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Charles Redden Butler Neto
BIOGRAPHY
Charles R. Butler III (Neto) has been studying ancient times for many years. From learning to read encyclopedias at the age of 3, he has always looked for the reason behind the action. M...view moreBIOGRAPHY
Charles R. Butler III (Neto) has been studying ancient times for many years. From learning to read encyclopedias at the age of 3, he has always looked for the reason behind the action. Midrash allows him to do this. Midrash is a Hebrew style of writing which means “interpretation”. It is meant to look at what may have motivated a person in the narrative that we know very little about. What were they living through, was there some background that is missing. He started writing this story as a free verse poem ten years ago, expecting it to be around three pages long, a short story. It grew off the page into a novella, and then a novel.
Every night he listened, and it was as if Salome was speaking, filling in the very few words that were written in Josephus, or the book of Luke that spoke of an unnamed daughter of Herodias, something that wasn’t there in the operas of Strauss, a vulnerable young woman who had been sheltered and then thrust into adult responsibility far too soon. She did not die young, but of old age, not mocked, but respected as a queen. This does not happen without a young person taking charge of her own life and turning a different direction, one which has not been told.
In learning about her, he learned about himself. One sometimes must make decisions that are unpopular, try to find out about the backside of a culture because the front is not what it seems. Talk to the bum on the street before you go to the counselor, talk to the counselor before you go the bureaucrat, but learn that the bureaucrat may have just the information you need if you talk to them nicely. From talking to the homeless, he learned what Salome could have found out, just by watching.
Charles was born in Brazil in a small town in the highlands, the son of missionary parents. Like Salome, he has lived in multiple countries. He traveled to Europe in college, and wandered Capri and the streets of Rome. He speaks English, Portuguese, some Spanish, and signs American Sign Language. He studied Hebrew in seminary, and took two years of Latin. He has studied Brazilian sign language and has worked at linguistic conferences in Brazil, having to work, as an interpreter, through many points of view.
Charles currently lives in Hyattsville, MD, a suburb of Washington, DC, with his husband and five cats in a quiet suburban neighborhood with neighbors of multiple ethnicities. Like Galilee, Washington, DC is a crossroad of multiple worlds, religions, and rulers, not that different than 2000 years ago. Salome could live next door and might just change the world.view less