Ben Gallup

Click the image to download it for free (.tif). The resolution should be good enough for printing at a decent size, at least 8.5” x 11”. Please feel free to share!

(Originally printed in Reform and Revolution #7)

Prints available here.

“Some people just burn their candle more brightly than others. On this particular dark and rainy November day, I had a chance to read a new MG novel by my friend and teacher-librarian-artist-poet-rocker-and (newly) published children’s author Ben Gallup.
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Sammy’s Attic takes the reader on a journey back to school to confront and reconciliation with the bully and the anger rooted in trauma of Sammy’s escape from a devastating fire. A dozen color illustrations accompany this easy chapter book that deals with real issues in a way that young readers and their adults will appreciate. I encourage elementary and middle school librarians to get copies of Sammy’s Attic circulating ASAP, or as they say in Stuttgart, Sie sollten dieses Buch kaufen!”

…a humbling review, from the one and only Bookman, Craig Seasholes!

While you’re at his blog, be sure to check out other recent articles on readers, authors, libraries, and #FReadom

http://bookmansbytes.blogspot.com/2021/11/ben%20gallup.html

Ana Roxanne, one of the best music artists I’ve found recently. Give it a listen.

Sammy’s hometown burned down in summer forest fires. Since the fires took his home, Sammy has developed an anger problem, which gets him into trouble at his new school. He invents a snowy, imaginary world and a friend, named Tu, in the attic of his new home to help himself heal from loss, terror, and anger. Tu helps Sammy find his way into a new life and new school, where Sammy must make friends and deal with a bully. Sammy can only make peace with these profound changes by following the smell of smoke from below the floorboards of his bedroom, where he finds a world, and himself, in flames.

Sammy’s Attic is a fresh take on perennial kid-problems, offering wisdom and a great story. It does not read as didactic or moralistic, but it does aim to teach emotional intelligence (especially to boys) by normalizing empathy, crying, restorative justice, and other aspects of well-being that masculine gender socialization often discourages.

Sammy’s Attic was primarily written for readers ages 8-13. It is intended as a stand-alone story kids will enjoy as well as a text that teachers, counselors, social workers, school administrators, and youth mentors can use in discussion with young people.

Surprise! I moved to Germany. Long story. Anyway, I won’t be posting much until I get settled here. I’ll be in touch soon,

Love,

Ben

I just want to live in a place where I can stand on the sidewalk and shout, “I love! I love!” and the people will shout back, “Me too! I love too!” -diary

36” x 24” acrylic on canvas

I always put reminders in my environment to cue healing strategies. Out of sight, out of mind…in sight, in mind! I’ll have prints available soon. In the meantime, please feel free to print any of my pictures and put them in your environment. I also find it helpful to save them as the wallpaper on my phone.

I’ll be exhibiting some work at Sing por Solidarity, based in Spain, to support Solidarity Park, which commemorates anti-fascists from around the world who died when their ship was torpedoed in 1937. Check out this event to learn more and support Solidarity Park:

I hope to have a video before too long! For now, enjoy on [cringe] Spotify.

I’ll be exhibiting some work at Sing por Solidarity, based in Spain, to support Solidarity Park, which commemorates anti-fascists from around the world who died when their ship was torpedoed in 1937. Check out this event to learn more and support Solidarity Park: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/discuss-with-solidarity-park-project-tickets-140694672553?utm-medium=discovery&utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&aff=esfb&utm-source=fb&utm-term=listing

I’ve decided to illustrate and self-publish Sammy’s Attic. Here’s illustration #1!

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I went to the woods to die alone. I had heard some time or other that it was common in hunter-gatherer societies for the very elderly to walk off from their community, sit down, and wait for death. It was really stupid and ridiculous for me to imitate this. It was perfect. I loved the whole idea.

I felt the time was right. Something in me had ripened, or perhaps withered. I was tired of listless days, scraping by on my pitiful, public pension. My parents were long dead. My only brother was dead. I had never been blessed with a family of my own. The few good friends I’d made in life were dead. I had been around the sun exactly 77 times. It was almost curious that I had waited this long, until my 77th birthday, to die. I got all bundled up, grabbed my cane, and headed to the state park, conveniently located near my home.

The air felt cold and fresh on my sagging cheeks as I walked the winding path, with crisp brown leaves and glittering frost crunching beneath my feet. Gentle wind tossed my few white strands of hair. “How delightful,” I marveled, laboriously hiking on my old man’s legs, step by step, deeper into the woods. 

I came to a sharp bend in the path, but the land ahead was sufficiently flat enough and clear, I reasoned, that if I kept going straight I could walk far enough (without stumbling and falling over) to a place where nobody would find me prematurely. 

Off the path I went, shuffling across the frozen and sleeping forest floor, between merry oaks and maples. “Marvelous. Just marvelous,” I delighted. I tried to savor the last walk of my life, but eventually I wearied of it. I found a grand, old tree with roots protruding from the ground like arms of a chair. “This will do,” I said to myself and began the difficult work of lowering my stiff, tired body, taking my dying seat against that tree.

Eventually I sat all the way down on the ground and rested my back on the mighty trunk. My huffing and puffing settled after a while, and I found myself in a stillness that opened all around, above and below. 

“You old fool!” I laughed, tickled by my ridiculous decision to come die here this morning. I loved it. It really was perfect. I smiled and gazed up at the sky.

A crow flew overhead and squawked as if to wish me good morning. I raised my hand to wave and return its greeting, but the crow continued its flight indifferently, and I realized it hadn’t been greeting me at all. I lowered my hand. How awkward. I suppose the crow was like most people I had known in life. They were only interested if you were something to eat or fornicate. I supposed the crow would return when my mind had left my body. Pity I wouldn’t be there to enjoy it.

My thoughts drifted along a usual course, through the profound and mundane, just as if I had chosen my habitual porch-sitting rather than coming here to die today.

Hours passed and cold began to set in, and then hunger. I didn’t really mind. My body was giving it’s usual survival signals, but a voice from the depths of my heart whispered, “Hush, hush, dear body. We are all done now. Please just rest.” The pains rebelled at this and grew more urgent for a while, but finally they gave up.

I always expected the bodily pains to be the worst part of dying, but my aged bag of bones was like a withered autumn leaf, ready to fall away in nature’s course. No, it was only after my stem was gently plucked from the branch of life that the terror and torture began.

My crisp view of the trees set against the darkening winter sky began to blur. The rustling of leaves in the breeze and the occasional chitter of a squirrel became muffled and indistinct. I could no longer find an object of perception to put any name to. I lived all my life knowing where my body began and ended, just at the surface of my skin, of course! Now this sense of my body’s outline began to dissolve. Sight, smell, touch, and thought, all of which I had taken for granted as a unity held together within a self, drifted apart like hands that could no longer find each other, feet that couldn’t find a ground.

As my familiar senses fell into disarray, something below them was revealed, something that immediately began fading. I was losing some fundamental sense of being, a sense I had never noticed until now, just as I felt it pull away slowly like a wave never to return to shore. 

I had lived a life of painful longing for love, some kind of success, some kind of spiritual connection. I had lived a life of hard work and discipline. The fact of my existence seemed a problem to be solved, a demand to achieve. And now I could see how every night I sat in despair and wished for true love or a message from the angels was misguided and self-inflicted suffering, an anxious distraction from the fragile flower of my beautiful life. The humble, miraculous, and simple feeling of life, always too close for me to behold it, only came into my view now, as it was leaving.

How foolish I was to never appreciate my being! So often I had thought I was cursed for having the thoroughly absurd misfortune of being born at all! But my being! Life! Beneath all the trivial layers of experience! Precious being! I had wasted it! Wasted it! You old fool! Wasted it!

There is nothing I can say to describe the fear and chaos of what followed. Nothing.

I’m going to stop writing now anyway, because I’m tired and recess starts in just a few minutes.

I’m telling you all of this, Ms. Flandry, because I hope you will not waste this life as I wasted my last one. Frankly, you should quit teaching. My kindergarten teacher in my last life really cared about us. Maybe you used to like kids and teaching, but we can all tell you don’t anymore. And it’s only the first week of school. You would be happier if you quit and took some time to be quiet and alone, so you can feel your precious life. Also, can we please get a snack other than graham crackers? Ok. See you after lunch.