benito Juárez, in full Benito Pablo Juárez García, (born March 21, 1806, San Pablo Guelatao, Oaxaca, Mexico—died July 18, 1872, Mexico City), national hero and president of Mexico (1861–72), who for three years (1864–67) fought against foreign occupation under the emperor Maximilian and who sought constitutional reforms to create a democratic federal republic.

 

Early career

Juárez was born of Mesoamerican Indian parents, both of whom died when he was three years old. When he was 12, he left the uncle who was caring for him and joined his sister in the city of Oaxaca, where he began his formal education.

 

He originally studied for the priesthood, but in 1829 he entered the Oaxaca Institute of Arts and Sciences (1827; now Benito Juárez Autonomous University of Oaxaca) to study law and science. In 1831 he received a law degree and won his first public office, a seat on the municipal council. Impeccably honest, he never used public office for personal gain, and his modest way of life reflected his simple tastes, even after his marriage in 1843 to Margarita Maza, a Oaxacan woman 17 years his junior. Politics soon became his life’s work: he was a member of both the state and national legislatures, he became a judge in 1841, and he served as governor of his state, a post that brought him into national prominence.

 

During his early years in politics, Juárez began to formulate liberal solutions for his country’s many problems. The road to economic health, he concluded, lay in substituting capitalism for the stifling economic monopoly held by the Roman Catholic Church and the landed aristocracy. He also believed that political stability could be achieved only through the adoption of a constitutional form of government based on a federal system.

 

The conservatives’ return to power in the elections of 1853, however, doomed any reform in the near term in Mexico. Many prominent liberals were exiled, including Juárez. From December 1853 until June 1855 he lived in New Orleans in semipoverty, occupying himself by exchanging ideas with other Mexicans and laying plans to return home. The opportunity to put his ideas into action finally came in 1855, when the liberals took control of the national government, and Juárez left the United States to join the new administration of Juan Álvarez as minister of justice and public instruction.

 

The liberals carried out three major reforms, all supported by Juárez. As minister of justice, he was responsible for the law bearing his name that abolished special courts for the clergy and military, for he felt that juridical equality would help promote social equality. In June 1856 the government published the Ley Lerdo (“Lerdo Law,” named for the minister of finance). Although it forced the church to sell its property, it contained no threat of confiscation. By breaking up large landed estates, the government hoped that many Mexicans would be able to acquire property and thus create the middle class that it believed was essential for a strong and stable Mexico. The climax of the reform was the liberal constitution promulgated in February 1857.

 

In the same year, Ignacio Comonfort was elected president, and the new Congress chose Juárez to preside over the Supreme Court and therefore, according to the constitution, also to serve as the effective vice president of Mexico. The court position was critical in determining his future career, for when the conservatives revolted and ousted Comonfort in January 1858, Juárez had a legal claim to the presidency. Lacking troops to control the area around Mexico City, however, he retired to the eastern port city of Veracruz.

 

At Veracruz Juárez faced serious difficulties, for he had to create a government and hold it together through quarrels, betrayals, and defeat; to enforce and implement the constitution; and to maintain armies in the field and defeat the conservative forces. He was an extraordinarily tenacious and self-sufficient man, however, able to concentrate his energy and interest, and he proved himself the master of his government.

 

Because the clergy was supporting the conservatives against the legal government, Juárez enacted several laws to curb ecclesiastical power. He nationalized all church property, exempting only those buildings actually used for worship and instruction. To weaken clerical influence still further, he also nationalized the cemeteries and put birth registrations and marriages under the civil authority. Finally, the government separated church and state and guaranteed religious liberty to all citizens.

 

Presidency

By late 1860 the conservatives were faltering, and in January 1861 Juárez was able to return to Mexico City and was constitutionally elected president. He was, however, faced with many serious problems: the opposition’s forces still remained intact, the new Congress distrusted its president, and the treasury was virtually empty. As a solution to the latter problem, Juárez decided in July 1861 to suspend payment on all foreign debts for two years. England, Spain, and France decided to intervene to safeguard their investments, and by January 1862 the three countries had landed troops at Veracruz. However, when Britain and Spain realized that Napoleon III intended to conquer Mexico and control it through a puppet, Archduke Maximilian of Austria, they withdrew their forces. The French suffered a major defeat at Puebla on May 5, 1862, but with reinforcements they were able to occupy Mexico City in June 1863, and Maximilian soon arrived to take control of the government.

 

Forced to leave the capital again, Juárez kept himself and his government alive by a long series of retreats that ended only at El Paso del Norte (later named Juárez) at the Mexican-U.S. border. Early in 1867, as a result of continued Mexican resistance, increased U.S. pressure, and criticism at home, Napoleon decided to withdraw his troops. Soon afterward Mexican forces captured Maximilian and executed him.

 

Juárez then made the greatest mistake of his political career. In August 1867, shortly after his return to Mexico City, he issued a call for national elections and for a referendum on whether Congress should make five amendments to the constitution. Public opinion did not object to the president’s running for reelection, but the constitutional changes aroused immediate and violent reaction in many quarters, including those sympathetic to Juárez. His proposed changes came under fire because amendments enacted by Congress alone were unconstitutional, and the changes would strengthen the executive power. Juárez was reelected, but the controversy had created such a crisis of confidence that the administration did not even bother to count the votes on the amendments.

 

Despite illness and personal loss—in October 1870 Juárez suffered a stroke, and three months later his wife died—he decided to run again in 1871. After a bitter campaign he was reelected, but many of his countrymen, refusing to accept the result as final, took up arms against him. Juárez spent the last few months of his life trying to restore peace. He died of a heart attack in 1872 and was buried in the Pantheon of San Fernando in Mexico City.

 

Legacy

Mexico City: Benito Juárez monument

 

Juárez’s political rise was a continual struggle to transform his liberal ideas into a permanent political reality and to overcome the prevalent social attitudes toward his Indian background. The prejudices of the 19th century serve to emphasize and enhance Juárez’s extraordinary qualities and achievements. His domestic reforms set the stage for Mexico’s remarkable modernization in the last quarter of the 19th century and freed Mexico from the most-flagrant remnants of neocolonialism. His leadership against the French earned Juárez his place as a national hero.

Dolores Ibárruri ‘La Passionaria’

 

Dolores Ibárruri  ‘La Passionaria’

 

Source: Biografias y Vidas

olores Ibárruri [The Passion Flower]

Source: Biographies and Lives

(Dolores Ibárruri Gómez, called La Pasionaria) Spanish communist leader (Gallarta, Vizcaya, 1895 - Madrid, 1989). Born into a conservative mining family, Dolores Ibárruri became interested in the workers' struggle under the influence of her husband, a socialist militant whom she married in 1915.

 

Since she took action on the occasion of the revolutionary general strike of 1917, Dolores Ibárruri gained prestige as a political speaker and columnist, despite the fact that she had interrupted her school training very soon to start working as a servant.

 

Impressed by the triumph of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Dolores Ibárruri participated together with the Somorrostro socialist group, of which she was a member, in the split from the PSOE that gave rise to the birth of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) in 1920, reaching to form part of its Central Committee in 1930; In 1931 she moved to Madrid to work in the editorial office of the Party newspaper, Mundo Obrero.

 

Her activism as a tireless fighter of hers landed her in jail twice in 1931-33. Recently elected deputy for Asturias in 1936, the uprising of the military against the government of the Republic increased her popular charisma, by deploying during the following Civil War (1936-39) a great propaganda activity; her passionate, sensitive and coherent prose made her a symbol of the resistance and combativeness of republican Spain.

 

 

La Pasionaria signing autographs for soldiers

of the international brigades (1938)

 

Already during the war she rose to second place in influence within the party, after its general secretary, José Díaz. After the military defeat, she went into exile in the Soviet Union (1939-77), continuing her work as the representative of Spain in the Communist International. When Díaz died in 1942, she Pasionaria replaced him as general secretary of the PCE, a position from which she would be displaced by Santiago Carrillo in 1960; she remained, however, in the honorary position of president of the Party.

 

Dolores Ibárruri returned to Spain after the death of Franco and the transition to democracy, and she was again elected as a deputy for Asturias (1977). Even then, she remained clinging to the old ideals of pro-Soviet communism, which barely had any echo in Spanish society or in the PCE; Plagued by health problems, she soon left her seat and withdrew from active politics.

Monument to Passionanaria

 

How to cite this article:

Fernndez, Tomás and Tamaro, Elena. «Biography of Dolores Ibárruri [La Pasionaria]». In Biographies and Lives. The online biographical encyclopedia [Internet]. Barcelona, ​​Spain, 2004. Available at https://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/i/ibarruri.htm [date of access: November 23, 2022].

With affection,

Ruben

(Dolores

 

 

The Wife's Story

 

The Wife's     Story

URSULA K. LEGUIN

        

He was a good husband, a good father. I don’t understand it. I don’t believe in it. I don’t believe that it

happened. I saw it happen but it isn’t true. It can’t be. He was always gentle. If you’d have seen him

playing with the children, anybody who saw him with the children would have known that there wasn’t

any bad in him, not one mean bone. When I first met him he was still living with his mother, over near

Spring Lake, and I used to see them together, the mother and the sons, and think that any young fellow

that was that nice with his family must be one worth knowing. Then one time when I was walking in the

woods I met him by himself coming back from a hunting trip. He hadn’t got any game at all, not so much

as a field mouse, but he wasn’t cast down about it. He was just larking along enjoying the morning air.

That’s one of the things I first loved about him. He didn’t take things hard, he didn’t grouch and whine

when things didn’t go his way. So we got to talking that day. And I guess things moved right along after

that, because pretty soon he was over here pretty near all the time. And my sister said — see, my

parents had moved out the year before and gone south, leaving us the place — my sister said, kind of

teasing but serious, “Well! If he’s going to be here every day and half the night, I guess there isn’t room

for me!” And she moved out — just down the way. We’ve always been real close, her and me. That’s the

sort of thing doesn’t ever change. I couldn’t ever have got through this bad time without my sis. 

Well, so he come to live here. And all I can say is, it was the happiest year of my life. He was just purely

good to me. A hard worker and never lazy, and so big and fine‐looking. Everybody looked up to him, you

know, young as he was. Lodge Meeting nights, more and more often they had him to lead the singing.

He had such a beautiful voice, and he’d lead off strong, and the others following and joining in, high

voices and low. It brings the shivers on me now to think of it, hearing it, nights when I’d stayed home

from meeting when the children was babies — the singing coming up through the trees there, and the

moonlight, summer nights, the full moon shining. I’ll never hear anything so beautiful. I’ll never know a

joy like that again.

It was the moon, that’s what they say. It’s the moon’s fault, and the blood. It was in his father’s blood. I

never knew his father, and now I wonder what become of him. He was from up Whitewater way, and

had no kin around here. I always thought he went back there, but now I don’t know. There was some

talk about him, tales that come out after what happened to my husband. It’s something runs in the

blood, they say, and it may never come out, but if it does, it’s the change of the moon that does it.

Always it happens in the dark of the moon, when everybody’s home and asleep. Something comes over

the one that’s got the curse in his blood, they say, and he gets up because he can’t sleep, and goes out

into the glaring sun, and goes off all alone — drawn to find those like him. 

And it may be so, because my husband would do that. I’d half rouse and say, “Where you going to?” and

he’d say, “Oh, hunting, be back this evening,” and it wasn’t like him, even his voice was different. But I’d

be so sleepy, and not wanting to wake the kids, and he was so good and responsible, it was no call of

mine to go asking “Why?” and “Where?” and all like that.

So it happened that way maybe three times or four. He’d come back late and worn out, and pretty near

cross for one so sweet‐tempered — not wanting to talk about it.  I figured everybody got to bust out

now and then, and nagging never helped anything.  But it did begin to worry me.  Not so muc that he

went, but that he come back so tired and strange. Even, he smelled strange. It made my hair stand up on

end. I could not endure it and I said, “What is that — those smells on you? All over you!” And he said, “I

don’t know,” real short, and made like he was sleeping. But he went down when he thought I wasn’t

noticing, and washed and washed himself. But those smells stayed in his hair, and in our bed, for days.

And then the awful thing. I don’t find it easy to tell about this. I want to cry when I have to bring it to my

mind. Our youngest, the little one, my baby, she turned from her father. Just overnight. He come in and

she got scared‐looking, stiff, with her eyes wide, and then she begun to cry and try to hide behind me.

She didn’t yet talk plain but she was saying over and over, “Make it go away! Make it go away!”

The look in his eyes; just for one moment, when he heard that. That’s what I don’t want‐ever to

remember. That’s what I can’t forget. The look in his eyes looking at his own child.

I said to the child, “Shame on you, what’s got into you!” — scolding, but keeping her right up close to me

at the same time, because I was frightened too. Frightened to shaking.

He looked away then and said something like, “Guess she just waked up dreaming,” and passed it off

that way. Or tried to. And so did I. And I got real mad with my baby when she kept on acting crazy scared

of her own dad. But she couldn’t help it and I couldn’t change it.

He kept away that whole day. Because he knew, I guess. It was just beginning dark of the moon.

It was hot and close inside, and dark, and we’d all been asleep some while, when something woke me

up. He wasn’t there beside me. I heard a little stir in the passage, when I listened. So I got up, because I

could bear it no longer. I went out into the passage, and it was light there, hard sunlight coming in from

the door. And I saw him standing just outside, in the tall grass by the entrance. His head was hanging.

Presently he sat down, like he felt weary, and looked down at his feet. I held still, inside, and watched —

I didn’t know what for.

And I saw what he saw. I saw the changing. In his feet, it was, first. They got long, each foot got longer,

stretching out, the toes stretching out and the foot getting long, and fleshy, and white. And no hair on

them.

The hair begun to come away all over his body. It was like his hair fried away in the sunlight and was

gone. He was white all over then, like a worm’s skin. And he turned his face. It was changing while I

looked, it got flatter and flatter, the mouth flat and wide, and the teeth grinning flat and dull, and the

nose just a knob of flesh with nostril holes, and the ears gone, and the eyes gone blue — blue, with

white rims around the blue — staring at me out of that flat, soft, white face.

He stood up then on two legs.

I saw him, I had to see him. My own dear love, turned in the hateful one.

I couldn’t move, but as I crouched there in the passage staring out into the day I was trembling and

shaking with a growl that burst out into a crazy awful howling.  A grief howl and a terror howl.  And the

others heard it, even sleeping, and woke up.

It stared and peered, that thing my husband had turned into, and shoved its face up to the entrance of

our house. I was still bound by mortal fear, but behind me the children had waked up, and the baby was

whimpering. The mother anger come into me then, and I snarled and crept forward.

The man thing looked around. It had no gun, like the ones from the man places do. But it picked up a

heavy fallen tree branch in its long white foot, and shoved the end of that down into our house, at me. I

snapped the end of it in my teeth and started to force my way out, because I knew the man would kill

our children if it could. But my sister was already coming. I saw her running at the man with her head

low and her mane high and her eyes yellow as the winter sun. It turned on her and raised up that branch

to hit her. But I come out of the doorway, mad with the mother anger, and the others all were coming

answering my call, the whole pack gathering, there in that blind glare and heat of the sun at noon.

The man looked round at us and yelled out loud, and brandished the branch it held. Then it broke and

ran, heading for the cleared fields and plowlands, down the mountainside. It ran, on two legs, leaping

and weaving, and we followed it.

I was last, because love still bound the anger and the fear in me. I was running when I saw them pull it

down. My sister’s teeth were in its throat. I got there and it was dead. The others were drawing back

from the kill, because of the taste of the blood, and the smell. The younger ones were cowering and

some crying, and my sister rubbed her mouth against her fore legs over and over to get rid of the taste. I

went up close because I thought if the thing was dead the spell, the curse must be done, and my

husband could come back — alive, or even dead, if I could only see him, my true love, in his true form,

beautiful. But only the dead man lay there white and bloody. We drew back and back from it, and

turned and ran back up into the hills, back to the woods of the shadows and the twilight and the blessed

dark.

With affection,

Ruben