Where Are the Women?

Unless a top 10 list is derived from actual statistics, it's not worth worrying about, especially when it comes to books.

The latest top 10 is 10 science fiction novels you pretend to have read.... The compilers of this list go on to list their reasons why you should have read these books. The basic premise is that if you pretend to have read these books and haven't it's because you are trying to be something you're not. The last time I saw an illustration of this elitist philosophy was in the remake of Born Yesterday in which Melanie Griffith (before all the cosmetic surgery that left her needing a mask that covered her from head to toe) actually read a huge tome that was all the rage in Washington D.C. At a party, she began discussing the book with people who hadn't read the book but pretended they did because it was the in thing to do. And here she comes to the party to discuss this most essential book on politics or economics or something very Washington D.C. and she was alone without anyone to discuss what she read. Isn't that always the way?

The link above lists books I've not heard of, although there are books I have read, like Dune by Frank Herbert (and I read the entire series), 1984 by George Orwell, which I recently read and am willing to discuss -- and often do), and Jonathan Strange & Dr. Norrell, which I began and just could not get into. What was the point of the book? I couldn't figure out whether or not there was a story or how far into the massive doorstop I'd have to tunnel before I got to it and gave up. Good thing it was a library book and all I had to do was return it and pay the fines. The other books I don't think I've ever heard about.

The list is arbitrary. How about my own list of 10 books you should read? How about any of Andre Norton's books, especially her Witch World series where the war between the sexes really was fought and a society that was essentially equal, until all the men went and ruined it, split apart and women took over rule after fleeing their native country over the mountains and sealing the mountains behind them and setting spells to make sure no one could even think about that direction? Now that is a great trick. People know north, south, and west, but there was no east and no one thought about it or considered it strange until Simon Tregarth came through the Siege Perilous and found himself in the midst of their world. Oh, Karsten and Alizon were still mostly male ruled, but the Witches of Estcarp kept them at bay. Then there were the Falconers who resemble a more militant and misogynistic society where the the females ran their villages and male children were taken away when they came of age to join the men in their mountain eyries and bond with a falcon that would be their mate, except for time to go to the villages to breed, for the rest of their lives. Now that is a separatist society. Add magic and the evils of technology that brings a loss of self and soul and which the Witches constantly battled and you have a complex and intricate world where the coming of triplets from a Witch forsworn who lost her virginity but did not lose her power mated with Simon Tregarth and you have interesting times coming.

Then there is the Pliocine Exile books by Julian May who weaves a world of telepaths and telekinetics that jumps time back and forth and creates a future that sees a time where you can be Unified or not and how that affects the worlds that bind their minds together in harmony. This is a universe filled with anomalies and possibilities that bred Bodiless Jack and Diamond Mask and it all began with a group of telepaths that fled to the Pliocine era of Earth to escape Unity. Lots of complexities and adventures there, not to mention a great deal about politics, science, technology, and minds capable of massacre and beauty.

Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series is another good choice. The world of Darkover was a world in chaos and at the mercy of minds and telepathic/telekinetic abilities that nearly destroyed them until they signed the pact and chose to fight each other eye to eye and hand to hand with swords. Seeing a world where power was used for good until some bright group of powerful individuals decided to see how far they could go and how it nearly destroyed them, and then their climb back from the brink until discovered by humans is a masterful work. The people of Darkover living side by side with humans and their advanced technology is a lesson in human and humanoid nature.

That's just the start of my list. Yes, there are three women there, something that was missing from the 10 science fiction novels you pretend to read to fit into some elitist group of society. Let's not forget Ursula K. Le Guin and the many worlds and civilizations and worlds she created and continues to create. My first thought is The Left Hand of Darkness and Madeleine L'Engle and A Wrinkle in Time for starters. There's also C. J. Cherryh. The first of her books I read was Down Below Station and it was very good. How about the Petaybee series by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough? Anne McCaffrey created the world where dragons and human riders were paired and fought Thread and then added smaller dragons that everyone could join with and later on included dolphins. Now that was a world to be explored and enjoyed and the intricacies of their society as it devolved from a technological world to a world more like medieval times where dragons and humans protected all is a study in politics and economics that cannot be easily forgotten.

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough also wrote some wonderful fantasies based on Scandinavian myths and folklore very much like Terry Brooks and his Shannara series and just as good, and sometimes better, although I enjoyed Brooks's books as well, cutting my teeth on Sword of Shannara.

I'd have to say that my top 10 list would be mostly composed of female writers, not because they're better or more inventive, but because they have been slighted by the people who think they matter. There is a world full of wonderful science fiction, hard and soft, written by women, many of whom chose to go by their initials or take on male names to be recognized and accepted, as if having a penis is the only real criteria for who and what are best in science fiction.

Here are a few names for you: Octavia Butler, Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood (although she prefers not to be called a science fiction author), Nancy Kress, Lois Bujold, and Catherine Asaro to name a few.

Take another look and try some of these books. You won't be sorry. The real test is in stretching the limits of one's mind -- or prejudices -- and realizing there is no need to go back to a more myopic and less rich view of science fiction and the world.

Mediocre in Comparison

Ben Hur was on my movie watching list this weekend and I relived the days of yore when William Wyler directed Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd in their epic grudge match. Aside from realizing that Charlton Heston was wearing a really bad wig and beard as a rower in the bowels of Roman galleys, the movie still thrilled me. Maybe it was the music. It could've been knowing that the villa where Heston and his family stayed during the filming of Ben Hur was crawling with lice, as the Italian scandal sheets claims, or that Stephen Boyd nearly went blind during the filming because he had to wear two pairs of brown contacts to hide his brilliant blue eyes. It was mainly because the musical score stirred my emotions almost as much as watching Judah ben Hur and Messala fight it out in the circus as they took their grudge match to the circus and fought it out with their chariots. The movie holds up even after more than 50 years.

As Amazon always does, they suggested more movies for me to watch and I was surprised to find a remake of Ben Hur of a more recent vintage. The remake starred Joseph Morgan (The Vampire Diaries) and Stephen Campbell Moore (Hunted and He Knew He Was Right) and was a miniseries made for TV in 2010, which is probably how I missed it before. I don't watch TV. I haven't even turned on my TV in 3 or 4 years. I do dust it infrequently, but I don't turn it on. I think the batteries in the remote are likely corroded as well. Oh, well.

Anyway, I watched the remake. There is a grittier look to the movie and it is a much smaller scale in terms of story and scenery. There are also a lot of changes made to Lew Wallace's 1883 novel, which I am in the process of reading. I want to know exactly what was changed and how. I do know that Cecil B. DeMille's version of the book with Heston and Boyd was much closer to the original story, and to the first time DeMille made the movie with Ramon Novarro. (Yes, I have seen the older version.)

For starters, there was lots of nudity, male and female, and there was sex, quite a bit of sex, but only with Messala's father's personal whore, Athene, who was also adept at the art of poisoning. After all, how is a senator like Marcellus Agrippa supposed to ascend to power without poison adept whores who  gain access to a rival's bed so he can whisper state secrets in the afterglow of sex? A man is less able to think clearly once his interest has been aroused -- and sated.

Where Heston's Judah was chaste and focused on revenge, Morgan's Judah loses his virginity to Athene and continues to bed her, especially since she taught him how to please her so fully.

Instead of Esther being a slave and Judah's property, she is the daughter of the merchant Simonides. Simonides wishes to form a more lasting alliance by betrothing Esther to Judah. Big difference there, and one I'm sure was not in Wallace's book, not to mention Simonides being crucified in Judah's place after the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, played simperingly by Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey), who is struck by the falling tile Judah knocked from the roof of his home. Oops! I thought it was Tirzah who knocked loose the tile while Judah took the blame. Guess not -- at least not in the miniseries.

I could go on for at least another 10,000 words explaining the differences between the 1959 and the 2010 versions of the movie. What I noticed most is that Morgan and Moore looked more like boys playing the parts of Judah ben Hur and Messala while Heston and Boyd brought not only their stardom to the parts, but gravitas and power that Morgan and Moore lacked, even though Morgan and Moore were nude more often. After all, everyone knows that nudity and sex make a story more real and popular when on the screen -- little or big. And I don't mean the size of breasts or penises either.

Morgan simpered and pursed his full lips in place of real acting and Moore was marginally better in his close cropped hair and shining bronze armor. Where Boyd had smiling and venomous villainy, Moore was conflicted and weak in his bitter rivalry, which amounted to little more than constipated pique. About the only truly villainous character was David, played by Marc Warren (Hogfather as Teatime), who traded his overseer's position for ownership of Judah ben Hur's vast fortunes and coveted Esther. His lying, scheming, back-stabbing best nearly eclipsed Moore's vengeful Messala, who turned out to be Marcellus Agrippa's bastard son and a man who felt he didn't measure up to his Roman father's high standards. After all, his mother, who died when Messala was a boy, was another of Marcellus's personal poisoning whores. A slave.

There was far too much modern psychology in place of real characters with real motives in the remake that will appeal to audiences who haven't seen the 1959 version of Ben Hur on the big screen. The pretty boys and sex did nothing to enhance the remake and the only stand
out performance wasn't by Ben Cross, who played the frightened tyrant, Emperor Tiberius, but by Art Malik, the Sheikh Ildarim. Malik's mischievous sheikh was a match for Hugh Griffith's smoldering and lightning tempered sheikh bent on proving the 4:1 odds were more in favor of the Jew -- and Arab -- than the Romans.

I'd give the 2010 remake of Ben Hur a mediocre 3/5 stars on its own de-merits. It is an admirable attempt at reimagining Lew Wallace's sweeping epic that succeeded only in gritty and realistic scenery and pretty much failed in elevating these boys to the larger than life characters and heart of the story. It was, at best, amusing at times, and quite mediocre the rest of the time.

Review: Blood Moon by Alexandra Sokoloff

Ever since a friend recommended The Gift by Alexandra Sokoloff, I've been intrigued by Sokoloff's gift for creeping horror and surprising stories. I didn't know then that she was also a screenwriter, which explains how she is able to pain scenes that jump off the page. That is no less true for Blood Moon the second book in the FBI Thriller series that began with Huntress Moon. 

Blood Moon begins where Huntress Moon ended with Special Agent Matt Roarke chasing Cara Lindstrom, the only survivor of The Reaper's bloody family murders. Baptized in blood, Cara is that rarest of serial murders, a female serial killer. Roarke isn't quite convinced that Cara is a serial killer, rather more a vigilante, which is in keeping with who she kills -- men who have wronged women by rape, murder, incest, and violence. That is how Roarke first becmae involved with Cara; she said something to his undercover agent before pushing him into the path of oncoming traffic until the agent was a bloodied, broken smear on the highway.

In Blood Moon, Roarke is expressly forbidden to continue investigating Cara Lindstrom and ordered to get back to work on his organized crime take-down, but Roarke is emotionally invested in pursuing Cara. Good thing there is a holiday coming up and he and his team have a good plan for moving on Cara by tricking her into believing they are after The Reaper, a case they know will get her attention so they can get her.

While searching for a similar murder to pretend to investigate as if The Reaper was active again, Roarke and his team stumble into the midst of The Reaper's latest killing -- or so they think. All the signs are there, but Cara is nowhere to be found. She's off on business of her own, working from an apartment in the Haight in San Francisco. Cara kills again and Roarke is two steps behind The Reaper who is actually killing again in a small community in the mountains.

Alexandra Sokoloff has created a very realistic set of characters with easily recognizable quirks and talents, a team that works well together -- most of the time. Roarke's second is a dapper man who prefers the good things in life and is close enough to Roarke to realize his friend and colleague has mixed feelings about Cara Lindstrom, especially when it comes to catching her. Roarke isn't acting at all like his efficient self and that has Epps frustrated and angry. Epps doesn't want to lose his friend or see him in jail.

The relationship between Cara and Roarke has its ups and downs, but there is a noticeable pull between them that is not only understandable but makes sense -- inside and outside of the book. They are bound together by forces stronger than cop chasing criminal, forces forged when Cara was found alive in the wake of The Reaper's bloody spree. Both were forged in the blood of The Reaper's kills but took different paths.

Although the creepy horror that infused Huntress Moon is not a part of Blood Moon, the boogey man -- or woman -- have been unmasked, there remains a strong sense of purpose and excitement when it is revelaed that The Reaper has returned and is hunting families again. As clue by clue Roarke gets closer to understanding The Reaper's motives and his methods, the sense of purpose grows stronger.

Sokoloff sets up scene after scene of horror made more horrific by the idyllic surroundings and placid, happy lives that are touched by the Evil of The Reaper's evolving pattern. Blood Moon is horrifying at moments, but at it's heart is an exciting chase after Evil as Evil is being redefined and refined. Justice becomes less clearly defined and more satisfying when reached.

One question remains. How do you define justice?

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Release Day Blitz for the 5th and Final Book in The Pipe Woman Chronicles by Lynne Cantwell

Naomi Witherspoon lives in interesting times.  At the winter solstice, she was Seized by a Native American goddess to mediate a power-sharing agreement between all the pagan gods and goddesses and the Christian God.  Then, as her relationship with her new boyfriend Fissured, she Tapped a wellspring of strength – her Native American heritage.

Now, Gravid and due any day, she must conduct the mediation of her life.  Will she succeed?  Or will it all go up in smoke?

The answers to those questions, and more, can be found in Annealed, the final installment in the Pipe Woman Chronicles, an urban fantasy series by Lynne Cantwell.

It began at the winter solstice And it ends Now. 

It’s zero hour…

Naomi has just two weeks to find a new home for Joseph's grandfather. The old Ute shaman is fighting for his life against a mysterious injection of toxin he received at the hands of the Norse Trickster god Loki. If Naomi is to defeat Loki once and for all, she must learn what it is he seeks under the old man's wickiup. 

She has just one week before she must mediate between the Earth's pagan gods and goddesses and the Christian God. If her efforts fail, all of humankind will suffer the consequences.

And her baby is due any day.

In this, the fifth and final book of the Pipe Woman Chronicles, Naomi is in a race against the clock to balance the demands of her body, her family, and her friends – and she must do it while the whole world is watching.

PAPERBACK | KINDLE

A taste of chapter 10: Jehovah sighed. "White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman, I concede that much of what You have said here is true. Humanity wrestles still with its baser impulses, even as it reaches for the pinnacle of its potential. Math, the sciences, engineering. I never thought they would figure out fractal theory." He chuckled. "I love My children dearly. Soon they will reach the stars. They are ever a surprise and a delight to Me." Lynne Cantwell's take on the excerpt: "Naomi has finally reached the Big Mediation -- the one between the Christian God and all the pagan gods and goddesses that the whole series has been driving toward. In this scene, White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman has just outlined all the ways humanity has trashed God's Creation: ruining the environment, using Scripture as an excuse to treat other human races like animals, and so on. God acknowledges all of that. But it's also clear that He takes great delight in what He has created -- and He has a sense of humor, too."

About the Author: Lynne Cantwell

Lynne Cantwell has been writing fiction since the second grade, when the kid who sat in front of her showed her a book he had written, and she thought, "I could do that." The result was Susie and the Talking Doll, a picture book, illustrated by the author, about a girl who owned a doll that not only could talk, but could carry on conversations. The book had dialogue but no paragraph breaks. Today, after a twenty-year career in broadcast journalism and a master's degree in fiction writing from Johns Hopkins University (or perhaps despite the master's degree), Lynne is still writing fantasy. In addition, she is a contributing author at Indies Unlimited and writes a monthly post for The Indie Exchange.

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Strum the Heart Strings

Struggling to write a new book is just that -- a struggle. It is worth it, or at least that's what I tell myself as I slog on through days when it feels like I'm prying the words out one by one with a toothpick or pair of eyebrow tweezers. There are days, however, when the words flow and time ceases to have meaning. I often stop when the light goes to turn on a lamp and realize I've been writing nonstop for 12 hours or more. Those are the days I look forward to.

When my father died, I decided to put myself out there and began writing a series of stories about myself and my family for various anthologies. The words came easily then. I felt like I was writing for my father, showing him the world of our family through my eyes and experiences. I amassed a lot of contracts in those, a few of which fell through just before publishing because the publishers needed to cut a few stories to make the anthology just the right size. I accepted their last minute rejections with equanimity. After all, it was only one book and I could sell the story elsewhere, and I usually did.

It seemed during those days that a new anthology came out every couple of months containing one or two of my stories. Those were heady days as I decided who would get a copy from my box of author's copies. I always had more names than books, but people decided to buy the books instead.

I get excited even now when I put out a new book. It's that sigh of relief that all the fussing, editing, and frustration are behind me and the fussing, frustration, and review ahead that energize me to keep moving forward. Getting bogged down in the work-a-day world is a problem, but I manage to slog through most of the time without resorting to playing games or picking up my latest cross-stitch project.

Today is another one of those heady and exciting days because I have put out another book. This time the book is a collection of the anthologized stories I wrote mostly for Dad. Instead of buying a whole lot of books, readers can now pick up Heart Strings and read them in one place, with a little something at the end of each story about its history.

So, without further ado, I offer Heart Strings: A Collection of Memories. Buy it here on Red Room or at Amazon or through Smashwords for $1.99 and share the good times and the bad, the laughter and the tears.

Review: Huntress Moon by Alexandra Sokoloff

There's nothing new about FBI staking out organized crime in San Francisco, but Alexandra Sokoloff adds a twist. The head of the organized crimes division, Special Agent Roarke, is on his way to meet Greer, an undercover operative. Greer has used the signal that means he has either been made or there is something of dire importance he needs to communicate to Roarke. On his way to meet Greer, Roarke is across the street from the undercover operative and he spots a slim, striking woman all in black wearing a sleeveless turtleneck sweater behind Greer. She and Roarke lock eyes just before a truck passes. In its wake, the woman is gone and Greer is roadkill.

Stunned by what seems like an accident, Roarke is even more shocked by the feeling that he recognized the woman, but he isn't sure from where. As the reports from eye witnesses come in, it becomes more apparent that the woman was involved in Greer's death, an assumption that becomes fact when they trace the woman back to her hotel and discovered the whole place has been wiped clean of trace evidence and reeks of bleach.

The woman could be that rarest of individuals, a female contract killer hired by the organized crime bosses in San Francisco to terminate Greer. Was that why Greer needed to talk?  That can't be since an organization that traffics in women wouldn't hire a female assassin. A search reveals two more murders within the past year and a half tied to the woman and Roarke is on the hunt. He must find the woman and stop her from killing anyone else. And Roarke is intrigued, a female serial killer is rare.

Huntress Moon is riveting. Alexandra Sokoloff dives right into the action and spins a tale that becomes more exciting and confounding with each page. The story proceeds at a fast pace and gets more complex and more exciting as Roarke peels back the layers of the mystery woman's past. Here is a murderer which is neither black nor white with considerable shadowy gray in her personality that turns this FBI thriller into something darker. Sokoloff blurs the line between right and wrong where justice is seen through a glass darkly.

There are no wasted words in this razor's edge tale of suspense and horror in Sokoloff's signature style. Huntress Moon is just the beginning of what sets a new benchmark in thrillers. Very seldom do I award 5 stars, but Sokoloff's Huntress Moon deserves no less.

Just a Breath Away

During the years that one stroke after another took my grandmother away by inches, as she changed from a vibrant, sassy, intelligent, and loving woman into a shell that looked like her but whose eyes lacked the sparkle and simple joy of life. I went to see her less and less often. It’s hard to lose someone in a senseless accident or after a protracted illness, but to watch the lighthouse of their mind dim slowly is worse.

Strokes took my grandmother’s physical functions first, and each succeeding stroke took a little more of her mind until her body was reforged into a tightening fetal ball that could not be straightened. The gentlest and most loving touch tore her fragile skin and brought screams of pain. During the six years my grandmother existed in the nursing home, my mother went every evening to see her and sit and talk with her and I often went along. Age-dimmed blue eyes looked back at us with no recognition, on her face the smile of an infant to whom our faces and voices were a soft blur of colors and sounds. We reached out to her but she could not reach back to us, a prisoner of her deteriorating mind and weakening body.

The strokes continued to kill half of her brain and the doctors intervened time and again with tubes and medication, cutting holes in her body to force-feed her when the muscles in her throat ceased working, so they could keep her alive a little longer. Finally, when her body could take no more of their interventions, the doctors decided to take my grandmother off all the machines and let her die.

“My brother will be there,” my mother said. “I think your grandmother would like it if you were there.”

I could hardly keep the tears back as I answered, “My grandmother isn’t there any more. She’s gone.

“Well, I want you there.”

I thought it over, trying to match the painfully thin and angular body with the strong and vibrant woman I had known all my life. “I don’t want to be there. You’re treating her death like some sort of circus attraction. I can’t be there to watch.”

“All right. Suit yourself,” my mother’s favorite final words. Suit myself. If I had suited myself I would never have let the doctors forced-feed her or keep bringing her back from the brink of death to lie in a lonely bed among strangers.

The day the doctors took my grandmother off all the machines and took out all the wires and tubes, I stayed home and cried, unsure if I had made the right decision of if I was being selfish and disrespectful. What did Granny Good Witch, my name for my grandmother, want?

She wanted a quiet and simple funeral, and she made and paid for all the arrangements before her first stroke, right after my grandfather died. She wanted love and respect, and what was happening in the nursing home room wasn’t loving or respectful, at least as far as I could see.

When the phone rang later that afternoon, I nearly jumped out of my skin. I knew before I picked up the phone who was calling.

“Mom slipped away peacefully. She’s gone,” my mother said, her voice breaking through her usually iron control.

“Thanks, “I said and hung up, my word lost in the sound of muffled sobs. I knew my mother missed Granny Good Witch terribly and she always would. They had always been close and that was never more evident than watching my mother hold my grandmother’s hand while grandma looked up at her with unfocused innocent eyes, a sweet smile on her face, while Mom cried and said, “Mama, please don’t leave me alone.”

I didn’t feel alone, but I had let my grandmother go many months before when she no longer recognized any of us. I felt that what had died that afternoon was the shell of my grandmother, not the woman with whom I spent so many happy afternoons together laughing and talking and cooking. I clung to those moments like a drowning woman clinging to a bit of wreck-age in a storm-wracked sea.

I went to bed early that night, worn out from crying and unable to concentrate long enough to do anything productive. I tossed and turned, tried to read, and finally, a little after midnight by the nightstand clock, I fell asleep.

I don’t remember any dreams. What I do remember is a light burning brighter and brighter against my eyelids. I sat up on the side of the bed, thinking I forgotten to turn out the hall light, and went to bedroom door. Groggily, I fumbled to open the door wider, reaching around the doorframe for the light, but it was off. I flipped the switch on and then off again, but the light persisted. I walked into the hall and saw a figured dressed in blue. It was my grandmother. She was wearing her favorite ankle-length smocked blue robe with the quilted mandarin collar. Shining with a soft white light, she stood there as if waiting for me to recognize her.

I couldn’t stop the tears running down my cheeks as I reached out to her. She took my hands and held me closely, my chin grazing the soft halo of her silver hair, and patted my back while I cried.

“I’m sorry,” I said between sobs,” but I couldn’t stand to be there today. I just couldn’t watch.”

“It’s all right,” she murmured. “I knew you were there for me even if you weren’t in the room. It’s all right.”

Still holding her hand, I stepped back, and looked down at her as she smiled up at me. I didn’t know what to say and I didn’t want to let her go, but I knew I must, just as I had let her go when she no longer recognized me and I knew she wasn’t coming back.

“I wanted to tell you something,” she said. “I have always believed in you even though you don’t believe in yourself. Believe in yourself and follow your heart and remember I’ll always be just a breath away.” And then she was gone.

When I woke the next morning I wasn’t sure at first if I had dreamed that my grandmother was standing in the hall or if it had been real, but it didn’t matter. I still felt her around me.

I went to the funeral three days later and went up to the coffin, not because it was expected but because I wanted to touch her one last time. Her body was straight again and she wore her favorite blue dress. I touched her cold cheek, but I knew she wasn’t lying in the box; she was just a breath away.

 

The Phone Call

Can you come home?” my sister asked when I answered the phone.

 “What’s wrong?”

 “Brandon’s dead.”

 As the oldest child, it has always fallen to me to take care of my brother and sisters. My favorite chore was watching Tracy. She was a bright, inquisitive child full of laughter and love.

 When she was a teenager she came to me for advice about boys and sex. Sitting on a cushion to see over the steering wheel and dash of my car, we drove the back roads and side streets near Mom and Dad’s house when she was practicing driving to get her license. We went to rock concerts together and sat up long into the night when she had a problem or needed to talk. She watched my boys when I worked a second job or on rare nights when I went out with friends. When she got married she asked me to do her makeup and hair and help her find the right dress. I even made the bouquet she carried and the bouquets for her bridesmaids. We were inseparable even when my husband was stationed far away from home and kept in close contact.

 When Brandon was born, I lived in Louisiana, but I was the first person she called with the news. My baby sister had a baby boy and I saw him for the first time at Thanksgiving when he was still a sweetly scented, tiny, wide-eyed bundle of waving arms and kicking legs. He was just as precious and bright-eyed as Tracy had been when I saw her for the first time.

 My short vacation was just long enough to catch up on all the news and get to hold my nephew with a little time for my sister and me to get away for a few hours for a good long chat. She glowed with happiness and contentment.

 Two months later I got another phone call. Brandon was dead.

 It was late when I finally pulled into my parent’s driveway. I pulled off into the yard, slammed the gear shift into Park, got out of the car and ran across the yard and through the door my mother held for me. My snow-covered shoes slid across the tile entry and I stumbled across the carpet toward my little sister. She looked up. “Oh,” she said, “you made it. I’ll bet you’re tired.” Taking my coat she brushed away the melting snowflakes and laid it carefully across the arm of the sofa, smoothing the folds, flicking away a splash of dried mud. “Did you stop and get something to eat? Are you hungry?” I shook my head.

 Cold wind slashed through the space between us as my father kicked the snow from his shoes against the door frame and clattered into the house. He stood in the doorway. “Didn’t you bring any bags?”

 “I’ll get them later,” I told him, watching Tracy poke up the fire in the stove, knock off the ashes and place the iron back into the holder. She rubbed her arms and stared into the fire for a moment oblivious to the rest of us.

 “Would you like some cake or pie and some coffee?” My mother took my arm and led me through the dining room and into the kitchen.

 “I don’t drink coffee, Mom.”

 “There’s plenty.” She turned on the coffee maker. “And lots of pie. Sister Friend brought apple pie and I don’t remember who brought the peach pie or the chocolate cake.” She turned to the refrigerator and looked into the freezer. “There’s ice cream if you want it.” She put a gallon of vanilla on the counter. “You can heat the pie in the microwave.”

 Mom wandered past me, into the foyer and up the stairs. Dad followed. “Don’t forget to put away the ice cream,” he said.

 I went back into the family room. Tracy had fallen asleep in a chair facing the stove. Taking an afghan from my mother’s lounger, I draped it around her, carefully tucking in the edges and smoothing the warm hand crocheted wool over her tightly clenched fists.

 Dark circles hung like old drapes beneath her honey brown lashes. Feathery lines spread out from the corners of her eyes and a knife-edge line creased the smooth skin between her eyebrows. I laid down on the sofa and pulled another afghan over me, as I watched my little sister shift and mumble in her sleep through the night while the logs shifted and fell in a spray of sparks that woke the ash-covered embers into a brief comforting life.

 The next morning the snow was gone and a light drizzle dampened the frost rimed ground as we left the house.

 

As the minister spoke, Tracy took my hand, curling her fingers tightly around mine, her nails digging into my skin. She nodded as the minister spoke, her face calm and still. Her grip tightened on my hand as she looked up and past the black suited minister to the tiny white coffin behind him.

 When the service was over Tracy held my hand as she sat there looking at the empty stand. “I gave him CPR. His lips were so blue and cold and stiff. I still feel them,” she said as tears slipped down her cheeks. “I still feel them.”

 I followed the long procession out onto the highway south to the little country graveyard where Brandon would be buried. As they lowered his coffin into the ground at my sister’s feet, the icy drizzle turned to snow. Tracy dropped a rose into the gaping hole while everyone drifted silently away. I walked back toward the cars, said goodbye to my family and a couple friends and turned for one last look at Tracy before I got in the car and drove back to Tennessee.

 “I’m pregnant,” Tracy said when she called a month later. “Brandon sent him.”

Review: Desert Wives by Betty Webb

Lena Jones is back to work in Desert Wives and this time she is up against a polygamist compound. Her intention was to get her client's daughter, Rebecca, out of Prophet Solomon Royal's clutches. Rebecca is only 13 years old and doesn't want to marry Prophet Solomon and her mother doesn't want that either. She had already gotten away from that life and she wants a better life for herself and her daughter.

Len gets Rebecca back, but Rebecca's father Abel is determined to get her back, especially since he gets two 16-year old brides for giving his daughter to Solomon. Lena and Rebecca also find Solomon dead on their run through the night. Solomon's death means Rebecca is free, but only as long as her mother, Esther, didn't kill him, and it looks like Esther might have done just that.

With Esther in jail awaiting extradition to Utah and Rebecca staying with her partner Jimmy's friends on the reservation, the only thing left is for Lena to go under cover in Solomon Royal's polygamist compound and find out who killed him or Rebecca will end up married to the new polygamist prophet.

The clash between polygamists and the rest of the world is a meaty subject. Betty Webb tackles the incestuous relationships among local police and government officials and the tangled webs of polygamist families in Desert Wives. Lena is the most likely undercover agent ever since she has a hard time pretending to be meek and obedient and keeping her mouth shut. In short, Lena sticks out like a giant black ram among a herd of cowed white-fleeced sheep.  She isn't very effective and spends more time sticking her nose into personal family relationships than finding out who killed Solomon Royal.

The polygamist compound is a quagmire of intrigue, abuse, and male superiority with a loathsome cast of characters on all sides and everyone is a suspect. However, Webb spends more time detailing the polygamist life and abuses than in laying down the clues that will lead to Solomon's killer, waiting until the very last for Lena to have an ah-ha moment and failing to share the brainstorm with the reader. Webb does give up the murderer but it is a wetly fizzled climax.

What Webb does very well is populate her stories with standout characters, many of which get great cameos that don't last, and very little development beyond Lena's passing interest. Webb describes the countryside beautifully but telegraphs the ending with a less sure hand. In the warring muddle of tracking down the murderer and moral outrage, Lena shines like a dark angel that lifts Desert Wives out of the ordinary.

Webb spends most of her crystal clear prose generously on Lena and the landscape, but seems to ignore the basic premise of a mystery is to solve the case. I enjoyed Desert Wives and was fascinated by the polygamist machinations, in this fast paced story, but was faintly dissatisfied in the search for the killer. All's well that ends well, except when the ending feels rushed and incomplete. I did, however, enjoy finding out more about Lena's past.

Review: 1984 by George Orwell

1984 is one of those books I thought I'd read in school, but hadn't actually read. I did see the movie with John Hurt as Winston Smith and most of the language of 1984 has passed into common use, like Big Brother, thought police, thought crimes, etc. George Orwell's take on the future is powerful and clairvoyant -- and we are living a version of his constricted, hate-filled world today.

Winston Smith, Orwell's protagonist, begins the book by hiding out of sight of the telescreen and writing in a diary with pen and ink purchased at different shops so as to be more difficult to track. He is writing his thoughts about Oceania and Big Brother and the world he lives in, the gray, unemotional, fear-filled world that surrounds him but does not include him. He is writing for O'Brien, a man in the inner circle of the Party, someone Winston believes is also rebelling against the status quo. As Winston continues his small rebellions, Orwell illustrates how Winston is less free than he thinks he is. Winston is merely an inconsequential cog in the wheel of The Party.

Orwell paints a world where Oceania is always at war and thus always asking more of its citizens by giving them less and expecting them to accept less with equanimity because it's for Oceania, the Party, and for Big Brother. Outwardly, everyone lives the same way with oily gin, gray coveralls, and cramped quarters always in vies of the telescreens where even in the parks and countryside there are microphones to capture even the whispered confidences between lovers and co-conspirators. Children turn their parents in for what they say in their sleep that proves there is rebellion in their minds. Life is a gray, empty round of hate and fear and hopelessness, even among the proles who are not subject to the dictates of the Party because they are not allowed to be party members. The proles are serfs, slaves and belong to Big Brother as surely as do the party members.

Orwell creates Winston Smith's world with simple, straightforward language, evoking a cold world full of people looking over their shoulders and clutching their small rebellions in secret. Paranoia and disgust oozes from the pages and stays with the reader long after the book is closed. Even the passages of the Book that explains the workings of The party and how Oceania, though a bit pedantic, ring with truth.

While our world, this modern world, seems less gray and freer, Orwell got it right. His newspeak is our politically correct and his Big Brother is our out of control Congress and President. We don't have thought police per se, but we have a media controlled by the government that spouts the party line and an entire country of people watching and listening to pounce on the slightest misspoken word they gladly throw back in our faces for public condemnation of the miscreant. Although what we see isn't exactly like Orwell's vision, it's close enough to be frightening, knowing that wars are made and lines redrawn to give us somewhere to focus our hate when the real damage is done by the government that is supposed to support and protect us.

George Orwell's 1984 is here and reading about it is frighteningly real.

Review: Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber

One of these days I will have to sit down and figure out how many books I have chosen to read because of movies I've seen, and how many authors I have finally understood and enjoyed because I saw a movie made from the book first. Conjure Wife is one of the former since I didn't know that there was a book upon which the movie Burn, Witch Burn, which I first saw many moons ago, was based. 

Earlier this week when I read that Conjure Wife was indeed what the movie was based on, I had to read the book. Fritz Leiber was not one of my favorite science fiction and fantasy writers, but I am always game to take a chance. A visit to Amazon and a download later and I was in the midst of the academic world of a small college and into the mind of the professor teaching about the roots of magic and sociology of the primitive and modern minds.

Considering Conjure Wife was Fritz Leiber's debut effort, I was not disappointed. Leiber goes deep into the mind of a modern man who is determined to see the use of magic and spells as an aberration of his wife's intelligence and experience in various sociological forays into primitive societies. How could his rational wife be serious about such medieval notions and actually practice and believe that spells could effect any change in the way things were done?

Leiber erodes Norman Saylor's resistance like a relentless tide eating away at the sand beneath his conventional beliefs. From the first hint of trouble when he burns his wife's last packet of magical protection in his watch casing, Norman is forced to see the truth of his rise and favor in his academic world. Norman is assailed by a psychotic student who has failed exams and been summarily cast out of yet another university, a female student's crush and claims of sexual misconduct, and losing the department chair to a less worthy colleague.

Norman attempts to find some order among the superstitious chaos that surrounds him and seeks help from one of his friends, a mathematics professor, in quantifying the ingredients of a spell that will restore his wife's soul to her body. Conjure Wife is a wondrous concoction of superstition, science, and psychology that brings the war of the sexes into a very real and fascinating journey to the heart of what makes men and women different and the same.

One thing I realized as I read Conjure Wife is that I had seen a frothy and light-hearted version of this story before. Fritz Leiber's book has been made into three movies since it was published in 1933: Weird Woman n 1944, Burn, Witch Burn (aka Night of the Eagle) in 1960, and Witches' Brew in 1980 starring Teri Garr and Richard Benjamin, which is the light-hearted version.

Fritz Leiber mastered the war between the sexes and the way that men and women see and deal with the world in Conjure Wife. Leiber's language is brilliant and clear and his obvious wonder at the secret world of women is priceless, so much so that a fourth remake of the book is now in the works. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and Leiber's writing and may now have to remedy the dearth of Leiber's sword and sorcery and science fiction in my library.

Tagged and bagged

This is not how I want to wake up in the morning. I received a notice from my bank that I had made a purchase at the Bentonville, AR Walmart, a place where I do not shop, followed by a notice from Walmart that my account information had been changed. I called Walmart to discover that my old credit card, which the bank was supposed to have canceled and yet still honored, had been used by someone to buy $71.25 worth of goods. After a long conversation, an exchange of information, and resetting my account information, I discovered the thief had bought a box of Durex extra sensitive condoms and had added a TOPUP to his Virgin Mobile account, both of which have been canceled. His email address is: nuubeeb.l.ablablab.la@gmail.com. He won't get his Durex extra sensitive condoms nor will his Virgin Mobile phone be topped up. That is the problem with ordering online from someone else's credit card. I sent him an email to that effect. I have, however, contacted the police and have filed a complaint about identity theft. This is the third time in the past 10 years that this has happened and the thieves keep getting stupider or they would have figured out that I am not the kind of person to mess with or that their theft will go unnoticed for a month. This one was noticed within hours of it happening and his ill gotten gains have not been gained. So, whoever you are at nuubeeb.l.ablablab.la@gmail.com, please be advised, you have been unmasked and will need to explain your actions (which have been thoroughly documented) to the police. Good luck and get your condoms in the truck stop restroom like all the other people on the run. Thank you and have a nice day.

Lullaby and Good-Bye

I knew it would not be easy; nothing ever is. But there was a moment, a single moment, when fear overwhelmed me. What was I about to do to my children, to my own life? How could I walk away from the man with whom I shared three sons? What could I promise them except uncertainty? Would it be better to stick it out and make sure our boys had two parents?

While Dave and I sat on the couch talking about splitting our belongings, the words were on the tip of my tongue: “Let’s think this over. Maybe there’s another way.” But I couldn’t say the words. Something held me back.

“You can have the furniture. I can’t take it with me,” I said.

“What about the piano? I can always send it to you.”

“It’s not practical. Sell it and send the money to me in Ohio.”

He didn’t put up a fight. After all, he really hadn’t wanted the piano in the first place. He couldn’t play it, and I would not be here long to play it. Or I could sell the piano and use the money to pay for the divorce.

It was all so cut and dried, so easy to divide up seven years worth of furnishings and mementos—and to leave behind seven years worth of travel and holidays, birthdays and anniversaries, love and companionship. The reason why suddenly didn’t seem so important. I had to think of the boys. None of us was happy, and no matter what we did, things were becoming increasingly more unstable.

Eddie’s screams startled us both.

Dave looked up. “I thought I told those boys to go to sleep.”

I raced to the boys’ bedroom. Eddie sat in the middle of his bed, his eyes closed and his head thrown back, screaming. I sat down and pulled him into my arms. He fought me. “It’s all right, honey. It was just a nightmare. Momma’s here.” He snuffled and calmed in my arms, sobs wracking his body. His shoulders shook. I pulled him onto my lap, his head against my chest, and rocked him slowly as I hummed. Eddie, the oldest of my sons, was getting too big for me to hold him. He was growing so quickly. So were his two brothers.

“I heard voices. Shouting,” he said.

It was the same dream over and over: a larger-than-life replay of the arguments between his father and I. Dave and I fought often in the middle of the night, whenever he finally came home, our voices barely hushed and intent on ripping each other apart. I thought we had been so quiet, but Eddie was a light sleeper.

“It’s all right, sweetie. No one’s shouting. It was all a dream,” I reassured Eddie now as I tucked him into bed. Then, I lay down next to him and began singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” the boys’ favorite lullaby. He curled up against my side and sang some of the words before he fell back to sleep. The song had the same effect on my sons that it had on my baby sister when she was little.

David Scott stirred in the upper bunk. “It’s all right, Eddie. It’s all right.”

I slipped carefully out of the bed and checked on David Scott. He patted the pillow, murmuring in his sleep. “Shhh, Eddie. It’s all right.” I kissed his cheek and tucked the covers around him. I don’t know how the boys did it, talking in their sleep to each other as though they were awake. It must be some family quirk, because, according to my mother, my sisters and I carried on whole conversations in our sleep. David Scott stopped patting his  pillow and was silent, his breathing even and deep.

No, I couldn’t back out now. My boys needed to be able to sleep without nightmares and terrors. I had to go.

Over the last two years, Dave and I had gone to three marriage counselors. We did everything they told us to do, but we couldn’t recapture the spark that had brought us together, and Dave didn’t seem to want to stop seeing other women. He didn’t want to change, and I couldn’t change enough. I could no longer ignore the truth. Counseling hadn’t worked. Talking hadn’t worked. Shouting certainly didn’t work. And lullabies didn’t soothe whatever it was that made my husband unsettled and uneasy. There was no way to sing my marriage better. The only choice was to leave and take the boys with me. We’d all be better off.

I picked the covers up off the floor and covered A.J. He slept through just about everything, but he was still young. It was only a matter of time before the tension between his father and I began to disturb his sleep, too. It was time for us to leave. I looked sadly but resignedly at my three young sons, then closed the door quietly behind me.

A few months later, I sat on the edge of the bed that Eddie, David Scott, and A.J. now shared, singing “Over the Rainbow” to ease them into sleep. The bed was unfamiliar, but they wouldn’t have to sleep there for long. We would move out of my parents’ house and into our own apartment at the end of the month. Thank goodness, they were still small enough to fit in one bed together.

“I can’t believe you still sing that song.” My youngest sister, Tracy, stood in the doorway. “You almost had me ready to fall asleep.”

“It’s their favorite song,” I said as I turned off the lamp and slipped out of the room.

“Mine, too,” she said.

Together, Tracy and I folded the laundry and talked over old times while the night wore on. Finally, finished with all the chores, I climbed the stairs and checked on the boys before turning in myself. A dim ray of light fell across their sleeping faces. A.J. kicked at the covers and turned over, one pudgy little hand dangling over the edge. Eddie mumbled something about rainbows and wishes, a smile tugging at his lips. David Scott patted Eddie’s shoulder, murmuring  a trickle of words—“… over the rainbow.”

At times I regret the divorce … but not in the middle of the night. There are no more nightmares of fighting and angry voices, no more crying and screams in the night. Now, the only sounds that drift through the night are of my boys talking, and sometimes even giggling] in their sleep about little boy things and rainbow wishes. That’s when I know that, no matter how hard it is being a single parent, it is all worth it.

I still sing my sons to sleep every night, after the hard days of school and play. But I no longer sing to chase away their nightmares and calm their fears. Instead, I sing a wistful lullaby about hope and better times, grateful we’ve finally found them.

 

Review: The Memorist by M. J. Rose

In this second book of M. J. Rose's Reincarnationist series Rose goes back to Europe for another memory tool. This time the tool is a flute made of bone that plays a tune to release the memories of past lives. Malachai has known about it for years through his treatment of Meer Logan who came to the Phoenix Institute as a child haunted by what Meer considers to be false memories of times long past.

The Memorist centers around Vienna and Ludwig von Beethoven who in the 19th century had the memory flute and figured out the melody to unlock the flute's power. Meer's father, Joshua Logan, is also involve, not because there is an ancient Jewish artifact to recover but because he has found a gaming box that has been a central theme in Meer's haunting memories.

Into this struggle between fact and fear of reincarnation comes a journalist, David Yelom, who recently lost his family in a bombing and left him standing on the edge between sanity and vengeance. He is in Vienna to cover the ISTA conference, a world conference for security professionals, and plans to bomb the Beethoven concert on the final night, saving his revenge for the crashing finale of Beethoven's 5th symphony from far beneath the concert hall in the catacombs that riddle the depths of Vienna's streets.

So far, the Reincarnationist series has included several instances where the catacomb riddled depths of European city streets have been used. The Memorist is no exception. Meer's memories contain trips to the catacombs beneath the Memorist Society's building into their secret vault and the Roman catacombs that extend beneath the concert hall that makes security a nightmare and offers a haven to would-be bombers. 

Rose takes the reader on a tour of Beethoven's favorite haunts and homes, a pilgrimmage of music and danger and music that elevates The Memorist from inventive thriller to a literary feast for all the senses, even though we can't hear the music. I did find some of the people in the audience for the big concert quite amusing as they checked out the competition and fidgeted during one of the Beethoven's more recognizable and wondrous symphonies. Not everyone is a music lover -- or a history lover or reincarnation believer -- but everyone loves a good story and there are several good stories in The Memorist.

The confluence of past life memories and current relationships and acquaintances is well handled and even poignant at times. The story is believable and will even wring a tear from the reader in places. Keep in mind, Rose has created a memorable series that gives life and sheds light on some of the oldest beliefs in the world, out of which come the memory tools. If only. . . .

Other than some glaring editing errors, I heartily recommend The Memorist. It has everything a good novel should have: interesting characters, harrowing cliff hangers, action, history, emotional depth, and insight.

The First Full Cup

This was published in Wait a Minute, I Have to Take Off My Bra, an anthology about breasts of every size, shape, and situation.

 

Everything changed the year before I turned twelve.

Spring started with first blood and turned to summer. Summer turned to fall when I got breasts.

The only changes that caught my mother’s attention were when my clothes were too tight and my skirts long enough to cover my knees. She constantly prodded me to “sit up straight” or “stand up straight” with the regularity of a metronome until I responded without thinking. Chin up, chest out, back straight, jaw tensed, teeth grinding, tense smile visibly in place, full lips in a tight thin line over just a hint of teeth. Her commands were accompanied by the look that said I’d better act right and stop embarrassing her.

One Saturday morning while lying in bed with one hand behind my head and the other holding a book on my chest, Mom burst into the bedroom I shared with my two younger sisters. “Get up out of that bed,” she commanded. My lips stretched and my jaw clenched as I slowly moved to obey. “Go wash under your arms. They’re filthy.”

I looked at my armpit and then back at her. “I took a bath last night.”

She strode closer and grabbed my arm. “How lazy can you…?” She stared at my armpit. What I had known for weeks she finally discovered; the dirt was hair. “Get dressed,” she hurled over her shoulder as she walked out of my room and down the hall.

Less than a month later, while standing in line outside my sixth grade classroom waiting for the teacher, the fact I was growing up shook me.

That day I wore another of my mother’s sensible clothing choices, a two-piece sailor outfit: navy blue pleated skirt and thin white sweater with a red scarf knotted at the point of a wide winged navy blue collar surrounding a vee neck. I was aware of the faint ache of the cloth pressed against the hard nubs on my chest but I ignored it just like all the other pains our family doctor called growing pains. It was there and not there. The boys were lined up along the wall opposite the girls and Rob Stokes acted up, making us laugh – until he targeted me.

“I can see Jackie’s nipples,” he crowed, “and they’re pink.”

Nipples? I didn’t have nipples. I had little pinky-brown circles on my chest like everyone else but not nipples. You had to have breasts to have nipples.

The boys crowded closer. The girls moved away.

“Wow,” Rob said, “they’re really pink. See?” He pointed at my chest.

I looked down. The white knit was translucent and I saw a faint blush of pink that was pale in comparison to the red that flamed my cheeks and the tips of my ears. I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at Rob. “Your barn door is open,” I shot back just as our teacher appeared at the end of the hall. Rob looked down and checked his zipper. I gritted my teeth and swallowed hard to keep the tears back. 

As the teacher unlocked the door, I asked to go to the bathroom. He nodded. I walked through a gauntlet of whispers and down the hall. I opened the door and marched to the farthest stall from the door, went inside, carefully latched the door, sat down on the commode and burst into silent tears. When I got back to class all the boys stared and I stared right back, a defiant smile on my lips, my shoulders slightly hunched to keep my white knit top away from the blushing pink beneath.

Other girls in my sixth grade class bragged about wearing bras that were little more than bra-shaped tee shirts. I wasn’t about to ask mom for a training bra. I didn’t have anything to train, and neither did any of the other girls in my class.

When my mother got home from work I told her I needed new clothes. “We just bought you new clothes for school.”

“My clothes are too tight.” I had changed into play clothes as soon as I got home, wadding up the knit top and stuffing it back into a dark corner in the closet behind a shoe box. 

“You look fine and you aren’t getting new clothes,” she said in her “that’s final” voice.

“I need new clothes.” The whole story tumbled out in a rush.

My mother looked at me as though seeing me for the first time. Her hand flew to her mouth and she stepped back. “Stand up straight.” I snapped to attention: chest out, chin up, shoulders back. “Oh,” she said with a look of shock in her eyes. “Go peel the potatoes for dinner.”

The subject was closed.

I dug out all my old tee shirts, locked the bathroom door and tried them on. They made my chest ache. Nothing fit. I waited for my parents to go to their Eastern Star meeting one night and tiptoed into their room to raid my father’s drawers. I took an old undershirt from the bottom of the neatly folded stack, balled it up and snuck past the living room where my brother and sisters were watching television with Grandma. “I’m going to do homework, Gram.” I took the stairs two at a time.

I closed and locked the bathroom door, took off my top and pulled the undershirt over my head, over my chest, smoothed it over my hips and let it cascade past my knees.

I raided my mother’s lingerie drawer. Her bras were impossibly huge and there was no way I could cut up one of her bras and not get caught. I’d have to stuff the cups or use  the foam rubber breasts with the perfectly sculpted nipples I found in the bottom of the buffet in the dining room. I wanted camouflage not bigger breasts.

 “Please, God, let Mom buy me bigger clothes,” I prayed each night without success. I put my legs through the arms of my sweaters and pulled them up, spreading my legs with all my might in hopes of stretching them enough. I ripped the seams and put them in the mending pile. Mom complained.

“I must be growing really fast,” I said hopefully.

“Wear something else,” my mother ordered.

As my clothing choices shrank and the mending pile grew, I was desperate. Dad’s undershirt looked better and better.

“Where’s the top that goes to this skirt?” Mom asked as she held up the navy blue pleated skirt.

“I don’t know,” I said, holding my breath while she rummaged in the closet.

She tossed a pile of clothes on the bed. “Hang those up. We’ll clean out that closet later.”  

I hurriedly hung up the dresses and tops that would normally have sat on the foot of my bed for a week or more. I had to get that white knit top out of the house for good. I’d hide it in the barrel where Dad burned the trash, under the ashes and rusted, burnt tin cans.

Meanwhile, I experimented with holey sheets destined for dusting rags, borrowed thread and needles “to make doll clothes” and ripped, cut and sewed the strips of sheet together to wrap around my chest, using safety pins to hold it all together. I ended up getting stuck or the binding slipped slowly down to my hips. Everything called attention to the hard knots on my chest that ached whenever something touched them. The hard little knot beneath my swelling nipples got bigger and I slouched more to hide them.

I breathed a sigh of relief when Christmas vacation finally arrived. A whole week of wearing play clothes and no one to worry about my chest . . . I thought.

Christmas morning my sisters and brother and I crept down the stairs in the dark toward the black irregular triangle of the tree with the dark boxy shapes beneath its branches. We stood in the foyer as close to the tree as we dared and whispered about what we’d get. Our whispers were calculated to be just loud enough to rouse our parents slowly.

Mom appeared through the curtain separating their room from the living room, her face shiny in the nightlight. “Get back upstairs,” her voice a rasping whisper.

We went as far as the top landing, hunkered down and waited.

“I said, get back upstairs.”

We went.

Huddled together on my bed, we whispered and waited, and anxiously watched for some sign of dawn.

As we finally gathered around the lighted tree, patiently waiting for our gifts, Mom and Dad handed out presents. Then Dad handed me the rectangular box Mom had held on her lap while we had opened our gifts.

Dad hovered.

Mom smiled.

I hesitated.

It was probably clothes. I wanted to try out the sketch pad and the watercolors but the way my parents looked… “Just get it over with,” I thought, and I opened the box.

I resisted the urge to throw the box as though it contained a poisonous snake. It was worse.

Inside was a navy blue sweater. On top of the sweater was a bra, a real bra with hooks and cups and straps—and cups. The cups were rumpled cotton mounds of air and cloth with rigid circles of stitching pointing up at me.

Mom and Dad beamed.

I cringed inside.

“Go put it on,” Mom urged.

“But I wanted to…”

“We want to see if it fits,” she said in her “obey or else” tone.

I went upstairs like I was walking the last mile to the electric chair.

I put on the bra with my eyes closed. When I opened my eyes and looked down the enormous cups were filled.

The cups were filled.

The tag scratched my arm where it dangled from the strap and I jerked it off and read it. They were only A cups, but the cups were filled.

I pulled the soft navy blue sweater over my head and smoothed it down over my pajama bottoms. I stared down at the front of the sweater where it swelled softly over the bra, over me in the bra. I couldn’t go to school like this. There would be talk of Kleenex stuffing and foam rubber boobs.

“Don’t take all day,” my mother yelled.

I pulled the sweater down and walked the rest of the last mile back down to the living room. My sisters giggled and my brother pushed his new Tonka truck around the living room. My sister, Carol, pointed to the curtain that led to my parents’ room. I hunched my shoulders, hung my head and went in.

“Let’s have a look.”

I stepped through.

“Stand up straight.”

I snapped to attention: head up, chin out, shoulders back. Flames engulfed my cheeks and the tips of my ears as Mom smoothed and tugged the sweater into place. “Turn around.” I moved slowly, my parents discussing me as though I were a mannequin. “She won’t wear that long,” Mom said as she pulled up the back of my sweater and checked the hooks.  

She spun me around. “You look all grown up,” Dad said. For the first time I smiled a real smile and stood up straight without urging.

When I went back to school wearing my new sweater over the new bra no one noticed. Rob Stokes didn’t give me a second glance and life went on as usual. I didn’t slouch or hunch and my friends noticed I was taller.

My lingerie drawers are full of sexy and decadently luxurious jewel-colored satin and lace confections, supportive sports bras and comfortable soft, shapeless cotton bras with their DD cups. As much as I love the feel of fabric and lace and pretty embroidery, it is still that first cotton bra and the first full A cups that make me smile.

The Viral Staircase

Published originally in 1995 in Columbus Alive! newspaper. This was the first article I wrote professionally and the first to be nationally syndicated.

Headlines scream the end of the world: Flesh-eating bacteria. Salmonella poisoning from homemade ice cream, raw eggs, cheese and undercooked meat.

Diseases once conquered are reappearing. They are resistant to the antibiotics and drugs created to protect us and our families.

In every headline is a germ of truth. Hundreds of thousands are dying. They are the very old, the very young, the sick, and the frail, those already grappling with other diseases and a growing population of millions whose immune systems are faltering. These are the ones who've always died from plague, pox and disease since the beginning of time.

We conquered tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, and childhood diseases-we thought.  Why are they coming back?

Cleanliness may be next to godliness but it can also lead to extinction, it appears. Cleanliness and the use of antibiotics and vaccines have combined possibly to change the course of human evolution.

We have massacred hundreds of billions of microbes, viruses and bacteria with antibiotics. A fever remained, evolved and came back in concentrated forms, creating a new, mutant, antibiotic-resistant monster refusing to succumb to our best efforts and obsession with cleanliness. Like Victor Frankenstein we created a creature bent on destruction.

Dr. Calvin Kunin, professor of medicine at the Ohio State University, compares the emergency of drug-resistant microbes to Darwinian evolution-survival of the fittest. "We are seeing accelerated evolution before our eyes," said Kunin, who is chairman of the Infectious Disease Society of America's committee on antibiotics.

Throughout our lives we encounter bacteria and viruses on virtually everything we touch, taste and smell. Most are harmless. They help tip off our immune systems  to potential danger, responding by marking and attacking invaders.

Bacteria have their benefits. "They manufacture nutrients-biotin, pantothenic acid, pyridoxine, vitamin B12-stimulate the immune system to recognize threatening microbes, and stake out a territory that might otherwise be occupied by pathogenic [disease-causing] organisms," says holly Ahem, a microbiologist at the State University of New York at Albany.

Ricki Lewis, science writer, in September 1992s's FDA Consumer, explained that "[Microbes are] found in predictable places where bends in the body create warm, moist pockets, and where the body is exposed to the outside. [They] inhabit our armpits and groins, our eyes and ears, the entrances to our respiratory tracts, and the exits from our urinary tracts ... [and] our colons. ...From between our fingers to between our toes, many microbes call the healthy human body home."

We are host to trillions of bacteria. At birth we pick up hitchhiking bacteria in the birth canal. Lewis tells how "within 12 hours, several species [of bacterial life] are present in the intestinal tract, transferred from the mother, from food, and from the baby's fist to his mouth."

Although not necessarily dangerous, the teeming microscopic life forms help to stimulate the baby's immune system.

Immunologist suspect a parent's instinctive kissing and nuzzling introduce bacteria that serve to kick the body's natural defenses into high gear. Without that initial introduction our bodies would be unable to fight against the simplest infections and we would die-or be confined to a plastic, germ-free bubble.

The bugs normally within us are kept from multiplying to infective levels. "These organisms are confined to an area that is theoretically outside the body (because they exit directly to the outside)," says Charles Schable, chief to he Diagnostic Serology Section, division HIV/AIDS at the national Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia.

Before Lister pioneered sanitary, hygienic conditions in hospitals and operating theaters, before Pasteur created his rabies vaccine, before modern science created antibiotics and changed the world, humans adapted to virulent diseases alone.

According to historians, in the past plagues efficiently controlled population growth, without respect to money, influence, position, or power. They treat all equally, cutting the frail and weak from the human herd, leaving only the strong to survive and pass their enhanced immune systems on to their children.

Christopher Columbus carried smallpox across the Atlantic Ocean to unsuspecting natives, where the population couldn't fight off plagues and childhood diseases commonplace to Europeans who had adapted over time and were largely resistant. Adventuring European sailors seeking wealth and spreading death mingled freely with the natives, unmindful of their recent illnesses, and sowed the seeds of destruction.

Each European incursion brought religion, confining clothing and more disease. The natives had no resistance to the new diseases and millions succumbed before their immune systems could fight back.

In the Pacific, centuries later, the guileless Polynesians welcomed near- extinction with open arms. Measles, an inconvenient childhood illness in the Old World ravaged the islands of the New World. The islanders were unprepared. They had no immunological resistance to their visits' average diseases. Missionaries wrote in reports and diaries how Polynesians threw themselves into the surf to cool their fevers, jumped off cliffs onto the rocks, and hung themselves to relieve their suffering, leaving a mere one-third of the original population to carry on.

Since those first dire days, Indians and Polynesians have built up immunities to those catastrophic illnesses. They have adapted. Their bodies now contain minute traces of the bacteria that drove them to the verge of extinction, according to  the immunologists and biologists at the CDC. Future generations have been endowed with the ruin of the past.

In the early 20th century a new twist on conquering disease occurred with the discovery of antibiotics. No longer satisfied with vaccinations of weakened strains of infectious diseases, we set our sights on total annihilation.

Medicine forced nature to retaliate and preserve the status quo. Undaunted, scientists looked for other avenues and have found a potential answer among cockroaches, generally considered one of the lowest forms of life.

Dr. Richard Karp, University of Cincinnati professor of biological sciences explains, "When you're dealing with roaches, which can live up to four years, what really gets extended is its adult life. A roach is more like a higher animal that wants a little quality of life during its long adult phase."

To combat incursions of insects and bacteria in the past, we salted, pickled, dried and froze our food before cooking. Now we eat fresher, centrally processed produce and meats that contain hardier strains of Salmonella and E. coli, in addition to insect infestations.

Eggs sunny-side up, raw eggs, undercooked and barely cooked eggs once stirred out palates; now they prompt our digestion to revolt. Cheese, teeming with bacterial colonies, veined and aged to perfection, graced our tables with color and rich flavor; now they color our insides with infection. Homemade ice cream, hand cranked on the back porch on lazy summer evenings, a treat anticipated and cheered is now barely tasted. Even salad bars with their bright display of color and texture, must beviewed with concern; you never know who has touched it or how clean they were.

Not so many years ago, before the Food and Drug Administration raised its standards, higher contents of rodent hairs, droppings and filth found their way into our processed foods. FDA inspectors tell how English and European exports are required to scrutinize food sent to America with stricter standards than those reserved for their own consumers.

Just a century ago, most food was grown at home or purchased from local farmers. It was hastily washed and processed and few people felt any ill effects. Then scientists, government officials and doctors tampered with the prevailing conditions in the name of better health, all to help us live longer. Manufacturers followed suit by convincing consumers that cleaning their homes, food, utensils and bodies wasn't enough. We must sanitize, purify, deodorize and disinfect everything. Pictures of teeming microscopic germs are 9% exterminated before their eyes.

Madison Avenue cranks out billions of dollars worth of ads to promote continued health and safety from germs. Not satisfied with using the same dishcloth or sponge or dish mop over and over again, products are used once and thrown away. Terry cloth towels hanging in the kitchen or bathroom are thrown out in favor of sanitary disposable towels. Cloths are sanitized, not just washed.

The national Centers for Disease Control reports that "From 1976 through 1991, the proportion of reported Salmonella isolates in the United States that were SE [Salmonella enteritidis, which causes severe, bloody diarrhea] increased from 5 percent to 20 percent...and to 21 percent for the first half of 1993."  All from food prepared in our homes.

Authors Marguerite Neill, Michael Osterholm and David Swerdlow reported in the July 1994 issue of Patient Care magazine, "Centralized processing of food increases the potential for widespread contamination...[and m]any consumers are not experienced in the proper handling and preparation of food...more of their meals are prepared by other who may be careless."

To combat the fear of contamination, corporations manufacture antibacterial sprays, lotions and powders for kitchen counters, appliances and food preparer hygiene. Hands are purified with antibacterial soap. Pani-inducing tabloids and national newspaper headlines report our homes are no longer safe until they're sterilized and germ-free.

Where will it all end? Can we live germ-free forever?

The Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) from 1991 to the present has documented cases of viruses jumping from apes, horses and dogs to humans and causing severe illness and death. A new strain of pneumonia or localized infection of soft tissues has been documented as transferring from horse to human, and an illness  similar to Rocky Mountain spotted fever has jumped over from man's best friend, according to JAMA.

HIV, AIDS, and other previously unknown diseases such as Ebola fever, which is more than 97% fatal, baffle medical science. There is no cure. Killer viruses and bacteria, unfazed by antiseptic conditions, adapt faster than they can be documented, classified, studied, decontaminated and killed.

From Africa, birthplace of the AIDS virus, come whispering reports of prostitutes, and a scattering of anonymous people, resistant to infection - without the intervention of science or medicine. They are adapting - alone - in the questionable cleanliness of the Dark Continent's rural communities.

 

Review: The Host by Stephenie Meyer

I am not a fan of sparkly vampires, but I am a fan of books and giving second chances. Any writer can turn out a good book, even after some pretty bad books, or in spite of them. With this in mind, I approached The Host with no expectations, other than wanting to read a good science fiction novel.

The first thing I noticed from reading the synopsis of The Host was that it was very similar to Robert A. Heinlein's The Puppetmasters. Alien race uses humans as hosts and lives and acts through the host body. I have to say up front, Heinlein did it better.

Although Meyer does set up an interesting premise of the parasite--in this case the silver beings that name themselves souls, or centipedes as the humans call them--being unable to completely eradicate the host personality and bonding sufficiently to turn rebel to her own species. The Wanderer is a female, though she has had more hosts than any other of her species, and capable of birthing a thousand of her kind, something she fears to do because it will mean her final death. No more hosts, only a thousand offspring born from the individual cells of the Wanderer's body, essentially tearing her apart. That is something to be feared, not like the more transient pain of a human giving birth.

Meyer describes the souls in their natural form as beautiful silver ribbons with hundreds of tendrils implanted at the base of the human brain where the tendrils, or tentacles, connect with the spinal cord and brain, using 278 connections, more than in any other species the souls have taken over among all the worlds they have colonized. Nothing like scary and beautiful in the same breath.

Because the Wanderer is having trouble quieting her host's voice and mind, she seeks help in order to figure out why and fix the problem. Unfortunately, a Seeker, the enforcers of the souls, is onto Wanderer and tells her that either Wanderer gets the information about the rebels the host Melanie is part of or the Seeker will be implanted into Melanie's brain and the Wanderer will get a new, more tractable, less difficult host. That sends Wanderer on a drive from San Diego where she is an honorary history professor (history of the souls and her own hosts) to Tucson where Wanderer expects to get help.

Along the way, Melanie recognizes one of the landmarks that leads to a rebel sanctuary and off Wanderer and Melanie go into the Arizona desert. Nearly dead, they are found by the rebels, taken hostage, and held in the lava tubes of a vast underground system Melanie's Uncle Jed has fashioned into a sanctuary for himself and 35 other rebels.

Most of The Host is about how the rebels react to the parasite and how Wanderer and Melanie interact and become a part of the community.

Once again, Meyer has created a protagonist that is weak and emotionally frail, a victim that does not show any real grit or determination until nearly the end of the book. The first two-thirds of the novel is slow and tedious without much action. Despite there being thirty-seven rebels purportedly in the caves, barely half of them are never heard or seen. One or two characters pops in and out and there is very little connection to Wanderer or Melanie except as props for the change in sentiment. All the characters are Meyer's stock in trade -- either irritating or whiny, ineffective females and stereotypical male characters chosen from the usual suspects: strong and silent, strong and obnoxious, irascible with a good heart, weepy and ill, and just plain invisible until someone needs to die or be killed to move things along.

The Host doesn't really get interesting and moving until the last third of the story when time is running out and much needs to be done before Meyer can write the end. There are moments when Wanderer and Melanie and her brother Jamie move out of the mundane plod, but too few to hold the story together. I had hopes in the beginning that Melanie would be a force to be reckoned with, but trapped in her own head by Wanderer, that did not happen. There is nothing like an alien genetically incapable of violence giving up an Eden of plenty and happiness to be a pathetic pawn who finally finds the strength to determine her own fate in the last few pages of a 600-page novel.

While the elements of a real page-turner are there, Meyer fails to put them together. The beginning of the novel is like slogging through thick mud until the last third when the pace picks up and the stakes are high. I usually read novels of this length in a couple of days, especially good novels that I promise myself I will read just one more chapter -- and one more -- and one more until I am finished. Not so with The Host, which took me nearly two weeks to get through the bulk of novel before I became engaged sufficiently to keep turning the pages. I will not even go into the usual tirade of poor writing and poorer editing that abound in the book.

Suffice it to say, that The Host is a moderately successful novel in the last third of the novel. The rest is a poor warmup for what could have and should have been really good science fiction. Best I can give The Host by Stephenie Meyer is 3 out of 5, and that's only because of the last third of the book when it really took off.

No Shoe Polish

I didn’t really want to date. Divorced less than a year raising three children alone, I didn’t have the time and certainly wasn’t ready, but I let my girlfriends talk me into going out on my birthday and that’s when the fun began. I knew there was a reason I didn’t like dating. It was the men.

 

“It’s your turn to get the drinks, birthday girl.” Debbie nudged Connie. “That guy over there has been watching you all night.”

I rolled my eyes, asked what they wanted and headed to the bar. A hairy-chested guy in a powder blue suit with his Saturday Night Fever shiny polyester shirt open to his navel and sporting almost as many necklaces as Mr. T attempted what I’m sure he thought was a smile. I ordered the drinks and waited, trying not to notice the stench of Mr. Saturday Night Fever’s cologne. “How ‘bout I get those for you,” he wheezed in my ear. Must be his idea of sexy, but it wasn’t mine.

 “Thank you, but I can manage.” I picked up the drinks and headed back to my friends while they made faces at me and pointed. I knew he was there; I felt his hot breath on my neck. I should have worn my hair down.

 As I set down the drinks and stepped back, I bumped into him. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t know anyone was there.” His hand was warm on my elbow.

 “Look,” he said, “I’m sorry for acting like a jerk. I didn’t know how to get your attention.”

 “It worked.” I managed a weak smile. He wasn’t bad looking if you ignored the long Elvis sideburns and concentrated on his thick, curly black hair. Outside of the hideous clothes and the overwhelming amount of gold he wore, he might be a nice guy.

 “Would you like to dance?”

 My girlfriends huddled together and nodded, giggling and urging me to say yes. I was outnumbered and it was only one dance. “Okay.” He took my hand and led me to the dance floor just as a slow song started.

 When he pulled me close, I fought the urge to sneeze. I finally recognized the cologne he bathed in; it was Polo. It smelled better in the bottle. I was fine as long as I held my breath, at least until I passed out. He pulled me closer and pressed his cheek against mine. He was a good dancer, but I was uncomfortable. I fought the urge to sneeze and needing to breathe, as the black spots in front of me grew bigger. I stepped on his foot, pulled away, and turned my head to take another deep breath when, suddenly, the song was over. I thanked him for the dance.

 “See you tomorrow at work,” he said as he kissed my cheek and left.

 I looked at my friends, but they looked everywhere but at me. “What’s going on?”

 Darlene shifted in her seat as if she had ants in her pants. “Didn’t you recognize him?”

 “No. Who is he?”

 “You should take a break once in a while, look around, pay attention to the cleaning staff.”

 “Shelby cleans our office.”

 “Carlos is her boss.”

 “Some friends you are.”

 They hadn’t set me up, but Carlos was in the break room when they discussed how to get me to agree to go out on my birthday. He’d noticed me. Since I seldom got up from my desk, he didn’t know how to get close enough to ask me out. He’d suggested meeting us at the Blarney Stone and they agreed. “You need to get out more. Go on a date.”

 “I don’t want to date.”

 “You’re too young to close up shop,” Debbie said. Darlene and Connie agreed. “He’s not so bad. Owns a cleaning company.”

 “He’s single,” Connie said.

 “Well, he’s not so bad once you get past the gold and the polyester and the cologne. Not bad at all, as long as I don’t breathe.” I smiled and my friends laughed. “There is that,” they chorused.

 “But before you do anything else,” Connie said, “maybe you should check your lipstick.” She offered me her compact and pointed to her right cheek.

 There were black specks like coal dust down the side of my right cheek where Carlos’s cheek touched mine. “His face didn’t look dirty.”

 “Not his face, his sideburns,” Darlene said. “It’s shoe polish.”

 “What?”

 “To hide the gray.”

 Just my luck. “What’s next, a safety pin to hold his zipper closed?” We all laughed.

 The next night at work, I bumped into Carlos in the lobby. He wore a gray polyester suit with a plain white shirt and red silk tie. He smelled of soap and fresh air. “I forgot to wish you a happy birthday.” He held out a small box wrapped in silver and gold. His smile transformed him into something approaching a nice guy, all the bravado and attitude gone.

 I opened the package. It was a small leather bound copy of “Pride and Prejudice” with gilded edges.

 “I noticed you like her books.”

 “Thank you, but I can’t accept this.”

 “It’s bad luck to refuse a birthday gift. Please take it.”

 “Thanks.” A blush warmed my cheeks.

 “Would you like to go out to dinner this weekend?”

 “I have to work.”

 “You have to eat. Let me buy you dinner.”

 I said yes and before the month was out we had dinner together three times. One night, when it was too cold to walk across the parking lot to the diner, he brought a picnic basket full of food he’d made. As I got up to go back to work, Carlos touched my arm. “Would you like to go to a movie this weekend? We can take your kids.”

 I had so little time with the boys as it was and I didn’t think they were ready to see me with someone other than their father. Carlos was a nice guy with a chivalrous heart. “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll talk to my boys and give you an answer tomorrow.”

  “No gold chains, no safety pins, no cologne.” Carlos grinned. “And no shoe polish. I promise.”

 My cheeks got hot. “How…?”

 He winked and pointed to my three friends peeking through the window in the break room door.

 Carlos wasn’t perfect, but he had a generous soul and I suddenly realized I wanted to get to know him better. I guess I wanted to date after all.

Review: The Reincarnationist by M. J. Rose

Since I had already read The Book of Lost Fragrances and Seduction of the series, I decided to read The Reincarnationist which is the first book in the Reincarnationist series. There were surprises (good and bad), more about reincarnation, and a really good story. This is what books should be -- satisfying.

John Ryder has been having what he calls lurches for over a year. They started when he was caught in a bomb blast in Rome. The lurches put him in ancient Rome in the body of a priest named Julius who is in love with a Vestal, The Vestal, and having an intimate relationship. Since the vestals served for 30 years and were chaste or they died by being buried alive to suffocate, having both Julius and Sabina, the Vestal, were committing a capital crime. Julius would also die if he was found out to be Sabina's lover.

Coincidentally, the Phoenix Club, which has been invested in proving reincarnation, financed a dig in Rome to find an ancient memory tool of powerful significance -- the Memory Stones. Josh is on site and in the grave of what has proven to be a Vestal holding a fruitwood box that may contain the Memory Stones. One of the archaeologists is murdered and the Memory Stones stolen and Josh is the only witness. The fun is just beginning as the threads that have bound him with the other players in this drama are connected to him by threads that span centuries.

I was immediately intrigued by the story M. J. Rose spins in The Reincarnationist and was more comfortable with the switches between time periods, which were less jarring than in Seduction and quite fascinating. The details of all the times depicted are well researched and amazingly accurate (I'm a study of history and archaeology) and left me breathless with anticipation for the next occurrence.

Part of the fun of The Reincarnationist is figuring out how different people are related and which one is the mind behind the murders and the thefts. I was wrong. There were, however, some questions that remained unanswered at the end, but the ending was satisfying and fit the context of the central theme and the tone of the story that unfolded.

Some of the characters made my skin crawl and others broke my heart, but all were fully realized. I love when that happens.

On the less satisfying side were the numerous editing glitches, repeated words, and words out of context. For a major publishing house like Mira, I was definitely not happy, especially when I had to stop my headlong rush through the book to figure out what was supposed to be written. The only other incident was Josh's description of the soul, which was exactly the same as the description used in a movie about finding the reincarnated Dalai Lama. The use of the cup and the water was nearly word for word from the movie, a movie I happen to like and remember clearly. It may be that Rose is simply using the Buddhist explanation and that it's rather like repeating a funny story or an explanation of reincarnation. I can let that go, although it did stand out.

In the end, it is the story and the way the character move through their fictional universe that matters. In this, M. J. Rose does an excellent job of putting all the pieces of a very intricate puzzle together in an entertaining and thought provoking manner. The Reincarnationist is a wonderful story inhabited by believable 3-dimensional characters that shock, amaze, and fascinate from beginning to end, so much so I stayed up late a couple of nights to finish the book.